Fortunately, the sunlight in the entire Mask Zone is quite ample, and it gets pretty sunny by noon. Throughout the day, they were busy drying things and weaving some practical tools with their tentacles. Besides various net bags for storing stuff, each person also wove themselves a set of clothes. Although the grass didn't offer much defense, it could well prevent cuts, more reliable than fur.
Feline animals feel quite uncomfortable moving around in clothes, but they're not real cats, after all, and can tolerate it. After a busy day, they finally managed to light a fire at night. Little Superman was careful to use his tail to hold the tinder and placed it onto the firewood. When the night was illuminated, all the cats felt a bit moved.
After being here for so many days, they've finally seen fire—it's simply a miracle in the evolutionary history of felines, thanks to Prometheus.
Of course, hearing this, the mouse became a bit dissatisfied. He said, "It was my original body that gave you all strength, allowing you to use tentacles to create fire. You're thanking Prometheus?"
"Actually, we don't really thank him; otherwise, we would have saved him from Mount Olympus long ago. You should just listen to the human race's thanking, don't take it too seriously," Little Superman said.
The mouse was speechless, never seen such confidence before. But what Little Superman said was also true; humans say one thing but do another when it comes to faith, Nya has seen far too many. Whether it's gratitude or rejection, don't listen to what they say in their prayers, listen to what they say when they settle accounts.
After lighting the fire, they could cook cooked food. No one here knew how to make stone tools, lacking utensils for soup stewing, they could only roast it first. However, roasted meat provided great comfort to a few cats, the roasted bird meat smelled so good, and roasting a few bird eggs in the fire, when the egg yolk entered the mouth, suddenly life in the Cthulhu Mythos Universe didn't seem so hard.
Shiller felt somewhat regretful; it would be nice if the pile of bones below were real, as human skulls are quite suitable as bowls. However, even if they brought it up, Peter probably wouldn't drink from it, so they left it at that.
Peter ate a bird leg too, his appetite visibly improved a lot. The wound on his abdomen wasn't sutured, but because the tentacles could keep pressing on it, there were already signs of healing. After filling their stomachs and sleeping through the night, Peter finally regained some spirit.
Shiller didn't actively ask him; rather, he asked Shiller, "Did you see the situation inside here?"
Shiller explained the anomaly he saw in the feeding room to him, Peter showed a look of realization, clearly he had suspicions all along, and Shiller's information filled the last piece of the jigsaw.
"You should have heard of blood cells." Peter's voice was still somewhat weak, but his logic was clear, "They're red cells, white cells, and platelets. Each of these cells has its own function, but together they form a complex system. In fact, these cells are more intelligent than many would imagine, not operating according to a specific rule, but while doing their part, they exhibit special tendencies. And this can be used as a design for special cellular computers."
"The bio-computer constituted by blood cells possesses all the advantages of cellular computers. At the same time, they divide into different workgroups based on tendencies, similar to computer threads. All this is spontaneously completed by the cells, requiring no programming, you could understand it as a natural computing power optimization system, very efficient."
"However, the drawback of this computer is extremely difficult storage; as difficult as blood preservation, perhaps even more difficult. Because the heat generated by using cells for computation can kill them, thus there's inevitably a large consumption, if not replenished timely, it will cease operation. Those animals being fed are to supplement blood."
"But obviously, mixing so many different blood types will surely trigger rejection reactions. The so-called rejection reaction is actually the antibodies in the plasma targeting foreign antigens, attacking red cells, thus causing adverse reactions."
"In the absence of other human organs, these adverse reactions wouldn't necessarily matter, but the cellular computer can't ignore them. Plasma is the carrier of blood cells, triggering blood rejection reaction is equivalent to the computer case attacking the motherboard; if the motherboard breaks, computation can't occur."
"To avoid rejection reactions, you either destroy antibodies in the plasma or give red cells surfaces a uniform antigen. It's akin to either revoking plasma's licensing or issuing the same passport for red cells in different blood types."
"Both methods are extremely difficult for the human race, otherwise issues with heterogeneous blood transfusion would have been resolved long ago. Such issues are mainly irresolvable because the human system is very precise; compromising one link, other links might be affected, so aggressive methods can't be employed. However, without a body, this becomes somewhat simpler."
"If there are only one or two types of blood, there are ways to unify them, but if there are just too many types, even from different species, it's still extremely difficult, at least impossible to solve with conventional means."
"Iron Man's idea is nothing short of genius." Peter's tone increased slightly, clearly he also became somewhat excited, "He chose to contaminate all the blood so they could coexist."
The cats listened to the preceding professional content, understanding half of it, only knowing not to mix different biological blood together, otherwise the computer would break, but Iron Man used a method to mix all biological blood together.
Peter further explained, "The residue in that room has the strength to contaminate blood. Those mutated animals' blood we've seen before has all turned black, this is a sign of contamination."
"When animals are contaminated, the nature of the blood changes; no matter what it originally was, it gains a certain unified attribute. When these beings are thrown into the cube, the blood is extracted from them, mixed with other blood, and might be regarded as the same blood type."
"Even if there were differences at that point, they would all be poured into the residue room and contaminated again, it would definitely become the same blood. By that logic, red blood cell surfaces would have the same antigen, plasma antibodies wouldn't work, cellular clusters wouldn't be attacked, and the computer could continue to operate normally."
"Thus, the problem of blood consumption is solved. If you only extract one type of animal, it is impossible to perform large-scale calculations because the blood of that one type of animal is not sufficient for consumption, even for those larger-bodied groups. But if you add all of them together, it's possible to perform massive computations."
"So, it's not the Tindalos Hounds that ruined everything; quite the opposite, it's these remnants that helped Iron Man establish this blood cell computer system. Their contamination was used to unify the blood type, lower the threshold for blood collection, and support the massive consumption needed for computations."
"I'm a bit confused," Constantine said, "If those hounds are all madmen, why would they help Iron Man?"
Previously the mouse had said that Misisha was very bad-tempered, and he was even unwilling to talk to Nya. So why would he be willing to talk to Iron Man?
"He probably wasn't willing," Shiller said.
"Did he rush into their lair and grab those remnants?" Little Superman scratched his ear with his paw.
"Probably not," Shiller said, "You can see, at this stage his resources are not abundant. He's building these facilities with minimal labor and materials. If he indeed had the capability to charge into the Tindalos Hound's home, he probably wouldn't need to build this computer."
"I think he might have decided to create such a computer because he encountered these remnants. After all, the biological computers we've seen before weren't like this. There must be some reason for the change. It's possible Iron Man saw these remnants and got the idea to create a blood cell computer, then put it into practice."
The mouse nodded and said, "Indeed, this group of dogs likes to carelessly dump what they've eaten. Now, the structure of time and space is chaotic beyond recognition, so running into remnants is quite normal. However, I'm still shocked that he can touch this stuff, as these remnants are extremely lethal to human contamination."
"I told you, he's no longer an ordinary human. Do you think the human race could use their own blood to make a computer?"
"Wait a minute," Little Superman said, "Since all the blood can be unified into one blood type, why not just use your own? Wouldn't it be easier to just capture animals and draw their blood?"
Peter shook his head, "The initial cell computer cluster grouping could only be done with his own blood. If he could freely manipulate the blood and organs of other creatures in this universe, he wouldn't need to build this computer."
They recalled what Shiller said before, that Iron Man probably created this computer to analyze data of this universe, proving that he was still at a stage where he knew nothing. In such a situation, using those wild animals is more difficult than using himself, because those animals and their natural environment are unknown, whereas for Iron Man, all kinds of bio-technology regarding the human body are well-known to him.
"He needs to use the organization of his blood cells to establish a trend," Peter explained, "like paving the road in advance, so future cells will follow this path, thereby improving efficiency more readily. So initially, he definitely has to use his own blood."
"Sometimes I really don't understand you humans," the mouse shook his head, "seeing what you do to your fellow humans, I thought you were inherently evil, but you do such things to yourselves without hesitation, I can only think you're mad."
"He really is mad." Peter turned somewhat listless, as if he wanted to say more on this topic but didn't have the energy. The recent thoughts and speaking had drained him, and soon he fell asleep again.
"But, Iron Man picked up the hound's leftovers, why are they coming to us?" Little Superman was puzzled.
"They might be looking for Iron Man, just can't locate him," Shiller said, "If you had built a supercomputer around this pile of remnants, what would you analyze first?"
Without waiting for Little Superman to answer, Shiller said directly, "Of course, the remnants themselves. Because only by figuring out what this is can the computer be more stably operated. But in the Cthulhu Universe, observation holds power, and can even directly connect with the Outer God."
"It's like, Iron Man made a supercomputer that, with an unknown massive amount of computational power per second, is constantly prank-calling Misisha. However, this thing isn't the Observer that Misisha is normally familiar with. If he wasn't a computer expert, he wouldn't know what's calling him..."
"Pfft," the mouse couldn't help but laugh, "He's done well!"
"Don't get too happy too soon," Shiller said, "Guess why Misisha and Yog have been confronting each other for so long without causing much damage, but now he's gone mad enough to tear down buildings?"
The mouse's expression cracked again.