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The meeting ended in a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere.
Ryan had only explained the project's goals in broad strokes and raised a few research directions, asking Holbrook and the others to begin investigating them. He hadn't done as he had in the past and flung the technical materials directly in front of them to have them work backward from it.
The research directions he'd raised were all inferred from the materials the system had disclosed so far. Studying these directions in depth now meant that once the system's materials came out, they could move straight to verification, saving a great deal of effort.
Under these circumstances, the research lab's current workload wasn't heavy. They hadn't even suspended the projects they'd already had underway, and had ample manpower and time to keep pursuing them.
Although the goals Ryan had raised seemed inconceivable, Holbrook had a great deal of confidence in this project.
With this much funding, even if he couldn't reach the goal Ryan required, he could still make a name for himself in the photoacoustic imaging field. Producing some other results wouldn't be very difficult.
In truth, in a great many research projects, results could be had as long as one was willing to spend the money.
It was only that a lot of the time the ratio of input to output was too low, which was why costs had to be controlled, human initiative brought into play, and greater breakthroughs sought under limited conditions.
Projects of this sort generally had to wait for an opportunity. Perhaps some heavyweight on the team would suddenly have a flash of insight and achieve a critical breakthrough that made the technology possible. Perhaps the technology would suddenly be embargoed, forcing them to rely on their own efforts.
Otherwise, projects of this sort could only trickle along, sustaining themselves on middling funding or accumulating slowly for a later release.
After the meeting, the photoacoustic imaging scanner project counted as formally launched, and all sorts of work got underway in orderly fashion.
The laboratory was arranged inside a vacant mech bay in the Dome Base. Holbrook and the others came and went from the lab every day, and could occasionally see the mechs in the bays undergoing testing.
The one still being tested now was the firefighting mech, which for various purposes like pilot training or airframe testing would be hauled out for a couple of laps from time to time.
A mature mech like Scrapper, meanwhile, would stay in its bay drinking engine oil unless there was some need for it.
On top of that, most of the material used in Scrapper's original construction was steel. Although high-strength steel had been used for support as well, deploying it at high frequency would put too much strain on the materials and structure.
So Scrapper was rarely deployed these days, essentially in a state of retirement, or you could say it was waiting to enter a history museum.
A working environment like this left Holbrook and the others feeling extremely comfortable.
In the space of only a few short days, they'd come to feel this place was simply a paradise for research. Although it was far from the city, it had everything one could want, which instead lent it a sense of carefree seclusion from the world.
The work tasks were relaxed, the working environment was comfortable, their duties hadn't increased much, and during working hours they could see mechs from time to time.
Ryan, meanwhile, had begun to grow busy again. Aside from the photoacoustic imaging research, he also had to handle the work of the AI center day to day, offering his suggestions from time to time.
MOSS's materials contained an enormous quantity of algorithms and special architectures. He had no intention of copying all of it out himself. He'd already planned out the lines of thinking and handed them to the programmers in the research center to implement, which saved a great deal of effort.
Beyond that, the research at the brain-machine center and the prosthetics center also required his attention from time to time.
What he was thankful for now was that the Crimson Typhoon and liquid neural connection projects no longer needed much interference from him.
The experiments on those two projects had leveled off. Everything that could currently be tested had already been tested, and the results obtained held no problems worth noting. They only needed to keep researching deeper.
And so the days passed steadily.
Until.
"You're saying a New Year's Day interview?"
Ryan raised his head from in front of the computer and looked at Patricia.
He was in the photoacoustic imaging lab at the moment, having just run a photoacoustic imaging experiment alongside the people from the research lab.
They'd used the lab's old equipment from before, scanning and imaging the cerebral blood vessels of a live mouse, which counted as gaining a little hands-on experience. After all, everything he'd learned before had come from documents.
The two of them moved off to one side, the computer handed back to research assistants like Julian Prosser.
Patricia said, "On New Year's Day the national broadcaster is putting together a summary of the country's research achievements. A project as enormous as ours obviously can't be overlooked, so they've asked me to come and get your opinion."
"That's definitely no problem for me," Ryan said.
The new project had only just gotten started, and he was short on Summon Points right now, so naturally he wouldn't refuse.
"I knew you wouldn't refuse." Patricia smiled.
At this point Ryan suddenly remembered something. It was already the end of the year, so by rights this should be the time when awards were decided. He'd completed a project like Crimson Typhoon this year. Surely he ought to be able to take home an award or two?
When he asked Patricia about it, she replied at once.
"I was just about to bring that up with you."
"Both the Crimson Typhoon project team and you personally will be receiving next year's National Science and Technology Progress Award. The ceremony is in January, and you'll be able to go to the hall to accept it then."
Patricia knew Ryan generally paid little attention to matters of this sort, and volunteered an explanation. "This award is currently one of the five great awards in the country's scientific and technological world. It's already the highest-grade award that can be given to you at present."
"Mm-hmm."
Hearing this much, Ryan was already satisfied. He didn't need to go search online. Just hearing the first word of that award's name was enough for him to know its weight was absolutely not light.
The research assistants running the experiment off to the side, however, had lost their composure somewhat.
The National Science and Technology Progress Award...
Hearing this, Julian Prosser and several others nearly forgot how the next step of the experiment was supposed to go.
"Good heavens, The Mech Expert has to be the youngest recipient ever, right?" Prosser said in a low voice to the other research assistants.
"Be more confident. Drop the 'has to be' and swap in 'definitely,'" a colleague said.
"The Mech Expert is only sixteen this year, isn't he? I don't think anyone will ever break that record."
"Maybe one day, after some kind of brain-enhancement serum shows up, humanity will produce another monster like him."
"People really are different from one another..."
The colleagues all shook their heads and sighed.
The news Patricia had brought lifted Ryan's mood considerably, and he even threw himself into the experiment with more energy.
Only, for some reason, the assistants had suddenly lost all their energy.
Ah, young people these days had such frail constitutions.
After finishing the experiment and leaving the lab, Ryan returned to his own dorm, thought for a moment, and made calls to share the news with his family.
Chloe was extremely excited when she heard, because this year she'd be staying at school over winter break, which meant she'd be able to meet up with Ryan then and give the mech movie's setting another good going-over.
His parents, hearing the news, were sincerely happy for him too, and indicated that they'd come to the site to gather with him when the time came.
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