Chapter 33 (Silicon-Based Survival 1): The Mu Continent

65 million years ago, on Earth’s Neo-Tethys Ocean, at Tower Island

Brahma and Venu, husband and wife, followed Maria’s group to Earth’s Tower Island. Two years earlier, the Tower Island power station had already been completed. Its massive framework soared into the clouds, vanishing into the distance. The structure, rising 180,000 kilometers high, received vast quantities of superluminal energy, which—through deeply buried metallic conductors—pierced the planet’s crust.

The Indo-Australian Plate had thrust deep beneath the Eurasian Plate on the seafloor of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. In just two years, Tower Island had “grown” dozens of meters taller, its area expanding to more than five times its original size.

The moment Venu saw her daughter Cynthia, she rushed forward and embraced her. Cynthia had grown into a graceful young woman, her cheeks tinged with pink, her eyes shining with both shyness and delight. Venu fussed over her daughter, speaking in a constant stream of concern. Cynthia responded with calls that rose and fell like song. Although mother and daughter communicated in entirely different language patterns, neither found this an obstacle—unlike Tesla and Maria, who could make no sense of it at all.

The last time Brahma had seen Cynthia, she had still been an infant. Now, as mother and daughter clung to each other, Brahma, the father, stood a few meters away, feeling at a loss. He stepped forward, then hesitated, wanting to speak but unsure how to begin.

Perhaps sensing this, Cynthia slipped from her mother’s arms and gazed up and down at Brahma with her large eyes. Venu, realizing what was happening, eagerly took Cynthia by the hand and led her toward Brahma, barely able to contain her excitement as she introduced them:

“Cynthia, this is your father.”

In that instant, a smile spread across Brahma’s weathered face, tears filling his eyes. With a clear, joyous song like a soprano’s note, Cynthia ran to Brahma.

The family of three embraced tightly.

A few wisps of cloud floated across the sky above Tower Island. The setting sun hung over the western sea, its rays shimmering in rippling halos across the gentle waves. Everyone sat around a large round table outdoors; everything was peaceful and beautiful.

Nikola Tesla felt a sense of unreality. Could life truly be this lovely? After all, the end of the world was near. The planets of the solar system were about to be engulfed in a fiery ordeal.

Tesla held Maria’s hand, squeezing it tighter and tighter. If only time could stop at this moment forever!

Abbott emerged from a vast factory building. After greeting everyone, he turned to Maria and said,

“The last batch of experimental equipment you needed has been installed. But final adjustments must be carried out by your lab personnel. When can you start?”

Maria glanced at Brahma and Venu, and at the large group of volunteers in the distance, and replied, “We’ll tune the equipment as quickly as possible and begin the experiments. After all, our research has been interrupted for over a decade; we mustn’t be too hasty.”

“You’re right, Maria. Your experiment is our top priority, but we know that large-scale cloning of Venusian humans is an extremely complex and arduous task. We’ll support you and wish you success,” Tesla said, gently patting Maria’s arm.

“Top priority? So you have other contingency plans? I thought the cloning mission could only succeed—failure wasn’t an option. If I fail, is there another way?” Maria asked in confusion.

Abbott shot Tesla a look and said, “Maria, please don’t fail! The so-called alternatives are really last resorts—solutions born of desperation. But don’t worry about that now.”

Maria grew more puzzled and turned to Tesla, “What’s this method, exactly? I’d just like to know, since the pressure these days is crushing—I can hardly sleep.”

Nikola Tesla and Abbott exchanged glances. They stopped dodging the question and explained the backup plan, which Abbott had called a desperate measure.

Over billions of years, the planets in the solar system’s habitable zone had fostered tens of thousands of species—plants and animals that absorb and metabolize energy, breed generation after generation, together forming a rich, diverse biosphere.

Every living creature is made of organic matter, and all organic life depends on one chemical element: carbon. That’s why the Venusians referred to living things as carbon-based.

After the rise of electronic computers, the internet and artificial intelligence greatly advanced Venusian technology and productivity. This sparked a question: must all life be carbon-based? Might it “live” inside silicon-based chips?

Silicon-based life had long been a hot topic among Venusian scientists, spawning endless fascinating experiments—cellular automata being the classic example.

Within a computer, you could create a two-dimensional plane tiled with cells, or even a three-dimensional lattice built of cubes. You’d set simple rules for moving up, down, turning left or right, and let virtual balls, lines, or even “ants” move through this space.

Then, something marvelous would happen. After many cycles, the paths of the balls or ants could become unpredictable, chaotic, or form regular repeating patterns.

The paths of the balls would branch like cell division, and the virtual ants seemed to acquire a kind of life. Hence, these experiments were dubbed “cellular automata”.

Nikola Tesla’s brain-machine interface project had shown the possibility of silicon-based existence—not just for cells, but for the consciousness within the Venusian human brain itself.

Venusian computers used an advanced hybrid radix architecture, offering vast storage and high computational efficiency. Astonishingly, the winner of the highest Venusian physics prize had even proposed breaking the iron law of standardized hardware, blurring the line between hardware and software, allowing hardware to “grow” on its own and develop the ability to learn and “think”.

This bold move shook, even overturned, the dominance of mathematical determinism, enabling computers to learn autonomously through scenario simulations, aligning them more closely with the human brain’s mode of thought.

As neuroscience advanced, brain-machine fusion was no longer novel on Venus.

If necessary—or if there truly was no other way—Venusians had the ability to upload their consciousness to computer clouds, achieving silicon-based existence.

The reason for “if necessary” is that most people were unwilling! Those who uploaded their entire consciousness to the cloud lost all vital signs; to put it bluntly, full upload meant biological death.

If Maria’s team could clone human bodies, then after Venusian consciousness was uploaded and stored in the cloud, once their clones matured, the original consciousness could be downloaded into the new bodies—a true “resurrection”.

If this process succeeded perfectly, it would be the best of all outcomes. The place for Venusian clone resurrection would be Earth.

Abbott’s “desperate measure” referred to the scenario in which the cloning plan failed and the cloud-stored consciousnesses had nowhere to go. Venusian consciousness would be trapped in silicon chips, living endlessly like virtual ants, surviving only as silicon-based entities—assuming a colossal, uninterrupted supply of electricity.

After hearing the explanation, Maria shook her head and sighed. “I thought it would be something more original. Compared to living and breathing freely, who would want to be trapped in a silicon chip, reduced to nothing but strings of digital code?”

As she spoke, another idea came to Maria. “Haven’t bionic robots made great strides? If cloning fails, can’t we download consciousnesses into robot bodies? They can see, feel, and move freely.”

Tesla and Abbott had already considered Maria’s proposal. The problem was that manufacturing billions of robots was an immense undertaking—time and cost made it impossible. Worse, intelligent robots consumed tens of thousands of times more power than ordinary humans!

That would create a thorny problem: there wouldn’t be enough “intelligent bodies” to go around. With only a limited quota, the nearly six billion Venusian consciousnesses would have to be “resurrected” by lottery.

Even then, there was another major issue. Cloned humans could be self-sufficient, obtaining energy from food, but robots could not; they’d require vast amounts of electricity. With Mars shattered and Earth reeling from the impact, there was no way to build enough power stations in the short term.

The human brain is energy efficient! That’s why cloning bodies and downloading consciousness is the ideal solution.

“I will do everything I can to ensure the cloning project succeeds,” Maria said, rubbing her hands together, then clenching her fists, her voice soft but resolute. “But even if my experiment succeeds, we can only begin cloning after Mars explodes. At that point, we’ll need a massive amount of equipment. Where do you plan to store it all?”

“We’ll use spaceships to transport the extracted genes and hard drives containing the stored consciousness to Saturn’s moon Iapetus, keeping them safe from Mars’s explosion. Afterward, we’ll bring them back to Earth,” Tesla replied.

“But the huge quantity of equipment and batteries required for cloning can’t all be taken along. Nikola has found a suitable storage site on Earth,” Abbott added.

Nikola Tesla unfolded a holographic map of Earth and pointed to a vast blue ocean. The Venusians called it the Pacific. “The land in this ocean is called Atlantis; it rises only a few meters above sea level, and, with the movement of the plates, is rapidly sinking. I plan to store your equipment in sealed structures built from massive stacks of batteries.”

This landmass, also known as Mu, would soon be completely submerged by the Pacific. The structures, built like enormous bricks of batteries, were stable, and surrounded by seawater, could easily withstand the shockwaves from Mars’s explosion impacting Earth.

As soon as Maria saw Tesla’s diagram of the battery-built structure, she thought of the ruins of Venus’s ancient civilizations and exclaimed,

“Pyramids! The batteries will become the pyramids of Mu beneath the Pacific Ocean!”

&

A poem composed by combining lines from ancient works:

Where shall I rest through this endless night? — Ming Dynasty, Li Shimian
My body and dreams are one. — Song Dynasty, Monk Zhiyuan
Life is as fleeting as passing electricity. — Ming Dynasty, Qian Zizheng
To light the heart of a wandering guest. — Tang Dynasty, Meng Haoran