Chapter 109 108: Miniaturization
By now, the total number of Clones had surpassed one hundred million. However, because some Clones were always resting at any given time of day, Li Qingsong only maintained about 80 million simultaneous conscious connections.
After the agricultural complex and the Clone cultivation factories were complete, Li Qingsong didn't hesitate for a moment. He immediately directed all 80 million Clones into constructing the many other factories.
Nearly every type of factory needed to be expanded to five or six times its current size. Correspondingly, the number of trains, railway lines, passenger vehicles, spaceships, and more had to increase by the same magnitude to meet the demands of the booming population.
And so, the Clone cultivation factories became the busiest places in the entire Jupiter System.
This was even after Li Qingsong had deliberately adjusted the cultivation batches to prevent a massive, short-term influx of Clones from overwhelming the existing transport, supply, and energy infrastructure.
The new cultivation method no longer produced 15 million Clones in a single batch every six months. Instead, those 15 million births were spread out evenly over every single day.
This way, approximately 83,000 Clones emerged from the cultivation factories daily. The number remained stable, avoiding any drastic fluctuations.
This made allocating the necessary resources much easier.
At the Clone cultivation factories, Li Qingsong set up dedicated supply warehouses, stocking them with vast quantities of clothes, food, shoes, hats, towels, and other personal items. He also diverted a large portion of his transportation resources to these locations.
Just after midnight each day, about 3,500 Clones would emerge. They were then moved to the rest areas by robots and other Clones.
After a fixed rest period of a little over half a day, these newborn Clones would form lines. They moved quickly in a quiet, solemn procession, first to the clothing distribution point to receive their uniforms, and then, like a living assembly line, to the adjacent cafeteria for the first meal of their lives.
Every day, garment factories produced tens of thousands of sets of clothing, which were then loaded onto rumbling trains and distributed to each pickup point.
The food production bases and central kitchens also turned out massive quantities of raw ingredients and semi-prepared meals—so much that it also had to be transported by rail. Trainload after trainload was delivered to the cafeterias at the Clone cultivation factories, destined for the stomachs of the Clones.
But no matter how much clothing and food was delivered, the warehouses here were never full; they were like bottomless pits.
No matter how many supplies came in, they were all consumed by the massive number of newly-created Clones.
After their meal, the Clones would rise in an orderly fashion once more to collect their remaining personal items. Finally, they boarded internal shuttle buses that converged at the main gates of the Clone cultivation factory.
Li Qingsong had established dozens of these gates. Even so, a crowd of Clones was perpetually waiting at each one.
A bus would pull up, a group of Clones would board in an orderly fashion, and the bus would speed off. The next bus would arrive to take another group away. This cycle repeated 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without ever stopping.
For every Clone transported away, another was born in the factory to take its place. The process never ceased for a single moment.
These Clones were transported to Ganymede Central Station.
From there, they went their separate ways, each according to the job Li Qingsong had planned for them.
Some boarded trains to other bases, where they were assigned to a factory, a construction site, another base, or a laboratory.
Other Clones took trains to the space elevator. There, they ascended into space to board vessels destined for other moons, space stations, or the Jupiter Ring Base.
Still others joined the transportation corps, becoming a link in the very system that shuttled their fellow Clones.
Under these conditions, the total number of Clones under Li Qingsong's command finally increased to about 150 million.
Thus, while ensuring every Clone had sufficient rest and was not overworked, Li Qingsong could finally maintain one hundred million conscious connections at all times.
His production capacity had finally reached its peak.
But even then, Clone cultivation did not stop.
In addition to his active force, Li Qingsong needed a reserve. If an accident or war caused mass casualties among the Clones, he could immediately replenish his numbers.
In fact, even when the number of Clones under his command reached the target of two hundred million, production would not stop. It would merely slow to a rate of about ten million new Clones per year to continually grow the reserves.
After another period of frenetic construction—with 150 million Clones working in shifts and under Li Qingsong's full command—the scale of his base clusters and industrial systems across the Jupiter System had finally expanded to five times their original size, at last sufficient for the current population.
「By this time, forty years had passed since Li Qingsong's arrival in the Jupiter System.」
The various bases entered a state of stable operation, and the phase of large-scale construction finally drew to a close.
This left a large number of Clones temporarily idle.
But that was no problem.
The scientific research system, which Li Qingsong had already pushed to a highly advanced and complex stage, was ready for them. In this system, a single major discipline could be divided into hundreds or thousands of sub-branches, each with its own hundreds or thousands of research topics. Every one of these topics required anywhere from dozens to tens of thousands of Clones to pursue with full effort. Now, that system was in desperate need of more manpower and brainpower.
And so, of the roughly 70 million idle Clones, about 50 million were assigned to operate the newly built factories and bases. The remaining 20 million were like water from a massive Water Tower, flowing out through a network of pipes that branched ever finer, channeling this immense resource into every single subdivision of scientific research.
The impact of this massive influx of Clones was almost instantaneous and plain to see.
On the very first day they were fully integrated into their work, Li Qingsong saw the number of minor technological breakthroughs skyrocket into the millions—a figure nearly equal to the output of the entire previous month.
Li Qingsong's scientific apparatus was like a vast, heavy train, and each of these minor breakthroughs was like a pair of hands pushing it.
Now, propelled by this multitude of hands, it finally began to lurch slowly forward.
Amidst all this progress, the nuclear fission Propulsion Laboratory finally delivered some tremendous good news.
The dual-source, secondary-pressurization Thrust Device, powered by both nuclear fission and chemical fuel, had finally undergone its initial miniaturization!
Its mass was drastically reduced, from an initial 3,000 tons down to just 260 tons.
Yet its efficiency had increased dramatically. In terms of average thrust power per unit of fuel, it had actually doubled!