For 40 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
"Hm?"
Prosser looked at the result on the glucose meter in his hand, then at the result the program displayed on the computer, somewhat taken aback. "How are the two results different?"
The glucose meter's test required blood drawn from the fingertip.
In his surprise, the finger he had just pricked didn't even hurt, and beads of blood went on dripping from his hand one by one.
"That's perfectly normal." Ryan showed no great surprise. He took the glucose meter out of Prosser's hand and said, "The glucose meter and the photoacoustic scanner both carry error."
"Though the scanner's precision should run higher than the glucose meter's, and its result is the more trustworthy of the two."
At that explanation, Prosser relaxed considerably.
"I thought something had gone wrong with the scanner."
Beside them, Holbrook spoke up, shaken. "The way things stand, even a real error margin would hardly matter. The crux is that this program genuinely worked!"
Exactly!
The research assistants nodded along. Every one of them thought he had it right.
They had genuinely, truly used this program to parse a human body's data out of photoacoustic signals.
That was the part that mattered.
Error was beside the point entirely. Every measuring instrument in existence carried error. It only had to be adjusted out later.
Holbrook looked at the photoacoustic scanner standing in the lab and felt as though he were inside a dream.
"It just... worked?"
He murmured it, half in disbelief.
Only days ago, Ryan had told him the complete signals were captured, and even then he had anticipated that collecting photoacoustic signals from a human body would be no great feat.
He had assumed the true barrier would come after, in the parsing algorithm and its program.
And instead, the first human experiment barely finished, Ryan had drawn a flash drive out of his pocket and informed him the parsing algorithm was complete, the program already written, nothing left but to run it...
Wasn't this success arriving a little too fast, a little too easily?
In his experience, research was not supposed to move at this speed!
On the other side, Ryan, with no idea what was going through his head, was talking to Prosser. "You ate breakfast just about two hours ago, right?"
Prosser nodded. "Right. Exactly."
"Mm. In that case your blood glucose should sit in the normal range." Ryan thought back over the material he'd read online the night before. Two hours after a meal, the value did indeed belong in that band.
"Rest a while first. In two more hours, we'll test again," he told Prosser.
Soon enough, two hours later, Prosser walked back into the test area, and the assistant outside started the instrument.
The scanner's running indicator flickered ten times at a speed the eye could barely separate, and the second scan was finished almost at once.
"Import the result into the program from before and run it."
At Ryan's word, the research assistant worked the computer with practiced ease, feeding the fresh experimental data into the calculation program.
Operation this foolproof, anyone at all could manage.
The program's result appeared on the screen in short order, and everyone looked over:
[7.4 mmol/L]
And at the same moment, Prosser ran another test with the glucose meter.
He held the result up for the room.
[7.4 mmol/L]
This time the glucose meter's reading and the photoacoustic scanner's agreed exactly. Both said 7.4 millimoles per liter.
"So we've... succeeded?" The assistant at the computer stared at the two matching results, and suddenly felt like a man who had wandered out to buy a bottle of soy sauce and accidentally witnessed history.
The assistant who had stood by the whole time opened his mouth, and no words came out.
"Fast as it was, it looks like we really did succeed!" Prosser said, pressing down on his finger.
All three of them had arrived at exactly the feeling Holbrook had.
Too fast!
But beyond any question, they had succeeded!
By every convention, this was the moment for cheering and applause.
But Holbrook glanced around him.
The laboratory held barely a soul. Himself, Ryan, and three research assistants.
He had believed today would hold nothing but the human signal-acquisition experiment. It had never entered his head beforehand that Ryan would produce a signal-parsing program and put it to the test.
Had he known, he would have insisted on calling every person in the upstairs offices down to witness this scene together.
This was a major breakthrough for the project!
With this one experiment, they had not only obtained complete photoacoustic signals from a human body. They had parsed those signals, and produced the body data standing behind them.
It meant their research no longer lived only inside a conception. Its feasibility had been proven against reality itself.
It was an aircraft off the drawing board, actually built, its test flight flown and landed.
And yet, at a moment of this significance, the whole vast laboratory held only their cold and quiet handful, without so much as the sound of applause...
"That's about it for today. Prosser, keep an eye on your own condition and watch whether any adverse reaction turns up. The rest of the day is yours to arrange."
Ryan dismissed Prosser and the other assistants, and took Holbrook with him to find Patricia.
Patricia was, as ever, in her office.
At the sight of the two of them coming in together, she paused a beat, then said, "Let me guess. The research has progress?"
She waved the pair over to the sitting area.
Holbrook settled onto the sofa. "The first human experiment has just been completed. Through the photoacoustic scanner, we produced and captured photoacoustic signals on a living human body, and then, through the signal-parsing program, obtained the subject's blood glucose value."
"This has gone past progress. The project's research can already be called a success. The speed of it is beyond all comparison!" Holbrook grew more worked up with every word.
Ryan nodded along with what Holbrook was saying.
And yet Patricia only nodded, mildly.
"Understood. Now walk me through the specifics."
That was far too calm...
Holbrook opened his mouth, unsure what he was even supposed to say. What he had no way of knowing was that Patricia had long, long since grown used to Ryan's efficiency.
Ryan stepped in and laid out the day's experimental details, and folded in, along the way, the intelligent scanning-center conception he'd described to Holbrook before.
Only when he finished did Patricia ask her question. "You're certain the parsing algorithms and programs for the other data can be completed just as quickly?"
Ryan said, "Of course. The parsing algorithms and programs for the other attributes, I'll be handing to the Prism AI center's programmers to complete."
Patricia said, "Then there's no problem. Get the project's experiment report up to me as soon as you can."
And as she said it, she looked toward the man sitting at Ryan's side.
Holbrook, who had been listening quietly all this while without a word, met Patricia's gaze at exactly that moment, a trace of puzzlement rising in his eyes.
An experiment report?
And now Ryan was looking over at him too.
And at that moment, Holbrook suddenly remembered a certain legend that circulated inside the base...
It was the story of one tool man after another...
He seemed, faintly, to understand why Ryan had brought him along.
---
EXTRA CHAPTER FOR EVERY 500 POWERSTONES.