7 Chapter 7 - The Mysterious Black Chip

Sylzone woke up. It was Tuesday. As he sat up, the sun hit his eyes with light, causing him to squint a little.

After what happened yesterday, he thought that was only a temporary thing, but after he tried remembering the information about the circuits, he realized he could recall it perfectly.

Since his class was at 2 P.M. today, he decided to read up more on electrical engineering.

Thus, he activated the textbook he got yesterday and tried to decipher a new topic. To his disappointment, nothing happened.

Giving up, he could only study the book using what he knew. The information he had absorbed yesterday helped a little. Although he could not understand the other concepts in detail, he was able to get a basic overview.

Quantum circuits were more like pseudo-quantum products. There was a strip of quantum particles underneath every circuit. The circuits themselves had nothing to do with quantum mechanics. They were given that name because of the quantum strips placed inside. These were treated as raw components in manufacturing. The next two topics were products derived from the circuits.

Infinitely alternating cycles were a way to recycle energy using quantum circuits. It was related to the microchip inside the circuit. Batteries normally have a charge cycle. In his previous world, The average charge had 10,000,000 cycles. Once all the cycles were exhausted, the battery would no longer work. The way an infinitely alternating cycle worked was that as a cycle was close to being exhausted, this microchip would send commands to the quantum strip underneath that circuit to replicate. Upon receiving that command, the quantum strip would replicate the circuit line, causing a new one to appear on top.

The quantum strip would then 'erase' the previous circuit. When the replicated line fell into place, it fused with the original connections and overwrote the state of the previous circuit. Because the replicated circuit was in a 'never used' state, the cycle would act like it was never used. However, there would still be some residual state left over, but this still extended the life of the battery by a significant amount. Since the quantum strip could do this without limit, the technique was given the name 'infinitely alternating cycles'. The programmer who came up with this method became a billionaire and stopped working. However, people continued improving the technique.

For the consumers, this was explosive news. It dramatically increased portable electronic usage. Sales of portable electronics shot up dramatically. Kids, teenagers, and college students would play games all day long. Young adults started being more productive because energy intensive apps didn't even drain 1% after 1 week of usage. More social events were recorded and posted online. Entertainment venues that used high amounts of electricity were able to relocate to previously un-sustainable locations.

Industries that relied on fuel and could not adapt went bankrupt. Their resources were limited. What could they do to fight against an infinite fuel source? Companies that were able to make the transition naturally did very well. As the idea that energy was now infinite in addition to being cheap sunk into the minds of later generations, new products emerged that tremendously altered the experiences people had.

You could taste food without buying it. You could try on clothes without wearing them. You could now have a movie theater experience at the beach. You could clean yourself and feel refreshed without having to use water. Classes could now hold an infinite amount of students and everyone could get a 1-on-1 meeting with the professor. People could now get 16 hours of sleep in 1 hour. The perfect meal could be cooked every single time without fail. The possibilities were literally endless.

The other shocking thing was triple route routing. Although he couldn't understand it perfectly, the revelation of the main concept left Sylzone shaking intensely out of wonder. The amount of ideas he was generating just multiplied continuously in his head.

Essentially, triple path routing had no relation to its name and predated quantum circuits. The reason it was named so was because the person who created the proof of concept was named Tior Triple Roan. Hoar was originally named Tior Roan, but because he was obsessed with triples when he was a baby, his parents added Triple to his name. This obsession followed him to college. Even though he was 3x more productive than anyone else, he still felt it was too slow.

When he was a senior, Tior found out about a class called Quantum AI. It was an elective class that no one really cared about, but Tior had an immense fascination towards it. That was because on the brochure he looked at, it mentioned sentient processing and explained it as doing things at the speed of light. He had aspirations to triple everything he currently did. Curious, he immersed himself in the class for the entire semester, forgetting everything else.

When he finally finished the class, he immersed himself in his room for one month, not leaving for anything other than food and classes. When he finally revealed himself again, he had developed a concept called infinite processing. The world was confused and didn't pay much attention at first. Then he created a proof of concept.

He invited everyone to a massive event at the biggest outdoor stage at school. He sent out invitations everywhere and even emailed some major news publications. Those publications contacted the big players.

On the day of the reveal, he didn't wear a suit and tie, but just some simple clothing. He walked up onto the stage and carried a small computer that wasn't worth much. Behind him, dozens of people walked on and off the stage, putting down a hundred giant monitors.

He then set it up so that the monitors all displayed the same thing. People thought he was crazy at this point. Afterwards, he downloaded a game known to be very heavy on resources and started it up.

Those who were gamers closed their eyes, not wanting to see the horror that was about to happen. Indeed, there were a few gasps as the game struggled to load with a single screen, let alone multiple. Then he shut the game down, turned the computer off, swapped out the microchip, then closed everything up again. As he was getting ready to start the game up again, people asked him not to subject them to that again. A lot of other people agreed.

However, he ignored them. He started the game again, and before anyone could close their eyes, the next sight shocked them to their core. The game was now running in full 32K, at uncapped frames per second (fps), on maximum settings. Each monitor was displaying the same thing. The most shocking thing was the uncapped fps. One gamer with sharp eyes noticed that it was over 10,000 before he started feeling dizzy and stumbling.

Tior then started playing the game a little. He went out of town and towards a monster field. As he got near a mob, some people started grimacing.

'That's going to be a lot of particle effects!'

When he executed his skills and dived into the mob, hundreds of jaws dropped as the fps remained above 10,000. Then his in-game view started rumbling. A boss had emerged from the ground. He joined up with other players to take it down. The boss had multiple ranged aoe attacks, physical attacks that showed a lot of impact, and he would repeatedly duck into the ground and reappear someone else.

Throughout the entire encounter, the fps stayed above 10,000 fps.

By the end of the day, he had already been offered trillions of dollars to sell the concept, agreements to work for the biggest companies, and contracts to create even more products.

Tior Triple Roan also announced that his name was now Tior Infinite Roan. However, people felt it was better to honor his original name, thus they called the technique Triple Path Routing instead of Infinite Processing. The triple was to honor his middle name, the path was to honor the journey he took to get to where he was, and the routing was related to how the chip worked. A better name would've been Triple Infinite Routing, but they felt that Triple Path Routing respected his legacy.

Tior Infinite Roan didn't have any complaints, so instead of Infinite Processing, the name went down in all books as Triple Path Routing. The class, Quantum AI, naturally exploded in popularity. The field had advanced a lot since then.

This had very little relation to electrical engineering, but since quantum circuits were based off of triple path routing, it was mentioned.

Then, seemingly struck by a thought, Sylzone reached into his pocket and pulled out a microchip. It was pitch black. It was the black microchip Jaff had given him earlier.

As he looked it over and turned it, he wondered if it could also do the things mentioned in the book. No, he erased that though. He wondered what it could do at all.

A knock on the door startled him.

"Room service! Would you like any refreshments?" a feminine voice asked.

'Room service? What time is it?' Sylzone asked as he looked at the time.

'12:00 PM'

'I guess it's time for a break' he thought as he put the black microchip on a desk.

After he grabbed some snacks and ate them, it was 12:15 PM.

'I guess I'll sleep until 1:00 PM, then get ready for class'

He then went back to bed, set the alarm on the watch, and started to doze off. As he was falling asleep, he thought about the two things he read. Quantum circuits, quantum particles, quantum strips, and infinite processing. As he thought about these things, they put him into a deeper sleep before he stopped moving.

*rattle*

*rattle*

*whoosh*

Suddenly, a rattling sound and a whoosh sound appeared out of nowhere, but Sylzone was fast asleep. The sounds got louder until Carmen appeared.

'Hmm? What is that?' she thought.

As the sounds got louder, she was finally able to identify the direction they seemed to originate from. She gasped. The rattling sound was coming from the black microchip on the desk and the whooshing sound was from the watch. The vortex had reappeared!

She wanted to wake up Sylzone but he was in a deep sleep.

Helpless, she could only stare at what was happening, and let him know about it after he woke.

As she stared at the chip and watch, she started to notice something peculiar. The microchip that was originally just rattling started sliding across the table in their direction! At the same time, she slowly felt a suction force pulling on her. She was an AI, but she actually felt like something was pulling on her! She turned to the source of the feeling and noticed the vortex on the watch started getting faster and larger. In fact, it seemed to even be breaking out of the range of the watch. As it rose, she could see a pitch black tornado emitting stronger and stronger rotational force. The strange part was, even though the force was getting stronger, it didn't feel like it was pulling anything in. At least, when she looked around, everything was still. Then a thought popped up in her head and she looked at the microchip. Indeed, her thought was correct! The vortex was pulling on the microchip alone.

She immediately realized they were somehow connected. Although they were both pitch black, and there was a similar resemblance, she still felt it was a coincidence. Now the current events confirmed her suspicions.

She continued observing, watching as the microchip was traveling towards the vortex. When the microchip was a few feet away from the bed, the vortex actually stretched out towards it.

When Carmen saw this, her first thought was, 'how long is this thing??'

The vortex devoured the microchip and began retracting back into the watch. After the surface returned to normal, only silence could be heard. Carmen sat down on the end of the bed and stared at Sylzone. She thought about what she witnessed just now.

'This watch.. it's more mysterious than I expected. Stretching itself out? That's not just a function. That was more like something thought the microchip wasn't coming fast enough!'