Chapter 297: Did You Steal This?
"It really was a gift from a friend," Frank said. "Yeah—someone I met not long ago."
"A gift? From a friend you just met?" Lip looked deeply skeptical. "You're telling me you know someone who just happens to have blueprints like this? You didn't steal it, did you?"
"What are you thinking?" Frank snapped, swatting the back of Lip's head. "Do I need to steal something like this? What kind of person do you think your old man is?"
"Did he say anything else when he gave you these?" Lip asked, rubbing his head.
"He said not to show it to too many people," Frank replied. "And that it could be sold—for hundreds of millions. Billions, even."
He said the last part with a joking tone.
"Hundreds of millions… billions…" Lip murmured under his breath.
"You're not actually believing that, are you?" Frank said, half-laughing. But seeing Lip's expression, he started to hesitate.
"It might actually be possible," Lip said seriously. "The level of technology in these designs is insane. This is generational—way ahead of its time."
Technology was incredibly valuable in the modern world. Countless companies had risen to prominence on the back of a single breakthrough.
Take Gretchen and Elliott's Gray Matter, for example. Built around Walter's research, it had grown into a billion-dollar company.
But before a technology's potential was fully realized, it often looked worthless—easily dismissed, just like Frank was doing now.
Just like Walter in his youth.
Back then, he hadn't thought much of his own invention either. He'd sold it to Gretchen and Elliott for a few hundred dollars and walked away.
Walter could never have imagined that his work would one day build a company worth billions.
If even the creator himself could misjudge his own work, then how could someone like Frank—an outsider with no technical background—be expected to recognize its value?
"Even so," Frank said doubtfully, "can it really be worth that much?"
"Look at the date written here," Frank added. "This blueprint's old. It's from the '90s. If it were that valuable, it should've been built already."
Technology advances at a breathtaking pace.
Back in the day, computers were bulky monsters with laughably small memory, relying on disks for storage—enough to hold only a few books at most.
Look at things now. It hasn't even been that many years, yet computers have become faster, thinner, and far more advanced.
And this blueprint dated back to the 1990s—practically an antique. Back then, the internet itself had barely been born.
So in Frank's view, no matter how sophisticated the design was, it should have already been obsolete.
"You can't look at technology that way," Lip shook his head.
Frank didn't understand—but Lip did.
Many technologies are ahead of their time, far beyond what the era can support.
Scientists often put forward what are known as hypotheses—ideas based on assumptions. They imagine how something could work, even if the conditions to realize it don't yet exist.
Black holes, wormholes, parallel universes—these were all once hypotheses. Until experimental evidence proves them, they remain theoretical.
Take black holes, for example. After Einstein proposed the field equations of general relativity in 1915, the idea of black holes emerged—objects so dense that even light couldn't escape them.
Yet it took more than sixty years before scientists finally confirmed their existence in the distant Cygnus constellation.
That's why scientific technology can't be judged by age alone. Just because something was designed in the '90s doesn't mean it's outdated junk.
Many blueprints and theories from decades ago—or even earlier—couldn't be realized simply because the conditions weren't right.
Ideas like building a structure similar to countless solar panels to completely envelop the sun and harvest its energy.
Or constructing a gigantic lens in space around Earth, using a principle every child knows—focusing sunlight with a magnifying glass. If the lens were large enough, the concentrated energy could exceed even nuclear weapons in destructive power.
There were countless ideas like these—some pure fantasy, others surprisingly plausible.
And in Lip's eyes, the blueprint Frank had brought back belonged to that same category.
"So basically, it's useless," Frank concluded after Lip's explanation.
No matter how brilliant the idea, if it couldn't be built, it had no real value—at best, an academic contribution.
"With current technology, it might be possible to build it," Lip said slowly. "But there's still a lot I don't understand. I'd need more time to study it. Whoever designed this… they were incredible."
Normally, a blueprint would be signed—just like an artist signs their painting.
But the name on this one had been deliberately scratched out. Not a single letter was legible.
"Do you think the person who gave this to you designed it?" Lip asked.
"No way," Frank answered immediately.
Lip had already said this wasn't something an ordinary person could design. It would take a genius with deep expertise in fields like nuclear physics.
And Ivan? The scruffy, muscle-bound guy looked more like a lumberjack than a physicist.
"Then that makes this even stranger," Lip muttered. "I'll keep it for now and take it to the lab. I feel like I've seen something similar in theory before."
"Take it," Frank said casually. "It's useless to us anyway."
Exhausted, Frank went to bed early.
"—Hiss!"
The next morning, Frank groaned in pain. Looking down, he saw that his ankle was badly swollen.
"Fuck," he cursed.
This kind of symptom could only mean one thing—the cancer.
I should go to the hospital, he thought.
He'd already made peace with the idea of not getting treatment. It was expensive, painful, and often pointless.
Before, he hadn't had the money. Now that money wasn't an issue, the fear was the suffering—with no guarantee of results.
He'd watched Walter go through treatment. The pain, the torment—it terrified him. And worst of all, the treatment hadn't even worked.
Walter hadn't gone to some back-alley clinic either. It was one of the top three cancer treatment centers in the country—an absolute authority in the field.
If Frank sought treatment, there was nowhere better to go.
Still, weighed down by doubts and fears, Frank had always chosen to just drift along.
But Walter's condition had improved.
And the good news Walter shared over the phone a few days ago… finally made Frank start to reconsider.