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The magical mental circuitry of those people could be set aside for now.
Ryan was currently in his own office, and Kyle was here too, the two of them drinking soda to celebrate.
"This project's speed is just too fast. I wasn't even ready, and it's already reached the ending." Kyle took a big gulp of soda, feeling it fizz and burst in his mouth, and sighed.
Ryan laughed. "The project isn't over yet. You all still have the upcoming tests to get through."
"I know, I know." Kyle leaned back in his chair and let out a burp. "I just feel like this past year and then some has been a little dreamlike."
He thought of himself a year ago. Back then, although he'd already settled on a direction and was well-regarded by plenty of people, he'd still felt lost about the future. It wasn't until someone recommended him to the Scrapper project that he'd found his true direction within it.
The power of neural connection technology went without saying. Over this past year, through his own perseverance and talent, he'd come to understand the technology thoroughly, ahead of everyone else.
And he was being valued more and more. Although he hadn't started his doctorate yet, many organizations had already approached him, including some classified ones. Unfortunately, the research directions they wanted didn't match his own wishes.
A year ago, if any single one of these organizations had come knocking, he'd have been beside himself with joy. Whatever the research direction, he'd have agreed first and figured it out later. He'd never have considered it as calmly as he did today.
Most of the credit for all of this belonged to the young man in front of him.
Thinking of this, Kyle told Ryan about the matter, wanting to hear his opinion.
Although Ryan was younger than him, between the two of them Ryan was clearly the smarter one, and at the end of the day, Ryan was the founder of neural connection technology. No one understood it better than him.
Ryan listened and thought for a moment. "Then it depends on which research direction you want to develop in."
As he spoke, he laid out the current development directions of neural connection technology for Kyle, one by one.
Although neural connection technology had only appeared a year ago, it had already branched into many directions. The most obvious were sync materials, human-machine connection, two-person sync, and connection-system programming, along with some applications in medicine, gaming, and industry. Broken down further, there were even more fields.
Of course, for neural connection technology to make a grand showing in these fields, it would require adaptive modification, and that would be an enormous undertaking.
Take his earlier brain-controlled prosthetic, for example. He'd simplified the brain-control system down until only the function of detecting hand-movement signals remained, along with the later research on the custom operating system and the like.
That modification had been nothing much to him. But if Kyle were to handle it, it would probably take a year or two at least, and burn through a great deal of money on top of that.
Real scientific research was extremely money-intensive, unlike doing a project with the answers already in hand the way he did.
Listening to Ryan point out the directions one by one, Kyle now fell into deep thought. "When I chose the brain-machine direction before, it was mainly because I was optimistic about its prospects for brain enhancement."
"Brain enhancement? I never heard you mention that." Ryan was a little surprised. He'd never once seen Kyle reveal any such idea on the project.
"Wasn't I too busy? I'd just finished wrapping my head around neural connection, and then I came over here to the liquid neural side." Kyle rubbed his head and laughed. "Actually, at the very beginning, I chose this direction because I saw some papers describing brain-computer interface technology's prospects for enhancing the human brain. Turns out the ideal and the reality are still a long way apart."
Even Ryan shook his head. "Brain enhancement is a bit too far off for current brain-computer interfaces and neural connection technology. Even I have no plans to open up research in that direction."
What exactly the brain's operating mechanism was, no one in the world had managed to figure out yet.
This little thing you could hold in one hand had stumped everyone on Earth. Even Ryan, who'd studied neural connection through and through, had no clue when faced with this problem. Otherwise he'd have studied his own skull clearly first.
Hearing Ryan's words, Kyle scratched his hair, taken aback by the answer. He hadn't expected the ever-confident Ryan to say something like this.
Ryan thought it over and offered his advice anyway.
"You can stay at the base for now. The Crimson Typhoon project will keep going for a long time, and so will the research on liquid neural connection."
"Once you've fully understood liquid neural connection, it won't be too late to think about your future path then."
Kyle scratched his head. "But I kind of want to produce some results now."
Ryan rolled his eyes. This guy felt that he'd learned all this and still hadn't put out a single decent result of his own, so he wanted to make one to prove himself.
Put bluntly, he'd been a tool for too long and had started hatching little schemes of his own.
Ryan remembered something. "Prism Sciences is putting together a new brain-control device research team right now. If you don't mind, you could join it as a technology consultant."
Prism Sciences' brain-control system was indeed hiring lately. Because Ryan was just one person, and the projects on his plate kept piling up, if the company didn't bring on more tools, ahem, researchers, they simply wouldn't be able to keep up.
Besides researchers, there were also technology consultants, responsible for guiding the researchers and answering their questions day to day. The targets they had in mind were all experts and professors who'd spent time on the Scrapper project. Adding one Kyle to the mix was no big deal. Compared to those professors, he came a lot cheaper.
Hearing this, Kyle thought for a moment. "Then would it be possible for me to set up another project, outside of prosthetics?"
"Of course," Ryan nodded.
At this, Kyle immediately nodded in agreement, not even asking about the compensation.
Of course, even if Kyle had asked, Ryan wouldn't have known. That he even knew his own company was hiring was already plenty. How could he possibly know the details of the compensation?
As they finished discussing it, the phone suddenly rang, and Kyle took the opportunity to say his goodbyes.
The call was from Chloe, who'd phoned specifically to congratulate him on the test's success.
Over summer break, she'd gone with her teacher to study filming with a small production crew, so she hadn't had the time to come to the base. Seeing Crimson Typhoon on television this time, she'd been left utterly stunned, barely able to get her words out.
Once this call ended, his parents' call came through soon after.
"Mm-hmm, I haven't had much going on lately. I'm not all that busy. I'll be able to rest soon, and we'll see each other then."
"Oh, right, I recruited someone for the company. He's got a lot of potential."
By the time this call ended, an hour had passed. Ryan shook his head, then suddenly remembered something.
He opened the system panel and glanced at the system's progress.
Ninety percent.
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