"70% of skincare products are Water." Alice looked at the reading on the water pressure gauge. "Chlorine and metal ions in tap Water will destroy enzyme activity; we can only use deionized Water."
Day 14: Completion. When the last Mexican worker left with his pay, the entire garage had been completely transformed.
The former abandoned auto repair shop had been converted into a modern small-scale factory. Although the area wasn't large, the functional zones were strictly partitioned, the floors were mirror-bright, and the air was filled with the faint scent of disinfectant.
Especially the core area enclosed with glass and color steel at the very back, which exuded a cold scientific aesthetic under the glow of cold LED lights.
"The foundation is laid, Aunt Sarah, next, let's bring in those steel monsters."
To avoid dirtying the newly built core clean zone, Alice left the equipment she had hauled back from the scrap yard in Zone 1, the contaminated work area near the main door.
Although this area wasn't as spotless as the core zone, the bright industrial pendant lights illuminated the workbench as clearly as an operating room.
"Zzzzt—"
Blinding welding sparks flew, landing on the fireproof mat spread on the floor.
Alice wore a heavy welding mask and a grey industrial jumpsuit that was a size too large.
Those slender, fair hands that should have been used for playing the piano or holding test tubes were now wearing coarse heat-resistant gloves, skillfully manipulating an argon arc welding torch.
She was doing the final assembly.
Molten metal droplets precisely filled the cracks on the mixing tank's shell and connected those complex modified pipes.
Sarah Mason sat on a brand-new aluminum folding ladder, holding sandpaper and helping Alice sand the shell of a second-hand centrifugal pump to prevent rust from contaminating the new environment.
She watched Alice working intently under the powerful lights; besides heartache, her eyes were filled with shock.
"Alice, take a break. You've been working for eight hours straight." Sarah Mason handed her a bottle of Water. "Are you really only fifteen? I feel like when you're repairing these machines, you're like a master mechanic possessed by a demon."
Alice turned off the welding torch and lifted her mask.
Her face was streaked with black soot, and sweat ran down her forehead, washing clean tracks across her cheeks.
"Physics, chemistry, and mechanical principles are all interconnected, Aunt Sarah. As long as you understand the composition of matter, there's nothing that can't be fixed."
Alice took a large gulp of Water and walked over to the now-transformed giant.
After these days of modification, this originally rust-covered abandoned Revlon equipment now displayed a strange cyberpunk aesthetic.
The silver-white stainless steel tank was wrapped in a dense network of purple copper pipes.
Those were the condensation systems salvaged from air conditioner compressors.
At the bottom motor position, that massive centrifugal pump had been violently retrofitted, and it even had an air intake that looked like a jet engine turbine.
"And this machine isn't just repaired; I'm going to 'mod' it."
Alice patted the cold metal tank, her voice filled with the pride unique to an engineer.
"Ordinary emulsifiers on the market only spin at 3,000 RPM, producing paste particles around 50 microns. These particles are too large to easily penetrate the skin barrier, so most of it just stays on the surface."
She pointed to the modified turbine device at the bottom.
"I used the brushless motor from that discarded medical centrifugal pump, rewound the coils, and paired it with a stator-rotor structure I designed myself to force its instantaneous speed up to 12,000 RPM."
"12,000 RPM? Won't it explode?" Sarah Mason asked worriedly.
"It does generate massive amounts of heat and can easily burn out, which is why I designed this external circulating water-cooling system. At this speed, it will produce a violent cavitation effect."
"What's cavitation?"
"High-speed fluids will tear open countless tiny vacuum bubbles inside the liquid. When these bubbles instantly implode, they generate localized extreme high temperatures and shockwaves of thousands of atmospheres. You can imagine it as detonating thousands of microscopic bombs invisible to the naked eye inside the mixing tank. It's this force that can violently tear the droplets in the oil-Water mixture down to the nanometer level, which means true instantaneous penetration and zero greasiness."
Alice's eyes flashed with a fanatical light.
"Now, although it looks like a cobbled-together monster on the outside, its core performance has already surpassed the multi-million dollar equipment in the top laboratories of Lancôme or Estée Lauder."
"This is the violent aesthetic of fluid mechanics, and it's an overkill for traditional processes."
With the final debugging complete, Alice directed the use of a hydraulic forklift to slowly push the heavy giant into the core clean zone.
In another corner of the core zone was a simple assembly line filled with industrial violent aesthetics.
Alice had dismantled three scrapped laser printers and two supermarket checkout scanners, using the stepper motors, paper rollers, and optical sensors inside to build a precision filling and labeling system.
"The hardware is in place. Next, we inject the soul."
Alice walked to the dust-free experimental bench.
On it sat a second-hand microscope bought from eBay, along with various precision measuring cups.
She took a dark brown light-shielding bottle out of her portable incubator.
The bottle contained a few milliliters of a slightly bluish liquid.
It was the trace amount of glandular secretion she had extracted from the super spider that had changed Peter Parker's fate and was about to change hers.
After thousands of dilutions, separations, and detoxification processes, the venom, which originally had strong radioactivity and gene-rewriting capabilities, now only retained the purest cell-activating enzymes.
This was a biological catalyst that did not exist in nature.
"T-1, that's its code name," Alice whispered. "It cannot be replicated or synthesized. It is the impregnable moat of our Umbrella Corporation."
"Start production."
Alice heavily pressed the red start button.
"Rumble—"
The monster-like mixing tank let out a low, terrifying roar, and the entire garage floor began to vibrate slightly.
Frost instantly formed on the cooling pipes as the internal high-speed turbine frantically tore, collided, and fused hundreds of kilograms of aloe vera juice, glycerin, salicylic acid, and that special active enzyme.
One hour later.
The pressure valve hissed, and the discharge valve slowly opened.
A snow-white paste with a texture as fine as congealed fat and a faint, cold fragrance flowed slowly down the stainless steel pipe, filling the frosted glass bottles waiting to be filled.
Immediately after, the filled bottles were sent by the conveyor belt into the next black box.
"Swish—Click."
"Swish—Click."
Accompanied by the rhythmic mechanical sound, the printer's paper rollers precisely fed out red and white adhesive stickers.
The moment the optical sensor captured the bottle's position, the rubber roller dropped, using the bottle's own rotational centrifugal force to instantly smooth the sticker, fitting it perfectly without a single bubble or wrinkle.
One by one, the finished products were spat out, neatly arranged on the collection table at the end.
The entire process was smooth and seamless, full of industrial beauty.
Sarah Mason picked up a bottle of the freshly made product.
The bottle was cold, and the open red and white protective Umbrella Corporation logo was right in the center. Both its position and flatness were so precise they were a godsend for those with OCD, exuding the coldness and high-end feel characteristic of large-scale industrial production.
[Umbrella Biotech]
[T-1 Cellular Repair Cream]
"How is it, Aunt Sarah? Does it look like a garage workshop product made by two women?"
Alice stood with her arms crossed, watching the finished products being continuously spat out by the conveyor belt, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly.
"No, it looks like a masterpiece from a multinational pharmaceutical giant with decades of history."
Sarah Mason said as she unscrewed the cap.
The paste inside was flawlessly white, without a single bubble, and its surface had a high-end luster.
She tried a bit on the back of her hand.
There was no greasiness; it didn't even need massaging.
The moment that touch of white contacted the skin, it was like a snowflake falling into warm Water, vanishing instantly and leaving only a hydrated sensation.
"My God!" Sarah Mason's hands were shaking with excitement. "It looks more high-end than the hundreds-of-dollars creams in the malls."
"Of course, because it's the crystallization of science."
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