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The next day, at noon.
The filming crew for the national broadcaster interview Patricia had mentioned yesterday arrived at the base.
Ryan came out of the photoacoustic lab and headed to Scrapper's mech bay.
The interview room had been set up here.
The interview team had been waiting here for a good while. They'd started preparing here since morning, and some of them were outside filming the scenes in other parts of the base that could be shown.
"Hello, Chief Designer!" The moment they saw him, the crew's director came over to greet him.
"Hello." Ryan shook his hand too.
"Let's begin the interview."
"All right, we won't take up too much of your time."
At the director's command, the scene sprang into motion at once.
Ryan sat in the simply arranged interview seat, a small round table beside him, and the seat next to that was the reporter's spot.
The one who'd come this time wasn't Erik Donovan, with whom he'd had a passing acquaintance before, but a delicate-featured female reporter.
Behind the two of them, Scrapper was fixed to a rack in a standing posture, and the camera filmed from below, which happened to capture both Scrapper and Ryan in the frame, an excellent angle.
Actually, the national broadcaster had originally wanted to conduct the interview at Crimson Typhoon's feet, but Crimson Typhoon was simply too large. Filming at its feet, you couldn't even fit all of its toes into the shot.
And out of conservative considerations, Crimson Typhoon and the base's everyday state weren't yet suitable for exposure under high-definition lenses.
So in the end they'd settled for the next best thing and put the location inside Scrapper's mech bay.
The interview formally began.
The female reporter broke into a warm smile and enunciated clearly to the camera, "Our interview subject today is the world-famous genius scientist, Ryan. On the domestic internet he's often called The Mech Expert, and abroad there are even people who consider him a god of science walking among mortals..."
While the reporter delivered her opening lines, Ryan had already drifted off into his own world, his thoughts wandering to the photoacoustic imaging research.
It wasn't until one of the reporter's lines called him back.
"Then next, let's formally move into our main topic."
Ryan's eyes refocused, meeting the reporter's gaze calmly.
The reporter asked, "Everyone's awareness of you began with the Scrapper mech behind us. Your mech test in the mech warehouse back then, in many people's eyes, drew back the curtain on an era that belongs to you. May I ask what kind of motivation drove you to build Scrapper in the first place?"
As she spoke, she cast her gaze toward Scrapper, and the camera lens turned to aim at Scrapper's head along with her.
On Scrapper's small, flat head, the two dim indicator lights were like a pair of solemn eyes, meeting the camera's gaze.
Ryan's turn.
For this question, he naturally couldn't say it was to earn Summon Points.
He thought about it, then said, "The main reason I did it back then was really just that I was too bored, so I wanted to make something a bit more challenging."
"Uh..." The female reporter froze for a moment despite herself. "What exactly was the reason for the boredom?"
"I'd already taught myself the high school curriculum back in elementary school, but my parents didn't want me going to university too early, so I had no choice but to study at home while researching the things I was interested in."
This was actually true. He'd already been clamoring to go to university back when he was seven or eight. It was only that his father and mother hadn't agreed.
And by the time he later started building Scrapper, there was of course no way he'd abandon a Scrapper already under construction to go to university, so he simply coasted through high school.
In any case, the teachers wouldn't take issue with him cutting class or asking for leave.
"Then during the research on Scrapper, did you run into any problems you couldn't solve?"
"No. The research process was fairly smooth. The design was basically finished in about a year or two, and the time after that was all construction and refinement."
"Actually, I'd been planning to drive it to enter a science and technology innovation competition back then. I felt taking first prize shouldn't be a problem." Ryan spoke mildly.
The female reporter: ...
Hearing this much, she no longer dared to keep asking.
Finishing the design in a year or two, that was just too something, and he'd wanted to drive it to a innovation competition. If he didn't take first prize, was he going to stomp the judges flat on the spot?
Overseas there were research teams now saying they wanted to replicate Scrapper, and to this day they still hadn't even gotten the brain-machine interface figured out.
The purpose of this interview was to have Ryan recount his own journey of the heart, to encourage viewers.
But clearly, a journey of the heart like this brought the public nothing but a blow.
Even the director was prompting her in her earpiece to change the topic.
She switched topics accordingly. "Everyone knows now that your research fields span multiple disciplines and domains. Aside from mechs, you also have remarkable achievements in brain-controlled prosthetics and artificial intelligence. How do you ordinarily maintain your studying and research? Under such high-intensity study and research work, what does your daily routine look like?"
"Actually, coordinating the relationship between the two isn't especially hard. You just need to manage your time well. I strictly control my daily tasks, and whether it's studying or research, I'll finish within the set time, and then get in bed and rest."
Whew.
That sounded a lot more normal.
The female reporter continued, "Then how much time do you generally spend studying?"
"Generally, if the time is managed well, a single discipline can be studied to its end in about two weeks. When it comes to studying, I fancy myself as understanding it quite well."
"Um... studied to its end means?"
"From zero, to fully understanding the knowledge that must be grasped in a discipline or field. Once you reach that point, there's nothing in this industry I don't understand."
"Change." The director's feeble voice came through the earpiece.
The female reporter took a sip of water and switched topics yet again. "Then do you feel..."
"..."
"Change."
"Change again."
The interview went on for over an hour, and by the time Ryan left, there was less than twenty minutes of usable material.
The director clutched his hair, on the verge of going mad.
"Is the world of geniuses all like this?"
...
On the other side.
Ryan had just finished lunch in the cafeteria when he suddenly received a call from his father.
His father's tone was somewhat shocked. "Son, I just received a piece of news over here. Someone's put forward an intention to acquire us!"
"What?" Ryan knit his brow. "Who is it? A domestic company?"
There was still someone domestically who wanted to acquire Prism?
"Not domestic. It's Gaentech, from overseas."
"They want to merge with us through a combination of equity swap and cash, or acquire just our AI center!"
"Their offer over there is thirty-five billion dollars!"
Ryan's brow knit even deeper.
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