Chapter 980: The Real Reason
Translator: Sean88888 Editor: Elkassar1
Professor Edwards clenched his teeth and told Sheyan, "Fine! But you have to fulfill a few criteria first. It's impossible to ensure a 100% success rate with the limited facilities in this ambulance. We have to go to Elia Private Hospital at once!
"Wouldn't that take too much time?" asked Sheyan in hesitation while staring at the corpse of Sarah Connor.
Now that the topic of conversation finally turned to his field of expertise, Professor Edwards smiled with ease and said, "Not a problem. There are always some differences between what's written in books and in reality."
He stepped forward and examined the corpse in Reef's arms. His eyebrows gradually became less tightened as he said, "Under normal circumstances, five minutes after death is considered one phase. During this phase, the brain will die and the major organs will decay. The next phase is the following three hours. Within three hours, the body will not undergo much changes in its internal environment except for the brain, the heart and the digestive system. At least, the muscles will remain soft. Body temperature will drop to about 30 degrees. Many anaerobic reactions will continue, and some special cells will remain active. Note that this estimate is for the elderly who suffer from chronic illnesses. For people who were physically healthy when they were alive, the duration can be extended to up to four hours. People like the corpse in question, for instance."
"OK." Sheyan hesitated no longer. "Since the professor is so confident, there's no reason why we shouldn't support him."
The group quickly jumped into the ambulance, turned on the siren and drove to Elia Private Hospital. On the way there, Sheyan looked at Mogensha and asked, "Do you understand now?"
"Nope," replied Mogensha with a shrug.
Sheyan smiled and said, "First, tell me. Who's the main character of the Terminator world?"
"The two who just died," answered Mogensha.
Sheyan shook his head slightly. "Wrong! The first main character in the Terminator world is the future leader of the Resistance, John Connor, while the second main character is Skynet. All the stories revolve around them."
"But John will only appear in the future, and the same holds true for Skynet. The two of them have nothing to do with us right now," Mogensha could not help exclaiming, "Are we supposed to travel through time?"
Sheyan smiled and said, "Wrong. John...is right next to us."
As soon as Sheyan uttered this sentence, Zi and Sanzi's displayed an incredulous look, feeling as if something had been punctured inside them.
"How's that possible?! You mean...you mean..."
Sheyan said slowly, "In the original plot, Sarah Connor was a single woman until she met Kyle Reese, a warrior from the future. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's love, maybe it's to vent, but they made love passionately in the process of being chased, resulting in John Connor."
"According to the information I've got, Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese had spent more than 48 hours together before we entered this world."
Sheyan's eyes sparkled with a ray of light that seemed to be able to discern everything. "Well, 48 hours were plenty of time to be attracted to each other and make love. According to the plot, the chances of conceiving after sex this time are 100%, or the main plotline wouldn't exist otherwise. Now....you should understand what I mean when I said John is right next to us.
(TL: Holy sh*t) (ED: Yeah, this sh*t's wild)
"The future leader of the Resistance, Mr. John Connor, is still with us in the fallopian tube of his mother, in the form of a fertilised egg -- Sarah Connor is dead, but the fertilised egg is still alive! It's precisely thanks to the existence of the fertilised egg that our main mission is kept alive!"
"As long as John, the protagonist doesn't die, no matter what happens, the plot will not change too much! We're actually pretty lucky. It only takes one stray bullet through Sarah Connor's abdomen to completely destroy our chances of completing this mission. The bullet doesn't even have to hit her uterus or fallopian tube directly because the resulting biological contamination would be enough to kill the fertilised egg."
"But... But there's still a ways to go to turn him from a fertilised egg to a fetus," Mogensha could not help saying.
"That's why Professor Edwards, the great geneticist, is here with us. His authority in this field is beyond doubt. He has just told us that human organs will fail within five minutes after a human's death, but the preservation of fertilised eggs in fallopian tubes lasts for about four hours...."
"Because Professor Edwards told us this right after we shot a guy's head off with a gun, I think the information should be credible. No one would joke with their own life after all. Oh right, I forgot to introduce another one of Professor Edwards' identity. The yellow page clearly stated his title as: the Director of the Stepford Infertility Center. He has performed more than 1,000 IVF operations so far."
The so-called IVF, or test-tube baby technology, is not a technology which enabled babies to grow in test tubes, but a process of manually combining an egg and a sperm into a fertilised egg in a laboratory dish, then transfer the embryo (the new life conceived through in vitro fertilisation) back into the woman's uterus (embryo transplantation). The embryo can then develop in the uterine cavity like in a normal pregnancy until it reaches full term, after which it can be birthed normally.
This method is a great boon for many parents with inactive sperm or fallopian tube deformities, and the number of test tube babies worldwide has reached a figure of four millions.
What Sheyan wanted Professor Edwards to do right now was simple enough - to suck that precious fertilised egg out of the fallopian tube of the dead Sarah Connor (a woman expels only one egg a month, so it's not difficult to find) and after the proper treatment, transfer it into the womb of a healthy woman.
In that way, the future saviour will still be born - just with a different mother.
Professor Edwards could already perform the IVF operation successfully 20 years ago, so the only thing he wa worried about right now was not the failure of the operation, but whether Sheyan would keep his promise afterwards....
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"Those people are way too strong!"
The one who spoke was Ougens, who had unwittingly joined the side of the Terminators.
During the pursuit, he was pretty relentless at first.
He felt as if he had fallen into a huge conspiracy after coming to this world. After painstaking effort, their side had finally managed to kill the two mission targets and finally saw a sliver of hope, but a bunch of people had suddenly appeared halfway through and stolen away Sarah Connor! Of course they would chase with everything they had! (All of them thought Sarah Connor either had a glimmer of life left, or had faked her death.)
But what happened afterwards scared the life out of Ougens.
Be it the dual-attribute MT, or the masked female mage, or the black man with the golden AK, they all appeared to be as unshakeable as towering mountains in front of Ougens. And there was that dual-MT configuration towards the end!
This led directly to the pursuers being struck down mercilessly one by one even though their numbers were more than double that of the opponent's!
Ougens was almost sure that even the T-800 Terminator would be killed in a head-on fight with that formidable squad! The fact that that group had chosen the defending side of the mission meant that their side now was facing an insurmountable task.
Shots rang out again in the distance. Amidst the rising smoke and dust, a T-800 Terminator moved past Ougens' side and ran along in a cold silence towards a contestant running in panic over fifty meters away.
The only advantage of choosing the Terminator's side was that they would not be attacked as long as they were not within ten meters of the Terminator.
Ougens narrowed his eyes. He had already resigned himself to failing the mission, so he was determined to recover his losses from his enemies. He immediately gave chase.
The fleeing contestant suddenly turned around and fired.
Some of the bullets missed their target and burrowed themselves into the wall nearby, while the rest hit the T-800, but besides making holes in its clothes, they did not seem to hinder the Terminator much.
However, the bullets were just a feint. The contestant suddenly opened his mouth and out slipped an orange-sized electromagnetic grenade. With a kick, the grenade flew straight at the Terminator. Amidst a harsh static noise, even the mighty Terminator immediately fell into a state of interference.
The contestant was going to escape successfully!
Just then, a figure flashed out of the pillar to the left of Ougens. The person was dressed as a hippie and had a mohawk haircut. Between his fingers was an Ace of Spades poker card. A ray of light shot out with a light flick of his fingers.
A shrill noise which was like the sound of a chainsaw forcefully sawing through steel could be heard. The flying card shot through the air and left a faint trail of light behind it. When it cut through the steel surface of a car, the surface would split, roll up, and emit some dazzling sparks!
Following that was the abrupt halt to the ceaseless shooting of the gun. It was replaced by an agonising scream. A severed arm that was still tightly holding on to a gun traced a parabolic path in the air before crashing down to the ground.