The only question now was how closely the simulation matched reality. Could the excellence achieved in the simulated world truly translate into excellence in the real world?

"I don't expect to fully achieve the simulation results, truly doubling the maximum consciousness connection count to 20 million. Reaching 15 million would be enough."

Tom thought to himself, "I'd be satisfied with 15 million."

At this moment, human embryos produced using this gene editing plan had already been placed in cultivation tanks, and the answer would be revealed in half a year.

A short half-year passed quickly.

It had been over 30 years since Tom arrived in the Jupiter system. At this time, a new batch of 1,000 clones were rapidly born.

Tom breathed a slight sigh of relief: "The fact that they were successfully born and didn't develop into monstrosities at least means that the overall direction of this plan is correct."

Tom's consciousness immediately transferred to one of the clones.

The next moment, Tom's eyes widened in shock.

What's going on?!

He felt that his consciousness connection count had not increased to 15 million, nor to the 20 million shown in the simulation results.

Instead… it was 100 million!

Damn it, this Gaia AI was too far off the mark!

The AI's simulation result was indeed wrong, with an error as high as 400%. But this error, to Tom's utter surprise, was not a bad error, but a good one!

This, this…

In an instant, that "empty" feeling, which he hadn't experienced for a long time, swept through Tom's entire mind—the feeling of connecting all clones' consciousnesses at once, yet still having a vast surplus of connections. It left him stunned for a moment before he reacted.

It's already 100 million? It's already surpassed 100 million?

I originally prepared 30 million clones, thinking it would be more than enough, but now it's so far short?

This immediately disrupted all of Tom's previous arrangements and plans.

Originally, Tom had already built an extremely large-scale clone cultivation factory, capable of cultivating 500,000 clones per batch, totaling 1 million per year. He thought it would be more than enough, but now it seemed far from it.

A larger clone cultivation factory needed to be built, with a scale at least ten times larger than the current level!

No, ten times isn't enough!

With a maximum connection count of 100 million, he would need to have approximately 200 million clones under his command to ensure sufficient rest time for individual clones and to provide replacements in case of accidents.

Expanding the existing capacity by ten times would only yield 10 million clones per year, requiring 20 years of full-load production to produce them.

Tom didn't have that much time to wait.

Therefore, the existing clone production capacity needed to be increased by at least 30 times, reaching an annual output of 30 million clones, to be barely sufficient.

An annual output of 30 million clones—how enormous would such a clone cultivation factory need to be, and how large would the culture medium preparation factories, and auxiliary factories like power plants and equipment repair shops, need to be?

And, with the number of clones rapidly surging to 200 million, other facilities also needed to keep up.

Most directly, for the food supply, his planting, breeding, and aquaculture bases would need to expand by at least six times their current size.

For example, the clothing factory: the output of spacesuits must keep up, right? For daily necessities, underwear, outer garments, hats, towels, blankets, cups, tableware, soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and so on, must also keep up, right?

The construction of dormitory areas must keep up, right? It's out of the question to have clones live in family houses, but at least every clone must have a bed, right?

With more clones, transportation demand increases, so the number of buses must increase, right? Railway lines must expand, right? The number of passenger spacecraft must increase, right?

Furthermore, so many clones also need enough jobs so they can produce sufficient materials to support scientific research and development, so various factories must be built, right?

The scale of the scientific research base needs to expand, right? The number of scientific research facilities needs to increase, right?

In just an instant, a colossal construction demand, so vast that it made Tom feel a bit daunted, appeared in his mind.

"This, this truly is a happy problem. Let's start with the most urgent construction needs: first build the clone cultivation factories and their auxiliary factories, as well as the food bases."

The existing cultivation factory, with an annual output of 1 million clones, plus its auxiliary factories, already covers an area of 100 square kilometers.

Now, even with further improvements in technology and higher production capacity, to reach an annual output of 30 million clones, the area would still need to expand to at least 2,000 square kilometers.

The existing comprehensive agricultural base covers an area of approximately 300 square kilometers.

Previously, Tom had thought that such a large base would last for at least several decades, even a hundred years. But he didn't expect that it would already be insufficient after just over ten years.

He still needed to build six more comprehensive agricultural bases of the same scale.

However, such a massive scale of construction also required sufficient material support.

Fortunately, he currently had 30 million clones at hand. By urgently deploying all of them to various mines and factories, he could barely support the resource demands of these constructions.

Thus, under Tom's command, all 30 million clones plunged into unprecedentedly busy work.

In space, numerous cargo ships from dozens of satellites and the Jupiter ring shuttled back and forth, with countless materials entering or leaving the four large satellites via four space elevators.

Supported by the electricity from nuclear fission power plants, fuel production factories worked tirelessly to produce fuels like liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, and methane, either supplying them to various large and small spacecraft, which then transformed them into hot gases that erupted into the boundless interstellar space and disappeared, or supplying them to various vehicles, which then transformed them into exhaust gases that erupted into the atmosphere.

Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of heavy intelligent machines, under the control of the Demeter AI and maintained by a large number of clones, roared across the desolate land day and night.

For a time, Tom even temporarily set aside the most important task of miniaturizing nuclear fission propulsion technology, dedicating himself fully and unreservedly to construction.

In the first year, the first phase of the clone cultivation factory began operation, and 5 million clone embryos started cultivation.

In the second year, the total number of clones under Tom's command increased to 41 million, the second phase of the clone cultivation factory began operation, and another 15 million clone embryos started cultivation. At the same time, three comprehensive food bases were completed, and various crops, livestock, aquatic fish, fruits, cotton, and so on began to be cultivated.

By the third year, these crucial clone cultivation factories and newly built comprehensive food bases were finally all completed, resolving the most pressing issues.

And at this moment, the number of clones under Tom's command had also skyrocketed to 110 million.

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