Chapter 79 – Roadmap for the Future

Bonus Chapter

The following weeks passed with an almost unsettling sense of normalcy.

Alexander had long since learned that peace and quiet were not words often associated with the Marvel Universe. Since receiving the memories of his other self and learning of the Marvel Universe, one bizarre incident after another had found its way onto his doorstep. Whether it was Duel Spirits, demons, or ancient vampires plotting from the shadows, something always seemed determined to interrupt any attempt at living an ordinary life; yet, somehow, nothing happened.

By the time the calendar reached the end of June, nearly a month had slipped by without a single supernatural crisis.

Industrial Illusions continued expanding at an incredible pace to the point that they had finally reached their target of complete national coverage; new employees arrived almost weekly, and most of Alexander's days were buried beneath contracts, budgets, production reports, meetings with the R&D team, and of course, endless paperwork.

It was almost relaxing.

"...Which is exactly why I'm expecting something terrible to happen any day now," Alexander muttered while signing yet another stack of documents.

Roland, standing nearby, simply raised an eyebrow and observed, "You say that as though disaster runs on a schedule."

"My dear Roland... This is the Marvel Universe we live in," Alexander answered without looking up, "It practically does."

Before Roland could reply, another knock came from the office door.

The secretary poked her head inside and announced, "Mr Alexander, Mr Mason asked me to inform you that the Research and Development Division has completed its preliminary evaluation. They're waiting for you in the conference room."

Alexander immediately placed his pen down and commented, "So they've finally finished."

Roland smiled faintly before saying, "I had a feeling today's meeting would be interesting."

Unlike their first gathering almost a month earlier, the atmosphere inside the conference room had changed dramatically.

Blueprints covered nearly every available surface. Large sheets of technical drawings had been pinned onto portable boards. Several whiteboards were filled with equations, diagrams and flowcharts. Coffee cups were scattered everywhere.

The room looked less like a meeting hall and more like a battlefield where engineers had been fighting mathematics for weeks, but most surprisingly, everyone looked excited.

Phineas Mason stood near the largest whiteboard, arms folded across his chest, an unmistakable grin on his face.

The rest of the team shared similar expressions.

Seeing that, Alexander couldn't help smiling as he guessed, "So... I'll assume this means you've reached a conclusion."

Phineas Mason nodded and replied, "We have."

He picked up a folder nearly an inch thick before placing it on the table, "We've analysed both blueprints and the overall theory you provided."

He paused before he added, "Several times."

Alexander did not simply wait and asked, "The verdict?"

Phineas Mason didn't hesitate to answer, "The Duel Monster microchip is impossible."

Silence fell in the conference room, but not for long, as Phineas Mason added, "The Battle Box is also impossible. I truly can't figure out how you came up with those blueprints. The requirements are so absurd that it feels closer to something out of a sci-fi movie."

Another pause followed.

Despite the harsh words, nobody around the table appeared discouraged, and instead, several engineers seemed oddly amused.

Alexander leaned back in his chair, "I expected as much."

That answer actually surprised several members of the team.

"You... did?" Amelia asked.

Alexander nodded and explained, "When I theorised the Solid Vision and created those blueprints, I already knew that the technology was ahead of its time."

Mason chuckled and observed, "'Ahead of its time' is putting it mildly."

He gestured toward Victor, who nodded and said, "Right, the semiconductors."

Victor adjusted his glasses and explained, "The processor described in these blueprints requires an integration density we simply cannot manufacture."

Naomi continued, "The computational requirements alone exceed what commercially available hardware can reasonably provide. Maybe not even the current military hardware is capable of that."

Thomas pointed toward another report, "The power requirements are another issue. Even if we somehow built it, the heat output would make the device impractical in the best scenario and a deadly hazard in the worst."

Amelia picked up another blueprint, "The materials specified here either don't exist commercially or cannot yet be manufactured with the required tolerances."

One after another, every department presented another obstacle.

Manufacturing. Optics. Display technology. Miniaturization. Storage. Networking. Each problem sounded more impossible than the last.

By the time everyone finished speaking, the room had fallen silent once again.

Alexander looked around the table before he said, "So... What I'm hearing is that none of this can be built."

Phineas Mason smiled and corrected him, "Not exactly."

He stood up before walking toward the largest whiteboard and saying, "What we're saying... Is that none of it can be built if we insist on starting from the finish line."

He flipped over the first page covering the board, and beneath it appeared a large flowchart divided into nine numbered sections.

Alexander immediately leaned forward and muttered an interested, "Oh...?"

"We stopped treating your blueprints as construction manuals." Phineas tapped the final box at the bottom of the chart and concluded, "And we started treating them for what they are, a destination."

The engineer circled the first box and announced, "Phase One. Forget holograms; we build the game first."

Alexander blinked before he requested, "Explain..."

Naomi stepped forward and said, "The first objective is creating a completely digital Duel Monsters platform."

She began listing items beneath the title, "A complete digital card database. A rules engine. Deck validation. Randomised shuffling. Automatic match recording. Replay functionality. The software should be capable of enforcing every rule without human intervention."

Alexander slowly nodded and commented, "So tournaments become much easier to organise."

"Exactly."

No arguments over rulings, no illegal decks.

Every match automatically documented; even before any holograms existed, the game itself could already evolve.

"The hardware?" Alexander asked.

Thomas pushed forward another blueprint and said, "Our first Battle Box won't resemble your design."

Instead of the elegant and practical device Alexander had brought from the YGO System Shop, the drawing resembled an oversized industrial terminal.

It was large, heavy, and boxy, with an LCD monitor mounted above a card reader; then there were speakers and other visible networking hardware connected to it.

Essentially, it looked like a very expensive arcade cabinet.

Alexander stared at it for several seconds before he commented, "It's certainly less impressive and aesthetically appealing..."

Laughter spread around the room.

"It isn't supposed to impress anyone," Phineas replied, "It's supposed to just work and prove the concept."

Alexander couldn't argue with that logic, and at the same time, he almost had the impression of seeing the phantom images of Steve Jobs and Todd Howard smiling from behind Phineas before they quickly faded away.

Shortly after, Victor took over the presentation, "The processors described in your blueprint cannot be manufactured. So we won't manufacture them."

He drew another diagram and continued, "Instead, we'll begin designing Application-Specific Integrated Circuits. ASICs."

Alexander immediately understood.

Instead of creating one impossibly advanced chip, they will create several specialised chips that would each perform a dedicated task.

Image processing. Game logic. Communications. Display management.

Individually, none of them represented a technological miracle, but together they would gradually replace increasingly complicated hardware as a stop-gap measure.

Reaching that conclusion, Alexander couldn't suppress another smile from forming on his face.

Then Phineas announced, "Phase Two."

The discussion shifted toward the cards themselves.

"The microchips inside your cards remain completely unrealistic with the current technologies available," Amelia admitted, "So we asked ourselves a different question. What functionality do we actually need?"

After several weeks of discussion, the answer proved surprisingly straightforward.

Unique identification. Authentication. Data storage and nothing more.

Instead of futuristic microprocessors, the prototype cards would use early smart card technology.

Contact chips. EEPROM memory. Authentication keys.

Each card possesses its own unique identity and is supplemented by invisible optical markings embedded into the printing process.

"When inserted into the Battle Box," Amelia explained, "The system immediately recognises exactly which card has been played. It isn't elegant... but it accomplishes the same objective at least temporarily."

Alexander nodded approvingly because for testing purposes that was more than enough.

Visualisation became the natural third phase and occupied almost the entire next section of the roadmap.

Rather than betting everything on a single technology, Phineas proposed attacking the problem from multiple directions simultaneously.

Pepper's Ghost. Projection mapping. LCD projection systems. Laser scanning. Volumetric displays.

Some already existed while others remained confined to military laboratories and university research.

Phineas lingered slightly longer on laser scanning, "My previous work gave me... familiarity with the subject."

He carefully avoided saying more, and Alexander noticed the deliberate wording but wisely chose not to pry because military contracts were rarely topics people discussed casually.

"The important point," Mason continued, "is that we don't know which technology will ultimately win. So we investigate all of them."

The fourth phase surprised Alexander more than any engineering discussion so far.

"It isn't an engineering problem." Everyone turned toward Phineas, "We need monsters. Not drawings but living animations."

The room quickly filled with new job descriptions.

Artists. Animators. Three-dimensional modellers. Sound designers. Voice actors. Motion specialists.

People capable of giving personality to every monster.

Alexander suddenly realised how much work still lay ahead.

His prototype artwork, every monster illustration he had painstakingly drawn over the past year, would become the foundation for an entirely new creative department.

Industrial Illusions was no longer simply manufacturing cards, but it was creating an entire digital universe.

The Fifth Phase centred around something Alexander had barely considered, spatial awareness.

"If monsters are going to occupy physical space," Thomas explained, "the system first needs to understand where that space actually is."

Infrared cameras. Pressure sensors. Optical markers. Magnetic positioning. Primitive tracking systems. Nothing individually revolutionary, but combined, it should be enough to anchor projected monsters onto the battlefield without constantly drifting or misaligning.

"So..." Alexander summarised, "We're teaching the machine where reality begins."

"That's one way of putting it." Phineas returned to the front once more before he moved on, "This next phase is probably the most important."

He held up Alexander's original microchip blueprint and said, "At first, we believed this document was impossible. An unhinged creation made by the boundless imagination of a brilliant mind."

He smiled and admitted, "But we were wrong."

Alexander tilted his head and muttered, "Oh?"

"It isn't a manufacturing blueprint, but it's a roadmap."

He pinned three new diagrams beneath it.

Generation One.

Generation Two.

Generation Three.

"We already know where semiconductor technology eventually needs to arrive. So instead of wandering blindly... We simply keep moving toward that destination."

The first generation relied almost entirely on commercially available hardware.

Separate processors. Separate controllers. Separate graphics boards.

The second gradually replaced them with increasingly specialised custom silicon.

Dedicated animation processors. Improved graphics accelerators. Custom ASICs.

Finally, the third generation approached Alexander's original blueprint through integration rather than miracle breakthroughs.

Alexander quietly stared at the diagrams while thinking, 'I didn't realise it before... The blueprint has never been valuable because it shows us how to build the impossible. It is valuable because it shows us what the future looks like. Phineas's phenomenal mind caught on that detail, and with it he was able to conceptualise three generations of advanced microchips... As expected from a Marvel-level genius. I had the YGO System's help and was only able to fully understand the parts directly connected to the Solid Vision technology, but Phineas, in almost a month, has already almost fully digested the blueprint and derived "downgraded" versions from it... It's genuinely amazing... and a bit scary...'

While Alexander thought that, the remaining phases followed naturally.

Software capable of giving monsters believable reactions rather than playing prerecorded animations.

Prototype projection systems using mirrors, projectors and transparent screens.

Computer vision synchronising everything in real time.

Finally, a true Battle Box.

Portable. Responsive. Automatic card recognition. Custom processors. Integrated tracking. Real-time rendering.

The machine Alexander's blueprint had depicted from the beginning.

By the time Phineas finished speaking, nobody in the room said anything.

Everyone simply looked toward the roadmap covering nearly the entire wall.

Nine phases. Dozens of technological breakthroughs. Hundreds of smaller problems waiting beneath each one.

It was intimidating, it was ambitious, it was also... Possible.

Alexander slowly rose from his chair before approaching the whiteboard himself.

His eyes wandered from Phase One all the way to Phase Nine, then he smiled and said, "I asked you to build the future I envisioned."

He looked back toward the entire team and added, "You gave me the road leading there. Thank you."

Several engineers couldn't hide their pride.

Finally, Alexander asked the only remaining question, "So... how long do you think it would take?"

The room collectively turned toward Phineas Mason.

The engineer scratched the side of his head while pretending to calculate as he said, "Assuming funding continues. No major technological dead ends. And Lady Luck doesn't decide she hates us..."

A grin slowly spread across his face, "...I think we can have a working prototype in about a year."

Silence.

Alexander blinked, and Roland's eyebrows rose ever so slightly before he let out a low whistle and commented, "That's... significantly more optimistic than I expected."

At the same time, Alexander thought, 'One year? I already prepared myself to hear five years, perhaps even ten. Instead... My lead engineer has just confidently cut that estimate down to twelve months.'

Shortly after that, Alexander laughed and said, "Hahaha! Then..."

He extended his hand toward Mason, "...Let's change the world."

The handshake was firm.

Around them, the conference room erupted into renewed discussion as every engineer immediately began debating which phase should begin first, their excitement impossible to contain. The roadmap was no longer a theoretical exercise, but it had become Industrial Illusions' next great undertaking.