Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman Chapter 856: Crystal Holograms

Mrs. Mellon’s workshop was filled with unfinished projects, empty plant pots, blank canvases, and all sorts of other things. It was a room that reflected the elderly lady’s personal interests.

The Mellon family’s servants had taken Katherine Hepburn’s luggage to her guest room, but Henry’s gift was still inside his own suitcase, so he naturally kept it with him.

Everyone gathered around an empty workbench, eagerly anticipating what they were about to see. Even Katherine Hepburn was curious, since the old lady herself had no idea what Henry had prepared.

Henry carefully lifted something out of his suitcase. Wrapped in clothing, it was slightly larger than a can of powdered milk. When he unwrapped it, he revealed a cylindrical piece of white crystal that had been cut into shape.

However, the crystal had obvious cracks on its surface, and its interior was quite cloudy. Its overall quality was terrible. Everyone who saw it looked a little disappointed.

Givenchy, meanwhile, inwardly clicked his tongue in dismay. He couldn’t help feeling a little regretful. If he’d seen the gift beforehand, he might have been able to persuade Henry not to present it.

A crystal of this size was certainly uncommon, but it wasn’t anything particularly precious to the Mellon family. Its poor quality made it even less valuable.

The two women present were equally disappointed. Nevertheless, both displayed excellent manners and refrained from criticizing the gift outright. Katherine Hepburn, in particular, was desperately trying to think of a way to smooth over the awkward situation.

Henry tossed the wrapping clothes back into his suitcase and held up the crystal with a smile.

"Don’t let its unimpressive appearance fool you. It took quite a bit of effort to make this. It needs a base and some lighting, too."

He gently placed the crystal on the workbench, then took a metal stand out of his suitcase. It had no elaborate decorations, just a polished finish. Its most important feature was an extending arm that held a small lamp.

The arm wasn’t fixed in place. It could rotate around the base, allowing the little lamp to circle the object on the stand like a satellite orbiting a planet.

The stand needed to be connected to a power source, and a servant soon brought over an extension cord that was already plugged in. Henry tested the light and rotation functions to make sure they worked properly. Only then, under everyone’s watchful eyes, did he place the supposedly "low-quality" crystal on the stand.

The moment he withdrew his hand, a chorus of astonished gasps erupted around him. Even the Mellon family’s servants, standing farther away and usually so composed, couldn’t hide their surprise.

Under the light, the crystal continuously refracted the beams passing through its interior, eventually concentrating them above the crystal to form a three-dimensional holographic image.

It was Paul Mellon, now deceased, looking as he had ten years earlier: white-haired, but still full of energy and vitality.

But that wasn’t the only image the crystal could produce through the refraction of light. As the lamp slowly rotated, the holographic projection above the crystal changed with the angle of illumination.

Sometimes it showed Paul Mellon as a young man. At other times, it displayed Rachel Lambert Mellon herself, both in her youth and in old age. There were even images of the elderly couple together, including pictures of them when they were young.

As the light revolved, the holograms above the crystal shifted continuously. The couple appeared young or old, individually or together. Watching these images, Mrs. Rachel Lambert Mellon covered her mouth with both hands, tears welling in her eyes. For a long while, she couldn’t utter a word.

"This is absolutely incredible!" Givenchy exclaimed in amazement. "How did you do this, Henry?"

"Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I used images of you and Mr. Mellon without obtaining your permission beforehand. I found reference photographs in various magazines and combined them with my impressions from the first time I met you and your husband to create these images."

"Ah, no, Henry, I meant—"

Givenchy tried to press further, but Henry raised an index finger to his lips.

"The manufacturing process is a trade secret."

"Oh! Oh, I see." Givenchy stopped asking.

Besides, he suspected that even if Henry explained the process in detail, he wouldn’t necessarily understand it, let alone be able to reproduce it. His question had simply been an expression of astonishment and curiosity.

In truth, Henry really couldn’t reveal the technology. It came from Kree and Skrull technology, which used crystals to store data in a form that could be erased and overwritten.

In his own underwater laboratory, he still had more than a dozen alien crystals of various sizes. They were trophies he’d painstakingly and surreptitiously removed from a Kree Empire cruiser.

If used properly, a crystal of the size sitting before them could store data on the exabyte scale by Earth’s computing standards.

To understand what that meant, consider the basic units of computer data storage. Starting with bits, then bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and petabytes, the next unit was exabytes.

For another point of reference, as of 2018, Google’s accumulated data was estimated to amount to around ten exabytes. That was the volume of information stored across more than twenty data centers built around the world.

Using alien laser-engraving technology, this crystal had been turned into a medium that could produce three-dimensional images when illuminated. It was a classic case of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

However, the Kree possessed artificial crystal manufacturing technology, so obtaining this particular crystal hadn’t cost nearly as much as outsiders might imagine. After all, crystal itself wasn’t an especially expensive mineral.

Furthermore, any transparent material could serve as a data-storage medium in Kree or Skrull technology. For a Kryptonian capable of making diamonds with his bare hands, this crystal was even less remarkable in terms of material value.

The real treasure was the alien laser-engraving technology itself. By the standards of Earth’s current technological development, it was science-fiction-level technology that had yet to become reality.

Before Henry had traveled to this world, the earliest public information he remembered about optical data storage research dated back to 2009, when Japan’s Hitachi collaborated with Kyoto University on the subject. It wasn’t until 2019 that quartz-glass storage technology achieved preliminary results.

Even before his arrival in this world, the technology had remained confined to laboratories. And Henry hadn’t been the sort of person who spent his time hunting down research papers to study, so he had no way of knowing just how far Earth’s research had lagged behind Kree and Skrull technology.

Still, he doubted that Earth would reach this level of advancement in another twenty years, even if a simple white crystal could project full-color, three-dimensional holograms using a fluorescent light source.

...Then again, considering that this was a world with Mister Fantastic and Iron Man, perhaps he shouldn’t make such a prediction too soon.

In any case, bringing this device out now amounted to a genuine technological dimensionality strike. No one present could begin to understand how it worked.

The two women, however, cared very little about the technical sophistication behind it.

Mrs. Rachel Lambert Mellon gazed at the images of herself in her youth and her late husband, both young and old. Unable to contain her emotions any longer, she threw herself into the arms of her newly found older sister and began to sob.

Katherine Hepburn comforted her new friend while rolling her eyes and complaining in a sour tone, "Stop crying, Rachel. I’ve been looking after this fellow for two or three years, and even I haven’t managed to get a gift this good out of him. If anyone should be crying, it ought to be me!"

Uh-oh. The smug Kryptonian had just been doused from head to toe with a bucket of ice water.

Henry hurriedly shot Givenchy a pleading look, practically twitching the corners of his eyes from the effort. Unfortunately, the old fox, who was a master of social etiquette, pretended not to understand a thing. He simply turned his head away and began studying the texture of a blank canvas.

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