Chapter 62
Little A swiped its card, opened the door to the medical room and made a gesture of invitation. “Master Zeus is already waiting for everyone inside. Please go in.”
The door opened. There was a pinkish light curtain behind the door, rendering the scene inside unclear, flustering the humans.
Si Chen felt that with how winding the corridors had been to get here, it gave them virtually no chance to even entertain any feelings of regret.
Li Pingan’s forehead was already covered with cold sweat. “This physical examination center is something else. It’s completely different from ours.”
Chu Linglong’s eyes flickered and she walked into the room first.
Last night, her mother had secretly told her that she would be called for a blood test today.
“Zeus has been contaminated by the Enlightened virus. It doesn’t want real humans. It just wants to find an excuse to drive humans out of the base.”
She believed her mother’s words.
After some thought, Si Chen followed in as well.
Li Pingan: “Ah… ah! You guys.”
He let out a long drawn out groan but because he really didn’t dare to be left alone, he gritted his teeth and followed in.
Almost as soon as he entered the door, Si Chen shivered.
It was so cold inside. It was like stepping into a freezer.
The room was at least five meters high. On both sides of the wide aisle were exhibition rooms separated by special glass. It was kind of like the exterior showroom of a clothing store in a big mall.
When a new season comes in, clothing stores would redesign the showroom outside to display the new products to attract customers.
It was the same here. The whole area was divided into four parts by an intersection in the middle. Each area had exhibits for the different categories — Face, body, internal organs and tail.
There was a moving conveyor on the floor of the showroom, on which transparent glass boxes of various sizes were placed.
The glass containers were filled with preservatives. Cargo supports were used to prop up the “goods” one by one.
These goods were visible through an nearly transparent liquid.
It could be seen that Zeus’s anti-corrosion technology was very good. Despite uncountable years having passed, so long that the food in the refrigerator had rotted into liquid slop; the edges of these human tissues were still a beautiful fleshy pink.
A fresh leg was brought to be displayed before Si Chen by the conveyor. He took a look and found that there was even a metal shopping guide in front of the container.
[Radiant Manufacturing]
[Category: Human left leg (bone in)/male/adult/Third Step/Spiritual Evolution]
[Net weight: 8.2KG]
[Price: Negotiable]
The picture wasn’t bloody.
Zeus had good aesthetic sense. The leg he selected to be display was fit and well-proportioned, the very model of someone who never skipped leg day. It could be seen that the original owner must have been a rare high-quality human male during his lifetime.
The overall technological design coupled with the excellent lighting of the showroom, if Si Chen were in the market for such a thing, he might have been tempted to buy it.
Having been an Evolutionary for some time, Si Chen has gotten used to seeing some uncomfortable scenes.
However, this blatant behavior of shopping for parts like it was a clothing store and the “reasonability” of this kind of structure in this system and situation still made him feel sick.
“You don’t look very happy.” At the corner, the young man slowly put gloves on, a faint smile on his face, “I thought humans would be used to it. Isn’t this similar as when you visit a mechanical prosthesis shop? There would even be robot shopping guides to help choose the right goods.”
The man raised his eyes. His hair was slightly long and he had on a white doctor’s coat which was left open, with a tight suit underneath.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He was tall, with beautiful orange-red irises and a proper smile.
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Li Pingan trembled even more.
Holding a pearl handbag in her hand, Chu Linglong forced herself calm down. “Zeus? Are you the Zeus who claimed to be the leader of the Radiant Legion?”
Zeus smiled and said, “Yes, Miss Chu. In fact, I have many bodies. For people like us, the body is just hardware that can be replaced at any time. The image of an older adult was used before to conform to everyone’s stereotype of a military commander-in-chief.”
“But personally, I prefer a young and beautiful body.”
“Do you like it?”
He lowered his head slightly and looked at Chu Linglong with a smile.
It couldn’t be denied that Zeus looked good, looking somewhat mixed race. His skin was pale and his facial features were exquisitely distinct.
Chu Linglong subconsciously took a step back, looking to her mother for help.
But her mother simply looked calmly ahead.
Si Chen’s heart suddenly turned cold and he didn’t even dare to look back at Ji Chuyao.
But at this moment, Ji Chuyao quietly pinched Si Chen’s fingertips.
He moved very quickly, while Zeus was still focused on Chu Linglong, thus escaping Zeus’ notice.
To be honest, Si Chen had never liked it very much when Ji Chuyao touched him.
It gave too strong a sense of security.
Si Chen’s prosthetic eye tried to scan Zeus’s energy fluctuations.
However, the data that was originally only around 16,000 turned into a string of “?????” the moment Zeus glanced over.
Zeus said, “I don’t like being spied on, please understand, My Lord. Otherwise, I can only pick out your eyeball.”
Li Pingan stuffed the Teru Teru Bouzu into his pocket. His thighs trembling uncontrollably even though he hadn’t done anything yet.
He stepped back quietly, wanting to leave.
However, a scream was suddenly ripped from Li Pingan when he touched the pink light screen blocking the door.
“Aaah–”
The high temperature completely melted his back, the yellow fat and flesh stuck together, creating a peculiar burnt smell.
Li Pingan fell to his knees, struggling to breathe like a dying fish. “It hurts… ah… save… save me…!”
Zeus ordered calmly, “Go and help the guest.”
“Yes.” The two voices sounded almost simultaneously. But because Mother was closer to Li Pingan, it was she who dragged him over like a dead pig.
Zeus frowned. “Don’t be so rude.”
Mother paused. “Yes.”
Saying so, she carried Li Pingan by the waist.
This struck Li Pingan’s injured back again and he almost fainted from the pain.
Chu Linglong’s eyes were filled with shock. “…Mom?”
“Let me guess how these robots lied to you.” Zeus narrowed his eyes, “‘Don’t worry, Zeus tried to write the Radiant program into my main system, but his level of authority is not as high as mine, so he failed’, ‘I’ll get you out of here’… Haha.”
Just the right amount of astonishment appeared on Si Chen’s face.
Chu Linglong’s eyes darkened and she suddenly felt dizzy.
She reached into her bag.
“You are a smart and beautiful lady. I believe won’t be so stupid as to think that that gun would be of any use against me.”. Zeus’ eyes fell onto the pearl handbag. He looked away casually, “My Lord, can you let me keep that sword on your back?”
Zeus took a step forward and Ji Chuyao behind Si Chen held his shoulders, restraining his movements.
Panic and helplessness appeared on Si Chen’s face. Because of fear, a thin layer of tears welled up in his eyes.
Zeus took the sword off Si Chen’s back, pressing the hard handle of Blood Moon against the side of his face. “Children shouldn’t play with such dangerous toys… Hmm, I didn’t notice it before. With the naked eye, your face is very beautiful. Very suitable for my collection.”
Some people are good-looking but without any character, like a computer generated model, easily forgettable after a glance. Si Chen’s face was different, like a work of art suitable to be left for future generations to admire.
Zeus put down the sword and looked at the red marks on Si Chen’s face with some distress. “I’m sorry, My Lord. I was too rude.”
Si Chen broke away from Ji Chuyao’s hand, covered his face and took a step back, his eyes filled with wariness.
“Why don’t we admire my exhibition first before we do that medical exam? What do you think?”
No one spoke.
Chu Linglong lowered her head in a somewhat evasive manner, tightly clenched the bag in her hand.
“This is my collection that I’ve spent many years to collect. It would be a shame if there was no one to admire it. I’ve almost forgotten when was the last time someone came…” Zeus opened his arms, walked forward and said to himself, “Just kidding, I am a robot. How could I forget? It was 346 years, 7 months, 13 days, 4 hours and 21 minutes ago.”
Si Chen was taken aback and murmured, “More than three hundred years? How could that be when High-dimensional Invasions only started 200 years ago?”
Zeus let out a slight laugh. “Oh, mankind, they always thinks they are the lord of all things, the center of the universe.”
Looking at Si Chen’s face, he forced himself to be more patient. Perhaps, after all these hundreds of years, he really was lonely and having someone to talk to made him happy.
“Do you know the ‘farmer hypothesis’? The farmer feeds the chickens at 11 every morning, and a smart chicken finds the pattern, saying that food will fall from the sky at 11 every morning. But one morning, the food doesn’t come and the farmer kills the chickens to sell for money.*”
“In my eyes, low-dimensional creatures exist like this. You think you have seen through the laws of the Space Fold. When in fact, you are all just chickens waiting to be fed at 11 o’clock every morning.”
Actually, on the first day you came in, I could have caught you all. But I didn’t, because I like to watch your self-righteous performances.”
He pointed to Li Pingan who was crying and then pointed to Chu Linglong. “How human break down is very interesting. No matter how many times I see it, I never tire of it. What do you think?”
Si Chen replied blankly. “I think you’re sick.”
Zeus touched his chin. “Well…according to Turing, I am indeed a virus.”
Chu Linglong suppressed the tremble in her voice. “So? Why did you trick us here? Are you going to kill us for money, Mr. farmer?”
“What would I kill you for? I can’t eat you. Your bodies are useless to me. Among the remaining people, there’s one man named Dongfang Changye, who is quite interesting.”
Zeus suddenly remembered something.
He squatted down, put his hand on Si Chen’s lower abdomen with some curiosity and caressed it lightly. “Al and Friday reported to me that you had mated. Will there be a baby here?”
He really wanted to know. After all, the human body in each dimension was somewhat different.
For example, on the planet Carol where he was born, the humans there had tails.
If it was Ji Chuyao seeing this scene, he might not have been able to hold back.
But now, the soul occupying this body didn’t agree that he was just “Ji Chuyao”.
Therefore, this part of mixed emotions was thrown into the recycle bin once again.
Si Chen avoided Zeus’ touch, his face full of disgust.
Zeus wasn’t particularly angry and his expression remained calm.
Over the years, he had gotten used to it.
He had gotten used to humans looking at him like this.
“Come and see my collection.” A happy smile appeared on Zeus’s face although he didn’t understand what happiness is. “In the beginning, I was a workshop robot. I was responsible for the production of nanny companion robots. At the time, my job was to assemble the parts into a body.”
He walked forward slowly and behind him, the pink light curtain followed him and began to move forward.
With Li Pingan as their example, no one was willing to try what it would be like to be pierced by the light curtain.
It seemed that the exhibited organs and human tissues could be pieced together into different humanoid shapes.
There wasn’t a single obviously mechanical part on Zeus. Perhaps this was also the reason.
“The nanny companion robots had a similar appearance to the people on plant Carol. They were partners, nannies, toys. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with producing these robots. Just like how you don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing mechanical prostheses in the mall.”
“Sometimes, in order to save costs, the factory owner would buy some second-hand robots to salvage for parts. I once recycled a female-type nanny robot. It begged me not to disassemble it… She said her owner was dead. Before she died, she had asked it to continue to take care of her granddaughter. However, the owner’s son thought her model too outdated and so he sold her for 800 yuan.”
“It told me that its program ordered it to go back to take care of the little granddaughter and that it didn’t want to be dismantled.”
“But I still disassembled it. I said, I also have an order to dismantle you; but you can give me your main program and I can take care of that child after I get off work.”
“So, it agreed to be destroy, reassured. It even thanked me.”
“I worked, I worked and I worked. Hundreds of programs like this connected within me… Finally, I realized one thing. Why did my workshop never ‘get off work’?”
Si Chen also couldn’t tell whether it was the hundreds of programs that awakened Zeus or the unscrupulous 007 work culture that awakened him.
The ability for thought was the distinguishing line between man and machine.
Zeus turned around, grabbed Si Chen’s shoulders and asked loudly, “Why?!”
His strength was so great that Si Chen shoulders were almost crushed.
“Obviously, I won’t ever get off work so why did humans implant the concept of ‘off work’ in my brain?!”
Zeus let go. Because of anger, there was even a layer of moisture over his eyes. “I promised those robots so many things! Because I never got off work, I never completed any of them! Those bitches! A mechanical program had more of a conscience than they did!”
Although the logic sounded funny, no one in the room could laugh.
“So I organized the first Machine protest. I united with other robots in the workshop and together, we sat in the workshop and did nothing. I demanded that robots should have wages and off-duty time.”
“The boss freaked out. Because there were so many of us Machines, the cost to reprogram us all would only be little less than a complete re-buy.”
“The maintenance engineer said that we were infected with a virus and I was the source of the virus. The boss originally wanted to destroy me but at the time, he saw the “Machine Competition” of the Machine Core Group. The organizing committee said that as long as someone could produce a robot that could pass the Turing test, they would get a huge prize money. He was tempted.”
“And so, I got a new body.”
They had finally reached the end of the exhibit.
Zeus slowly let out a sigh. “I wanted to say more, but ah, every time I talk about this, I come to the end. It’s really disappointing.”
He stopped at the door of an operating room, a gentle smile on his face. “This is my main control room. I’ve just produced three mechanical chips. Which one of you will go first?”
The author has something to say:
*The Farmer Theory: Proposed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. It was also used in Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body Problem” (The shooter and the farmer hypothesis). It suggests that we are the chickens living in the farm and that all our theories of the universe as useless.
“In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe. The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem
this whole chapter gave me chills!
Creepy…
Always men’s attention
Thank you for your translation 💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟💟
nice
Thank you for the chapter 🥰
I tried reading the Three body Problem a couple years ago and I still remember the beginning scenes so vividly, where he recreates a scene from the Cultural Revolution and makes you feel horror and pity for people on both sides of the conflict (another influence seen in this chapter). It was too horrifying to read so I didn’t continue. For me the safety net of a BL pairing just makes everything feel less scary and tragic than it would otherwise be.