Chapter 37: CH 37

Jiang Lin opened her eyes. The snow-white ceiling was pressed down head-on, and a mechanical sound of beeping was noisy in her ears. In a daze, she shed aggrieved tears.

The two young men were really unscrupulous. It wasn’t her fault that her companion died. She was also a victim in all this. The ship itself was the property of Elysium. In that situation, she was also part owner of the ship— There was no reason to escape without the owner, but those two boys didn’t give her any due respect.

The people who came from the Walking Stones were rude, she thought faintly. Her forehead was still hurting badly, like her mind was being squeezed by a snake. Jiang Lin fumbled in her pocket, but she didn’t touch the warm velvet bag in her memory.

They had lost their firefly.

As consciousness recovered, uncontrollable numbness and itching spread throughout her body. She needed firefly. The fireflies can get her out of all this. It would help her clear away the pain and negative thoughts that kept surging. Like a firefly in the dark, it would continue to lead her to be a perfect person, a flawless mother.

Jiang Lin squeezed the quilt under her hand and breathed in pain. Suddenly a warm hand covered the back of her hand.

The skin of that hand was rough and dry to the touch, clearly belonging to an old man. There wasn’t many old people these days, and there are very few who could move freely in Elysium.

“Fan Lao…” Jiang Lin choked and said, “I—I brought the ship back.”

“The family needs a responsible person like you.” The old man smiled and moved closer.

“I want… I want to see Chengcheng, Fan Lao. Let me see Chengcheng. How is Chengcheng doing up there?”

“Mom!” As the old man waved his fingers, a light screen was projected in the air, and a little boy’s smiling face appeared from the middle of the light screen. “Mom, when will you come upstairs to see me?”

However, Jiang Lin bent over and grabbed the old man’s hand tightly. She turned her back, hid her face out of sight of the little boy, and tried to suppress her groan.

“Fan Lao, ship, people… are all contributions. Can you give me a firefly, just one… I only ate one today and didn’t violate the rules… I don’t want Chengcheng to see me like this…”

“Of course, of course.” The old man took a step back with a smile and asked the assistant next to him to step forward. The young assistant in a suit had a sluggish expression. He touched his pocket and didn’t take out the medicine Jiang Lin longed for. Instead, he took out a thin syringe full of emerald green liquid.

Jiang Lin rolled her eyes and expressed her doubts with her only sanity.

“This works better.” The smile on Fan Lao’s face was even more kind. “Don’t worry. We’re a family.”

Jiang Lin stretched out her arm and didn’t question it anymore.

“Move her upstairs.” Half a minute later, the smile on Fan Lao’s face faded a bit as he looked at the dying woman in front of him. Her mouth and eyes had started to grow grass buds. “She has no relatives or friends down there, right?”

“No.” The man covered the body with a white cloth. “Both of her teammates are dead.”

“I see.” Fan Lao nodded. “The simulation video of that little boy can be deleted. No need to process her video, just plant her.”

At the same time.

“Is this your pet?”

After agreeing to Tang Yibu’s request for “dinner” with a smile, Duan Lili let go of Tang Yibu’s arm, squatted down, and gently stroked the iron bead hiding behind Tang Yibu.

“I know this kind of mechanical life. We call it Grove R-660. It’s not common to raise it, but we can help you program it.”

“Program it?” Ruan Xian stopped turning around.

“Yes, there are eight professional engineers at Elysium. In order to make everyone’s life happier, we have prepared various programs.” She patted the iron bead and stood up gracefully. “Reprogramming can make it smarter and even thoroughly understand human language. If you want, you can also add a cat or dog personality to it.”

Ruan Xian frowned slowly.

“No.” This time Tang Yibu was the first to speak. He picked up the iron bead, and there was a little more doubt in his voice. “Then it can’t communicate with its kind.”

The smile on Duan Lili’s face froze for half a second: “Isn’t it your pet?”

“No, I lied to it.” Tang Yibu flicked the shell of the iron bead causing it to rattle comfortably. “Strictly speaking, it never belonged to me, and I have no right to deprive it of the right to communicate with its kind.”

“I think you misunderstood.” After thinking about it, Duan Lili’s smile became a bit more cordial. “It’ll only become smart. It won’t forget its original habits and it won’t lose its abilities to communicate with its companions.”

“I’m not talking about ‘ability’.” Tang Yibu widened his eyes slightly. “I have collected similar information. If its intelligence far exceeds that of its kind, it will only suffer. Its kind will no longer understand its behavior, it will be very… An accurate description by the records in data, it will be very lonely.”

Ruan Xian, who wanted to speak, closed his mouth and gave Tang Yibu a sideway glance.

Tang Yibu sounded seriously confusing. The android and Duan Lili were not on the same wavelength at all. At this moment, he should start another topic and end this small discussion that was unimportant as to save Duan Lili from becoming suspicious.

But he wanted to listen.

Duan Lili bluntly expressed her astonishment. She seemed to be stunned by the young man in front of her. “In other words, you don’t want it to become smarter…” She tried to summarize.

“This is not something I have the final say. I’m just an unrelated stranger and I’m not qualified to judge.” Tang Yibu shook his head. “It has a certain limit of intelligence. If it wants, it can choose by itself.”

“Do you want to be smart?” After that, Tang Yibu asked the iron bead in his arms seriously.

You are reading story Happy Doomsday at novel35.com

“Gwah?” The iron bead took a bite of Tang Yibu’s coat and chewed on it happily.

“It doesn’t seem to need it for the time being,” Tang Yibu said sincerely.

Duan Lili took a deep breath and silently took a few steps back in Ruan Xian’s direction. She wisely decided to end the topic on her own. “Well, I’ll show you two to the guest room first. Dinner is about to start, and I think the two of you will want to take a shower, change clothes or something.”

After leading them to the empty room, Duan Lili glanced at Ruan Xian’s holster and pursed her lips. A decent smile seemed to be engraved on her face. The deputy captain kept her steps graceful as she left, her high heels clacking on the ground firmly.

The room in front of him was incredibly clean and tidy.

Even when he first arrived at the refuge, he didn’t pay such attention to his residence. Scented candles and speakers were placed on the small wooden cabinet by the bed, the retro-shaped bedside lamp was on, and the entire room was filled with warm light. Ruan Xian plucked the tassel of the window curtain with his hand, drove the iron bead off the bed, and then turned to Tang Yibu…

The android was already gone and there was a vague sound of water humming in the bathroom.

Just as the corners of Ruan Xian’s mouth tended to rise, it tightened rapidly in the next second.

This was a good opportunity.

He threw the iron bead on the sofa beside him, quickly checked the speakers by the bed, and then the projector not far away. He kept tapping on their shells, trying to judge the model of the parts inside by sound.

As long as he figured out the possible mechanism by which the earring attack his brain, he could design a device that blocked the killing function of the earring and remove the invisible collar. It was imperative to make a test device to determine what kind of behavior was considered “harmful to Tang Yibu”, and what kind of signal Tang Yibu wanted to send to the earring…

After neatly disassembling and assembling, Ruan Xian took a metal fountain pen from the pen holder and assembled the parts into the body of the fountain pen. Listening to the pleasant humming in the bathroom, he put his hand on the handle of the blood gun.

If he hadn’t shot at Tang Yibu’s vital point, would the android immediately kill him with this earring? Or would he stop the attack in time and impose a slight punishment? Maybe he could test it out, deliberately act frightened, and then…

The iron bead rolled to Ruan Xian’s feet and began to play with his pants.

Ruan Xian glanced down at it.

…Tang Yibu would suffer minor injuries at most while he might die. Or he might be able to deceive Tang Yibu, successfully crack the attack mechanism of the earring, and wait for the opportunity to leave by himself. It was just the android was sometimes too smart, and Ruan Xian wasn’t sure if he could lie about the past perfectly. There was only one thing he could be sure of— Whether he succeeds or not, Tang Yibu would be more alert towards him.

Ruan Xian lowered his eyes and slowly stuffed the blood gun back into the holster.

He picked up the iron bead and watched the dirt on the iron shell rub against his white coat. The metal shell of the mechanical life was slightly cool to touch, and it wasn’t comfortable holding it.

The timing was wrong, Ruan Xian told himself. Although it wasn’t very different from human emotional patterns, androids always possessed emotions. He wasn’t familiar with it yet so now wasn’t the time.

Their cooperation was tentatively smooth and creating testing equipment wasn’t difficult. He could… wait a bit, at least to gather more information.

Taking an inhale, Ruan Xian took out the modified parts and put them back into their original position.

“I’m done showering!” When Tang Yibu walked about of the bathroom, Ruan Xian had just put the parts on the speaker back in place. He turned his head and looked at Tang Yibu, almost choking on his own saliva. “Where are your clothes?”

“Let me tell you, they didn’t prepare any pajamas in the bathroom.” Tang Yibu stepped across the dirty clothes carelessly, opened the wardrobe opposite of the bathroom, seemingly unaware of his nakedness. “…The clothes here are inconvenient to move around. The quick-washing machine can still be used. Take off your clothes too and we can wash it together since I’m going to run a load.”

Ruan Xian threw a stifled look over his blank face. “No.”

Tang Yibu pouted, wrapped his lower body with a thin blanket, and left the buzzing quick-washing machine that he turned on. In the warm light, the android stretched out his limbs and laid on the bed in the room. The soft mattress was deeply sunken, and Tang Yibu was so shocked that his whole body stretched out.

He patted the bed twice in disbelief. “Mr. Ruan, this bed is very soft.”

Ruan Xian decided to roll his eyes openly, indicating that he didn’t have any willingness to talk. He put down the struggling iron bead in his arms, took off his dirty coat, and then picked a pair of linen pajamas from the closet at random, ready to move in the direction of the bathroom.

However, before Ruan Xian took two steps, he was pulled back from behind by a hand. His field of vision rotated, and his back hit something soft.

Tang Yibu pressed on one of his arms with a serious expression. “Look, it’s really soft.”

Cool water droplets were left along Tang Yibu’s half-dried black hair and dripped onto Ruan Xian’s neck. Ruan Xian only felt that the fluttering anger returned to his chest. He took a deep breath and was just about to attack…

Tang Yibu leaned down, his lips were close to Ruan Xian’s ears, and his voice so low that he could barely make out what was said. “Thank you.”

Ruan Xian instantly suppressed his anger. Tang Yibu’s expression couldn’t be clearly seen from this angle. He subconsciously shrank. “…For what?”

“Thank you for not attacking me with your blood gun,” Tang Yibu whispered with a smile.

For an instant, the blood in Ruan Xian’s body seemed to freeze. He turned his head sideways, just to meet Tang Yibu’s golden eyes.

“Also, although you didn’t feel anything, I’m not sure if anyone here is listening.” Tang Yibu bent his eyes. “Be careful with everything, my Mr. Ruan.”

The author has something to say:

You can eat in the next chapter! Hold on Tang Tang! （×

After all, he is the strongest AI, so he’s not really stupid√

You can find story with these keywords: Happy Doomsday, Read Happy Doomsday, Happy Doomsday novel, Happy Doomsday book, Happy Doomsday story, Happy Doomsday full, Happy Doomsday Latest Chapter