Chapter 97: 53.1

Chapter 53.1

Forced Resilience

Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil

 

Wei Zhuo only has three days’ holiday – or more like, two and a half days. He’s expected to be back in action by afternoon on the third day.

So for all the time they had together, they spent it all glued to one another. Not too sticky, but simply holding hands, flirting, not even kissing.

Cheng Zhaoci is trying not to spook Wei Zhuo, who doesn’t seem too used to such dispalys of affection. Wei Zhuo… actually likes those, but Cheng Zhaoci isn’t kissing him actively, and he doesn’t have the courage to initiate kisses either.

It’s quite painful to keep urges suppressed, but it can’t be helped.

This lasts until the day he finally leaves. Before Wei Zhuo gets onto his transport, Cheng Zhaoci drags Wei Zhuo on the collar to plant him a kiss on the forehead – with Wei Zhuo compliantly lowering his head.

“After my birthday a few months later, Wei-ge, do you want to be my cijun?” He can’t wait any longer to ask. Separation after a short time spent together only worsens the longing.

Cheng Zhaoci needed to cling to something. He wants to tie Wei Zhuo to his side, even if it is only in name for now.

“Alright,” Wei Zhuo promises without delay, “I’ll take the day off and come back when xiao-Ci comes of age,” he’s not blushing this time. In fact, he is smiling gently, looking confident and reliable.

But when he’s finally on the transport, the ‘gentle’ and ‘reliable’ shemale smashes his fist into the walls of the vessel. Even the management AI is popping out.

[What now?! What the fuck?! Are you sick? Go see a doctor then!]

Commercial-grade AIs have no emotional capacity. Not for lack of technological means, but it has been judged too unnecessary a burden to do so.

This military AI, though, appears to have been manufactured by a temperamental insectoid. Unfriendly, and cusses often. The shemale soldiers won’t call for the AI unless they absolutely have to.

Wei Zhuo is breathing heavily, and his muscles are all tense. It took all he had just to keep his composure in front of Cheng Zhaoci, but! But! He’s completely electrified! He can’t hold it in anymore!

When Wei Zhuo is raising his fist up again, the AI yells.

[Sure! Smash your fist in! When the vessel crashes, I look forward to your dumb arse paying for reimbursements!]

… Really, what kind of miserable misanthrope made this malignant AI?

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“The AI on ships? My baby wrote it up himself,” Lu Yao replies to Cheng Zhaoci’s question, “he made it speak softly in the beginning, but none of the hardened shemale soldiers would listen to a soft tone. So he changed it up.”

And he understands his baby tuned the AI’s tone to match him.

“We don’t alloy research into AI sentience. They are tools, and it’d get infinitely complex if it had its own mind,” Lu Yao watches as Cheng Zhaoci marks down lots of notes with this serious look on his face, “why are you interested in this, by the way?”

“It’s writing material,” explains Cheng Zhaoci. One of the stories of his travelling to the past series was to feature a cat and its elderly owner. It was to follow one of the stories; the ginger cat has spotted the protagonist that lets people travel back in time in the penultimate chapter of that, and so, after that story, it goes to the protagonist, wishing to travel back in time.

It thinks it has lost its ‘pet,’ – more technically, the ginger’s pet is actually its owner. She’s an old granny who had Alzheimer’s and kept forgetting stuff. One winter afternoon, she will leave her home, only to never come back.

The cat will go outside to search for her, but cannot find her. Instead, it will run into the protagonist.

It will get transported back to the time when it was picked up off the street by the granny’s family. Her husband will still be there as well. The ginger cat will still be that spoilt, fat cat that eats, sleeps, and sunbaths when it’s tired.

It’s a cat, and will be able to do nothing against fate. The granny’s partner will pass away the same as before. The granny will get Alzheimer’s the same as before. However, on that fateful day, when the granny goes missing, the cat will follow her.

It will meow for her attention behind her, but she would not stop. Finally, she loses her footing on slippery, icy roads, and tumbles into the freezing river next to her. That was the end of her life the last time. This time, the severely hydrophobic fat ginger cat will also jump after her, bravely, doing its best to drag the granny back.

Of course, it will be futile.

Bystanders will call the police, and there will also be people jumping to help both the granny and the cat. However, she is too old. She would not make it. The fat cat is shivering, meowing, but all will be for naught.

The cat, once again, goes to the protagonist. It wants to travel to the past again.

The protagonist obliges.

The very last panel of this story, depicts the cat meowing at the elderly couple once more.

It is unable to change anything. It won’t be able to stop the grandpa dying of old age, or Alzheimer’s affecting the granny. Yet, it will ask for a redo no matter how many times the same things happen. Why? Maybe, it simply did not want the warmth of its ‘pet’ to fade.

Cheng Zhaoci was hoping to depict themes of solitude in old age, and ask questions about people’s bonds with others.

Now, though, the story has to be adapted to the insectoids. There are two questions. One, insectoids have no ‘granny’s. This one’s simple; he just needs to change the gender. Two, Alzheimer’s isn’t a thing in insectoids. They don’t even have this kind of illness, and even if there were, medical technology can probably treat it. Three, pets are an extremely niche hobby in insectoid society. Normally, no one ever raises anything other than their own young. This is quite the issue.

He doesn’t know enough to force something like ‘Alzheimer’s but for insectoids’ to work. As for pets… He’s got his eyes on the futuristic AIs this technologically advanced civilisation employs.

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