Chapter 410: New Function |
The 66.6?centimeter?tall little doll sat up from the alchemy platform, blinking a bit sluggishly. After a long moment she seemed to boot successfully, lifted her head, and stared blankly at Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng had been about to ask Irene whether this mass?production chassis was running in low?bandwidth mode, but one look at the new doll’s glassy stare told him there was no need to ask: with that sluggish yet sagely look, the bandwidth could not be high.
Even Foxy could not help muttering: “She doesn’t look very smart.”
“Nonsense. Low bandwidth, do you even know what low bandwidth means?” Irene (Rebar), standing beside Yu Sheng, rolled her eyes, then tried giving orders to the mass?produced version of herself on the platform: “I’ll have her get down and walk around first to see how it goes.”
As soon as the little doll finished speaking, the mass?produced Irene swayed a bit, then, like a machine performing a startup self?check, slowly examined her hands and feet. After two or three more seconds, this mass?produced unit awkwardly stood up, reversed, climbed off the alchemy platform, and promptly splatted onto the floor.
Yu Sheng was speechless.
Foxy was speechless.
“What are those looks supposed to mean? A newly awakened body needs time to adapt,” Irene (Rebar) said, a little embarrassed as the temporary host, but keeping her chin up as she explained, “I used to take over a new body directly, which is why I looked so steady. Now I’m trying to let the new body move on instinct. I’m telling you, this is very…”
Before she finished, the mass?produced Irene got up, then splatted again, and began creeping in a weird posture through the shadows.
Irene blinked: “R?right?”
What followed was a whole lot of fussing. A complete novice like Foxy, a half?baked amateur like Yu Sheng, and an unreliable little doll made up a trio of the untrustworthy, huddled together to figure out how to make a living, brainless doll move on simple commands. Who knows how many failures it took before Irene finally seemed to grasp a knack for it and successfully awakened the “spirit” dormant in this blank mass?production shell.
Yu Sheng found it hard to describe what happened in that instant, but he truly felt the change. He sensed a flicker of living texture appear within the hollow doll chassis in his hands. What had been a shell with nothing but empty vitality suddenly became a genuine life with spirit. Then this small one turned her head, her slightly stiff eyes staring blankly this way. [There it is.]
Hesitating, Yu Sheng set the mass?produced Irene on the ground and watched her wobble a few times, then stand steady.
She had no self, much less anything that could be called wisdom. In essence, she was still a container directly controlled by Irene. But now this container possessed the most basic kind of spirituality.
It was something between a soul and an empty shell.
“So this is a machine spirit?” Yu Sheng frowned slightly, watching the mass?production doll slowly turn her head as he pondered, “Or, in Xuan Che’s terms, an artifact spirit?”
“Come here.”
Irene beckoned to the mass?production doll. For the first time she did not take control. Instead, she tried issuing a directive to make her “chassis” move.
The mass?production doll responded immediately. After confirming Irene’s position, she stepped toward her.
“Oh, oh, oh! It works! Yu Sheng, look! It works!” Irene burst into excitement, turned to shout happily at Yu Sheng, then faced her “mass?produced self” again and, brimming with delight, looked her up and down for a long time: “Wow. Watching my chassis like this for the first time feels pretty incredible.”
“Only you could adapt this fast. Anyone else seeing another version of themselves swaying around right in front of them would feel awkward as their first reaction,” Yu Sheng said from the side, then waved his hand. “Alright, try more complex commands, then let’s test the new function.”
“Okay.”
Irene immediately agreed and began putting the mass?production doll through a series of tests.
First came the basics of running and jumping, then more precise climbing and grasping, and finally the high?difficulty task of mimicking handwriting.
The mass?production doll executed each directive from her host in silence. She looked daft the whole time, but completed almost every command flawlessly.
With a hint of amazement, Yu Sheng watched Irene run through test after test. Now the two little dolls were sprawled on the floor. Irene held a ritual graver and carved a set of complex alchemy runes into the ground, while the mass?production doll lay beside her, imitating Irene’s movements with another graver to reproduce the runes exactly.
To be honest, the sight of two tiny things lying on the floor scratching away was pretty entertaining.
“Basic motions are fine, execution is fine, and tasks she has performed or referenced once can be repeated easily. She also understands human speech,” Irene said as she got up and patted her hands, then turned and patted the mass?production doll’s skirt for her. “Her reactions are sometimes slow, and she can’t handle complex, sudden situations. But she should ask for help if she runs into trouble. I think I’ve successfully taught her the concept of ‘asking for help.’”
The mass?production doll stood there blankly, as if listening to Irene, or perhaps just quietly observing her movements. After a moment, she clapped her hands too, then patted Irene’s skirt.
“Her capacity to learn and imitate is strong,” Irene added.
Foxy was curious: “Will you have to teach every mass?production doll like this?”
“No. After this, they can teach each other,” Irene said, waving a hand. “Mass?production dolls aren’t flexible, but sharing knowledge and experience between them is even more convenient than it is for humans. If there’s something new, just teach one and the rest will learn it quickly.”
Foxy thought for a second and understood: “They’re networked?”
“It’s we,” Irene corrected solemnly. “All Irenes are linked, mass?production or not. Right now the mass?production type is just this one prototype, so I can’t say what it will look like once they scale up. We’ll see when the time comes.”
She was small, but her heart was broad. To be fair, she had always been that way.
With the basics done, it was time to test the new function.
“Now we should see whether the mass?production unit’s special ability really works,” Yu Sheng exhaled softly, eyes on the blank?eyed mass?production doll. “First, you go a little farther away.”
The mass?production doll seemed to process that, as if confirming whether to obey Yu Sheng’s command. She soon nodded, turned, and walked to a corner of the lab.
“Is this really safe?” Irene watched Yu Sheng a bit nervously. “Don’t break my first mass?production unit.”
“When have I ever let you down?” Yu Sheng shot the little doll a glance, then focused on the “mass?production unit” in the distance.
Strictly speaking, he focused on the pre?fabricated door inside her.
He drew a calm breath, steadied himself, and raised his hand toward the air beside him.
Following the principle of the portable No. 66 Wutong Road, Yu Sheng had left a door?brand within the unit’s skeleton. At the same time, it was not the same thing as the doors he normally used. In the production process, each Irene contained Yu Sheng’s blood. That blood granted every Irene equal door authority and a startup key. Together, blood and door formed a complete set.
Yu Sheng nudged the space beside him.
The mass?production doll at the far end of the lab suddenly went blurry and unreal. This small one’s figure rippled on the spot. In the next second, she became a fissure that kept turning inward, vanished, and reappeared at Yu Sheng’s side. [Was she scared by the sudden transfer, or is she always this dazed?]
Foxy stared, then snapped to: the process was identical to the ship Hotel’s transfers when entering and leaving the Valley. Yu Sheng smiled.
Just as he had imagined, the ship Hotel’s teleportation method could be replicated.
Back then, he had brought that huge ship from outer space into the Valley by merging his door with the ship’s phase engine and treating the entire vessel as a door. That let him flip the ship’s coordinates to the other side at the moment of opening and send it to its destination, the Black Forest.
The process differed from the way he usually opened doors, but the principle was not much different.
At least, in Yu Sheng’s view, the underlying essence was the same.
A door symbolizes both separation and connection. It is a bond linking two places otherwise cut off from each other. Opening a great door is the merging and co?existence of two spaces. You pass through the door, or the door passes through you. You step into the far side, or the far?side space arrives beneath your feet. It is all the same.
If the result is the same, the form and process of opening the door do not matter.
The form of the door does not even matter.
Yu Sheng lowered his head, thoughtful, then beamed at the mass?production doll still standing at his side, her expression a little vacant.
Irene wandered over, chin tipped up: “By the way, the new function has to be more than you summoning them whenever you like, right? If it were only that, you could just open a door and haul someone over the old way.”
“Of course it’s not that simple,” Yu Sheng said with a smile. “These mass?production dolls with pre?fabricated doors can be far more useful.”
Irene blinked, lost in thought. [What else could they do?]
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation