Chapter 412: The staffing problem is solved! |
To be fair, after Irene broke it down, Yu Sheng realized that among all the special materials used to mass-produce dolls, his own blood was actually the cheapest component; at most it cost time, roughly thirty minutes to produce a round.
The good news was that he did not need to worry about the output of mass-produced Irenes for the time being. The throughput clearly had a natural bottleneck, but Yu Sheng figured he would not need to raise an army of hundreds of thousands of dolls anytime soon: [Slowly stockpile, then.]
When the third mass-produced doll sat up from the alchemy platform, Yu Sheng discovered something else: even the final step of the ensoulment ritual, the part where a name had to be bestowed, could be handled by the mass-production unit that operated the process.
After two mass-produced dolls somewhat clumsily shaped the body of their new sister, then imitated Yu Sheng’s earlier procedure and haltingly spoke the name “Irene” over the alchemy table, that cold lump of clay and metal suddenly came alive. Yu Sheng had not even had time to react before he saw the rough shell quickly flush with a sheen of red; the portions of “blood” and “spirit” within the clay fused into vitality in a blink, and the new doll opened her eyes.
Yu Sheng stared in disbelief as the two mass-produced dolls helped the newly awakened sister down from the table, then watched the newcomer, through the link among machine spirits, instantly absorb the others’ experience, jog over to another platform, and start preparing to fabricate the next unit. He was thoroughly bewildered as he muttered: “So this works too? You’re telling me the ‘bestowing of a name’ step doesn’t even require human participation?”
Even Irene herself was baffled as she said: “I have no idea. I never once thought about using dolls to make dolls, okay? I’m groping in the dark just like you.”
Yu Sheng frowned, his mind immediately turning quick: “Maybe because every mass-produced doll carries my ‘blood,’ they also have a way to bestow names on newborn dolls. Or is it some sort of resonance? Or, since all the mass-produced dolls are connected to each other, as long as the first one is named, the rest can do it too?”
“I’m sure it still has to do with your freakish ‘blood’,” Irene said after thinking it over, looking into Yu Sheng’s eyes with extra seriousness, “after all, even that huge starship came back to life once it got a smear of your blood.”
Yu Sheng neither agreed nor disagreed. He watched the many Irenes running between the alchemy platforms with little cups full of fresh blood in hand, and for a long while he said nothing.
Irene did not follow: “Storing more what?”
“Blood,” Yu Sheng said offhandedly, “it regenerates anyway, and now it has a new use. Daily consumption is obviously going to rise. I figure I can just let a little out and stockpile it whenever I’m idle. As long as I don’t bleed out on the spot, the blood won’t vanish. Otherwise letting it just circulate inside me feels like a waste.”
Irene listened, dumbstruck, and only after a while did she yelp: “You sound even less human than I did earlier!”
“Obviously. How could me talking be the same as you talking?” Yu Sheng shot the little doll a glare, “besides, you opened your mouth ready to drain me dry. I’m at least still bargaining for a way to keep scraping by.”
Irene blinked, at a loss: “Is that really how you use the phrase ‘scrape by’?”
“Of course. I’m a writer, my word choice is precise.”
“Sure, sure?”
Foxy simply watched Yu Sheng flimflam Irene without saying a word, busying herself with pouring molten iron to cast skeletal parts.
And so the mass-produced dolls began to multiply, one becoming two, two becoming four, four turning into a small crowd.
A large crowd of gothic dolls in black dresses with black hair and red eyes ran back and forth in the spacious alchemy laboratory, busily manufacturing more dolls and awakening more sisters. They would follow that instruction continuously until the current batch of raw materials ran out.
Yu Sheng found an out-of-the-way spot to sit, his expression a mix of amazement and something subtler as he gazed at the spectacle of a whole gang of Irenes dashing about the lab.
He gave a little shiver as an old nightmare he had once imagined resurfaced by accident: [hundreds and thousands of Irenes swarming around him, crawling all over the floor, squealing and chittering, leaping up and down, making so much racket it drove a man to scratch at his own heart.]
He quickly shook his head and cast off the lousy association.
That scene of hundreds and thousands of Irenes crawling everywhere seemed on the verge of becoming reality, yet these mass-produced Irenes were far quieter than he had imagined.
Most of the time they simply executed orders obediently. Even when they ran into tasks that could not be carried out for the moment, they would only exchange a few simple signals, which bystanders could not even comprehend, then go find a place out of the way to wait. And although the mass-produced dolls certainly had the “function” of speech, they seldom talked.
Looking at these quiet yet industrious little things, Yu Sheng even felt a bit out of place, especially when an Irene with the exact same face was right beside him giggling and chattering nonstop; the dissonance was overwhelming.
By then Foxy had finished casting the last batch of skeletal parts. Blowing the faint smoke off her tails, she came over, looked curiously at Yu Sheng and Irene, and asked: “Benefactor, if we are making this many mass-produced dolls, what will we have them do when we are not fighting?”
“There are plenty of uses. Our main base is short on hands everywhere,” Yu Sheng said with a grin, clearly having planned this out, “routine maintenance at the starport, taking care of kids in town, minding and cleaning the hub, and a lot of facilities the Special Service Bureau built, all of them lack people.
“Right now those places are basically being tended by personnel the Special Service Bureau loaned us, but that is a favor owed, and we cannot rely on that forever.
“I had originally thought that once the Fairy Tale side expanded, they could send people to take over some of the facilities in the valley, but that would look suspiciously like hiring child labor. Now that the mass-produced dolls are out, half the problem is solved.”
No sooner had Yu Sheng finished than Irene started beeping off again as she said: “So because you can’t hire child labor, you make me do it all? I’m a mass-production unit that’s only 66 centimeters tall. I’m much shorter than those bratty kids, you know!”
“So now you emphasize being only 66 centimeters, huh?” Yu Sheng chuckled and poked the little doll, “who was it who said the valley is all our family’s property and got so excited about it they bounced around the room and sat up in bed grinning half the night? Since it’s our own property, what’s wrong with tending it ourselves?”
Irene said: “That said, though…”
Foxy, hearing Yu Sheng’s plan, was not entirely reassured as she said: “Can mass-produced dolls really handle these things? Simple jobs are one thing, but if you have them maintain large equipment, I worry they will fall into the machines.”
She glanced back at the little ones running between the alchemy platforms and occasionally bumping into each other, and her brow creased on instinct as she added: “They feel kind of clumsy.”
“Machine spirits grow,” Yu Sheng said, quite confident in the mass-produced dolls, “haven’t you noticed they already move more smoothly than they did at the start? They share knowledge and experience, and they understand basic coordination and learning. I’m very optimistic about their growth. Besides, I won’t assign truly complex work to them yet.”
Foxy thought it over, her fluffy ears twitching as she said: “That is a relief.”
“All right, no need to worry about what-ifs. At the very least, they can handle the daily cleaning around the hub from now on,” Yu Sheng said cheerfully, waving his hand as he rose from the alchemy table, “we have been cooped up in here long enough. Let’s take a portion of the mass-produced dolls outside to get some air and say hello to the others. Irene, you arrange it: leave half here to keep assembling production units, and take the other half out.”
“Okay!”
Thirty minutes later, Princess Rapunzel sat on a rooftop in Fairy Tale Town, staring with her mouth open as Yu Sheng paraded down the street with a grand entourage of a dozen Irenes at his back.
The long string of mass-produced dolls marched in neat formation, eyes forward, following behind the “host” Irene (Rebar). In every sense they were stamped from the same mold. The sight would have floored anyone. Even the always mature and steady Red Hood took a tumble when she saw it.
“Hey… hey! Red Hood! Did you see that? Irene just multiplied… she multiplied into a whole group, holy crap!” Princess Rapunzel nearly rolled off the rooftop, dashed to Red Hood’s side, and babbled: “What is even happening?”
“I don’t know,” Red Hood was also dazed, “I thought I was seeing double from doing too many driving test questions.”
While the two were talking, Yu Sheng had already led the line of Irenes along the street. Red Hood came forward at once, stared straight at the dozen little dolls in front of her, and held it in for a full thirty seconds before speaking as she said: “You didn’t slip and make too many by accident, did you?”
“How could anyone slip like that?” Yu Sheng laughed and raised his hand to introduce them as he said: “Meet the Irene mass-production model.”
Red Hood fell silent.
The red-clad girl looked blankly at Yu Sheng, then at Irene, the only one in the line with a bright gleam in her eyes, clearly the “host.” After a while she finally managed: “What were you all thinking?”
“Young as you are, your imagination falling behind won’t do,” Yu Sheng said with a grin, tossing off an explanation, “just think of it as a new technology developed by the Hotel. Weren’t we saying the power station was short on staff? This group is assigned to look after the generators. I’ll teach you how to communicate with them later. There will be another batch coming out of the hub pyramid that we’ll send to the starport and to the Black Forest logging camp. Also, from now on Irenes will be coming out of the hub every so often. If you see any lost or wandering near town, take them to gather at the castle. These mass-produced dolls have not been through much testing yet, and there might be instability.”
Red Hood said: “Huh?”
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