Chapter 1 The Robot Sister

Hao Ren suspected that the robot girl in front of him might not have been properly repaired—the lab mainframe probably really forgot to install speakers and a microphone for her.

Ever since she woke up, she had been staring blankly, not saying a word. Apart from her eyes darting around, she hadn't made a single movement. This clearly indicated a problem with her input/output devices.

But Nolan scoffed at Hao Ren's idea.

"She's observing the environment," Nolan's holographic projection stood beside the platform with her arms crossed. Her eyes were on the robot girl lying on the platform, but she was actually using a whole bunch of monitoring equipment in the lab to monitor the signal flow inside the robot's body. "Her logic circuits are already on, she just doesn't want to talk."

The robot girl lying on the platform immediately turned her gaze to Nolan.

This... was not human, and not even... a physical entity.

n-6 somewhat awkwardly activated her logic circuits, and her thoughts gradually became smoother. She watched the grey-haired woman standing next to her with great vigilance. Through various sensors, she felt that at least twenty unauthorized but unstoppable reading threads were injected into her processor the moment the grey-haired woman spoke. She instantly lost all protection in front of the other party, like a discarded, about-to-be-deregistered shell. And the grey-haired woman herself... she had no body temperature, no heartbeat, not even mass. She was not a physical entity at all... but neither was she any kind of holographic image n-6 had ever seen.

The robot girl sensed a great threat.

She tried to move her limbs, but soon discovered that all her actions were being monitored by some higher-level program. This program did not prevent her from moving, but the state of being monitored made her immediately give up trying to move her limbs: it was the logic circuit's protection mechanism at work. She cautiously observed the surrounding environment, but everything she saw was unfamiliar machinery. She saw crystal pillars emitting a faint blue light, floating projection screens, neatly arranged operating platforms, and strange machines with many mechanical tentacles swimming around near the ceiling.

It was a spacious laboratory, or perhaps some kind of precision machining center, but the first possibility was more likely.

And the people around her, they looked very much like real... humans.

n-6 felt that her thinking was becoming clearer. She knew about humans. Humans lived in the "Fortress" on the moon. Although the Executors rarely had the opportunity to see humans in person, every characteristic of humans had been engraved deep in the database of every Executor from the beginning. But these humans around her didn't seem quite the same as those stored in n-6's database. From body temperature to surface features, to the electromagnetic waves and other energy fluctuations emanating from them, they were all different from what was said in the database.

The humans in the database did not have furry ears and tails, nor did they have three or four-meter-long reptilian trunks, nor were there cubs only twenty centimeters long with fish tails.

But they had heartbeats, at least some of them had heartbeats, and they also had many other characteristics of carbon-based organisms... they should be humans.

"What's your name? If you can understand, at least blink."

The "human" with furry ears and tail and golden eyes was talking to her. n-6 was certain that there was no corresponding language in her database, but she still accurately understood what the other party meant. This was an unexplainble phenonmenon. She went back to check the audio collected by the sound recording device, but this time she could no longer understand the meaning of the audio.

But n-6 still decided to communicate with the other party, because the other party was human.

So she blinked: "Current identification code n-6, factory number e75-3C6215, general-purpose combat Executor, combat vehicle auxiliary operator, type-5 airborne computer."

These humans were different from those recorded in the database, but they were indeed carbon-based organisms. They were not Executors made of metal and bionic materials. Perhaps that guess was true—humans still survived on the surface of the home planet, they had just mutated under the influence of the Planet Devourer.

"I told you, she definitely has speakers and a microphone. I remember installing them," Nolan raised her chin, looking smugly at Hao Ren, as if the robot girl had been repaired by her—although all the systems of the spaceship laboratory were indeed part of her.

Hao Ren ignored the smug spaceship spirit and looked at the robot girl who was lying on the platform and curiously looking at him: "n-6 and... that e75 something something, which one is your name?"

"n-6," the robot girl blinked. Her voice sounded pleasant but lacked fluctuation. She seemed a little curious. "Are you humans?"

Hao Ren didn't expect the other party to ask this as soon as she opened her mouth, and this question really stumped him. He looked at the circle of abnormal creatures around him, thinking that his family could put together an animal world or Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio without any problem, but to say they were humans... he barely counted, right?

"How should I put it, you can say we are if you think so," Hao Ren finally decided not to introduce the races and origins of his group one by one, because that meant introducing n-6 to a background story of no less than two million words. "Because I'm not sure what your criteria for judging humans are."

n-6 blinked again: "Understood, you are indeed humans."

As expected, these were humans who stayed on the home planet and mutated.

Completely unaware that she had been tacitly recognized as a mutant, Hao Ren was now just full of curiosity about n-6: "You..."

But before he could finish speaking, the robot girl interjected, "How many of you are there?"

"Huh?" Hao Ren was stunned for a moment, looking at his companions, but he didn't answer the other party's question. "Why are you asking this?"

"If your population is insufficient, you will need the protection of the Zenith," n-6 continued on her own. "The surface of the home planet is no longer suitable for human survival. The Zenith and the Fortress are the last shelters for humans. You need to go there."

"I think she misunderstood something," Hao Ren muttered to the data terminal in the mental connection.

"This unit believes that her misunderstanding is just right," the data terminal replied. "She seems to have mistaken us for the descendants of human survivors living on the surface of the planet. It seems that she doesn't know that an unknown spaceship crashed on this planet. Maybe we can use this as a breakthrough to contact those people in the sky..."

Hao Ren completed the exchange with the data terminal in his mind without any trace, but his appearance seemed to have no delay at all. He revealed a smile: "We have known of your existence for a long time, but we have never had the ability to go to space. Do you still have a way to return to your base now?"

"My fighter has crashed," n-6 replied. "But I can send out a recovery signal, and a recovery team will come to pick me up."

"That's good," Vivian nodded beside her, then looked at n-6 curiously. "By the way, why are you always lying down? Why don't you sit up and adapt to your new body?"

"New... body?" n-6 seemed to suddenly realize something and gently moved her neck, but stopped again before getting up. "I feel... my movements are being controlled by another program..."

"Ah, so you interrupted the movement of your limbs because of this," Nolan waved her hand. "Don't worry, that's because your original limbs were scrapped, so we had to get you a new set, but there is a compatibility problem between the new limbs and your logic circuits, so we added an extra driver to your control system. Does this driver make you uncomfortable?"

Just a driver?

n-6 was a little surprised, but after a simple logical judgment, she found that she did not have the need (and right to speak) to question or ask the other party to recompile the program for her, so she reset the security mechanism of her logic circuits and began to try to move her limbs through the new driver.

She successfully sat up.

This brand-new body... seemed very powerful.

The robot girl carefully observed her hands and feet. She put her hands in front of her eyes, slowly clenched and released them. This seemingly delicate body contained incredible energy. She even felt that with this body alone, she could compete with the titanium guards in the Fortress.

Did the descendants of humans who stayed on the home planet actually have this level of technology? Was this... the legendary ancient lost technology?

"Thank you for saving me," she seemed to recall all the details of her crash at this time. According to the etiquette required by the program, she stood up and bowed deeply to Hao Ren. "I..."

She stopped halfway through her words because she felt something pulling her from behind, affecting her next movement. Looking back, she found that a solid cable extended from the platform she had just been lying on and was connected to the back of her neck.

"This..." Miss n-6 thought carefully and turned to look at Hao Ren. "Am I charging now?"

Nolan quickly explained: "This is not a power cord! This is the data cable that was used to write the driver for you before. By the way, the energy system you originally used was badly damaged, so we upgraded it when we repaired it. Now its automatic recharge speed is even faster than before."

"Ah, that's great," n-6 said happily. "I thought I would have to be plugged in all the time to move around in the future."

Hao Ren couldn't help but mutter to the data terminal in his mind again: "Her ability to make up things is really unexpectedly strong."

"Perhaps the artificial intelligence created by this civilization is good at associative input methods."

However, just as everyone was preparing to learn more about the "Zenith" from this robot girl named n-6, Nolan suddenly looked up in a certain direction.

"Boss, it seems we have guests."

"Hmm?"

"Two transport planes have landed in the forest twelve kilometers away from this ship, and an armed team is approaching here."

(Going to the Writers Association meeting, automatic updates these days =.=)