Chapter 311: Anyone Who’s With That Cat Can’t Be Good News [Part 2]
“I didn’t know that the Original robots had willingly surrendered themselves to the experiments,” Xi Kai said with a bit of difficulty.
“Of course they did. Did you really think that the arrogant Reefia would agree to being dissected otherwise? That the cruel Suyi would allow himself to be cut without fighting back?!” Moon stared at Xi Kai for a moment before turning away again. “Back in those days, the Xi Family had singlehandedly resisted the united assault of countless enemies and created countless miracles. It was the generation of geniuses and the best generation of Xi Family to ever live. To put it simply, everyone else who was born after that generation was unworthy!”
Unworthy…
Unworthy…
Unworthy…
Xi Kai felt a bit faint. He never thought that the word would ever fall on a member of the Xi Family.
“It was the most glorious generation of people to ever live, and yet the same generation who was struck by disaster after disaster like nothing we had ever seen before. Master said that no amount of genius was enough to disobey fate, and that we were so great that even the gods couldn’t bear to look at us anymore. That was why the gods had hit us with disasters, wars, setbacks, electromagnetic storms, civil wars until finally, the last of us became… average people.”
Moon looked at Xi Kai again when he said the word “average”. The latter could barely hold in a terrific outburst, much less the blood rushing to his head.
Moon then opened his palm and curled all of his fingers except one. “But I won’t follow my brothers’ folly. I will wait for Sigma to return, and I will guard even more secrets so that the unworthy can’t get their hands on it.” That was why he would rather enter hibernation than be dissected by the Xi Family.
Right now Xi Kai was burning up with shame. He wasn’t his ancestor, and he hadn’t committed their atrocities, but he couldn’t deny that he had thought of researching the last Original robot. Moon’s confession made him give up his idea completely, however. It wasn’t just because he couldn’t make any breakthrough without that mysterious brain matter. He wasn’t so foolish as to deny the ability gap between himself and the best of the Xi Family who ever lived.
After Moon finally came to a pause, Cillin asked, “Is there really no way to go back? Is it really impossible to recreate the components of the black box?”
Moon shook his head. “We lost too much data, and none of us Original robots had participated in that particular project. Sigma might know slightly more than us since master taught him a lot of things before the transfer, but unless this side of the ‘bridge’ is open, he couldn’t cross over from the other side even if he tried…”
Moon suddenly stared at Cillin. “So, my question is, how did you people cross over to this galaxy? How did you manage to lock onto this particular galaxy without a reference point?”
Xi Kai’s mouth turned into an O-shape. Did he hear correctly? Did he just imply that Cillin didn’t belong to the empire, no, to this galaxy? Did that mean that the Xi Family originally came from another galaxy as well?!
Wheeze whispered a brief explanation of what happened beside Moon’s ears. Moon looked down on Cillin’s ring and put a hand beneath his chin. “I see. Maybe that ring of yours contain some residual signal; a mark of space and time that pinpointed your transfer to this galaxy. Still, the residual signal has to have come from somewhere, meaning that it must’ve come into contact with the black box before.”
Suddenly, Cillin recalled Genya’s story. Back then, Genya had accidentally come into contact with an unstable wormhole and entered GAL space. Not long after he went in, that wormhole had disappeared as well. In the past Cillin thought that it was just a coincidence, but now that he really thought about it, he decided that the black box must’ve been near that unstable wormhole at the time. Logically speaking, the chances of Genya being sent to GAL space instead of another galaxy or star system naturally was infinitesimally small.
Moon stretched his arms wide, flipped down the cable and landed next to Cillin. “I’ve decided to accompany you temporarily!”
Xi Kai looked at Cillin oddly. He was the real descendant of the Xi Family, but Moon had treated Cillin way better than him. He supposed that the Original robot really was that disappointed with the Xi Family’s descendants.
Chip didn’t object to Moon’s decision. He knew that Moon wanted to find the black box with Cillin, return to GAL space and meet up with Sigma.
And so Cillin and Wheeze gained a new companion during their return trip. The atmosphere was livened a lot as a result.
Wheeze introduced Moon to “Return” and logged into the forum. Then, the two of them started watching the ongoing “matches” between intellectuals. Moon needed to catch up on his knowledge and data anyway, so this was just perfect.
After he had sufficiently familiarized himself, Moon joined in on the fun and debated many people with Wheeze. As a result, a lot of people fainted from anger that day.
Moon asked to watch TV after he had had enough of debating for the day, so Cillin passed him a micro-computer. Bored as usual, Wheeze sat with Moon and watched TV with him, or at least it tried to until it realized what the robot was watching. Its whiskers twitched again and again…
This goddamn robot… is watching… porn!???
On the screen, two actors were kissing each other as if they were the only two people left in the entire world. Then, they went down to business and didn’t stop until a very, very long time later.
“Oh em gee, I’m so embarrassed!” Moon covered his face embarrassedly. Cillin simply stared at him as a couple of thoughts passed through his mind: Can someone explain to me why his fingers are fully stretched if he’s really embarrassed, and what the heck does the flashing blue strip on his visor mean? Anyone!?
Wheeze flicked its ears and decided that its time was better spent arguing with the old scholars.
Cillin asked, “Moon, weren’t you afraid that Sigma might be lonely?”
Fingers still stuck to his “face”, Moon turned to him and replied, “Of course Sigma will be lonely, but he doesn’t think like us, do you understand what I mean? He will never go crazy from loneliness. Let’s say you have a dream. Normally, you would gauge the probability of the dream becoming a reality and be invigorated or depressed by the answer, right? In some cases, the gap is so huge that it could even induce despair. But Sigma doesn’t feel such things. He only cares about making his dreams come true, and to that end he can work for a thousand years without rest.”
Cillin smiled. “Yeah, he’s a great fellow.” He recalled the Sigma swinging his arms like an innocent child. He recalled his ability to take joy in even the simplest of pleasures. He must’ve been really sad when Shortcut opened, but nothing happened as he thought it would, didn’t he? I wonder how everyone is doing right now.
Cillin flew Moon and Wheeze back to the capital star region, but instead of reporting to Guan Feng as he normally did after a mission, he chose to visit Genya first.
Genya had heard of the waves Cillin created in the academia a while ago, but he didn’t care. He would almost always support anything that Cillin wished to do.
Cillin inquired about Genya’s accident and only that because it was directly related to some of the internal problems the Gen Family was facing at the time. He asked about the location of the wormhole and the exact time he entered GAL space.
After answering all the questions, Genya asked, “You’re heading back?”
“Mn. I want to try. I want to head home and see how things are.”
“To be honest, I never expected that I’ll make it back here when I accidentally entered that place. When I left you that message, my only hope for you was to accumulate enough strength before you leave that planet and explore the borderless world… do you have a plan yet?”
Cillin had a feeling that Genya was hoping to visit GAL space as well.
“You little!” Genya hit Cillin once in the hand before waving him off. “You should visit Guan Feng now. He got into a minor accident not long ago, and he’s too embarrassed to say what it was exactly.”
An accident? What accident? Still, the lack of worry on Genya’s face probably meant that it was nothing major.
“Okay, I’ll head to AF1 after hanging around for a bit. Oh right, did you receive the Golden Thread Turtle I asked Tousen to send over yet?” Cillin had to leave San Calombo in a hurry at the time, so he asked Tousen to be the delivery boy.
“Yes, I did.” Genya’s smile deepened when the Golden Thread Turtle was mentioned. “I’m giving it a lot of attention. There’s a rumor that states that anyone who saw a hundred-year old Golden Thread Turtle would have their lifespan increased for another hundred years. Some of my old friends kept visiting me lately because of this. There’s no way they’re getting away with my prize though, hehe!”
“Wheeze, Moon, time to go! And Blueskin, you’re going to break your waist is you keep that up! Your tail isn’t made for vertical standing!” Cillin hollered at the direction of the mini sea.
Genya stared at them in deep amusement until they left. His smile turned smaller as he gazed toward the distance.
Was there anyone he missed in GAL? Yes, there are…
When Cillin reached Guan Feng’s place, he discovered the “minor” incident turned out to be more serious than he thought. Not only was Guan Feng injured, he nearly lost his entire arm. That was why he had been brooding in his house and undergoing recovery treatment as of late. Even Genya knew about this only because he contacted Guan Feng to talk about the stunts Cillin pulled as of late.
When Cillin heard from Guan Feng why he almost lost an arm, his first reaction was: You must be joking!
Everyone knows that Guan Feng was the creator and master of the Purgatory Thunder Snake series, so no one ever thought that the guy would be hurt by his own creation one day. Worse, he was wounded by the poorest gun of the series, the B model. It was no wonder that he was too ashamed to meet anyone lately.
It wasn’t entirely his fault though. Guan Feng had been working himself to the bone researching a medium-sized gun barrel of the PTS, and the exhaustion finally got to him when he was handling a PTS B. As a result, he had accidentally shot himself.
“And that is why you should drop everything you’re doing for now and help me. I want to finish this project as soon as possible because the longer it’s dragged out, the higher the chance a mistake might occur.” When Guan Feng told Cillin what he was working on, the young man agreed that it was too taxing a project for a single person to complete.
On the other side of the living hall, Wheeze and Moon were surrounding the aquarium and “battling” against the squirt fishes. Guan Feng turned around just in time to see Moon lying on top of the aquarium and electrocuting the last fish into unconsciousness.
Guan Feng: “...” I knew that anyone who’s with that cat can’t be good news!