The place was covered in wreckages. The cleaner robots only cleaned up the wreckages within the mining areas and ignored the countless mechanical debris and smashed up robots beyond them. The Free Army cared even less for them, doing only the bare minimum to deal with their own dead and wounded. Everyone was busy mining the ores right now.
Czedow was currently standing amidst the wreckage and thinking god-knows-what. He looked melancholic and lonely amidst the dark environment, or at least that was what Cary thought after seeing him.
The man was running circles around the outskirts because he had just hit Wheeze with a tool. After he saw Czedow standing alone in the wreckage, he suddenly took diverted from his original path and walked toward the robot.
In Cary’s opinion, the battlefield had probably evoked some emotions within the robot. Czedow was a robot, and the wreckages around them were technically his own kind. It made sense that Czedow was wrestling with emotions just like how a human would feel emotional if they stood on a battlefield strewn with human corpses for the first time.
“Hey man. Why are you acting sad by your lonesome?” Cary asked while giving Czedow a casual pat on the shoulder.
Czedow slowly turned around to face the Hunter. The robot’s expression betrayed no signs of sadness whatsoever, but Cary thought it was just another case of facial paralysis—an illness that was commonly shared by all robots—and continued,
“There’s no need to think too much about this. As Hunters, this is a sight we’re going to encounter a lot more often in the future. Take me for example. The first time I saw a corpse-strewn battlefield, I gotta admit that I felt pretty bad myself. Enemies or not, they were all people just like me after all. That said, you’ll get used to it eventually, not to mention that some bastards do deserve to die. Just think of all the pains these robots put us through just now…”
Cary wasn’t done comforting Czedow yet, but he abruptly saw Wheeze leading Moon, Sigma and White Ghost toward them from the corner of his eyes. They were pretty silent, but White Ghost was just way too eye-catching. He would be a failure of a Hunter if he missed someone as obvious as her.
“Ahem, anyway, I need to go and help out the gang, so I’ll leave you to your thoughts. Bye!” Cary ran away as soon as he left behind these parting words. There was no way he was staying and giving a certain fat cat the chance to take revenge against him.
Wheeze ran all the way to Czedow before leaping onto his shoulder. It then patted the robot with its paw as emphasis while saying, “This here is Czedow!”
Czedow looked at Wheeze, Moon, Sigma, and finally White Ghost. Then, he looked back at Wheeze and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Little White said she doesn’t know you, so I brought her over to introduce the two of you to each other! She is your girlfriend after all,” said Wheeze while licking its paws innocently. It pretended not to notice Moon’s hand gestures.
Czedow and White Ghost looked at Moon at the same time, and Moon lowered his head while fidgeted with his oval, metallic thumbs. Suddenly, he let out ah “Oh!” before asking Czedow, “What was Cary talking to you about? Is it a secret?”
It was one of the worst attempts at changing a subject Czedow had ever seen, but he gave Moon face and answered, “It’s nothing. Cary thought I was feeling melancholic and decided to show me his support, that’s all.”
“What? What is there to be sad about all these?” Wheeze tilted its head in confusion.
Czedow responded with a helpless look of his own. “I don’t know either. Maybe the human psyche is fragile enough that a sight like this makes them feel sentimental or something?”
Moon scratched his round head. “If it’s not that, then why are you here? There’s nothing here but trash.”
“I’m searching for useful information,” Czedow replied.
“Info?”
“Yes.”
Czedow pointed at a nearby robot with its head bashed in and its lower half of the body missing. He then projected a hologram from his eyes. The footage was intermittent and incredibly blurry, but they could see two people in the hologram. One of them was Robert Borat, and the other person was flickering too much even for them to see.
“Is this…”
“It is their memories.” The hologram disappeared after Czedow’s eyes had turned back to normal.
“So, you’re saying we should read the memories of these ‘dead’ robots and acquire potentially useful information for ourselves,” Wheeze asked.
“Not really. You can only read the memories of robots that are neither too ‘dead’ nor ‘awake’. Moreover, these memories are always incomplete due to the damage they suffered. It’s up to luck whether we’ll find any useful information among them.”
Curious, Wheeze, Moon Sigma and even White Ghost tried to read the robots’ memories using the method that was outlined by Czedow, but the amount of robots that were stuck between “death” and “wakefulness” were just too few. Most of the robots were fully “dead”, and even when they found a robot that was stuck between the two states, they were unable to perform up to Czedow’s level.
“Screw it! I’m not doing this anymore!” Wheeze exploded while putting a hole into a “dead” robot. No matter how hard it tried, all it got from the near “dead” robot it was reading was a bunch of indecipherable images. That said, it was wise enough to take out its anger on a “dead” robot instead of the near “dead” one.
Czedow walked over and read the “memories” of the robot Wheeze had left behind. He didn’t discover anything either, but he decided to save the memories and reassemble them after the mission was over. Given enough time, he should be able to find something useful.
“We could dig out more secrets of the Robert Family if we could collect more information. It’ll make our future operations easier and benefit us in some ways,” Wheeze said while standing atop of another “dead” robot and scratching its exterior again and again. Cats were extremely grudgeful creatures, and it would never forget that it had let Robert Borat escape and failed to get any real benefit from the bastard!
However, Czedow surprised them by saying, “No, these ‘memories’ can only be used as points of reference. They might not necessarily be a true representation of things.”
“Robots do not lie!” Moon argued. Moon disagreed with him because his master used to say that robots were extremely honest creatures because unlike humans, their memories never changes.
“Yeah! My thoughts exactly!” Wheeze echoed in agreement.
Czedow let out a sigh and pushed away a robot blocking his way with his leg. Then, he sat in front of Wheeze, held out his palm, and projected the hologram of a fish. Specifically, it was the fish Wheeze was raising in the small pond Sigma had created in his indoors fruit garden.
“What is this?” Czedow asked.
“It’s a fish, duh!” Wheeze answered immediately.
The hologram changed, and this time it showed a plate of dried fishes. It was the kind Wheeze often ate.
“What about this?”
“A plate of dried fishes!”
The hologram into a bag of fish biscuits; Wheeze’s favorite flavor. “What about this?”
“Fish—biscuits!” Wheeze’s eyes grew brighter and brighter.
Finally, the bag of fish biscuits transformed into a full-course meal of fishes. It was something Wheeze craved but almost never got to enjoy. Czedow asked again, “What do you hate the most?”
Wheeze started salivating when it saw the tableful of fishes in Czedow’s hologram. Its pupils dilated, and its voice turned high-pitched as it yelled in delight,
“A full~ course~ meal…”
Wheeze stiffened like a statue before it could finish. Its ears moved backward, and its whiskers trembled restlessly as it fell into deep thought.
What do you hate the most… what do you hate the most…
Moon, Sigma and White Ghost were utterly silent. When it came to perspective taking, they might not necessarily have done better than Wheeze.
Czedow withdrew his palm and removed the hologram.
“The memories are real, but they aren’t necessarily accurate. Perhaps you would’ve answered correctly if I had asked the final question separately, or if I hadn’t shown you that final image.”
Czedow gave Wheeze a head rub before resuming his search for more memories.
Meanwhile, Elder Mo was resting on a rock not far away from the robotic group. After Czedow’s demonstration was over, he gave Cillin a tap on the back before pointing at the robot, asking, “How on earth did you manage to build such an incredible robot?”
Cillin rubbed his forehead. “If you asked me this question a couple of years ago, I could’ve given you a proper answer. Now, I’m not sure anymore.”