Hao Ren did not know why Hessiana was so bitter towards him. He wondered when he would unknowingly rub her the wrong way. There was a reason for it except that Hessiana had a psychotic disorder as a left-behind child. For a thousand years, Vivian left Hessiana behind in Athens. It was only fortunate that Hessiana was tough mentally and just got a bit neurotic as a result of the neglect.
A long awkward moment ensued when Hessiana called Hao Ren pop.
However, Hessiana could not care less; she was pleased with herself. For the first time in a thousand years, she saw improvement in her relationship with her beloved Ma’am Vivian. She was on cloud nine. Hao Ren could not care less about this neurotic bat-demon either so long as she did not create trouble. He passed the buck for disciplining the kid to Vivian and went back to his work.
The new ecosystem of Tannagost-Zorm was booming, the drone cluster had multiplied itself and increased its range, the construction units on the planet Inferno had erected the first electric-discharging needle-tower later yesterday, and Becky had sent a letter of greetings to everyone. Everything came in at once, but Hao Ren had no difficulty handling them. He had gotten it down to a fine art.
Y’zaks did not go out with his daughter to scavenge for electrical waste today but read the People’s Daily on the sofa, killing his time. When Hao Ren came out of his room, Y’zaks put up a big grin on his face and asked, “Done with your work?”
“Yeah.” Hao Ren patted Y’zaks on the shoulder and then flung himself in the sofa, edging Dumb Cbat off the armrest. “Did I not tell you not to squat on the armrest?” Hao Ren chided.
Rollie tumbled to the ground with a meow, but she flipped around and bounced up quickly before swinging her paw, which was in the shape of a ball, at Hao Ren’s face. The action was all at one fell swoop. Hao Ren took that unhurriedly while chatting with Y’zaks about how-was-your-day stuff. He learned about the situation in Helcrown and Y’lisabet’s learning progress while Y’zaks was more interested in things about the planet Inferno; he regretted that he did not follow Hao Ren to Inferno.
Although retired, Y’zaks was an explorer at heart; his curiosity and adventurous spirit had not died down.
Y’zaks suddenly became silent and looked past Hao Ren.
“What’s wrong?” Hao Ren asked. He turned his head around and almost sprained his neck. “What the hell?”
A familiar blonde girl with a faint glow on her body, face emotionless, with shoulder-length hair, and skinny was standing behind him. She was the corpse girl that the MDT ‘borrowed’ in the Ark of Dreams in Zorm.
“Hi!” The blonde girl waved at them. The expression on her face turned from stiff to animated quickly. “Buddy, how is my reproduction skill?”
Hao Ren finally realized that it was the MDT, but he was startled a bit because he did not expect to see ‘her’ here in the real world. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
The blonde girl pointed happily to herself. “Because I am a girl at heart.”
Suddenly, the door opened. Lily returned from the outside. The husky maiden was stunned seeing a strange and foreign girl in the house. “Who is she, Mr. Landlord?”
“It’s the freaking brick!” Hao Ren had a headache; as if the imaginative husky was not playful enough, the MDT was even more coltish. He reached to grab the arm of the brick. “Girl at heart my foot! Did you download some apps again? Oh, wait a minute!”
His hand went through the girl’s body, and the girl flickered, and half her body had sunk into the floor like a ghost. The blonde girl took a step back and yelled, “Don’t touch me! I’ve yet stabilized it!”
“Is this a holographic projection?” Hao Ren had figured it out now and was speechless. “Having this trouble just to give yourself a new theme?”
The blonde girl’s arms akimbo—in the hologram, of course. “I have decided. I’m going to compete with Nolan for the post of the battleship host. Did she not want to pull me out of the console last time? Well, I have thought it through. Since we both are AIs, what gives her the special rights over me? Is it all because she has a human look? This is the only difference between us.”
While saying, the blonde girl spun one round and said, “I, the cerebral-thrombosis corpse maiden Pattianne must make the bitch give up the console slot!”
Hao Ren looked at the neurotic, dumbstruck. He did not know what to say. He was undecided whether to rail at the MDT for taking ‘cerebral thrombosis’ as his name, or inveigh against the power struggle between two AIs over a host slot.
Y’zaks looked on, equally dumbstruck. He scratched his jaw and nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting… I remember in my hometown; there was a kind of creature called mirage demon, which was a type of large insect that could project an ultra-realistic image using the crystal on its back to disguise itself as something attractive to trap its prey. It was a fascinating guy.”
Hao Ren smiled wryly. “I don’t care if it’s interesting. I want to remind this fella that it has sunk into the floor again.”
The MDT quickly lifted the holographic image like a ghost with no movement on the limbs. It raised it too high, two centimeters above the floor, which made it like a ghost hovering in the air. ‘She’ had to make several adjustments before finally making it right. “Phew! It’s not easy at all. My altitude sensor isn’t suited for this purpose.”
Lily curiously went up to check out the virtual body. She reached inside the blonde girl and fumbled a little with her hand. “It doesn’t look fake from the outside, except that it appeared a little shiny. Wait a second! I think I’ve touched something,” she said.
While saying, she shook the thing in her hand. The blonde girl swung back and forth. “Stop! That’s me. You’re grabbing my body!” the MDT pleaded.
The protest did not work. Instead, it aroused Lily’s playfulness. The husky maiden lifted the body of the MDT in the air, which visually it was the blonde girl, with her hand still stuck inside the blonde girl’s stomach as if it was a scene in an age-restricted horror movie minus the blood. Rollie, who sprawled on the sofa watching, bounced up with a meow, stepped over Hao Ren’s head and the sofa’s back, and scrambled to the other end of the living hall.
Hao Ren watched on but not letting Lily do it overboard. He suddenly heard a noise in the kitchen. Then Y’lisabet ran out nervously. “Uncle Ren! Something is not good! Lil Pea looks—”
The little demon paused, looked up and saw Lily swinging the body of a person in the air, her jaw dropped. “That’s fun!”
Hao Ren waved his hand in front of Y’lisabet. “Don’t bother with them. What did you say about Lil Pea?”
Y’lisabet took her eyes off what Lily was doing. “I don’t know what happened! Lil Pea suddenly said that her stomach didn’t feel right and then she kept swimming in a circle.”
Hao Ren became nervous and ran into the washroom.
In the washroom, Lil Pea was in the big water basin where she was swimming in a circle with a weird posture and kicking up water with her tail occasionally. The little mermaid jumped out of the water when she saw Hao Ren, looking very spirited. “Hi, Dad-dee! Swimming?”
She looked just fine.