Chapter 22 – Garbage Processing Yard (8)

Zhang Xun lowered his head and pretended to concentrate on the photon gun design drawings sent to him by several mechanics, but really his eyes were just glued to the paper without taking in what he was looking at.

Adam's eyes staring at him were like thorns in his back.

After the odd conversation that morning, Adam had been following him like a dog with gauze wrapped around his head. Today was Saturday, in the Lab there were only a few workaholic mechanics and their poor assistant researchers who were still working on the weekend. Whenever they bumped into someone they would be astonished by the wounds on Zhang Xun's face and Adam's head and ask what happened.

Zhang Xun's standard, official answer to this was: There was a little accident at the Garbage Processing Yard.

"Ah-Xun, do you have a boyfriend?" Adam suddenly asked from behind him.

Zhang Xun replied angrily, "I spend all day watching over you, you really think I'd have a boyfriend?"

"Have you had a boyfriend before?" Adam continued to ask, "I know you have a father, a good friend, and lots of subordinates, but I've never heard you talk about your romantic relationships."

How did this AI become an emotional expert after a concussion? Zhang Xun was a little irritable, turned his head and stared at Adam who was hugging and stroking Alloy, "That's my private business. Don't ask about it."

"Romantic relationships are a very important part of a human's life. Before gender separation, in order to keep replicating and continuing its own DNA, hormones produce a series of complex chemical reactions to form love. Some people say that this chemical reaction is just a by-product of sexual behavior, and some people say that love has a very important role in the replication and continuation of DNA. But no matter which statement, I agree that for most human beings, love is of great significance to a person's understanding of the world and character formation."

"I don't need you to teach me about being a human." Zhang Xun narrowed his eyes, a little unhappy.

Adam looked at him with concern, "I just wanted to clarify that I have never heard or perceived your romantic relationships in your words so far. In fact, based on the time you spend in the Lab, I don't think you have had a romantic relationship for a long time."

"..."

Adam looked Zhang Xun up and down, his expression like a mechanic looking at a broken robot, "Your appearance is good, the only downside is your lack of development, your muscles may not be in line with the aesthetics here. Your IQ should be relatively high, but since love has been separated from reproduction, this may not help you find a partner. And you are an introvert, with a certain lack of fatherly love, and on top of that, you were bullied as a teenager, making you lack trust in other humans. Maybe this is..."

"Enough!" Zhang Xun slammed down the document in his hand and stood up suddenly, staring at him irritably, "I said don't ask about it. Are you forgetting your place again?"

Adam immediately said sorry and then fell silent.

Zhang Xun squeezed his brows as if he had a headache and said after a while, "Thank you for protecting me yesterday."

Adam blinked a few times, "But I failed."

"For human beings, sometimes the result isn't important." Zhang Xun raised his eyes and looked at him, raised the corner of his mouth slightly, as if he wanted to smile, but his mind was heavy on that smile and he looked a little tired, "You knew that you were at risk of being seriously injured but you still tried to protect me, even overcoming your own survival instincts. This is a very meaningful gesture for humans." He paused, then added, "But it could also be because you know that if I get seriously injured, they might give you a new mechanic, one who's not a good 'controlling' mechanic like me, so after weighing the pros and cons, you decided to make certain sacrifices to protect me."

Adam was stunned, as if he didn't expect Zhang Xun's last words.

"Or." Zhang Xun walked towards Adam, resting his hands on the armrests on both sides of the armchair that Adam was sitting on, looking at Adam with a condescending attitude. At this moment, Zhang Xun had a sharp guess in his eyes, "You deliberately encouraged me to take you to the Fourth District, and deliberately walked to the dangerous area, because you wanted me to worry. You wanted me to see you seriously injured. This would allow you to convince me to let you learn how to defend yourself."

Adam looked at him quietly, without anger, panic, or shame, "but I don't need to go around in such a big circle to convince you. I can practise secretly by myself."

"You know that if you want to gain my trust, you can't lie to me. So all decisions have to be made of my own accord." Zhang Xun's tone was still calm, almost as calm as Adam's, so calm that it lacked human breath.

For a while, the two were silent. The air between them was pulled tightly, as if it were about to break at any moment.

Zhang Xun suddenly smiled slightly, the smile almost reaching his eyes, "But it doesn't matter. To control and be controlled, this is the essence of human relationships. You know human beings very well, Adam."

Adam finally said, "To encourage you I went to the Fourth District on purpose. On the one hand, it was out of curiosity, on the other hand, I really hoped to cause some riots, which would make you reconsider letting me learn self-defence. But after meeting those five hostile humans , I found that I couldn't think as usual. Nothing was under my control, except for the last sense of self-preservation, I didn't control anything."

His tone was still calm, his expression didn't even change, but his eyes were subtly sad.

Zhang Xun straightened up and looked down at him. After thinking for a moment, he said, "I can allow you to learn martial arts, provided that I have more means to restrict you."

Adam was a little surprised.

Why did Zhang Xun still agree after seeing through him?

"Although you were trying to manipulate me, your argument has some truth. I'm not a warrior, and I can't even protect myself in certain situations, let alone protect you." Zhang Xun said, taking a bag out from his jacket pocket. Inside was a diamond-shaped, chip-like, metal device with several vertical and horizontal lines on it, a hole in the middle, and a very thin nano 'wire' behind it, "I will implant this tracker on your forehead. It will allow me to know where you are and can monitor your brain wave activity and even read your data when you're feeling strong emotions, and I can see everything you can see through this camera hole. When necessary, I can activate the standby function through this silk probe. There will be a weak electric current here, which will temporarily overload your mechanical brain, causing you to enter a state of paralysis for up to five seconds. This overload won't cause damage to your central cognitive modules or your long and short term memory, nor will it affect your human lobes, but it won't feel good. Any attempt to take this device out will trigger the paralysing effect, which will put you in a standby state, and you will only be able to wake up after I open your skull and unlock it manually."

Adam blinked a few more times, as if processing what he said, "You'll know where I am? How will you locate me?"

"The signal can be picked up within the range of Lost Paradise. Any time you leave the range of my control, the standby program will be automatically triggered and I'll receive an alert." Zhang Xun paused and continued, "You don't have to ask anything more, you just need to decide, will you choose to keep things as they are, or choose to have self-defence or even attack skills, but be implanted with this device?"

Adam thought for a while and replied, "I choose the latter. "

............................................................

On Monday morning, Diego, who had just done a hundred push-ups, was pulling up his vest and wiping off the sweat. When he turned his head he saw Zhang Xun and Adam slowly walking towards the gate of the garbage processing yard.

He widened his eyes.

"You two... did you get into a fight?" He looked back and forth between the two who had bruises on their faces, "No, it can't be this serious at your level. And what's that thing on the robot's forehead? New Jewelry?"

Adam reached up and touched the diamond-shaped device implanted in his forehead.

Zhang Xun held up a bottle of Russian Tsarskaya whisky that the hunters had brought back recently, "I brought you a gift."

When Diego saw the bottle, he couldn't see anything else and his eyes seemed to pop out with green light, "Holy fuck...Where did you get it?!"

"I have my sources." Zhang Xun smiled slightly, "But it's not for free, I have a request."

Diego's salivating expression immediately subsided and he looked at him suspiciously, "Request? How can I, a garbage dump manager, help you?"

"I checked your information. You used to be the head of the Sixth Hunting Regiment. During a hunting operation, the whole group lost contact. About two years later, you suddenly appeared in Lost Paradise. After a series of evaluations, although you could no longer enter the hunting group, the guards still reserved a position in the military for you. It's a pity that you started drinking too much after that and you couldn't recover. In the end, you were sent here by the military to be a manager because of drinking and making trouble. But when you were the head of the regiment, you once won the championship of the fighting competition that's held every three years. You're proficient in boxing, free fighting, muay thai, taekwondo and other fighting techniques. You were known as the human weapon"

The more Zhang Xun spoke, the darker Diego's face became, "...So what? You want me to beat someone up for you?"

Zhang Xun shook his head, "No, I want you to be Adam's training partner."

"Huh?" Diego looked at Adam, who was smiling in a distorted way because of his swollen cheeks, "You really agreed? Damn, this kid really has a knack for convincing people."

Adam laughed without saying a word.

When Diego reached out to take the vodka, Zhang Xun suddenly withdrew his hand slightly, "However, please don't tell anyone else about this. I can get this alcohol for you every month from now on until Adam completes his training."

"Okay okay okay! Whatever you say goes!"

So Adam's training was secretly carried out every day in the garbage processing yard. While the huge machinery roared and kept sorting, Zhang Xun would be sitting under the pergola, being fanned by the old electric fan while reading the proposals submitted by some mechanics and the applications and design drawings that needed to be approved, or drawing designs for his own ideas. James had said that recently, the hunts had been getting more and more dangerous, probably because the god descent program had created more hostility and fear towards them in the ordinary world, and the hunting group that went out last month were attacked by the robot soldiers before they even left the range of the Rocky Mountains. This siege led to the Round Table's decision to suspend all hunting activities, but this wasn't a long-term solution. Zhang Xun thought about improving the body armour worn by the members of the hunting regiment, and installing a disruptive device to confuse the robot soldiers' identification of gender characteristics, perhaps reducing the chance of them being detected.

Adam gave him a lot of help with this. After all, the identification system of those robot soldiers was designed by Eden.

He wondered what it must feel like to help others deal with himself...

He raised his head and saw Diego taking off his shirt, revealing his strong bronze skin, sweating profusely but with an excited face to confront his opponent. Adam, on the other hand, was soaked in sweat, his blond hair stuck to his cheeks, but his blue eyes were narrowed as he lowered his body and moved with slow steps, looking for an opportunity to attack.

Zhang Xun still remembered on the first day when Diego started training him, Diego had made Adam hit the sandbag and the sandbag swung back and knocked Adam out with a nosebleed... But now, he could predict or even dodge Diego's punches, and occasionally counterattacked with a punch or two.

Adam's physical condition was very good. The original owner of the body had received plenty of strength and endurance training, so it wouldn't be too difficult for him to implement the knowledge in his head now.

But now Zhang Xun had new concerns.

The one-month deadline was approaching, and he and Adam had to prepare for a full-scale psychological assessment.