The Record of Unusual Creatures

The death of the First Born’s brain was confirmed to be irreversible, and this was good and bad news at the same time. The good news was, they did not need to worry about the First Born suddenly waking up and wrecking the surviving Executor civilization again. The bad news was that Hao Ren would not be able to “cure” the First Born enough to recover its senses. That was one of Hao Ren’s initial plans: discover the ailing brain core, then find a way to cure it. If the First Born had not totally fallen into madness, perhaps it could have been cured? As it was, trying to completely kill this mythological creature that had already fused with the planet was extremely difficult. It was almost equivalent to destroying the planet altogether.

Hao Ren had to abandon that plan… The patient’s brain was a goner…

The Petrachelys returned to the surface. The droid swarm had already built a temporary forward operating base on the surface as argent alloy covered the once pockmarked landscape, concealing the hideous cracks and craters. Meanwhile, tall command towers, factories, and laboratory facilities were raised at breakneck speed. Despite being a temporary modular base, it gave the barren place a sense of “civilization”.

The forward base was right next to the massive rift as well as the final battlefield of the fortress, much like a silver mark dotting the vast and scorched earth. The construction did not take the droids too long. They had directly moved the modules made in the space factory via hyperspace teleportation directly to the planet’s surface and just needed to lay them down in the predetermined places before they brought them online. The prefabricated modules could be deployed, adapted, welded together, and expanded within a few hours. When the Petrachelys first left the heart of the planet, it was an engineering mess, but by the time she got back, it was already a functioning base.

The ship landed on the small spaceport in the base, and Nolan finally got to enjoy her overdue docking inspection… It was the first maintenance she had undergone ever since she came to the godforsaken Star Cluster X and almost got blasted into two. The shipgirl was so happy that she threw confetti for almost half an hour. Hao Ren, on the other hand, was in the forward base’s command center, staring at a massive holographic projection.

A detailed planetary structure was being projected, and based on the few accompanying pictorial breakdowns, onlookers could clearly get an idea of what was going on inside the planet. They could see that the First-Born-inhabited planet’s interior had undergone a complete transformation. Every fault, every layer of the planet, and even the core itself held the presence of the First Born. The ancient being had almost “consumed” the planet, and its tentacles had replaced almost sixty percent of the planet’s interior support structure. Those massive caverns and vaults were completely dependent on the tentacles supporting them.

If the goddess of creation had not contemplated the survival of the mortal races when she designed these “guardians of life”, programming the First Born to move into the heart of the planet to prevent any destruction of the planet’s outer layer and natural resources, the planet would have probably been a literal hell hole.

“Let’s not even get started on our firepower. Even if have enough, we still can’t kill it,” Y’zaks grumbled. “The First Born is completely fused with the planet, and worse still, 3,000 years ago, the First Born tried to ‘pry open’ the planet. That led to the shattering a third of the planet’s structure; there are faults everywhere. It’s entirely dependent on the tentacles to maintain its structure. If the First Born completely dies off, the planet will come apart within a hundred years… something the Executors probably will not want to see.”

“Actually, the Executors could migrate, right?” Nangong Sanba quipped. “Why haven’t they found a proper place to move to? But, we can help them with that, no? Our probes are much more advanced than theirs, and the Executors are all machines. The new place just has to be rich in minerals, and the temperature about right; their ability to survive is stronger than most carbon-based beings’. There should be many potential planets too.”

Hao Ren gave him a sideways glance. “Let’s say I’ve just blown up your house and I tell you, ‘Oh, well, you can still move to a new place, right? If you can’t, I’ll find you a new ‘house’. How would you feel?”

Nangong Sanba pondered a bit. “… But I’m staying at your place…”

“F*ck, I forgot about that…” Hao Ren cringed.

Vivian looked at the two as she sighed. “You two are hopeless. But actually, what Nangong Sanba suggested is workable. When facing total annihilation, moving is a much better option than dying. Nevertheless, that should be a last resort. If we have any other ways to resolve this, we can’t go around blowing the planet up. The Executors have deep links to the planet too. Now that the humans are gone, they will not stand idly and watch their planet get blown to smithereens because this planet is the last remaining memento that their creators have left them.”

“How about blasting its face with the ‘lullaby’?” Lily asked as she wagged her tail. “Since we can’t wake it up or kill it properly, then we should just let it sleep for good.”

“Well, let’s not even start with how much work is required to place the lullaby system all over the planet, and even if it’s possible material-wise, it won’t work.” Hao Ren waved her off. “The lullaby system has its limits; it can only restrict a part of the First Born’s nervous system but can’t totally control it. After being exposed to the lullaby, its tentacles may start twitching for a bit due to conditional reflex, and long term exposure to the lullaby will cause it to wither. If its physical structure weakens, there’s a risk that the planet might fall apart.”

Lily shook her head in frustration. “This won’t work, that won’t work… Then how about we use a neuro-controller and a massive supercomputer to create a brain for the First Born as we did in Purgatory. Remember, Mr. Landlord? The people there even built a city around its brain and went there to pray every day…”

Hao Ren proceeded to rub his chin. “That sounds like a plan, but creating an artificial brain isn’t something that can be done within a day or two. This is a massive project, even bigger than the one on Purgatory. The First Born’s loss of consciousness there was due to devil Vivian sealing it. Its physical structure was pretty much intact, and it could still be revived by plugging in an external brain. However, this First Born here has been smashed silly by a meteorite. Loss of brain aside, most of its central neural cortex has also totally withered. We’re looking at excavating a third of the planet, perhaps, for that to work.”

As he spoke, the images in the holographic projection changed. The rocks, water, and lava all disappeared; only the biological system of the First Born was left with different marks to indicate the condition of the organs. The brain and its surrounding organs were all marked with the “dead” black, while a good amount of nerve structures outside the brain were in various shades of dark red: that indicated a drop in function due to toxins.

Rollie lay on the table as she stared blankly at the intricate tentacles and cyst structure before she raised her hand. “That looks like a ball of yarn, nya!”

Hao Ren clicked his tongue. “Why is this furball here?”

“She was running around the base and I was afraid that she would cause trouble so I dragged her here,” Vivian said while she stuffed a handful of fish jerky into the dumb cat’s mouth to pacify her. “As a matter of fact, I have an idea.”

“Go ahead.” Hao Ren nodded. “Any idea is better than none at this point.”

“Zorm… Isn’t he missing a body?” Vivian gently tapped her finger on the table. “If we could let Zorm act as the thought control center, wouldn’t he cut down on the engineering requirements?”

Lily’s eyes widened when she heard Vivian’s suggestion. “Whoa, Battie! You’re actually about as smart as me, eh!”

Hao Ren was also sparked by Vivian’s idea. “That could work! It’ll cut off at least seventy to eighty percent of the work needed. That’s the hardest part of creating an artificial brain. The First Born is, after all, a demi-god, and the structure of its psyche is just too complicated. Even the man-made brain on Purgatory only managed to simulate part of its brain’s biological functions. If Zorm can assume direct control of this body, then its efficiency will be even better than the version we had on Purgatory!”

In truth, if not for the Wall of Reality separating Purgatory and Tannagost, Hao Ren would have wanted Zorm to take over that body on Purgatory.

“However, Zorm is currently the overseer of Tannagost’s ecosystem; he can’t possibly leave that place, right?” Wuyue suddenly interjected. “Besides, this place is pretty far from Tannagost, right? Doesn’t sound all that proper to dismantle a part of CARS and ship it here…”

Since Zorm had already lost his body, he could only reside as a consciousness within the supercomputer in CARS. Plus, he also needed an antenna as well as an energy unit to communicate with the outside world, and the system took up a building’s worth of space. Dismantling it would mean cutting up a quarter of CARS.

Aside from that, Wuyue also pointed out another problem: Zorm was indeed looking after Tannagost, and as the only living sane First Born around, he could not afford to be away.

Lily then pondered a little bit more before she popped an idea, “What about remote control?”

Seeing the werehusky’s sparkly googly eyes, Hao Ren realized that she was onto something, “Remote control?”

“Haven’t we already used the droid swarm fortress to solve the communication issue within Star Cluster X? This means that communication from here to CARS is smooth. We can connect the First Born here to a whole lot of artificial neural systems with a receiver instead of a supercomputer. Then, get Zorm to use CARS’ super antenna array to connect to the receiver here, like the droid hivemind’s form of wireless communication to process thought. Won’t that work?”

Lily stared at Hao Ren hard once she finished rambling. Her golden irises were piercing as her tail swung from left to right. With a “praise me, now” expression on her face, her whole person was akin to a readable child.

In spite of that, her idea was indeed incredible. It looked like the dumb husky’s four graduations from the University of Beijing were not just for her to swipe the canteen food…

“Sounds workable. As long as we can assure the smoothness of the transmission, it’ll be quite simple for Zorm to extend his consciousness here.” Hao Ren nodded in affirmation before he praised the doggie. “Good idea, you’re pretty smart.”

“Yep, I’m a genius!” Lily’s tail was already spinning like a propeller. “And I think, if this works out, we can do it for other finds as well. So long as we find a living First Born, we blow its brains out, then put in a boatload of artificial nerves and receiver points for Zorm to take over. Additionally, while Zorm is able to manage them, we can get him to prepare a whole bunch of backup networks, and we can even name the process… cloud computing…”