The Record of Unusual Creatures

The mad, wretched man—that was what Nolan’s men began to call the stranger, who was holding on to a woman’s body. Although Hao Ren had only been there for less than two hours, he was already famous in the base. He had no idea who made the story up, and which big mouth spread it out, but he managed to attract stares for all the wrong reasons.

However, Hao Ren did not have time for this. He was busy studying the MDT-possessed body. This is not what your dirty mind is thinking of course. He wanted to know how this second-generation of the Evolved ended up becoming the carrier for the MDT. The Plane of Dreams was a real world; everything that happened in there had to follow the laws of nature. Since the MDT’s awareness could leech off the corpse, the corpse and the MDT’s consciousness had to have some kind of compatibility.

Finding out this compatibility would probably allow the MDT to restore its sensory ability.

Hao Ren cautiously took the cloth that he used as bandage off the blonde. The fatal through-and through wound on the abdomen was still gross. The blood had dried up, the silver and white, half-fresh half-machine cables that grew with the body was clear visible. Hao Ren had tried not to look at other part of the body. Anyway, considering the scary wound, he did not have much appetite for other thing.

The MDT still had not recovered its sensory ability, but it had an audio-visual sharing with Hao Ren. It was now seeing through Hao Ren’s eyes its current appearance. Even a machine that had a problematic worldview found the experience novel and interesting.

“I guess the chip in the second generation Evolved’s brain works with her artificial nerves,” Hao Ren put on his glove and carefully examined the broken tubes. “The operating mode of these parts should be closer to the machine. Your consciousness may survive in them.”

“I think you are a pervert,” the MDT scolded Hao Ren for his eyes were darting across the girl’s body. “You’re essentially molesting her; sadomasochistic… your hand is in my stomach!”

“If you’re helping, just shut up,” Hao Ren muttered. But in the eyes of the others, he seemed to be talking to himself. “Look at these tubes. They really grow with the body—the ultimate form of mechanical devices, as if they are biological…”

The MDT began to make frivolous comments. “Do you think my titties are too small? Hey, the nipples are black, aren’t they? I don’t like black. Is there any chance to help change them to blue ones?”

“Get the hell out of here! Who is the pervert here?” How Hao Ren wished he could whack the freaking PDA. “And they’re not your titties!”

“For now, they are! And you dare to say that you didn’t see it? Stop denying. We’re sharing the same pair of eyes. I even know how fast you blink.”

“I can’t believe that I have such a PDA…” Hao Ren said haplessly. “I have just reconnected a few broken lines. Do you feel anything?”

“I feel nothing. I don’t know how human feels. I think I need to remind you; this body is already dead. Can’t you see that there is not a single electrical signal in the cables? The biological and mechanical parts of this body have ceased to function. Connecting the dead cables together would make no difference.”

Hao Ren sighed. “I know that in theory a dead body wouldn’t carry soul. But let’s call a spade a spade; aren’t you in her body right now? And the undead like zombie moves? This shows that dead body can also move.”

“The undead has its own special energy circulation. Their blood vessels no longer pulsate, but they have other circulation and metabolism, such as magical powers or alchemical drugs. So, in a broad sense, the undead’s body is still ‘alive’,” the MDT sounded serious this time. “But the physical condition of the body in front of you is different. She is completely dead. She has stopped working. At least I can see through your eyes. There is no activity in the body…”

“Right, I just tested the signals on these lines. They are broken. I really can’t explain where you are living in her now.” Hao Ren sighed and got to his feet. “So let’s go back to the starting point and scan again. This time I’ll check the brain, maybe there is a chip that is using the remaining cellular energy to keep it working but just off-line—”

But before Hao Ren finished his sentence, someone knocked on the door. He looked up and saw a dark-skinned, middle-aged woman was standing outside, staring in.

“The door is not closed,” the middle-aged woman said.

Hao Ren quickly took his hand out of the MDT’s stomach (which sounds strange) and suddenly realised that he had been talking to the MDT for a while, not only in his mind but also out of his mouth. He rubbed his hands and said, “You hear everything?”

“Just the last few sentences,” the middle-aged woman said. She reached into her pocket, took out a cheap ciggy, put it into her mouth, lit up and took a few shots. “But I’m not interested in what you said. I’m a doctor. Nolan asked me to handle a … to see your girlfriend.”

Hao Ren scratched his head. “I’m not crazy. I just talked to it a little.”

The MDT did not seem to shut up yet. “Do you think chatting with a dead body is not mad?”

“Shut up,” Hao Ren shouted in his mind.

The middle-aged woman looked at him with a strange sympathy. She had already heard about this man from Nolan, just as other mercenaries who had made up a perception of him—she thought that Hao Ren was just a poor guy who did not want to accept the tragic death of his spouse and thus became crazy. She did not say much but picked up a small black box next to her feet and walked into the room. “Do you mind if I interrupt your solitude for a moment? I need to give your girlfriend a jab.”

Hao Ren said with a hapless face. “Just do whatever you like but please don’t say she’s my girlfriend, could you?”

The ‘doctor’ had nothing in common with what Hao Ren had imagined in his mind. She did not wear a white coat, nor did she bring any medical apparatus. She even had cigarettes in her mouth. She was wearing the same grey and black combat suit as the other mercenaries. She had a stone face that looked like she had gone through a lot of hardship. She looked like a through-and through soldier except that she did not carry any weapon. No one would have a second thought she was as good as other soldiers if she took up a gun. Hao Ren watched as the woman removed a silvery, pistol-like vacuum syringe from her black suitcase. He asked, “Does doctors here all dress up like this?”

“You doubt my qualifications?” The woman took out a metal tube from the small compartment in the box and stuffed it into the vacuum syringe. “Well, I admit that I don’t have a practicing license. After all, the last professional licensing agency in the world was closed more than 20 years ago. But I have handled more than hundreds of wounded people, which is more important than having a licence.”

As she spoke, she pressed the vacuum syringe against the neck of the MDT and injected something into the body. Hao Ren looked on. He did not know why she gave a corpse an injection. He even suspected that the ‘doctor’ that Nolan sent was playing along with his ‘schizophrenia’. “What did you give her?”

“Nanomachine Swarm,” the ‘doctor’ said. “The simplest model. They will guarantee that the body will not rot within a month, but will exhaust their energy after a month… Oops! Nolan told not to mention ‘rot’ in front of you…”

Hao Ren twisted his mouth and said, “It’s fine… But then, isn’t Nanomachine Swarm a very dangerous thing?”

He remembered the information he had previously seen on the Internet. But at that time, he did not have time to read about the fate of nanotechnology after the accident. He thought that the technology had been sealed.

“In the eyes of ultra-conservative Naturals, probably all thing high-tech deserve to die, right?” The doctor shot Hao Ren a glance. “But without Nanomachine Swarm, 99% of people in the world will die of hunger and suffocation. Do you think there are still lands that can grow vegetation? Where do you think the oxygen you breathe comes from? You should be grateful to the Nanomachine Swarm, at least they feed humans.”