Chapter 409

Chapter 410: New Feature

The 66.6 centimeter tall doll sat up from the alchemic platform, blinking a little slowly. After a long moment she seemed to finish booting, lifted her head, and stared blankly at Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng had meant to ask Irene whether this mass production body was running in low bandwidth mode, but one look at the new doll’s vacant eyes told him he did not need to ask. [With that slow but “wise” look, the bandwidth could not be high.]

Even Foxy could not help muttering under her breath: “This one does not look very smart.”

Rolling her eyes, Irene (rebar) snapped from beside Yu Sheng: “Of course not smart. It is low bandwidth. Do you even know what low bandwidth means?” Then she started giving orders to the mass produced version of herself on the platform, saying: “I will have her climb down and walk around first to see how she does.”

As soon as the little doll finished, the mass produced Irene swayed forward and back, then, like a machine doing a self check after startup, slowly examined her hands and feet. Two or three seconds later, this mass production unit stood up very unsteadily, backed down from the alchemic platform, and promptly fell flat on the floor with a smack.

Yu Sheng: “…”

Foxy: “…”

“What are those looks for? A body that just woke up needs time to adjust,” said Irene (rebar), looking a bit embarrassed but still trying to sound firm. “Before this I always took direct control of a new body, so of course it was steady. Now we are trying to let the new body move by instinct. I am telling you, this is very-”

She did not finish. The mass produced Irene had just pushed herself up when she fell again and started crawling in a weird, gloomy posture.

Yu Sheng could not stand it. He walked over, lifted the mass produced Irene off the ground, and said: “I think step one is that you should take control for a bit and at least tell this body what ‘upright walking’ is.”

Irene froze and blinked: “Right. That makes sense?”

What followed was more scrambling around. A totally inexperienced Foxy, a half baked Yu Sheng, and a not very reliable little doll crowded together to figure out how to make a living doll with no brain move on simple orders. Who knew how many times they failed. At last, Irene seemed to grasp a bit of the knack and successfully woke the sleeping “spirit” inside this totally blank mass production body.

Yu Sheng found it hard to describe what happened in that instant, but he truly felt a change. He felt a touch of living texture appear inside the hollow shell, and the empty thing that had only a faint spark of life became a real being with spirit. Then the small body slowly turned her head, and her stiff eyes stared blankly this way.

Yu Sheng hesitated, then set the mass produced Irene on the floor. She wobbled a few times, then stood steady.

She had no self, and there was nothing like wisdom. At its core, this was still a container controlled directly by Irene. But now the container had the most basic spark of spirit.

It was something between a soul and a shell.

Yu Sheng frowned slightly, watching the mass produced doll turn her head bit by bit as he said: “So this is a machine spirit? Or, in Xuan Che’s words, an artifact spirit?”

“Come here,” said Irene, beckoning to the mass produced doll. For the first time, she did not take direct control. She tried giving an order to move her “body” instead.

The mass produced doll reacted at once. After locking on to Irene’s position, she walked toward her.

“Oh, oh, oh, it works. Yu Sheng, look, it works,” Irene cried, turning to him with bright excitement. Then she faced the “mass produced me” who had come to stand in front of her and happily looked her up and down for a long while, saying: “Wow. Watching my own body like this for the first time feels amazing.”

“You are the only one who could adapt this fast. Anyone else who saw another self waving around in front of them would feel awkward,” said Yu Sheng with a sigh, then he waved his hand. “All right, try some more complex commands. After that, test the new feature.”

“Okay,” said Irene at once.

She began a series of tests on the mass produced doll. First were basic running and jumping, then finer movements like climbing and grasping, and finally the high difficulty task of imitating writing.

The mass produced doll carried out every order from her “host” without a word. She looked dull the whole time, but almost every task came out perfect.

With a bit of wonder, Yu Sheng watched Irene run test after test. At the moment, two little dolls were lying on the floor. Irene was using an engraving knife to carve a complex alchemic rune on the ground, and the mass produced doll, using another engraving knife, copied Irene’s movements and reproduced the rune exactly.

Honestly, the two tiny figures sprawled on the floor scratching and carving looked pretty fun.

“Basic movements are fine. Execution is fine. Tasks she has done or seen once are easy to repeat. She also understands human speech,” said Irene as she stood up and clapped the dust off her hands. Then she turned and patted the skirt of the mass produced doll beside her. “Sometimes the reaction is slow, and she cannot handle complex, sudden situations. But if she runs into real trouble, she should ask for help. I think I have already taught her the idea of asking for help.”

The mass produced doll stood there blankly, as if listening to Irene, or just quietly watching her moves. After a moment, she suddenly clapped her hands too, then reached out and patted Irene’s skirt.

“Her learning and imitation are very strong,” added Irene.

Foxy grew curious and asked: “Do you have to teach every mass produced doll like this each time?”

“No. Later they can teach one another,” said Irene with a wave. “Mass produced dolls may not be flexible, but they share knowledge and experience more easily than people. If you teach one something new, the others will learn it quickly.”

“So they are networking?” said Foxy after thinking it through.

“It is ‘we,’” Irene corrected, very serious. “All Irenes are linked, mass produced or not. Right now the mass produced line has only this one prototype, so I cannot say what it will look like once the scale grows. We will see then.”

For such a small doll, her heart was very big. To be fair, she had always been that carefree.

When the basic tests were done, it was time to test the new feature.

“Next we see whether the mass production unit’s special ability really works,” said Yu Sheng, letting out a light breath as his eyes fell on the blank faced mass produced doll. “You, go a bit farther away.”

The mass produced doll paused, as if confirming whether to obey Yu Sheng. Soon she nodded, turned, and walked to a corner of the lab.

“Will this really work?” Irene asked, a little nervous as she watched Yu Sheng. “Do not break my first mass production unit.”

“Do you still not trust my work?” Yu Sheng glanced at the little doll, then focused on the “mass production unit” in the distance.

Strictly speaking, he focused on the precast gate inside it.

He breathed out, steadied himself, and raised a hand toward the air beside him.

Following the idea behind the portable Wutong Road 66, Yu Sheng had left an imprint of The Door inside the unit’s skeleton. At the same time, it was not the same as the Door he usually used. In the making process, each “Irene” carried some of Yu Sheng’s blood. That blood gave every Irene equal door opening permission and an activation key. Blood and The Door together formed a complete set.

Yu Sheng gently pushed the space beside him.

The mass produced doll standing at The End Web in the lab suddenly turned blurry and unreal. Her tiny figure rippled in place. In the next second, she twisted inward like a folding rift and vanished, then reappeared at Yu Sheng’s side.

Foxy stared, stunned. Then she reacted at once. This looked exactly like what happened when the ship Otherworldly Hotel teleported in and out of the Valley.

Yu Sheng smiled.

Just as he expected, the teleporation method used by Otherworldly Hotel could be reproduced. When he moved that huge ship from outer space into the Valley, he fused the Door he opened with the ship’s phase engine and treated the whole ship as a Door. That let him flip the ship’s coordinates to the other side of The Door at the instant of door opening and send it to the destination, the Black Forest.

The process differed from how he usually opened a Door, but the principle was almost the same.

In Yu Sheng’s eyes, the essence was one thing. The Door stands for separation and connection. It links two places that were apart. Opening the Door means the two spaces merge and coexist. You can walk through the Door, or the Door can pass through you. You can step into the other side, or the space on the other side can come to your feet. It is all the same.

As long as the result is the same, the form and steps of door opening do not matter.

Even the form of The Door does not matter.

Yu Sheng lowered his head, thoughtful, then smiled down at the mass produced doll still standing by him with a slightly dazed look. [Was she scared by the sudden teleportation, or is she always this blank?]

Irene wandered over, chin lifted, and said: “By the way, the new function of the mass production unit is not just that you can summon her any time, right? If that is all, you could just open a Door and yank someone over like usual.”

“Of course it is not that simple,” said Yu Sheng with a grin. “These mass produced dolls with precast gates can do a lot.”

Irene blinked and started thinking.