Can Ci Pin/Imperfections(残次品)BL by Priest

Chapter 25

Although Monoeye Hawk was a munitions dealer, he boasted to be good at every kind of crime, and robbing seemed like another easy job for him. In less than ten minutes, he gathered all essential supplies on Lu’s list, set up the program and transported the supplies one by one into the mech without needing four useless assistants.

One was B4, a cold black hole, and the other was Monoeye Hawk, a slayer from Cayley. The students weren’t brave enough to break the ice and talk with both of them. Neither the cool student nor the energetic one was able to show off their personalities. What they could only do was just to stand aside, huddle together and tremble like four tiny animals in a huge storm without any shelter. Behind them was the lost and defeated homeland they did not dare dwell upon, while here in front of their eyes was the endless wandering in space.

Mint’s personal terminal glowed at that time, and it was a call from Bixing Lu in the main control room with the help of the communication network in the supply station.

The teens never felt that Lu was a reliable person when they used to sit in a classroom or auditorium, hearing his boring speech. But when his projection appeared in front of them, they had the sudden illusion of salvation and then surrounded him.

Bixing Lu asked, “Are you scared?”

Only one sentence from him almost brought the students to tears.

Mint choked a little and asked, “Headmaster Lu, why haven’t you come here?”

“The smugglers and fugitives have their own secret channel. If the people in this supply station fled in advance with all weapons taken, there must be a definite accurate information source. Following them would be much safer than wandering in space. So I’m trying to hack into their communication database.” Lu lowered his head, concentrating on checking the program of the mainframe, and what they could see via the projection was only his profile. He talked with them at the same time, “Don’t be afraid, you know life is an adventure of no return. It is the status quo and you’ll be used to it. So, are you ready for the first mech operation class?”

Among the four students, both Mint and White had their own goals and never thought of learning to drive the mech. Jingshu Huang was suffering from vacucerebral syndrome - based on contemporary theory of brain science, when vacucerebral syndrome would concentrate on non-human brain devices and link with them, it would have irreversible defects, which meant that she might not be able to link with the mental network. If she was lucky enough to link, the compatibility would still be very low.

Suppose they were in a regular class, even the teacher tied them up to the chair and forced them to listen to what he or she said, the only result would be four “Emperor of Sleeping on Desks.” There would always be some “wooden heads” that were born unable to understand.

“Mechs are lethal weapons designed for the interstellar war. As the wars magnified to interstellar level in the early age, warships usually needed soldiers from several battalions. The cooperation of different arms in one warship was also necessary and it included professional drivers, surveying and mapping expert, artillerists, just to name a few. The outcome was inefficiency and high error rate. If spies or rebels broke into the warship undetected, it would bring incalculable losses to the whole force on the warship — that was why mental networks were created.”

In the midst of great confusion, the distorted man’s voice from the personal terminal was still gentle and calm, having a quiet power here. Even Monoeye Hawk, who used to despise his weird dream, looked up at him and didn’t disturb him.

“With the help of highly intelligent mental network, all functions of the warship can be concentrated on only one mech. Once the consciousness of  a human being and the mental network are connected, that being becomes the soul of the warship. After connecting, all of your senses would be replaced by the sensors of the mech. A huge amount of information would flood into your brain. That’s why many people will get a shock and slip into a coma when they connect with the mental network for the first time."

White asked: “So how do we adapt to the mental network, headmaster?”

Lu was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Call me by Mr. Lu from now on, there is no school anymore - the method to adapt to the mental network is an easy question to answer,  which is, to get familiar with every part and function of the mech so that you can make full prediction about what kinds of feeling they could bring to you. Normally, we prepared simulators for you at class. It’s divided into different senses, and then we stack them up the same way as the mech through the learning process, and that is why we need to learn it for a whole year.”

Hearing the unachievable task Bixing Lu announced, Rickhead looked at the complicated signals and programs of the mech that continuously inputted supplies, and could not even dare to think about his friends and mom who were still on Beijing-ß planet. Great sorrow arose from the bottom of his heart, and he was almost beaten by tremendous despair. “I cannot understand, headmaster…Mr. Lu. I can’t do it as well, I was ordered to quit school when I was just in seventh grade during compulsory education. They said I had a low IQ!”