The buzzing in his pocket continued, like a tiny bee refusing to go on strike. Chen Hao pulled it out; the metal pellet was vibrating slightly against the fabric, as if protesting being forgotten for too long.
He stared at it for two seconds, then casually stuffed it back into his pocket, but his gaze fell on Nana.
She walked slowly, her right arm dangling in mid-air, the joint making short, sharp "click" sounds, like an old door hinge running out of oil. With each step, her arm twitched, as if a drunkard was tapping his feet inside her.
"Your arm... did you wear it out while you were repairing chickens last night?" Chen Hao grinned. "How about we apply for workers' compensation?"
Nana stopped and turned her optical eyes to him: "The drive system detected external resistance, which is preliminarily determined to be foreign object intrusion."
"What kind of thing can crawl into your metal body?" He walked around to her right and reached out to touch the outer layer of the mechanical arm. His fingertip slid, bringing out a few grayish-white hairs that floated half a foot away in the sunlight.
"Wait a minute." Chen Hao squinted. "This thing... is it a chicken feather?"
"Probability 87.3%"
"You're a robot, you don't lay eggs or hatch chicks, what's the point of having this thermoregulation function? To attract bees and butterflies?"
"The temperature control module is used to maintain the stability of the sensor and is not designed for biological behavior."
“But now it’s become a reserve for incubating eggs.” Chen Hao clicked his tongue. “Come on, go to the side. Don’t let the chickens see you disassembling parts. They might think we’re doing a live dissection.”
They set up a simple sunshade outside the chicken coop. Chen Hao rummaged through his toolbox and found a fine-tipped screwdriver and tweezers, and then casually tore off a piece of old cloth to spread on the ground.
"Prepare to open it up," he said.
Nana initiated the shell unlocking procedure, and a crack slowly appeared in her right arm joint. Chen Hao gently pried open the protective cover with the tip of his knife, and a gust of warm air rushed out—there was even a faint heat flow circulating inside the robotic arm.
"I was wondering how you could attract chicks even when you were just standing still. Did you turn on the heating in your room?" He opened the first gear assembly, which was already stuffed with flattened feathers, as dense as a dried dandelion ball.
"The cleaning mode has been tried three times, to no avail," Nana said calmly. "The self-cleaning fan cannot remove deep-seated tangled fibers."
“That’s blowing on your face, that’s stuffing your throat.” Chen Hao took out his chewing gum, chewed it twice and stuck it on the tip of the tweezers, rubbing out the loose downy feathers little by little. “Let me tell you, the hardest thing about raising chickens is not feeding them or preventing disease, it’s preventing them from doing random construction. Last time, one hen insisted on building a nest in the generator exhaust vent, which almost caused a short circuit and fire.”
“Behavioral motivations can be recorded,” Nana said.
"It's no use memorizing them; they don't read the instructions."
As the disassembly progressed, the jammed gears gradually came to light. Chen Hao used a fan to blow air in the opposite direction while carefully manipulating each transmission plate covered in lint. Suddenly, the tweezers touched something hard.
He took a closer look and froze.
"Huh? Isn't this... an eggshell?"
A small pile of broken shells lay quietly at the bottom of the heating chamber, its edges smooth, clearly peeled off from the empty shells after hatching. Surrounding it was a ring of neatly woven downy feathers, forming a miniature nest structure, with a trace of body heat still remaining in the central depression.
"Wow." Chen Hao straightened up. "You really moved in? And it's a fully furnished apartment with underfloor heating?"
“Young birds may identify stable heat sources as parent individuals,” Nana analyzed. “This phenomenon was not included in the initial behavior prediction model.”
"You didn't expect chickens to fall in love with robots?" he laughed. "If word gets out, we'll both be used as case studies in a science ethics class."
"The key is to restore functionality," she cautioned.
"Alright, alright, let's see this through to the end." Chen Hao continued cleaning, moving even more gently. He didn't dare pull too hard, afraid of breaking the internal wiring, so he could only pick it out one wire at a time. Midway through, a little chick waddled over, stood three steps away, tilted its head to watch him work, its eyes focused as if it were a supervisor.
"What are you looking at?" Chen Hao waved his hand. "Your ancestors' house was forcibly demolished, aren't you going to leave?"
The chick clucked, spun around in a circle, and hopped away.
After removing the last tuft of feathers, Chen Hao closed the cover and patted the robotic arm: "It's assembled, let's try it."
Nana closed her eyes for a second, then slowly raised her right arm. The joint moved smoothly, and the blue light circulated inside her before returning to normal.
“System calibration in progress,” she said. “The complete reset is expected to be completed in ten minutes.”
Chen Hao slumped onto the wooden crate and casually grabbed a handful of feed, scattering it into the trough. The remaining chickens immediately swarmed around, scrambling for it, their clucking filling the air.
"Do you think they'll find another warm place to live in the future?" he asked.
“This area has been marked as a high-risk interaction point,” Nana replied. “An intermittent vibration warning mechanism will be added later.”
"It sounds like a burglar alarm."
“We could consider coating with a low-adhesion material,” she added, “to reduce the probability of organic residue.”
"Hey!" Chen Hao sat up abruptly. "That's easy! You know non-stick pans, right? That slippery stuff on the bottom, let's coat it with that too? I guarantee a feather won't stick, and even saliva will slip on it."
“PTFE coatings are not weather-resistant enough,” Nana responded. “But there is a better alternative – perfluoropolyether-based composite films, which have a coefficient of friction of less than 0.05 and are resistant to high-temperature oxidation.”
"I don't understand what you're saying, but I can tell you agree."
"We suggest trying it during the next maintenance."
“Okay, I’ll personally spray paint it for you and write a sign that says: ‘No nesting allowed, violators will be fined.’”
Nana didn't reply, but simply raised her right arm slightly and performed a small swing test in the sunlight. The blue light flashed twice, indicating that her condition was stable.
Chen Hao looked at her and suddenly found the scene both absurd and funny. The two of them, one human and one robot, were squatting by the chicken coop, having just finished performing a "nest-clearing operation" on the robot, discussing how to prevent the chicks from settling there again.
He took out some dry rations, took a bite, and said as he chewed, "I should have known better than to let you install the thermostat; it would have saved me from getting into trouble."
“This feature improves nighttime monitoring accuracy by 19.4%,” Nana said earnestly. “The advantages outweigh the disadvantages.”
"But you're like a mobile incubator now."
"It wasn't an active attraction."
"But the result was that it attracted people."
Nana paused for a moment: "Perhaps all things warm will be misunderstood by people—or chickens."
Chen Hao almost choked.
He turned to look at her; her optician's eyes were quietly reflecting the setting sun, revealing no emotion. But he knew that those words were already quite gentle for her.
"Alright then." He wiped the dust off his face. "From now on, wherever you stand, I'll put up a sign in advance: 'Not suitable for settling down here.'"
He stood up, stretched, and casually checked the automatic feeder's operation. Everything was normal.
The cricket breeding box stood quietly in the corner in the distance, and dark shadows could be vaguely seen crawling inside the transparent cover, but no one went to open it.
Chen Hao walked to the sink to wash his hands and looked up at the sky.
The sun was setting, and the light slanted across the robotic arm's shell, reflecting a faint silver streak.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com