Chapter 35
Even though Mary Shelley was one of the institute's core researchers, the committee's old men still had a hundred percent distrust of the research plan and strongly suggested that she switch to a more easily achievable project, such as improving the supernatural weapon called "Shell" and expanding the incineration radius of 22 yards—about 20 meters—to a radius of 3 kilometers.
She privately complained to Ye Yihe that those old men were basically trying to create a superpowered version of the nuclear missile.
Despite being distrusted, Mary Shelley still managed to secure some funding based on her past achievements and began research known as Project Adam.
For the first few days, Ye Yihe was only responsible for assisting, doing tasks such as organizing materials, accessories, and classifying and storing them.
Despite being a multi-degree PhD with a number of medals that far surpass those in the research institute, Mary Shelley was equally adept at carelessly leaving things lying around and tripping over them. Ye Yihe had to catch her several times in time.
So, a few days ago, Ye Yihe spent a lot of effort filing all the paper documents, classifying the mechanical parts, and storing the miscellaneous items separately—Fyodor's super memory was equally useful in this regard, and Ye Yihe could clearly remember the location of everything, even more clearly than Mary Shelley.
"I want that one, the one with the black motherboard and a few metal stamps on it..."
"Is this it? Here."
"That drawing, the one that shows the core power and sensor design..."
"It's in filing cabinet E... Wait a moment, I'll get it."
If Agatha Christie were to see Fyodor actually working diligently for Mary Shelley, she would probably be so shocked she would lose her composure.
However, Mary Shelley did not know Fyodor, who was known as "The Devil"—thanks to the fact that the latter operated almost entirely in the shadows and would never make any high-profile displays to let everyone know that he was the one who did it.
That's right, we're talking about Verlaine, the "King of Assassins," who always placed a birch cross at the scene after completing an assassination mission.
This also led to Mary Shelley's growing fondness for Ye Yihe.
The intelligent and considerate Mr. Fyodor neither boasts nor arrogantly flaunts his education and qualifications, and he is also very handsome!
It would be a waste to use it only for logistical work as an office and lab administrator.
"I've made up my mind,"
Mary Shelley pushed up her large, round glasses perched on her nose and formally announced, "I'll teach you software programming. With your excellent memory, you'll definitely learn C, C++, Linux, MySQL, or Python very quickly!"
"Then you'll be in charge of some of the development and testing work. Hehe, if the plan goes smoothly, not only will it give those old men a shock, but you might even be added to the list of medal recipients!"
Ye Yihe: "..." Slow down, what does he want to learn?
After much deliberation, Ye Yihe agreed to her suggestion.
After all, it's always good to have more skills.
But occasionally—and I mean occasionally—he couldn't help but fall silent—his goal was simply to do good, so why was there so much more to learn?
Furthermore, the content of "The Secret of the Gentle Forest" remains unresolved... Mary Shelley had a falling out with the Pan six years ago and has not received any further information from him.
The biggest gain from this trip to the UK was finding Verlaine a mother who was still a minor. I wonder if he will be happy when he hears this news.
Ye Yihe gazed at the bionic humanoid machine gradually taking shape on the fixed frame and fell into deep thought.
...Maybe he also has a younger brother?
“We need to build something sturdy,” Ye Yihe suggested, “the kind that can withstand high-density gravitational pressure.”
"Does that mean designing the hardware structure based on the possibility of facing Verlaine in the future? Indeed, my vision for Adam is that it must be able to handle any situation perfectly."
Mary Shelley, without looking up, was recording data on the paper. "Just being able to fight isn't enough. How about adding singing, dancing, and telling corny jokes... Being able to soothe people's hearts is also an essential element..."
Speaking of this, Ye Yihe asked her, "Do you plan to let Verlaine know that he actually has a theoretical mother? I can try to tell him."
If the other person was born from a petri dish from which blood ties cannot be traced, then how can the theoretical mother not be considered a mother?
Upon hearing this question again, which was extremely impactful for a minor, Mary Shelley instinctively cleared her throat with a tactical cough.
"Well, well, it's not that I can't accept this conclusion, but... well, that infamous assassin king would never accept it," her face was practically contorted in pain, "He might use this as a stain on his reputation and then come all the way here to kill me..."
Ye Yihe thought about it for a moment, then nodded in agreement with her concerns, "It is indeed quite dangerous."
Of course, the main danger lies in the level of physical strength.
In his attitude toward the outside world, Verlaine was closer to a rather contradictory state, a cruel yet compassionate, self-loathing yet painful sense of extreme instability.
Ye Yihe didn't quite understand before, but now that he knows that Verlaine, who looks like a young man, is actually only six or seven years old in terms of mental age from birth to the present, he feels that he has probably figured it out.
However, he wasn't sure if Verlaine wanted to suddenly have a mother who wasn't related to him by blood and a brother who was a silicon-based life form, so he decided to keep this secret to himself for the time being.
Because it was a matter of face for the French government—after all, Verlaine had worked with his partner Rimbaud for four years as a French special operations intelligence officer—there was not much coverage of Verlaine in the news for the general public, even though he had already carried out several high-profile assassinations of celebrities.
Mary Shelley's unilateral acquaintance with Verlaine was purely because, as one of the core members of the research institute, ensuring her safety was an extremely important issue for the government.
Verlaine's assassination style, which targeted important figures, would have been disastrous if he had set his sights on Mary Shelley.
The value that the mind of a top scientist can create is more than that of 100,000 armies combined!
Therefore, Mary Shelley was specifically given information about Verlaine by the [Clock Tower Attendant], who emphasized that she should be extremely wary of this man and absolutely not have any contact with him.
In addition, the [Clock Tower Attendants] would secretly send people to accompany and protect Mary Shelley when she went out.
This is why Ye Yihe, who had just met Mary Shelley upon arriving in England, was immediately invited for tea by Agatha Christie.
If Agatha hadn't been forced to reach an agreement with Ye Yihe, Mary Shelley would have had information on Fyodor the next day on her desk.
In this respect, Agatha Christie probably regretted it too—if she had known that Fyodor would target their Dr. Mary Shelley, she should have warned the latter in advance about this cunning and low-profile Russian rat.
Now all we can do is pray that, given her goodwill, the mouse that sneaked into the backyard won't damage anything else.
Ye Yihe could only look up at the sky in disbelief.
He told the truth about his purpose in coming to England, but those people simply didn't believe him.
But this is good too; getting one of Fyodor's subordinates for free will definitely be a pleasant surprise for him.
Speaking of his subordinates, Ye Yihe finally found time to listen to the system's previous voice recordings and learned that Fyodor's organization was called "The House of the Dead," and that he had even tried to use his identity to lure Odasaku into joining!
If it hadn't ultimately failed, and if Oda Sakunosuke had clearly distinguished between him and Fyodor, Ye Yihe would definitely have taken a plane back overnight to explain to Oda Sakunosuke.
Now, his life at the research institute is both regular and fulfilling.
During work hours, besides assisting Mary Shelley, he would bury himself in thick programming language textbooks, along with various network protocols and decoding/encryption techniques; after get off work, he would bury himself in thick human language textbooks, studying English on Mondays and Tuesdays, French on Wednesdays and Thursdays, Russian on Fridays and Saturdays, and Japanese on the last day.
If you have any free time, exercise and review the various tips and tricks taught by Oda Sakunosuke to avoid getting rusty.
...He never studied this hard when he was in school.
Mary Shelley lived up to her reputation as a girl with a genius mind, making rapid progress in her research on bionic robots. In just three or four months, she built a basic hardware framework and began working on the software compilation and testing.
The precision of such humanoid machines is too high to wait until the hardware is fully assembled before starting software installation and testing. If there are any issues with circuit logic and wiring modifications, we would face the situation of having to start all over again. Experiment failure is not a big deal, but the main problem is that doing so would consume too much money and easily exceed the budget.
Repeated assembly is also quite time-consuming.
Ye Yihe's original job application for an assistant included cooking skills, and while Mary Shelley praised her cooking highly, she later became too busy to cook and had to quickly grab something from the cafeteria to eat.
In addition, he observed several new faces at the research institute who would subtly stare at him as he passed by, probably surveillance personnel sent by Agatha Christie to prevent him from doing anything sneaky.
Since they were just looking and didn't bother him, Ye Yihe let them go—which would put Agatha at ease.
"Phew, the test results look fine this time!"
In the lab, Mary Shelley wiped her brow and excitedly announced the news to Ye Yihe, "Want to try and get Adam to say hello to you?"
Ye Yihe looked up from the computer screen that was loading instructions and glanced at the humanoid mechanical body on the fixed frame, which was in a state of disarray, with wires and parts scattered everywhere, and the two cameras that served as eyes were still flashing red dots.
"No, never mind... This form just feels kind of creepy." He said quietly.
It was the 1990s, a time when technology was not yet advanced, and science fiction films were still focused on fantasy themes such as aliens and time travel; games were practically nonexistent. But in his era, there were quite a few films and entertainment works about robots gaining independent thinking abilities, rebelling, and ultimately destroying humanity...
"Afraid of my genius? Well, that's only natural."
The project has taken a giant leap forward, and Mary Shelley is in high spirits. "Once all the hardware is assembled, and with my superpowers—heh heh, Adam Frankenstein will be born!"
"Frankenstein... a homunculus created from scratch? It certainly fits his identity as a name..."
— Ye Yihe's casual agreement came to an abrupt end.
Wait, Frankenstein and Mary Shelley?
He seemed to remember that there was an author named Shelley who wrote a great novel with a protagonist named Frankenstein...
"The name Frankenstein is quite unique. Is it a tribute to that science fiction novel?" Ye Yihe asked tentatively.
"Hmm? A novel? What novel? The name is actually based on my superpower name."
Mary Shelley pointed to herself, “This is my proudest masterpiece, so of course it has to be given my favorite name!”
Ye Yihe: "…………"
Ye Yihe: "Do you know Agatha? What is her special ability?"
"Of course I know her. After all, I'm a superpower technician, and I've dealt with the superpower intelligence agency [Clock Tower Attendant] quite a few times."
Mary Shelley crossed her arms and recalled earnestly, "I remember her ability was called 'No One Survives,' and it was the kind of ability that was so aggressive that it couldn't distinguish friend from foe... Although I've never seen it with my own eyes... What's wrong? The expression on your face looks particularly strange."
"It's nothing... just a slight shock to my brain."
Ye Yihe interlaced his fingers on the table, his mind lost in a long silence.
He meant, um, could it be... that the original owner of this body also possessed a special ability called "Sin and Punishment"?
hiss……
"Your expression is even stranger now,"
Mary Shelley pushed up her glasses in confusion, then remembered something else. "Oh right, didn't you ask me before if I knew if the Pan had a document about Verlaine?"
"Um."
Ye Yihe silently nodded as he pieced together the fragments of his worldview.
After becoming acquainted with Mary Shelley, he took the opportunity to frankly tell her the purpose of his visit. Unfortunately, she had never seen the document, let alone the contents of the final chapter, "The Secret of the Gentle Forest."
“Although the successful creation of artificial superhumans is a closely guarded secret, there are quite a few people who specialize in researching artificial superhuman abilities. So, I later subtly inquired with other colleagues,” Mary Shelley said.
"I heard from one of my colleagues who went to Japan to exchange scientific research results that there was also a researcher there who was extremely obsessed with creating artificial superhumans. He had privately mentioned several times that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of great predecessors—now that I think about it, he might have been talking about Pan."
I didn't think much of it at first when I heard what my colleague said, but after connecting it with what Ye Yihe told her about the Verlaine incident, it became easy to make such a guess.
Ye Yihe's eyes lit up upon receiving the clue. "Really?"
Researchers who are so fanatically pursuing a certain goal are indeed very likely to resort to any means to collect relevant information about that goal, and "The Secret of the Gentle Forest" is very likely one of them.
"Do you want to try asking him yourself?"
Mary Shelley blinked and wagged her index finger at him smugly, “I just happened to be assigned a spot to go to Japan for an exchange program these past few days—since we’re not really going to exchange our core technologies that we’re currently researching, we’ll just discuss the results that have already been published—so why don’t I ask you to go for me?”
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