Chapter 150 Rebooter Base - 7 Tang Bu...
Tang Bufan returned to the quantum physics lab, and to his surprise, Mian Tuo was there, lying there listlessly, swinging her old slippers.
"Didn't you go to study the water quality of the Amazon River?" Tang Bufan asked him curiously, sitting down next to him.
"We can't do any research, our island's communications have been cut off," Mian Tuo muttered, lying there.
Tang Bufan became concerned: "What happened?"
“The satellite has fallen into Fang Yue’s hands,” Mian Tuo said. “Originally, the satellite was controlled by the East District Underground City Academy of Sciences, but now that Fang Yue has taken power, many people from the Academy have been arrested, and our island can no longer use satellite communication.”
With communication cut off, those who remotely control androids to conduct research around the world are forced to halt their activities.
"...So now Fang Yue and the orcs are on the same side?" Tang Bufan pressed.
"It's hard to say, she didn't hand over the people from the Academy of Sciences." Mian Tuo sighed deeply: "I hope the people in the underground city are alright."
After he finished speaking, he suddenly remembered something and turned to look at Tang Bufan: "By the way, your husband is nearby."
Tang Bufan's heart skipped a beat, and he almost couldn't help but slightly raise the corners of his mouth: "Lu Yi is here?"
“Didn’t he send people to build a military base on the east coast of Australia a month ago?” Mian Tuo said. “Now the aircraft has landed there, and now a lot of drones have been sent out to search the sea.”
Tang Bufan thought for a moment, then asked, "What about the people from the Eastern Federation?"
"They don't have any aircraft, and both they and the Northern Federation only sent warships, which were dragged across the sea by our poisonous humans." Cotton was quite proud: "The highly prolific mutant poisonous humans we developed are still very strong, and they can drag ships underwater like sea monsters."
Hearing him mention the mutated poison people, Tang Bufan couldn't help but think of r5165. His heart sank slightly, and after a while, he asked, "How long have you been researching mutated poison people?"
Cotton thought for a moment and said, "Ten years, I guess. Before the doctor came to the island, no one thought of using poisonous people combined with plants to clean up the earth."
Before this, although they had discovered many mutated plants and microorganisms that could purify pollution, they had been struggling to spread them on a large scale. Either the environment was not suitable for the growth of those plants, or the microorganisms could not survive.
"The Doctor is really capable. He figured out a solution to a problem that our ancestors struggled with for a thousand years in just ten years. Now the research on the fast-growing poisonous humans is going very smoothly, and a new generation can mature in three years." Although Cotton didn't particularly like Zero, she still admired his abilities.
Tang Bufan had already noticed that all the poison-human children in the research institute were growing very fast. Some of them were only a little over a year old, but they looked like they were eight or nine years old.
Moreover, they are highly intelligent... Before today, Tang Bufan did not think there was anything wrong with "eight or nine-year-old" children being able to read, write, and do arithmetic, but now that he thinks about it carefully, they are actually only one or two years old!
And that R5165... Tang Bufan couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine when he recalled the look in the little poisonous girl's eyes.
“They’re a new generation every three years, and their intelligence keeps improving…” Tang Bufan asked Mian Tuo thoughtfully, “Aren’t you afraid they’ll get out of control?”
“What’s there to be afraid of?” Cotton slipper leaned back in her chair leisurely, twirling a ballpoint pen in her fingers. “Didn’t we embed a ‘death’ switch into their genes? The doctor had already thought of that.”
After he finished speaking, his eyes lit up as he began to imagine: "Once the toxic humans are all over the world, we'll press that switch again, BOOM! The toxic humans will die one after another, and their green flesh and blood will blend into the earth and ocean! Pollutants will begin to degrade, nuclear radiation will rapidly decrease, and our clean Earth will return!"
Tang Bufan wasn't as excited as him, and Mian Tuo, seeing Tang Bufan's still somber expression, scoffed somewhat disappointedly: "You idiot, you don't understand at all."
Tang Bufan wasn't ignorant; he was simply in a state of crisis. Clearly, some of the poisoners had already noticed something was wrong, while the people at the research institute were unaware of it.
However, for the sake of his escape plan, Tang Bufan did not intend to reveal this matter... He couldn't care less about anything else at the moment.
The exit of Chen Fei's clone was faster than Tang Bufan had imagined; just three days later, the little boy was sent to a special observation room on the third floor.
Tang Bufan was unable to see him. When he rushed over after hearing the news, the glass chamber was already empty, and a researcher was cleaning it.
"Can't we see the 'Rebooter' upstairs?" Tang Bufan asked the researcher breathlessly, looking worried. "Since he's going to be sent back to the 21st century, he shouldn't know anything about this world."
"Don't worry, he's staying in an observation room without windows," the researcher said. "The facilities upstairs are like a hospital; we'll lie and tell him he's in a hospital."
After he finished speaking, he gestured for Tang Bufan to follow him: "Since you're here, come and have your blood drawn. Your clone is almost ready."
"..." Tang Bufan regretted rushing over.
While they were having their blood drawn, the entire research institute suddenly trembled. The tremor wasn't severe, more like a magnitude 3 or 4 earthquake. Tang Bufan and the researcher looked up and saw the surrounding equipment clanging. The tremor gradually subsided, but they could still feel the building moving slightly.
"The engines are all running." The researcher calmly lowered his head and continued drawing blood from Tang Bufan. "I wonder where the island will be moved to this time."
Relocation… Tang Bufan frowned slightly and asked tentatively, “Have the orcs tracked us here?”
The researcher didn't answer him, but instead looked up at him with a half-smile: "What, missing your orc?"
Tang Bufan remained silent.
The researcher then lowered his head and said, "You were originally human, so you should stand on the side of humanity."
Tang Bufan looked at his blood being drawn into the test tube, and a surge of anger welled up inside him. He couldn't help but say, "But I'm thinking... you don't treat me like a human being."
The researcher then fell silent.
The subtle tremors continued, and Tang Bufan was agitated. After the blood was drawn, he went to the ground. The sky was bright, but it was an illusion. In the distance, the Restarter was lit up with many lights, and islanders whom Tang Bufan had never seen before lived inside. The fields in front of him were empty and deserted.
Tang Bufan grabbed a researcher who was about to leave work and asked him a question. He learned that the assessment of this group of poisoned children had started this morning. In order to prevent their noise in the fields from reaching Chen Fei, who was now given higher priority than the poisoned children.
Tang Bufan felt a chill in his heart. He hadn't even said goodbye to r5166, that little boy who, like Lu Yi, liked to cling to him. And this parting would most likely mean they would never see each other again in this lifetime.
Unless... unless... he takes the news of his presence here to Lu Yi.
But the island is moving now. Will r5166 remember the way after it leaves? Tang Bufan didn't know. He then thought of r5165. The little girl should be fine.
Please, please come find me before I have surgery. Tang Bufan sat down on the dilapidated steps and clutched his hair.
"When is the surgery?" Anderson asked Tang Bufan as he lay on the cardboard box that night.
At this moment, the ground was still shaking gently; the island had been moving for seven hours.
"...I don't know." Tang Bufan lay on the wooden bed, staring at the dark ceiling with his eyes open: "Zero won't tell me... The people here all seem very friendly to me, but they won't tell me anything in reality."
A long silence followed.
“If you come back after the surgery…” Anderson whispered in the darkness, “kill me.”
Tang Bufan turned his head in surprise, staring wide-eyed at Anderson sleeping on the floor: "What are you thinking about?"
“I’m not thinking about anything, I don’t want to think about anything anymore,” Anderson said. “Life is meaningless, there’s nothing I can do.”
Tang Bufan suddenly felt a lump in his throat, only then realizing that Anderson, who had been locked in the room, was actually under just as much pressure as him.
"No." Tang Bufan turned his head, tears streaming down his face, but he said with utmost seriousness, "I'm a very shameless person. No matter what, I have to live. Even after you scolded me like that, I still had to live... So... even if I become a machine in the future, I will still live."
At that time, he probably wouldn't dare to face Lu Yi.
The ground continued to tremble, and Tang Bufan closed his eyes in pain.
In his dream, he seemed to hear the cry of a whale, a long and drawn-out wail.
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