WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 32

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Oil & Coil

Fupunkalypse offers three races to choose from.

Humans, the pure-blooded kind. Mutants, humans whose bodies have been partly altered or deformed. And last, androids.

Yes, believe it or not, some androids are treated as people in Fupunkalypse and can be picked as a playable race!

Compared to regular humans and mutants, they face enormous discrimination, and players tend to avoid them as a hard-mode race, wondering why they'd put up with being treated like that just to play a game.

So why are androids playable at all?

According to the in-game explanation, it was because androids were also beings with complete personalities.

And what sat in front of me now was ZINO-03, a boss entity from Fupunkalypse.

Strictly speaking, it looked like only the core, the part that held ZINO-03's AI.

In the game, ZINO-03, or Zino, was what you'd call a growth-type boss, one that grew stronger the more in-game time passed. Since Zino kept reinforcing their own body, the recommended play was either to take them down before too much time went by, or to build a friendly relationship early.

Androids were discriminated against wherever they went, but incredibly, ZINO was a bigshot-class android who ruled a whole district even as an android.

Beat that bigshot-class android in a fight, and what dropped was that very Zino android core.

There'd been a mention from the moment it first appeared that it had lived over 200 years, but still... To think this core would just be lying around in a black market in 2033, three hundred years back, at the starting point of humanity's collapse.

My mouth practically watered.

A blueprint for upgrading a core drive with Zino's core had flashed through my head in an instant.

"Do you know what that thing is?"

A voice came from behind me, and I turned my head.

A middle-aged man of completely ordinary looks stood there, and judging by the way he carried himself, he had to be the owner of this shop, the one the engineer outside had mentioned.

"You were standing in front of it so entranced that I thought I'd ask. It's been in our shop about three years, and hardly any customers have stopped in front of it."

"Three years? Nobody tried to buy it in all that time?"

When Rita asked, the man came to stand beside us and looked down at the shelf.

"It's not that nobody wanted it. Before this, a few people did want to buy it. It actually sold a few times and came back."

"It sold and then came back?"

That was Rita's question, from where she stood watching beside me.

"Yes... about three times?"

The man wiped Zino's core down with a cloth in quick swipes.

"We don't usually accept returns, but with this one, we took it back every time."

I'd been listening quietly up to that point, and only then did I open my mouth.

"Do you mind telling me why they all returned it?"

"They said there seemed to be some bugs in this android. That it doesn't follow orders properly and makes its own judgments. And that it has a few other creepy bugs besides."

At that, Rita frowned and spoke.

"An android that ignores orders and makes its own judgments? Sounds like a defective unit to me."

"What kind of bugs, specifically?"

"The first owner said that when you gave it a job, instead of just doing the job, it kept asking pointless questions."

The man flipped the cloth over as he said it.

"Why does it have to be done. What did that person do. What happens to that person if it does this. That's the sort of thing it asks, they said."

Using the flipped cloth, the man gave the core another stroke.

"So the owner decided that was a bug and asked us for a refund."

"...What reasons did the second and third owners give for asking for refunds?"

"The second owner said the robot got far too attached to their daughter. That at some point it wouldn't move away from the front of the girl's bedroom door."

"..."

"Apparently the daughter started giving it some name and calling it that, too, and that didn't sit well with the owner either. So I figured that was a bug, all right, and accepted the refund."

"And the last one? The third?"

"They said it made its own judgments and lied."

The man set the core down on the shelf.

"Word had apparently come that there'd been a death in that household. But this thing never passed it on to the owner. They only found out about three days later."

"Oh... that's..."

"So they asked why it hadn't said anything, and it told them it hadn't said anything on purpose, so the owner wouldn't be hurt."

The man shrugged.

"The owner couldn't make it to the funeral. They said that if a product doesn't relay a message it's supposed to pass on to its owner, that has to be a bug, so I accepted that return too."

By the time I'd heard all that, I was certain. This was the Zino I knew from the future. It meant a self existed inside this ZINO-03 core.

"Hmmm... This is a bit... iffy..."

But Rita, who'd heard it all too, wore a face that turned uncertain.

And no wonder. In 2033, AI hadn't grown enough yet to be treated as a person.

Just as I'd felt riding the Dolores taxi, robots up to this point hadn't developed much.

No, honestly, they hadn't developed at all.

"...Huh?"

Rita, who'd been peering at the android core with that uncertain look, suddenly leaned in.

"There's something written on the side of this."

The man pulled the cloth back a little.

Scratched and worn, half of it rubbed away, but something was definitely engraved there. I could tell it was a manufacturer's mark, but not which company's.

"It's Nova Mechanics."

"You know them?"

"Yeah. They were a robot company."

Rita answered without any fuss.

"They used to be pretty famous. Pretty much every robot came from them. Everything from factory machines to cleaning and housework ones."

"..."

"Lots of their stuff is still running around today. Oh, the taxi we rode here, remember? The driving robot in that was probably Nova-made too."

'...That was this company's?'

The memory of that fucking awful driver came back.

...If anything, my trust just dropped.

"So where is that company now?"

"Gone. About four years ago, I think?"

Rita counted it off on her fingers.

"Kurogane bought them out. I remember seeing it on the news."

Rita shrugged.

"But after that, the company never put out a new model."

"...A new model?"

"Yeah. They went through the whole acquisition and never made a new product, and in the end the company itself vanished. But the products were so sturdy and good that everyone's still using the old ones. Like that taxi. Fixing them and fixing them again."

From what was known as of Fupunkalypse's timeline, the Big Three Megacorps, having realized the danger of advanced AI, had destroyed every company that succeeded in developing it, by one means or another.

Nova Mechanics was probably one of the companies destroyed that way.

'Which also means it's a product of incredible technology.'

Even though I'd survived over a hundred years in the game as an engineer character, building something like this from a zero base was close to impossible.

Something like this isn't made by one person. It's the product of a company's technology, developed by countless engineers working together.

The moment I heard that much, I stood up with my mind made.

A mana core drive? Important, but for right now, this one mattered more.

An urge rose in me to slip a mana thread inside right then and look over its insides.

"How much for this?"

At my words, the owner, who'd been wiping the core, blinked and asked.

"Eh? You just heard the whole story and you still want to buy it?"

"Yes. How those people failed to use it is their business. I think I can use it well. How much?"

The man stopped the hand that had been wiping the core.

Then he folded the cloth in half and set it on the workbench.

* * *

The Patron, Rayden, looked at the thin young man before him.

Minding the shop himself was an old habit of Rayden's. He had no reason, at this point, to run a small store like this with his own hands. Even so, he set aside a spot, laid out goods, and dealt with the people who came in himself.

Some might call it a bad hobby. But there were things that could never be gained by sitting above and only handing down orders.

Looking a person who knows good goods straight in the eye.

That was a pleasure he couldn't give up even after becoming the Patron.

Three years had passed since this item came into his hands, and in that time, exactly three people had wanted to buy it.

All three seemed not to understand its true value, but Rayden had simply sent the item off in their hands.

He'd known it would come back to him anyway.

Though the second customer's daughter seemed to have recognized the item's value properly.

And just as Rayden had expected, this robot core had always come back to this very spot in his shop.

And now, once again, someone had appeared who said they wanted to buy this robot core.

And those eyes, to the Patron Rayden's judgment, belonged to someone who knew the item's worth well enough.

A sudden playful mood took hold of Rayden, and he grinned.

"Customer. This item is no longer for sale."

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