Chapter 7: I Found A Gun
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The battleground that he saw was located in a huge valley behind a mountain. Within the valley laid the remains of countless mechanical parts. Big and small bomb craters marked the ground like the surface of the moon. Amongst those were also countless skeletal remains.
Pa.s.sing by one of the bomb craters, Chen Jin saw that there were over 10 human skulls strewn inside it, including bones of an arm, leg, and rib. It was a pale, blotchy and scattered mess. The sandy wind with a tint of yellow that was whoos.h.i.+ng along now seemed to carry with it an ominous feel.
Chen Jin felt a chill starting from his spine. The damaged robots. The dead humans. What does this mean? “This means that an intense battle had erupted here between the robots and humans. The robots became the enemy of humans.”
In addition, he could infer from the scale of this battle that the number of robots should number at least 100,000 or more. The number of human soldiers should be around tens of thousands. As for the results of this battle, there was no doubt that it was the robots’ victory. The defensive front of the humans was totally broken through and destroyed. The casualties on the side of the robots were obviously greater as their wreckage was a few times more extensive.
“Everytime a robot is damaged, the production line can immediately replace it with another ten robots. But how long does it take to replace the casualty of a human soldier? This war was extremely unfair for the humans. Humans paid with their lives, but the robots only paid with the materials they were made of. How could the humans ever compete and win against them?”
In a flash, Chen Jin realised the reason why this world became like this. A defection. A defection from the robots. Thus, it caused the civilisation of this world to be reduced to ruins. Humans…. They might have been totally destroyed.
Chen Jin thought about a movie called “Terminator” that he had watched. It was about the future of Earth, where all the robots fell under the control of a “Sky Net System.” All nuclear bombs took to the sky, and every robot defected. The human race was suddenly on the brink of extinction. Thus the last remaining resistor had to send a warrior back in time to change history and prevent the end of the world from happening. However, the “Sky Net System” also sent a killer robot back to the past, to stop the humans from changing history first. Following which was a series of incidents.
Chen Jin thought that the end of the world as depicted in “Terminator” shared many similar characteristics to this world. He looked at the wreckage of the robots on the ground which seemed to be made of some kind of silver metal, and then looked at Wawa by his feet.
Chen Jin’s stare became more alert and suspicious. “Wawa, did you ever defect from the humans and fall under the control of the Sky Net?”
Although Wawa was a trash disposal robot, Chen Jin had witnessed with his own eyes how he compressed a big pile of rubbish into the box of its stomach. Summoning all its strength, it pressed vigorously. After a short time, its stomach squeezed out a compressed square-shaped lump of rubbish. This showed that its purpose and function seemed to be rubbish disposal. A public rubbish disposal robot.
However, this did not mean that it was not controlled by the “Sky Net System.” Moreover, controlling it would be a piece of cake with the capability of the “Sky Net System.”
Also, putting aside the image of a kind and harmless Wawa who seemed without any destructive ability, Chen Jin had a hypothetical situation in mind: If he put his brain inside Wawa’s stomach, it would be squeezed to the point of explosion within seconds. If Wawa wanted to get rid of him, it only needed to take advantage of the situation while he was asleep and the job would simply be done by getting his brain into its stomach.
“What should I do?” Chen Jin’s train of thought went to how scary the Sky Net was and suspicion grew in his heart regarding Wawa. He did not know if he should continue to trust it. “Could it be that Wawa’s purpose is to gain my trust, slowly get nearer to me, and then get rid of me in one kill? Robots have now become so scheming that they learned how to hedge and double-talk?”
Shaking his head, he saw Wawa raise its camera eyes and stare at him with an innocent gaze. Chen Jin gave a reluctant smile. “Maybe I am developing paranoia at a later stage? Wawa is only a robot. It’s not afraid of death or pain, if it wanted to get rid of me, it just has to directly execute the Sky Net System’s command and attack me. It’s a robot; whatever it executes are based on procedural commands that do not operate on the dichotomy of truth nor lie. How could it be so scheming? Wawa is a humorous silly thing, not a scheming defector.”
Chen Jin still chose to believe in it. Turning his sight back to the battleground, Chen Jin could not help licking his lips as happiness filled his gaze. Jackpot. This time, he really hit the jackpot. There were many high-value items that he could take and they were extremely varied. The highest valued items amongst the wreckage was the weapons. Weapons that were scattered everywhere on the ground.
There were two categories of weapons that he could take: weapons used by the humans and weapons used by the robots. Weapons for human usage included automatic rifles, handguns, and missile launchers. The robots used weapons that included bigger-sized automatic rifles, grenade-launching guns, and laser machines. These killing weapons were not too different from those used by the military on Earth. They were simply equipped with a more futuristic design, smarter operations, and more powerful ammunition.
In addition, the laser machines that the robots used were not simply laser weapons. It was a close-contact cutting tool that operated by producing a high temperature to slice through objects. Also, because the robots were wholly built of metal, they were more resilient. Therefore, the weapons that they used were generally larger than those used by the humans and the power was also more formidable.
“I’d better take some of the weapons for human use, like the rifles and the handguns. The weapons that the robots used are too large. Just with a pa.s.sing glance, the length seems to easily be above 1 meter with a weight of more than 30 kilograms. Who can use it? I can’t even carry it!” As for the missile launcher, that thing was way out of his league to tinker with. Chen Jin did not intend to take it back to his camping ground.
From the sea of dead in the battleground, he picked only two normal automatic rifles that seemed intact with no signs of damage. The automatic rifle had a futuristic design that seemed similar to the FN-2000 that was designed by the Belgium military manufacturers. It was a bullpup with a large action and magazine resting under his shoulder. The top of the rifle was equipped with a holographic scope.
He found a box of unused bullets, opened it and lifted out a magazine filled with bullets. Changing out the original magazine and turning on the safety, he aimed at a far away target. c.o.c.king the trigger aggressively, he fired with a blast!
“Rat-at-tat-tat-tat-tat ~”
A volley of bullets spat out and the mouth of the gun was spilling blue tongues of smoke. From a distance of about a few hundred meters, a layer of dust was whipped up. The speed of the bullets was rapid. Within eight or nine seconds, he had shot all of the 100 bullets in his magazine. It was good. This particular automatic model had a magazine that could hold a tremendous quant.i.ty of bullets. The bullets were equipped with a high-performance gun propellant, hence they could be made into half the size of the traditional bullet while retaining its power and precision with an even greater firepower.
After shooting all the bullets, Chen Jin blew at the air steaming out from the mouth of the gun and hoisted it on his shoulder. He could not help but ask himself this question, “What would happen if I brought this gun with me back to Earth? Which clown would still dare to provoke me?”
Immediately changing his expression, he quickly squashed this thought in his mind. He repeated quietly, “Harmony, harmony…..”
He put a clip into the other automatic and carried out a test-shooting. A malfunction occurred halfway and the sh.e.l.ls could not be ejected. He had to throw this gun away and take the one free from malfunctions.
Similarly, he also test-shot some handguns and took away two in the best working conditions. He found an automatic rifle weighing 5.5 kilograms. He found two handguns weighing 2.5 kilograms. A total of 8 kilograms.
He took 20 automatic magazines that could hold 100 shots each; each magazine was 0.55 kilograms. Hence, a total of 11 kilograms.
The sum of the above total weight was almost 20 kilograms and approached the limits of how much Chen Jin could carry with him.
Thus, Chen Jin put all the additional items which included two handgun clips that could hold 30 shots and three bags of 450 handgun bullets, into Wawa’s stomach. In order to let Wawa help him carry his load, he signalled to it not to proceed with compression as it would then self-explode.
Wawa understood his meaning and did not proceed with the compression. With a full load, they returned to the camping ground.