Imperfections Chapter 35

Zhanlu reminded him politely, "Headmaster Lu, you might be overly optimistic. The Evaluation Standard on Fighting Capacity issued by the IU is scored out of 100. According to my rough calculation, the self-defense force has about 5 points, indicating that they will be undefended in front of inter-stellar pirates."

Bixing Lu managed to recover from the shock, forming a sentence, "It is okay. Hardware is the base, while the software can be upgraded. We all know that, right?"

Jingheng Lin looked at the young man from head to toe. From his appearance, he couldn't tell any similarities between him and Xin Lu, even their personalities were no similar at all. Xin Lu, although also an unbearable chatterbox, was just talkative, but not really a sophisticate in social interaction. The first half of his life was too smooth and legendary, so inevitably, he was a bit arrogant. When he gets mad, he wouldn't compromise no matter what had happened.
But Bixing Lu was far different from him.

He would stay up half the night and run laps around this shabby base, and then come here early in the morning, not to talk about what he wanted to do or about the paramountcy of human rights. All he wanted to do is to propose a scheme that was not in contradiction with Lin's original plan—the scheme wouldn't make a difference to the bigger picture even if the self-defense force was wiped out by interstellar pirates. If that happens, they could always sacrifice the base and follow their initial plan.

Maybe, he just wanted a little more time.

So how did he become what he became?

Jingheng Lin couldn't help to think, "It must be the old licentious Persian Cat who spent too much time indulging himself in luxury and debauchery that he failed to take good care of the young Bixing Lu."

Bixing Lu's head was already filled with various fancies, so the lengthy gaze from Jingheng Lin almost killed him. Bixing glanced around rapidly in hope to find something that could reflect light so that he could see if he was hot enough at this angle.

But in the eyes of Jingheng Lin, Bixing's motions and expressions seemed more like a shyness for bringing him trouble.

"I have already said that I would rebuild a Starry Sea Academy for him."

After a little contemplation, Lin receded, "Spencer's data of the channels lack details while inaccuracy would lead to problems in the battlefield. I need to find out the exact structures of the underground channels and draw a military map. Meanwhile, I need to verify the locations and situations of two secret warehouses and start to move our armaments and resources there. In addition, the communication network needs to be built and the heavy No. 3 should be repaired — I will need about three months. After three months, external communication will be opened for search of the Silver Nine. Once the Silver Nine makes a response and communication is established, Prince Cayley in the Eighth Galaxy will notice it immediately. Do you think you have enough time?"

Bixing Lu, who took a moment to recover from the shock, looked up in a sudden.

"You have been authorized with administration privilege — there's nothing we can do even if the time isn't enough. In war, no one can predict what will happen in the next second. I can't buy you more time. " Jingheng Lin never made a compromise, so when he did, he seemed really awkward. Lin made a dry cough as if it was no big deal, and then looked downward to read the complicated design drawings presented by Bixing Lu. It was really giving him a headache, so he lifted his hands, intending to wave Lu off.

Bixing Lu suddenly caught him by his hand and let go in a flash. The time of contact was very subtle — you can call it a grab, or a high-five — the former would be a bit s.e.xual, the latter would be the innocent, friendly celebration. It was precisely obscured by Scientist Lu, which left Zhanlu's man-machine interaction in complete chaos.

Jingheng Lin froze for a bit because he wasn't used to getting too close to others. The unexpected physical contact made him feel a bit uncomfortable, but he had to pretend that it was okay because he didn't want to seem disagreeable and difficult. 

According to an incomplete poll, 90% of protagonists in love stories appear to be hypersensitive to the touch from their beloved. When they recover from the touch, they would try their bests to cover up their sensitivity. According to Bixing Lu's little experiment, Jingheng Lin fell in love with him.

"What should I do?" He was totally out of wits but managed to put on a calm facade. He felt as if he were 3 inches taller and walked out of the door proudly like a hero.

"Is he really that happy?" Jingheng Lin's gaze followed Lu with confusion, "He can't even walk straight, as if he got a big tail on his b.u.t.t."

Zhanlu reminded him, "Sir, I don't think you clarified to Headmaster Lu about what will happen in 3 months in terms of the exact situation and the risks."

"He knows." Jingheng Lin sighed, stretching out his hand to magnify the designing drawings to cover the whole table. "I don't know if he's genius or a complete fool. You can't teach a pig how to sing. You can stuff pigs into a mech, but it doesn't mean they can fly. How can he not understand it?"

Zhanlu thought for a while and asked, "Sir, on our way here, you told Miss Huang that Silver Fortress didn't make strict requirement for mental strength — did you really think vacucerebral syndrome is nothing or were your remarks merely out of politeness?"

Jingheng Lin shrugged, "Who knows?"

After all, n.o.body has seen morons, trash, people with vacant brain or anxiety in the Union's army.

The Declaration of Independence issued by the IU has claimed that souls are born n.o.ble and everyone is equal and free.  

The great IU is always right — humans are born with natural rights with supreme status. How can people be divided into cla.s.ses just by worldly prejudice?

Human beings are only divided into "useful ones" and "useless ones".

The AI made an emotionless mechanical voice, "OK, it is merely for politeness, remarks altered."

"His concept of mirror image sounds pretty interesting." Jingheng Lin said casually, "Some of the roads in the underground channel often deliberately treads a fine line at the edge of the gravitational field and small planets for disguise.

Under this environment, 'Guerrilla Warfare' is not an impossibility. Interstellar pirates would set up many spearheads, so would we. It is also the right moment when the showy self-defense force could be used to test the reaction speed of Prince Cayley's armed escort. Zhanlu, I need you to collect all the information of the family of Prince Cayley for me, and make an a.n.a.lysis of their behavior pattern..."

The reality is cruel. Those who remain unshakable in this cruelty ought to be crueler.

Bixing Lu walked out of the Building of Self-Defense Force, and many people who knew Lu by fighting with him pa.s.sed by and offered him warm greetings.

Carefree children shouted and ran, playing "the Self-defense Force snaps at pirates". One child played as a member of Self-dense Force in the chase of 6 pirates. The young soldier of the Self-Defense Force gasped and wheezed after chasing, and then bursting out crying because his friends teased him too much.

Several real members of the Self-Defense Force who stink of alcohol pa.s.sed by Lu shoulder to shoulder. They talked loudly about the odd disease Cow had suffered. Half a minute later, a rude rumor was created and spread everywhere — Spencer must have hemorrhoids.

The second day after the large screen in the square had been repaired, the screen started showing p.o.r.n.

Together with the broken sound sets, the resulting effect was extraordinary eerie. The old gap-toothed man who had a gang fight yesterday threw an apple to Bixing Lu from afar, yelling at him with raucous and harsh voice, "Expert, when are you gonna to repair the sound sets? I believe it is the most urgent matter!" 

Bixing Lu cleaned the apple and shouted back, "Grandpa, if you have only three months left, what are you gonna to do?"

The old teeth-missed man replied, smiling widely, "Sit-around-and-wait-to-die."

Bixing Lu ate the apple silently and thought, but you really only have three months left.

After eating, Bixing Lu came up with a strategy. He wiped his mouth and said, "Be careful not to overload the base. The public media would cost a lot of electricity."

Then, he surrept.i.tiously cut off the civil electricity through the administration authority he got from Jingheng Lin.

In an instant, all the lights except the one in the administrative building went out, the man and the woman in the screen vanished like a mirage, and then people in the base signed with 'f.u.c.k!'.

"Just like I have said." Bixing Lu postured a wave to people around, "There is no sufficient energy to be squandered. A 3-minute-p.o.r.n would lead to a day-long power failure. Well, we can enjoy nothing.

By the way, the man doesn't even have any abs. There's nothing interesting about it. So, do what you should do right now."

Obviously, people were quashed by the "3-minutes" speech.

The old gap-toothed man caught him up in a haste, "You a.s.shole. You're now cutting this s.h.i.+tty p.o.r.n into 3-minute-episodes, and giving us one episode a day? Are you a human anymore!?"

Bixng Lu said reluctantly, "It is based on the infrastructure of your base, and I can do nothing about it."

Quickly, Lu was surrounded by the crowd.

"Aren't you an expert?"

"Just make it work!"

"Didn't you say yesterday that we were to go out of the Eighth Galaxy and to conquer the universe？"

"OK, fine, let me find a way out, the base does not have enough maintenance robots. Are there any mechanics?"
​ 
No one responded.

"All right," Bixing Lu waved his hand, "Linemen, those who have dealt with robots and those who have done maintenance in merchant s.h.i.+ps......plumbers and sewer workers, come with me."

These sit-around-and-wait-to-die residents swam out once they heard it. Those who had repaired small household appliances followed Lu like donkeys with a carrot tied in front of their noses. These donkeys with burning enthusiasm actively cooperated with Bixing Lu, registered their skills and divided up the work.

The education in the Eighth Galaxy was bad enough, but these interstellar b.u.ms' were even worse. Some of them were even illiterate, so n.o.body understood Lu's renovation scheme for the energy system. 

After a mouth-drying long talk, Bixing Lu found that communicating his idea with them was even harder than training a dog. He had to give up and make a more detailed division of work. The workers in the base were divided into several groups with limited robots that as the group leaders, leading these idiots to work.

And the four students also got their first a.s.signments in their life, Bixing Lu asked them to estimate the energy consumption of the base before night. He would need the result the next day, and if he couldn't get it, he would have to stop all the renovation and wait for recalculation.

They had been together day and night since they lost their families, so these students had gotten used to obeying Lu and seeing Lu as the backbone. After receiving Lu's a.s.signment, they each calculated the consumption respectively, but when they compared their answers, they found that their answers were completely different in orders of magnitude.

"Argh, if we really can't do it, we should ask Headmaster Lu, where is he? " White asked.

"He's busy with modifying the program for maintenance robots. G.o.d knows where he is." Mint cupped her cheek, feeling dizzy in her stare at messy numbers, "It is getting dark... I was great at a.s.sembling illegal weapons. Can't I do what I can do?"

Jingshu Huang testily beat her personal terminal back and stood up, "I can't work it out. He has never taught this. I'm just going to turn in the a.s.signment this. I will do what I want now: sleep!"

Rickhead couldn't agree more and rose with Huang.

At that time, White glanced around and stopped them with a low voice, "Wait, did you know General Lin only gave us three months?"

The three other students asked in bewilderment, "3 months to do what?"

"President Lu told me secretly this morning," White lowered his voice more, "The Silver Legion of the IU is nearby. They'll transfer goods and materials three months later, and the base and all the people here would be used as bait to attract the attention of Prince Cayley. Headmaster Lu said that they would become cannon fodders if the base is still as vulnerable as it is now. They are either thieves or smugglers, and General Lin definitely wouldn't care about their lives.... Don't tell anyone else, alright? Or else they'd start riots, and our lives would become so much tougher."

The four students looked at each other in speechless despair.

Rickhead said, "But baits are not equal to cannon fodder..."

"Baits will definitely die," Jingshu Huang returned to her seat, "Have you forgotten what happened to the Beijing-ß Planet."

As her words sank, the room fell silent.

Everyone wanted to forget the Bejing-ß Planet, however, miserable memories like this never dies.

"Headmaster Lu said that to stay alive, we must have adequate defense, the ability to escape after being defeated, and a system to conceal our coordinates; the infrastructure and energy supply are both the base, which needs to be completed as soon as possible." White rattled off, "Then we pray."

At this time, a middle-aged woman walked in. She ran a small restaurant in the base and everyone called her "Fatty Sister." White and his cla.s.smates who had just learned the big secret looked at each other, zipping their lips solemnly.

With half-foot tall meal boxes on her hand, Fatty Sister plopped it in front of students and said, "Your mother-f.u.c.king teacher is total bulls.h.i.+t. He not only leads a gang of hooligans to meddle with nothing, but also gets you guys into it. Have some snacks and go to sleep."

The night snack of Fatty Sister was as husky as herself. Probably because she saw them as children, the steamed buns were made in the shape of little chickens and rabbits. These had thin bun wrapper and so much stuffing that the buns ended up being as big as half a football, lying in the meal box in such a fierce appearance that it could surely be used to exorcise devils and stabilize the house. Finally, all the steamed buns were eaten.

"Check the personal terminal, Headmaster Lu gave us reference books before." As soon as the Fatty Sister left, Mint began to talk, she rubbed her nose with two fingers, as if to rub off the redness around her eyes, "I remember that there was a book about energy and energy utilization. If I can make a laser gun, I don't believe that I cannot work out the answer of the a.s.signed problem."

It was the first time that the students in Starry Sea Academy voluntarily read books by themselves to find what they needed, as if they were ancient h.o.m.o sapiens who just came down from the tree and began to step into the human society. It was indeed a brilliant milestone, however, with unsatisfactory results.

The reference books were not student-friendly. As soon the obscure jargon and arrogant mathematical tools made their appearance, the four students knelt on all fours in defeat. Quant.i.ty doesn't add up to quality. The four stupid heads couldn't add up to one smart brain after all. They stayed up all night to study the reference book but couldn't find one valid answer.

Time is precious to those who tended to enjoy a carefree sleep; however, time is ruthless to those who has a deadline next day.

The energy towers in the base rose and fell. The sunrise was very special -- there wasn't a gray line at the horizon. The night sky faded from where the energy towers rose, and then the azure blue stretched in all directions like a cloud of enshrouding mist, which took up the entire sky several minutes later,

The dawn broke.

Bixing Lu, who took a nap in the workshop, was awakened by noises. He rubbed his eyes and found the mechs that been thrown out of base by Jingheng Lin was dragged back one by one.

Drivers rolled down from mechs with ragged clothes — none of them was hurt. Only the contest between the strong would cause death. For Jingheng Lin, they were small potatoes standing in the way. Lin could shove them away easily without hurting them — in spite of this, the shouting and crying outside showed that the harsh s.p.a.ce war had caused incurable psychological trauma.

Quickly, the soaring indignation transformed the disorganized crying and shouting into an unanimous slogan.

Bixing Lu walked over to the window and heard their uniform yell towards Spencer, "Cow! a.s.shole! I want a retire!"

The young scientist withdrew the curtain, giving out a sigh.

This is the second day of the countdown, 90 days away from the destruction. The base was still in a despair.