A blinking corpse. Most people would probably faint the moment they saw one, but thankfully Hao Ren’s mental strength was titanium by now and he was unfazed by the experience. He lay the body on the bed before going ahead to inspect it. By now, the latter had returned to the ghastly gauntess from before as she lay there with her lifeless eyes half-opened. From this angle, she still looked no different than your usual corpse, and the blinking was probably just an illusion.
But something indeed happened while the MDT continued to harp about some parts of its sensory functions coming online.
“There’s some light, very blurry, but I did see something.” The MDT sounded very happy. “And now that I can see… I think my sense of touch has returned. But this is still weird, probably because my motor functions is not working.”
Hao Ren waved his hand before the corpse princess. “How’s that?”
“Oh oh! There’s a shadow. I saw a shadow!” the MDT’s voice came immediately. “But why can’t I see clearly?”
Hao Ren used his hands to pry the eyelids open. “Can you see anything now?”
The MDT was pleasently surprised. “Oh Oh! I saw something. That’s really cool. How did you do that?”
Hao Ren used his fingers to hold the eyelids open as he moved his face close. “That’s because you were squinting! Open your eyes!”
As he let his hands go, the blonde lass’ eyelids went back to its original half-opened state. The MDT gave it a few tries but it was fruitless. “Say… how do you open your eyes?”
“…Didn’t you blink earlier?”
“That was not by me!” the MDT retorted. “I never had an eyelid to speak of since I came off the assembly line! How the hell would I know how to control them.”
Hao Ren opened his mouth before finding himself at a loss for words. He pulled out a roll of cellophene tape from his Dimensional Pocket and used it to forcibly keep the eyes open. “Alright. I’ve opened it for you. Get used to this sensation, and figure out a way to control it. Pronto.”
Hao Ren felt that since he came to this world his interaction with the MDT had gotten into the uncanny valley.
The MDT gave a emphatic “Oh” as it started to activate the motor system that was incompatible with its systems. As it struggled to get it working, it grumbled. “It’s such a pain to control this body… humanoid bodies have so many messy parts. I can’t even begin to fathom how much brain power you guys need to even walk straight… OH OH! My sight is moving! My sight is moving! Earthquake! Earthquake!”
Hao Ren looked over. “Quake your ass. That’s your eyeballs moving. What were you doing when you’re supposed to practice blinking?”
“Ugh… such clunky controls. My usual optometry sensors is spherical and have an innate 360 view of everything. It’s much much simpler.” The MDT rolled the eyesballs around, and this scene, happening on a stiff corpse was even more eerier than usual. “I think I have managed to get hold of the signals when the eyes open. Pull off the tape… uh… softer… my body is fragile…”
Hao Ren pulled the tape off and saw the corpse princess blinking slowly. Her eyelids were shuddering, indicating that the MDT was still struggling with the controls. After a few tries later, the MDT seemed to have grasped the technique, ‘she’ opened her eyes wide as ‘she’ curiously absorbed the scenery before her. Her eyeballs darted about agilely before her vision landed on Hao Ren. “Oh oh, partner, so that’s how you look like with human eyes… heh, such low res image.”
Hao Ren was curious on how the MDT saw him usually. “So how did I look like normally? Is it very different from now?”
“It’s difficult to explain. Our sensory organs are different afet all. The corpse princess blinked (it was the only part that was movable). “If you want a comparison… it’s like being so used games in 4K resolution than suddenly going back to play Tetris on a brick games device. It feels like your entire polygon count dropping considerably.”
“…”
The MDT was not done yet. “Heh, it feels like I’m seeing you covered in mosaic. But that’s better than nothing I guess.”
Hao Ren ignored the MDT’s lackadasical attitude and focused on observing the latter’s facial expression as he tried to look for more traces of recovery. “Can you move anything else other than the eyes? Any other parts that works?”
“My listening ability is restored, just realised that.” The MDT was checking its body functions. “Seems like a part of my sense of touch is restored, but there is still a huge amount of signals floating about chaotically, I can’t even be sure where did the signals came from, so that’s that. Aside from that…”
The MDT thought for a good while before starting to sound defeated again. “And there’s a whole bunch of odd signals, probably some human perception signal, like hot, cold, pain and the likes. But I don’t understand them. These signals are no where near the level of clarity my sensors are about to receive. It almost feel like I’m in a storm of signals, and there’s nothing but noise everywhere.”
Hao Ren frowned, and even thought he will never understand what the MDT was feeling, base on its description he realised that dropping a soul into an incompatible vessel was very problematic. The MDT was trying to adapt to a new vessel that it clearly saw was critically ‘inferior’. For it, all of the sensors of this new ‘shell’ was as good as defective, and none of it could transmit ‘proper’ data to it and this was foreign territory for this AI.
“Why did your sensory organs recovered anyway?” As the MDT was struggling against the vague signal Hao Ren murmured, almost as if speaking to himself. “This body should’ve been a dead corpse, and entire nervous system should have shut down… So how does your organs even work?”
“I have no idea, I only know that this body is very clunky.” The MDT grumbled. “And don’t even think of opening me up. It took me a lot of effort to even get this going, don’t go prodding around, you might wreck something by accident.”
Hao Ren gave the corpse a glance. “Just lay there. And this body of yours would need a surgery if I were to open it up and I have no idea how to perform one.”
No matter how did the MDT was recovering its functions within a corpose, and why did this corpse suddenly regain its conciousness, it was at least a good sign. The MDT had made progress in controlling the blinking of the eye, and it fully restoring its functions was probably not too far-fetched. At least by that time Hao Ren did not have to be that corpse-lugging necrophile.
But before that, there was a bigger problem. How would he even begin to explain to the mercenaries that the corpse had came back alive?!
The MDT shot out a random idea. “Just tell them it was a misdiagnosis last time around and that I was still alive, just in a death-like state.”
Hao Ren glared back. “What the bloody hell, people would have call bullshit? Who would’ve believed me if I were to say that?”
“Haven’t you been claiming that all these while?”
“When I said it last time, people simply thought I was a lunatic. But if you were to go out and about it’ll be them going crazy.” Hao Ren buried his face into his palm. “Forget it. Just continue to pretend to be a corpse. Only move when no one’s around.”
“That’ll work. It’s still to early for that anyway. I can’t even mastered the art of blinking.” The MDT said as it blinked and eyeballs darted about. “Oh right, those beacons you placed before, any thing from those?”
“I was planning to check them out when I returned here, but you got in the way.”
Hao Ren said as he pulled out a communication device with full holographic display. It could communicate with the exploring droids, but as it did not come with its own AI, it was not as user-friendly as the MDT.
Hao Ren turn back as he looked at the corpse/MDT as he sighed inwards: Really shitty luck to run into this scenario.
After he activated the device and entired the data, Hao Ren was connected with the droids. As this was a rather simple process, Hao Ren could still do it without help, after the system went online he received the echoing signals from the droids. Despite the massive interference, the system managed to establish a stable contact with the droids.
He then sent out a command to the droids to look for the beacons. The beacon launcher he realised that the slum had already been fully deployed and should by now be eminating some powerful navigation signals in space.
“Search fail. Unable to locate the beacon.”
The droids replied in a mechanical tone.