[The first day after leaving the Golden Country.
I always felt No. 17 ought to be grateful to me.
After all, who besides me would care about a big-headed doll who went on about blowing himself up all day long?
Honestly, he really resembled those noble young ladies and gentlemen of the Tyron Empire. I meant the illegitimate children like me, who received no affection from their families, had no worries about food or drink, but could find no meaning in their existence-
With no need to worry about their livelihoods, yet unable to feel love or be loved, they often sank into nihilism.
As a result, they frequently shut themselves away at home, soaked some oatmeal in the functional beverages produced by the Scholar's Guild, then scored a couple of cuts across their wrists so the pain would let them realize they were still alive.
Fortunately, though, most of those noble bastards merely had psychological problems, whereas No. 17 simply had a programming problem.
I could tell he did not want to explode either, but the Turing Family's underlying logic left him no choice-which was also why I had not initially intended to help restore his body.
Thankfully, we no longer needed to worry about his self-destruct mechanism blowing us all sky-high in an unguarded moment.
I thought he ought to thank the Golden Country's absolute monarchy.
It stipulated that the monarch allowed each family to develop its own businesses, acquiring power and wealth through lawful, compliant means to achieve the basic initial accumulation of capital.
At the same time, however, it gave the ruler authority over each family's creations, lest those families develop any unnecessary rebellious inclinations as time passed. In Eve's words, "The Aidel Family never worried about challenges from any family, but swatting mosquitoes was irritating