Synthetic Human

Chapter 49

"Even so, I still find it hard to believe..."

Qin Xa looked Brown up and down.

"A synthetic human. A Stone Man."

"You helped humanity build a glorious spacefaring civilization, creating astonishingly advanced technologies that now seem like incomprehensible black boxes."

"And a survivor of such a race was working as a pilot and guard for a mad slave master on Nuceria?"

"I even thought you might be the 30K version of Zao Baoyang... How could a Stone Man not even know how to fly a plane properly?"

"..."

Hearing Qin Xa's praise and amazement regarding the Stone Men, Brown found it rather gratifying.

As for serving as the Tark Patriarch's guard...

The Stone Man tapped his head. "Part of it is because of the Butcher's Nails. This thing was made to control me... Come to think of it, the Theme World employees who invented it probably never imagined that people in later generations would drive it into natural humans' heads."

"What does 'Theme World' mean?" Qin Xa caught a term in Brown's words that puzzled him.

"Nuceria was a theme park more than nineteen thousand years ago." Brown answered as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "This whole world was an amusement park. Back then, the system was run by an entertainment company called Nuceria."

"The company hired a great many employees, then genetically engineered them and enhanced them so they could endure more cruel and terrifying things. They could play gladiators from ancient Roman culture, decadent aristocrats indulging in luxury every day, and one of Rome's signature cultural practices was oppressing slaves, or things like that."

"I greatly appreciate your praise and admiration for the Stone Men, but if you think Stone Men like me, and my companions whose whereabouts I do not know, were scientists or administrators... then you are mistaken. We were merely non-natural-human employees created to play certain amusement-park roles alongside natural-human employees."

"..."

Upon hearing this, Qin Xa stared at Brown in shock. He did not interrupt, merely continued listening.

Brown went on.

"Some visitors played slave masters and took pleasure in abusing employees. Some played slaves and took pleasure in being abused by employees."

"There were also PVP activities where people played generals suppressing slave revolts, or slaves rising up against aristocrats."

"Then, after a game that could only be called utterly horrific, the natural-human employees would be anesthetized with one drug, while another was used in conjunction to erase their memories."

"..."

Listening to Brown, Qin Xa felt as though he had somehow transmigrated again.

The entertainment company, theme-park worlds, role-playing, games... everything Brown described was utterly out of place with the current state of this world called Nuceria.

After all, Nuceria had gone from an amusement park, a place where visitors could play either slaves or aristocrats and return freely to normal life once it was over, into a living hell where no one could escape.

Sitting in this incredibly advanced aircraft, Qin Xa felt as if he had become one of the cruel, deranged tourists who had come here for entertainment tens of thousands of years ago, when humanity was still at its peak.

"Later, Nuceria One—that is, our world."

"The company packaged up and sold this world's northern hemisphere to another company. That company opened a desert nomadic-tribe cultural amusement park in the north."

"So don't go to the northern hemisphere unless you have to. There are giant desert worms and the like there."

"Though the High-Riders often capture people and toss them into the worms' mouths for amusement, so being careful does not really help."

"As for the Immaterium storms later causing the collapse of the faster-than-light travel system, leading to civilization's decline... that is too much to explain. We are almost at Desia's Arena. I'll tell you next time I come to pick you up or take you somewhere."

"..."

Brown was clearly a chatterbox.

Unlike natural humans, he had no innate personality of his own. Perhaps the humans who made him had programmed such a personality into him.

Then made Brown a narrator and guide for a theme-park world...

Qin Xa could guess as much.

But Brown's next words pulled him back into reality, back into the hellishly cruel Nuceria.

"No matter what it used to be, this place has changed."

"Like the other human worlds after the Immaterium storms destroyed the faster-than-light travel system, this place became corrupt, ignorant, dark, and cruel."

"Because the amusement world's security forces controlled the greatest and strongest military power, they declared themselves aristocrats and enslaved everyone else. Whether they had once been company employees or tourists, all were enslaved by them."

"In time, even the Nucerians themselves forgot how civilized they had once been."

"..."

Qin Xa could not help interrupting. "Wait... A place for tourists to indulge in bizarre entertainment activities does not seem civilized either, does it?"

"You are right about that." Brown could not help nodding in agreement. "But I was designed to serve humans. Like the entire Stone Man race, I will not make any moral judgment about how humans amuse themselves. Though the company's complaints department turned into slaves of the security forces more than ten thousand years ago, I still have to maintain that initial setting."

Qin Xa said nothing, digesting what he had heard.

He had actually considered before why Nuceria had become such a damned place.

He had also wondered whether Nuceria might once have been... something like a theme park.

Because another primarch's Homeworld had also seemingly been a theme park during humanity's golden age: Fenris, where Russ now was.

A theme park centered on Norse and Viking culture.

But that was only speculation, only a possibility.

Nuceria alone had been confirmed by the Stone Man beside him.

Of course, it was also possible that this chatterbox Stone Man was making it all up.

After thinking it over, Qin Xa decided to ask about something more important in this hellish present-day Nuceria.

"Why does a Stone Man serve a specific aristocrat? It cannot just be because of the Butcher's Nails, can it?" Qin Xa asked.

"Of course not." Brown shook his head. "The Tark Family's ancestors were once enslaved. Guided by my companions, their ancestors found powerful weapons and equipment from nearly twenty thousand years ago. Then they overthrew the slave masters, only to become slave masters themselves."

"From that time onward, I was the Tarko Family's steward, serving patriarch after patriarch. Now it is this Tark Patriarch's turn."

"To be fair, this Tark is truly very similar to his ancestors in many ways. They all pity slaves and hate aristocrats and authority."

"But... I think this Tark's hatred of aristocrats comes more from his experiences during childhood and youth."

"..."

Seeing Brown about to go off on a tangent again, Qin Xa steered the conversation back on track. "What about your companions?"

"They disappeared. One day, they simply vanished without a trace," Brown said. "At the time, they were worshipped as gods. Then one day, they were gone, and I was the only one left on all of Nuceria."

"Did you kill them?" Qin Xa suddenly asked.

"If I had that capability, I would have turned Nuceria back into the amusement park it used to be long ago." Brown answered lightly. "I am somewhat skilled in combat, but my companions who played gladiators, generals, and Soldiers long ago were even better at fighting. If they were here, even if we were all controlled by the Butcher's Nails, we could work together to find a way to turn Nuceria back into what it once was."

"Now that the Immaterium storms have dispersed, the storms that scattered humanity into one barbaric, ignorant realm after another throughout the galaxy will no longer affect faster-than-light travel. If Nuceria became the amusement park it once was, new visitors would surely come."

"..."

"Impossible."

Qin Xa interrupted Brown again.

"This damned place is now a hell where a group of slave masters use relics left behind from humanity's peak to enslave and slaughter commoners everywhere. Under normal circumstances, the commoners can never overthrow the slave masters."

"Besides, the so-called amusement park you speak of was not an amusement park at all. It was merely a previous hell for deranged tourists to satisfy their morbid curiosity."

Brown showed little reaction upon hearing Qin Xa's cruel words. He clearly understood all of it; he was simply still mentally immersed in the past.

"You are right."

Brown nodded gently.

This Stone Man had many implants that did not match his original body. It seemed that over the tens of thousands of years, it was not only Nuceria that had changed, but him as well.

"But that previous hell was my home."