Repair robots

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A grating dragging sound came from outside the shack, like metal scraping against the ground.

Cheng Qi lifted the tarp and looked outside.

A little girl of about five or six stood outside, her hair tied in two horn-like pigtails and her cheeks rosy.

A hemp rope was tied around her waist, trailing back to a battered bathtub filled with assorted technological scrap.

The girl couldn't possibly drag the bathtub on her own. Behind it, a little mechanical dog with only three legs was pushing hard against the tub with its forehead.

The girl had stopped, but the mechanical dog hadn't noticed and was still scrabbling away with its three legs, head down.

A rare-metal detector was installed in the dog's nose, making it an excellent scavenging assistant.

"Cheng Qi, I heard E Luo blew you up with a missile."

"I heard you died."

"I just came to see whether you were dead."

The girl opened her big, dark eyes wide. "Are you dead?"

"Oh, it's Xiao Qiong."

Cheng Qi stepped out of the shack and thought for a moment. "I don't think I'm dead."

"That's good, then."

The girl waved a hand. "You grown-ups really make me worry."

Cheng Qi smiled. "Where are you going?"

Xiao Qiong sniffled and looked into the distance. "To set up a stall on Bar Street and see if I can make a little extra money. You know how Mom works herself to death for a few credit points without taking care of herself at all. I'm trying to help pay off some of her debt. You grown-ups really are such a worry."

Cheng Qi gazed at Xiao Qiong.

She was only five and a half years old.

Her father had been a young, strong scavenger with a steady income. But a year ago, seeking more valuable finds, he had started digging deeper into the garbage heaps, like the coal mines that burrowed underground in the old days.

Then the tunnel collapsed, and Xiao Qiong's father remained inside forever.

To support Xiao Qiong, her mother had been left with no choice but to sell her body on Bar Street.

Xiao Qiong had no idea what her mother's work involved.

Since her father died, she had felt she ought to shoulder half the burden, so she was always repeating those few phrases that made her sound so grown-up.

Cheng Qi glanced at the battered bathtub. "How much are you hoping to make?"

"Twenty credit points would be enough."

Xiao Qiong nodded to herself. "After all, any mature person knows greed is bad."

Cheng Qi patted the little girl's head, turned back into the shack, and fetched half of a large, bright red apple.

Xiao Qiong's eyes widened as she stared at the fresh apple, its surface gleaming red. "This... must be worth hundreds of credit points, right?"

Cheng Qi pointed at the apple and said earnestly, "This is an apple with a dream. The moment you decide to sell it or store it for a long time, it'll pop into a bubble and disappear. It once whispered to me that its dream was to be eaten while someone walked along."

As he spoke, Cheng Qi placed the apple in Xiao Qiong's hand. "Here. Help me make its dream come true."

"You grown-ups. You just want to look after me, but you insist on making up a fairy tale full of holes."

Xiao Qiong raised the apple to her nose and sniffed it, then took a crunchy bite. Her nose wrinkled, and a trace of tears welled in her eyes.

After wiping her eyes, Xiao Qiong began slowly dragging the bathtub away. "I won't take advantage of you. Once I've sold today's goods, we'll split the money fifty-fifty!"

Cheng Qi smiled, then looked toward a distant garbage heap.

Xiao Qiong's mother had been watching in secret all along-not because she was worried about Xiao Qiong meeting Cheng Qi, but because she didn't feel comfortable letting her daughter go out alone late at night.

Cheng Qi had just returned to his shack.

Then he heard someone knock. In fact, someone was tapping one of the shack's posts from outside.

He lifted the tarp and found that Xiao Qiong had come back.

In one hand was the apple, now half eaten. In the other was a strange necklace.

She pointed at the apple. "Mom will help the other half make its dream come true."

Then she raised the necklace high above her head and offered it to Cheng Qi. "Here, this is my present for you. Don't turn your nose up at it! Finding identical beads is really hard. I spent a whole year collecting them!"

Cheng Qi narrowed his eyes at the necklace in his hand.

It was a string of metal beads, each a tiny sphere about the size of a glass marble from the old days, gleaming with a silvery metallic sheen.

A tuft of black threads dangled from the bottom of each bead, making it look like a round-headed octopus, with the black threads resembling limp tentacles.

[Similar technological constructs detected]

[Synthesize?]

Cheng Qi's expression briefly froze.

[Small Circuit Repair Robot]

[Its body can float into cramped equipment. Each unit is equipped with 14 miniature tentacles and welding capabilities, allowing it to repair millimeter-scale circuits.]

Cheng Qi was stunned.

These little "beads" were actually individual robots?

Although these robots had long since been discarded and were all broken, the Standard Template Construct could synthesize and upgrade them!

"Pretty, aren't they?"

"Those things under the beads are called tassels. These aren't ordinary steel ball bearings."

Xiao Qiong clasped her hands behind her back, her face brimming with pride. "They must be some kind of high-end steel ball bearings."

"It's beautiful."

"Thank you, Xiao Qiong."

Cheng Qi slowly exhaled. Sometimes, a small act of kindness brought unexpected rewards.

Deep into the quiet night.

Cheng Qi tucked himself away in his shack and dismantled the necklace.

He counted them and found there were actually 35 small repair robots.

They were all out of power, and many of their repair tentacles were badly damaged.

But that wasn't a problem. They were more than sufficient as basic synthesis materials.

With these repair robots, he would be able to fix Muon Base's locator!

Cheng Qi could imagine Xiao Qiong spending the past year with dirty hands and a grubby face, rummaging through garbage heaps for matching beads, all to make him a string of... prayer beads.

Cheng Qi had helped Xiao Qiong many times before. Precocious as she was, the little girl knew how to be grateful.

Every legend in this world was built from one small step forward after another.

Cheng Qi's eyes gleamed as he raised the back of his hand, and the Standard Template Construct released a fan-shaped azure scanning beam!

[Disassembling into raw matter]

[Synthesis successful]

[Micro Circuit Repair Robot] ×17

[Size reduced by 50%. Remotely controlled. Can use its small size to enter equipment and perform simple mechanical repairs and circuit welding.]

Cheng Qi paused.

The tiny metal "beads" before him had now been given new life.

Their built-in levitation systems kept them floating in the air. A tiny red dot blinked within each body, awaiting a command link, while the hairlike mechanical tentacles beneath the beads swayed gently in the air.

"They've gotten smaller."

"But they're still too big to repair a circuit board."

Cheng Qi's eyes gleamed. "Keep going!"

[Disassembling into raw matter]

[Synthesis successful]

[Millimeter-Scale Circuit Repair Robot] ×8

This time, the robots' bodies had shrunk to the size of rice grains. From a distance, they looked like a swarm of mosquitoes hovering in the air.

"Still too big. One more size reduction should let them repair the circuit board!"

Excitement surged through Cheng Qi as he drew closer and closer to his goal. The amazement the Standard Template Construct brought him still came in ever-greater waves. Miniaturization had always been the hardest mountain to conquer in robotics.

[Disassembling into raw matter]

[Synthesis successful]

[Micrometer-Scale Circuit Repair Robot] ×4

The repair robots had grown even smaller, like inconspicuous sesame seeds. In the dim shack, they would have been almost impossible to spot without their faint blinking indicator lights.

"Still remotely controlled?"

Cheng Qi frowned slightly. "The inside of a circuit board is complicated. If I have to rely on remote control alone, I probably can't achieve that level of precision."

[Disassembling into raw matter]

[Synthesis successful]

[Intelligent Micrometer-Scale Circuit Repair Sprite] ×2

[Equipped with more powerful intelligent recognition capabilities. Can automatically detect and diagnose circuit faults and quickly formulate repair plans. Can penetrate extremely tiny circuit structures to perform repairs. Repair speed per unit increased by 350%.]

"Intelligent!"

"That's exactly what I need!"

Cheng Qi's eyes widened, but the space before him seemed empty. "Uh... where are you?"

A faint buzzing sounded, and two pinpricks of light appeared ahead of him, coming together and separating again.

Only then did Cheng Qi breathe a sigh of relief.

After all that synthesizing, he had nearly synthesized the robots out of sight. They were now vanishingly small!

At this point.

The repair robots had reached the micrometer scale, but that measurement referred to their repair tentacles. Their bodies were still somewhat bulky and would struggle to enter the circuit board.

"One final synthesis. This is my only chance."

Cheng Qi's gaze grew solemn. "The Standard Template Construct always upgrades things by a whole tier. As long as their size is halved again, they'll definitely solve the problem in front of me!"

[Disassembling into raw matter]

[Synthesis successful]

Boom!

The ground shook.

A massive metal cone nearly four meters tall and at least 1.8 meters in diameter materialized inside the shack, smashing Cheng Qi's only dining table.

"What the hell is this?!"

"It's enormous!"

"Doesn't this screw everything up?!"