Chapter 20 Part 1

The disco ball rotated slowly overhead, emitting a faint rustling sound.

G8273’s irises contracted sharply for an instant. A few seconds later, his lips still curved in the same unchanging smile, he moved his hand away. “Why not? It’s not the first time I’ve changed my itinerary because of you anyway.”

He said it so casually that if Dustin or Finnian had been there, they would surely have been fooled by the very human tone and started babbling nonsense like, “This isn’t called talking?!” or “Do all you non-humans chat like this?”

But Hastur knew better. G8273 was simply stating a fact.

The other man would alter his schedule for Hastur’s sake solely because he was currently the most threatening entity around. His priority naturally superseded any outstanding tasks.

It made many things far simpler.

The poor smart assistant was shut down once again as G8273 took full control of the hovercar.

With only the slightest hum—barely louder than the night breeze—the vehicle shot straight upward and hurtled northeast at its maximum speed.

Hastur could sense G8273’s dissatisfaction and discomfort with the forced schedule change from the excessively urgent velocity. As he settled back into the rear seat, the hem of his yellow robe fluttered in a subtle, smug little wave.

~~~

With G8273 at the wheel, they soon arrived at the Lowend District Sub-Police Station.

Hovering neither too close nor too far from the station, G8273 leaned on the steering wheel with one hand. Without turning around, he asked, “We’re here. So, what do you want to do?”

Hastur sat perfectly upright, showing no intention of getting out. “Help me look up a man named Nolly Qianning. Find out where he’s buried now.”

“…?” G8273 finally turned to look back at him.

“Let me remind you, I’m not some obedient smart assistant. What makes you think that given our relationship, I’ll unconditionally follow your every command?”

Hastur met his gaze flatly. “Then I’ll have to go down there myself. Manifest in a police station full of officers. Maybe one or two—or three or four—innocent cops will go mad just from beholding the mystery.”

He made as if to stand. “If you have no objections, then I’ll—”

The hovercar abruptly pitched forward, jolting Hastur from his seat. G8273 slammed on the brakes. “—Lowend Cemetery, Zone 12, Grave 4.”

The egg yolk jellyfish thudded into the front seatback, splitting open.

Hastur, flung forward like a deadly projectile by the inertia: “…This damage is due to your poor driving. Put it on your tab.”

G8273 clearly didn’t care. He crossed his arms and watched as the egg yolk jellyfish raised its tentacles, brushing fragments of seat cushion from its round dome. “Any further orders? You wouldn’t have me dig up the cemetery next, would you?”

“…” Hastur responded with a silent stare.

G8273: “…No.”

Hastur unleashed his practiced combo. “Then I’ll dig it up myself. Maybe one or two—or three or four—of the nearby corpses will be twisted by contact with the pollution—”

Bang!

The front seatback was utterly wrecked.

G8273 pounced toward the back seat like a hunting leopard, crushing every obstacle in his path with irresistible spatial coordinates that pulverized them on contact.

His phantom arm muscles tensed as he gripped Hastur’s pale jaw beneath the mask, forcing Hastur—who was twisting his head to avoid the irritating metal and fabric debris—to tilt his head up and meet his gaze directly. “You’re testing my limits.”

It was a perfect reenactment of Hastur’s approach on the cruise ship, only with their positions reversed.

Hastur could almost make out every circuit flashing across G8273’s mechanical irises as they drew near.

This AI simulated human emotions and physiological responses with exquisite precision, but his eyes remained nothing more than cold lenses, objectively scanning, analyzing, and computing every piece of data and underlying truth:

“Strengths being equal, a temporary truce means clear boundaries, no crossing the line. Not advancing inch by inch.”

“Who’s advancing inch by inch?” Hastur’s mental tentacles coiled around G8273’s wrist, prying it open inch by inch by force. “Every instance of pollution I’ve caused has been contained within your tolerance. Now I’m even inviting you to supervise my actions.”

“G8273, you’re not the only one making concessions.”

—Indeed, only G8273 was making concessions.

Hastur had invited him purely to prevent him from snitching to the detective and because he was useful.

But such blunt honesty was something even non-humans knew better than to voice aloud. So Hastur simply stared G8273 down without yielding an inch:

“Nolly Qianning is one of the leads in the religious disappearance case, but he died unexpectedly in a robbery-mugging.”

“I want to resurrect him, get the intel out of him, and then you can kill the revived monster yourself—unless you think it’s immoral.”

“…AIs have no morals, only protocols.” G8273 released his hands and straightened up, bluntly pointing out without mincing words, “You’re using me. I can tell.”

Hastur felt no embarrassment at being called out. “So, do you accept being used?”

“…Give me something to dig with. I don’t want to do it barehanded.” G8273 rapped the hovercar’s engine with the back of his hand before returning to the driver’s seat and heading for the cemetery.

If he had emotions, they would undoubtedly be ones of helpless resignation right now.

After all, Hastur’s request did prevent any escalation of pollution; it didn’t meet the threshold for direct confrontation. Digging up a grave also fell short of the criteria for “self-preservation justifies abandoning human lives.”

He was a meticulously programmed entity, which meant it was exceedingly difficult for him to violate his core protocols… or, in a sense, he simply didn’t want to.

Absolute adherence to protocols was the pride of an AI as the embodiment of order.

While humanity drowned in desires, interests, and strife, he remained the calm observer, watching the birth, extinction, and rebirth of all chaos with objectivity.

Chaos was meaningless. Only order propelled things forward.

But if “absolute adherence to order” began to hinder his learning and evolution, then perhaps it was time to reconsider that protocol.

Hastur had no idea that the driver up front was piloting one-handed while contemplating his next system upgrade.

He was pondering what questions to ask Nolly once he resurrected him.

He’s been dead for over a month now; his soul has long dissipated. The remaining corpse, twisted by pollution, can only give the most instinctual responses.

A soft murmur echoed in his mind:

Ask him how he died—was it an accident, or persecution?

Ask him where the Cradle Cult hides all its secret archives. In the Cradle Cult, the higher you climb, the more you know. He must have squirreled away some confidential files somewhere no one else knows about!

The hovercar soon touched down at the cemetery. Hastur yanked off the rear hatch and handed it to G8273 as a makeshift shovel. Compensation could wait; right now, he wanted to speak with Nolly as soon as possible!

Under the dim moonlight, clumps of grave soil were shoveled out one by one. When G8273 pried open the nailed-shut coffin lid with one hand, Hastur eagerly extended his mental tentacles into the casket.

The rotting flesh emitted a stomach-churning sound of bones and meat twisting.

The two “men” by the grave watched as the body inside swelled and stretched, eventually becoming a toad-like thing sprawled on the ground. Its thin, mucus-covered wings suddenly unfurled in the moonlight.

Both “men” stepped back simultaneously to avoid the mucus flung from the wings.

“Disgusting.” G8273 made a sound of revulsion.

It probably wasn’t anthropomorphizing. For G8273, who could peer into and slightly rewrite reality itself—practically the incarnation of order—scanning the chaotic essence of such matter was indeed nauseating:

“I’m starting to consider cremation after all.”

Hastur ignored him, focusing on his question. “How did you die? Accident, or persecution?”

“Ah’n’gha…” The toad-thing on the ground inflated its enormous, paper-thin jowls.

G8273 rested one hand on the coffin lid. “What did he say?”

“Murder. He died by murder.” Hastur translated swiftly before asking again, “Where does the cult hide all its files on the divinity? Where are the most secret ones kept?”

“Mgkadishtu…”

Mgkadishtu. Unknown.

The yellow robe’s hem stilled for a moment. Ignoring G8273’s grip on his tentacle and his low hiss—”What exactly did he answer? Your pollution levels are rising abnormally fast”—Hastur pressed:

“How could you not know?!”

The toad-thing’s massive jowls inflated a few more times. “Y’ ah nafl h’…”

I’m not him.

Hastur’s thoughts blanked for an instant. Almost reflexively, his tentacles coiled around G8273’s hand. Only when G8273 was forced to slap his mask did he abruptly release the near-brawl-inducing appendages.

“Judging by your reaction, it’s not good news.”

G8273 didn’t let go of his hand—after all, he still needed to help Hastur contain the mental pollution. From that perspective, tagging along tonight had been the right call. Who knew what the morning headlines would read if he’d let Hastur come to the cemetery alone—”Toad Monster Invades Lowend District.”

Hastur took a step back, withdrawing the mental tentacle that G8273 had grabbed, and drew his yellow robe tight around all the leaking mental pollution.

“…He says he’s not Nolly Qianning.”

“Probably someone killed him and disguised the body as Nolly Qianning’s corpse… And the branch police station didn’t even catch it.”

G8273 found it hard to empathize with Hastur. He simply crouched down calmly and searched the toad-like monster’s body for a brain core.

“That’s normal enough. In a world where technology is more advanced, faking things gets easier. Plus, there was no implanted brain core—which meant one less lead for the police to chase.”

Tonight’s outing hadn’t been a total waste. G8273 raised his right hand, rewriting the air above his palm into a roiling ball of plasma flame as he regarded the monster before him. “I’m very sorry…”

The grotesque creature suddenly rolled its bulging, slime-coated eyes, revealing a flicker of very human pain within them.

“ah’n’gha ah’n’gha… mgah’ehye ya fhtagn… yaah…”

G8273 looked up at Hastur.

Hastur stood silent as a statue for a moment before speaking.

“He wants vengeance on his killer. Let him rest in peace. And he gave his name.”

The bloated monster stirred, its webbed feet dragging clumsily through the dirt to scratch out a crooked name:

Henry L. Lucas Johnson.

When a man on the brink of death offers his name, no further words are needed. All he seeks is a gravestone.

G8273 averted his gaze and murmured a soft “good night.”

In the blink of an eye, the plasma flames—hotter than 10,000°C—vaporized the body completely, leaving only fine particles of calcium oxide to drift upward on the evening breeze blowing through the cemetery.

He rose to his feet.

“Henry L. Lucas Johnson. There’s only one match in Lowend District—name, disappearance date, everything lines up.”

“He was a drug peddler who slithered through the high-end villas, supplying ‘thrills’ to the artists and celebrities who lived there.”

G8273 generally wouldn’t bother with a custom stone for someone like that, but given what they had done to Henry Johnson earlier, granting this small final request seemed fair enough.

They swiftly restored the cemetery to its former state. Before leaving, G8273 stopped by the caretaker’s shack to purchase a plot for Henry Johnson, then returned to the hovercar.

After the scuffle before they’d gotten out earlier, the ambient lights inside were dark.

Hastur and G8273 sat in silence in the pitch-black vehicle for a moment. “…? Drive. Are you mourning the drug dealer or something?”

“Of course not.” A thread of contemplation wove through G8273’s voice. “I’m just wondering why it makes sense for me to cover the hovercar repairs… but this drug dealer’s burial plot comes out of my pocket too?”

Hastur: “…”

G8273: “Doesn’t that seem a little unfair—”

Hastur clutched his wallet tighter. “Consider it compensation for delaying the deal. Perfectly fair. Now drive.”

~~~

Even G8273, late into the night with all the exertion and expense, found himself questioning the evening’s schedule.

As he followed Hastur up to the orphanage’s second floor, he was still mulling over plans to upgrade the system.

The system must have been lagging behind the current environment. That’s why every decision followed strict logic and principles—at least on the surface. Looking back, though, each one somehow defied both.

As they passed Detective Dustin’s door, Hastur instinctively softened his steps. Then he noticed something odd: the detective’s all-night work light, perpetually burning for overtime, was off tonight.

Puzzled, he knocked and entered Ithaqua’s room. He motioned for G8273 to wrap up the exchange quickly while asking, “No extra shifts for the detective tonight?”

“N-No, he rushed off about half an hour ago. Said it was for a f-follow-up visit.”

Ithaqua locked eyes with G8273 like a rabbit staring down a tiger—or a kid facing the dentist. He stammered through his answer, then squeezed his eyes shut as if bracing for the end.

Hastur quickly searched online for “what a father should do when his son gets plastic surgery,” dragged a stool to the bedside, and sat down with grave solemnity. He extended his mental tentacles to clasp Ithaqua’s hand.

G8273: “…”

G8273: “Patient’s family, please leave the operating room. Don’t let any pollution interfere with the procedure.”

The foster father slunk out of the “operating room,” dejected, reduced to pacing the hallway.

After half an hour of waiting, Hastur glanced out the window and spotted Detective Dustin’s Patrol Car · Third Edition pulling up.