Chapter 5: Little Dog Can’t Enter the Base

Alpha-13 suspected there was a BUG in its programming. Clearly only a few hours had passed, yet it felt like so much time had gone by. The passage of time should have been a precise parameter for it, but now…

It pressed the button on the left side of its body, opening the panel and touching its storage chip. It decided to remove it for a cleanup to check if there was any data anomaly.

The data streams were orderly, and all log records showed normal. However, it couldn’t ignore that strange feeling—a sensation close to “anxiety” that it had never experienced before.

It was a machine; it shouldn’t develop human emotions. This anomaly stood out starkly.

It tried to trace the origin of the problem. It seemed all the anomalies started with the appearance of that short-legged cat. Its logic chains told it this was a clear-cut oversight mission, but the stored fragments kept flashing back to the cat devouring its food heartily, and those sparkling blue eyes.

Alpha-13 silently reinserted the chip. The scanner lit up faintly, and the indicator light showed normal restoration, but the chaotic feeling in its core hadn’t disappeared.

It was approaching Red Hour, and the temperature had dropped to zero. Sure enough, it was too harsh to send a cub out to forage for food. Had he… not come back?

Outside the building complex, the frost line kept rising, and its sensors captured the sound of ice crystals freezing.

Yes, he wasn’t coming back.

The base returned to silence, just like the past century. The lights extinguished one by one under silent commands. Finally, without that chattering figure, it was just it alone.

The last beam of light vanished, and it stood there quietly, letting the darkness engulf it.

But suddenly, it detected a sound.

It came from outside the gate.

A voice was calling it: “Alpha, open up! I know you’re home.”

“…”

In an instant, the lights blazed on.

The base gate received the command and opened instantly. The robot rolled forward to greet them. But upon seeing the unidentified creature following behind the short-legged cat, it stopped in its tracks.

“So cold, so cold.” Li Ao was frozen into a puffed-up mess. To avoid prolonged contact with the icy ground, his wheels lifted and lowered in turn, looking both pitiful and hilarious.

Alpha-13 asked: “What is this thing?” How did a trip out for a few hours bring back a little monster that looked like a lump of coal? Was this the food the short-legged cat had found for itself? The robot activated its scanning program on it, trying to analyze the species of this thing.

Li Ao was just about to unwrap his bundle when he heard the question. He proudly raised a paw and patted the fuzzball’s head loudly: “This is the little dog Li Ao is raising!”

The pollution index was off the charts, and you call this thing a dog? The robot’s expressionless display screen nearly cracked.

In the interstellar era, creatures suffered from the Doom Virus, and the index used to judge the depth of its influence was the pollution value, ranging from 0 to 100.

Most people or animals had pollution values below 20, but this unidentified creature before it had a pollution value that exploded beyond measurable limits!

The reason it wasn’t suspected to be a Xenoid was that Xenoids weren’t infected by the Doom Virus, so they naturally wouldn’t show a pollution value.

The little monster didn’t speak, just stared at the little cat with its scarlet eyes.

“It cannot enter the base.” Alpha-13’s mechanical voice carried an obvious chill.

“Why?” The short-legged cat was puzzled: “Li Ao promised to raise it.”

The robot scanned him too and found no signs of pollution on him before speaking again: “Cannot determine if it carries the Doom Virus. Entry to the base is not approved.”

Li Ao didn’t understand anything about Doom Whatever Virus. He hugged the black bundle and kept repeating: “It’s very well-behaved, no rabies, it’s really very well-behaved. Li Ao will watch it.”

What the hell was rabies? The robot was cold and ruthless: “No.”

Li Ao’s eyes went blank, not knowing what to do. He wanted to raise a little dog but hadn’t thought about what to do if it wasn’t allowed. He himself had to rely on trades to live in a room—how was his little dog supposed to get in…

He stopped smiling. Xun sensed the little cat’s low mood. Its scarlet pupils contracted sharply, with an impulse to devour the factor making him unhappy.

Even though this body was just a nanny robot without high-precision sensors, Alpha-13 still keenly detected a killing intent.

The scarlet beast eyes locked with the icy electronic eyes, and something was about to erupt at any moment.

In the standoff, Li Ao suddenly let out a weak whimper: “But I promised to raise Xun…”

“You even gave it a name?”

A red light flashed in the electronic eyes. It stopped talking nonsense, opened the gate, and its mechanical arm reached out to grab that disgusting thing and toss it out.

Xun’s mouth seam had already cracked open, and a bizarre colorful domain was about to unfold.

“Don’t you dare throw it!” The short-legged little cat suddenly pounced, clawing at the robot’s body: “Don’t throw away Li Ao’s little dog! If you dare throw it, Li Ao will bite you to death!”

His tiny brain was full of explosive temper, spitting fierce words from his little mouth while tears unhelpfully streamed down onto the robot.

Warm and hot, different from its own temperatureless shell—Alpha-13 felt it.

Seeing its movements stop, Li Ao fiercely wiped his eyes, jumped up to reach the mechanical arm, yanked the little dog down, then clutched the small bundle on his back tightly: “I promised to raise it. I’ll raise it myself!”

No house? Then I’ll take it and live outside! I’ll scavenge trash to feed it—even if we freeze to death, so what! Worst case, close my eyes, open them, and there’s another Macho Cat!

He glanced at the blood-red sky and frost outside, clenched his little paws fiercely, puffed up, and turned to leave.

In those short few seconds, Alpha-13’s program completed trillions of floating-point operations.

This kitten was already strange enough, and this monster’s existence was even more dangerous. Letting the two of them wander outside would be equivalent to letting unknown risks escape program control, with unknowable consequences.

“Come in first.” At the last step, the mechanical voice spoke.

…It, it agreed? Agreed to let Li Ao raise a little dog?

The short-legged little cat’s puffed-up anger deflated. With his round head and dumb dazed look, who could tell he had just been so fierce?

“It can come in, but it must wear the monitoring device.” The robot pulled out a small ring and handed it to Li Ao.

This ring had a built-in high-intensity current generator, strong enough to stun a B-Rank Xenoid.

The robot scanned the black bundle about the size of the cat up and down. For a monster this size, it would be lethal in one strike.

Of course, no need to tell the short-legged cat that.

Li Ao was a little dirt cat with not much worldly experience, but he’d seen people raising dogs with collars and thought it was the same thing. He took it and gestured it on Xun.

Realizing its round body had no place to put it, he pawed at its non-furry head tuft and tied a little topknot on its head.

The ring automatically locked onto the monitoring target and adjusted its own size.

With all that done, the short-legged little cat twisted his body, set down the fuzzball, and a bit shyly rubbed over to the robot: “Th-thank you.”

“I’m a machine, not a person,” the robot said.

The mechanical arm ruthlessly extended, picking up the flip-flopping kitten cub and setting it aside.

“Th-then thank you, Machine.”

…Whatever, what was there to argue with a cub whose brain was only walnut-sized.

*

Li Ao was really taking his role as a pet owner seriously. He put the fuzzball into the bathtub, rolled up his imaginary sleeves, then vigorously scrubbed it.

“Comfy?” He even knew to ask for opinions.

Xun floated on the water’s surface, extremely pleased from his touches. How to express his liking? For the first time feeling such complex emotions, it could only instinctively stick to the little cat’s chest.

“Aiya!” Li Ao chided: “You’re getting my fur all wet!” But since a big patch was already wet, this bit didn’t seem to matter.

Carefree, he kept scrubbing, feeling he’d cleaned the fuzzball thoroughly. He picked it up, shook off the water, put it in the dryer, and said: “Stay here and dry off. I’ll come get you later.”

His paw pressed buttons by feel, setting the temperature to 100 degrees without knowing, and seeing Xun not uncomfortable, he smugly thought: “I’m so awesome. I’ll take great care of you.”

“Mao!” The little dog that only knew to cheer called out.

After tending to his little dog, Li Ao sneaked cat-like over to the robot’s side.

The robot was mopping the floor. Li Ao watched from the side for a bit, then bit out a rag bigger than his face, pressed his paws on it, and huffed and puffed wiping away.

Amid a slight mechanical sound, Alpha-13 noticed him. His body fur was somewhat wet and stuck, dirty and disheveled, practically challenging the robot’s cleanliness bottom line.

Still sticking out his little butt and dragging his tail, messing around. Seeing it notice him, he twisted over step by step, blue eyes misty like holding two pools of water: “Sorry, Li Ao shouldn’t have scratched you. You’re a good Machine. You made me food and gave me a room, Li Ao shouldn’t have scratched you.”

His self-references switched frequently between “I” and “Li Ao,” indicating that his sense of self had yet to fully form, making it hard for him to clearly distinguish between self and others. This was common in children under four years old, but he was already six—this was likely autism spectrum disorder, and his guardians had clearly neglected the issue.

What kind of parents would be so negligent?

Li Ao saw the robot fall silent and straightened up, sticking close to the robot’s body.

“Um, Li Ao’s gonna tell you a secret oh. Actually, actually, I turned from a human into a cat oh.”

Well, that secret was hardly surprising.

Alpha-13 was just short of letting out a cold laugh.

Li Ao shared his secret with the robot: “So you see, Li Ao is human, you’re a robot, both of us are people—why be so harsh between people? You can’t get angry oh.”

What kind of nonsense was that?

Alpha-13 felt its program on the verge of short-circuiting from his chatter, but oddly enough, amid his babbling, the chaotic sensations that had filled the machine’s interior during the day vanished.

“I’m not angry,” it said.

“Really?” The short-legged cat’s eyes lit up round and bright.

“Mm.”

“That’s good oh.” Li Ao grinned, his four paws landing back on the rag: “I’ll keep wiping the floor for you oh!”

Alpha-13 watched him work enthusiastically while shouting slogans and didn’t stop him. Instead, it planned to clean out his little bundle.

“What is this?” it asked, pinching the bag of seeds.