"What's going on here?"
The effect of the Grow-and-Shrink Candy wore off, and the big Herta puppet shrank back into a standard-model little Herta puppet.
As a clever and sagacious Genius, Madam Herta foresaw everything like a prophet and had anticipated this outcome long ago.
That was why the clothes she'd had the little Herta puppets deliver to the big Herta puppet were custom-made, equipped with an auto-adjusting size function.
This cut off any possibility of the little Herta puppet flashing anyone when her body suddenly reverted—but that wasn't the important part.
Herta's knobbly-knuckled fingertips pinched a spicy gluten strip.
This thing was a snack synthesized from the most inert metal currently in the lab—drop it on Earth and not even aqua regia could dissolve it, extremely hard in texture—plus ordinary space station food the staff had brought over.
She flicked a finger against a facet of the synthesizer, her whole face the picture of incomprehension:
"Fine, so the analyzer I personally tuned and designed can't scan out its algorithmic base frequency—whatever. But this thing seems to not even obey the law of conservation of energy?"
She didn't mean the synthesis itself; that process still 'apparently' followed conservation of energy—the stronger the Heliobus energy fed into the synthesis, the stronger the snack's effect.
What she meant was that the synthesizer's operation seemed not to obey conservation of energy. Normally, a machine needs to absorb Path energy to run, yet Caelus used the 'synthesize or I'll dismantle you' method—and it actually worked!
That's just absolutely absurd!
"The mass-energy conversion process can't even be detected! There's no Sigma Baryon involved... it might even exceed the Herta Sequence."
There you have it—that's a Genius for you.
Even her conversational theorems are named after herself.
Herta jabbed a scanning probe into the Universal Synthesizer, her heart both delighted and weirded out.
The several dozen model verifications she'd conjectured had all returned errors!
Failure is exceedingly precious to a Genius—just like every time she heard the news that one of Ruan Mei's lab experiments had failed, Herta would be the first to rush over and offer her hearty congratulations!
What was weird was that this thing really was a little absurd!
"I... can't make sense of its gene-deconstruction process."
Ruan Mei lowered her gaze, fixing it on the synthesizer, and on the cage of lab mice beside it—a cage that had gone from a loving, four-generations-under-one-roof family to just a brother and sister depending on each other for survival.
The synthesizer could synthesize living material, but Ruan Mei didn't understand how it broke a lab mouse down into the molecules and atoms needed to make a spicy gluten strip—it seemed to have no analysis process at all.
Slot one: lab mouse.
Slot two: Yiyi Alloy.
Slot three: rice.
Duang~! Mash them together.
And it becomes a spicy gluten strip?!
"The program exists yet leaves no trace, the framework construction fails, it violates the Sixth Law. Even remotely commandeering part of the computing power of the planetary Difference Machine to simulate it, I can't parse it—I can only piece together a fragmentary logic chain."
Ordinarily, no matter who was conversing with Screwllum, they could feel his gentle nature—he spoke calmly and soothingly, without the airs of a sovereign of Planet Screwllum.
But at this moment his tone was graver than it had ever been.
"A question: everyone—does science still exist?"
Ruan Mei was silent.
Even Herta shut that haughty mouth of hers.
The Geniuses at this moment were just like that first batch of Genius scientists in Earth's history who set out to explore the microscopic realm and conduct the double-slit interference experiment.
This machine before their eyes was a challenge to the scientific worldview, enough to provoke philosophical doubt about the very nature of reality.
Uncertainty, illogicality—its underlying logic was like a gag comic drawn for children to read!
As long as the story can make a child laugh, you mustn't fuss over the details within; otherwise, think it through too carefully and it's terrifying, utterly impossible to grasp by logic.
The ordinary folk of 18th- and 19th-century Earth couldn't understand all this talk of waves and particles, nor could they truly comprehend the impact of the causal paradox in the delayed-choice experiment. Right now, the Haxxor Bunny was equally clueless about what the three Geniuses were discussing.
She was busy having a blast with the Curio she'd just gotten her hands on—the Punklorde Mentality.
For the current Haxxor Bunny, this thing functioned like the training wheels on either side of a child's bike—helping her complete protocol docking faster and carry out edits to reality.
Once she became fully proficient, this thing would turn into a mere toy.
"All right, everyone, time to give the thing back to me."
Having given the three Geniuses a little taste of the first-generation Wolf King's shock—watching the three of them wear expressions of doubting their lives and their scientific worldview—Caelus nodded in satisfaction and prepared to take back the Universal Synthesizer.
"Hey! Wait! Don't take it away!"
Herta clamped firmly onto the arm Caelus had stretched toward the synthesizer, stopping him from carrying off this super-super-super interesting machine:
"Didn't you say you'd lend it to us to research?"
"When did I ever say that?"
Caelus looked at Herta, expressionless.
"The bet! We all bet on it!"
Madam Herta stuck out her little hand and forcefully jabbed at Caelus's chest, hollering.
"By the time you'd all studied the three systems, you'd already run several dozen rounds of synthesis tests, and you've collected all the information you wanted to observe and record, haven't you?"
Caelus stuffed the popsicle—the one Ruan Mei had just synthesized from two lab mice and a new creation cultivated an hour earlier—into Herta's tender little mouth.
"As for the parts that can't be detected, my advice is that you just admit defeat, stop wasting time, and go debug the Simulated Universe."
The synthesizer's underlying principle was built upon the gag concepts of the Pleasant Goat Universe it contained. Perhaps if Nous personally took action he could crack part of the algorithm—the Geniuses were nowhere near!
"Mmgh..."
Glistening saliva and melted ice-water trickled from her mouth. Herta blinked, then suddenly clutched Caelus's arm and toppled toward the ground.
"Whoa! You're gonna pull a fake-injury extortion stunt now?"
Caelus pulled out his arm and hopped back—no sword aura accompanying him.
"I don't care! I don't care! I don't care! I don't care!"
Amid everyone's stunned and dumbfounded expressions, Herta flailed her little arms and legs wildly, throwing a dignity-free tantrum like the Spring Spirit from the Honkai fan-works next door, big fat tears dropping down as she wailed:
"Let me research it! Let me research it! Let me research it!"
Herta's antics—like a child wheedling its parents—left both Ruan Mei and Screwllum dumbstruck.
Caelus reacted fastest. He immediately whipped out his phone and filmed Herta acting spoiled, even making a point of getting Screwllum and Ruan Mei into the frame, to prove this was a puppet operated by Herta's true self—and not the Herta puppet in his own hand.
The three of them simultaneously fell into thought.
Could it be that the puppet's body reverting to its girlhood form also affected Herta's mind? No, that's not right.
A normal little Herta puppet wouldn't act like this either.
The next second, Caelus, Ruan Mei, and Screwllum all looked toward the popsicle sitting in the open mini-fridge—the effect of that snack hadn't been tested yet.
Looks like... so that's it...
Bang!
Three Herta puppets burst through the door. Two of them lifted, respectively, the head and ankles of the Herta on the floor—the one 'acting cute and clinging to Caelus's thigh while calling him Daddy'—and carried her out without the slightest mercy.
The remaining Herta, as though nothing whatsoever had happened, took over the original Herta puppet's spot without batting an eye.
"Why are you all looking at me with those eyes? Have you been captivated by the perfect Madam Herta?"
Herta folded her arms and let out a couple of smug hmphs, narcissistic as ever.
"A popsicle that infantilizes people, is it?"
Ruan Mei regarded the popsicle with great interest.
From the time she'd known Herta until now, she had never seen Herta display such a posture—this trip had truly been worthwhile.
On top of the surprise Caelus had brought her, she'd also gotten to watch Herta act spoiled and silly.
Concealing the gloating and wicked grin in her eyes, the Haxxor Bunny sidled up to Herta and asked:
"Hey, aren't you afraid Caelus will post that video he just shot?"
Herta gave a disdainful tch. And, in light of the fact that the Haxxor Bunny had taken out her own share of the Book Cake for the three of them to research, she curled her lip and replied:
"Little girl, I am Herta—the perfect Herta! That sort of thing simply doesn't matter. When have I ever cared about other people's opinions?"
"At most it'd just turn a bunch of fools into anthropoid apes briefly excited out of their minds."
"Fine, you're amazing."
The Haxxor Bunny had to hand it to this gal's level of narcissism.
After all, if she were the one rolling on the floor acting cute and calling someone Daddy, she'd definitely pull out all the stops to destroy that piece of black-history footage!
"Of course—I am Herta!"
Herta planted both hands on her hips, like a proud little peacock, all but writing 'Hurry up and praise me more' across her cheeks.
Screwllum and Ruan Mei were used to this and thought nothing of it; the former even praised her a few times to indulge her.
Caelus felt that when this gal used the little Herta puppet body, she more or less melted into the appearance's age bracket, and when she used the big Herta puppet she got all pretentious.
Herta swept her gaze over the dozens of synthesized products before her, raised a single finger, and asked:
"I think it's time to invite one more person."
"A question: introduce a fifth collaborator to the Simulated Universe?"
Screwllum reached up and adjusted the cravat at his chest.
"Yes, but not only for the Simulated Universe. Before this, we gathered here to seek out the secret of the Aeons—and only that [Answer] could rally the members of the Genius Society together."
"But now there's an extremely interesting new thing in the mix."
Herta drew in a slight breath.
It was true the scientific worldview had taken a hit, but those present were no ordinary scholars—they were true Geniuses. Their composure stabilized quickly, and they were resolutely determined to unravel the secret behind the synthesizer.
"I believe that, for the Simulated Universe and that miraculous synthesizer, there's absolutely someone who will answer us."
"And what if the one who comes is Polka o Kakamu?"
Ruan Mei asked softly.
Genius Society #4, dubbed the [Lord of Silence], who once destroyed his own portraits and statues across the entire universe and killed many members of the Genius Society.
"Wouldn't that be perfect? Lord of Silence, are you listening? I'm #83 Herta. I want to meet you—we're bound to have plenty to talk about!"
Herta paid it no mind; instead she shouted loudly to her surroundings.
Naturally no one answered, and Herta shrugged at the two Geniuses.
"You all chat. We should be heading back."
Caelus waved goodbye to the three of them.
His objective had already been accomplished.
"Dear, I look forward to our next meeting. I hope you can bring me even more surprises."
Her lips, thin in pigment and showing a cool tint, curved at the corners as Ruan Mei spoke softly.
"Scram~ Hurry up and scram~!"
Herta waved her hand in disgust, like shooing away a fly.
"...I can promise you this: as long as I'm on the space station, I can lend you the synthesizer to research."
Caelus revealed a warm smile.
"It's so late—why not stay for dinner? I'll call Asta to keep you company."
Though her tone was a flat, perfunctory monotone, the rapid-fire pace still conveyed Herta's reluctance to see Caelus go.
"Heh, what a shameless woman—at least her mouth softens up once in a while."
Caelus fished out a Herta puppet and, before Herta's slightly twitching eye and amid Ruan Mei's silence, planted a big MUA~ on it.
Screwllum shook his head and, maintaining his gentlemanly courtesy, looked toward the Haxxor Bunny:
"Miss Bronie, feel free to contact me with any questions."
"Thank you, I won't stand on ceremony."
The Haxxor Bunny's impression of Screwllum was fairly good—at least far better than Herta.
She had easily obtained a Genius's contact information, something very few figures in the universe possessed.
All thanks to Caelus, when you got down to it—you could call it a transaction. That cake had helped all three of them a great deal, so when she needed a Genius to clear up her doubts, the Haxxor Bunny wouldn't be shy about it either.
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