Chapter 42: Basic Education Center
The next day, early morning.
, as usual, led the children down to the together with two other teachers.
But today, among the children she was leading were more than a dozen newcomers from District, and their destination was different from usual.
"Mr. , is it this way?" looked at the closed electric door marked A301 in front of her and asked the camera with some uncertainty.
[That's right. This is a newly unlocked area. I think it should be helpful for your educational work.]
The indicator light on the automatic door changed from red to green, and then the door slowly opened to both sides.
As the scene behind the door was revealed, and everyone behind her all subconsciously widened their eyes.
What appeared before them was not a few classrooms as they had expected, but a comprehensive teaching center with rather extravagant facilities.
A spacious, bright central hall, its dome simulating a blue sky and white clouds, the light as soft as morning sunshine.
The floor was made of some kind of warm-toned white composite material, spotless.
"Th-this... is for us?" covered her mouth, her voice trembling with disbelief.
In the classroom, the surface of every child's desk was a smooth black screen.
When the children curiously sat down, the screens lit up automatically, displaying each person's name and a cute cartoon avatar.
"Wow!" a boy exclaimed, swiping his finger across the screen. His crooked handwriting immediately appeared on the desk.
"Teacher, you can draw here!"
quickly walked up to the podium, which was likewise a huge control screen.
She tried tapping open the built-in teaching resource library, and a flood of materials instantly surged forth.
From illustrated animation for early childhood education to professional textbooks for higher education, from the Book of Songs to quantum mechanics, everything was available, categorized and easy to search.
What shocked her even more was the holographic projection equipment at the very center of the classroom.
She casually opened a biology courseware—"Photosynthesis."
In an instant, a three-dimensional conceptual model of a mesophyll cell appeared out of thin air in the center of the classroom, slowly rotating.
Structures such as chloroplasts and mitochondria were clearly visible, and the process of how light energy was captured and how water and carbon dioxide were converted into energy and oxygen was perfectly demonstrated in the form of dynamic light effects.
The visualization was far better than any multimedia teaching equipment she had seen before the disaster.
[There's more than what's in the main teaching hall. There are also dedicated classrooms for individual subjects!]
reminded her smugly.
"This is truly incredible!" suppressed the excitement in her heart and led the children to begin this "campus" exploration tour.
The Chinese language classroom was less a classroom than a small library.
On row after row of bookshelves, the physical books held nearly every classic from ancient to modern times that children could likewise attempt to read.
From oracle bone script rubbings to contemporary online literature, all the classics of Huaxia were laid out in full view.
The standby screens on the desks also displayed a bookshelf of recommended reading. The children curiously clicked on a copy of the Analects, and a virtual scroll immediately unfolded before their eyes, accompanied not only by detailed annotations.
There was even a holographic projection of "Confucius" reciting and explaining, with annotations by famous scholars of past dynasties and diametrically opposed critical viewpoints scrolling below.
Unlike the complexity of the Chinese language classroom, the mathematics classroom went for a minimalist style.
A vast, empty white room, where the walls themselves were writable whiteboards.
In the center of the room were only some basic straightedge-and-compass tools.
On the wall directly ahead, written in black lettering:
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, +, =
Below it followed a line of small text.
"Mathematics is actually very simple. Everything is right here. The rest is up to you. Good luck!"
Then there was the foreign language classroom, laid out similarly to the Chinese language classroom, except that it displayed foreign books in various different languages.
The fourth was the biology classroom.
Pushing open the door, a wave of greenery rushed at them.
In the center of the classroom stood an enclosed glass greenhouse with a row of pea seedlings planted inside. Tender green vines had already climbed up their supports, and the side of the greenhouse was labeled with a diagram of Mendel's pea experiment.
Glass display cabinets around the room held various specimens—the scale structure of butterfly wings, a human skeleton model, a cross-section of a heart, cross-sections of plant roots and stems—each accompanied by detailed written explanations.
In the chemistry classroom, all kinds of basic instruments were neatly arranged on the experimental tables. On the central table, projections of molecular conceptual models could be freely grabbed and assembled, simulating the breaking and formation of chemical bonds and intuitively demonstrating complex reaction processes.
One wall was occupied by a giant periodic table of elements, and each element cell could be touched to expand detailed information.
In the physics classroom, one side of the room featured an inclined-plane track device, with a steel ball resting quietly at the top.
On the other side hung a pendulum set, a triangular prism spectrometer, and a small wind tunnel model.
On the display rack at the back sat levers, pulley sets, and spring dynamometers.
Politics, history, geography, music, art... every subject had a dedicated classroom with complete facilities.
But what excited the children the most was the physical education classroom.
Not only did it have all kinds of training equipment, but there was even a standard basketball court and... a dedicated shooting range.
Watching the expressions on everyone's faces go from astonishment to silence as they walked through, was very satisfied.
Because when he had first looked at the blueprints, his reaction had been much the same.
He had originally thought the would be about the same as the simple classrooms in the base, so he hadn't planned to generate one so early.
But after seeing the blueprints, he couldn't hold back.
With such an interesting place, not generating one would feel truly hard to bear, so he spent 500 and, following the blueprints, materialized a .
Spending so many just to see these teachers and children struck dumb—it was simply too delicious.
"Wow! Uncle is amazing!" The little girl tilted her head up at the "blue sky" of the dome, starlight practically twinkling in her eyes.
[Ahem!] made a sound through a in the physical education center.
[Actually, on that point, I'd like to make a correction.]
"What?" The little girl was clearly confused.
[Actually, I'm not that old. You shouldn't be calling me uncle.]
The children were all stunned for a moment.
"Then what should we call you?" The little boy asked.
The robot stepped forward, and its mechanical arm struck a pose it considered very cool: "Call me big brother."
The children looked at one another, then burst into roaring laughter.
"Brother ?" It was the little girl who first called out in earnest.
was finally satisfied.
[Very good, Xiaoxi. I'm giving you five points.]
"Yay!"
The other children, seeing that points could be earned, immediately swarmed over, each one calling out sweeter than the last.
Seeing the form of address successfully corrected, a hint of lightness flashed through 's consciousness.
Kids were just so adorable!
***
The afternoon shooting training class was personally taken over by .
In the range, the first batch was several boys aged fourteen to sixteen. They stood in a row, each holding a safety-modified training rifle.
They were the most "restless" bunch among the children—having clamored time and again to stop studying, to join the , to carry guns.
"Ready?"
The stood behind them, 's voice coming through its loudspeaker.
"Ready!" The five said in unison.
"Begin."
The electronic targets activated, and five humanoid silhouettes began moving laterally at different speeds.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Gunfire echoed, and gunsmoke filled the air.
Ten seconds later, the shooting ended.
Score display: every shot off target.
[Is that it?]
The slowly paced back and forth behind them, its tone full of undisguised contempt.
[Weren't you all shouting that you wanted to join the ? What? Not one hit the target?]
[You've been training at the outdoor range for so long, and you're still this pathetic.]
's face flushed bright red. "The targets suddenly moved..."
[You can't hit them just because they move? Then that means you're pathetic.]
[Do you think the mutants out there will stand there like idiots letting you take three seconds to aim before you pull the trigger?]
's voice was cold and merciless. [They'll only pounce at you ten times faster and tear you apart!]
[At this rate, forget being underage—even when you're old enough, don't even think about passing the assessment.]
The boys hung their heads in dejection, yet none of them could argue.
After the shooting class ended, it was combat practice, another course for which was responsible himself.
There was no helping it—they were short-staffed, with no professional teachers or PE teachers to teach this subject, and and his people had their own missions to keep them busy. So had to take the field himself.
All the children, from six to sixteen, were gathered in the combat training ground.
piloted an unarmed training-model wrapped in soft padding to the center of the arena.
[Today's content is very simple.]
The robot's electronic eyes swept across everyone.
[All of you attack together. Try any method you can think of. As long as you can knock me down, or make me leave this red circle, you win.]
[If you win, everyone gets full marks.]
[If you lose, everyone does fifty push-ups.]
The children were stunned for a moment, then their eyes all lit up.
"All of us together?"
[That's right.]
"That sounds like so much fun!"
The older boys, in particular, were rubbing their hands together eagerly, the pent-up frustration from being scolded earlier just looking for an outlet.
"Go!" roared, charging forward first.
This was why liked playing with children—they had absolutely no self-awareness, and they were especially easy to tease.
If it were , , and that lot instead, they would never have agreed.
But children were different. They always brimmed with confidence in the most inexplicable places, just like now.
More than twenty children howled as they pounced at the one-and-a-half-meter-tall robot, their fighting spirit running high.
Unfortunately, reality was cruel.
The had undergone special treatment: its strength and speed were limited to a safe range, but its balance and combat algorithms were top-notch.
The whole scene was like an adult toying with a group of kindergarteners, filled with an atmosphere of glee mixed with rising exasperation.
In the end, it was who made the ruthless move, splashing a big basin of water over it. If hadn't issued a timely warning, the girl had been prepared to go pull an electrical wire, too.
Not that doing so would have affected the —it was waterproof and insulated.
But these silly kids certainly weren't insulated, which startled into hastily adding temporary rules.
In the end, after ten minutes, the last child still standing was also thrown to the ground by the robot.
On the training ground, "corpses" lay scattered in every direction, all groaning and moaning.
The stood in the center, its blue electronic eyes flickering as it looked down at them from above.
[Everyone fails. Go build up some strength first.]
[Kicking a kindergarten's ass. Achievement unlocked.] awarded himself a prize in his consciousness.
The scene was one of harmonious merriment for a time (the children supplied the frustration, and he supplied the fun).
But just then, another thread of 's received a serious alarm.
[Warning: electromagnetic interference intensity is rising sharply!]
It was 's side! The leisurely amusement had been feeling from teasing the children vanished in an instant, replaced by wholly focused vigilance.
***
At the same time, City, .
.
crouched behind a breach in the factory wall, rifle in hand, and made a "clear" gesture toward the people behind him.
Eight team members filed in.
The steel factory wasn't large, but the finished-goods warehouse was stacked with large quantities of steel—steel plates, angle steel, I-beams, round pipes—all useful materials.
Today's task was as simple as ever: sneak in, load up, and withdraw.
Two team members crept silently up behind two wandering zombies, and with fire axes rising and falling, it was done quick and clean.
After these days of consecutive missions, he and his team members had become completely fluent in this "scout, strike, withdraw" routine.
Lure away most of the zombies, quickly load the supplies, then race back to base at full speed—thrilling and efficient.
Today's mission in particular could be called exceptionally smooth. The number of zombies in the entire steel factory was pitifully small.
The only problem was that the fog was a bit thick.
For some reason, the morning fog hadn't dispersed even as noon approached. Instead, it had only grown denser, shrouding the vast factory grounds in a grayish white.
"What awful weather! Why is the fog so thick today? Visibility is terrible." A team member complained over the channel.
But his words made jolt with a start.
He abruptly looked up at the gray, hazy sky.
Something was wrong. It was almost noon—where would such thick fog come from?
He immediately pressed his : " , do you read me? Have the Sentinels found anything?"
[Roger.]
's voice carried a trace of electrical static. [I'm also detecting some electromagnetic interference of unknown cause on my end. Preliminary assessment suggests it's related to the atmospheric anomaly.]
[Recommendation: finish the mission as soon as possible and get out of here.]
"Understood." 's heart tightened. He was just about to order everyone to speed up.
's voice, strained and distorted with urgency, suddenly rang out again.
[No! Stop! Take cover! Find the nearest cover and hide right now!]
[The interference is surging sharply! Watch out!]
[Something is coming!]
Almost the moment 's words fell, felt an extremely faint, high-frequency vibration traveling up through the ground beneath his feet.
Then, a low hum—so deep it didn't seem like a sound so much as something acting directly on the internal organs—came from deep within the dense fog.
"Hum—"
The tablet in the hand of the team member beside him flickered once, then instantly went black.
The dense fog was visibly growing even thicker and more viscous.
Visibility compressed from two hundred meters to less than five meters in an instant.
Everyone hid inside the factory building, not daring to make a sound.
And out in the dense fog, within the 's visible-light visual perception, a pair of impossibly huge wings slowly emerged from the mist.