Chapter 481: Vegapunk's Artificial Humans
What was happening inside the Navy Science Division was unknown to Brett. He stayed quietly at Fish-Man Island, watching the World Government's movements from a distance.
The Government's mass recruitment had kicked into high gear, casting a net across the entire world in search of exceptional strength.
Brett had friends and business partners spread across every sea. Nothing classified, but enough to get a general picture of what was happening. The Navy's new recruitment drive had indeed brought in a considerable number of fresh soldiers. But among them, nothing remotely close to what the World Government was hoping for had appeared yet.
A waste of effort, was his assessment.
The world simply didn't have an endless supply of extraordinary fighters hiding in obscurity, biding their time, waiting to enlist on behalf of the World Government. The fact that they'd found both Fujitora and Ryokugyu during the last drive had already been a remarkable stroke of luck. Expecting to repeat that was desperation more than strategy.
Though, thinking about it, the pressure he had placed on them probably had something to do with it. They had deployed their ultimate weapon and still hadn't been able to finish him off. The Five Elders were likely in a state they hadn't experienced in eight hundred years.
And honestly, even if they did manage to recruit two more Admirals, it wouldn't matter all that much. The final war was going to be decided by the ancient weapons. The contributions that individual human fighters could make, however powerful, were limited in that context. He was fairly certain that having two extra Akainus and Aokijis during the chase wouldn't have turned the tide. It would have just cost a few more blasts to deal with.
The Government and the Five Elders were clearly rattled. They had never faced an enemy quite like this before, and their instinct was to throw manpower at the problem because they didn't know what else to throw.
That was fine by him.
He didn't interfere. Time passed in its unhurried way.
About a month later, word came from Vegapunk's laboratory.
Results.
Brett went immediately.
"This is something else entirely."
Tesoro looked around the experimental facility tucked deep within the Forest of the Sea, taking in the sight with undisguised surprise.
Five enormous cultivation columns stood at the center of the room, each one appearing to be made from some extremely high-grade glass material. They were filled to the top with green liquid, and within that liquid floated five distinct figures.
Some were male, some female. Some appeared human, some mechanical. Each one bore a different number on their body, running from 02 to 06. The one thing they all had in common was the network of wiring connecting them to the columns, a tangle of cables and conduits whose purpose was not immediately obvious.
"So these are the satellite bodies you've built for yourself, Doctor?"
Tesoro turned to look at Vegapunk, who was standing nearby.
The old scientist had lost half his head at some point in the process, and seemed to have found the appearance somewhat inconvenient, because he'd fitted a cap over the top of it in the shape of an apple's stem, with a small antenna running up from it to maintain wireless connection to his brain.
"Precisely!" Vegapunk's satisfaction was evident. "Six satellites in total. Combined with myself, that makes seven Vegapunks. Work efficiency goes up sevenfold immediately!"
"Three and a half times," said the other figure standing nearby, with the tone of someone who had made this correction before. There had already been one satellite before this batch.
This one looked different from how Brett remembered him. His connection to Vegapunk's brain had apparently changed something in his appearance. He wore a helmet visor that obscured his face entirely, but the number 01 was clearly visible on him.
"Ha ha, don't worry about the small details, Shaka."
Vegapunk laughed it off.
"Shaka?" Brett looked at the satellite with some curiosity.
"Those are the names the old man gave them!" Franky, who had been cheerfully calibrating equipment on the other side of the room, jumped in with obvious enthusiasm. He was in his element here. "Number one is Shaka, who embodies Virtue! Number two is Lilith, who embodies Evil! Number three is Edison, who embodies Thought! Number four is Pythagoras, who embodies Wisdom! Number five is Atlas, who embodies Violence! And number six is York, who embodies Desire!"
He introduced each of them in turn, pointing to the figures in the columns.
Aside from Shaka, Lilith was a striking woman with short hair. Edison and Pythagoras were both robotic in form, distinguished mainly by the fact that Edison had a very large head and Pythagoras a considerably smaller one. Atlas and York were both humanoid female forms. Atlas was tall with a young, almost childlike face, while York had the same kind of mature, striking presence as Lilith.
Brett paid their appearances less attention than their names. He was more curious about something else entirely. These names, Edison, Pythagoras, were these people who had actually existed in this world? They had to have come from somewhere. You couldn't just invent names like those from nothing.
"Let's wake them up already!" Franky could barely contain himself. His admiration for Vegapunk was the kind that lit up his whole face, and Vegapunk had apparently taken a genuine liking to him in return, never hesitating to share his work and his thinking with the young shipwright.
"Right then." Vegapunk gave a firm nod. "Franky, activate their bodies."
"On it!"
Franky sprinted to the nearest control panel with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting for this moment all day, and threw the lever.
Visibly, the figures inside all five columns began to tremble slightly.
"They were created using Lineage Factor technology combined with mechanical engineering," Vegapunk explained, watching the columns closely as he spoke. "Their bodies are part mechanical, part biological. They possess life, but they do not possess consciousness. So the final step is this."
He drew a long breath. "Shaka. Inject the consciousness."
Shaka nodded.
Brett wasn't sure what exactly he did, but a moment later there was a faint hum, low and constant, and when he turned toward the sound he found its source: the original Vegapunk's brain, encased in its mechanical housing at the center of the laboratory, was trembling slightly, its outer shell alive with shifting light.
Vegapunk had explained Shaka's nature to Brett before. He was, in essence, a second consciousness that Vegapunk had constructed from the excess capacity of his own extraordinary brain, then projected wirelessly into a physical body. An artificial intelligence, in practical terms.
And now that same brain was going to push five more AI consciousnesses into five new bodies simultaneously.
The cultivation columns shook hard.
Beside Brett, Tesoro had gone completely still. He seemed to have stopped breathing, as though afraid that even the sound of an exhale might disturb the experiment.
His worry turned out to be unnecessary.
Because in the next instant, all five figures inside the columns opened their eyes at once.
Five distinct sets of thoughts reached Brett simultaneously.
It worked.