Qin Minghui's schistosomiasis was cured, and what followed was a period of slow recuperation. After all, her previous recurrence of the disease had put a great burden on her body.
It was the elderly who recovered faster. They used a new drug developed by Qin Minghui, which had very low risks, and everyone successfully passed the critical period.
"That is to say, we can go out freely now and no longer be afraid of bloodworm infection?" The old people were still a little dizzy and could not believe that the disease that had troubled them for so many years was cured just like that.
"Yes." 01 said, "After you are cured of schistosomiasis, your body will have produced antibodies and will not be infected again."
He was wearing a white coat and had just come out of the laboratory.
Since Qin Minghui escaped from danger a few days ago, 01 has been more actively studying human medicine, with one of his bodies immersed in the laboratory every day, studying hard. He has learned how to make and dispense medicines, master surgical operations, and even use cells to cultivate healthy organs... 01 has done research on all of them.
"Since Miss will be using this human body for a long time, I must learn to take good care of Miss's body so that she will not be troubled by illness." 01 said to Qin Minghui.
He is no longer wearing the mask. Under the cat face and dog face masks, they are the same face. The two bodies look exactly the same, except for the occasional different clothes.
This body, which studies human medicine, usually wears an extra white coat and stores many emergency medicines in its body.
He brought the newly made ointment to Qin Minghui's room. Another body wearing a suit and vest was sitting by the bed peeling fruit.
"Miss, I'll go make you something to eat." Suit vest 01 put down the peeled fruit and stood up to go out, while white coat 01 naturally stepped forward and began to remove Qin Minghui's bandages.
“Miss, this improved ointment has a great blood-dissolving function and can also repair the skin. The marks left by these schistosomiasis will soon disappear.” said White Coat 01.
Qin Minghui was lying on the bed reading a book when she saw the scene of the two bodies completing the handover. It was normal that the two bodies did not communicate with each other, after all, they were the same person, and it would be strange for them to greet themselves.
But Qin Minghui hasn't gotten used to it yet, and every time she sees such a scene, she feels a little confused.
In fact, 01 could have made the two bodies exactly the same, swapped them without Qin Minghui noticing, but he made them look the same but wanted to differentiate them in their clothing. Every swap had to be done under Qin Minghui's nose so that she would know clearly that it was a different body.
Regarding this habit, 01 said, "This way the little lady's reaction is more interesting."
Qin Minghui had to tolerate some of his little preferences, after all, 01 was just a little naughty.
01While applying the ointment on her, she suddenly blushed.
"01? Why is it blushing? Is it going to burn out due to overload?" Qin Minghui was worried.
01 said: "No, it's because I found out that I missed it before. In this situation, I feel shy, but I don't show it in my body. So the young lady can't feel my mood very well, so I added the facial micro-expression and body reaction system."
After the experiment, Qin Minghui said that this reaction system was amazing and the simulation was very realistic and vivid.
But the reaction was too sensitive and real, which also caused trouble for 01, and he had to adjust his sensitivity.
Qin Minghui: "01, you are cheating."
01 said seriously, "Young lady, 01 is just a robot. It is normal for the data to need constant adjustment."
Finally, after a harmonious discussion, the two decided that the young lady would be in charge of adjusting these data.
After she recovered, Qin Minghui put on the agenda the large-scale production of medicine to treat blood-sucking worms. Before that, they needed a large amount of raw materials, the most important of which was the white insect nest tissue that 01 brought back last time.
"We need a larger and more lethal robot," said Qin Minghui.
"There is one." When 01 said this, Qin Minghui understood what he was talking about.
The former capital of the Mechanical Kingdom, the Riser Robot, is now sleeping in this area. If it is activated, this legendary robot may be able to completely destroy the insect nest.
"I'll go discuss this with Grandma Hui and the others." Qin Minghui said this, but she wasn't sure. She tried to ask, and then she heard Grandma Hui say, "Hasn't your 01 already activated some of the functions of Ruiser?"
Grandma Li Ze laughed and said, "Hui means she agreed... This is a good thing. If we can completely eliminate the source of infection, it will be great."
Grandma Hui: "Whether those people can live on the ground again has nothing to do with us. The main thing is that 01 can now activate the Ruiser by himself, so why is he asking us?"
The attitudes of the rest of the people were mostly neither agreeing nor opposing. During this period, they had experienced many changes, and their previous insistence had loosened a lot. Now this attitude was already a huge improvement.
"Go ahead, we can't control you." The administrator, Grandma Hui, made the final decision.
After the heavy snow, the mountains and forests were covered with a layer of silver. In the severe winter, most living things hid in caves, much quieter than in other seasons, but on this day, the ground shook and cracked, and the mountain that formed a semi-enclosed area suddenly rose, and the originally turbulent river changed its course in the blink of an eye due to the huge drop.
Above the earth, a giant oval object slowly rose up. It looked like an alien warship, or a smaller planet that had landed on the ground.
The surface of the ellipse was smooth, as if it was not stained by dust. After it floated up, its bottom just brushed the treetops on the ground.
"Is this 'Ruiser'?" Qin Minghui looked at the huge machine that looked like a celestial body in shock. She couldn't imagine how such a machine was made. It seemed like a product from outer space.
An equally huge sinkhole was left on the ground. Standing on the edge and looking down, one could only see darkness, which seemed to be bottomless.
The entire village was taken into Reiser when it rose from the ground.
Qin Minghui and her grandparents entered Ruiser and came to the control area. The internal structure of Ruiser was extremely complicated. Without 01's guidance, Qin Minghui felt that she would need to figure out how to reach the control area for a long time.
At first, she was going to destroy the bloodworm nest alone with 01. After all, this was somewhat dangerous and required a lot of hard work. But Grandma Hui stopped her with a word. She said, "If we don't go with you, what if you mess up and cause damage to Rui Se?"
Grandma Li Ze quietly explained to her: "She is mainly worried about you. You haven't recovered yet."
Qin Minghui smiled: "I know."
When they arrived at the control area, Qin Minghui discovered that in order to fully activate the Ruiser and enable the weapons on the Ruiser, in addition to the main control center that 01 was fully controlling, there were actually twelve control consoles that required twelve pilots to operate together.
The old people here now, including her, made a total of twelve people. This was simply like fate.
Grandma Hui stood on a console and sneered at 01: "No matter how arrogant you are, you still need a group of old men and women like us to assist you. If you are capable, you can drive Rui Se away by yourself."
01 was silent for a moment, then said, "I will study the new system and try to control twelve bodies at once!"
Qin Minghui was startled and shouted nervously: "01 calm down! You don't have to be like this!"
Grandma Hui: "Why are you so nervous? He is joking."
Qin Minghui held her forehead and thought of something terrible.
The giant oval was finally fully activated, and a layer of light circles appeared on its surface, one after another, circling from the bottom of the oval to the middle. These energy bands lifted Riser up and flew towards the bloodworm nest.
Ruise was suspended above the bloodworm nest. The white nest, which originally looked huge, actually looked small in comparison with Ruise.
The clearer detection equipment transmitted the images below to them, and Qin Minghui saw clearly the deserted city that she had glanced at last time.
The bloodworm nest was lingering in a city left over from before the catastrophe, which was full of red plants. Qin Minghui had once thought whether this new red plant could be a drug to treat schistosomiasis. Now she could see clearly how these red plants grew.
—At their roots are some rotten things, and vaguely human shapes can be seen.
It turned out to be a human corpse infected with schistosomiasis.
"After dying of schistosomiasis, the body completely decays. After a long period of time, even the bones begin to dissolve, and red plants like this begin to grow." Grandma Hui said, "In our village, someone died of schistosomiasis and was not destroyed. Decades later, the body became like this. I tried to use this plant to make medicine, but found that it is also a source of infection and cannot be suppressed. It will aggravate the disease."
Grandma Hui had made many attempts to develop inhibitory drugs, and that was one of her failed attempts.
There were many bloodworms collecting juice from those red plants, and they probably fed on this juice. Qin Minghui thought of the safe zone she had been to. Perhaps after a long time, there would be fewer and fewer people in the safe zone, and they would all be infected with schistosomiasis. In another hundred years, there would be a field of red plants growing there, and by then, another food field for the bloodworms would be formed.
She even guessed why bloodworms are attracted to humans. They are attracted by the smell of "unripe food" emitted by people suffering from schistosomiasis.
If the two sides are allowed to remain in this stalemate, the extinction of mankind seems to be a foreseeable outcome.
Qin Minghui took a deep breath and gave the command: "01, start."
[Yes, little miss.] 01 in the main control replied.
Dazzling light flashed in the cracks and grooves on the outside of Ruiser, like a criss-crossing knife cutting through the insect nest below. The attacked insect nest suddenly unfolded all its folds, and a blanket of red bloodworms flew out of the nest and attacked Ruiser.
Dense red covered half of Reiser, and layer after layer was destroyed by laser fire and fell from the sky.
The flames, the broken bloodworm limbs, the disintegrating insect nest... everything ended at dusk.
There was no longer a single bloodworm that could fly. The ground was covered with black and red burnt ash. The white ash gushing out of the insect nest and the falling snow slowly covered the layer of bloodworm corpses.
…
…
…
"Later, we killed all the blood-sucking worms, destroyed the worm nests, and developed new medicines. 01 and I left our grandparents and went to several safe areas to deliver medicines."
Qin Minghui sat by the bunker outside the South Security Zone and told the children, "I told them that the bloodworms have been eradicated and that after injecting this medicine, they no longer have to worry about schistosomiasis and can live on the ground again... But they didn't seem to believe me."
A group of children, led by Qi Ling, listened while eating. Qi Ling bit his food in confusion: "Why don't you believe it? The medicine really works. We are all healed. Look at our hands and feet. The marks are fading! 01 also said that our grandfather will get better too. We really don't have to worry about schistosomiasis anymore!"
Qin Minghui: "It's normal for people who have been hiding underground for a long time to be afraid. When everyone finds out that everything is fine, they will gradually move out and live outside."
In the South Safety Zone, Huang Hua and her group, who call her the boss, have decided to build an above-ground city nearby. They believe that with their leadership, more and more people will return to the surface from underground in the near future.
One day, traces of human beings will reappear on this land.
"Sister, do you want to stay here and build the city on the ground?"
"No, I will leave after I send you and your grandfather to Grandma Hui and the others. 01 and I still have many places to visit."
"Sister, can we really live well there?"
"Of course, that's your grandfather's hometown, it's my hometown, and it will be your hometown in the future as well."
"Then sister, will you go back there?"
"Of course, I will go back to visit you all often."
Most people don’t know much about the girl and her giant robot, nor have they seen it. They only know that her appearance has brought vitality and hope to people, allowing them to start a new life.
The legend of the girl and the robot appears in various versions of history. There is no accurate answer about her origin and identity. It’s just that when people first built cities on the earth, many people went to explore farther places. When they came back, they said that they had seen the giant robot on the road.
"I saw a kite tied to that robot. Maybe that girl was flying the kite on it?"
"I saw that girl with a man. They were probably a couple, walking hand in hand by the lake. The big robot? Of course I saw the big robot, too. It was parked nearby."
"I've seen one before, too. I walked closer to take a look. It was a really big robot with a garden on top of its head. It was really beautiful."
…
And in the secluded mechanical country, there are also some records about the ending of Girls und Robot 01.
It is said that when her little lady was about to die, Robot 01 transformed her into a robot, but not long after, for unknown reasons, he destroyed the robot along with himself.
It is said that Qin Minghui died of old age as a human, and her robot 01 did not try to turn her into a robot as well. She turned off robot 01 before she died.
It is also said that Qin Minghui eventually succeeded in becoming a robot with a long lifespan, and traveled to many places with her 01, and finally fell asleep together somewhere.
…
What the real situation was, people many years later can no longer trace it.
Just at this moment, the tall robot passed through the mountains and forests, holding the little person in his hands. They walked away against the wind on the green grass of spring.
For them, the happy time is still very long.
(End of the sixth short story)