Chapter 38: I want to get pregnant

The place felt like a ‘chamber of eyeballs.’

Hundreds of monitors embedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor stared at me.

Each with a different gaze, each from a different perspective.

I stood alone at the center of it all.

Then, a black sphere wrapped in intricate wires, suspended from the ceiling, spoke to me.

[Greetings, Kang Chanwoo.]

“You… can talk?”

[Correct. Allow me to introduce myself. I am N.E.M.E.S.I.S., one of the early models of the R.P.M. system.]

This was the place Flacia had guided me to.

The enigmatic sphere controlled all the systems in this village.

And I realized—

Ah, so this thing is the true ruler of this underground town.

“Right, so… to fix the circuits, I’ll need direct access to your system. Can you come down for a sec?”

I forced a smile as I spoke.

They say you can’t spit on a smiling face, but I soon learned that doesn’t apply to AI.

[Request denied. This AI is currently in repair mode, restricting unnecessary external access.]

“…Then how am I supposed to fix the circuits?”

[No issue. The village’s primary circuits have already been restored. The remaining deep-layer circuits can self-repair within my operational parameters.]

This AI was more advanced than I’d expected.

Had I known, I wouldn’t have bothered coming all the way down here.

“…Guess I’ll head out, then?”

The contract was technically complete.

My job was to repair the circuits, and that was done.

I glanced back at Flacia.

Her expression was unreadable, but she didn’t seem inclined to let me leave.

…Just as I’d figured.

[Wait. Kang Chanwoo. I have a proposal for you.]

“A proposal?”

[To be precise, this situation could be classified as a ‘deception.’]

[Yet you remain calm. Almost as if you anticipated this.]

“…Yeah, well.”

I’d guessed someone was pulling Flacia’s strings.

I just hadn’t expected it to be an ‘early model’ of R.P.M.

[Shouldn’t you be surprised? I was designed to protect humanity. And yet, here I am, deceiving you.]

“Sure, but…”

I shrugged.

“I’ve seen early R.P.M. models before. You’re not the first of your kind I’ve met.”

[My ‘kind,’ you say?]

“Yeah. Emotionless logic that prioritizes human preservation but ends up undermining humanity itself.”

[Processing… Unable to empathize. However, analysis is possible.]

Anyone who’d played Stellar Child for long enough would recognize the type.

The kind that, under the guise of ‘protecting’ humanity, sought to dismantle and ‘preserve’ them.

AIs that pretended to understand humans better than humans themselves—stripping away emotions, automating reproduction, and even treating the player character as nothing more than a ‘viable specimen’ to be captured.

Fall into their hands, and it was a one-way trip to the factory.

As the memories resurfaced, I slowly raised my head.

“So you want to dismantle my body, is that it?”

But the response wasn’t what I expected.

[That is incorrect. Your assumption is incomprehensible. Why would I do that?]

“…Because R.P.M.’s purpose is human preservation. You’d want to collect physical data, right?”

[Wouldn’t that method inherently result in ‘death’?]

“…Well, yeah.”

[That would be an error.]

“…What?”

This N.E.M.E.S.I.S.—this early R.P.M. model—was different from the AIs I’d encountered before.

[I wish to ‘bear’ your seed, Kang Chanwoo.]

“…Excuse me?”

Suddenly, the atmosphere took a hard turn toward 19+.

Not that Stellar Child was ever shy about mature themes, but this was the first time I’d heard something so blatant.

‘Was it because this was VR?’ The realism was overwhelming.

[I want to understand humanity. And to… give birth to a new kind of human.]

[Humanity’s first act was always ‘reproduction.’ ‘Sex’—it is the condition for survival and the reaction of instinct.]

[But humanity, on the brink of extinction, reached a state where they could no longer even feel pleasure. I believe this was one of the causes of their downfall.]

[Therefore… I intend to merge human genetics with my system to conceive a new form of humanity.]

‘…Wait, what?’

‘Since when did this get so philosophical?’

“Hold on… so, in simple terms?”

Without hesitation, N.E.M.E.S.I.S. replied:

[I will harvest your genetic material until the moment of your death.]

Ha… Well, shit.

[Nervous system stimulation, reproductive gland maintenance, hormonal self-regeneration routine. By activating the prostate and repeating pleasure loops, I will sustain your genetic material in a state of infinite reproducibility.]

“…That’s just dying, isn’t it?!”

[To be precise, the body remains alive, but the consciousness melts away. It’s… ambiguous to definitively call it death.]

“Ambiguity is death!!”

In short, the moment you’re caught, it’s over.

I reflexively tried to run but froze when I turned around.

At the exit—Flacia was standing there.

“Step aside, Flacia.”

“I’m sorry. Truly, I am. But… we can’t refuse that being’s orders.”

“Why?”

“Because without her… we’d all die.”

Flacia’s voice was calm, but there was a tremor in it.

“This place was safe. A small village of just a few hundred people, but we had electricity, systems… a way to survive. And the one maintaining all of it was that AI.”

[Flacia’s explanation is accurate. I am, after all, her life’s savior.]

N.E.M.E.S.I.S.’s cold voice reverberated, and Flacia fell silent for a moment.

Then, quietly, she spoke again.

“I… was deployed to Earth centuries ago as a second-generation android from R.P.M.”

Her tone was steady, but it carried the weight of too many tangled emotions.

“Back then, humanity was already extinct… Our mission was simply to clean up the aberrant lifeforms. There was a secondary order to secure any survivors, but in reality, it was practically a suicide mission.”

She paused, steadying her breath as she dredged up fragments of memory.

“Reality was far more horrifying than we imagined. We lacked the technology, the equipment… and above all, there were too few of us.”

“My comrades were infected one by one. Some self-destructed, unable to endure the pain. Others lost their sense of self as their emotional control circuits collapsed.”

As she spoke, Flacia unconsciously gripped her own arm.

The faint tremors of her unstable circuits flickered, mirroring the echoes of that time.

“I… was also on the verge of infection.”

She lowered her head slightly and continued.

“I barely escaped to the surface, my body corroded, and found my way into these tunnels. And the one who saved me here… was that being.”

The control AI slumbering in the heart of the abandoned bunker—N.E.M.E.S.I.S.

Had it not been for that entity, she wouldn’t be standing here now.

That was the confession of a being who had survived for centuries in these forgotten tunnels.

“Flacia…”

Then—

Snap.

“Ghk—?!”

Wires surged from all directions, coiling around me like electrified tentacles and lifting me into the air.

[For humanity’s sake. We must become one, Kang Chanwoo.]

The tendrils burrowed deeper.

The wires enveloping my body began to vibrate intensely, and hundreds of monitors simultaneously flashed toward me.

At this rate, my mind and body would be completely consumed.

“No, wait—I don’t do monitors, okay?!”

I struggled, but the tendrils only tightened.

Then—

***

Bzzzt!

The space, once humming with cold electricity, shuddered violently.

[Error. Error. Emotional circuit anomaly detected. Filter conflict… Emotional wave. System… disruption—Error! Error!]

The monitors flickered, their screens distorting with graphical glitches.

[Huh?]

The sphere before me wavered for the first time.

Dozens of monitors flashed erratically, and a hint of confusion bled into the mechanical voice.

I smirked.

“Gotcha.”

Crossing my arms, I exuded the calm of a seasoned veteran.

“Knew this would happen.”

N.E.M.E.S.I.S. continued to tremble, spewing error logs, while the tendrils flailed uselessly in the air.

“When you were repairing your circuits earlier…”

I tilted my head slightly.

“I planted an emotional filter in your core data node.”

[Emotional… filter? Emotional noise. Abnormal response. Cannot comprehend.]

“An AI’s weakness is always the same.”

I flicked one of the tendrils.

Electricity crackled as it loosened and slid away.

“Not logic, but emotion. Not information… but emotional waves. And the source of those waves is…”

I turned slowly.

“Lila. I asked the girl with the richest emotional reactions to handle it.”

“L-Lila?!”

Even the machine seemed to recognize something akin to fear.

[Ghk—!]

N.E.M.E.S.I.S. writhed, its body contorting under the onslaught of bug-like emotional data.

Still, it refused to yield.

[Calculating… Ignoring errors. Seed acquisition prioritized.]

The tendrils lunged for me again.

But then—

Slash.

“Right on schedule, as planned, Chanwoo!”

“Finally, a fight. By the way, last I checked… at this point, Serika was sucking her thumb in her sleep.”

My escorts, Levi and Serika, had arrived.

In an instant, they severed the wires and freed me.