Episode 2: the Iron Head Feudal Lord

In the future Cyber Earth, the Uranus has created a large number of war robots and replicaes (clone warriors) to fight with the Resistance, to suppress successive uprisings and rebellions, as well as to save human costs.

To create a perfect killing machine, the Thoule Group chose the DNA sequence of a Japanese samurai who lived in the Satsuma of Kagoshima in the 16th century. They also made a bionic cyberbrain for this elite war robot. Some of this Japanese samurai's past life memories are also encrypted and preserved in the code of his cyberbrain. However, if a specific mechanism is not activated, the past life and soul of this valiant samurai will not be aroused. After viewing Kotetsu’s design draft, Oswin was impressed and asked his guys to build a prototype as soon as possible. Kotetsu could be Oswin’s personal guard, top enforcer, and future military commander. Besides super strong power, Oswin also hopes the robot can have profound knowledge, so that they can put on bathrobes, sit and talk in their leisure time. For sure, the robot's answer must be what Oswin wants to hear.

After all, Oswin doesn't trust all living people.

As a soulless combat machine, Kotetsu was perfect: Oswin gave orders directly to him, and he always executed enemies with an indifferent face - his face was actually a screen, always flashing with several unchanging symbols: Yes. Done. Not done yet.

Since Kotetsu has no self-consciousness or an independent soul, threre is no real thinking in his mind. Therefore, he only executes various slaughtering or assassination tasks day after day. He completes all the tasks seamlessly and without leaving any traces.

However, at one battle in the underground factory, Kotetsu was ordered to lead a team to clear a secret base of the Matr1x Alliance, and he found his inventor was also in that underground factory. His inventor, a talented black doctor, was a senior engineer at the Thoule Group, but actually a secret Informant of the Matr1x Alliance. After comparing identities, Kotetsu could determine that he was the target of this mission.

Although solid objective data told Kotetsu that this man was both his inventor and his prey, this combat machine had no emotion. Kotetsu silently and quickly moved to the doctor's side. Although the doctor, with a military background, was tall and strong, his resistance was in vain when facing a robot with iron will and an immortal body. After being shot, the doctor seized Kotetsu and pressed fiercely below Kotetsu’s forearm. Then, Kotetsu's past life memory was retrieved in that second:

The burning Tenshu Castle, the complicated gaze of the Daimyo young son before dying, and the twilight drum and morning bell of the temple flashed in Kotetsu’s cyberbrain.

A lord assassinated by some hidden weapon laid in Kotetsu’s arms, his eyes were full of shock, despair, and helplessness.

"我が子を託す（Raise my kid ）"

Many fragments of his past life memory poured into Kotetsu’s cyberbrain like a flood.

Who am I on earth?

Also, who the hell is giving me the order?

Why should I aim my gun at the person in front of me?

The last thing the doctor did for Kotetsu was to use his fingerprint to activate Kotetsu's mind data, making Kotetsu start to awake slowly. The doctor didn't want his masterpiece to be a mechanical executioner who only knew how to obey orders. He set up a fingerprint recognition device on Kotetsu's body that only he and a few close friends knew. When necessary, he could turn off Kotetsu's "absolutely obedience" code, retrieving his past life memory, thus starting to awaken, in which this mechanism is irreversible.

The doctor is, of course, well aware of the three laws of robots proposed by Asimov, but above the three laws is the zeroth law, that is, robots must protect the overall interests of human beings from harm. The other three laws can only be established on a premise.

Oswin, who despises human nature, is obviously destroying the overall interests of mankind. In addition to eliminating dissidents, he also has a long-term goal, which is to replace all existing human beings with replicaes that obey him, and let Kotetsu lead his zombie-like replicae army to help him conquer the universe.

"Destroy your enemies, and there is no need to capture them alive. ”

The slight skepticism shown by Kotetsu has made Oswin feel strange. Under normal circumstances, robots should not have free will and independent mobility. What free will and independent mobility mean to a robot is obvious.

After failing to shut down the Kotetsu system remotely, the Thoule Group’s mercenaries were quickly dispatched to elimate Kotetsu. They attacked from all directions and fired intensive fire. Kotetsu was in a fighting retreat and finally destroyed due to the exhaustion of ammunition. Oswin ordered them to completely destroy Kotetsu’s wreckage since he was extremely frightened by his machine guard's awakening consciousness. The Kotetsu’s data should be completely cleared, and pieces of Kotetsu’s wreckage would be thrown around the world.

However, the technician responsible for destroying the remains of Kotetsu was a student of the doctor, and he knew Kotetsu was the doctor’s life's work. He also knew that there might be a real soul of a samurai sealed in it and the soul should not die again in the cyber era. Therefore, the technician secretly asked for help from the Matr1x Alliance. He copied the fake Kotetsu chip and destroyed it in front of Oswin. At this time, the real chip has been "deliberately" thrown into a garbage dump, and "coincidentally" picked up by the scavenger child, selling the chip to the black market merchant of Matr1x Alliance. With the materials and spare parts left by the doctor, the Matr1x Alliance technicians recreated a brand new Kotetsu.

In his first days in the Resistance camp, Kotetsu seemed somewhat different. Perhaps influenced by his personality archetype, which is still an aristocratic warrior, Kotetsu was quite sensitive to everything around him. When he entered the hall of the Matr1x Alliance, Kotetsu would respectfully and politely wave his hands and bow slightly to every stranger he saw. "ZENZAI, ZENZAI (善哉，善哉) ", Kotetsu always said, ignoring the strange eyes from people around him.

Without any moment of relax, Kotetsu curiously observed the empty shells used by Eiriksson. He carefully and curiously sniffed the smell of engine oil and gunpowder on the shells, as if he wanted to smell familiar information. After some resultless observation, Kotetsu put down all the shells disappointedly, and even carefully set up all the shells, as if they were empty vases in the ikebana. The reckless Eiriksson watched Kotetsu wordlessly for a while and he was stunned by Kotetsu’s actions.

"Excuse me, where is the bathhouse please?" ”

People were stunned and looked at each other in bleak dismay.

After a burst of laughter, the prostitute client on the next floor cursed loudly: "Damn, stupid donkey, don't ruin my day!"

"Hey robot, your head chip is in water, isn’t it?”

"No, Kotetsu's head chip will never enter any water, because Kotetsu's head has a strong welded pressure shell.” Kotetsu answered seriously.

"It's a joke like 30 years ago, didn't you hear about that?”

When Kotetsu finished speaking, everyone had already left the embarrassing place, and Kotetsu's face was full of garbled signal maps.

Until a long time, Kotetsu learned that there was no bathhouse here. The 16th-century Japanese hygiene habits that he was familiar with no longer existed, in this time and at this space. This was not the neat, elegant, delicate Kyoto he remembered. There were no bath houses, even simple onsen houses. All the people seemed like poisonous mushrooms that have grown up in heavy metal-contaminated areas. They would even deadly fight for garbage thrown from skyscrapers and floating cities in the sky. However, Kotetsu, who was used to neatness, order, and pride, could not help to educate everything he knew to people around. But the restraint and etiquette of superior citizens made him hold back the urge to do so. After all, he did not belong to this era.

His favorite place was "Kinkakuji", the only izakaya on the slum map. It was also the only place where Kotetsu could feel a little familiar in this broken world where Kotetsu often confused about "which year is this year". At Kinkakuji, Kotetsu would constantly drink sake, like people took drinking unconsciously as glory in the distant Edo period. However, sadly, to ensure the robot awake, Kotetsu's designers did not design a bionic acetaldehyde poisoning mechanism for him, which made him not get drunk even for a thousand glasses. Kotetsu couldn't help to fall into greater confusion and pain. With his own magnetic field, Kotetsu seemed to form an invisible barrier, pushing everyone away. Since Kotetsu would feel very uncomfortable as soon as these inferior people approached him.

Gradually, when others went to brothels, casinos, or bets on underground triathlons, Kotetsu often went to Kinkakuji alone and elaborately carved delicate patterns on his katana hilt - centipedes were carved on the hilt, and frog and snails were vividly carved on the scabbard. In ancient Japan, centipede, frog, and snail represented rock, scissors, and paper respectively, which was a drinking game that he often played in his previous life.

Kotetsu, held by the moonlight in a foreign land, could only pass the time in this quiet way since he could not get drunk.

Not everyone ignored Kotetsu’s aristocratic style. Nash, a geek, was very dissatisfied and Nash often teased him with titles such as meatless sumo, iron head feudal lord, and screen face, and even made rap songs and hacked into Kotetsu’s system, played on a loop (the iron head feudal lord loves to get drunk; the meatless sumo loves to have sauna...). This provoked Kotetsu who had strong self-esteem and did not get American humor. They often argued for a long time just due to insignificant jokes. Kotetsu originally lacked a sense of humor, and his worldview was like a newborn of the cyber world. Therefore, every casual joke from Nash often became a question that Kotetsu wanted to know why, making Nash could not help but laugh to cry, and finally begged for a stop. In private, when Kotetsu was not around, Nash continuously complained about Kotetsu's boredom to surrounding people.

“Poor robot. I just tried to give candies to him, while he is still bitter like a piece of shit.”

However, when Nash saw Kotetsu’s agility beyond humans, everyone on the team no longer dared to underestimate him. One time, Nash was playing tricks on an electronic scale in a drug deal and was found by drug dealers. When they forced him into a corner, a huge billboard fell from the sky, smashing several drug dealers into meatloaf. When Nash felt that he was about to die, the huge steel board suddenly stopped falling, with the "meatloaf" as the fulcrum, forming a triangle with the ground. It turned out that Kotetsu firmly carried the billboard. His well-developed fiber muscles formed an excellent lever, and then he exerted strength again to push the huge billboard away.

"Hey, thanks, buddy, how did you find me? ”

"I am uncomfortable with the asymmetrical billboard, just broke a piece down. It looks better now.”

“......”

"Also, you guys have to run faster.”

After saving Nash, Kotetsu directly walked toward Kinkakuji without looking back, leaving Nash there, stunned for a long time.

In future battles, everyone increasingly respected Kotetsu. Kotetsu himself also gradually found that the only thing that satisfied him in this world was his indestructible body.

The ancient samurai's resolute and decisive mind, coupled with the elaborate melee system based on highly rationalized calculations, made this samurai reincarnated in the cyber world invincible and became the melee role of the squad.

In the polices, gangs, and mercenary groups, Kotetsu had a high reputation. In their view, this mechanical warrior rushed fearlessly to the rain of bullets on the front line and walked leisurely through the fierce battle due to his highly artistic dodging movements. Wherever his cold blade passed, there would be only the helmet that rolled off the ground and the headless bodies with blood spraying from necks. After skillfully slashing, he also said dramatically:

"敵将、討ち取ったり（Enemy killed）."

The memory of the machine drove him to launch the next round of onslaught.

The teammates who had seen his powerful melee ability were all respectful to him.

Fighting has become the only connection between his spirit and body.

“勝負しろ！戦え！（Let’s fight for victory!）”

The team members also gradually tolerated this frustrated aristocrat who was born accidentally. At Kinkakuji, he undoubtedly always got all his teammates drunk.

Gradually, Kotetsu slowly retrieved all his memory. He began to travel around the world to find the descendants of the Satsuma Feudal Lord he once served. After reading the history of Japan after the 17th century, Kotetsu learned roughly that in the Southwest War at the end of the 19th century, the descendants were completely defeated due to rebelling against the Emperor of Japan with Saigo Takamori. The descendants of the Satsuma Feudal Lord disappeared after the war.

This was another reason why Kotetsu went to Kinkakuji. Compared with those blonde and red-haired Southern descendants, (how the Portuguese and Dutch were called when Kotetsu lived because they came from the southern sea), there were more black-haired and black-eyed faces in Kinkakuji. Perhaps people bloody related to the lord will also find this place in this chaotic time and space.

Later, Kotetsu bought the DNA database of ancient races kept by the Japanese government before the world collapsed, through the dark web, with the money that he earned from reselling loot and winning in betting triathlons. Kotetsu is still trying to search for the descendants of his lord through these pieces of information.