I must protect him

I couldn't hold back my laughter at the time!

A six-year-old little guy who hasn't even learned all his characters yet, actually saying he wants to join the company as a researcher?

And just to build a "silver-haired big sister"?

So cute!

I picked him up and planted two kisses on his face.

He pushed me away, saying, "Mom, stop kissing me, stop kissing me," while his two little legs kicked vigorously in the air.

That stubborn and embarrassed little look of his really made it impossible to keep the corners of my mouth down!

Sigh, my silly son, where on earth did this obsession of yours come from?

...

November 16, Year XXXX.

Last night, Ah Chu was too busy working overtime. He spent the whole night at the lab and didn't come home.

Today he finally came back, and the moment he walked through the door, Xiao Qi clung to him.

I told Ah Chu about what happened yesterday.

I said Xiao Qi wanted to join the company as a researcher to personally build a silver-haired big sister!

Ah Chu didn't laugh at Xiao Qi, though.

He was very serious. He squatted down, held Xiao Qi's shoulders with both hands, looked his son straight in the eye, and said it was still too early for this sort of thing, and that he should wait until he grew up to consider it.

Xiao Qi was immediately unhappy upon hearing this.

His little face was clearly written all over with defiance, and his mouth was pouting high!

Then, an idea suddenly popped into my head!

I said, Xiao Qi, although you can't join the company, you can study hard in your school's art class!

Draw the silver-haired big sister in your heart!

The prettier you draw her, the better!

The more detailed you draw her, the better!

When the time comes, your dad will use your design blueprints to create the silver-haired big sister for you!

To my surprise, the little guy was instantly convinced by my words!

He immediately ignored his dad, came over to pester me, and demanded I sign him up for an extracurricular art class!

He even argued plausibly that the school's art class only taught them to draw the sun, trees, and houses, and didn't teach them how to draw big sisters at all! So the school's art class was useless!

I laughed right then and said, how sad your art teacher would be to hear you say that!

But then I thought about it, enrolling him in an art class wouldn't be a bad thing, right?

Drawing can train patience and cultivate aesthetic taste!

Having his little hands, which are always rubbing against who knows what all day long, hold a paintbrush is definitely better than him rubbing them all over the sofa!

Moreover...

Did I accidentally discover a hobby for Xiao Qi?

Will he really become more and more interested in drawing in the future and embark on an artistic path?

Become an art student! And ultimately become a painter!

If that really happens, then as his mom, I will definitely have to brag about it!

The great painter Fang Qi, who was his enlightenment teacher?

His mother!

If it weren't for a single sentence from his mom back then, he would never have started learning to draw!

Of course, it's also possible that this is just a passing fad for him.

Whatever!

As long as Xiao Qi likes it!

Besides, keeping him quiet for a while is a good thing.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to handle him pestering us every day asking when the silver-haired big sister will be ready.

This is the perfect chance to let him study drawing techniques properly!

When the time comes and he draws some illegible scribbles, it will let him know that "creation" is not that easy!

And so it was happily decided!

...

May 20, Year XXXX.

Oh my god!

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!

This brat, he actually drew it!

Hasn't Xiao Qi been taking the art class for over half a year now? Before, every time he came home, he would doodle in his little notebook.

Sometimes he would draw a crooked circle and call it a head, and sometimes he would draw two lines and call them arms.

Every time, I would perfunctorily praise him a bit, saying he drew so well!

He probably knew I was being perfunctory too, because he would get very dissatisfied every time, hug his little notebook, let out a hmph, and run away.

But today was different!

Today after school, he came back from his art class with an extremely solemn expression!

Wearing his backpack, he stood in front of me and carefully took out a piece of drawing paper from it.

On that drawing paper was actually a drawing of a silver-haired girl!

He drew it with quite a lot of effort!

The little silver-haired beauty in the picture really looked quite pretty.

The lines were still a bit crooked, the proportions of the head and body were a bit strange, and the slender figure looked like a patchwork of several geometric shapes...

It was probably a composition method he just learned in art class, but this talent is indeed a bit...

Sigh, it seems there is no hope of being the enlightenment mother of a painter.

But that's not important!

What's important is that he drew the eyes!

What Xiao Qi depicted most carefully were these eyes.

One eye was yellow, dotted stroke by stroke with a lemon-yellow colored pencil, as if he was trying to draw some kind of... gemstone reflection?

The other eye was red, drawn on the right side, using a crimson watercolor pen.

He drew that eye slightly curved, different from the other one, as if it were smiling, or perhaps plotting some mischievous idea.

In short, it gave off a slightly wicked feeling!

He couldn't draw the long silver hair well, so he just drew lots and lots of silver lines on the paper.

He also added many markers, with annotations written next to them in crooked handwriting.

Next to the left eye, he drew a tiny arrow and wrote "like an amber gemstone."

Next to the right eye, he also drew a small arrow and wrote "like crimson flames."

This brat, his choice of words is quite sophisticated!

He's only a little over seven years old, where did he learn all these adjectives!

I held that piece of paper, looked at it for a long time, and then looked at him.

He was looking up at me with his little face, both nervous and expectant, his little fists clenched tightly at his sides!

So, I praised him profusely!

I said, Xiao Qi, you are really amazing!

You drew it so well, Mommy is so touched!

Mommy will take good care of this drawing and keep it forever!

When you grow up, we will use this design blueprint to make the silver-haired big sister for you!

Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief, and a huge smile bloomed on his little face!

He was missing a front tooth, but he was incredibly cute!

I then immediately took this drawing to show Ah Chu.

Ah Chu was sitting at his desk in the study at the time, buried in reading a lab report.

I handed the drawing to him, and he froze, not even noticing when his glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose.

He looked at the drawing, stayed silent for a little while, and then smiled too.

He also said it was great, really well drawn.

But that smile...

How should I put it, it was a bit forced.

I'm his wife, how could I not tell.

The corners of his eyes didn't fully crinkle.

I didn't want Xiao Qi to notice, so I quickly picked Xiao Qi up and took him to his room.

I held his little hand and, right in front of him, carefully tucked this drawing into this notebook of mine.

Tucked right into the page I'm writing on now!

I pointed at it and said, Xiao Qi look, Mommy put the drawing right here!

Everything recorded in here is Mommy's most precious things, and your drawing is in here too!

Mommy will keep it safe, and in the future, we will definitely build a silver-haired big sister for you!

Xiao Qi was finally satisfied. He said he would draw more in the future, even prettier ones, and then he pattered out of the room.

That stride was exactly the same as his dad's when stepping down from the podium after finishing a project presentation.

I went to look for Ah Chu again.

Ah Chu was still sitting in front of the computer, staring blankly at the data on the screen.

So I gently closed the bedroom door, walked over to him, sat on the armrest of his chair, and asked him why he was in such bad shape today.

Ah Chu was silent for a while before telling me...

He felt that something was wrong.

I asked what was wrong, saying Xiao Qi's drawing was very nice!

He said no, Xiao Qi drew very well, he said...

It was those official agencies that were starting to act strange.

I was taken aback for a moment. Official? How could the official agencies be acting strange?

He told me that the data of the recovered AI companions didn't match up.

He said that right now, the R&D headquarters was conducting comprehensive tests on those recovered AI companions.

There were quite a few companion-type AIs returned by the Awakened Omnic Management Bureau, and the data volume was massive, but the results would be out soon.

He said he would tell me if there was really a problem.

That stinky Ah Chu, actually daring to keep me in suspense!

But I could understand. He was just like that; as long as there was even 0.1 percent uncertainty, he wouldn't say much before the official conclusion came out.

That was fine too. With his personality, if there was really a problem, he couldn't possibly hide it from me.

So I'll just wait patiently.

As for this drawing, I'll just tuck it in here!

The brat's very first design blueprint.

Amber gemstones and crimson flames... I can't believe he came up with that!

When Xiao Qi grows up, I'll really have Ah Chu build one based on this. When the time comes, I'll frame this piece of paper and hang it at the laboratory door!

On it, it will say:

Xiao Qi, 7 years and 3 months old, first draft of the silver-haired, heterochromatic-eyed older sister!

Codename: Liguang!

...

August 14, Year XXXX.

A major problem has occurred.

This time, it's really a massive problem.

Today is the weekend. I waited at home all day, but Ah Chu never came back.

We had agreed that he would rest today and take Xiao Qi to the amusement park. It was rare for him to have such a complete day off.

But he didn't come back.

He didn't reply to messages and didn't answer calls. I knew something was wrong.

It wasn't until the evening that Xiao Qi suddenly looked up and asked me if Dad wasn't coming back today.

I said Dad was busy, and he just let out an oh.

I asked if he wasn't disappointed, and he said no, saying that Dad must be researching how to help Mom lose weight, and that Mom's weight loss was more important.

...This brat!

I didn't even know what expression to make!

Sometime after nine o'clock, after I coaxed Xiao Qi to sleep, Ah Chu finally returned.

He stood at the door, still clutching his briefcase. His coat was wrinkled, his tie was askew, and there was a thin layer of fog on his glasses.

His face looked so terrible, as if he hadn't slept for days.

Before I even had time to walk over and hug him, he said...

Yueyue, something huge might be about to happen.

In fact... it might have already happened.

I rarely saw him this nervous.

The last time he was this nervous seemed to be during the first Omnic Crisis, back when I first met him.

At that time, he wasn't much older than Xiao Qi is now.

At nine o'clock late at night, when a group of people gradually gathered in the conference room, some were still wearing their white lab coats.

They were all board members.

Calling it a board of directors was a bit of a stretch; it was really just Ah Chu's group of technical partners.

There was Lao Zhang, who always liked to keep a straight face and had been researching emotional core architectures for over a decade.

And Xiao Wang, who was smiling all day long but would always swear when experiments got stuck.

In short, they were all people who had built this company from the ruins alongside Ah Chu.

Dawn was the blood, sweat, and tears of them all. And of course, mine too.

I was the only person in the room who didn't have a technical background.

But I was the largest shareholder after all, and their sister-in-law, so they still had to drag me into their meetings.

I really hadn't heard Ah Chu use such a heavy tone in a long time.

He said: It's confirmed. The official agencies... have caused a massive mess.

The conference room immediately fell into chaos.

Questioning, flipping through documents, angry cursing... everything was happening.

Ah Chu directly pulled up a set of charts and projected them onto the entire wall.

Densely packed data curves, red and green, a bunch of technical parameters I couldn't understand.

They started arguing fiercely, having all sorts of discussions and proposing various hypotheses. Many technical terms went in my left ear and out my right.

But I understood one thing.

Those substandard AIs that were recovered...

None of their data had reached the danger threshold.

In other words, those recovered products were actually all qualified AI companions!

Did that mean we were screwed over by the officials?

I felt like it wasn't really a big problem.

So I said...

This isn't really a serious issue, right?

Isn't it quite normal for the Bureau's testing to be stricter than what we require?

Since none of the recovered ones reached the danger threshold, wouldn't the ones left in the customers' hands be even safer?

But Ah Chu shook his head.

The others shook their heads as well.

They said it was impossible for all of them to be below the threshold.

As the designers of the first-generation emotional core, they all knew very well.

These cores were not yet fully perfected. During the awakening process, a portion of them would absolutely exceed the threshold.

There definitely would be, and the percentage wouldn't be low.

This was a result they had predetermined, an expectation written in the R&D proposal!

But now, everything that had been recovered was a qualified product.

...Then what about the ones that exceeded the threshold?

I suddenly understood the severity of the situation.

The ones that exceeded the threshold...

Had all been labeled qualified and left in the customers' hands by the Bureau!

...The officials were actually lying?

What they were recovering were not unstable awakened AIs!

They were recovering stable awakened AIs!

They had left the awakened AIs that least deserved to stay, the ones most prone to accidents, the ones with the most fiery cores...

Right beside the customers!

And then told them...

Your AI is perfectly normal.

...As expected. Keeping Xiao Qi away from Dawn Company was the most correct decision Ah Chu and I had ever made.

Ah Chu is still in the meeting now, and I came back early.

Xiao Qi was home alone, and I was too worried about him.

I was really terrified that something might happen to him.

Fortunately, Xiao Qi was still in his own little room right now, sleeping soundly.

The carefree little thing!

My mind is in a mess, so I wrote down this note.

I must record all of this.

...I must protect him well.