Chapter 18

The place where the children dragged Adam was the rooftop. The rooftop was heavily lined with laundry, but on the very front clothesline, a wide, thick, pitch-black sheet resembling vinyl was spread out instead of clothes.

Looking back at Adam, Jera asked probingly.

“Artificial intelligence, do you know what this is?”

Examining the mysterious objects, Adam opened his mouth.

“This is… a solar cell.”

The faces of the children, including Jera, instantly brightened as if a lightbulb had been switched on.

“You know it!”

“They say it’s an object that generates electricity from sunlight, is it true?”

“I will have to check the condition, but at this rate, there should be no problem using it in practice.”

The children let out bursts of cheers.

“It’s a success!”

“We went through absolute hell bringing it all the way here! If you had said it was unusable, I would have cried.”

“You have no idea how much I worried about getting caught by the boss!”

Gazing into the machine connected to the panel, Adam turned his head to look at the children.

“Is there a reason why you must not be caught by the director?”

The children flinched.

Scratching his head, Jera spoke.

“Of course. If we tell him that we went to a place like that by ourselves and brought back an object like this, it’s obvious we’d get scolded.”

“Then is this act against the rules of this shelter? In accordance with the artificial intelligence ethics recommendations, I cannot assist with wrongful deeds.”

“Are you asking if this is a wrongful deed? No! I don’t think so!”

“Why do you think so?”

“Uhhh… that’s…”

Instead of the flustered Jera, someone else spoke.

“It’s not a wrongful deed. The power grid in Zone F is wretched, and since Soul Garden is located in a place far apart from the town even among them, blackouts occur all the time. Attempting to set up a self-sufficient power system is a good try.”

Jera’s face brightened.

“R-Right?”

Standing at the entrance of the rooftop, Shuri spoke with a face like a furious Chihuahua.

“But why are you kids the ones trying to do that?!”

The children let out shrieks.

“Ack, we’re busted!”

Shuri growled like a Chihuahua.

“You little punks went all the way to an abandoned town by yourselves and brought this back? Do you have any idea how dangerous that place is?!”

Under normal circumstances, Jera would have shouted, ‘What do you care, Shuri?!’

However, he couldn’t do that today. It was because he had heard from Adam earlier why Shuri cultivated tomatoes.

“Idiots! Did you bring this to the rooftop and honestly hope Kamal wouldn’t know?”

Puckering his lips, Jera mumbled.

“It’s not that we hoped the boss wouldn’t know, we just wanted to install it well by ourselves and give him a surprise. The boss is a severe tech-illiterate anyway, so even if we show it to him, he won’t know what it is!”

“Unbelievable.”

Even while saying so, Shuri examined the inverter the children had brought over.

‘But setting up an emergency power supply is actually quite fine, isn’t it? I didn’t think of something like this.’

Jera slily came and stood beside her.

“Shuri, are you going to help us install this?”

Raising her head, Shuri glared at Jera’s round forehead and spoke.

“What do I look like to you?”

“Shuri.”

“Not my name. My occupation!”

“Uh… an engineer?”

“Go deeper.”

Thinking this was an opportunity to flatter her, Jera grinned, baring his missing front teeth.

“An incredibly smart engineer!”

Holding her forehead, Shuri spoke.

“My specialty is software. I can’t do electrical work that is this specialized.”

“Why can’t you? You’re an engineer.”

“I’m telling you, I specialize in software.”

“But you’re an engineer.”

It was the exact moment Shuri was about to transform into a furious Chihuahua.

“I can assist you.”

It was Adam. Shuri and Jera looked at him at the same time.

“If you happen to wish for it, from now on, I will guide you through the process of safely connecting the solar panel made of Condust cells produced before the Great War to the specialized special inverter.”

“Shuri, please check the polarity again.”

“Got it!”

Sweeping her sweat-soaked bangs up with her forearm, Shuri thought.

‘This is a bit strange. Why am I following an artificial intelligence’s instructions?’

However, there wasn’t much time to think other thoughts. She brought the terminal at the end of the cable to the voltage scanner. At that, the open-circuit voltage figure was output on the scanner’s display.

Having verified the voltage figure, Adam nodded his head.

“Good. Jera, please prepare the grounding jumper.”

“Y-Yes!”

Jera, who was suffering alongside Shuri, searched for and held up a small piece of metal.

“I just need to insert this into that place, right?”

“That is correct.”

Instead of inserting the metal piece into the circuit right away, Jera stared blankly down at it.

“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”

“N-No.”

Jera raised his head and looked up at the sky. Right in the middle of the pristine blue sky, the massive sun was burning white.

“Just, it’s fascinating that electricity is generated with that light…”

Gazing at such a Jera, Adam spoke in a gratifying voice.

“Jera, that is a truly impressive thought. That formulation connects with the relationship between the sun and humanity.”

Shuri thought.

‘Adam sounds like a chatbot.’

However, she didn’t say it out loud. It was because she caught sight of the side profile of Jera, who was eagerly listening to Adam’s words with his large eyes sparkling.

Pointing to the sun, Adam spoke.

“The sun has always been in that spot. And people have researched various methods to utilize that energy. They dried food in the sun to increase preservability, and they gathered light to spark fires.”

A bright smile emerged on the face of Jera, who was listening carefully to Adam’s words.

Laughing brightly, the child pointed at the solar cell.

“And it has come all the way here!”

“That is correct. To grasp what one desires. Repeating simulations thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of millions, trillions, perhaps even more times.”

When saying those words, Jera was looking at the solar cell, but Adam was looking at Shuri.

Adam spoke.

“It has come all the way here.”

Feeling the gaze, Shuri raised her head. The pitch-black full-face panel was staring intently at her.

Tilting his head playfully, Adam instructed Jera.

“Jera, please connect the circuit.”

“Alright!”

Jera carefully inserted the grounding jumper between the rails. Shuri, who had patiently waited for their conversation to end, connected the grounding wire to the inverter. Soon, a green light turned on upon the indicator.

Verifying it, Adam spoke.

“Grounding is complete.”

Shuri and Jera threw their hands up high and shouted hurrah.

“It’s done!”

“We succeeded! We’ve come all the way here!”

With a heavily moved face, Jera looked down at his own hands.

“Seriously, I generated electricity with light…!”

Shuri thought.

‘You didn’t generate it, the inverter is generating it.’

She merely thought it. For she was a sensible adult.

While examining whether the inverter was functioning well, Shuri pointed to a small machine attached to the side of the inverter and asked.

“Adam, what is that?”

“It is a cooling pump.”

Sparkling her two eyes, Shuri spoke in a moved voice.

“This is cute.”

“Pardon?”

“Huh?”

“Because it changes color once it starts working. It’s cute…”

Inside the pump, a fluid responsible for cooling was flowing. The fluid, which had been colorless when the temperature was low, emitted a pretty neon-like blue light as the temperature rose.

Jera looked at Shuri with eyes that seemed to be looking at a giant spider.

“What about that is cute? I’ve thought about this before, but Shuri’s taste is truly strange.”

Shuri growled.

“What about my taste? Do you want to get scolded?”

“It’s strange, so I’m saying it’s strange. Why should I get scolded?”

Adam separated them.

“Jera, keep a close eye on the figures displayed on the panel. And Shuri, please come this way for a moment.”

“Yeah!”

“Understood.”

Pulling off her insulated gloves one by one, Shuri grumbled.

“Even though I went through the trouble to help. What about my taste?!”

Passing the installation zone bustling with children, Adam walked ahead between the white sheets hanging on the clothesline.

Shuri hurriedly followed behind him, worried she might lose him. Yet before she knew it, she ended up planting her face straight into Adam’s broad back as he came to a sudden halt.

“W-What is it? Why all of a sudden…?”

However, the place she had buried her nose into wasn’t Adam’s back. It was a bulky chest.

Startled, Shuri raised her head. A pitch-black head was looking down at her.

“Even though I went through the trouble to help you.”

Adam whispered in a soft voice.

“Shuri, tell me. Am I cute, or is the cooling pump cute?”