Daily Life on the Train

Early morning, Shu opened his eyes in bed.

After staring blankly at the ceiling for a few minutes as usual, Shu punctually turned off the alarm one second before it rang.

Getting up and dressed, Shu picked up a pair of glasses from the small table beside the bed and placed them on his nose.

The somewhat blurry distance instantly sharpened. Shu blinked awkwardly at the view outside the window and sighed.

These glasses were fitted for him by Otto before departure. They looked unremarkable, even the frame seemed a bit bulky.

In reality, besides helping Shu see distant objects clearly, these glasses integrated functions like communication, data viewing, and retrieval—a piece of future tech, as far as Shu was concerned.

Otto had provided Shu with five pairs of these glasses for replacement.

However, unlike others, Shu's vision would temporarily return to normal when he entered combat mode and was empowered by his [Wish].

At that point, the glasses became a complete burden, so Shu would have to take them off before facing battle in the future.

Fortunately, Shu didn't need to worry about his prescription worsening. Otto's research had shown that Shu's body seemed fixed in its current state. Any changes, positive or negative, would eventually be forced back on track by [Hope].

"Ah... Morning..." The white-haired furball who couldn't open her eyes, randomly refreshing her spawn point in any corner of the dining car each morning, appeared!

"Morning," Shu casually greeted Kiana, took a portion of breakfast prepared by Mei, and sat down. "Did you sleep well last night?"

"Mmm..." Kiana slumped onto the table, listlessly stuffing a bun into her mouth.

This time, Shu saw clearly how Kiana managed to stuff a whole bun into her mouth in one go.

She just slowly pushed it in, so smoothly it didn't seem like pushing in a bun, but rather a smooth egg.

"The homework Mei assigned was way too hard... Kept me up all night..." Kiana mumbled indistinctly, eyes closed, chewing the bun.

Shu paused his spoon mid-air, glancing at Kiana. "You didn't sleep well because you were doing homework last night?"

Kiana nodded once per second, giving Shu an affirmative answer.

"I don't believe you," Shu stated his opinion bluntly and started on his own breakfast.

Kiana's previously unopenable eyes snapped wide open, as if deeply offended. She stared incredulously at Shu.

"What's wrong! This lady occasionally makes an effort too, okay!"

Shu nodded. "Right. Occasionally."

The fact you didn't sleep better because of that homework is already something that only happens occasionally.

"Kiana, Shu, good morning." Bronya, sporting even heavier dark circles, made her entrance.

The two deep bags under her eyes made even Kiana click her tongue.

"Bronya, didn't you sleep again last night?" Mei asked with some concern, carrying her own breakfast and looking at Bronya.

"Bronya went to sleep at three..." Bronya paused for a moment, then decided to offer a completely useless defense.

"What an ungodly sleep schedule..." Shu couldn't help but comment. "Are all you hackers like this?"

Bronya's silence lasted even longer this time. She looked at Shu, wanting to silently skip past the topic.

"Of course not!" The cabbage-head's demolition arrived. Bronya, the umbrella-breaker, finally found someone—no, an AI—better at tearing things down than her.

"Not many hackers play games until four or five in the morning every night!" Ai-chan glared at the silent Bronya on the screen, speaking rather angrily.

Bronya didn't refute it. Silence seemed to be her only refuge now.

"Ooh~" Kiana drew out an exaggeratedly long sound, then suddenly turned her spearhead towards Ai-chan. "And how would you know, Ai-chan?"

"Don't tell me you put surveillance cameras in everyone's room?!" Kiana launched her conspiracy theory!

"How could I!" Ai-chan's entire art style warped into a Chibi-version emoji from anger. "Ai-chan is not the kind of AI who casually peeps on others' privacy!"

"The one playing games with Bronya, and getting completely shut out all night by Bronya, was Ai-chan," Bronya, sitting opposite Shu, suddenly spoke up, offering an explanation.

Alright, the familiar demolition...

"No! Ai-chan was just... Ai-chan was just..." Clearly, Ai-chan was very flustered, but her database lacked any suitable explanatory phrases.

Forcing connections and shifting blame were still too difficult for an AI.

Ai-chan was an autonomous AI created after Otto and the Ethics exchanged technologies, a kind of purely data-based machine lifeform. The biggest difference between her and the machines in Future City was that Ai-chan didn't have her own body.

However, Ai-chan also didn't need physical hardware support, or rather, all computer devices worldwide served as the hardware she relied on for survival.

She was stored in the cloud.

So Shu's glasses had another very important function: he could contact the complete Ai-chan anytime, anywhere. Shu himself wasn't good at pure data calculation; Ai-chan excelled at it.

As for why she was named Ai-chan...

AI-chan... a pun so lame it deserved a pay cut. The surname "Hyperion" signified her affiliation.

"How can the Captain leave the Hyperion?" Otto had said when naming the train. "If you can get me an aerial battleship this time, I can make you a real captain too."

An aerial battleship... That guy Otto really said things lightly.

The train... should be called by its name "Hyperion" from now on. The Hyperion was Otto's core project during these two months, besides the Key of Evolution.

He had practically remodeled the entire Hyperion.

The opening shocker was Otto adding a ramming horn to the front engine, along with an active derailment device. This allowed the Hyperion to continue running at full speed for some distance even after derailing, until the device wore out.

Want to experience being run over by a derailing train engine? This thing has enough power to crush another train car!

The second carriage remained the living quarters, as usual. The difference was that Otto had designated half the carriage space as a "living room and kitchen," making one carriage cover almost all living needs.

The third carriage was the armory. Two Titan mechs knelt on one knee inside, occupying most of the main space.

Various pieces of equipment hung on the carriage walls, ammunition piled in corners, including but not limited to—an 88mm handheld electromagnetic cannon, a 23mm caliber pulse sniper rifle... It was practically a small mobile arsenal.

Bad news: Shu didn't understand any of it.