Chapter 6170 - 5181: Soul-Stirring Utopia (38)

Shiller actually knows Iron Man pretty well. Even someone like Tony Stark, who loves scientific research that much, has to admit that a lot of parts of research are boring as hell—pure repetitive labor, and the really terrifying part is you repeat it for ages and still get no result. It’s hard not to get cranky.

Iron Man’s way of venting that crankiness is to talk through his own thought process. He’s the type who needs to "output" to drain his emotions, and he doesn’t care who’s listening. In daily life he can talk to Pepper, but in the lab most of the time it’s Jarvis; if Jarvis isn’t around, he just talks to the air.

Shiller doesn’t know if the Iron Man of the Prime Universe has this habit, but when you’re building something this huge, there’s no way there isn’t downtime. Once he gets bored waiting, he’ll look for something to do, so he just casually drew these things on the wall.

If he noticed Yog’s presence, he might have started talking to Yog about something, but not to communicate, just to kill boredom—like some people rant to their pets about work. Of course they don’t expect the cat or dog to understand; they just feel better after saying it.

Thinking of this scene, Shiller found it both absurd and funny. There’s a good chance Iron Man never saw Yog’s true form. What he saw was probably the tentacle of a tentacle of a tentacle of a tentacle of a tentacle—in human terms, a single molecule on Yog’s fingernail, about the same level as that golden bubble Shiller saw, which actually looks kind of cute.

So he just treated this thing as some kind of tiny creature, taking it along on a trip through a strange cosmos, and when he got bored building houses, he’d draw stick figures and tell it stories—completely unaware that behind Yog’s little dog head stretched an indescribably vast body.

At this point Shiller naturally thought of himself. Wasn’t it the same with him and the Gray mist back then? When he first met the Gray mist, it was like a child—or rather, anything that lacks common sense about Human Society will act like a child. He taught the Gray mist basic knowledge, helped it find food, totally unaware that it wasn’t a Symbiont at all and didn’t need to eat in the first place.

Thinking about it this way, Shiller could completely understand Iron Man. How humans see an Outer God depends entirely on how that Outer God appears in front of them. If Yog descended to Earth in his full original form, Iron Man would absolutely greet him with a punch to the face. But if Yog follows behind Iron Man like a quiet golden bubble, just watching him work, Iron Man would probably think this little thing is pretty interesting.

Shiller briefly laid out his thoughts, but Peter just looked at him like he was studying Aliens. Still, after thinking for a moment, he said, "No wonder the Spider Man from the Central Universe says you and Iron Man get along. You two are the same type of person."

"And what’s wrong with that?" Shiller said, perfectly confident. "The Human race is all about Appearance. Otherwise, why are cats so popular?"

Peter couldn’t figure out how to refute that. Honestly, in his opinion, cats are completely unfit to be pets. They’ve never truly been domesticated, they’re moody, not very smart, their upper and lower limits are miles apart, and they’re not even that interactive. Yet they’re somehow just as popular as dogs. The only explanation is that they’re too damn cute.

Peter lowered his head to look at his own paws: not only were they fluffy, but when he spread them they looked like a little flower, with pink pads on the underside. If he saw a kitten like this on the street, he’d probably go over to pet it too, even knowing full well it might bite him. He’d still be willing to take the risk.

He still didn’t get what was "cute" about gray Fog or golden bubbles, but people like different things. Aesthetic taste is subjective. If someone thinks they’re cute, there’s nothing you can do about it. You could say that being adorable also takes talent. Nya racked his brains for it and still couldn’t beat someone who’s effortlessly cute by nature.

When Shiller shared his theory with the Mouse, the Mouse was just full of question marks.

"You’re telling me your buddy came all the way out here to draw picture books for an Outer God?"

"More than that, he probably ran a whole slate of early-childhood classes." Shiller said, extrapolating from his own experience. "Including but not limited to: ’Don’t run off.’ ’Can you eat that?’ ’Absolutely no pooping on the bed.’ ’If you agree, say something.’ ’Later I’ll build you a nest’..."

"What the hell is wrong with you humans?" the Mouse couldn’t help saying. "I spent so much time studying human habits, disguising myself as what you’re most familiar with, and you end up liking a mute little ball instead?"

"Have you considered the possibility that we don’t like you precisely because you’re too much like humans?" Shiller said. "You know us, we’ve always been big on killing our own kind."

The Mouse let out a long sigh, but Shiller’s tone suddenly shifted.

"Even if Yog could talk, he’d still be more likable than you. He’s not like you, some professional con artist with slick savvy pouring out of your mouth every time you open it. Humans prefer people who seem sincere—even if they’re gods."

"Can’t help you there." The Mouse shook his head. "That’s just our company culture. After all, there are way too many idiots in the human crowd; being a con artist is the easiest strategy."

"Maybe we can find more drawings." Peter said. "Even if they’re not useful in a practical sense, they can still tell us about Iron Man’s psychological state. Judging from these patterns, at least at this point, he seems to be in a pretty relaxed, leisurely mood."

Shiller gave Peter a approving look. A lot of people completely ignore psychological state, but Peter clearly isn’t one of them. And in the Cthulhu Mythos Universe, your mental state is crucial. If Iron Man can keep up this cheerful, self-entertaining mindset, he probably won’t be in much danger.

Shiller felt that there should also be similar murals inside the neural network computer’s cube. It was just that back then they didn’t have the ability to explore it. They’d have to pay more attention to it later—this could count as a precious collectible. Once Iron Man came out, they could even show it to him.

Shiller called the other two cats over as well. Little Superman circled the pattern once and said with some disdain, "His drawing skills aren’t that great, there’s zero sense of aesthetics. What is this lump supposed to be? Who could possibly tell this is a white blood cell?"

Constantine, however, thought for a moment and said, "Do you think Yog knows how to draw?"

"Of course he does," the Mouse said. "He’s basically a Great Artist among the Outer Gods. Our form of artistic expression isn’t quite the same as the Human race’s, but if it’s just sketching patterns, he can definitely do it—and his drawings are absolutely way better than your friend’s."

"Then I think we can try to see if there are any murals drawn by him," Constantine said. "Maybe we can figure out what he’s trying to say to Iron Man?"

Constantine’s words opened up a new line of thought, but Shiller had to go check under the Dammed Lake to see if there were any pipelines. Peter needed to build the pipeline, Little Superman was in charge of hunting, so this job could only be left to Constantine.

No one thought looking for murals was pointless, because obviously, in the Cthulhu Mythos Universe, understanding what the Outer Gods are thinking is very important. Through Yog’s state, they could also confirm his attitude toward Iron Man and help them find Iron Man.

Later in the evening, the cats returned to the Roof Terrace. By that time Constantine had already carried back a lot of sand, clearly planning to use it for drawing. Shiller had also done a round in the lake, but the weather wasn’t great today, the water was fairly murky, and he hadn’t found any pipelines.

"On the lower level of the cube—the place we came up from—I found a huge mural. It doesn’t look like it was drawn by Humans." Constantine had the other cats help him spread the sand out, covering a large area of ground, easily forty or fifty square meters, and then he started to draw.

Constantine’s drawing skills were impressive. After all, he used to be a professional Array painter. Those Arrays were each more complicated than the last, and getting one wrong could cost you your life. That had given him extremely strong pattern memory and drawing ability.

The picture he drew was far more complex and aesthetically pleasing than Iron Man’s stick figures. The lines varied in thickness, and the whole thing was a circular shape that contained all the content within it. It was just too complex, and the other cats couldn’t understand it.

"What does this mean?" Peter asked. "Why does it look like a logo?"

The other cats felt about the same. The circle was too perfectly regular, and the patterns inside all looked like decorative lines. There wasn’t any narrative part, so they couldn’t tell what it was trying to say.

The cats all looked at the Mouse, and the Mouse shook his head and said, "Don’t look at me. I’m just a con artist, not an artist. How would I know what he’s doing?"

"But you’re the same Race as him. You ought to understand something, right?"

The Mouse examined the pattern carefully and then said, "All I can tell you is: if we’re going to tell a story, it’s very likely we won’t present it in a linear way. That is, it won’t be like how you Humans do comics, with one panel for the cause, one panel for the process, and a final panel for the result. We mix all of that together—basically, we stack those three pictures on top of each other and express them simultaneously."

"Then how can anyone make sense of it?" Peter asked, very puzzled.

"It’s only you linear creatures who can’t make sense of it," the Mouse said. "For beings who can see different timelines at the same time, it’s actually pretty easy to understand."

"Then how come you can’t understand what he drew?"

"The problem is that Yog likes to play with extremely abstruse stuff." The Mouse scratched his head with a paw. "Same as I said before: his cultural level is too high. He uses all kinds of specialized terms. Even if my true body came here, it might not be able to fully understand it, let alone this version of me."

"To use a Human metaphor: it’s like someone wrote a book in more than a dozen languages, including obscure minor languages from forgotten corners of the world and ancient tongues that nobody uses anymore. And it’s not just the words—he also invented an entirely new grammar. You’d have to have read some ancient text that was already lost thousands of years ago to deduce the rules of that grammar. Then, after you decode it, you discover it’s a bizarre story whose deeper meaning you can’t grasp at all unless you know a particular allusion."

"But he isn’t doing this on purpose," the Mouse said. "He just knows too much, and he assumes there are no illiterate people in this world who don’t understand all that. In my opinion, this painting is already as concise as he can make it. I’m guessing this isn’t the first one—what looks like a stylistic shift is actually him having run out of options."