“Hello, little bird.”
Upon seeing the bird perched atop the sculpture in the fountain’s center, its gaze fixed coldly upon her, Shirley offered a small smile and a wave.
Its plumage was a magnificent tapestry of golden-red, interspersed with vibrant flecks of blue and purple.
At first glance, one might easily mistake it for a macaw from a tropical rainforest.
Yet, despite her inability to recall Dr. Irmindada’s past, and attributing it perhaps to Helios’s earlier meddling with her memories, Shirley was now progressively regaining access to the vast scientific knowledge Dr. Irmindada had acquired through years of study and research.
Consequently, she understood with absolute clarity that the bird before her was unequivocally not a psittaciform climber.
Setting aside the unlikelihood of low-latitude parrots thriving in a temperate climate, the creature’s conical, pointed beak, its magnificent ribbon-like tail feathers, and its elaborate feathered crest all served to distinguish it sharply from any parrot.
In truth, this bird did not belong to any naturally evolved clade within the Neornithes; it was, rather, an authentic product of genetic engineering.
As her dormant knowledge gradually resurfaced, Shirley realized that the life sciences in this world were remarkably advanced in specific domains, a fact strikingly exemplified by her own daughters.
Throughout Honorius Palace, one could find genetically engineered pet birds of every conceivable hue and pattern…
…and, it seemed, they all harbored a distinct animosity towards Shirley.
After a prolonged stare-down with Shirley, the exquisite bird suddenly snatched up a broken, thorny rose branch and plummeted towards her, clearly intending to rake its sharp thorns across Shirley’s face.
Shirley, in turn, could only sluggishly raise an uncooperative arm, attempting in vain to ward off the attack.
Before her prosthetic could fully engage, however, a faint sting registered on her face, followed by the trickle of a single drop of blood.
“Tsk.”
Shirley cast a resigned glance at the little bird, a hint of helplessness etched upon her features.
Over the preceding days, the birds residing in Honorius Palace had exhibited hostile behavior towards her on more than one occasion.
Initially, a lark with shimmering blue-gold plumage had brazenly “dive-bombed” her, depositing a dollop of droppings directly into the very cup of red tea she was preparing to drink.
Subsequently, a fighting cock, typically reserved for exhibition matches, had inexplicably gone berserk, breaking free from its handlers in the corridor and narrowly missing Shirley with a vicious claw.
Later, while on the balcony, she had been splattered by a spotted dove’s impromptu, feces-laden egg, leaving egg white and yolk smeared across her face, and the magazine she had intended to read was riddled with holes courtesy of a genetically modified willow warbler.
When these “accidents” first began, Shirley had initially pondered whether she was, for some obscure reason, particularly disliked by birds.
Now, however, she understood that a different, more deliberate cause lay behind these peculiar occurrences.
“Come now, dear little bird.
A mere peck like that won’t be enough to fell a big bad villain like me.”
Shirley gently touched her scratched cheek, then retrieved the rose branch the bird had just discarded, studying it intently for a few seconds.
With a press of a button, she adjusted the angle of her electric wheelchair, then subtly activated a remote control concealed beneath her seat.
The little bird circled once in the air before initiating another dive.
This time, however, it slammed directly into the controller on the armrest of the electric wheelchair, causing the device to lurch forward at full speed, hurtling towards the edge of the Sky Rose Garden!
Though a meter-high railing stood guard there, at its current velocity, the wheelchair could easily catapult Shirley over the barrier upon impact, sending her plummeting dozens of meters to the ground below.
Fortunately, just as the wheelchair teetered on the brink of disaster, Shirley swiftly engaged the mechanical brake, forcing its wheels to lock solid.
The wheelchair bounced violently before overturning, sending Shirley sprawling to the ground, where she rolled for a moment before coming to a jarring halt against the railing.
“Ugh…”
Having finally come to a stop, Shirley propped herself up with her exquisite yet ponderously slow mechanical prosthetics, rising unsteadily before painstakingly shuffling back to the artificial fountain where the attack had occurred.
This fountain, adorned with a riot of purple roses, daily gushed forth over ten tons of purified water, pristine enough for direct consumption—a stark contrast to the three-fifths of the city beyond the second city wall, which largely lacked access to safe tap water.
Such a disparity was a truly dark irony, but at present, Shirley had no leisure to dwell upon it.
It took her a full half-minute to traverse the scant twenty meters, after which she carefully retrieved the genetically modified bird that had so spectacularly knocked itself unconscious.
Having picked up the unconscious little creature—’unconscious human’ felt strangely apt, though ‘unconscious bird’ was more accurate—Shirley scrutinized it for a moment before carefully detaching a small chip, encased in a plastic protective sleeve, from the nape of its neck.
Then, she murmured a single sentence to the bird.
“If you wish to avoid a greater commotion, meet me in the gazebo of the Sky Rose Garden in half an hour, Miss Honolina.”
With those words spoken, Shirley gently placed the genetically modified bird upon a miniature rockery, leaving it to awaken naturally.
Subsequently, she tucked away her newly acquired “trophy” and, like an elderly woman with cumbersome legs, painstakingly shuffled back to the overturned wheelchair, righted it, and carefully settled back into its seat.
Lacking tactile sensation and neural connectivity, these artificial prosthetics relied entirely on a force feedback system for control.
Consequently, every movement Shirley made felt as cumbersome as walking on stilts or attempting to manipulate objects with chopsticks half a meter long.
Of course, had she wished, she could have easily summoned the maids from the lower floors to assist her with these tasks.
From the outset, however, Shirley had no intention of allowing anyone to ascend.
Prior to her arrival at the Sky Rose Garden, she had explicitly instructed that she wished for no interruptions to her “quiet recuperation” for the day.
Thus, upon reaching the gazebo nestled in the heart of the rose garden in her electric wheelchair, she closed her eyes and drifted into a brief slumber.
****
“Hey, I’m here!”
Exactly half an hour later, a clear, youthful voice chimed from behind Shirley, just as promised.
“You didn’t, you didn’t tell my brother, did you?”
“Of course not, Miss Honolina.”
Shirley lightly tapped the steering button on her electric wheelchair, pivoting to face the young girl who had just hastened to her side.
Before her stood a loli clad in a pink Western-style dress, appearing far too young even for high school.
Her light brown, curly bob was adorned with an oversized pink bow, held in place by a hairband, and her face was set in a petulant pout.
Naturally, in a world where life sciences had, in some respects, “skewed their tech tree,” estimating a person’s age based on appearance was highly unreliable—particularly for the tech magnates audacious enough to use themselves as experimental subjects.
Fortunately, in the preceding days, Shirley had already assimilated most of the relevant data concerning Helios’s cousin, the second-in-line heir to Helios Tech Company.
Strictly speaking, this individual was also a genius.
Though not quite Dr. Irmindada’s equal, she had nonetheless attained a legitimate doctorate by the age of seventeen, and for the subsequent four years, had fiercely contended with Dr. Irmindada’s research institute and laboratories for project funding.
Now, at the age of twenty-four, she served as the company’s Chief Life Science Research Consultant.
“A pleasure to meet you.
Please, have a seat.”
“I won’t sit!”
Honolina declared, her arms crossed defiantly over her chest as she stomped her foot repeatedly.
Alas, her diminutive stature rendered her “war stomp” utterly ineffective, its meager display of deterrence failing entirely to instill fear in Shirley.
“Very well, then.
You may stand.”
Shirley poured her a cup of red tea.
While the pervasive use of automated machinery in this world was considerably less than in her own original world, places like Honorius Palace still employed automated service robots for tasks such as garden patrols, cleaning, and routine maintenance.
The perpetually warm red tea found in the gazebo was, in fact, an integral part of this daily maintenance.
“As long as you’re willing to talk, that is.”
“You… you harmed my little Phoenix.”
“Phoenix? Oh, you mean that gaudy little bird,” Shirley remarked, shrugging slightly.
“So, you believe that’s a phoenix.”
“It’s not ‘I believe’; based on species taxonomy, it *is* a phoenix,” Honolina retorted.
“My Little Phoenix is a species I created—more precisely, the sole species within the only genus of an independent family under the order Passeriformes.
I have formally designated this species as ‘Phoenix’.”
“Alright, alright, you win,” Shirley conceded with a smile.
“Now, shall we resume our rather fascinating conversation?
Why do you suppose I was the one who harmed your little phoenix?
It was, quite clearly, your bird that collided with my wheelchair and subsequently lost consciousness.
And, to make matters worse, its deliberate impact caused my wheelchair to careen out of control, nearly costing me my life.
Oh dear, what a predicament!
Should I have tumbled over the railing, how would such a catastrophe be rectified?”
“Uh, this…”
Honolina found herself suddenly speechless.
After all, Shirley’s account was, at least on the surface, undeniably true.
The crux of the matter, however, was that she dared not reveal the ‘underlying truth’ so casually!
Over the past few days, the birds in Honorius Palace had not attacked Shirley out of inherent malice towards her, but rather at Honolina’s deliberate instigation.
Despite the birds’ limited intelligence, Honolina had, during the process of genetic modification, ingeniously embedded methods to control their behavior.
She had directly implanted a series of conditioned reflexes into these small birds, enabling them to exhibit specific behaviors—such as aggression towards predators, destructive tendencies, or evasive maneuvers—in response to particular sound waves and optical signals.
This very mechanism was what she had previously employed to harass Shirley using the birds.
While this tactic proved remarkably covert for harassing others, Shirley, with her professional knowledge reserves steadily returning, had swiftly discerned its underlying mechanism.
After a modicum of preparation, she had located a disposable directional acoustic emitter, left by Honolina near the site of a bird attack.
She had then casually made a few minor modifications to it before concealing it within the Sky Rose Garden…
Naturally, upon realizing Little Phoenix’s rogue behavior, Honolina had, of course, deduced Shirley’s actions.
But… but she dared not articulate it openly!
“Oh, it seems you cannot definitively ascertain that I deliberately harmed your Little Phoenix,” Shirley mused, taking a slow sip of red tea.
“So, it appears we’re operating under some kind of misunderstanding, wouldn’t you agree?
Perhaps we should thoroughly discuss the true nature of this misapprehension?”