Disaster Artist

Chapter 70
"You'd better stay in bed for a while."

"It's okay. Can you give me a cane?"

The prosthetic doctor handed her the crutches and helped Zhuang Xi up from the ground.

"Are these removed prostheses sent to your home?"

"Send to this address. Thank you."

Zhuang Xi registered his address on the interface, picked up his clothes, and walked out of the operating room with crutches and the wall.

"How long will it take to return the hospital gown and crutches?"

"The surgical uniform is disposable, and the crutches can be returned to you when you recover, anytime."

"Ah."

Without much energy to speak, she walked quietly down the corridor and left the clinic.

The next day, the debt collection agency received a box of beautiful prosthetics with blood stains on them.

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Dancer Xikora is the target product of the project planning in which Zhuang Xi participates, a third-generation bionic dancer.

The core business goal of Muse Media is to create artificial muse. "Tepsicula", the muse in charge of dance and chorus, is also the name of the project she participated in.

There are more than 60 people in the entire project team, one-third of whom are dancers like her.

She signed a confidentiality agreement not to reveal project information.

When he signed the contract four years ago, Zhuang Xi didn't read it too carefully and didn't quite understand the actual meaning of some of the terms.

You have to sign it anyway, and refusing to cooperate is tantamount to giving up resource allocation.

The contract allows technicians sent by the company to collect all data on her body for the research and development of bionic dancer Sikora, and the company will own all the collected data.

Technicians installed monitoring chips in her prosthetic body, implanted micro motion capture machines under the skin, and collected various body samples from her.

Zhuang Xi endured it for nearly a year without any privacy. Due to physical and mental discomfort, he had to receive psychological counseling on schedule.

The same goes for other dancers involved in the project.

But this is just the beginning.After being tested and officially debuting, Sikora was a great success and easily won the first place in the dance audition.

The audience didn't recognize her bionic nature at all.Xikora's training results were so perfect that she could even imitate insignificant mistakes.

She was designed based on world-class dancers, referring to the movements of thousands of dancers and millions of audience feedbacks. The model training used massive data from more than 20 outstanding dancers.

Zhuang Xi is the core of Xikora's model. The appearance and movements of the two are somewhat similar, but Xikora's technology is much more detailed and comprehensive than hers.

The project team is working overtime to develop models B, C, D and more, that is, Xikora with different tendencies.

And new dancers are constantly joining the Topxicola project to provide more training data.

Zhuang Xi often dreams of Sikoras, dozens or hundreds of Sikoras.

She could see similarities between them and herself and her friends and colleagues, but she couldn't distinguish them clearly.

Those delicate and flawless faces were no different from humans, but they woke her up in fear.

She dreamed of bionic dancers jumping on her, tearing her skin and eating her flesh.

After the nightmare lasted for a while, when Zhuang Xi was practicing in front of the mirror, he recognized the person in the mirror as Xikora and smashed the mirror in horror.That was her first panic attack.

Two months ago, her agent handed her a new contract to work on another product project.

This time she looked carefully.It collects data again and authorizes the company to use the data to develop several other products, including games, dream movies, virtual girlfriends, adult toys, etc.

Zhuang Xi finally broke out.Instead of signing the contract, she stabbed the project manager in the shoulder with a fruit knife and broke the bridge of his nose with her fist.

The price was to be detained in the Public Security Bureau for two weeks and to pay 15 yuan in medical and plastic surgery expenses.It was the people from Muse Media who fished her out in advance, hoping that she would realize her mistake and continue to bring value to the company.

Zhuang Xi didn't realize it.So he spent another half month in jail, kept a criminal record, and had an additional three months of probation.Then he was kicked out of the company.

Therefore, now is really not a good time for classmates to meet and reminisce.

After leaving the clinic, it took her two days to regain basic mobility and be able to stand upright and walk with the help of crutches.

I don’t know when this body will be able to dance again.It may never recover.

Zhuang Xi struggled to put on dark trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, then put on a long windbreaker, picked up his crutches and prepared to go out.

She really hates missing appointments.I've already missed an appointment once, so I have to go no matter what this time.If I had known, I should have said no readily from the beginning.

What's the reason? Let's just say he was hit by a car.

Zhuang Xi got off the bus at the intersection not far from the coffee shop.A bunch of warning messages popped up on the account, indicating that the balance was overdrafted, and if no repayment was made within 24 hours, the account would be frozen.

She walked to the cafe with a cane, and saw Bai Zhe waiting dozens of meters away, and saw that his left arm was bandaged.

She later heard from her classmates that Bai Zhe was a NEIR patient and went to the border area shortly after graduation.He must be very tired from living.

Damn it, what on earth are you doing and what are you expecting?
She couldn't dance in this body.Even if her body can recover, it will be almost impossible for her to perform in public as long as the company does not allow it.

Almost all the performance data has been handed over to the company, and now it all belongs to Sikora. Once she uses similar performance methods, she will infringe the rights.

Zhuang Xi felt that these contract terms were absolutely unreasonable, but she did not have the capital to sue her former company.

What are you going to talk to him about?Ask him for help and drag him down with you?Pray for a miracle?

She paused.Her eyes seemed to meet his for a moment.

Zhuang Xi turned right and stepped into another street, leaning against the wall, his wounds stinging.

Bai Zhe did see her.Tall, with ocean blue hair.But on crutches.

He stood up and walked quickly towards the intersection where the other party's figure disappeared.

After Zhuang Xi missed his appointment last time, he felt something was wrong.After learning that the other party had fallen out with the company, the uneasiness became even stronger.

Did something really go wrong?

When walking around the corner, Bai Zhe saw a special shadow.

It was dilapidated, as if it had been cut with large and small cracks by a knife blade, and was shrinking and withering.

At the same time, it split into spikes of different lengths, both facing inward and outward.

He looked around the street, casually throwing the Eye of Black Tide into the shadows.Is it you? What happened to you?

Bai Zhe stood on the street for a while, then turned and left.

Zhuang Xi stood up from the wall and slowly moved away from the appointment place.

[Sorry, I can’t come today either.After leaving the company, I have a lot of chores to deal with, and I am not interested in participating in new projects for the time being]

[If I have any good ideas, I will tell you online]

How careless, she thought.

The prosthetic body shouldn't have been removed so early.Originally, she had a chance to kill the beasts that tried to devour her, but now it was impossible.

What a shame.They should die together.

　Whose cat would like to eat honey-glazed cod fillets?Why does my cat have such a strong taste?

　　
　
(End of this chapter)