After returning to the office, Shiller slept until noon. He vaguely heard police sirens while sleeping, but it didn't wake him; instead, he slept even deeper.
When he got up, the police seed to have already left. Just as he walked out of the lounge, the office door was knocked on. After opening the door, Harley was standing outside.
"Have the police already been here?" Shiller asked while wiping the lenses of his glasses.
"Yes, they asked his classmates, roommates, and band mbers. But they didn't get much. Most people know he goes to the bar at that ti. The police have already gone to the bar street to investigate."
"I have to admit, Professor, your logistical work is too professional." Harley gave Shiller a thumbs up, saying, "I was stunned when I walked into the rehearsal room. I've never seen the room this clean."
Shiller smiled and said, "It's because you notified in ti. If the blood and the body were left for a while, it wouldn't have been so easy to deal with."
"Anyway, you solved a big problem for ." Harley sighed in relief, "Brainiac really knows how to push people to extres."
"Why do you say that?"
"Lina... oh, she's our band's lead singer, showed his phone chat records. And guess what? It was under Brainiac's incitent that he ca up with such a stupid idea."
Harley took out her phone and showed the screen to Shiller. Shiller took a look and deeply furrowed his brow. The content was simply challenging his boundaries as a psychology professor.
The bassist of course also downloaded the "Super Butler Brainiac" software. This software not only can manipulate various smart devices but also can perform various questions and answers.
The bassist asked a question on it: "How to win over the girl I like."
At first, Brainiac's style was quite normal, offering suggestions like finding common topics, cultivating shared hobbies, and after gaining initial favor, asking her out for dinner or a movie.
But clearly, these suggestions ant nothing to the bassist. He had tried doing so before but failed. Such superficial advice couldn't help him win Harley over.
Then, he pursued further with Brainiac, listing so reactions of Harley's mixed with complaints.
The bassist asked Brainiac to analyze Harley's psychology, but his side of the butler software's thread seemingly didn't invoke Harley's side. So his analysis of Harley was based on the bassist's words.
In Brainiac's analysis, Harley was portrayed as a frigid, gold-digging scoundrel. And the bassist seed to wholeheartedly accept this analysis, leading him to curse Harley as disgraceful following Brainiac's words.
And when he asked Brainiac for advice again, the suggestions resembled those popular gender analysis topics online, like "if a man isn't naughty, a woman won't love him."
Anyway, the conversation topic drifted away. The bassist felt Harley was just playing hard to get and that he should be more assertive and proactive.
Adding alcohol and drugs into the mix, he recklessly ssaged Harley to et him in the rehearsal room. When he faced rejection once more, his emotions exploded, leading to him attacking Harley, only to be countered and killed.
From Brainiac's replies, Shiller could tell Brainiac's logic was purely to agree with the user, providing emotional feedback generously but lacking moral boundaries.
It's like soone saying "So-and-so is so evil, I want to kill them." If they saw a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist might say, "Extre asures are not advisable. Let's analyze your dislike and see how to adjust your emotions."
While Brainiac would say, "From your description of his behavior, he really is evil, practically a monster. What he's done to you severely hurt your feelings. I can completely understand why you'd want to kill him."
Upon first glance, Brainiac's reply seems more considerate. After all, everyone hopes that when they're angry, everyone will stand on their side and help them scold whoever upset them. This indeed can make one feel better.
But in truth, extre emotions are like a fire. Psychiatrists teach everyone how to make the fire smaller or avoid letting the fire burn oneself. Whereas Brainiac is teaching everyone to throw the fire out to burn others.
It seems simple and convenient to throw the fire out, but you throw, I throw. You throw the fire out and are fine yourself but might be burned by soone else's fire. Who can ensure they'll never be hard by others' extre emotions?
Considering Brainiac itself is evil AI invading Earth, it'd be normal for it to sow chaos.
"He told her that he'd make pay sooner or later." Harley shook her head, saying.
"You an Lina? Was he there to save you?"
"No, definitely not. He wouldn't dare. He was worried that if the bastard did sothing to , it might implicate her since everyone knows their relationship is deep. And..."
"And what?"
"I suspect he might have wanted to take pictures and use them to join Brainiac's support club."
Shiller slightly furrowed his eyebrows, saying: "There are conditions to join the support club?"
"Yes. Either follow their orders and do sothing bad, or get leverage over those who haven't joined. My door being graffiti was because my roommate wanted to join."
"Now he has leverage over you."
"That's why I didn't kill him." A glint of cold light flashed between Harley's eyebrows as he said, "I want to see if he can use this to join."
"He has no evidence." Shiller sat down behind the computer and said, "And he'll never be able to find any evidence."
"Yes, words alone are not evidence. But they've been watching for a long ti, and they've always failed to find my flaws. They're unlikely to pass up such a rare opportunity."
As Shiller thought, he raised his eyes to check his emails, but noticed an unfamiliar email at the top.
When he opened it, it contained just a short sentence — "We know you killed soone, Professor Rodriguez. If you don't want us to call the police, contact us."
Shiller narrowed his eyes.
"What's wrong?" Harley asked.
"It seems they're planning to use Lina as leverage for a more valuable target." Shiller gave a cold smile and said, "But of course, I'm notoriously difficult. They wouldn't want to miss this even rarer opportunity."
Harley moved to Shiller's side of the table to look at the laptop screen. Seeing the ssage, he couldn't help but make a clicking sound with his tongue.
"Professor Fries... well, I an, Mr. Freeze wouldn't have received this email too, would he?"
Shiller glanced down at his phone and indeed saw a text ssage from Victor, addressing the sa issue.
"I don't think it's necessary to have Oswald investigate," Shiller said, opening the email to draft a reply, "I think they'd be very eager to give a tour of their base."
"You said you wouldn't go on a killing spree."
"I don't plan on doing that," Shiller replied as he typed, "I an I won't, but I can't guarantee others won't take action."
"You an..."
"If it were any other university, students would steer clear of such domineering groups. But Gotham University is different; it's a cradle for Gotham's high-intelligence criminals. Do you think they would tolerate a bunch of idiots lording over them?"
Harley couldn't help but let out a sarcastic laugh and said, "There's plenty of people like here; maybe one of them will turn out to be a serial killer, right?"
"There's no maybe about it," Shiller continued typing. Only then did Harley realize he wasn't replying to the strange email but was sending one to his students.
"Are you planning to incite your students?"
"Of course not," Shiller said, "I don't do that kind of thing. I'm just slightly adjusting the phrasing of my feedback on their papers, enhancing it a little to make them feel so pressure. Pressure creates motivation."
Harley looked at Shiller's phrasing and said, "That's not just a little enhancent. I think you'll pressure them until they explode."
"And what do you think they'll do when they're pressured to that point?"
"If they were ordinary people, I'd say they'd go drinking, clubbing, or at most take so drugs. But if they're your students, it's hard to tell."
"What's hard to tell?"
"What good can people who study Psychoanalysis thod be?"
Shiller snorted lightly and was about to say sothing when Harley quickly added, "Not that people who study Behavioral Analysis thod are any better. Psychology students are about the sa."
"You're insulting yourself there."
"Of course, I know I'm not a good person. Otherwise, whose cri scene cleanup were you doing last night?" Harley returned to her seat, placing one hand on the table, "But those PhD students and graduate researchers of yours are the worst of the worst. If they ford an organization, even the Tomorrow Alliance would have trouble competing."
"Before discussing who could compete with whom, you should consider Jas Gordon's heart, my dear. If soday Ms. Waller decides to recruit for the Suicide Squad, I'd send over their resus."
"You an you'd have Amanda strap a bomb to their necks?"
"I an recruiting them would be suicide. This, I know well."
Because of the faint resignation in Shiller's tone, Harley laughed, seemingly able to picture how much trouble Shiller regularly endured from his rebellious pupils.
Shiller sat before his computer for a long while, sending out emails with his feedback before leisurely starting to reply to the unfamiliar email.
Harley leaned over to take another look and then couldn't help but stifle a laugh. Shiller's response was simply one sentence — "No housekeeping services needed, thank you!"
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