Chapter 3 The Recycler's Paradox

This was the second time.

The first time, she failed to save Raven. The second time, she failed to stop Lin Yan's mould infection.

She caused his "death", she turned him into a monster.

Quest Trackback: Death of the Raven

Task No.: 0-99 [Entropy Increasing Exuviae

Mission Objective: Recover entropic remains

Case Location: Abandoned Research Institute in the Southern Suburbs

--Infected Target: Recycler Raven.

'The mission is permanently sealed in the Black Box Protocol Library of the Memory Eternity Corporation, with raven synaptic scorch marks remaining on the edges of the archive pages. The target's remaining metamorphosis is actually a leaked Memetic Virus-Ψ from the initial prototype of the 'Egg Project', topologically infected via a Bayesian neural network, with an infection path that exhibits a Klein's bottle structure - host memories become a new singularity in the chain of propagation at the moment they are eroded.'

Three years ago, 23:57 P.M. [Abandoned Research Institute in the Southern Suburbs, Environmental Pollution Level: Red]

When they arrived at the Institute, the smell of burning emanating from the ancient servers lingered in the air, and the cables on the floor were like decapitated articulated snakes, with coolant similar to cerebrospinal fluid gushing from their severed mouths, refracting the topological projections of the Klein Bottle in the ghostly blue shimmering light. Tokyu and Raven stood in front of the main console, and on the terminal screen, a red warning message constantly pulsed:

[Ψ-class Modine Virus Contamination Index: 79.4%]

[Contamination Level: Extremely High]

[Infection Path: Klein Bottle Topology Spread]

'Cognitive field has completed four-dimensional fluidic embedding.' Raven's vocal pattern appeared to quiver like a Carnot cycle heat engine.

'It's reconstructing reality with a Bayesian network.' Tokyu gazed at the skyrocketing Shannon entropy values on the terminal, the codes that were supposed to show the path of the virus were now escaping across the screen in the form of Cantor dust. The electronic clock on the fire door was decompressing the timeline in reverse, the characters of the security logos were reconstructing their strokes through Cantor functions, and their shadows were being projected by Riemann surfaces beyond the discontinuous cone of light .... They stepped into a field that had become modulo infected.

'We must find the source of the contamination as soon as possible.' A twofold vocal pattern emanated from Raven's throat as her finger squeezed the trigger of her weapon.

They moved deeper into the Institute, and Raven's pace slowed. 'What's wrong?' Tokyu asked in a low voice.

Raven's pace paused slightly, her brow furrowing slightly, 'Something ... strange.'

'Omega level modal contamination is reconstructing the topology.' Raven's pupils fissured into fractal geometric patterns, ice crystals of the Fibonacci sequence condensing on the inside of her military grade gas mask, 'The quantum pendulum effect in this corridor... We've experienced the same time slice twelve times.'

Tokyu snapped to a halt and looked over at him. 'What are you talking about?'

'We are on the wrong path.'" Raven's voice was unusually certain, his eyes swept across the corridor, 'We should go back.'

Tokyu's pulled up the path record immediately at his terminal.

[Path analysis: no deviation]

[Current direction: correct]

[ΨVirus infection rate: 32.8%] (rising)

Tokyu's fingertips slid on the terminal and called up the field map, projecting it in mid-air.

'Look carefully, it's the right direction.' Her voice was cold.

Raven stared at the map for a few seconds, then frowned, her tone still firm, 'That's not right. I remember that we came in from the left when we arrived, but now, the direction of the lights on this road is different from what we remember.'

Tokyu's eyes sank slightly.

--The -Ψ virus was already affecting his spatial perception.

If she didn't end the mission as soon as possible, he would soon fall into a complete cognitive paradox and would no longer be able to distinguish between reality and misplaced 'memories'.

She had to speed up the pace of the mission.

'Keep up.' Shi Yu bypassed him and walked in the direction of the experimental core, with a hint of imperturbability in her tone.

Raven gave a slight lurch and looked at her with complicated eyes, but eventually took a step to follow.

[ΨVirus Infection Rate: 41.2%] (Critical Growth)

[Host Cognitive Offset: Mild]

When the infection rate exceeds 80%, Raven will be completely rewritten by the Ψ Virus's mind, turning into a logically closed-loop self-consistent body, and at that time ... he will never be him again.

--She couldn't let this happen.

When they finally reached the core of the experiment, the effects of the Ψ-virus had become more apparent. The entire lab was undergoing a Lie group transformation at a rate of 24 frames per second, each blink triggering an irreversible degradation of the manifold structure. The mass spectrometers and incubation chambers that were supposed to be stationary were now sliding in trajectories that followed non-Abelian canonical fields.

'Tokyu ....' Raven stood behind her, looking stoic but with a hint of confusion.

Tokyu took a deep breath, she didn't turn around, but quickly operated the terminal and began to input the destruction procedure.

[Mission Progress - Data Erasure 30%]

[Mission Progress - Data Erasure 60%]

Suddenly, Raven's hand pressed her wrist. 'Tokyu.'

She stopped moving and looked up at him. His eyes were deep, and his tone was low, but with a hint of strange certainty.

'I think you're the one who's going the wrong way.'

Her fingers paused.

[ΨVirus Infection Rate: 73.8%]

--No time to waste.

Tokyu violently shook off his hand and directly entered the last command on the terminal.

[Execute Final Purge]

[Countdown: 10, 9, 8...]

The moment the reverse entropy pulse penetrated the Klein Hub, the cognitive plague matrix of the Ψ Virus began to quantum decoherence, and the surface of the storage array surfaced with Cantor's dusty annihilation trails. Raven's neural synapses, reconfigured by the modal virus, peeled away like layers of a renegade algorithm that had suffered a Turing trial. The fractal pupil deep within his iris closes sharply, the last remaining remnants of the Ψ Virus branding his hippocampus with irreversible Gödel burns.

[Ψ Virus Infection Rate: 0% (Backtracking Complete)]

[Mission Completed]

After returning to the base, Tokyu sat in front of the terminal, his fingers absently tapping the keyboard as a short string of text quickly surfaced on the screen:

[Mission Number: 0-99]

[Objective: Recovery of Ψ-class Modal Virus]

[Mission Status: Completed]

[Damage: None]

[Event Description: Contamination cleaned up, no special circumstances]

[Submitter: Tokyu]

Tokyu finished knocking out the mission report, stretched her back without any burden, casually picked up a can of functional drink, and waited for the Raven behind her to sigh as usual, and then take over, add, and modify her mission report to make it into an official document that complied with the company's standards.

But behind her, there was dead silence.

She slowly turned her head to look at Raven standing behind her, still wearing the standard recycler uniform, expressionless, still standing there like an old cadre. He just stood there, looking at her, his eyes deep and calm, as if everything was a matter of course.

Tokyu frowned. 'Submitted?'

'Sure.' Crow's tone was as low as ever.

Tokyu froze, her eyes fixed dead on Raven, trying to catch that familiar hint of helplessness in his expression, but there was nothing.

--She finally realised what the problem was, her 'forced formatting' had not only removed the virus, but also destroyed Raven's autonomous decision-making system. Raven's self-will hadn't disappeared, his thought patterns were still there, he still analysed, calculated, and carried out tasks, but - he was no longer able to make decisions 'against Tokiyu's will'.

It was her hand that wiped out his freedom to make decisions.

Tokiyu slowly closed her eyes, and an unspeakable sense of absurdity emerged in her heart. She thought that she was the one carrying out the mission. She thought that she was recovering the remains of the moult and ensuring the balance of the world. She thought that Raven would always stand next to her, patching up the holes that she cared not to face.

She laughed softly to herself and whispered, '... What a perfect mission.'

Raven nodded slightly, 'Yes, the mission was executed perfectly with no anomalies.' Tokyu's smile finally disappeared completely.

She closed the terminal and stared at the light and shadow on the desktop, her fingertips trembling slightly. This was the first time that she, for the first time, developed an emotion similar to regrets.

The night, the recursive code continued unabated.

while(true){echo 'You're not a complete egg either';}