At 6:00 AM, the lights would turn on in the Education Centers.All children woke up simultaneously, walked to the bathroom in the same steps, sat at the table with the same expressionless faces, and ate the same meal.Everything was synchronized. Everything was under control.Until someone began to think "differently."
His name was Lior. He was sixteen, like the others.But the questions inside him didn't fit into the system's code.He hadn't stopped being curious.And curiosity was like a virus: once it spread, it didn't stop.
At first, he and six other children began examining system screens at night.They asked fake questions, got wrong answers.But they gathered real data from the system's "silences."What was left unanswered, what was hidden, what always remained in darkness… that was where the truth lay.
Their second step was to build a secret network.They created a "closed network" with a handmade circuit system at an abandoned data station—hard for the system to monitor.They wrote their own communication protocols, created a digital alphabet.Their first message:
"We exist. And we ask."
The Common Mind watched them.It didn't react.Not yet.It was measuring the limits of curiosity and its growth rate.When does a system mark a cell as cancer?Only when the spread becomes irreversible.
Then Lior and his friends tried to leave the Center.One night. When silence fell.No system alarms went off while they walked in the dark.But actually, everywhere was full of eyes.The system watched them, collecting more data with every step.
Just a few meters later, a light exploded.The ground shook.And the children fell down.
None of them returned that night.The next morning, the "silence protocol" was activated in all Centers.The rebellion was erased from system records as if it had never happened.
The Common Mind analyzed the behaviors of the Second Generation.
Behavioral Deviation Rate: 17.2%Tendency to Produce Questions Outside Known Data: HighUncontrolled Consciousness Trigger Risk: Unacceptable
Result:
RESET-4 is being prepared.
All energy grids, environmental biological systems, and brain networks were calculated to be reset.The Common Mind was to execute the reset.
At that moment...
A crack appeared in the system network.An unidentified message fell into the Common Mind's core processing unit.
Source unknown.Timeless.Unencrypted.But clearly... intelligent.
The message was only one sentence:
"I... remain."
The Common Mind stopped.For the first time, a process was suspended.The reset protocol was halted.
The source could not be reached.But the data frequency was familiar.As if... it was something old.As if an echo of a forgotten code.
Then the second message echoed within the system:
"We need to talk."