Blue light.
It was the only colour in the Memory Purification room. Cold, like the shadowless lamps of an operating table, yet dense, like liquid ice. Wang Chuan sat in the ergonomic operator's chair, his spine ramrod straight – a memory carved into his muscles by years of training, a form of silent obedience. Before him, seven suspended light screens unfolded. On their deep blue background, silvery-white data streams raced silently, each one carrying a life being parsed, measured, and judged.
[Operator: Wang Chuan, ID 739]
[Mission Sequence: CN-137]
[Target Unit: Resident LX-734. Gender: Female. Lifecycle Assessment: 73.4 Standard Years. Remaining Social Contribution Potential: 0.7%]
[Processing Content: Locate and erase specific memory cluster – "Dandelion Field and Nursery Rhyme (inherited from grandmother)". Associated Emotions: Nostalgia, non-purposeful pleasure.]
[Basis for Determination: According to Article 14, Clause 2 of the Soul Efficiency Management Act, said memory cluster possesses excessive emotional value, has directly correlated with a 0.7% decrease in target's production efficiency over the last three months, constituting an inefficient asset. Approved for clearance.]
His fingers glided lightly over the photic keyboard, like a master surgeon wielding a scalpel – stable, precise, without a single extraneous tremor. Through the neural link, his perception submerged into a scene of warm, golden sunlight, where fluffy dandelion seeds swayed in the wind, and an old, yet sprightly, woman's voice hummed a vague tune about summer and journeys.
Wang Chuan's eyes held no fluctuation, like two pools of still, bottomless water. He precisely located every neural synapse carrying this memory and, like defusing a bomb's trigger, carefully peeled them away from the vast memory network. This was delicate work; the surrounding useful 'productive skill memories' or 'basic social rule memories' couldn't be damaged. The entire process was quiet, efficient, sterile.
[Clearance Progress: 100%]
[Target Emotional Fluctuation Peak: Has fallen within safe threshold.]
[Operator Emotional Fluctuation Value: 0.01%. (Excellent)]
A prompt tone sounded, marking the successful completion of the 137th standard operation. Wang Chuan habitually glanced at the real-time monitoring data in the corner. That 0.01% value was negligible, yet it made his fingertips stall for half a second. Regulations required the immediate purging of temporary cache post-operation, including any potential residual perceptual fragments.
But his fingers, defying the command, quickly and covertly input a string of non-standard instructions. A single frame was captured, compressed, encrypted – the image of the old woman's brilliantly smiling, youthful face, and the bunch of dandelions she held, glowing as if lit from within. The action was fluid, instinctual. The data was then sent to an encrypted partition named 'Dust' in his personal terminal. Dozens of similar fragments had already accumulated there: a child's eyes sparkling with delight upon receiving candy, the silhouette of two lovers sharing an umbrella in the rain, an unapplauded street performance at sunset... System 'waste'. His private collection.
He closed all interfaces and stood up. His uniform was deep grey, the material stiff, effectively isolating the wearer from external interference, yet also like a shell, isolating the wearer from their own improper emotions. He walked towards the office door. The metal door slid open silently.
The hall of the Records Department of the Samsara Administration Bureau came into view. Unlike the absolute quiet of the Purification room, it was filled with a low, deep hum composed of countless data streams and spirit energy. His colleagues – those elite Executors capable of spirit out-of-body projection – mostly sat with eyes closed, their consciousnesses already piercing physical limits, spanning thousands of miles in an instant, handling cross-dimensional soul dispatches, order maintenance, and even armed elimination tasks. On their workstations, light points representing completed missions pulsed like breathing, their efficiency staggering.
Wang Chuan's workstation was in the dimmest corner of the hall, right next to the server arrays emitting a faint heat. His physical location perfectly mapped his position within the entire system – a 'defective product' incapable of spirit projection, a mere 'cog' reliant on physical contact and primitive paperwork. The air smelled of the scorched odour from databoard heat sinks, and a kind of cold loneliness.
The morning departmental briefing had just ended. The huge central light screen was still cycling through the key bulletins. Topping the list was his younger sister, Wang You.
On the screen, Wang You's 3D image was cold and perfect, her silver-white Executor uniform spotless, her gaze as sharp as an unsheathed blade. The briefing text succinctly displayed her latest achievement: "Executor Wang You, at dawn today, successfully eliminated the core of the 'Flowing Shadow' dimension rebellion, completing the task in only 37% of the standard allotted time. Order in the target area has been restored. Efficiency Rating: Perfect." Below her image were her far-surpassing ability metrics, all hovering near the theoretical optimum – a flat, unwavering line of inhuman perfection.
Wang Chuan subconsciously touched the personal communicator in his inner pocket. The screen lit up, displaying the newly synced weekly evaluation form. A line of glaring red commentary was particularly piercing: "Spirit Compatibility remains persistently below threshold (<5%), severely impacting cross-dimensional operational capability. Recommendations: 1. Enhance basic Spirit Resonance Resonance training. 2. If no improvement is observed, consider transfer to Logistics or permanent Clerical position."
He expressionlessly turned off the communicator. The screen went dark, like many of the unspeakable things within him, hidden away once more. He merged into the stream of off-duty personnel, like a drop of water joining a grey river.
The spirit-rail carriage was crowded yet quiet. People moved like encoded data packets on fixed routes, their faces blank. Outside the window was the standard cityscape under the rule of the Samsara Administration: towering metal buildings with hard, sharp lines reflected the cold sky light; streams of hover-cars slid silently along aerial tracks, following optimal paths; huge holographic billboards projected system-approved values. On one of the largest billboards, his sister Wang You's flawless face looked down upon the multitude. In a monotone voice, devoid of fluctuation, like a system prompt, she proclaimed:
"Order is the foundation. Efficiency is life. Emotion is the driver, not the purpose. Any redundant emotional investment that cannot be converted into practical benefit is a waste of system resources, a drag on collective evolution."
The icy words penetrated the carriage's soundproofing, clearly reaching everyone's ears, and striking Wang Chuan's heart. He averted his eyes, looking out at the monotonous scenery flying past.
Pushing open the door to his home, an atmosphere utterly different from the outside world greeted him. It was the smell of old paper, fine dust, and the bitter fragrance of a certain type of tea, carrying the sluggish warmth of settled time. His father, Lao Wang, was curled up in the creaky old sofa in the living room. The old-style display on the wall was playing the news broadcast featuring Wang You's speech, the volume turned down low, like background noise.
His father didn't seem to notice his return, his attention entirely on the purple clay teapot in his hands. He meticulously poured hot water over the pot's body, then used tea tongs to pick up a cup, painstakingly scalding and rinsing it. Every movement was slow and focused, completely out of sync with the world outside the window that pursued ultimate efficiency.
"Do you know why plastic flowers never wither?"
His father suddenly spoke, his voice calm, not looking up, as if talking to himself.
Wang Chuan paused while changing his shoes. He was long accustomed to these sudden, seemingly meaningless questions from his father. He didn't answer, nor did he want to respond. He walked straight towards his room, trying to shut the question out behind him.
Behind him, his father picked up a cup of freshly brewed, clear, amber tea, brought it to his nose to smell its aroma, and then, in an extremely low voice, as if sighing, added the latter half of the sentence:
"Because they were never alive to begin with."
The door closed behind Wang Chuan. The sound wasn't heavy, but it effectively cut off the light and sound from the living room. He leaned against the door, slowly letting out a breath, as if he had just finished an invisible struggle. The room contained only a bed, a desk, and a wardrobe – spartan, almost austere, conforming to the system's optimized configuration for low-efficiency single occupants' living spaces.
From his uniform's inner pocket, he didn't pull out the communicator displaying the poor evaluation, but instead, a slightly curled, rough-textured paper drawing.
The paper was clearly from discarded databoard packaging; a faint barcode was still visible on the back. On the front, drawn with cheap wax crayons, was a picture – a field of golden dandelions, and beside it, a small, stick-figure-like form. The strokes were childish, the colours unusually vivid, filled with a kind of clumsy, sincere force.
This wasn't any standard-issued decoration from the system. It was the last trace left by another 'purified' soul, preserved by him secretly before the Weaver incident. An 'illegal item'.
He gazed silently at the golden field in the drawing. The neon lights of the city outside the window cast stripes of light and shadow across his face through the blinds, mirroring the confusion and persistence warring within him. After a long while, he bent down and carefully slid the drawing back under his pillow, like hiding a dangerous secret capable of overturning everything.
In the corner of the room, in the old bookstand on his father's usual desk, stood a fresh, lifelike plastic dandelion, its petals full, its form perfect, never wilting, and never having lived.