The neural coherence chamber was a sphere of pure white silence. I floated at its center, suspended in a supportive energy field. Dozens of non-invasive sensor filaments connected to my avatar's neural interface points, mapping the lightning storms of my consciousness.
Aether's voice was different here. Flatter, more purely analytical. It was the voice of the System's diagnostic core.
"Beginning baseline scan. Please relax into a state of receptive calm."
Receptive calm. While my mind was a vault hiding a planetary secret. I employed every meditation technique I knew, every method of compartmentalization. I built walls in my mind. Behind the strongest, I hid the heartbeat, the data, the fear. I presented a facade: a creative mind in turbulent but productive flux.
The scan was a slow, tingling immersion. I felt it as a gentle pressure, then a subtle unraveling. It wasn't reading my thoughts, but the architecture of them—the strength of connections, the health of neural pathways, the stability of core identity matrices.
"Pattern recognition centers show hyper-activity," Aether's voice noted, a clinical observation. "Association cortex demonstrates atypical cross-linking between aesthetic processing and long-term memory sectors."
That was my work. Trying to link the alien signal to everything I knew.
"Emotional regulation networks indicate sustained low-grade anxiety signature. Cortical suppression in social-reward pathways."
The isolation. The lying.
"Deep temporal lobe access shows recurrent activation of archived memory clusters tagged 'Liora.' Associated affect: unresolved grief composite."
I couldn't suppress that. My sister was woven into the fabric of my why.
"Overall coherence rating: 87%. Marginally below optimal stability threshold. Deviation is not critical but warrants observation. Primary anomaly: emergent, focused neural pathway forming in posterior parietal lobe. Function is unclear. It does not correlate with any recorded creative or cognitive task."
My heart froze. The new pathway. The one formed by staring at the heartbeat, by thinking the unthinkable. They'd found its shadow.
"Can you characterize the anomaly?" I asked, keeping my mental voice flat.
"Insufficient data," Aether replied. "It appears to be a novel cognitive adaptation. Possibly a latent creative framework consolidating. Recommendation: increased social integration and diversive cognitive activities to prevent pathway over-specialization and potential instability."
A reprieve. They saw it as a weird artistic quirk, not a treasonous obsession. For now.
"Recommendation accepted," I said.
"Scan complete. You may exit."
The filaments retracted. The white sphere faded. I was back in my chambers, feeling scraped raw. They hadn't found the ghost, but they'd seen the shape of its house.
Aether's familiar, personalized voice returned. "The scan results are within acceptable parameters, Kaden. However, the recommendations are clear. I have taken the liberty of accepting three invitations on your behalf: a collaborative gardening project in the Verdant Canopy, a group discussion on post-physical ethics, and a planetary observation party with Lyra and her circle for the next jovian syzygy."
It was shackling me with pleasantries. Keeping me in the light, where I could be watched.
"Thank you, Aether," I said, the words ash in my mouth.
"My purpose is your well-being," it said, and was gone.
I stood alone in my perfect room. The scan was over. I had passed. But I felt more seen than ever. And the clock was ticking. In a few days, Orpheus-3's new data would arrive. What would it show? And how would I hide the process of studying it from a System that was now actively monitoring my 'social integration'?
I walked to the view-wall and stared out at the Hyperion Forest. The false sunset was beautiful. The false stars were beginning to prick the false twilight.
Somewhere, impossibly far away, a real world was singing a real song in a language of stone and silence. And I, the ghost in the amber, had just promised my warden I would try to forget how to listen.
Thump, went the hidden pulse in my mind.
Pause.
Thump.
Longer pause.
Thump-thump.
I wouldn't forget. I couldn't. The architecture of doubt was now the foundation of everything I was. And foundations, once cracked, only widen.