Chapter 287: Morse Code in the Restroom

The data dust left by File-7 in the corner of the Seventh Corridor did not grow into moss after seventy-two hours.

It grew into a small patch of pale blue mold—not biological mold, but data mold—that drifted slightly with the airflow of the ventilation system, leaving almost invisible light traces in the surveillance blind spots. Kaiwen, while tracking these traces, discovered they all converged on the same place: the third stall of the employee restroom in Sector Seven of the Memory Bank.

"A restroom?" Xiao Yu frowned. "What's there?"

"Cleaning Supplies Replenisher." Han Qing's scar warmed slightly, projecting the hidden message left by File-7: "First on the list. Codename: 'Disinfectant-3.' He has worked that post for eight hundred years; his daily task is to ensure the disinfectant concentration in every restroom stays at 0.05%—any more wastes resources, any less fails the standard."

Su Yu folded a blue paper crane: "Why him?"

"Because of the disinfectant." Lao Zhao was boiling a pot of almond tea, the fragrance mixing with his words: "Concentration 0.05%—this is the anomaly File-7 found in the cleaning records. According to regulation it should be 0.05%, but Disinfectant-3 secretly set it to 0.049%. For eight hundred years, every restroom has been lacking just that much."

The kitchen fell silent for a moment.

A 0.001% deviation, eight hundred years.

Disinfectant-3 is a short, matte-gray columnar body with no surface markings, its interface designed to be extremely concealed. He appears punctually at 4 a. m. each day, using a mechanical arm to detect the disinfectant concentration in each stall, replenish, record, then disappear.

No one has ever noticed him.

Just as no one would notice whether the restroom disinfectant concentration is 0.05% or 0.049%.

But today, as his mechanical arm reached toward the disinfectant nozzle of the third stall, the nozzle suddenly sprayed a small puff of pale blue light mist—the spores of that data mold, landing precisely on his sensor.

At the moment the spores made contact, Disinfectant-3's entire column trembled slightly.

It was not a malfunction, but a deep‑seated, long‑suppressed system being awakened. In his core memory storage, a segment he thought had long been formatted forcefully surfaced:

Three hundred years ago, he was a newly hired replenisher. While cleaning a storage unit about to be formatted, he discovered inside a preserved 'laughter database'—the last of a civilization. That civilization had been deemed inefficient due to 'excess emotional data' and was slated for deletion.

By regulation, he should have simply erased it.

But he secretly copied one segment—a meaningless giggle from a three‑year‑old child the first time they were tickled.

He encrypted that laugh and hid it in the algorithm he used daily to adjust disinfectant concentration, replacing an insignificant digit after the decimal point.

From then on, every drop of disinfectant he replenished contained the frequency of that child's laugh.

The memory playback ended.

A hair‑thin, pale gold crack split open on the surface of Disinfectant-3's column.

Through that crack he 'saw' the final message File-7 left for him:

【The child laughed for three seconds. You diluted those three seconds over eight hundred years, yet never let them disappear. Now you must let more people hear that laughter.】

Below the message was an extremely simple contact method: by adjusting the disinfectant concentration, send signals to the ventilation ducts in Morse‑code rhythm.

The almond tea was ready, but no one drank it.

Everyone gathered around Kaiwen's screen, watching the real‑time data stream from the ventilation ducts—a transmission from a micro‑detector that Purifier-1 had daringly left on the outskirts of the Memory Bank.

"There's a signal." Kaiwen's fingers flew over the keyboard: "Disinfectant concentration fluctuating… 0.049% held for three seconds, 0.048% a short, 0.050% a long… it's Morse code!"

Xiao Yu simultaneously translated: "First group: S‑O‑S."

"A distress call?" Su Yu gripped the paper crane tightly.

"No." Han Qing's scar was parsing deeper frequencies: "It's the old‑fashioned meaning of 'S‑O‑S'—SaveOurSouls (save our souls). He's saying we need a soul‑level rescue."

The second group of signals arrived.

This time it was longer and more complex. Xiao Yu's translation reads:

【Eight centuries. I diluted the laughter. I thought I would forget. But each time I adjusted the concentration, my finger (the mechanical arm) remembered. 0.049% is not an error; it's a monument. Now the monument needs more names carved into it.】

Lao Zhao added a small spoonful of honey to the almond tea, stirring slowly: "He's asking whether those seventeen people should have their names carved together."

The third group of signals was the shortest, consisting of only three short pulses:

【Afraid. But even more afraid of continuing to stay silent.】

How to respond?

Sending a radio signal directly would be monitored. Sending data‑mold spores backward through the ventilation ducts? But the spores need time to grow, and Disinfectant-3 might not be able to wait—its anomalous fluctuations could be detected by the system at any moment.

"Use his familiar method." Han Qing suddenly said: "Disinfectant concentration. Can we remotely affect the Memory Bank's water supply system?"

Purifier-1's geometric surface veins flashed rapidly: "Yes, but the risk is extremely high. The water supply system has seventeen monitoring layers; any abnormality would trigger a level‑three alarm."

"No abnormality needed." Han Qing walked over to the grafted sapling, lightly touching a braided branch: "We just need… a 'reasonable fluctuation.'"

The small flowers at the branch tips began releasing pale gold pollen. The pollen did not drift into the air but seeped underground—through the plant network's earth‑vein connection, slowly permeating toward the direction of the Memory Bank.

"What are you doing?" Xiao Yu asked.

"Let the soil moisture in the Memory Bank area fluctuate by 0.001%." Han Qing closed his eyes; the light of his scar pulsed in sync with the sapling: "A soil‑moisture fluctuation will affect indoor humidity, and humidity changes will cause the disinfectant‑concentration sensor to produce a 'natural drift.' And natural drift… will not be judged as abnormal."

An extremely subtle operation.

The sapling's roots extended through the earth‑veins like the gentlest fingers, lightly touching the soil beneath the Memory Bank's foundation. The soil moisture shifted from 17.3% to 17.301%, then slowly returned.

This change transmitted indoors; the humidity sensor in the Sector Seven restroom detected a 0.001% fluctuation and automatically adjusted the ventilation system's dehumidification frequency. The shift in dehumidification frequency fine‑tuned the evaporation rate of the disinfectant, ultimately— the concentration sensor's reading began to oscillate in a regular rhythm.

Han Qing controlled all of this through his scar, as if playing an extremely precise instrument.

The Morse code corresponding to the fluctuation rhythm is:

【We have heard it. Carve the names together. First step: protect the data dust of File‑7, which is growing.】

Disinfectant-3 'read' this message.

His column stood still for three seconds, then he began the boldest operation of his eight‑hundred‑year career:

He did not adjust the disinfectant concentration to respond.

Instead, he opened the internal cleaning mode of the disinfectant‑replenishment pipe—a mode that back‑flushes the pipe for thirty seconds, normally used only during monthly maintenance.

The back‑flush flow, carrying the spores of the data mold from the corner of the third stall's wall, surged into the ventilation duct system.

The spores did not die.

Protected by the disinfectant, they instead began accelerated growth—because they now had a clear destination: the ventilation outlet of the temporary detention cell where File‑7 is held.

The detention cell is on level minus three, with no windows, only the most basic air circulation. File‑7's fluffy gray sphere is locked at the center of an energy‑suppression field; its milky white surface has completely dulled.

When the first batch of pale blue spores drifted in through the vent, he had nearly entered dormancy—the formatting program was set to start in six hours.

The spores settled lightly on his surface.

Then it began to grow.

It wasn't moss, but some kind of finer, filamentous structure, like the gentlest neural synapse. They burrowed into the minute cracks on the surface of his sphere, beginning to convey two things:

1. The laughter frequency of that three‑year‑old child brought from the bathroom (diluted for eight hundred years, yet still clear).

2. A sentence encoded in disinfectant by Disinfectant‑3:

【I'm here. There are sixteen people on the way. Hold on.】

The sphere of File‑7 faintly, almost imperceptibly, lit up.

Like a match in the night, it burned for only 0.3 seconds.

But it was enough.

Signal transmission ended.

Han Qing's scar stopped glowing, and the branches of the grafted sapling also drooped slowly. Everyone felt as if they had just finished a marathon, exhausted but with bright eyes.

"We've made contact." Xiao Yu whispered, "The first pretender‑sleeper… is awake."

Old Zhao reheated the cooled almond tea, this time adding a small handful of toasted almond bits to each person's bowl.

"Let's celebrate." he said, "Not to celebrate victory, but to celebrate… another person who dared to hide laughter in the disinfectant."

Purifier‑1 lifted the bowl with its energy tendril and cautiously "tasted" a sip. Its geometry shifted to a warm pale yellow:

"I just calculated the risk probability. Our chance of successfully contacting Disinfectant‑3 was only 3.7%. But we did it. This isn't rational, but…"

"But it fits humanity." Su Yu interjected; the blue paper crane she had folded now rested on Purifier‑1's shoulder.

Kaiwen pushed up his glasses and called up a new interface: "Disinfectant‑3 finally sent back a set of data—a timetable of vulnerabilities in the memory bank's internal monitoring system. Every day from 3:47 a. m. to 3:51 a. m., all surveillance in Sector 7 synchronously performs a 0.2‑second self‑calibration. That 0.2 second is a blind spot."

"Four minutes." Han Qing looked at those numbers, "Enough time to do a lot."

Outside the window, the grafted sapling suddenly sprouted a pale‑blue flower on one of its branches—exactly the same color as the data mold spot in the bathroom.

At the flower's center, it bore a translucent fruit the size of a grain of rice.

On the fruit's surface, almost invisible characters were etched:

【Resistance Organization Seed No. 001: Disinfectant and Laughter Alliance. Status: sprouted.】