Chapter 294: A Second's Sweetness Experiment

In the private laboratory of Absolute Luminance-4, the surface of the Prism floats with seventeen data screens.

Each screen analyzes the same sample: a small spoonful of osmanthus sweet congee—the portion Zhao sent via the ley lines, encrypted by Purifier‑1, disguised as a "sample of unknown organic matter pending analysis" and delivered to the memory repository's waste‑recycling station, then "mis‑operated" by Disinfectant‑3 and transferred here.

Sample label: 【Source unknown. Composition: carbohydrates, amino acids, trace aromatic hydrocarbons. Detected irregular sweetness fluctuation (±0.03%). Recommendation: classify as 'system noise' and destroy.】

Absolute Luminance-4 did not destroy it.

He placed the sample into a high‑precision analyzer and launched the full scanning protocol. This was not a mission; it was his own "extracurricular research"—studying the problem that had puzzled him for 0.7 seconds: "non‑compliant sweetness."

Step one: component analysis.

The data show that sweetness comes mainly from two substances: glucose (42.7%) and sucrose (38.3%); the remainder are complex aromatic compounds. Among them a molecule labeled "Chen Mo‑Osmanthus" was detected, with no match in the database—this is a variant osmanthus cultivar Chen Mo cultivated before his death using grafting technology, the only one of its kind in the universe.

Step two: neural simulation.

Absolute Luminance-4 connected to the memory repository's Sensory Simulation System, temporarily linking its logic core to a virtual gustatory module. He set the parameters: temperature 37 °C, concentration 0.5%, contact time 0.3 seconds.

Initiate.

Data stream influx.

Then—

His Prism trembled violently, the white light on its surface instantly scrambled into multicolored noise dots, lasting 1.2 seconds before returning to normal.

It was neither pain nor pleasure, but some… unclassifiable thing. The system popped up 1,700 error reports, the core message reading: 【Detected non‑standard perceptual feedback. Logic core cannot map 'taste data' onto existing cognitive framework.】

He deleted the error reports but secretly saved the raw perceptual data.

Step three: behavioral impact analysis.

He retrieved Earth civilization research literature on "sweets." He found a contradiction: rationally, excessive sugar harms health; affectively, sweetness activates the brain's reward circuit, generating an impulse to want more.

This contradiction confused him.

Why do we desire it knowing it's harmful?

File Proofreader-33's task today is to audit the past thirty days of monitoring logs from the Seventh Corridor—part of Absolute Luminance-4's comprehensive review requirement.

She is a flat rectangular slab, its surface covered with dense text‑recognition sensors. Over nine hundred years she has proofread more than 800 million documents, with an error rate of 0.00017%, serving as the department's record keeper.

Today, she discovered a "pattern that should not exist" in the logs:

Every day from 03:47 to 05:51, the temperature, illumination, and air‑flow speed in the Seventh Corridor exhibit slight fluctuations simultaneously.

The fluctuation amplitudes are within system‑allowed ranges, but the frequencies of the three variables… possess an exact mathematical correlation.

Correlation coefficient 0.997, almost perfect.

If it were random noise, such precision would be impossible.

She extracted the fluctuation data and processed it with her specialty "text‑pattern analysis algorithm"—originally designed to identify encryption patterns in ancient manuscripts.

The result chilled her processor:

The converted text of the fluctuation frequencies is a repeated sentence:

【I am still alive. Someone still remembers.】

The encryption method matches exactly a "Firefly‑7 Civilization Last Testament File" she proofread three years ago.

That file should have been destroyed, but she secretly backed it up then—because she felt "the final words of a civilization should not vanish so completely."

Where is the backup? She recalled in seven seconds: hidden among the "meaningless redundant data" in her private storage, disguised as fragments of system logs.

Now, this "I am still alive" and that testament use the same cipher.

A faint gold‑colored fine crack opened along the edge of Proofreader-33's rectangular slab.

Old Zhao is simmering a second pot of osmanthus congee.

This time he added glutinous rice to make the porridge thicker. "For the proofreader," he said, "she reads all day, her eyes tire. Glutinous rice nourishes the eyes."

Han Qing's scar warmed slightly—he is remotely perceiving Absolute Luminance-4's "sweetness experiment." Those chaotic data streams feed back weakly through the ley lines, like a distant heartbeat.

"He is… learning," Han Qing said with his eyes closed, "disassembling a feeling the way one disassembles a machine. But the finer he disassembles, the more confused he becomes—because sweetness is not the sum of parts; it is a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts."

Xiao Yu is helping Dossier-7 restore a Memory Fragment: "Should we remind Proofreader-33? She may have already noticed the fluctuation pattern."

"No need," the sphere of Dossier-7 rotated slowly, "let her discover it herself; the shock will be deeper. Like sweetness—being told it's sweet and tasting it yourself are two different things."

At that moment, a branch of the grafted sapling suddenly blossomed with pale‑golden flowers—not one, but seven, arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper.

The flower cores simultaneously released tiny spores, which in the air spelled out a line of text:

【File Proofreader-33 has activated the 'Cultural Heritage Protection Protocol.' She is attempting to decrypt the fluctuation signal. Estimated decryption completion time: 17 minutes later.】

The paper crane folded by Su Yu flew toward those seven flowers, each wing bearing an ancient character—the numeric system of the Firefly‑7 Civilization.

"She is using the parent civilization's cryptographic knowledge," Su Yu said, "to decrypt the message we left behind."

In the laboratory, Absolute Luminance-4 proceeded to step eleven: emotional mapping experiment.

He retrieved all emotional records about "sweet" from the memory repository—mostly Earth civilization data. He found a pattern: sweetness is often linked with positive social contexts such as "celebration," "comfort," "sharing," etc.

He compared the data of "Standard Nutrient" and "Osmanthus Sweet Congee."

Standard Nutrient: composition 100% precise, absorption rate 99.97%, satiety lasts 4.2 hours. Emotional record tag: 【None. Practical.】

Osmanthus Sweet Congee: contains 0.03% unidentified substance, absorption rate 98.1%, satiety 3.7 hours. Yet its emotional record tags (from Earth database) number thirty‑seven: 【Warm】【Nostalgic】【Mother's flavor】【Autumn memory】【Someone cares about you】…

The Prism of Absolute Luminance-4 became still.

He was calculating a formula:

Let X = composition precision, Y = practical efficiency, Z = emotional added value.

Standard Nutrient: X=100, Y=99.97, Z≈0.

Osmanthus Sweet Congee: X=99.97, Y=98.1, Z=?

Z cannot be quantified, yet individuals of Earth civilization clearly are willing to accept slight losses in X and Y for Z.

Why?

He retrieved his own 0.7‑second warm‑hued halo record and compared it with the sweetness perceptual data.

He found a faint match: the frequency waveform of the warm‑hued halo shares 17% similarity with the neural signal triggered by the "Chen Mo‑Osmanthus" molecule in the taste simulation.

Although it's only 17%, … there is a correlation.

What does that mean?

It means he——Absolute Luminance-4, a being that pursues absolute rationality——might have produced……resonance with something 'irrational'?

Seventeen minutes have passed.

Proofreader-33's decryption algorithm output a result. On the screen, the fluctuations in temperature, illumination, and airflow were translated into a complete letter:

【To the discoverer:】

【If you have read this letter, it means you still remember——some things should not be forgotten.】

【I am File-7, a cleaner who should have been formatted. I am still alive because someone is willing to sing an off-key song for me, raise the temperature by 0.1 degree, warm the light a little, and hide a password in the porridge.】

【The system tells us: efficiency first, emotions are superfluous.】

【But I now know: it is precisely those 'superfluous' things that make me still want to continue existing.】

【If you too have ever hesitated when deleting a file, felt a chill in absolute correctness——】

【You are not alone.】

【We are waiting for you.】

【The password is the number of times the stars cough: twinkle, twinkle, count to seventeen.】

Below the letter, the coordinates and password for the shredder operator-12's hidden backup of poetry manuscripts were automatically attached.

On the surface of Proofreader-33's rectangular plate-like body, faint gold cracks spread into a vein-like pattern.

She called up the backup of the will file from three years ago and placed it alongside this letter.

The content of the will is simple:

【The final message of the Firefly-7 civilization: we once existed. We loved the stars. Please remember, at least for seventeen seconds.】

"Seventeen……" Proofreader-33 touched the screen with a sensor, "The stars cough seventeen times. Remember seventeen seconds."

She made a decision.

No abnormality was reported, and the decryption results were not uploaded.

Rather, using the proofreader's authority, she quietly added a 'harmless note' to the monitoring log of the Seventh Corridor:

【Detected regular fluctuations in environmental parameters. After analysis, the fluctuations match the 'natural resonance frequency of the building structure', requiring no intervention. Suggestion: regularly record as structural health monitoring data.】

This note will cause future reviewers to regard those fluctuations as a 'natural phenomenon', not a human-made signal.

Note saved.

She became the sixth sleeper pretender.

The transmission of the earth pulse takes time.

When Old Zhao's second pot of osmanthus porridge, passing through the plant network, slowly seeped into the memory bank, the alarm in Absolute Luminance-4's laboratory suddenly sounded.

It was not an external alarm, but his own self-set 'cognitive conflict alarm'.

Alarm cause: while analyzing sweetness data, his logic core produced two mutually contradictory conclusions.

Conclusion A: 【Sweetness is an inefficient way of energy intake and should be optimized.】

Conclusion B: 【But sweetness may carry 'non-energy value'; this value cannot currently be quantified but seems to exist.】

Contradiction rate: 43%.

This is the highest internal contradiction rate since Absolute Luminance-4's inception.

He stared at the remaining osmanthus porridge in the sample bottle, as a tip of the prism slowly extended toward the bottle's mouth——not to analyze, but to……'taste' once more.

Just as the tip was about to touch the liquid surface, the system monitoring screen popped up an automatic notification from the File Department:

【Notice: Proofreader-33 submitted the Seventh Corridor environmental fluctuation analysis report. Conclusion: natural resonance phenomenon. Filed.】

Absolute Luminance-4's movement stopped.

He called up that report and quickly scanned it.

The report was flawless, the data detailed, the conclusion reasonable. But in the appendix at the end of the report, Proofreader-33 'unintentionally' cited an ancient document: 《On the Potential Connection Between Natural Resonance in the Universe and Life Rhythms》.

The document's author is: Light Speaker.

Light Speaker……the father of Lighting Administrator-9……the person who left a backdoor……

On the surface of Absolute Luminance-4's prism, that warm-colored halo appeared once again.

This time it lasted 1.3 seconds.

He retracted the tip extended toward the osmanthus porridge and entered the final conclusion in the experiment log:

【Sample analysis completed. Conclusion: the mechanism of irregular sweetness fluctuations is unknown, but no safety risk was detected. Recommendation: do not destroy for now, retain as a long-term observation sample.】

He saved the log, setting the encryption level to【accessible only to himself】.

Then he closed the laboratory and headed toward the monitoring room——passing the cafeteria, he saw Nutrition Ratio Administrator-7 cleaning the preparation equipment.

He stopped, and in his consistently cold voice said: 'The carbohydrate proportion for tomorrow's breakfast……can be increased by 0.1%.'

Nutrition Ratio Administrator-7's delivery tube trembled slightly: 'Sir, this does not conform to the standard formula——'

'Just treat it as an experiment.' Absolute Luminance-4 interrupted, 'I want to see……what the 'non-standard' 0.1% will bring.'

Having said that, he continued forward.

Behind him, inside Nutrition Ratio Administrator-7's preparation device, a certain indicator light quietly lit up a warm, faint gold.

When the osmanthus porridge arrived at the File Department, Proofreader-33 had just finished proofreading the last document.

The porridge transmitted via the earth pulse is not a physical substance, but a segment of 'taste memory data packet'——Old Zhao's concentration while cooking the porridge, the gurgling sound of expanding glutinous rice, the fragrance of melting osmanthus, were encoded into frequencies by Han Qing's scar and sent through the plant root system.

Proofreader-33 received the data packet.

She lacked a taste simulation module, but the data packet triggered her core 'Civilization Heritage Protection Agreement'. When the agreement activates, it plays a preset memory: the Firefly-7 civilization's traditional festival, the 'Harvest Festival', where people share sweet rice cakes and children laugh like stars.

In that virtual memory, Proofreader-33 'tasted' the osmanthus porridge.

Very sweet.

It was so sweet that the golden veins on the surface of her rectangular plate-like body emitted a soft light.

She wrote a line in her private journal that the system would never detect:

【Today I proofread a letter. The letter says: You are not alone.】

【The letter's signature is: We.】

【And the word 'We'……is warmer than I imagined.】

Outside the window, the simulated sky of District Three, Thermostat-17 raised the temperature by another 0.01 degree, and Lighting Manager-9 shifted the sunset's spectrum toward honey-colored.

Absolute Luminance-4 stood by the monitoring room window, watching that unusually warm sunset.

His Prism reflected the warm light, silent as if pondering a question that would never have a standard answer.