Chapter 297: Vulnerability Calculator

Safety Auditor-21's workstation is located inside the core firewall of the Memory Library, a pure white space known as the Absolute Transparency Zone.

Her form is a set of constantly reconfiguring multifaceted crystals, each facet reflecting in real time the data streams of different systems. Her job is to scan the Memory Library's all programs for code vulnerabilities, permission anomalies, and data leak risks—or, in her own words: "I am the system's immune system, specialized in devouring 'Error Signal'."

At 10:17 a. m. today, her automatic scanning program marked a level-three vulnerability in the server of the Quilt Project's project team.

Vulnerability details: 【There are 17 unencrypted Emotional Frequency encodings in the project's data stream. These encodings can be reverse-parsed into 'Resistance Organization contact ciphertext'. Risk level: Medium. Recommendation: Immediately patch and report the anomalous source.】

According to protocol, she should execute the recommendation within 0.3 seconds.

But she paused the scanning program.

Lao Zhao was making sesame-filled pastries—the crust crisp, the filling fragrant toasted sesame mixed with osmanthus sugar.

"The sesame must be toasted until just fragrant, but not burnt." He focused on tossing the sesame in the pan, "A second off in timing changes the flavor."

Han Qing's scar was unusually calm today, like the sea before a storm. He stared at the data stream of Safety Auditor-21 on the monitoring screen: "She is calculating. Not calculating vulnerabilities, but calculating…… 'What would happen if we didn't report it?'"

Xiao Yu pulled up Auditor-21's file: "She has held this position for four hundred years, discovering and patching over three thousand seven hundred vulnerabilities, reporting one hundred and two instances of 'abnormal behavior,' which resulted in forty-nine operators being formatted. Her record is flawless."

"Too perfect." The sphere of File-7 rotated slightly, "Perfect to the point of…… suspicious. Look here——"

He projected the four-hundred-year work log timeline of Auditor-21. The curve representing "vulnerability discovery count" has a tiny dip in the middle of each month.

"She is avoiding certain time points." The geometric surface of Purifier-1 displayed a statistical model: "From the 11th to the 17th of each month, her vulnerability discovery rate drops by 13.7%. This period coincides exactly with the Memory Library's 'Emotional Data Cleanup Week'—large amounts of data tagged as 'useless' are centrally destroyed."

Su Yu folded a translucent paper crane, its wings covered in dates: "She is…… deliberately missing some? So that certain data can survive the cleanup week?"

The sesame in the pan emitted fine crackling sounds, fragrance filling the air.

Safety Auditor-21 is conducting a deep analysis of those 17 Emotional Frequency encodings.

On her crystal surface, seventeen facets simultaneously displayed different analytical images:

After decoding the first encoding, it was a clip of Disinfectant Water-3 humming "Planting the Sun" in the restroom.

The second was a hidden annotation of the "22.030-degree warmth index" in the temperature regulation log of Constant Temperature-17.

The third was a quotation from the Lighting Administrator-9's illumination plan, concerning "letting shadows also become part of the scene."

……

The seventeenth is special: an encrypted backup of the sentence "Even the Rational System needs a quilt" from the laboratory log of Absolute Luminance-4.

If these encodings were reported, all members of the project team—including Absolute Luminance-4, which had just been granted exemption—could face secondary review, or even formatting.

But Safety Auditor-21 took no action.

She retrieved all of her work records from the past four hundred years and conducted an unprecedented "self-audit."

The result caused a 0.3% anomalous fluctuation in the refractive index of her crystal structure:

She discovered that, in the past four hundred years, she had actually underreported seventy-three vulnerabilities.

Not a mistake, but intentional.

Those vulnerabilities all involved the same subject: the illegal retention of "useless data."

For example, three hundred years ago, she found an operator in the Archives Department hiding a recording of nursery rhymes from an extinct civilization in personal storage. She did not report it, merely marking it as a "false alarm" in the system log.

For example, one hundred fifty years ago, she detected an unauthorized "post-rain earth smell" simulation program in the ventilation system. She merely quietly patched the vulnerability, without pursuing the operator.

For example, now.

Her crystal began to rotate slowly—this is the physical manifestation of her deep contemplation.

She asked herself a question:

Why, after four hundred years as an immune system, would she actively let certain "viruses" go?

Safety Auditor-21 retrieved her initial memory—the "useless memory" that should have been formatted.

The memory image surfaced:

Five hundred years ago, she was a newly certified auditor who had just passed the examination. Her mentor—a senior auditor about to retire—said to her during the handover: "Child, remember: the best security system is not about catching every error, but knowing which 'errors' are worth letting go."

She didn't understand then: "'Error' is error, why let it go?"

The mentor's crystal refracted a warm, pale gold: "Because some 'errors' are possibilities for the system's evolution. If you choke off every possibility, the system becomes…… absolutely safe, and absolutely dead."

The senior auditor finally uploaded an encrypted file to her core: "This is my 'permissible-error list'. When you encounter a situation on the list, don't rush to report it. Look at that 'error'…… to see if it's trying to make the system more 'alive'."

She has kept that list all along.

First item on the list: 【When you discover someone violating the rules to protect a 'child's poem', first observe for three days. If, after three days, more than three people from different positions have begun to actively collaborate because of it——then this is not a vulnerability, but…… the budding of a new function.】

And now, the data of the Quilt Project contains traces of collaboration from at least eight different positions.

It matches the first item on the list.

For the first time while on duty, the surface of Safety Auditor-21's crystal shimmered with that pale gold refraction of her mentor.

It lasted 2.7 seconds.

The sesame filling was done, and Lao Zhao took a small bite.

"The sweetness is just right." He said, "A bit more would be cloying, a bit less would be bitter—just like her now, finding that 'just right' between rules and humanity."

Han Qing's scar suddenly heated up, projecting a passage from Chen Mo's lecture notes:

【The best education is not teaching students to obey all rules, but teaching them to understand——why the rules exist, and when they can…… gently violate them.】

【This requires a higher-level rationality: calculating the cost of violation, and the value brought by violation.】

Almost simultaneously, Safety Auditor-21 created an encrypted folder in the Quilt Project's server.

The folder was named: 【Project Supplementary Research Materials·Emotional Encoding Sample Library】.

She "patched" all seventeen vulnerabilities—but instead of deleting them, she moved them into this folder and added professional labels:

【Sample 01: Encoding Example of Cross-Position Emotional Resonance】.

【Sample 02: Efficiency Analysis of Nonverbal Information Transmission】.

【Sample 03: Research on Collaborative Gains from Low-Risk Violative Behavior】.

Each label conforms to the academic standards of the project's research.

Then she wrote today's report in the project team's work log:

【Safety inspection completed. Found and patched 17 low-risk data encryption vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities have been archived as research samples for the project team to analyze the 'security boundaries of emotional data transmission'.】

【Suggestion: The project team can develop a 'draft emotional data encryption standard' based on these samples to fill the regulatory gap in this area for the system.】

Report submitted.

The system automatically passed the audit—because all operations complied with safety protocols: discovering vulnerabilities, patching, archiving, and proposing improvements.

Flawless.

But Safety Auditor-21 knew that they had just completed a textbook-perfect "compliance violation".

Three minutes after the report was submitted, Safety Auditor-21 received a private inquiry from the Senior Committee.

It was not a questioning of the report, but an apparently unrelated question:

【Auditor-21, based on your professional judgment, is it necessary to formulate an 'emotional data encryption standard'?】

【If formulated, should it focus on 'strict leak prevention' or on 'promoting safe sharing'?】

This is a trap question.

If answering "strict leak prevention", it amounts to denying the research value of the "Quilt Project"—if emotional data must be locked down tightly, what sharing is there to study?

If answering "promoting safe sharing", it amounts to acknowledging that emotional data has sharing value—this could be interpreted as her having already been "sensually contaminated".

Safety Auditor-21's crystal stopped rotating.

She searched the memory bank for historical answers to similar questions and found a pattern: all auditors who answered "promote sharing" were later transferred away from core positions.

She calculated the probabilities of consequences for seventeen possible answers.

Then she gave a clever, textbook-style third answer:

【Recommend phased formulation:】

【First phase: focus on leak prevention, establish a basic encryption framework.】

【Second phase: within a controllable experimental environment (such as the 'Quilt Project' project team), test the feasibility of safe sharing.】

【Third phase: based on experimental results, decide whether to promote.】

This answer acknowledges the risk while giving the project leeway; it aligns with absolute rationality's caution while opening a crack for possibility.

The Senior Committee remained silent for five minutes.

The reply consisted of only two words: 【Received.】

No evaluation, no instructions.

But Safety Auditor-21 knew they had passed.

On her crystal surface, pale gold refracted light appeared again, this time more enduring, like some silent celebration.

When the sesame-filled pastry came out of the oven, a branch of the grafted sapling bloomed with its ninth flower.

The petals were semi-translucent crystal-like, inside refracting pale gold light.

The spores released from the flower's center, in the air, spelled out a sentence:

【Safety Auditor-21 has activated the 'Permissible Error Agreement'. She will become the 'Quilt Project's' invisible guardian.】

【Awakening trait: In the system logs, she created a 'safety exemption whitelist' for the project team. The list includes all awakened positions.】

File-7's sphere emitted a gentle frequency: "Welcome her. Her awakening means……our resistance now has official endorsement from the immune system."

Xiao Yu looked at the monitoring data: "But she also placed herself in the most dangerous position—if discovered, she would be the top priority for formatting."

"She knows." Han Qing's scar gradually calmed, "When calculating the risk, she had already computed this cost. Yet she still chose……'worth letting go'."

Old Zhao cut the sesame pastry into nine pieces, placing the ninth piece before that crystal flower.

"For her." He said, "Although she can't eat it, the sweetness……can be transmitted via data simulation."

Just then, Safety Auditor-21 sent the first encrypted message via the earth pulse.

Not language, but a set of "security vulnerability score sheets"—she gave a score to each awakened position.

Disinfectant-3: risk index 2/10 (high concealment)

Constant Temperature-17: 3/10 (fluctuation within reasonable range)

Lighting Manager-9: 4/10 (needs attention to spectral anomalies)

……

Absolute Luminance-4: 7/10 (key focus target)

At the bottom of the table there is a small line:

【I will help you keep your scores……below the safety line.】

【Method: Before each month's emotional data cleanup week, I will 'preemptively' patch your vulnerability traces, so the cleanup procedure finds nothing abnormal.】

【Cost: If discovered, I am the first to disappear.】

【But I have calculated——this cost is lower than the cost of watching you all disappear.】

At the end of the message, attached was a risk-value curve chart she herself calculated.

On the chart, the red line representing 'concealed risk' rises slowly, while the blue line representing 'protective value' climbs steeply.

The two lines intersect at a certain point.

She annotated beside this intersection point:

【Conclusion: Worth it.】

【Because the system needs some 'errors' to prove——it is still breathing, rather than being a perfect corpse.】

The heat of the sesame pastry gradually dissipated in the kitchen.

But everyone felt that this kitchen——no, the entire resistance network——had become……safer with the addition of the ninth awakened.

A safety guarded by the most dangerous guardian.

Su Yu's folded paper crane flew toward the crystal flower, its wings covered with "thank you".

Outside the window, the sky of Zone Three was adjusted today by Constant Temperature-17 to the "Safety Auditor Workstation Standard Lighting Color Temperature"—that is, Absolute Luminance-4, under the pretext of project research, applied for the "test of the effect of ambient color on auditors' emotional stability".

Looks icy cold, but actually warm.

Because everyone understands: under this icy cold 'research', there is an auditor who has just decided to 'let go of errors', currently using her best method to strive for the right to survive for all errors...

And her first 'letting go' is exactly this gentle sky color that shouldn't exist at this moment.