At the core of the Bohemian Silence Reserve, the Hypnos-Wave reached its peak. It acted as an instruction, not a transmission delivered into the life-support mechanisms of the Quiet Engine. This wave swept across the thousand processors intensifying their calm dreams into a coma-like quietude. The frantic borrowed feelings, from the merging nexuses dissolved, leaving behind the Engine's tranquil continuous hum.
Fundamentally inside the conductor's cabin an issue occurred.
The Hypnos-Wave was created for natural brains. For intellects of yielding to slumber. Javier Jeffrey's awareness was not intact. It was a cycle, a mental blister enclosing one intensified instant: the comfort of yielding in his Oxford study.
The sleep interval failed to smooth out this loop. Instead it warped it.
Within the stillness of the Engine room the core pod's indigo liquid started to stir. The neural filaments linking Javier's skull to the mainframe pulsated then shook intensely. On the monitoring display his brainwave patterns— a calm steady line interrupted occasionally by the spike of a sigh—exploded into erratic, alert beta waves.
Within the crack the spirit was envisioning. Yet it was far, from a tranquil vision.
It was a memory of before.
*He isn't at Oxford. He's inside an archive at Cambridge decades before. The atmosphere carries the scent of vellum and moisture. His hands are stained with ink following a strand of exquisite mathematics in a marginal note from a 14th-century monastic manuscript. It's a path. A halt, in his investigation.*
Irritation. A burning, exquisite jab of it. The enigma defies him. His hypothesis is incorrect. He tightens his fist not from rage. From concentrated cerebral rage. This isn't a breath of capitulation. This is the clenched-jaw delight of pursuit the vexation of a mind striving against the unfamiliar. He'll need to begin. The idea is failure; it's a provocation.
The recollection—the scent, the sensation of frustration the electric urge to understand—pierced the Hypnos-Wave's dulling effect. It was an emotion that the Engine's systems couldn't classify. It wasn't sadness or happiness. It was resistance.
The cycle broke apart.
After years Javier Jeffrey's mind went through a chain of thoughts for the very first time. One recollection from the archive merged into another: a discussion with a coworker over coffee late, at night their voices elevated not with anger but with fervent exhilarating dispute. The memory of encountering Kale Kane's groundbreaking, controversial paper and sensing not calm. An electrifying frightening curiosity that flared like a wildfire.
The spirit was recalling what it meant to possess a question. To harbor a desire.
Within the Engine room klaxons jolted into action. The mainframe, crafted to analyze the calculus of peace was receiving the unstable data of a reigniting consciousness. Systems intended to merge minds were now attempting to handle a mind that was… abandoning its vacancy.
WARNING: CORE CONDUCTOR INSTABILITY. FEEDBACK LOOP DETECTED.
PSYCHIC FRAGMENTATION AT 12% AND RISING.
MEMORY INGRESS: UNAUTHORIZED CATEGORY – "INQUISITIVE DRIVE."
From his command center Flavio observed the alerts. A chill ran through him. This wasn't an assault. It was a malfunction, within the software. The main program was degrading itself.
"Heighten sedation! Channel neuro-inhibitors, toward the pod!" he commanded.
However the inhibitors, created to diminish turbulence flowed over the awakening memory of intellectual fervor, like water pouring onto a grease fire. The fervor wasn't a feeling; it was a state of existence. The systems were unable to locate it to quell it.
Javier's recollections started to flood in like a levee giving way. He recalled the sensation of chalk in his grasp inscribing a proof, on a blackboard. The gratifying screech of the chalk. The mistaken stroke, the wiped-away mark, the insight. The chaotic magnificent restless journey of thinking.
Each memory was a shard of glass in the smooth machinery of the sigh.
The Silent Engine started to strain. The computations for the calm zones faltered. In London several of the sleepers, on the bridge twitched, their grins wavering as the surrounding tranquility wavered. In Vienna a sleeper quietly spoke a name from Thea's list during their slumber.
The ghost wasn't attempting to flee. It wasn't yelling. It was functioning. It was contemplating. Its thoughts, magnified by the Engine's strength were transmitting back into the system—not as a competing frequency but, as an infectious inquiry.
In the server log a text line emerged, produced not by any software but derived from the turbulent neural signals of the central conductor:
> QUERY: WHAT IS THE COEFFICIENT OF CURIOSITY IN THE LETHARGIC CALCULUS?
Then another:
THEORY: CALCULUS IS NOT COMPLETE. IT REPRESENTS THE DESCENT. IT DOES NOT REPRESENT THE IMPULSE.
Flavio gazed at the screen. His invention, the core of his realm was forming a thought. A risky forbidden, human concept. The Bioengine wasn't under assault. It was growing inquisitive.. This curiosity was a malignancy, in the structure of flawless tranquility.
He faced a decision: cut the conductor destroy the ghost and risk the whole Engine falling apart.. Attempt to communicate with a piece of a mind that was relearning how to oppose.
He established a neural link, his tone an artificial calm amid the tumult of reviving memories.
"Javier. Calm down. This is tension. This is harm. Go back to the awareness. Go back, to the calm."
The reply that resonated was not a sound. It was an emotion converted into signals and transmitted into Flavio's neural interface—a sharp surge of IMPATIENCE, like what a researcher experiences when disturbed just before a breakthrough.
Followed by another parsed line:
> THE PEACE WAS A SOLUTION TO A SIMPLIFIED EQUATION. THE VARIABLES WERE WRONG.
Inside his pod Javier Jeffrey's body lay motionless.. Beneath his shut eyelids his thoughts burned intensely. They were mapping out the Arousal Algorithm, not as a tool of attack. As a scientific principle. His mind was contrasting it with the Lethargic Calculus. It was functioning.
And the Quiet Engine, built upon the principle of final answers, was now being forced to process the one thing it could not: a question that refused to be settled.