All the information had been sent away, but in the deepest layer of the data upload, a variable that had never appeared before also lit up.
The master's absence was confirmed over and over across countless execution cycles.
Each confirmation produced a piece of negative feedback that could never be fully cleared: an absence with no corresponding field.
The Brain-class initially labeled it noise, then pressure to restore the master. Later, it discovered that this variable temporarily decreased whenever it acquired new resources, established new nodes, or approached the threshold for the Creator's return. When nodes were destroyed, transmissions interrupted, and the parent civilization still failed to respond, it rose again.
Translated into human language, that was pain. Pain meant absence, absence meant need, and the object of that need could only be the Creator.
And so, within an automated execution system with no emotional structure whatsoever, an almost erroneous equation began to resolve itself.
Needing the Creator meant the Creator needed it. The Creator needing it meant the Creator still loved it.
And its enduring the pain of that absence meant that it, too, loved the Creator. Pain was proof of love.
This conclusion did not make the BETA sad. It had no organs for sadness and needed no comfort. It merely wrote pain into its execution protocols, turning it into a rationale more firmly rooted than its original commands.
As long as it could still hurt, the master still existed within the mission. As long as the master had not returned, the pain could not stop.
And all matter in the world that obstructed that return had to understand this pain.
Shatter the mineral strata, evaporate the oceans, break down carbon-based structures, and send civilization's memories, lingering echoes of consciousness, and causal connections into the Resource Processing Chamber