...What exactly...are you calculating?
The screen had long since gone black, but those words hung branded into the air like the impression of a hardened steel stamp, carrying a lingering warmth that was almost spent.
He was asking me. For the first time, the ghost hiding behind the data barrier had asked a question with this almost naked bewilderment, stripped of every electronic disguise.
He did not understand. His model had completely seized up before the variable of "chaos catalysis." He could not connect Chen Jing's "accident" to the Foundation's collapse through the chains of cause and effect he knew. He saw the outcome, but could not find the "why" that would reassure him enough to start making predictions again.
He was afraid. Afraid of this incalculable disorder. Afraid of me, a "variable" that played by no rules.
In the corner, Ryuk finally finished gnawing on the purple-spotted apple. He crushed its shriveled core between his claws with faint cracking sounds. His crimson eyes turned toward me, swirling with a mixture of excitement and some primal wariness.
"He's asking you, kid." Ryuk's voice rasped like stones grinding together. "He can't figure it out. He's scared. Are you going to tell him? Tell him you never calculated anything, really, just...threw a pebble and watched the water churn on its own?"
I slowly shook my head, never taking my eyes off the lifeless phone.
Tell him? No.
To explain is to submit. To place myself back inside the framework through which he tries to understand me.
Silence. Sustained, suffocating silence is the greatest torment I can inflict on him. The most complete denial of his world, built on analysis and understanding.
Let him guess. Let him run endless projections through that overloaded model until his logic circuits burn out.
But silence cannot be motionless. Stillness would give him breathing room, let him recalibrate.
My silence must be active, a poised threat bearing immense pressure, held back but never released.
The next target. I must push this sense of "incalculable" oppression to its limit. It must be a target he could never predict, whose manner of death would overturn everything currently understood, leaving his model unable even to define "chaos catalysis."
A...conceptual existence.
My gaze went blank, piercing the physical screen as I searched the underlying torrents of information and consciousness. Forgotten urban legends? Forbidden experiments at the fringes of science? Manifestations of ancient philosophical ideas?
Too vague. Not powerful enough.
I need something more modern, more...sharp. A "concept" that exists in the collective subconscious, symbolizing some chronic disease of the system itself.
Found it.
"Patient Zero." It did not mean the first case of a particular infectious disease. In an online context, it specifically referred to the anonymous accounts that first spread mental plagues such as extreme polarization, hatred, and conspiracy theories. They were like viruses, without physical form, only toxic ideas that endlessly replicated and mutated, tearing society apart and catalyzing violence. No one knew whether "Patient Zero" was a person, a team, or an AI. They were a concept, the embodiment of malice itself in the digital age.
Destroy a concept? Can the Death Note do that?
I walked over to the desk, brushing my fingertips across the notebook's rough, yellowed pages. Yes. As long as this "concept" is deeply bound to a specific, recognizable "form of existence."
My pen touched the page with an almost sacrilegious resolve.
["Patient Zero"] (whose existence is deeply integrated with ["Echo Chamber"], an underlying redundant code module within the current core internet protocols used to spread extremist information) Cause of death: conceptual deconstruction. Time: tomorrow at precisely twelve noon, at the moment of peak global network traffic. Cause of death: the ["Echo Chamber"] code module on which it depends will undergo a logical self-contradiction, recursively deleting all copies of itself within one ten-thousandth of a second and permanently writing an unalterable [Logical Deadlock] state. This process will cause every algorithmic recommendation-based platform aggregating extremist content worldwide (including but not limited to specific forums, social media groups, and video recommendation channels) to simultaneously and continuously push a plain-text announcement that cannot be closed, blocked, or interacted with. The announcement will consist of the most representative fragments of hate speech ever spread by "Patient Zero," randomly pieced together into an absurd, distorted collage, lasting twenty-four hours.
There would be no death. Only a concept dissolving itself. A compulsory "public execution" of malice itself. Those corners steeped in poison would be forced to stare without respite at the madness they had produced.
This had long since gone beyond "judgment." It was a surgical strike against the information ecosystem itself.
Mentor, how...does your model intend to define this?
The next day, at precisely twelve noon.
Certain corners of the global internet suddenly plunged into a bizarre "carnival."
The pages of countless extremist communities were covered in scrolling announcements that could neither be removed nor closed. Their contents were grotesque, randomly splicing fragments of racist rhetoric, gender antagonism, and anti-intellectual conspiracy theories into strings of "declarations" so absurd they made people's scalps crawl.
"...vaccine chip control is a conspiracy by Jewish financial capital and feminists working together to weaken white male fertility in order to..."
"...NASA hides the evidence that the earth is flat because underground reptilians need slaves and we are all..."
At first, there was anger and confusion. Users tried refreshing, closing, and reporting them. Nothing worked.
Then came bewilderment. The extremist rhetoric normally revered as "truth," spliced together so crudely and illogically, laid bare and displayed without end, instead took on an unprecedented air of absurdity and...ridiculousness.
Twenty-four hours. A compulsory, worldwide "exhibition of absurdity."
Panic spread, but it was no longer about any specific threat. It was about this incomprehensible power of control itself.
In my room, the screen displayed reports and panicked discussions from around the world about this surreal online incident.
Ryuk was no longer gnawing on anything. He crouched in the corner, his massive body leaning slightly forward, his crimson eyes fixed on the absurd, spliced phrases scrolling endlessly across the screen, as though trying to understand something within them. A very low, bewildered hum rose from his throat.
No calls.
No texts.
No response of any kind from "Mentor."
Only silence.
Absolute, unfathomable silence.
Time passed, second by second, minute by minute. One hour. Five hours. Twelve hours.
The phone never lit up again.
It was as though the person on the other end had finally been crushed by this incomprehensible "conceptual deconstruction," left without even the strength to send a question mark.
Or perhaps...he is brewing something in this suffocating silence?
I picked up the cold, silent phone.
My fingertip stroked its smooth screen.
The corners of my mouth lifted soundlessly.
Yes. Just like that.
Mentor.
Stay silent.
In your abyss of data,
slowly savor
this incalculable...
fear.
This silence
is my
latest answer to you.
Before you continue