W's message was like a cold searchlight, trained precisely on my insignificant moment of "hesitation." [Emotion is the source of error.] They had noticed after all. Not through supernatural means, but through meticulous monitoring and analysis of my behavioral patterns and the precision with which I completed each "operation."
They were reminding me, and warning me. Maintain absolute rationality, or be deemed an inadequate tool, at risk of being "optimized" or discarded.
I turned off my phone screen and forced that old awareness stirred by the arms-dealer target, long since stripped of any emotional color, back into the depths of my mind. Error must be eliminated. I ordered myself back onto that smooth, efficient track.
For the next few targets, I strictly followed the plans W provided, without the slightest deviation in timing, location, or method. The "operations" were as flawless as standardized products on an assembly line. The "it" inside me ran smoothly, no longer showing the slightest agitation, fitting ever more closely with this increasingly hollow shell of mine. My memory loss also became regular and "steady," like clearing cached data at scheduled intervals, no longer causing violent upheavals.
I seemed to have finally reached the state of "absolute rationality" W expected-a perfect machine that took targets as input and produced death as output.
W seemed very satisfied. They sent targets slightly more often, but the details of their plans began to show some... subtle changes. They were no longer as exhaustive as they had been at first. Occasionally, they left harmless "blanks" that required a minimum of independent input from me. It was as though they were testing whether this machine retained a degree of "adaptability," provided its core programming remained correct.
I paid it no mind. Filling those blanks required negligible thought and brought almost no