The undercurrent of despair permeating the bedrock of civilization's consensus was cold and viscous. It did not stem from any single event, but from the sediment and resonance of countless individuals' helplessness within the collective unconscious. It eroded the will to survive and dissolved the meaning of action. Injecting false hope or optimism was like painting rotten wood: meaningless, and its falseness might even make things worse.
My will wandered through that mire of despairing information. Absolute reason had limited use here, because despair itself was often a response to the bleak future extrapolated by "reason." The already faint echo that belonged to "Lin Chen" seemed to have dwindled into the same cold silence within this mire.
Yet just as my sense of existence continued to thin, nearly merging with this consensus of despair, I perceived an older, more fundamental stream of information.
It did not originate in the constructs of human civilization, nor did it belong entirely to the realm of consciousness. It was the informational echo of life itself. It was that tenacious, almost blind primal impulse to exist and endure, stretching across billions of years, from the first protoplasm to complex ecosystems. It was the instinct of DNA to replicate, the persistence of cells dividing, the nature of plants to turn toward sunlight, the force beyond reason that drove living things to struggle for survival even in desperate straits.
Beneath civilization's clamor and despair, this life echo was like the planet's heartbeat: low, slow, yet never ceasing.
My intervention had found a new fulcrum.
I no longer tried to combat or overwrite that consensus of despair. That would only provoke rejection. Instead, I began, ever so faintly, to amplify the life echo already present and reconnect it to the subconscious perceptions of individual humans.
This connection did