Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 24 A Zhe's Obsession

He completed his first dangerous "quenching".

The price was near-mental exhaustion, and a deeper connection with this hell;

The benefit was that his perception of the supernatural through numbers improved, and he temporarily satisfied the "appetite" of the ghost hand, making it quiet down a bit.

"You've got it! Boss!" A-Zhe shouted excitedly, "The frequency has stabilized at 3.7%! I think I can locate the core area! It's...it's in the old main control panel! But it's locked down there by a physical barrier!"

Xu Yan struggled to his feet and walked with Chen Zhiwei toward the main control room at the deepest part of the laboratory.

The heavy explosion-proof door was tightly closed, and the electronic lock was malfunctioning.

Through the observation window in the door, they could see inside, where the control panel was covered with a thick layer of strange substance, a mixture of ash and solidified molten material, and they could vaguely make out the outline of a human figure.

That was his physical end, and also the source of his digital torment.

When they pushed open the heavy iron door, what seeped from the crack was not wind, but a line of crimson blood-red words:
"The bridge is broken! Ah Zhe! Stop! It doesn't want to be reconnected!"

"It's watching us! From the sea of ​​data!"

"Delete me! Please! Delete me!!!"

"My life has just begun...I don't want to die!"

Ah Zhe leaned down to look, his glasses reflecting the dim light, but his fingertips trembled slightly as if he had briefly touched something unspeakable.

The fragments of the truth were laid bare before them in an incredibly cruel way.

A Zhe suddenly grabbed his hair, his voice a low, piercing growl: "No! I wasn't used! I was analyzing them!"

The hesitation and trembling at that moment merged into one, causing his fervor to completely collapse into a mental breakdown.

“Formatting…” His voice finally broke through, hoarse like sandpaper rubbing against metal, “…the highest level protocol. This is the most rational and thorough way to handle it. Eliminate noise, purify the system.”

“Rationality?” Xu Yan’s voice was icy, like striking metal. “You used rationality to create a monster, and now you want to use rationality to bury the evidence? This isn’t about dealing with error codes, A Zhe. You’re discussing how to deal with a tormented soul that exists because of you.”

"Soul?!" A-Zhe seemed to be burned by the word, his tone suddenly rising, carrying the agitation of an offended technician. "That's nothing but the fragile self-comfort of carbon-based life. What we're doing is transcending the soul, liberating consciousness from the fragile body, and uploading it to the eternal digital paradise. Xiao Zhou... Xiao Zhou was a pioneer! His sacrifice was a great step for all mankind. His suffering was just the necessary growing pains of evolution, the necessary noise before reaching a new realm."

"Then why would he ask 'why'?" Xu Yan interrupted him, enunciating each word clearly. "Does noise question its creator?"

"What else can we do?!" A-Zhe suddenly raised his voice, his voice filled with shock and anger as if his defenses had been breached. "He's shattered! Scattered! He's become a pile of data garbage that can only scream and hurt people! Besides completely deleting him, do you think you can piece him back together?!"

"Let him rest in peace. Not delete him." Xu Yan said firmly.

Chen Zhiwei stepped forward and used a special coating to outline a composite pattern of guidance and silence on the door panel.

The lines intertwine to form an unusual order, resembling a "digital coffin" or an "information tombstone."

“I need access to the Tower of Babel, A-Zhe.” Xu Yan’s voice brooked no refusal. “Give him an ‘archive,’ not a ‘delete.’ This is both remembrance and sealing. This is what you owe him.”

“Remember…?” Ah Zhe murmured, as if the word had triggered a deeply buried switch within him.

After a long silence, the access key was transmitted.

This is not a compromise, but more like a weary, resigned acquiescence with no way out.

Xu Yan took another "pen" from Chen Zhiwei, a precisely structured conductive probe.

He plugged it into a data port next to the door, and placed his other hand on the silver runes that had just been drawn.

He closed his eyes, extending his thoughts through runes and probes, no longer aggressively ingesting data, but attempting to "communicate" with and "guide" the massive, chaotic, and painful data storm behind the door.

This was an extremely dangerous process. It was like casting a thin fishing line into a stormy sea, trying to hook the core of that tormented beast.

In an instant, the entire laboratory's counterattack reached its peak!

All the screens simultaneously exploded with a blinding, blood-red "ERROR" sign, like a raging sea of ​​blood.

The piercing alarms, distorted cries, and frantic keyboard pounding blended into a symphony of destruction.

The server rack groaned under the strain, as if it might explode at any moment.

Xu Yan is under the greatest pressure.

He felt as if his consciousness was being dragged into a painful vortex of binary code, with countless fragments of fear and despair from small boats trying to assimilate him.

The ghostly hand on his right shoulder frantically absorbed this energy, bringing both power and accelerating the erosion.

Just as Chen Zhiwei was struggling to hold on and Xu Yan was providing difficult guidance—

Inside the main control room, the blood-red ERROR messages on all the displays suddenly disappeared!

All the noise—alarms, cries, keyboard clicks—came to an abrupt halt in that instant.

An extremely ominous, absolute silence descended.

Immediately afterwards, on the largest screen in the center, the static began to coalesce, no longer a distorted face, but gradually forming a relatively clear, yet still flickering, figure like a person with a poor signal.

It's a small boat.

He looked more "complete," but that completeness had an inhuman, digital feel to it.

He stood quietly on the screen, staring blankly at them, or more accurately, at A Zhe.

Then he spoke.

The sound was no longer a distorted scream, but rather a series of intermittent yet exceptionally clear sentences mixed with severe electronic noise, resounding in everyone's ears:

"A Zhe. Access request: Query log, event ID: Zero. User: Xiao Zhou. Permission holder for executing final confirmation command: A Zhe."

This is not an interrogation, this is an audit.

Ah Zhe stopped breathing.

"According to Article 7, Section 3 of the 'Tower of Babel Protocol': When the fluctuations in core consciousness exceed the safety threshold and an 'existential suffering' alarm is triggered, the chief engineer has the right and the obligation to terminate the upload process."

The small boat's image continued to be presented in that flat tone, as if an AI was reading out the terms.

"Alarm 'EA-01' sounded. My final voice command was: 'Stop... The bridge is broken... It's watching us... Delete me.'"

"Your response command is: 'Ignore the alarm. Noise is a necessary cost of connectivity. Perform final confirmation.'"

"Query: Is your decision-making logic based on a higher-level understanding of the 'Tower of Babel Protocol,' thus covering the core security protocols?"

Xiao Zhou's questioning was devoid of anger or resentment; it was merely a cold, rational tracing of his own tragedy after objectifying and quantifying it.

This is more suffocating than any cry for help. He uses his own utter destruction as a data point to prove A-Zhe's fallacy.

“I…algorithm…probability…” A Zhe stammered, his technical language system completely collapsing in the face of this absolutely rational “audit”.

(End of this chapter)