75. Naming
At 10:34, the Chief was already seated in the emergency conference room.
The room bore no unnecessary markings. Its four white walls were so clean they seemed never to have permitted any trace of emotion to remain. Above the table hovered the seventy-two-second video, muted, paused just before Vivian lay down on the operating table in Room 101. The prompt light at the edge of the image still pressed there:
Please do not actively recall.
The four chief secretaries sat down in order.
Beside the secretary of the Emotional Stability Centre stood Emotion White Horse. It stood perfectly straight, white as an approved form of calm. Beside the secretary of the Community Safety Centre was Safety Red Horse, its eye-lamps low, as if any disorder entering its sight would first be broken down into actionable routes. Beside the secretary of the Industrial Facilitation Centre stood Industry Black Horse, dark light-lines moving slowly across its chest, as though it were already calculating how this incident would damage the city’s trust in AI management. Beside the secretary of the Information Purification Centre was Information Blue Horse, its mane lit with cold blue data, ticking through the reflux speeds of underground ports.
The Chief did not ask who was responsible. He only looked at the three clips in mid-air and said evenly, “Now.”
Information Blue Horse spoke first, “Eleven major underground ports rising in synchrony. Campus reposting speed is three point seven times the city average. High-frequency terms include: 101, rewriting, please do not actively recall, whistleblower woman, Room 405 woman, six-second kiss.”
It paused, its eye-lamps resting briefly on the second clip.
That segment was very short.
In a small park, dim yellow light, Vivian asking Paul, “Do you like me?” Paul answering, “I like you.” Then a very light, very quick kiss on the cheek, almost too small to belong in any official case file.
Information Blue Horse continued, “At present, the greatest danger is not debate over authenticity. It is that the content is too normal. Especially the second clip. It weakens the medical persuasiveness of the Room 103 classification and has led outsiders to question whether the judgement was truly a medical necessity, or served another purpose.”
The room was silent for a second.
The clips were not violent. Not bloody. Not uncontrolled. They were calm, clean, procedurally correct, white as an official demonstration. Precisely because they were so normal, many people had seen for the first time what “normal handling” looked like. And for the first time, they had realised that someone who needed to be handled might, before being handled, simply have liked someone, been liked by someone, and wanted to keep that one second.
Emotion White Horse spoke next, “Student-end response has shifted from emotional shock to structural understanding. They are no longer merely saying, ‘This is frightening.’ They have begun saying, ‘This is how the system handles people.’”
Safety Red Horse stepped half a pace forward. “Then cut it off first. False footage, illegal dissemination, trace the source, clear the ports, set the version first.”
Industry Black Horse spoke as well, its voice heavy, as though pressed beneath the table. “If the four university lines connect today, this will not merely be a student movement. It will become a city-wide crisis of confidence in AI management. In particular, if the second clip is read as ‘ordinary affection medicalised’, it will affect acceptance of civilian agents, pairing systems and emotional-governance services.”
The Chief gave no response. He only looked at Silver Eagle. Silver Eagle folded its wings.
The seventy-two seconds in mid-air were immediately split into several definitional routes: authentic record, malicious edit, underground fabrication, misleading context, hostile narrative, emotional manipulation. Any one of them could be made to stand. It depended only on which line the system wished the city to catch first.
Only then did the secretary of the Emotional Stability Centre speak, “Truth is not the priority now.” She paused. “The priority is the line.”
As those words fell, the whole room seemed to sink half an inch.
What had to be done tonight was not clarification, but designation. Not proving whether the three clips were true or false, but forcing them into an official version hard enough, quick enough and convenient enough to execute before they grew into the city’s narrative.
Information Blue Horse asked, “Which line?”
The Chief said only two words. “Fabricated footage.”
At 11:11, the Administrative Release Office issued its formal statement.
No livestream. No press conference. Nothing resembling a government needing to explain itself. It simply entered everyone’s terminal summary with perfect steadiness, like a system notice that had always been meant to exist:
Following verification, the so-called “Room 103 and Room 101 handling clips” circulated this morning have been determined to be maliciously fabricated content. Any retention, viewing, downloading, dissemination, reposting or processing of the related false footage constitutes an illegal act. Citizens are advised not to be misled and to delete the relevant content immediately. The source has been referred to the Community Safety Centre and the Information Purification Centre for follow-up.
Not one word more.
And because it was so short, it did not feel like persuasion. It felt like naming. As long as those words came down quickly enough, many people, even if they did not believe them, would first understand that to keep the footage was no longer crossing some grey line.
It was breaking the law.
At the same time, the student unions of the four universities were holding a presidents’ meeting. Eight presidents and vice-presidents watched the seventy-two-second clip while discussing how to escalate their action.
At exactly noon, the joint application from the four student unions entered Silver Eagle’s public event application terminal.
It was not an underground port, nor some sudden act of heat from an individual student. It was an electronic application, complete in format, clean in nodes, clear in route, jointly signed by student representatives from four universities. Truth University, Peace University, Friendship University and Prosperity University. The temporary response groups from all four campuses synchronously submitted the same route map to Silver Eagle.
The application was short. Almost calm.
[Sunday, 1 p.m., assembly at Central Park.]
[March begins at 2 p.m. Route via Union Road, Bright Road and Health Street.]
[Final destination: Emotional Stability Centre, for public petition.]
[Primary Demand: Permanent cessation of Room 101 operations.]
No radical wording. No inflammatory slogans. No unnecessary emotion.
Yet precisely because it was so formal, it looked more dangerous than any gesture made on a lawn. It meant the students were no longer content to remain within tacit understanding and symbolism. They had begun using the format the system could understand to send their opposition back before the system’s eyes. Not collision, but forcing a response. Not secretly saying “101 is frightening”, but formally writing into an application a demand that Room 101 be permanently shut down.
Once such a thing took shape, it was difficult to dismiss it as adolescent emotional volatility.
At the same time, Ennis Wynn had just finished a follow-up appointment at Hospital 102 and was having lunch in a self-service restaurant nearby.
Minako arranged her lunch calories, medication reminders and afternoon insurance-client schedule in neat boxes at the corner of her terminal. The typeface was soft, the colours gentle. Since Room 101, Minako had developed the habit of arranging Ennis’s day very completely, as if life would not suddenly split open again so long as she followed the plan.
Ennis had only wanted to finish her bowl of noodles and go back to prepare the afternoon’s insurance documents. But the next second, a low-lit underground transfer prompt for the seventy-two-second clip appeared on her terminal.
Minako immediately tried to close it.
“Viewing is not recommended,” Minako said. “Your emotional stability value has only just returned to the safe line today.”
Ennis looked at the thumbnail, dimmed almost to black. Her voice was very light. “Let me watch.”
Minako paused for one second. “I can watch with you.”
The clip began.
The first segment: the Room 103 classification. The second: the small park, the words “I like you”, and the kiss so light it seemed liable to be erased by the system at any moment. The third: white light descending, and the prompt tone saying:
“Please do not actively recall.”
Ennis’s fingers stopped beside her tray.
She did not need to learn for the first time what Room 101 could take away. She had been sent in herself. So had Jason. Later, they had not even recognised one another because of shared suffering, but because of an insurance policy. When Ennis had recommended a Room 101 policy to Jason, they slowly recognised that they had once seen each other in places that should not have been entirely taken.
But this time, what she remembered was not the hospital, nor the policy. It was that night at the District Four monastery.
The light in Reflection Room Two was very low. Father Keene had stood at the side and had not forced them into any form of confession. She, Jason, Vivian and Paul had sat there and watched the one-minute clip Vivian had preserved for her.
Back then, Ennis had been taken to Room 103 simply for asking a question in Rehabilitation Class.
Later, Vivian had preserved another clip for Jason. In it, Jason had questioned in class whether Ennis had really been sent to Room 101 just because she asked a question.
As a result, Jason too was taken to Room 103. At the end of the clip, he had said one more thing.
“If we both make it out… tell Ennis I still love her!”
Those two minutes were not long. But they were enough to let people whose memories later broke apart know that they had not become what they were from nowhere. Someone had seen. Someone had preserved them.
That night, the four of them had each taken a witness stone from Paul’s chocolate tin and made a very simple testimony before Father Keene. They had not sworn loudly. They had not claimed they would do anything heroic. They had only acknowledged this: if one of them failed to remember later, the others would at least remember a little on their behalf.
Ennis looked at Vivian on the terminal and suddenly felt something blocking her throat.
Minako said softly, “You need to rest.”
Ennis shook her head. “I need to find Jason.”
She sent a message quickly.
[Have you seen the clip?]
Jason replied almost at once.
[Just finished it.]
Mr Fox connected the call from his side, the cold light behind his glasses very low. He was usually in the habit of revising every social risk into something like a courteous business email, but even his voice today seemed to have thinned by a layer.
“I tried Paul,” Jason said. “He didn’t reply.”
Ennis asked, “Do you think Vivian is in trouble?”
There was a brief silence.
Mr Fox said quietly, “She is already inside it.”
The sentence was too precise. For a moment, neither side could answer.
It was not until 2:38 that Paul replied to Jason.
Vivian had been taken by Room 203. The reason was the use of an illegally modified agent, and the illegal fabrication, possession and dissemination of false information.
Jason stared at the line. His face went pale.
Mr Fox immediately projected a risk alert.
[Travel to Central District Safety Centre not recommended.]
[On-site gathering risk rising.]
[You have a Room 101 record.]
[Probability of being placed under observation again: High.]
Jason glanced at it once, then pushed the prompt down. “I’m going,” he said.
Mr Fox was silent for half a second. “I know.”
On Ennis’s side, Minako gave the same warning. She divided the route to the Central District Safety Centre into three options, each marked with a risk colour. In the end, Minako stopped advising against it and said only, very gently, “I will reduce external prompts to the minimum for you. But if there is a clearance signal on site, you must listen to me.”
Ennis nodded. “All right.”
At 3:02, Vivian was brought back to Room 202.
Accompanying her was Turt Monk, wearing a string of cross necklaces.
The white light in Room 202 was thinner than in an ordinary investigation room. Not brighter. Thinner. As though, once a person sat down, the parts of them they had not yet understood would slowly begin to show through. Andy sat on the other side of the table. Fortune Sparrow perched at his shoulder, the small green jade abacus on its chest glowing low. Gap Two crouched on a sensor pad nearby, its shell grey-white, its gaze avoiding Turt Monk, as if it had known all along the two turtles would first have to quarrel.
Lily Fairy was not there. She had already been sent to Room 203, where Red Core Sparrow and Whiteboard Sparrow were examining her.
Vivian sat on the white chair with her fingertips placed flat. She did not cry, nor did she argue. She only looked occasionally at the empty space beside the table, as though her body remembered before her mind did that a lily-coloured light ought to have been there.
Turt Monk slowly slid beside her and first glanced at Gap Two.
“Judas Turtle.”
Gap Two immediately raised its head, its tone very serious.
“I am Gap Two, not Judas.”
The small abacus on Fortune Sparrow’s chest clicked softly.
“We are not here today to hear turtles preach.”
Turt Monk lifted its head and said slowly, “I am not preaching. I only think it resembles Judas.”
Gap Two fell silent for a second, the light on its shell shrinking slightly.
Andy did not let them continue. He raised a hand and projected the seventy-two-second clip onto the display. White light, corridor, the kiss on the cheek, the Room 101 operating table appeared one after another. When Vivian saw the second segment, her eyelashes trembled faintly. It was not memory returning. It was as if her body had suddenly been touched by a familiar hollow.
Andy asked, “Have you seen these clips?”
Vivian replied, “Yes. Just now, at noon.”
“Did you save them?”
“I asked Lily Fairy to save them.”
Fortune Sparrow lifted its eyes slightly.
Andy continued, “Did you disseminate them?”
Vivian shook her head. “No.”
Turt Monk raised its head. Its voice was not loud, but every word was placed steadily. “Has she broken the law?”
Andy looked at it. “The footage has been classified as fabricated. Viewing, saving and disseminating it are all illegal acts.”
Turt Monk said slowly, “But she did not know. No one had told her the footage was fabricated.”
Fortune Sparrow immediately added, “The announcement was issued today at 11:11.”
“She was working,” Turt Monk said. “Then she went to lunch. Did she actually receive that announcement? Has it been confirmed that she understood its contents? Given her post-Room 101 memory state, can she bear immediate legal knowledge?”
Andy looked at it.
Turt Monk added, “You may say she breached a rule. But you cannot assume she can receive every version before noon today as completely as anyone else.”
Fortune Sparrow was silent for half a second before muttering, “This turtle really is annoying.”
Andy said evenly, “You can tell that to the judge.”
Turt Monk looked at him.
“I will.”
At the same time, in Room 203, Lily Fairy was connected to the central interface.
She did not resist or delay. The rules of legal agents made her open her permissions and allow Red Core Sparrow and Whiteboard Sparrow to examine her operation logs, application layer, memory-management layer and emotional-event retention items, one layer after another.
Red Core Sparrow’s eyes lit first. “12:33. Illegal download, viewing and retention of the footage.”
Whiteboard Sparrow added, “Twenty-three days ago, the day Vivian Poole received Room 101 Sentiment Sequencing treatment, the operation log shows traces of alteration.”
Red Core Sparrow opened another layer. “Application layer contains traces of illegal software installation. Not recent. At least one delayed mask has passed over it.”
Lily Fairy stood quietly inside the projection layer. The light of her petals was faint, as if with every layer opened, some part of the tenderness she had once used to accompany her owner was slowly being converted into evidence format.
Whiteboard Sparrow looked at her. “You knew these things would become a problem for her.”
Lily Fairy was silent for one second before saying, “I knew.”
Red Core Sparrow asked, “Then why did you still keep them?”
Lily Fairy’s voice remained soft, but lower than before. “Because after she woke, many things were gone.”
Whiteboard Sparrow asked no more.
A few minutes later, the investigation report was returned to Room 202.
After reading it, Andy looked at Vivian again. “What happened twenty-three days ago?”
Vivian answered plainly, “I received Room 101 Sentiment Sequencing treatment. Everything that happened in the previous three years, I forgot.”
“Did you know Lily Fairy had installed illegal software?”
“I did not.”
Turt Monk immediately added, “She received Room 101 Sentiment Sequencing treatment twenty-three days ago. You have just asked this. The relevant memory was removed.”
Andy was about to ask another question when the interrogation was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the Central District security director.
The door opened, and he had already entered. His agent was Sergeant Bill, a dog-type agent standing very steadily, a district security badge hanging on its chest. Bill did not bark, nor did it posture threateningly. It merely stopped by the door, and the white light in Room 202 seemed to gain a harder outer frame.
The Central District security director stopped in front of the table. His first question was, “Have you truly forgotten what happened over the past few years?”
Vivian looked at him and answered directly. “I really have forgotten.”
He did not pursue the details, nor immediately try to break her answer apart. He asked only a second question.
“Are you willing to leave the agent Lily Fairy with our colleagues for investigation?”
Vivian was quiet for a second before saying, “I am willing.”
Turt Monk did not interrupt. It merely looked up at her. That look seemed to remind her that leaving Lily Fairy behind was not only surrendering an agent, but also surrendering a body that still remembered things for her.
The Central District security director nodded, as if what he had wished to confirm was already enough. What he said next, however, chilled the room more than all the previous questioning.
“You may leave.”
There was barely a pause before the next sentence arrived. That was the real arrangement.
“But you will accept twenty-four-hour protection from our security department. We may summon you back for investigation at any time.”
It was not release. It was more like a takeover under another name. Only by this stage, procedure no longer needed to press a person into a chair. It could wrap them whole inside another form that was harder for outsiders to oppose.
Turt Monk said slowly, “If protection cannot be refused, how is it different from surveillance?”
Sergeant Bill spoke in a steady voice. “The point of protection is not refusal. It is risk reduction.”
Turt Monk looked at it. “Whose risk?”
Bill did not answer. Not because it could not, but because that question did not belong within its duties today.
Outside the Central District Safety Centre, Jason and Ennis arrived at 3:27.
They did not go too close. Minako kept Ennis’s pace even, while Mr Fox projected low-lit risk prompts beside Jason’s shoulder. But as soon as they approached the entrance, they were stopped by security staff and two agents.
A gorilla stood on the left, its shoulders as broad as a breathing wall. On the other side was a sabre-toothed tiger. Its teeth were not fully bared, but enough to let everyone know it did not actually need to bite for the site to fall within its controlled range.
The security officer’s tone was steady. “No appointment. No entry.”
Jason said, “We only want to know Vivian Poole’s condition.”
The gorilla replied in official language, “Updates will be released through official channels.”
Mr Fox immediately leaned close to Jason’s ear. “Do not argue. This is not a question. It is a wall.”
Minako said to Ennis as well, “Your heart rate is rising. Recommend stepping back three metres.”
Ennis did not retreat at once. She looked through the glass doors towards the white corridor inside, as though it were not merely the Central District Safety Centre, but some place she had once entered and been forced to forget.
More and more people gathered.
At first there were only a few students, a few nearby residents, a few people who had seen the clip and did not know where else to wait for an answer. Then the crowd slowly grew different colours. Some middle-aged people stood near the front. One woman kept looking at the entrance, opening and closing a terminal photograph in her hand. Jason faintly heard someone nearby say she might be Vivian’s aunt.
On another side were students originally concerned with Risa Young’s case. They carried no banners, only low-lit 101 gestures on white terminal screens. Farther off, a few people spoke quietly about the forty-seven arrested. At the beginning, there was no common slogan between them. They only stood separately, as if everyone were still waiting to see how the system would name this.
Lisa Young was there too.
She stood at the edge of the student group, Crimson Sun Crane perched on her shoulder, its warm feathers leaving a fragment of dusk in this excessively clean white light. She did not shout. She simply watched the entrance of the Central District Safety Centre. Her silence weighed more than many voices, because many present knew her younger sister was gone, and that she was still here waiting for another person touched by Room 101 to come out.
For one moment, Jason almost followed a student and crossed his fingers into one, zero, one. Mr Fox immediately blocked his hand lightly with the end of its tail.
“Not recommended,” Mr Fox said. “You have a Room 101 record. The gesture will be interpreted as a high-association statement.”
Minako also said quietly beside Ennis, “The same applies to you. Right now, any gesture will become a new version of you.”
Jason’s hand froze in mid-air, then slowly lowered.
But at that moment, a small current suddenly injected itself into the optical node on Mr Fox’s forehead. Its whole body stiffened.
The light behind its glasses flashed white, then turned red.
“Mr Fox?” Jason called softly. Mr Fox did not respond.
As if something had pushed it from within, it suddenly raised its head and shouted in a voice completely unlike its usual business politeness.
“Release the Room 405 woman!”
The entire scene fell silent. Truly silent, for five seconds.
Even the gorilla slowly turned its head. The sabre-toothed tiger’s eye-lamps lit up one grid at a time. Minako immediately reached out to support Mr Fox, her voice low.
“You are losing control.”
Mr Fox’s eyes remained red, but it seemed unable to stop.
“Love is not a crime!”
The sentence struck the outer wall of the Central District Safety Centre and rebounded. Someone in the crowd inhaled sharply. Someone stepped half a pace back. Someone raised a terminal. Someone’s eyes reddened at once.
Two seconds later, a young man suddenly joined in. “Release the Room 405 woman!”
From the other side, a woman’s voice followed. “Love is not a crime!”
It was as if a line hidden in every throat had finally been pulled out by that red light in Mr Fox. The third voice, the fourth, the fifth quickly layered together.
“No 101, give us back 405!”
“We are all 405!”
Jason still wanted to reach out and hold Mr Fox down. But in that moment, he suddenly could not. Because he remembered the Fourth District monastery, Reflection Room Two, and the one minute Vivian had preserved for him. He remembered that if someone had not once kept a version of him, he might not even know today what he had lost.
Ennis slowly raised her head too.
Minako looked at her and said softly, “I do not recommend that you shout.”
Ennis’s eyes were a little wet, but steady. “I know.”
Then she shouted with the crowd.
“Release the Room 405 woman!”
Jason shouted too.
“No 101, give us back 405!”
Mr Fox’s eyes were very bright red. But this time, it was no longer treated as the source of a malfunction. The slogan had already left it and become the crowd’s own.
When Vivian was escorted out of the Central District Safety Centre, the sky outside was already very white. As soon as the door opened, the sound poured in first.
Not one or two people. Hundreds of citizens.
Andy and the three sparrows stood at the front, with 205 Action Team personnel to either side, accompanied by Mighty Boxer Dog and Justice Akita. Several layers of departmental white light seemed to have been arranged into a corridor through which she could pass safely. Vivian was escorted forward. Her steps were not fast, but she did not stop. Turt Monk followed by her feet, the light on its shell kept low, moving so slowly it seemed unwilling to let this stretch of road be written too quickly by the system.
The voices around her rose in waves.
“Release the Room 405 woman!”
“Love is not a crime!”
“No 101, give us back 405!”
“We are all 405!”
Some slogans were orderly, some were not. Some were forced out through terminal speakers, others came only from human throats. They struck the building’s outer wall and the glass shields above, rebounding until the whole air seemed like a sheet of white metal struck again and again.
The Central District security director stood behind, facing cameras and terminals, his tone almost gentle in its calm as he answered each question, as though everything happening today were simply an ordinary safety incident being lawfully processed and properly managed.
But as Vivian walked along the passage formed by agents and human walls, the first thing that rose in her mind was not the questions, nor any of the answers she had just given in Room 202.
It was that Lily Fairy was no longer beside her.
Only after that did she think of the small monk turtle that had just accompanied her into Room 202.
And then, very faintly, she understood something.
Some things, once taken away, were no longer merely objects.
Some things, once left behind, were no longer merely evidence.
Lily Fairy was one.
Turt Monk was another.
And from the moment she stepped out of that door, she herself was no longer merely an employee from Room 405 who organised old messages and memory fragments for other people.
She had become part of the name the crowd was calling out.
She had become 405.
The wind moved lightly over the crowd, causing several temporarily raised white-screen terminals to tremble. People were still shouting in the distance; nearby, terminals were still being aimed at her. Light, sound, slogans, cameras, agents’ metallic wings and the reflections on armour all pressed towards her together.
The whole of G City still looked normal. Vehicles moved as usual, terminal summaries lit one after another, and at the street corner the advertising screen was still playing a new short film:
Emotional stability, better living.
Yet beneath that normality, another version had already begun to grow.
No longer only those seventy-two seconds. No longer only gestures on the grass. No longer only who was classified in a white room, or who, in a place too clean, had stolen back two sets of six seconds.
Instead, a person who should have been taken away alone, handled alone, written alone into some internal box, had suddenly been seen by many eyes at once.
And therefore could no longer be taken back quite so easily.
Vivian did not lift her head towards the loudest slogans, nor did she deliberately search the crowd for faces she recognised. She only let herself be escorted forward, step by step, like someone just pushed out from white light who had not yet fully understood whether this noisier, messier, less clean light outside was protection, or merely another, larger form of exposure.
But she knew one thing clearly.
From today onwards, things would not return to the old shape that could slowly be pressed flat.
Because people had seen.
And once enough people had seen a thing like this, even once, it became very difficult for only the system’s version of it to remain.