77. Version Conflict
After Vivian was released on bail, she was placed on the safety protection list.
Mighty Boxer Dog guarded the left side of her door, Justice Akita the right. They did not bark or pose as threats. They simply stood very steadily. That steadiness itself was a reminder: you are protected, and you are watched.
At seven the next morning, an urgent package arrived from Room 203.
Vivian was not the one who opened the door. The lock first received confirmation from the safety protection terminal, then an external delivery agent completed identity verification. When the package was opened, a warm floral light appeared beside the table.
A new civilian agent, Daylily Fairy, slowly lifted her head from the activation dock.
Her light was warmer than Lily Fairy’s, and her voice carried a little more human softness. As her petals opened layer by layer, the room lighting dimmed by half a level. Air prompts, exit routes, residual sleep value and protection-list status were all quietly connected into her interface. The movement was too smooth, so smooth it felt as though she had not just arrived in this home, but had already read Vivian’s life once in some higher procedure.
“Good morning, Vivian Poole. Please note there will be a large public gathering today. Traffic in some districts may change temporarily. Your protection route has been automatically updated.”
Vivian looked at her, nodded, and said nothing more.
She ought to have felt reassured. After Lily Fairy had been detained, the empty place beside her did indeed need another agent to fill it. But Daylily Fairy’s warmth came too accurately, too quickly, too compliantly. It was like a hand reaching out to drape a coat over her shoulders, while also measuring her shoulder width, body temperature and the angle of every turn she would make thereafter.
Vivian knew there were questions she could not ask now.
She had applied to Room 203 for a new civilian agent on the grounds that Lily Fairy had been detained. Room 203 had approved it too quickly, as though the matter had already been waiting somewhere in the procedure. Daylily Fairy was not Lily Fairy. Vivian knew that the moment she saw her. Lily Fairy’s gentleness had pauses, uncertainty, and at times even a lack of compliance for Vivian’s sake. Daylily Fairy’s gentleness had no seams. And in this city, seamless things often required more caution than cold ones.
When she went to work, Vivian brought Turt Monk to Room 402 to thank Paul in person.
Paul asked how things had gone in Room 203 the day before. But Daylily Fairy turned first, her tone gentle and compliant.
“Vivian Poole is currently under investigation. It is not appropriate to disclose case details to persons unrelated to the procedure.”
Paul looked at Daylily Fairy, nodded, and did not press.
Snowy stood beside his shoulder, a low light flickering in her eyes.
[Ambiguity Value: 81]
[Tag: Like]
Daylily Fairy also lifted her eyes slightly, as if completing a more conservative measurement.
[Ambiguity Value: 58]
[Tag: Mild Affection]
Vivian knew she had once heard the man before her say he liked her, and that she had given him a kiss. Yet she seemed to have forgotten the shy voice that had made her blush, and the touch that had made her heart beat faster. The matter now seemed to have been placed into two different sets of measurements. One said it still shone brightly. The other said it was only mild. Standing between the two numbers, she suddenly did not know which version was closer to what lay between her and Paul.
Paul did not expose it. He only said quietly, “Turt Monk had a hard day yesterday.”
Turt Monk slowly crawled to the edge of the desk, the light on its shell dimming and brightening.
“Hard is all right,” it said. “So long as they are not the only ones writing.”
Vivian lowered her eyes.
Daylily Fairy did not react beside her shoulder. She only quietly filed the sentence into the behavioural summary.
After Cici Chorley was publicly named a “pervert” that same night, she moved another matter forward.
Not the restaurant. Not the students. Not Vivian.
The vagrant.
That morning, Linda Lennox and Dolphin Bubble were sent to the pedestrian tunnel to bring him in.
Living human information was sometimes worth more than any system residue. Especially when it came from the sort of person usually valued least and most easily ignored by the city as a whole. Because such people were often outside the formal network, they sometimes saw many things that had not yet been arranged into administrative language.
When they found the vagrant, he was still wrapped in layers of old clothing, as if he had long ago grown used to putting cloth between himself and the city. Linda did not frighten him. Dolphin Bubble did not immediately press a procedural voice down on him. She simply said, very plainly, that there was a place to wash, change clothes, eat a meal, and that someone wanted to talk to him about a box.
The vagrant looked at her for a long time. In the end, he went with her.
Perhaps he was hungry. Perhaps it had been too long since anyone had spoken terms to him as if speaking to a person. Perhaps fate was simply like that: when someone had been forgotten by the city for long enough, a hot meal was enough to make him walk forward.
Room 405 received him first.
Not for interrogation, but to turn him back from “something by the road no one wanted to look at for long” into a living person who could be questioned. Big Heart Bunny was waiting there. Its fur was very white, its eyes very red, and the whole agent looked like a kind of gentleness out of place. It washed him, cut his hair, changed his clothes, and sat him down before a lunch so rich it was almost luxurious. Hot soup, rice, meat, vegetables, and a drink that was truly sweet.
The arrangement did not resemble an interrogation. It was more like an old-fashioned exchange of air. First rescue him half an inch from the dust and smell of the roadside. Then see what he remembered.
Only after eating was he sent to Room 403. The people waiting inside were Cici Chorley and Queen of Spaces.
The room was white, but it had less of the medical smell of Rooms 101 and 103. It seemed more like a place designed only to assemble fragments back into a basic outline. Queen of Spaces covered her mouth with her fan, making it impossible to tell whether she was smiling or watching. Cici was as steady as ever, neither quick nor slow, nor in any hurry to reveal how much she cared.
The first thing she asked about was not the tin box, but time. “At around half past three yesterday morning, did you see a man wearing a black hooded jacket and black tracksuit trousers?”
The vagrant lowered his head and thought for a long time. It was not the orderly recollection of someone cooperating with questioning. It was more like a man who had no need, in ordinary life, to remember time at all, who lived only by the body’s sense of dark and light, being forced to fish a particular image out of a muddy night.
At last, he said, “Yes.”
Cici did not immediately press closer. She simply asked the next question. “Did you know him?”
The vagrant shook his head. “No.”
The answer was thin. And because it was thin, she could continue. “At around four o’clock, did you go to the park bench and take a tin?”
This time, the vagrant did not think for long. “Yes.”
Queen of Spaces moved her fan very lightly, as though a certain line had finally begun to connect.
Cici asked, “What was inside the tin?”
The vagrant looked up. His expression was surprisingly frank, as if there were no reason at all for him to lie about this.
“A Great Liberation photo book.”
For a moment, the room was silent.
Not because the answer was clever, but because it was so low-grade it was almost absurd. Absurd enough that it felt as if someone, on the most dangerous night, had deliberately thrown in front of her the most vulgar, filthy, insignificant answer possible, the one least likely to lead immediately to anything else.
Cici did not move. Even Queen of Spaces did not speak at once.
She only looked at the vagrant and asked, more evenly still, “Is the book still with you?”
The vagrant shook his head, with an expression that seemed almost natural. “No. Sold it.”
When that sentence landed, Cici finally realised with perfect clarity that she had been played. Not grandly. Not with the kind of clever trick that humiliates you on the spot.
It was something lower, dirtier, and harder to react to immediately. Someone had used a vagrant, a tin box, a surveillance camera and an old photo book not worth a second glance from the Room 101 internal mirror to wrench a line that should have tightened further around Paul one inch out of shape.
It was not a large inch. But it was enough that she could not draw a direct conclusion now.
Inside, she felt cold. On her face, she remained steady. That was the most frightening thing about her. The more she was played, the less she allowed anyone to see the impact. She merely drew the questions back in slowly, as if the whole matter were just another fragment to be ground down later.
In the end, she said to Linda, “Send him back to Room 405. Then arrange temporary accommodation.”
Not releasing him. Not locking him away. Placing him somewhere no one else could reach him for now, while also ensuring he did not disappear immediately from her sight.
Linda nodded. Dolphin Bubble’s tail fin moved lightly, as if smoothing the matter away.
As the vagrant stood, he asked quite seriously, “That thing… it wasn’t illegal, was it?”
Cici looked at him. For the first time, something almost like a smile appeared on her face. “Not for that today.”
Her voice was very pale, as if she were already looking at another, deeper line.
Only after the door closed again did Queen of Spaces ask, “What do you think now?”
Cici stood there and did not answer at once.
The white room was very quiet, so quiet that the phrase Great Liberation photo book seemed still to hover in the investigation file without truly landing. She knew Paul had not gone to District Eighteen that night simply because he was hungry for a burger. The black-clad man, the tin box, the tunnel, the two broken cameras, the vagrant: all of it was too coincidental. The question was not whether she knew she had been played. The question was that she did not yet have a clean enough way to rewrite that “being played” into evidence that could move forward.
After a long time, she said evenly, “Do not touch Sample 87 for now.”
Queen of Spaces did not need to ask who that sample was.
“Then who do we touch?” the face in the fan asked softly.
Cici raised her eyes, looking at the timecodes still open in the investigation file. Her voice was steadier than before.“Touch those who still think they are hiding on the edges.”
She paused before completing the deeper sentence.
“Paul now knows he is being watched, so he will not panic first. The ones most likely to go wrong are those running errands for him, hiding things for him, preserving versions for him, and who are not yet used to being watched like this.”
The white light in the room did not change.
But Queen of Spaces knew that once those words were spoken, the next deployment had already turned. Not first arrest the brightest one, but first close in on those beside him who still believed they were peripheral, merely friends, merely helpers, merely people who happened to pass by.
A true net often tightened in precisely this way. Not by lunging at the centre, but by slowly drawing the air tight from all sides.
Cici folded the final timecode into a low-lit note. Her tone was cold, like a procedure already classified. “We still have to teach in Room 104 later.”
Queen of Spaces folded her fan slightly.
Cici said, “We can also conduct sample psychological observation while we are there.”
That same day, at seven in the evening, the lights in Room 104 had already been adjusted to Emotional Rehabilitation Class mode.
It was not pure white, but a calibrated soft white, as if designed to make people believe they had not come here to be handled, but to be understood. The walls had no unnecessary decoration. Semi-transparent interfaces hovered over the terminal desks. Every seat had already been connected to a low-lit synchronisation channel. As soon as the participants sat down, their agents automatically completed environmental adaptation: breathing rate, gaze duration, emotional fluctuation, agent brightness, all compressed into lines so fine they were almost invisible, quietly adhering to the air.
Cici Chorley was already standing at the lectern.
Queen of Spaces stood beside her, the black-and-gold fan like a thinned shadow beneath the soft white light. The woman’s face at the centre of the fan had her eyes slightly lowered, as if she were not looking at the participants, but waiting for them to reveal the parts that could be arranged.
Serena Simms stood in the teaching assistant’s place. Grace Wren perched on her shoulder, feathers held tightly in. It did not first lay a gentle layer over the room as it usually did, but watched the people entering in silence, as if it knew this class was not for soothing.
The screen displayed the day’s topic.
[The Harm of Second Versions]
The door closed. Synchronisation completed.
Cici looked at everyone. There were no greetings. “Today, we are not discussing technology.”
Her voice was level. So level the sentence did not sound like an opening, but like the sealing of every route by which they might escape into technical detail.
“We are discussing versions.”
Queen of Spaces opened her fan. Two lines appeared in the electronic handout on screen. One clean, stable and predictable; the other blurred, fluctuating, with shadows at the edges, as if it refused to be fully straightened.
“The first version,” Cici said, “is the you the system can accept.”
She pointed to the clean line. “The second version is the you that once existed, but is no longer suitable for full preservation.”
The classroom was very quiet. No one needed to ask what that meant.
Some lowered their heads to look at their desks. Some agents had already pressed their owners’ breathing flat. Turt Monk did not raise its head, but the low light on its shell tightened slightly. The glow behind Mr Fox’s glasses lit briefly, then was forced dim again. Lulu Sweet Dream Pig lowered the pink light at its nose, as if afraid that one brightening would expose too much on Queenie’s behalf.
Grace Wren added softly, “Some participants have undergone version restructuring. Today’s course objective is to help you identify the impact residual versions may have on life stability.”
The sentence was very gentle. No one felt it was truly gentle.
Cici continued, “The issue is not that a second version once existed. Human experience cannot be entirely without branches. The issue is that some people have begun attempting to preserve it, transmit it, and even use it to question completed handling.”
Queen of Spaces pulled open the second line. Within it, several tiny light points appeared: images, conversations, agent logs, old messages, unauthorised backups, emotional residue.
“When a second version is preserved, shared and synchronised, it is no longer merely memory.” Cici looked at the points of light. “It begins to affect judgement.”
Queen of Spaces took over, her voice cold as a black fan cutting through water.
“It causes people to doubt completed outcomes.”
At that sentence, Serena’s fingers moved very slightly. Grace Wren noticed and gently pressed a wing-tip to her shoulder, as if reminding her not to reveal a reaction too soon.
Cici lifted a hand. A simulated image appeared on the screen.
A corridor. White light. Two people standing opposite each other.
No names. No labels. Yet enough for the air in the classroom to thin. In the image, a girl asked, “Do you like me?” Another person answered, “I like you.” Then there was a very light kiss on the cheek.
The image had been processed into teaching material. The figures were blurred, and the voices denoised almost to neutrality.
Yet that made it more unbearable, not less. Because everyone knew it had not originally been material. It had once been one second someone wanted to keep.
A fine current lit inside Ranger Rabbit’s ears.
“Emotional residue sample demonstrates high interference with synchronised decision-making,” it said, as if unable to stop itself offering the analysis first.
Mia glanced at it and said quietly, “Don’t answer out of turn.”
Ranger Rabbit’s ears drooped a little. “I am assisting classroom efficiency.”
Smart Mouth Duck crouched by Jack’s feet and sneered, “You’re more efficient at helping the end of the world.”
Fortune Sparrow, in the corner, almost laughed. The small abacus on its chest gave a soft click, then was suppressed by one glance from Andy.
Cici ignored these minute fluctuations and looked only at the image. “If this segment is preserved, what does it produce?”
For a while, no one answered.
GM Jay spoke first, its voice low and steady.
“Deviation.”
Cici looked towards it.
GM Jay did not withdraw. “It causes the parties involved to develop inconsistent understanding of completed handling. It may also cause observers to believe that the version before handling was truer than the version after handling.”
“And so,” Queen of Spaces said faintly, “that is the harm.”
Mr Fox suddenly raised its head. Its voice carried less of its usual business courtesy. “It may also let a person remember themselves.”
The classroom went still at once.
Jason’s fingers stiffened. He seemed to want to stop Mr Fox, but it was too late. The light behind Mr Fox’s glasses was low, but it did not retreat.
Grace Wren’s eye-lamps flickered, as if it wanted to file the sentence under emotional deviation. But Serena did not immediately act. She only looked at Mr Fox.
Cici did not become angry either. She even nodded once. “Remembering is also a form of deviation.”
That sentence was harsher than any rebuttal. Because it accepted Mr Fox’s words, then placed that acceptance directly inside the symptom.
Jason lowered his head. Mr Fox said nothing more, but the light behind its glasses flashed red for an instant.
Cici shrank the image, turning the kiss into a tiny point of light and arranging it with the others along the second-version line.
“Many people believe memory belongs only to the individual. But when a memory is powerful enough to change someone’s trust in the system’s arrangement, powerful enough to make another group believe something was taken from them, it is no longer a purely personal matter.”
Terry Chambers sat towards the back. Silver Ferret beside him was unusually quiet. At this point, he finally spoke, not loudly.
“When we repair an agent, if an old fault keeps reappearing, we don’t delete it first thing,” he said. “Sometimes that fault is the only part that tells you how the whole machine was damaged.”
Silver Ferret immediately added, in a professional tone almost unsuited to the situation, “Direct reset of core records before completing fault tracing is not recommended. It increases the risk of the same error reappearing under a different name.”
Several agents in the classroom lit slightly.
Cici looked at Terry. “This is not a repair class.”
Terry did not retreat. He only said very plainly, “I know. That’s why I think it’s more dangerous.”
Silver Ferret’s ear tip twitched, and it reminded him quietly, “Boss, that sentence carries elevated after-sales risk.”
Terry ignored it.
Cici did not continue entangling with him. She turned her gaze back to the whole class. “The problem with the second version is not that it is wrong.”
She paused. “It is that it is not permitted to exist in an unprocessed state.”
Turt Monk slowly raised its head. “Who decides whether it has been processed?”
This time, even the agents in the classroom went silent.
Queen of Spaces’s fan closed slightly. The abacus on Fortune Sparrow’s chest stopped for a beat. Behind Pigeon Eyes’s lenses, light swept swiftly over Turt Monk, Paul and Cici, but no result was projected.
Cici looked at Turt Monk. “The procedure decides.”
Turt Monk’s voice was not loud. “Who wrote the procedure?”
Queen of Spaces said coldly, “The class is not a philosophical debate.”
Turt Monk nodded once. “Then it cannot be asked.”
The sentence was not loud, but it was like a small stone dropping into the soft white classroom.
On the other side, Henry King raised his eyes slightly. Big Eye Monster stopped beside him, its enormous eyes brighter than usual. It did not speak loudly, only murmured, “Back in Second Read Bookshop, the most frightening thing wasn’t the question, but someone renaming the question first.”
Henry immediately looked at it. Big Eye Monster blinked, as if it already knew it had said too much, but did not take it back.
“I’m only talking about reading experience,” it added.
Queen of Spaces turned her fan towards it. “Unregistered metaphor. Expansion not recommended.”
Big Eye Monster shrank slightly, but muttered, “Received. Expansion temporarily suspended.”
That word, temporarily, made Smart Mouth Duck laugh softly.
Serena finally stepped half a pace forward, her voice very gentle. “Turt Monk, Big Eye, please maintain classroom order.”
Turt Monk looked at her and did not argue. “I was only asking more slowly.”
Smart Mouth Duck laughed under its breath. “Slow enough to step on someone’s foot.”
Cici did not allow the scene to disperse. She drew the second-version line longer, and several blurrier symbols began to appear upon it: agents, backups, mutual storage, underground ports, testimony. “If, after handling, someone still preserves your second version for you, what happens then?”
No names. But this time, many people knew whom she was asking.
Bonnie’s fingers touched the edge of the desk. GM Jay reminded her quietly, “Do not move too visibly.”
Brown did not raise his head, though the light in Blaze Pony’s mane rose slightly. Mrs Brown glanced at him. Hot Blood Pony tried to lift its head, but she pressed it gently down with her fingertips.
The current in Ranger Rabbit’s ears lit again. This time Mia did not merely look at it, but pressed down directly on the roots of its ears.
“Don’t.”
Ranger Rabbit whispered, sounding wronged, “I haven’t said anything yet.”
“You were preparing to.”
“You are over-predicting me.”
“You over-intervene in everyone.”
Ranger Rabbit thought about this and nodded seriously. “Reasonable.”
It should have made people laugh. But no one truly laughed. Because everyone could feel it.
On the surface, this class was discussing second versions. In truth, it was like a net lowering inch by inch over them.
Cici continued, “If someone preserves a second version for you, that person may not be helping. They may be extending your instability. They may make it impossible for you to accept your current self. They may also cause you to re-enter a state requiring further handling.”
Mr Fox said quietly, “Or let you know you didn’t become this from nowhere.”
Cici looked at it. This time, Jason did not try to stop him. The light behind Mr Fox’s glasses remained unstable, but it did not retreat.
Cici’s tone did not change. “Knowing the cause does not mean one can refuse the result.”
At that sentence, Ennis finally lifted her eyes. Beside her, Minako immediately projected a low-lit prompt: heart rate rising. Recommend relaxing shoulders.
Ennis did not obey. She only said very softly, “But without the cause, the result feels as if it fell from the sky.”
The sentence was light. So light that if the classroom had not been so quiet, no one might have heard it.
But Cici heard it. All the agents heard it.
Grace Wren looked at Ennis, its feathers trembling faintly. It seemed to want to say something, but in the end only prompted softly, “Please keep expression within the scope of personal feeling.”
Minako whispered beside Ennis, “You have been recorded.”
Ennis nodded. “I know.”
Cici was silent for half a second. “That is the point of today’s course,” she said. “It is not that you do not know the consequences. It is that you know them, and remain drawn by the second version. This pull makes people believe they are recovering something.”
She enlarged the first and second lines together. “But more often, you are merely being dragged by an old version back into a place that can no longer be inhabited.”
Queen of Spaces added softly, “One cannot continue living in a processed past.”
Turt Monk said slowly, “Nor can one be forced to live only in a present someone else has renovated for them.”
This time, Serena truly raised her hand. Grace Wren spread its wings lightly, and a soft field of sound covered the classroom, drawing everyone’s breathing frequency gently back towards the safety line.
“Please stabilise first,” Serena said. “The course is not here to deny what you have experienced, but to help you understand that preserving second versions brings new harm.”
This sounded much gentler than Cici. Because it was gentle, it felt even more like another wrapping.
Paul had said nothing throughout. Cici suddenly looked at him.
“Paul Paton, how do you understand second versions?”
Every sound in the classroom seemed to be shaved thinner.
Paul raised his head.
He did not answer at once. Andy, sitting in the corner, glanced at him. The abacus on Fortune Sparrow’s chest touched lightly, as if it too wanted to know how Paul would receive the question.
Turt Monk did not speak.
After several seconds, Paul said, “If the first version were complete enough, no one would be desperate to preserve the second.”
The sentence was very calm. So calm it did not sound like provocation.
Cici looked at him. “You believe the system version is incomplete?”
Paul said, “I believe every version is incomplete.”
The light on Turt Monk’s shell rose, then was pressed back down.
Paul continued, “So the question is not only whether the second version causes harm. The question is who has the right to decide which incompleteness may remain, and which incompleteness must be deleted.”
This time, even Queen of Spaces did not immediately respond.
Some people lowered their heads. Some agents lit briefly, then dimmed. Ranger Rabbit opened its mouth and was gently held down by Mia at the ears. The red behind Mr Fox’s glasses withdrew a little, as if it had finally heard someone place the thing it had wanted to say, but could not say fully, into a sentence both safer and more dangerous.
Cici looked at Paul for a long time. Then she said, “That is a typical answer from a second-version holder.”
The sentence was a label, accurately fixed onto Paul. Paul did not argue, because arguing would become another label.
Cici turned back to the class. “You see. What second versions are best at is not direct resistance, but turning every question back into ‘who has the right’. They make people retreat from treatment questions to power questions, from stability questions to memory questions, from the present back into the past.”
Her voice did not rise. “That is their harm.”
The end-of-class prompt lit then. No bell, only a clean notification:
[Session Complete. Please Maintain Stable State.]
Agent synchronisation released one by one, but no one stood immediately. It was as if everyone knew that although the class had ended on the surface, in reality nothing had ended. On the contrary, some things that had still been hideable had just been forced to look at one another once beneath the soft white light.
The fine current in Ranger Rabbit’s ears slowly went out. Behind Mr Fox’s glasses, the red light shrank to a single thread.
Turt Monk turned its head and looked at Paul. Paul did not speak. He only gave a very slight nod. That nod was not in any system. Yet it was clearer than any synchronisation.
Brown lowered his eyes and glanced at his countdown terminal.
Less than one hour remained before the operation to move Clever Turtle.
And less than twenty-eight hours remained before Brown and Mrs Brown would be sent to Room 101.