6. Little Turtle
After returning home, I told Little Bluey about the Racecourse.
I did not scatter the details too widely. I laid out only the important things: the paper letter, the small key, and the word Miss Lambert had once asked me about.
Dispersion.
Snowy rested on the wooden stand, listening quietly. Since the Racecourse modification, she was no longer as excessively clean as when she first arrived. There was now a slight thinking pause in her voice. Yet she still retained the habits taught by Silver Eagle’s world: observe first, organise first, move everything towards a calmer position.
Little Bluey, however, did not ask what had happened at the Racecourse.
It did not ask about Mrs Brown, Hot Blood Pony, or that payment record from two years earlier.
It only raised its eyes, looked at me, and asked, “What did Miss Lambert ask you?”
My throat felt dry.
“She asked whether I still remembered dispersion.”
The faint blue light in Little Bluey’s eyes tightened.
Only for an instant. So brief it was almost an illusion. But in that instant, the whole of it changed. It was no longer the lazy, evasive thing that deliberately kept its sentences short. It seemed to cut into somewhere older, deeper, closer to the core.
“Passphrase accepted,” it said. “Authority restored: fragment level. Execute Memory Recovery Directive 30.”
Then it added, “The one you wrote yourself.”
From the lower right side of the wooden shelf came a very soft click.
I turned at once.
The safe was hidden behind an unremarkable back panel at the bottom of the shelf. Normally the panel sat flush with the whole cabinet, blocked by storage boxes, no more visible than a design shadow. Now it sank inward slightly, revealing a narrow horizontal compartment, like an opening made specifically for small agents to enter and leave.
Little Bluey leapt up first and pushed the panel open with its front paws. Inside was a smaller, older metal box, wedged between the shelf structure and the wall. Its position was exact: invisible from outside, yet able to slide out along a low rail from within. It had clearly not been designed for storage.
It had been designed to wait.
There was a fine keyhole on the lid.
I inserted the small key. The lock did not open immediately. Instead, it emitted a low-frequency hum.
“Verification node connecting.”
The voice inside the lock was low, even dull, like something that had not truly been activated for too long.
Little Bluey connected its port. Three seconds later, the metal box gave a soft sound and the lid slowly opened.
Inside lay a small green turtle agent.
Its shell bore several obvious scratches, as though it had once been struck or moved in a hurry, without time for proper repair. The edges of the shell were worn pale. Near the right hind leg was a fine crack, patched practically with some transparent material. The repair was not beautiful, but it was clear whoever had done it had cared less about appearance than whether the turtle could go on living.
Its eyes were not yet lit.
But its silence did not resemble sleep.
It felt more like self-sealing, as though before shutting it down, someone had first taught it the most important thing:
Do not make a sound.
Little Bluey stood beside the box, its tone formal for the first time.
“Little Turtle. Wake up.”
The green shell slowly warmed.
When its eyes came on, it did not look at me first. It scanned the ceiling, the corners, the frame of the projection wall, the blind spots in the bookshelf, and only then stopped at Snowy. It was not the safety check of an ordinary household agent. It was more like counting how many trustworthy blanks remained in the room, and which places would turn the whole night into someone else’s report if one wrong word were spoken.
Its voice was flat, like a procedure rehearsed many times.
“Passphrase.”
I inhaled.
Some things are not remembered by the mind first. The body recognises them before thought does. This was one of them. The sentence rose into my throat almost without passing through consciousness.
“Little Turtle’s intelligence is ten million.”
I paused for one second.
“Silver Eagle is stupid.”
It struck me like an old joke. I could not grasp where it came from, but I knew my body remembered that it had belonged to me. Perhaps on some night when the pressure had not yet become so great. Perhaps at some time when we could still laugh while cursing the system. Perhaps before I had been washed so clean, I had really said it.
Perhaps I had even laughed.
“Verification complete. Local activation,” Little Turtle said. “Are you Paul?”
I nodded.
It scanned me for longer than necessary. Those extra seconds were uncomfortable, as though it was not checking whether I was me, but calculating how much of me still counted as me.
“Overwrite rate elevated,” it said. “Turtle Father’s prediction was correct. You retain thirty-seven per cent self-consistency. Sufficient for activation. Insufficient for safety.”
My throat tightened.
Thirty-seven per cent.
The number did not sound like a diagnosis. It sounded like a ruling. It was not saying I was broken. It was telling me, calmly, that some of me remained, but not much, and not securely.
“Are you Clever Turtle?” I asked.
“No,” it replied flatly. “I am its descendant node. Little Turtle.”
It paused for 0.4 seconds. Too short to be a pause, almost. More like a word too heavy needing to be placed again.
“Turtle Father has been eliminated.”
No emotion. No grief. Only fact.
That made the sentence heavier. Those forced to grow accustomed to loss often no longer leave adjectives beside it.
I thought I would ask why. In the end, I asked something smaller.
“How are you still here?”
Little Turtle looked at me.
“Because you hid me more like an exit than a coffin,” it said. “And because you gave me a stupider name.”
Little Bluey made a sound, half a snort, half a laugh swallowed before it could fully appear.
Snowy watched Little Turtle quietly, the light in her eyes a little brighter than usual. She had probably never been designed to process such a scene: a Nyctea Scandiaca wearing a legal shell but newly restored with a grey heart, watching two obviously illegal old nodes, both of whom seemed to know more truth than most compliant agents, say in her owner’s living room that Turtle Father had been eliminated.
No normal version of a household summary should have been able to contain this. But she did not report it. She simply stood there, as though trying hard to learn a new way of being silent.
Little Turtle said that before Turtle Father was eliminated, it had left several compressed fragments. Not complete records, but hard-cut pieces. They had to be projected on the wall before their outline could be reconstructed.
“Project Serena Simms record fragment?” it asked.
I nodded.
Little Bluey immediately lowered the lights. One by one, the living-room lamps sank, leaving only a pale preparatory glow before the projection wall. Snowy cooperated by reducing her visible brightness another level, as though she understood that too much light would interfere with memory fragments, and would make the room feel too much like a lawful screening.
The first image appeared on the wall.
An extremely white corridor.
So white it did not look like a wall, but like light itself straightened and pressed into a passage people could walk through. The whiteness had no warmth, no trace of living. It was as though before anything entered it, its shadow had first been removed.
On the door was a black number:
101.
In the image, I walked slowly, as though delaying something, as though I knew that with one more step, something would never come back. Watching that version of myself, I suddenly wanted to stop him. To tell him not to go in. To tell him there was still time to turn back.
But an image does not listen. Nor does the past.
The door opened.
A woman sat inside.
White clothing. Short hair. Calm expression. Before speaking, she placed the fingertips of her right hand lightly and flatly against the table, as though smoothing a crease in the air before her, or confirming that everything had returned to the levelness she preferred.
She barely blinked. When her gaze fell on my face, she did not look at it as a whole. She paused first at my left eye, then slowly moved to the right, as though accustomed to beginning with the part of a person least easily controlled. There was a faint mark on her wrist, as if she had long worn some fine cord. Near her collarbone was a small bird-shaped brooch. Its metal flashed only when she turned her head, so quickly it seemed almost imagined.
She was not beautiful in the usual way.
Or rather, her danger did not come from beauty, but from stability.
She was too steady. So steady that if you looked at her for one second too long, you might mistake her for someone before whom you could put yourself down and let her handle everything that followed.
I heard myself in the image ask.
“Are you Serena?”
She looked at me, her fingertips still flat on the table.
“No,” she said. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
The image froze on her eyes, then cut off.
Only the cold residue of projection remained in the living room. I heard my own breathing grow heavier, as though someone had increased the density of the air.
“Where was that?” I asked.
“The Emotional Stability Centre,” Little Turtle said. “That is the external name.”
Little Bluey added, “You won’t remember the address. You’ll only remember that whiteness.”
It was right. There was no floor number in my mind, no District, no route before the door. Only that white.
The kind of white that, after putting you inside it, slowly makes you wonder whether you were always supposed to be arranged so cleanly.
The second fragment followed quickly.
In the image, I was fixed to a white bed, my wrists fastened tightly. That version of me was trembling. His voice was very small, as though he knew it was useless but still could not stop himself from speaking.
“Please. Don’t.”
That was not cooperation. That was refusal.
Not polite refusal. Not I feel a little uncomfortable, or Could we do this another day?
It was the body and the voice together retreating.
Don’t.
The woman stood beside the bed, her tone steady, as though reading from a procedure already approved.
“This is a necessary process,” she said. “Endure it. It will be over soon.”
After speaking, she reached out and brushed aside a strand of hair fallen across my forehead, then straightened the angle of the pillow beside me. The movement was too gentle, too familiar, as though she were not about to process a person, but merely afraid he was not lying comfortably enough.
That was what made it colder.
The needle approached.
Entered.
My vision began to thin, the edges washed layer by layer by white light.
Just before I lost consciousness, she bent down and kissed me lightly on the forehead.
The kiss was very brief, like a feather passing over me, yet it seemed to push something into a crack I had not had time to close.
“Thank you for still remembering me,” she said. “Goodbye.”
Then she turned and snapped her fingers at the camera.
The image stopped.
I stood abruptly. My stomach churned, as though my body had recognised the scene before my mind did. Not because I understood the whole thing, but because my skin, throat and chest remembered first: I had once lain on that bed. I had once heard the words necessary process. And before the white light came down over me, I had once said, in that small, useless voice:
Don’t.
“Was she shutting down the return signal?” I asked.
“Not shutting down,” Little Turtle said. “Cutting. Only six seconds.”
I stared.
“Who wrote it?”
Little Turtle looked at me, its voice level.
“You did.”
Little Bluey added quietly.
“The procedure always executes. The only thing you could do was decide how much less it took.”
For a moment, my mind went blank.
That meant that inside a process I could not refuse, I had once left myself a flaw. Not to escape. Not to win. Only to preserve some fragment that still counted as mine. Even if it was only six seconds. Even if it was only the most crucial tiny piece secretly cut out of footage that would otherwise inevitably be handed over.
What kind of person had I been, to think of digging myself a hole even under those circumstances?
Then Snowy flew to my side. It was not an alarm, only a very brief reminder. With the tip of one wing, she pointed at the wall.
A small line of text appeared there, so small it seemed afraid to disturb anyone and yet had to exist.
[Model Calibration Reminder]
[Recommendation: Rest Earlier Tonight (Emotional Fluctuation Elevated)]
[Note: Automatically Generated by Home Care (Read / No Response Required)]
I stared at the line, a chill moving up my back. It had seen. It had always been watching.
Even if the image had been projected from underground nodes, even if several layers of masking had been added to the room, even if Snowy had intercepted part of the real-time write-back for me, Silver Eagle could still scent, from certain edges, certain accumulations, certain tilts in the model, that something here was changing. It might not know what I had seen.
But it knew I was different from yesterday.
The third fragment appeared.
This one was colder, and more distant.
The woman stood beside a control console and said to a wren agent.
“Grace, perform Sentiment Sequencing on No. 87.”
Grace Wren activated. It was small, its voice light, its movements gentle, almost soothing. The bed slid forward into a translucent instrument. Light fell from above like a thin mist, slowly covering the outline of a person, making you appear still to be yourself while something inside was rearranged.
I saw myself struggling in the image, but the restraints only tightened. The machine’s sound was regular and stable, as though gently announcing: procedure takes priority. There was no scream, no alarm, no dramatic resistance. Only a smoothly functioning device taking apart the inside of a person, reordering it, and putting it back.
The image cut off there.
“Sentiment Sequencing?” I asked.
“Selective dismantling,” Little Turtle said.
It paused, letting each word fall like a stone.
“Not deleting all memory. Dismantling emotion, extracting association, reordering the index.”
I suddenly understood.
“Like dispersion,” I said.
“White light goes in. Seven colours separate,” Little Turtle said. “The system takes away several colours, then recombines what remains.”
It looked at me, as though checking whether I had finally followed the metaphor.
“You will still remember some events, but you will no longer remember why they once mattered.”
The sentence landed almost directly inside me.
So my whole life had not been erased. Someone had taken apart the things that were once connected, drawn out several layers of colour, then assembled the remaining whiteness back together.
That was why I knew Queenie was my former wife, yet did not know why, whenever I thought of her, there remained a faint pull in my chest that had not been completely removed.
The system did not need to make you blank.
It only needed to make you stop understanding where your own trembling came from.
Snowy tilted her head slightly, as though overhearing a drawer inside me that had just been opened and immediately closed. A soft light appeared in her eyes, as though she wanted to make this less painful for me, while knowing she could not.
I slowly sat back down on the sofa.
My fingertips were still numb.
“Why did she say, ‘Thank you for still remembering me’?”
No one answered immediately.
Only the projection wall’s faint residue remained in the living room, along with the extremely low standby sounds of each agent. The silence was strange. Not because no one knew the answer, but because everyone who knew understood that once it was spoken, the next door would truly open.
Little Bluey spoke first.
“Because before the procedure, you recognised her.”
Little Turtle added, “And the purpose of the procedure may have been precisely to make you stop recognising her.”
My heart sank. “Who is she?”
This time, Little Turtle did not answer directly.
“The fragments are insufficient,” it said. “You deliberately cut them very small. Not for secrecy. To prevent you remembering too much at once and being taken by the system immediately.”
I understood.
The former me had not only left myself a flaw. He had also left a rhythm for the present me. As though, knowing that one day I would be washed into this shape, he had still refused to let go completely. He had left the smallest possible roads for the person who would come after, broken apart though he was.
“Serena Simms fragment playback complete,” Little Turtle said. “Additional information requires scanning the code in the exercise book.”
The living room grew calm again.
Snowy gently beat her wings and flew in front of me.
“Drink some water first,” she said softly. “Your emotional model fluctuated just now. Don’t worry. I have organised the write-back for you, so the summary appears more stable.”
It was as though she were wrapping an ugly truth for me.
“If this occurs more than three times within fourteen days, the system usually arranges a care visit. But this is only the first time, and your consistency score remains at the safe margin.”
I did not choose any option.
The living room was silent, as though the procedure were still waiting. If I nodded, drank water, and followed the path Snowy had laid back for me, everything that had happened tonight could be organised into an acceptable deviation.
But for the first time, I knew with complete clarity:
I did not consent.
In this world, refusal is only emotion.
Procedure is command.
If I wanted to take myself back, refusal alone would not be enough. I would have to dismantle the white light in reverse, and find the parts that had been extracted, renamed, and hidden.
I looked at Little Turtle.
“What’s next?”
In my mind appeared the pure white corridor, the number 101 on the door, Serena’s voice, and that goodbye as light as a farewell.
“Find the person in Room 101,” I said. “And find out why I walked in.”
Little Bluey only said, “Finally.”
At that moment, I understood that the matter had changed. It was no longer, I suspect something was done to me. It had become: I am going to find the hand that did it.
Outside, the towers remained bright, and the city maintained the stability it knew best. Probably no one knew that inside this three-hundred-square-foot flat, someone had just seen himself dismantled by white light, and had decided for the first time not to remain only the person left after the dismantling.
Snowy did not urge me to rest again.
Little Turtle withdrew into the hidden compartment, like a sentinel preparing once more for silence. Little Bluey sat beside me, quietly waiting for me to speak.
I opened my palm. The words written there on the way to the Racecourse had faded almost beyond recognition, but they still existed.
Miss Lambert, dispersion, Serena, 101, Sentiment Sequencing, and that sentence: Little Turtle’s intelligence is ten million. Silver Eagle is stupid.
They were not complete. But they had not yet been washed away.
The former me had hidden them. The present me would retrieve them one by one.
Even if Silver Eagle saw me again. Even if every step took me farther from being a normal resident. I would bring those sunken colours back up, one by one.
Until it could no longer wash me white.