Chapter 4: Information and Deformation
Elara was now spending most of her days at home, far from the mass, yet she continued her observations obsessively. Since her traditional camera was useless, she started using a complex electromagnetic wave meter sent by an old scientist friend. When she brought the device near the mass, the screen showed a constant, low-level signal in an unmeasurable range. It was unlike any known radio wave; it felt more like thought or emotion—a stream of data carrying a specific intent.
The Mass's Challenge to Science
Even more chillingly, when she tried to record and analyze this signal, her recording devices suffered immediate interference, the sound tapes dissolving into a meaningless, ripping static. When she placed the device just a few inches from the mass's surface, the data on the screen broke down into nonsensical geometric shapes. The measurements abandoned the framework of logic. Numbers scrambled, formulas contradicted themselves. Elara realized that this thing was not just a physical object but an anomaly that defied the very rules of human science and the logical foundation of human measurement.
Dr. Hemlock's Visit and Revelation
That evening, Dr. Hemlock, the town's elderly and respected doctor, burst through the quarantine line and ran frantically to Elara's house. His breath was ragged, his face drenched in sweat, his eyes wide with terror. He screamed that something had happened while examining a small, glass-like sample of the mass in his lab.
"It's not matter, Elara!" he cried out, his voice trembling and choked. "It's source code! The raw data of creation. A heap of code. I know it. The sample suddenly dissolved under the microscope and infused me... a flood of information poured into my mind. A momentary burst of consciousness... Knowledge about how the universe was constructed in a wrong way. A knowledge that our form is an error!"
The Doctor stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, a gleam of cosmic horror in his eyes. "That information showed us our flaws. Our fingerprints, our asymmetrical faces, our emotional instability... they are all noise. They only want Order."
With trembling hands, Dr. Hemlock grabbed a scalpel from the table. As Elara backed away in shock, the Doctor brought the scalpel closer to his own face.
"They... They don't like our form. It's too confusing, too soft, too random," the Doctor whispered, blood instead of tears streaming from his eyes. "We need to fix this. This is the highest truth. We must close the eyes that see this flawed world. Now I see!"
Dr. Hemlock did not scream. He only silently and meticulously, mimicking the impossible symmetry of the mass, plunged the scalpel into his own eyeballs. This was not suicide; it was a horrifying mimicry of ascension, a desperate attempt to achieve perfection. Before collapsing to the floor in blood, the Doctor murmured his last breath with a tone that no longer belonged to human language—smooth and mechanical— "We must become the alien."
This event revealed the mass's purpose to Elara with terrifying clarity: The alien was not conquering the world; it was correcting the world, with the coldness of a cosmic surgeon, viewing the human mind and body as a faulty structure. The threat was not a physical weapon, but a spreading philosophy.