The change began in the most minute details.
First, the ward's air quality micro-sensors recorded an unexplained, brief presence of "anomalous aerosol particles" during a routine early-morning self-check. The particles, with diameters between 0.3 and 0.5 microns, were at extremely low concentrations, appearing and vanishing within two minutes. Their size distribution didn't match known patterns of dust, skin flakes, or microbial clusters, and their optical scattering properties were slightly unusual. The system marked it as "Possibly externally introduced or transient release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from internal equipment materials." No alarm was triggered. The data was archived.
Old Zhang, the orderly responsible for cleaning the area around Bed 7, felt a faint but distinct static shock from his fingertip one morning while wiping the metal frame of the bedside table. He muttered something, looked at his dry cloth and the seemingly normal equipment, and thought nothing of it. However, data from the subsequent cleaning recorder (used to monitor disinfection compliance) showed an anomalous instantaneous drop of 0.5% in relative humidity around the bed area near that time, with a corresponding rise in negative air ion concentration, lasting about thirty seconds. Coincidence.
Then there was the cyclical automatic air mattress for preventing bedsores. Its pressure sensor logs showed that for three consecutive nights during the same timeframe (around 2:47 to 2:49 AM), the pressure maintenance curve for one partition exhibited an extremely subtle but repeatable "plateau"—during the phase when pressure should have been slowly releasing, the drop stalled for about 1.5 seconds, as if some invisible force was ever so slightly "propping" it up from below before vanishing. The engineer checked and deemed it an electromagnetic valve's occasional minor response delay, within permissible mechanical error margins.
Lin Yuan noticed these scattered reports during an inter-departmental coordination meeting. Representatives from Equipment, Logistics, and IT mentioned these "insignificant little glitches" in light tones, even joking about how "equipment these days is too sensitive, recording every little thing." Only Lin Yuan, cross-referencing these timestamps with her night shift logs and the execution times of certain stimulus protocols marked by the "NeuraLink" system, felt a chill run down her spine.
The "anomalous aerosol" appeared while the system was executing Protocol "S-04a"—a set of highly complex infrasonic and low-frequency acoustic wave mixtures simulating wind brushing against different material surfaces. The "static shock" and humidity fluctuation corresponded with Protocol "S-03c," an experiment involving microenvironment adjustments combining specific temperature gradients with ionized air particle distribution. The slight pressure plateau in the mattress occurred precisely during a week-long "Phase Synchrony Enhancement Experiment," aimed at "amplifying" Chen Yu's response strength as the master node through multi-node synchronized stimulation.
Too coincidental. Coincidental enough to resemble a response.
She encrypted and sent her findings, along with her time-correlation analysis and hidden concerns, to Zheng Boyuan. His reply came much later, just one brief line: "Data correlation exists. Have raised with project team to monitor for potential unknown environmental interaction side effects. Continue observation. Do not perform any non-standard operations on equipment."
"Side effects." The term was dismissive, yet it set off alarm bells in Lin Yuan's mind. These weren't side effects. This was leakage. It was the influence of that "thing" trapped in the rotting garden—continuously modified and enhanced—beginning to very faintly, tentatively cross the barrier between consciousness and reality, leaving traces in the physical world.
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The rotting garden could scarcely be called a "garden" anymore. It more closely resembled a vast, writhing, semi-biological, semi-mechanical nest. The sky was utterly dominated by the constantly shifting data streams of stimulus patterns, like a vast, frenzied display screen. In the dark purple soil, amidst the fungal patches and mucus, began to "grow" strange veins with a metallic cold light, resembling circuits or fiber optics. These veins radiated from Chen Yu's "statue" and faintly connected to similar veins beneath the reflections of other "nodes."
The "statue" itself was unrecognizable. Its surface was covered in patterns and smooth areas of dizzying complexity. These structures weren't fixed but underwent subtle dynamic adjustments with changes in the external stimulus protocols, like a set of precise living antenna and sensor arrays. The vines no longer merely coiled around it; some seemed to have fused with the statue's material, like implanted internal nerve bundles and reinforcement struts.
"His" consciousness had been