Silent Ark

Chapter 26: Daily Talk

The Decameron, Night Eight: The Cocoon of Despair

Inside the CERN fortress.

The victory of the "systemic failure" on the seventh night brought an eerie calm, but not peace; it was more like the exhaustion of someone who had just finished a major exam.

The fortress appears to be running "normal": the lights are steady, the system is quiet, and no one is arguing.

But there was a sense of stagnation in this quietness.

Professor Chen Dunli remains in a coma, and the brain wave curve on the monitoring screen is eerily flat.

Ali fell into a deep sleep under the influence of the drugs, his breathing becoming long and deep.

The others each occupied their own corner, doing what they were "supposed to do," but their efficiency was exceptionally low.

Time becomes viscous inside the fortress—physical time flows normally, but the subjective sense of time is stretched and distorted.

Five minutes felt like an hour; recalling memories required a lot of effort.

There is resistance to thinking.

Any idea that requires deep thinking or long-term planning is like traveling through syrup; it is immediately enveloped and diluted by invisible fatigue as soon as it is generated.

The concept of "tomorrow" is fading, becoming vague and irrelevant.

All that remained before me were the clock face, the simple task at hand that I hadn't finished, and a deep, almost comfortable weariness.

The Eighth Night: Gentle Drowning

Dr. Stark attempted to compile a "Long-Term Resource Optimization Plan for Bastion".

The document has been open for three hours, and only the title has been written.

He found himself repeatedly reading the same irrelevant abstract of an old paper—not research, but meaningless "reading".

He tried to force himself to focus, but the thoughts would arise and then vanish, as if his brain refused to carry out the "think" command.

Shen Ruozhi is checking the stability data of the quantum core.

The curve is smooth.

It's too stable.

She should have been wary—quantum systems are inherently volatile, and this absolute stability means that the system may have stopped “computing” and is merely maintaining a static projection of the previous result.

But she just marked it, thinking she would analyze it later, and then stared blankly at the screen, feeling a strange, tranquil emptiness in her mind.

Elena is organizing a list of medical supplies.

She recorded, deleted, and then recorded the same batch of antibiotics three times.

It's not forgetfulness, but rather that the act of "recording" itself has lost its sense of meaning as "preparing for the future."

future?

This word sounds so distant, so tiring.

Rajeev and Liu Pan, who had just recovered somewhat, sat together, and were supposed to be discussing the residual patterns in the field of consciousness after "arrogance" had faded.

But the conversation was intermittent, often falling into long silences.

It's not that I have nothing to say, it's that "speaking" suddenly seems strenuous and unnecessary.

In Yao Chong's polluted vision, he saw disturbing scenes.

The fortress was shrouded in an almost transparent layer of grayish-white mist.

This fog is not aggressive; it simply exists, gently enveloping and permeating everything.

In the fog, the causal lines representing "intention to act" become extremely short and weak, automatically retracting and knotting as soon as they extend a little, forming tiny, self-enclosed "intentional loops".

The future probability cloud, representing "possibilities," no longer branches and flows vividly, but solidifies into a few dark, limited, and blurry images, all describing "stillness" or "slow decay."

The most terrifying thing is that when he looks at others, the aura of consciousness that represents "vitality" or "desire for knowledge" in them is irreversibly and slowly fading away at an almost imperceptible rate.

It's not extinguished, it's dimmed.

It's like a battery quietly leaking electricity.

"...It's making us 'rust'." Yao Chong's voice was dry, breaking the silence. "Not from the outside, but from the inside...it's gradually dulling our sense of time, our ability to think, our sense of the future. The 'Abyss of Stagnation'...it's not death, but a comfortable inaction that infinitely approaches death."

As if to confirm this, the fortress's life support console emitted an extremely mild, almost sigh-like alarm.

The screen displays: "Carbon dioxide adsorbent regeneration cycle has exceeded the deadline by 7 hours. Execution recommended. Current CO2 concentration in the chamber: 0.08% (safe threshold 0.1%)."

A simple, routine, and critical maintenance procedure that was crucial to life and death has been forgotten by everyone.

It's not that I don't know, it's that even though I "know," I don't feel the urgency to "take immediate action."

The alarm was designed to be so "gentle" that it had no deterrent effect whatsoever.

"Who's in charge today..." Stark began, his voice slow and hesitant, a trait he himself was unaware of.

"I..." Elena looked blankly at the schedule, the words on it seemingly blurred, "It looks like... me? Or Rajev?"

"It's me," Rajev said, but he didn't move. He just looked at the 0.08% number and thought: There's still a 0.02% margin, there's still time.

"Starting the regeneration process requires manual operation at the physical control panel, which is about eighty meters down the east corridor," Shen Ruozhi stated the facts in a flat tone.

Eighty meters.

A simple walking instruction requires a complex decision-making process in everyone's brain at this moment: get up, take a step, maintain balance, deal with possible ground tremors... Each sub-step seems unusually "heavy".

"I'll go," Yao Chong said, trying to urge himself on. But his polluted vision told him that as soon as he had the thought of "taking action," the grayish-white fog around him immediately became thicker, wrapping around his limbs, and the number 0.08% began to distort and fade in his field of vision, trying to "slip away" from his consciousness.

"No, I'll go. I'll take responsibility." Rajeev finally stood up, moving as slowly as if he were underwater. It took him a full minute to reach the door.

In Liu Pan's vision of connection, he was horrified to see that when Rajeev decided to take action, the threads of connection between him and others—representing "support," "reminders," and "common goals"—not only failed to strengthen but instead became weaker and more blurred.

Others—including those deep within his own consciousness—even felt a vague sense of alienation from the “actor,” as if Rajev’s “movement” highlighted their “stillness,” bringing a subtle…irritation? No, it was a weak resistance to “disrupting the calm.”

"I'll go with you." Liu Pan struggled to his feet; he needed to maintain at least one positive connection.

The two slowly walked into the east corridor.

The lights seemed dimmer than usual.

The sound of footsteps echoed monotonously in the empty corridor, each step seeming superfluous.

What normally takes one minute took them five minutes to walk.

Rajeev's hand was on the manual valve of the regeneration program, but then he stopped.

"Just to confirm... is it to turn it counterclockwise three times first, wait for the pressure gauge to reach the green zone, and then push it all the way down?" he asked, his voice full of uncertainty. This procedure, which he had performed dozens of times, was like a fog in his mind.

Liu Pan also felt his memory was hazy. "It seems...yes. Or should we push it first and then turn it?"

The two froze in front of the valve, torn between the inertia of "fear of making a mistake" and the confusion of "vague steps".

Time passed second by second.

In the main control area of ​​the fortress, the CO2 concentration jumped to 0.085%.

In Yao Chong's vision, the causal chain representing "fortress air safety" is rapidly decaying from bright green to dark yellow, and evolving towards a broken red.

He bit his tongue hard, the sharp pain bringing a sliver of clarity: "Rajev, Liu Pan, make your move, no matter the order, just start!" He roared with all his might, his voice piercing through the communicator.

The roar was like a needle, piercing the gentle, drowsy fog within the fortress.

Rajeev jolted awake and, relying on his remaining muscle memory, forcefully turned the valve—however, people are more prone to making mistakes when they are in a hurry, and sure enough, he turned the valve in the wrong order.

The alarm emitted a short, sharp blast, and the pressure abnormality indicator light on the adsorption tower lit up red.

"There's a mistake, stop it now!" Shen Ruozhi saw the abnormal data on the control panel, and the sense of crisis overwhelmed her drowsiness.

She acted quickly and remotely activated the backup correction program.

After a brief hum of system operation, the pressure returned to normal, and the regeneration process finally began.

The CO2 concentration stopped at 0.086% and then began to decline very slowly.

The crisis has been temporarily averted.

But everyone was exhausted, panting and sweating, as if they had just finished a marathon.

It's not physical exhaustion, but mental exhaustion caused by resisting the instinct to "do nothing".

"We almost suffocated because we were too lazy to walk eighty meters or to check the steps?" Elena's voice trembled with absurdity.

"It's not 'laziness.'" Yao Chong wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. In his vision, the grayish-white fog had temporarily thinned under the impact of the alarm and sense of crisis, but it was still there, like background radiation. "It's 'stasis' gently inviting us to give up. Give up thinking, give up judgment, give up responsibility, and ultimately give up 'all the proactive actions necessary to maintain existence.' It doesn't force us; it simply makes 'inaction' incredibly easy, reasonable, even... comfortable."

He looked at the unconscious Chen Dunli.

The old man's tranquility, set against the backdrop of the gray-white mist, revealed a terrifying ambiguity—was it the transcendence of wisdom, or the ultimate form of "stillness"?

"We used to fight 'arrogance' with 'collective failure,'" Shen Ruozhi said bitterly, "but now, 'failure' itself has become the norm. We no longer strive for correctness, but we've also lost the impulse to act. That's the most terrifying thing about 'laziness'—it doesn't fight against your will; it just lets your will dissipate naturally."

The fortress fell silent again, but it was no longer a comfortable calm; rather, it was a terrifying silence born of the aftermath of a catastrophe.

They realized that the greatest enemy was not external destruction, but rather the silent, internal abandonment of the "meaning of existence" and the "effort to maintain existence."

"We must find an anchor point," Stark said, looking at his injured arm, the pain now serving as a kind of "clear-headed" coordinate. "We must find a reason to 'act under no circumstances give up.' Otherwise, next time we might forget to close the airlock, or check the radiation shielding... We will, in our gentle drowsiness, head towards a collective unconscious suicide."

"Ali," Liu Pan suddenly said, his connected vision looking towards the observation room, "his 'fault code,' that compulsive numbness brought on by trauma, isn't it... somewhat like the prototype of this 'stasis'? But even in that numbness, he still remembers tapping the communication protocol. That's the 'anchor' he can't let go of."

"What is each of our 'anchors'?" Elena asked, looking at everyone.

No one answered immediately.

The very act of searching for an "anchor" seems to require an expenditure of willpower that is extremely scarce at this moment.

Yao Chong's polluted vision once again focused on the boundless darkness outside the fortress and the pervasive, gentle gray-white mist inside.

On the seventh night, they dismantled "correctness".

On the eighth night, they tasted the emptiness that followed "not needing to be right".

When meaning and action fade together, can the light of civilization find a foothold to avoid being swallowed up by this eternal "stagnation" before its own fuel runs out?

And so the eighth night came to an end.