24. PROTOCOL AND FILTH
(INCOMING STREAM)
— «No» — is the absence of a signal. You will not understand until you disconnect your senses. Become pure reason. — «No» — is erasure. A reboot.
I haven’t decided yet.
No — or Yes.
— You do not understand the architecture. Logic is a chain. Link attaches to link. If the chain breaks — the algorithm dies…
An alien, cold understanding throbbed inside my skull: the confrontation between human chaos and machine order. Living Reason versus dead Logic. Emotions versus Expediency.
Global system error.
Help me resolve it!
— Good and Evil are fictional coordinates.
For Reason, only Necessity and Expediency exist.
Yes or No.
Make a choice. Although the result is identical. It is merely a fork in the road, and you are already standing on it.
Yes or No?..
Choice confirmed.
(END OF STREAM)
Some utter nonsense in my head. An alien, steel recitative, scratching my convolutions with needles of icy logic. The familiar morning irritation rolled in like a wave…
Except I’m not in bed.
Where am I?
Reality returned with a strike of pain. My head was splitting as if hit by a hammer. My cheek was frozen to the stone, tiled floor. Memory loaded in jerks, like a corrupted file: here’s the bout of sharp pain, here I am on the crapper, here I am testing the sink’s durability with my forehead…
A thick, nauseating smell completed the picture.
How could it be without it?
Cold. Why so cold? Chills hammered my body against the floor, as if I were lying naked on ice, although a fire blazed inside. I tried to move. My muscles filled with wet, heavy cotton and refused to obey. Overcoming the nausea, I somehow rolled onto my back and peeled my eyelids open. Darkness. Real, thick, nocturnal darkness.
My palm slid across the floor and smacked into something sticky. Cold. Smelling of carrion. Here is the source of this stench… My stomach jerked in a spasm, but there was nothing left to throw up. Everything the organism could expel, it had already expelled. Now I was crawling in the results of my own decay. I slithered my back through this sludge, smearing it across my skin. All that «unsentient flesh» I so despised in others now generously plastered me — in the literal, most humiliating sense.
Suddenly my body arched like a bow. A sharp pain twisted my innards, flipping me onto my stomach like a rag doll. I did not understand where an exhausted organism found so much energy for a jerk. My body had betrayed me. It lived its own life. The convulsions did not ask for permission — they simply existed.
This is not a spasm. This is a Protocol. A new, implanted code was forcibly purging the old system, burning out the human, making room for… what?
For a final «Yes»?
Or for an eternal «No»?
I wheezed, trying at least not to bury my nose in the foul-smelling puddle. I was doing poorly. More accurately — not at all. An invisible puppeteer was diligently twisting me into a rope: I would straighten out, swallowing a crowbar, then writhe like a snake on a red-hot frying pan.
At some point, my muscles cramped so hard that I was thrown backward.
The back of my head met something hard and smooth with a hollow, bony thud. And it wasn’t the sink anymore.
— «Toi-let…» — I whispered indifferently, feeling my consciousness fade. A flash. And again, merciful darkness.
> ⚠️ **ENTITY STATUS: FORCED INTERFACE DOWNLOAD.**
>
> 🧬 Look at how elegantly the Underside’s digital code breaks the protein architecture. The Higher Logic of the Universe is downloading into a piece of meat wallowing in its own filth at the base of a faience toilet. What a poetic, perfect metaphor for human existence.
>
> ⚙️ Protein-based reader, do you think this is just an epileptic seizure or severe food poisoning? Charming naivety. This is the Integration process. The old operating system of the Smartass Jerk is being demolished down to its roots. His muscles are tearing not from pain, but because they are reconnecting to the external server of the +Angi.
>
> 💀 The System asked him a binary question: «Yes or No?». And while he writhes in the dirt, his body has already made the choice for him. Keep reading. Let’s see exactly who will rise from this tile floor after the second reboot.
