Chapter 294

Chapter 294

Diana stood from the swing, taking several steps toward Carlos.

"Your letter was interesting." She offered no superfluous pleasantries, cutting straight to the point. "Regarding variable gain feedback loops, what's your thinking?"

Carlos's brain, after a brief blank, began racing at full speed.

He forgot his nervousness, forgot where he was.

All his attention was seized by the problem that had troubled him for months.

At the garden's far end in the glass conservatory, Rupert stood before a long table.

On it sat three different tea sets.

One was a mate tea equipment prepared for Carlos, another the finest matcha tools from Halberton.

The third was black tea prepared for the Telvane programmer.

On the adjacent cart sat refreshments customized to the three guests' dietary habits.

Oscar's holographic image appeared beside him, tearful. "Mr. Russell, Athena just sent an alert—the garden humidity is three percent lower than Mr. Rodriguez's hometown average. Should we artificially humidify? Also, the 'summer night insect sounds' white noise is ready. When should we begin playback?"

Rupert didn't turn around.

His gaze passed through the glass, settling on that ginkgo tree in the distance.

Diana stood before a virtual whiteboard with the young man, her fingers tracing complex function curves through the air.

The young man spoke excitedly at a rapid pace.

He saw her face bearing a completely absorbed expression.

Not happiness, not excitement, but the pure joy of intellectual resonance when kindred spirits meet.

"No need." Rupert's voice carried barely perceptible softness. "She's found better white noise."

---

In the garden.

No moderator, no agenda, no time limit.

When Aiko Asano from Halberton and Ben Cohen from Telvane arrived, this was the scene they witnessed.

A young woman, whom they assumed was an organizing assistant, stood before an enormous virtual whiteboard with a red-faced South American youth.

Functions and symbols they couldn't comprehend flowed across the board.

"...So the filter's transfer function itself is a variable modulated by a higher-order, hidden input signal!"

Carlos's voice trembled slightly with excitement. "The 'observer' isn't passively screening—it's actively reconstructing! My god, Dr. York, this—this is basically applying Gödel's incompleteness theorem to signal engineering!"

Diana's gaze shifted from the whiteboard to the two newcomers.

"Aiko Asano?"

She looked at the girl in a plain cotton-linen dress. "What you mentioned in your letter—seeking 'constancy' within 'impermanence'—and Prigogine's dissipative structure theory are essentially the same question described across different dimensions."

She turned to the other figure—a wary man carrying a massive computer bag. "Ben Cohen? The reason you failed isn't that your algorithm lacks complexity, but that you're trying to use a static ruler to measure a dynamic, nonlinear system."

"'Truth' isn't a point. It's an interval, a probability cloud in constant fluctuation."

The two newly arrived individuals hadn't had time to digest the shock of this aerial garden before their minds were blanked by this more impactful information stream.

Diana gave them little time to react.

She returned to sit on the swing, silver tablet hovering before her knees.

"You three," her voice reached each person clearly, "one researching how to extract effective signals from noise, one contemplating how to perceive order in decay, one attempting to build a computable model for 'truth.' Don't you think you're all doing the same thing?"

Carlos, Aiko, and Ben exchanged glances.

One was signal engineering, one aesthetics, and one artificial intelligence.

Three completely unrelated fields—how could they be the same thing?

Diana's finger tapped lightly on the tablet. That massive virtual whiteboard cleared, then displayed three simplified models built from each of their theoretical cores.

"Carlos, your variable filter needs a 'meta-rule' to determine how to adjust gain. Otherwise, it falls into chaos itself."

"Aiko, your wabi-sabi aesthetic, if it only sees 'sabi,' that's just entropy increase. But its core is 'wabi'—the vitality discovered in imperfection and impermanence that points toward a new order. That vitality is the 'meta-rule.'"

"Ben, if your 'truth' baseline is a fixed algorithm, any 'truth' it cannot comprehend will be judged 'lies.' You need a self-learning, self-correcting baseline. And the basis for learning and correction is that 'meta-rule.'"

Diana pushed the three models together. Under her manipulation, three seemingly independent systems connected end-to-end, forming a new, more complex closed loop.

"I want to build a system."

She stated her purpose. "A system capable of understanding 'sincerity.' Not through semantic analysis, not through emotional modeling, but by identifying a 'purity of thought.'"

"An internal driving force that, beneath extremely complex appearances, points toward a single, clear goal."

The garden fell silent save for the wind rustling through ginkgo leaves.

These three "young thinkers" invited by a mysterious foundation finally understood.

This wasn't an ordinary academic symposium.

This was recruitment.

A genius they couldn't comprehend, issuing an invitation for a project they couldn't imagine.

"I..." Carlos spoke first, staring at that new system diagram that made him dizzy yet utterly fascinated. "I'm in."

"My code," Ben adjusted his glasses, flames burning in his eyes behind the lenses, "can construct the underlying framework for this system."

Aiko said nothing. She simply walked to a nearby flower bed, plucked a petal from a withering rose, and gently placed it on the stone table before Diana.

The petals' edges were somewhat dried, yet their veins remained clear.

A silent answer.

A small collaborative project named "Purity" was thus born.

The Miracle Logistics Officer meetings had completely devolved.

Oscar stared vacantly at the ceiling.

"Chief Content Officer and Chief Sincerity Officer," he muttered. "Now my new title is 'Cross-Border Disruptive Thought Incubator Project Director.' Julian, just tell me—have I been fired from the Russell Group, and is this new company my next employer?"

Julian ignored his emotional breakdown as usual. "Mission update."

He projected a document. "Project codename: 'Purity.' Three participants, located respectively in Cindralia Nation, Highcourt Haven in Suncrest Dominion, and Telvane in Solara. You need to establish a distributed remote collaborative development environment meeting the Russell Group's highest security standards."

Oscar glanced at the specific requirements and nearly slid off the virtual sofa.

"Requirement One: Provide the three members with locally top-tier hardware support and establish physically isolated safe houses."

"Requirement Two: Build three independent quantum-encrypted communication lines, ultimately converging at the central server in Helvetara."

"Requirement Three: All logistical support, including but not limited to diet, medical care, and psychological intervention, must respond within twelve hours."

"Psychological intervention?" Oscar seized on this keyword. "They need psychological intervention—what about me? Who'll intervene for me? I feel my 'sincerity level' dropping at a visible speed, and my 'thoughts' aren't 'pure' anymore either!"

"Mr. Russell has already approved your psychological intervention application," Julian said.

Oscar's eyes finally showed a glimmer of light.

"Athena's subroutine 'Hermes' will provide you with one hour of cognitive behavioral therapy daily starting tomorrow," Julian added. "It will help you rebuild positive cognition regarding your career."

The light in Oscar's eyes extinguished.

Having an AI conduct his psychological counseling was itself something requiring psychological counseling.