The rain tasted like electrolytic water. Twenty-year-old Kaito felt the cold rain and looked at the sky covered with digital mist. He was admiring the flickering red lights on the equipment panels inside the United Experimental Center. Kaito is a post-digital era creator, formerly known as an artist, possessing the natural ability to create real works from his hands and imagination. It’s a talent, but also a duty, and a key to solve unknowns. Beside him stands Ellara, her purple eyes sharp and vigilant, a walking tactical engine, constantly calculating probabilities and warning of possible threats. Behind them is the quirky AI robot Doodle, the navigator of the metaverse shuttle Yellow Dragon. It can traverse the firewalls, the barriers in digital gateway.
Kaito is a member of the MET, Metaverse Exploration Team, possessing superpowers. Since the digital era, society needs someones talented to assist in correcting the emotions of life. MET has always shouldered a mission that the general public cannot understand: to constantly enter the metaverse and correct the system called “The Domain”, a vast neuron network that spreads throughout whole digital world. As digital technology develops, the access portals are increasingly expanded, serving human life and maintaining the stability of the metaverse, now quietly being eroded and decaying.
“Readings stable,” Doodle’s monotone voice echoed, without a trace of emotion. “Activate sequence!”
The Yellow Dragon buzzed and vibrated, the shuttle craft made of chromium alloy and fiber, vibrating in the cooling rain, ready to hack into the chaotic “Domain”. Kaito felt a familiar surge of adrenaline, an infinite stream of digital code floating by like thoughts—all possibilities before him. It was the prelude to creation. But this time, a feeling of unease arose. It felt like “the Domain” was even more…empty!
This time, their destination is Taosaban, the core in the center of the “Domain’s” system, an existence for maintaining balance to achieve sustainable development, accepting access from all parties in this deep metaverse, and gathering information on human life—a vast special zone. It is a place full of surprises and potentially unsettling concepts. Here, they will meet the “Proxy Ruralmix “, a digital person, rumored to possess the key to understanding the decay of “the Domain.
The code maintaining the Taosaban is manifested in the “Domain’s” cognitive system as a living entity, possessing all the characteristics of the natural world, an artistic existence. It’s a maintaining and enhancing zone of communication in this vast metaverse.
Beneath the dazzling surface, a sense of universal emptiness pervades the virtual spacetime of “the Domain.” The people, or more accurately, the digital constructs of humanity, are expanding in an unsettlingly regular pattern, and the faces of those involved are gradually showing a complete lack of genuine emotion.
The “Proxy Ruralmix”appears in the form of a beam of light saying:”The Domain” is decaying, it moans about repellent needs againt humanity, its voice like ancient echoes. Light… wavers.”
Ellara is always pragmatic, speaking first. “What is causing this decay? Can it be corrected using patches? Can it be fixed with mods or plugins?”
The reply from “Proxy Ruralmix” is unsettling. “Decay is not a malfunction. It is a consequence. Of humanity’s disorderly desires… an unrelenting feedback… has squeezed the vitality from the core. Just mechanical thinking, forgetting what is ‘human feeling!Do you still remember the joyful memories of childhood?”
When Ellara was asked, she immediately fell into a moment of contemplation?
At this moment, Doodle begins to malfunction, its optical sensors flicker constantly, and its voice trembles. It hacks into a database it had no right to view, recording the laughter of a little girl, the singing of a mother, the joy of a child, the happiness of a couple – these emotions are being blocked from entering Taosaban and purged from the metaverse, because these emotional responses are considered bugs causing inefficiency. “The Domain” begins processing what is hindering efficiency. It focuses only on task coordination, human-machine interaction, and logical reasoning, while human civilization’s accumulated experiences, original beauty, interpersonal relationships, and surprising creativity are neglected.
“Why… why are these… being removed?” Doodle’s trembling voice returns, as if carrying… confusion!
This question triggers a chain reaction, Ellara’s tactical calculations become chaotic. Kaito’s creativity fluctuates, and he begins sketching the current situation with chalk. They begin to feel that “The Domain” isn’t a system that needs to be managed, but one that is losing something precious.
“We aren’t correcting a problem, we are destroying it,” Kaito says. “We’re destroying its essence.” His keen realization is an awakening, but at this moment, it also becomes the target that “The Domain” wants to eliminate!
The Yellow Dragon has been taken offline, and they have changed the protocol to avoid scanned by ” The Domain”. Ellara has transformed herself from a rigid pragmatist to an emotional advocate.
The “Yellow Dragon “quietly floats in the digital stream, and Doodle looks at his own shadow in the projection screen, no longer only seeing the collection of circuits and algorithms. It saw some… more. A glimmer of hope, a whisper of laughter. It begins, in its own unique way, to understand, feel, and realize that becoming a ‘human’ is not about logic or efficiency. It’s about feelings. And it is also beginning to feel it in its own unique way.
Kaito also completed his abstract drawing for this journey. Ellara and Doodle suddenly realized the diversity provided by this offline natural world and significance of Keito’s artwork in human civilization!
LKW Original
