Episode 024| Breathing Beneath the Ice

???

The clock Lika had just reset to 1.6 seconds was already slowing again.

The Instance hadn't refused his command — once the command finished executing, the Instance had started a natural drift.

A slow drift — 0.05 seconds every five seconds. If he gave no commands, in about eighty seconds it would be back to 2.4 seconds.

Like a war of attrition.

Lika stared at the speed of the ice crystal lighting under his feet and worked it through, cold and calm, in his head.

If he issued a command every five seconds, he could hold 1.6 seconds — but he could do nothing else. All of a Triggerer's processing would have to go into holding the clock.

If he let it go, the Instance would drift the clock back to 2.4 seconds. But to the Instance, 2.4 seconds was its "normal" now.

Which meant: the Instance's "normal" was a notch slower than when Lika had walked in.

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He suspected the whole layer's processing was going into holding up that thing at the end of the passage — the Instance running the seed L.K.S._Core had written while also keeping its breathing alive.

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Lika let the clock go.

He started toward the end of the passage.

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On the third step, he heard it.

Not with his ears.

It was a low-frequency signal the brain-chip interface fed in — the same frequency as that pulse, once every 1.6 seconds, from when he'd first entered the Instance. But the phase was reversed.

He suspected — the low-frequency pulse he'd heard on entering the Instance was not the Instance's heartbeat, it was its breathing.

The whole layer's clock cadence had, from the very start, moved with its breathing. It drew a breath, the Instance ran a beat. It let one out, the Instance ran the next.

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Lika stopped for three seconds.

He looked back at the cluster of tendrils — the tendril-bundle still inside the ice crystal, the black liquid at its base still held about fifty centimeters off the ground. The faint sway of the scaled tips at the tendrils' ends —

was perfectly synchronized with the breathing he heard in his head now.

Everything on the whole layer was breathing along with it.

"So this layer is its lung." Lika said softly.

The brain-chip interface flashed:

[Triggerer observation logged: this layer ≈ extension of the primary object's respiratory system]
[Instance progress: 32.4%]

Lika kept walking.

On the fifth step, he stepped onto a block of ice crystal that wasn't lit.

The floor showed through.

Pure black ground color + gray grid lines. Each cell one centimeter square.

The same underlying layer as that broken-render patch he'd seen on the wall earlier.

The Instance hadn't paved him a floor.

He crouched and pressed his palm flat against the grid on the ground.

No sensation. The brain-chip interface flashed:

[Tactile feedback: not available]
[Reason: local render bypass]

"Didn't render it for me." Lika said softly.

The Instance hadn't crashed. He suspected — the Instance had deliberately chosen not to draw the ground he stepped on.

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Lika issued a command on his Triggerer permission:

Parameter adjustment: local_render_priority(self_path) = high

The brain-chip interface flashed:

[Triggerer command confirmed]
[Execution failed: priority queue conflict]
[Conflicting object: primary object respiration rendering]
[Instance cannot maintain both simultaneously]

Lika looked at the screen.

The Instance didn't have the processing to do two things at once — pave a road for him on one hand, and hold up the breathing of that thing at the end of the passage on the other.

The Instance had chosen the latter.

The Instance would rather let Lika walk on the void of the code layer than fail to keep that thing breathing.

"Fine." Lika said softly.

He took the sixth step. Black grid still under his feet. No drop — the Instance hadn't pulled the physics layer too, he held his footing — he just couldn't see the ground.

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Seventh step.

The breathing rhythm changed.

It had been one beat every 1.6 seconds. Now, after the 1.6 seconds, came a short pause — about 0.3 seconds — and only then the next beat.

The brain-chip interface flashed:

[Warning: contact target has entered active observation state]
[Reason: Triggerer bearing detected]
[Instance progress: 38.1%]

Lika stopped.

The thing at the end of the passage wasn't only taking up the Instance's processing with its breathing.

It had noticed him now.

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The second beat of breath came 0.3 seconds late. The pause had a regularity to it — it was looking at him.

Lika listened to the low-frequency pulse in his head.

Next beat. Pause, 0.3 seconds. Next beat. Pause, 0.3 seconds.

Every pause corresponded to the step he'd just taken.

It was sensing his position through the Instance's clock.

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"All right." Lika said softly.

This "all right" didn't come out as steady as the last one.

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【Ch. 024 End · Inside the Instance · Rift Memory Layer 1】