The Ministry called it a "Containment Protocol."
New towers rose overnight. Gray, glassy, silent. They were disguised as wellness hubs, but they pulsed with a different frequency — one that Adrian felt before he even stepped close.
[System Ping: High-Grade Emotional Scrubber Detected]
Function: Nullify non-sanctioned resonance
Security Layer: Quantum Adaptive Surveillance Grid (QASG)
System Threat Assessment: Extreme
Inside these towers, memories didn't just fade.
They were mapped.
Sorted. Scanned. Ranked by potential volatility.
Joy was commodified.
Grief, sterilized.
And love — that wild, unquantifiable thing — was flagged as a data risk.
Adrian sat in the heart of the resistance's signal node, surrounded by old-school gear — cassette players, analog monitors, even typewriters. They called it The Echo Lab.
Rhea entered holding a new artifact: a Ministry memory drive.
"We intercepted this during a drone malfunction. It's not just emotional data," she said. "It's predictive. They're running simulations — on you, on me, on what the next village might feel."
"They're automating suppression," Adrian whispered. "Anticipating rebellion before it's born."
He connected it to the GNH System.
The interface flickered.
[Unlocked: Shadow Algorithm Matrix]
You can now read and redirect Ministry prediction models.
New System Path: Counter-Simulation
Caution: Using this will alert the Ministry's central AI.
Meanwhile, Dr. Lhoren worked from within.
Her presence in the Ministry's psychological wing was still logged, but her priorities had shifted.
She left breadcrumbs: slightly altered reports, empathy-coded signatures embedded in wellness files, forged permissions that enabled "emotion-sharing circles."
Resistance was no longer outside the system.
It was woven through it.
The turning point came when a boy named Juno hacked a village billboard.
He was 13.
He rerouted the display to broadcast the original lullaby — the one that started it all. But he added something new:
A visual: faces of villagers, smiling freely. Not staged. Not licensed. Just… real.
The effect was instant.
People stopped.
Looked.
Felt.
The Ministry sent agents.
But it was too late.
[System Update: Cultural Cascade Triggered]
Juno's Act recognized as Symbolic Inflection Point
New Cultural Trait: Laughline
Effect: Media laced with authentic emotion now pierces repression grids.
Adrian met Juno the next day.
"You're not a hacker," he said. "You're a storyteller."
Juno grinned. "I just gave people back their reflection."
In The Echo Lab, Adrian prepared the next move.
He opened a terminal within the Shadow Algorithm Matrix and typed a single line:
if (emotion == real) then spread += 1
Then he whispered:
"Let them try to contain this."
And he hit execute.
The screen turned white.
The signal went live.
Across Drukten, Ministry towers flickered.
One by one…
They began to smile.
End of Chapter 14