The towers didn't fall.
They laughed.
Not audibly — but with flickers of light, glitches in smiles, mirrored gestures playing on loop as Ministry-calibrated emotions began to unravel under the weight of something they couldn't predict:
Truth.
It started as tremors in their surveillance feeds — subtle syncopations of unscripted laughter, unpredictable tears, entire neighborhoods slipping into ritualized joy that wasn't ordered.
The Ministry had words for it:
"Emotive anomaly."
"Affective drift."
"Unauthorized inner-world bloom."
Adrian had one:
Awakening.
In the hidden valleys beneath Drukten's industrial crust, resistance villages began cultivating more than food. They grew Emotion Gardens — spaces where old stories rooted in soil, and the act of planting itself became an emotional ritual.
Every seed held a memory.
Every sprout became a statement.
And Adrian, with dirt under his fingernails and the System pulsing gently behind his eyes, felt something shift.
[System Sync: Bio-Emotion Channel Detected]
You have created a living feedback loop: emotion → growth → emotion
New Trait Unlocked: "Soulsoil"
Effect: Physical environments now retain and amplify collective emotional states.
Rhea brought word from the outer fringe.
"The Emotional Scrubbers are failing. Not from hacking. From feedback. They weren't built to handle raw gratitude. Or wonder."
Adrian smirked. "They tried to contain storms by bottling skywater. Now the clouds are speaking back."
But she looked troubled.
"There's talk of something new. An override. Not Lexemia. Not emotional filtering. Something deeper."
That night, Dr. Lhoren returned with a data crystal.
"I had to pull this from the vaults," she said. "It's called Project Nirvana."
She placed it on the table. It glowed pale blue.
"It's not a drug. Not a tower. It's a full reset of human response logic. A neuro-emotional reboot. They plan to upload it through the national sleep grid."
Adrian stared at the code.
TARGET: Dream Layer 01 — Childhood Imprint Memory Blocks
MODE: Overwrite / Emotional Compliance Loop (ECL)
EFFECTIVE RANGE: 74% of national population
TIME TO DEPLOYMENT: 72 HOURS
"Dreams," Adrian whispered. "They're rewriting dreams."
[System Directive: Counter-Nirvana Protocol Required]
New Feature: Dreamwalk Access Unlocked
You may now enter the collective unconscious through symbolic access points.
Warning: Identity fragmentation risk. Stability must remain above 60%.
Current Stability: 68%
Rhea looked uncertain. "You'll be walking into everyone's nightmares, Adrian."
"I'm not alone," he said. "The GNH System wasn't just built to monitor happiness. It was meant to protect the root of selfhood."
Dr. Lhoren nodded. "Then you'll need to go deeper than emotion. You'll need meaning."
That night, the village children gathered with Adrian.
They sat beneath the stars, painting symbols on leaves, whispering old lullabies into jars.
Each was a token.
Each would become a Dream Key.
And at midnight, Adrian lay beneath the Memory Tree.
Its roots had grown deeper than any thought possible.
And the last thing he heard was Rhea's voice, saying:
"Bring us back our dreams."
He closed his eyes.
And the GNH System whispered:
[Dreamlink Established]
Welcome to Layer One.
Prepare for traversal.
The garden dissolved.
The world inverted.
And Adrian stepped into the sleeping mind of a nation.
End of Chapter 15