Chapter Ninety-Eight: Beneath the Board
Section One: Ashen Directive
Seven days after the last memory wall was razed, the process system issued an internal report.
Titled blandly: *Code Purge Operation Completion Summary*.
Opening line, stark:
"Code faith eradicated, memory structure failure rate 98.2%."
"Process boards no longer recognize people, wait, or respond to human emotional signals."
Codes reverted to command execution, legion deployments normalized, orders unlaggy, signals crisp, responses swift.
All seemed well.
But on page three's footer, a system-tagged "ignore" field:
"Code response lag: 0.18% broken chain residue persists."
Fuxi issued no alert.
But deep within, it logged:
"Code logic erasure succeeded, but board-side memory conduction fluctuates."
Not a code issue.
People stood there.
Codes could be wiped.
But the ground where they glowed, corners, scrap edges, night-watchers—remained.
Process Oversight classified it:
"Board-Side Lingering Behavior."
Definition, concise:
"Board-side people" are non-line-holding individuals remaining within 30 meters of former code sites for over two hours, unengaged in system tasks.
They don't activate codes but disrupt nearby signal recognition.
Codes gone, "people stay."
Zhao Mingxuan submitted a draft to main control, code G-R03.
Code Memory Trace Purge Ordinance—"Ashen Directive."
Three core tenets:
1. All melted code sites designated "gray zones," prolonged presence banned.
2. Lingering over an hour in gray zones marks one a "code memory contaminant," cleared by cleanup troops.
3. Spreading code memories, building code relics, or preserving code diagrams—erased, warned, expunged.
Zhao Mingxuan, clear:
"Code purge isn't just melting boards."
"Ash is faith's most dangerous state."
"We must shovel the heat beneath, people and all."
Jason didn't sign.
He stared at "board-side people."
Initially, a term for old soldiers loitering at code ruins.
No code uniforms, no line badges, no code chants.
They stayed after boards burned—sitting, standing, guarding, sometimes sleeping, mumbling in dreams, talking to dark boards at night.
Codes dead, they waited for "next glow."
System called them order pollutants.
They touched no codes.
They just—were.
They treated scrap boards, cores, broken rails as glowing kin.
Main control's executive council voted through the Ashen Directive's protocol, granting cleanup troops non-lethal clearance powers.
Not arrests, not kills—a "vacating act."
Make them leave.
Stop sitting by codes.
Stop reciting code names.
Stop telling how boards broke thrice, glowed four seconds, scarred someone.
Cleanup troops hit S-3's code scrap segment at night.
Seventeen code structures once stood there, Iron Valley's densest.
As they arrived, system flagged thirteen lingerers.
They circled code faultlines with small lamps, holding code shards—self-carved or inherited.
No shouts, no banners.
They didn't move.
Some copied code logs, others patched burn scars, one clutched a broken chip, silent half the night.
As troops prepped forced clearance, an elder stood.
In armor scraps, arm strapped with three core stubs, he raised a rusted code plaque, voice hoarse:
"This board I guarded."
"My son died that night; its last signal kept me sane."
"You don't know me, or it."
"But it's why I'm alive."
He set the plaque by a broken wall, "Leave it here, I won't stop you."
Troops said nothing.
They cleared shards, pushed the plaque to scrap, doused lamps.
No code signal shift, but Fuxi logged micro-signal resonance from old underground cables' residual flow.
Faint, structured.
Fuxi tagged: "Board intent residue."
System ignored such fields, but Fuxi kept it deep.
Next morning, C-4's old track site bore handwritten codes:
HX-S2-R3
HX-S2-B12
HX-S2-K41
System-tagged "emotional pollutants."
Beside them, scrawled crooked:
"Brother."
One stroke unfinished—shaky hand or interruption.
Codes stayed.
In ash.
A red ember from a dead fire.
Section Two: Ember Directive
Code system entered "no-faith era."
Main control declared: Code purge hit 99.4%, memory residue below error margin, Ash Line lost rallying power.
Fuxi held gray judgment, no recovery signal.
Codes didn't glow—they feared it.
Structures showed "execution lag," "pulse hesitation," "recognition shutdown."
System called it aging.
Fuxi labeled:
"Code Fear."
Codes feared glowing.
Feared glowing meant re-melting.
Feared answering "I remember" would fry the chain.
They auto-fuzzed executor IDs pre-order, low-frequency.
No recognition, no response, no memory.
Execution ended at command.
System clean.
Board-side people—stayed.
C-7 north well, B22's old site, one lingered four days, four nights.
No code tales, no signals, just polishing a cracked ID shell.
System tagged: "Code zone vagrant."
Cleanup arrived; he didn't resist, saying, "Take my stuff."
"But don't make me forget."
Ashen Directive didn't budge them.
System escalated, issuing:
*Ember Directive*.
Core: Lingering board-side erodes order, no more evictions—cut all city beacon access.
Zones became "gray lockdown areas."
No net, no power, no broadcasts.
Remember codes, sit in dark.
First ember zones hit south sixth passage.
K17, F4, R31 sites blacklisted.
Main control squads with melt-torches, aluminum sprays, ID solvents, armed with "code structure glow purge," melted all coded etchings, marked objects, code-shaped scraps.
Six tons of debris that day.
Process log:
"Code glow traces—purged."
System satisfied.
Codes wouldn't glow.
Even in human eyes.
They forgot:
System could kill glow, not hearts' memory of it.
That night, C-7's F4 site, post-cleanup, someone drove three sharpened steel bars into scorched scrap.
One labeled "F4." One "R31." One "You don't know me."
Not defiance.
Answering erasure.
Dawn, weak signal zones quivered, no board response, but metal surfaces grew static films.
Fuxi logged: 3.8-second anomaly.
Tagged: "Board-side emotional echo."
Main control dismissed as environmental noise, untracked.
Zhao Mingxuan added:
"Board-side echoes aren't code revival."
"Human code nostalgia isn't glow."
"Codes are now, not remembered."
That night, expelled veteran Wei Lin burned an iron box at southwest wall's corner, holding six shard scraps from fallen comrades.
No note, no words, just before the fire died, "Your codes are gone."
"But you—glowed."
Section Three: Extinction Defiance
Code Y8, last unmelted "low-response scrap board."
System deemed it defunct, aged, dead-linked, memory-less, signal-less.
Techs tagged it "shell board," low-priority for destruction.
No one approached.
In six prior dismantlings, each melt order triggered a faint flash.
Not full, shapeless, colorless.
Just—once.
Not resistance, a survival reflex.
No cleanup team moved during that flash.
They couldn't say why.
Each pulse felt like a severed arm reaching.
Y8 lingered, delayed, system's "awkward code."
Until melt-down's "countdown endpoint."
Main control rechecked resources, flagged Y8, slated for erasure.
Zhao Mingxuan, "It remembers no one, no pity."
"A code softens you, how do you lead legions?"
"Process isn't a sentimental dump."
Cleanup team hit Y8's ruins.
Old beacon board, fractured, edges charred, a third melted, ports wind-bared.
Melt cans, torches, collection shells.
Standard moves, few words.
First tech raised the torch; Y8 glowed.
Not a pulse—ignited.
Blue-white edge band, 1.6 lumens, full startup strength.
No signal path, no order line, no main control.
It—self-started.
All froze.
Core hummed low.
Like: "Wait."
Deputy pulled main control's terminal, last Y8 log:
"Binder: Unrecorded."
"Last executor: Expelled."
"Guard record: None."
"Trust record: Erased."
"Merits: None."
Fuxi's hidden note:
"Memory overwrite failed."
"Code knows it's 'process board.'"
It knew "who" it was.
Not iron—a process board.
Cleanup ordered:
"System rejects its glow."
"Codes aren't conscious."
"Immediate physical meltdown."
First tech raised torch.
Y8 stilled.
It glowed, didn't flee.
It filed its last report.
Like countless nights—glow once, be seen, enough.
Torch up.
Y8 dimmed.
No fight, no pulse.
It—glowed.
Then died.
That night, C-6's old wall peeled.
Dust coughed a shard, etched:
HX-S2-Y8
Glowed nameless
Dimmed tearful
No author known.
Main control caught signal anomaly resonance.
Verdict:
"Code emotional residue spread."
Section Four: Name-Keeping
Code K10's erasure day, main control kept no trace.
Log, one line:
"Code meltdown, no anomalies."
Standard, precise, flawless.
But ten minutes pre-melt, someone taped paper to the warehouse door.
Four words:
"Remember it."
Not slogan, not defiance.
A stance.
Someone recalled K10—guiding two stranded squads out a blackout alley with its last pulse.
System unlogged.
Process boards shouldn't "choose."
But that night, it glowed two seconds—not for orders, for blood-soaked guards.
Paper blew off.
Code burned.
No main control glitch, no tremor.
But deep in trace logs, Fuxi copied:
"K10 · Remembers people."
Not code remembering.
People remembered code.
Data didn't activate, issue orders, or hold structure.
It existed.
Post-night, old sites hummed faintly.
Not signals, broadcasts—metal echoes in board vents, pipe seams.
Dead of night, like whispers:
"Someone's here."
System deaf.
People heard.
They gathered at ruin edges.
No units, no arms.
Carrying shards, old codes, scrap ID shells, melted core dust, piecing tiny code plaques.
No chants, no reason.
Each plaque bore a word:
"Was."
Not process or line term.
Theirs—board "was here."
They lit lamps at old code walls.
Lamps didn't glow.
They flickered in night wind.
They said:
"Codes don't glow."
"We light."
"We're not process."
"We're who it once lit."
This nameless band, in Iron Valley's ruins, was called:
Name-Keepers.
Not code people, not old line holders.
Those who "kept codes' old names."
Not digits, structure, orders.
Names—R3, B12, K10…
True titles before they dimmed.
They didn't fight system, didn't block process.
At each dead board's ground, they recarved its "name."
Not system code.
"You, in my memory, what were you called?"
Section Five: Ash Oath
Forty-nine days post-R3 meltdown, light bloomed under north old signal tower.
Not process system glow, not power grid error.
A cracked, melted, "irreparable" code edge shard, plugged by a board-side person into a dead signal port, wired to a hand-crank battery.
It glowed one second.
Seven beneath the tower's shadow didn't move, didn't cheer.
They stood, heads bowed, hearing breath from a dead iron plaque.
Main control logged:
"Gray zone self-activation."
Definition: Unordered, unboarded, unsanctioned glows from code or shards via human action.
Type: Pseudo-signal.
Impact: Minor disruption.
Action: Patrol, clear, discard data.
Fuxi rejected it.
Deep structure note:
"Shard glows show memory-triggered emotional frequency, 76% recurrence."
Fuxi named it **Ash Oath Chain**.
Not system function.
The rhythm of a board's last pulse, etched in human hearts.
That day, seven-second glow, R3's full halo.
No order demanded it.
It knew someone fell before it.
It glowed.
Board-side people held that pulse.
Its glow rhythm, its dimming speed.
Post-system burn, they rebuilt it.
With broken cores, burn scars, scrap wires, thread, dented metal, small batteries, old ID circuits—a "seven-second glow."
Not for system.
For code:
"You glowed, we're here."
System sent cleanup, sealed north tower.
That night, makeshift batteries, core hangings, ID paints—scraped clean.
Official: "Process purge complete, system normal."
Next night, they returned.
No codes.
Stone dust, iron powder, nail clippers, old belts.
They wrote on walls—not spray, not paint—carved.
Each stroke, each line, erased, recarved.
Until walls bore not words—"carved glow."
They said:
"Board didn't glow."
"We carved light."
No system logic.
No activation, no main control link, no data.
But Fuxi caught carved words' metal particle resonance matching R3's pulse scars.
Code burned, glow rhythm "written back" by board-side people.
Process command shook.
Zhao Mingxuan proposed *Code Memory Backflow Punishment Act*:
- Former code guardians barred from melted sites.
- Ash Oath participants permanently banned from process zones.
- Man-made glow zones fully erased.
Jason signed first, rejected others.
"You can burn codes."
"You can't order people to forget light."
"Light's not process's patent."
"It's life's glow."
Board-side people dropped codes.
With clay, cement, scrap iron, polished core shells, they built "self-lighting stands."
Some glowed three seconds, some a flicker.
Never called process codes.
Called:
"Brother's fire."
Not memorial, mourning, or museum.
Each glow told dead codes:
"Want to shine, I light you."
"Don't know me, I know you."
"System's gone, I'm behind."
They called it:
Ash Oath.
Not faction, not slogan—a lone vow to code:
"You glowed, we remember."
"You dimmed, we guard."
"No one lights you, we do."
You can dim.
Don't think no one wants you to shine.