118: Chapter 119 That cup makes a sound every morning

Lynn was woken up by a system push notification.

She was sleeping on a folding bed in the office, still in her clothes, her shoes taken off and placed at the foot of the bed. Her tablet was pressed against her chest, screen down. When the notification vibrated, the tablet buzzed against her collarbone. She rolled over and ignored it, only opening her eyes after the second buzz.

The content of the push notification was the daily routine summary from the AI monitoring system.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and flipped the tablet over to look.

The summary was very short: a monitoring overview of the Blue Faction's jurisdiction over the past twelve hours. Scan coverage was 99.2%, active monitoring mode was running normally, and there were zero flagged subjects of interest.

Zero.

She swiped down to look at the detailed data.

Abnormal body temperature fluctuations: three cases, all with cold symptoms, automatically cross-referenced with medical records and excluded.

Abnormal heart rate fluctuations: seven cases, five of which were normal elevations after exercise, and two were brief arrhythmias during sleep, all within the baseline range.

Gait abnormalities: zero cases.

Voice spectrum abnormalities: zero cases.

She finished reading the summary and was about to close it when she noticed a small line of gray text at the very bottom.

System Confidence Index: 99.2%.

Her finger paused.

Yesterday, this number was 99.7%.

A 0.5 percentage point drop was almost negligible statistically, but Lynn wasn't the type of person to ignore numbers after the decimal point. She had studied at the Federation's Civilizational Architecture Academy for seven years, and she still remembered something her mentor said in the first class: "Trends are more important than values; a declining 99 is more dangerous than a stable 95."

She clicked on the detailed analysis page for the confidence index.

The explanation provided by the system was clear: the operating frequency of the dome's air circulation system had fluctuated by 0.3 Hz over the past twenty-four hours. This fluctuation affected the sampling accuracy of some biosensors, causing a slight decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio of the raw data. The system had automatically lowered the confidence assessment accordingly.

She glanced at the time distribution chart of the fluctuations; they were concentrated during the night cycle. When the dome lighting switched, the load on the air circulation system would change. This was a known engineering issue, not a new situation.

Reasonable.

She closed the analysis page and opened the system parameter settings.

The sensitivity threshold for active monitoring mode was currently set at two standard deviations. She had set this threshold herself yesterday, covering 95.4% of the normal fluctuation range; the remaining 4.6% would be flagged as subjects of interest.

But if the fluctuations in the air circulation system persisted, the sensors' sampling accuracy would continue to be affected, the signal-to-noise ratio would keep falling, and the confidence index would continue to drop. Eventually, the system might generate a large number of false positives due to noise interference. If there were too many false positives, true anomalies would be buried in a pile of false alarms.

This was the classic dilemma in monitoring system design—if sensitivity is too high, it gets drowned in noise; if it's too low, true threats are missed.

She needed to find a balance between the two.

She pulled up the historical operating data for the air circulation system, looking at the frequency fluctuation records for the past three months. The fluctuation range was between 0.1 and 0.5 Hz, which was within the normal range for aging equipment.

She then pulled up the technical specifications for the biosensors. Under environmental interference of 0.3 Hz, the sensors' sampling error would increase by about 0.08%. When this error was compounded in the biometric comparison process, it would ultimately cause the matching determination to fluctuate by about 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points.

0.1 to 0.2 percentage points.

She thought about it for a moment and made an adjustment on the parameter settings page.

She relaxed the anomaly determination threshold from two standard deviations to two point three standard deviations.

The effect of this adjustment was that the system's tolerance for "normal fluctuations" expanded from 95.4% to 97.9%, which could effectively filter out the noise interference caused by the air circulation system's fluctuations while still retaining the ability to capture true anomalies.

In the adjustment notes column, she wrote: "Threshold adjusted due to environmental noise interference; to be restored to original settings after air circulation system maintenance."

After writing it, she read the line again, felt it was fine, and clicked confirm.

A prompt popped up from the system: Threshold adjustment is in effect; estimated to reduce noise false positives by approximately 37%.

37%.

She nodded with satisfaction and closed the settings page.

The tablet's screen went dark. She placed it on the desk, stood up, and walked to the window.

People were already walking on the main road of the West District. Early shift workers were heading toward the factories in small groups of twos and threes. The waste disposal robots had just finished a round of cleaning, and the ground was spotless.

Everything was normal.

She turned to wash up, not looking at the tablet again.

The tablet's screen remained dark, but the system was running quietly in the background. The new threshold had taken effect. From this moment on, all fluctuations within two point three standard deviations of the baseline would be automatically categorized as "normal range."

The AI would no longer issue alarms for these fluctuations.

East District, Temporary Command Room.

Hark's isolation request was approved at four in the morning.

The approval was brief. The superior's wording was "Authorized to execute preventive isolation; take care to control the scope of impact." No extra words; the Empire's administrative system was like the Empire's soldiers—no nonsense.

He didn't go to seize the person immediately.

He sat at the desk, notebook spread open, spinning a carbon pen between his fingers a couple of times. He tapped the tip of the pen next to Gary's name, leaving a small black dot, then pulled the pen back.

He was thinking about something.

That woman said Gary's teeth were wrong, but he had seen them with his own eyes, and the teeth were fine. That woman said Gary stopped boiling water in the morning; he had no way to verify this because he couldn't possibly crouch at the door of B-113 until six-thirty tomorrow morning to hear if that broken cup rang.

But he could ask.

He stood up, not bringing his gun.

The sound of his power armor boots on the corridor floor was loud. Most people were still asleep at this hour, and the corridor was empty, with only the hum of the air circulation system and his footsteps alternating as they pushed forward.

B-113.

He knocked on the door, this time with normal force. His knuckles rapped against the metal door panel three times, neither too light nor too heavy.

The door opened faster than yesterday.

Gary stood behind the door, his eyes a bit swollen and his hair messy. He was still wearing the same blue pullover from yesterday, with a small dark water stain on the collar, probably from just having had a drink.

"Officer," Gary's voice carried the raspiness of someone who had just woken up, "what is it now?"

"Nothing major," Hark said, his tone much more relaxed than yesterday. He even took half a step back, pulling back the oppressive presence of the power armor slightly. "A few questions were missed during yesterday's registration; just filling them in."

Gary hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside to let him in.

The room was small, about twenty square meters, with a bed, a desk, a chair, and a wardrobe. On the desk were a water cup and a few old magazines. The bed wasn't made neatly, but it wasn't a mess either—a typical single man's room.

Hark didn't sit. He stood by the door, leaning against the doorframe. This posture made him seem less aggressive while also blocking the only exit.

"How many years have you lived here again?"

"Over three years," Gary said, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees. "I've been here since the station was built."

"Used to it?"

"It's alright. The place is a bit small, but it's enough for one person."

Hark nodded, his gaze sweeping around the room casually before finally landing on the desk.

There was no electric heating cup on the desk.

"What do you usually drink in the morning?" Hark asked, his tone like he was just chatting.

"Water," Gary said, "just plain water."

"Don't steep tea?"

"Occasionally, depends on my mood."

"What do you use to steep it?"

Gary was stunned for a moment, probably not expecting a soldier in power armor to chat with him about steeping tea.

"Just... a cup," he pointed to the water cup on the desk, "that one."

Hark looked at the cup. It was a plain metal cup without a heating function.

"Didn't you have an electric heating cup before?" Hark asked.

Gary's expression didn't change.

"Electric heating cup?" He thought for a moment. "Oh, that. I'm still using it."

His tone was very flat when he said this.

Hark listened.

The words "I'm still using it" were steady in tone, with no ups or downs, no annoyance, no resignation—none of the emotions one should have when dealing with an old object used for three years.

A broken electric heating cup used by someone for three years would make a sizzling sound every morning when plugged in. You couldn't possibly use this tone when mentioning it. You'd either be annoyed by it, used to it, or find it a bit ridiculous, but you couldn't have absolutely no feeling toward it.

Unless you had never used it.

Unless you only knew that you "had" an electric heating cup, but you didn't know it rang when plugged in, didn't know its switch was a bit loose, and didn't know that every morning at six-thirty you'd be woken up by it, curse it, and then still use it to boil water.

You had the memory of this object, but you didn't have the sentiment of three years of living with it.

There was no expression on Hark's face.

"Alright, nothing else then," he straightened up from the doorframe. "Sorry for the intrusion."

Gary stood up to see him out, that smile on his face again, just like yesterday—polite, proper, and just right.

Hark walked out, and the door closed behind him.

He stood in the corridor, not leaving immediately.

He listened to the sounds behind the door.

Footsteps, very light, walking from the door back to the bedside, then the slight creak of springs. Gary had sat back down on the bed.

Then there was no more sound.

After a normal person was questioned at their door by the military for two consecutive days, what should be the first thing they did after closing the door? Curse, sigh, mutter "so annoying" to themselves, or at least make some sound to express emotion.

There was no sound at all from behind the door.

It was abnormally quiet.

Hark turned and headed toward the command room, his pace faster than when he came.

Back at his desk, he flipped open his notebook and drew a line through the word "Possible" in the phrase "Possible Xenos" behind Gary's name.

Two words remained.

Xenos.

He pulled open a drawer.

Inside the drawer was a Service Pistol, the standard-issue sidearm for Imperial garrison troops. The magazine was full; he had checked it yesterday.

He took the gun out, glanced at the magazine after ejecting it, pushed it back in, and racked the slide. The sound of a round chambering was exceptionally crisp in the quiet command room.

Then he tucked the gun into the holster at his waist, picked up his notebook and pen, and walked out of the command room.

The lights in the corridor were still that ghastly white industrial lighting, and the hum of the air circulation system hadn't stopped for a single second.

Hark walked toward B-113.

This time, he brought his gun.