"Pink Zigzag"
The next stage wasn't intended. It wasn't planned, discussed, or even hypothesized. It just... happened.
It was an ordinary evening. Jonathan, as always, was the last to arrive. He held a cup of cooling coffee in his hands, a bag of printouts slung over his shoulder, and a tired expression on his face. He silently placed the cup on the edge of the table, placed his homemade interface on his head, settled into a creaky chair, and reached for his drink. It was at that moment that his hand brushed against a bare contact on the amplifier.
The discharge was weak - just a few volts, no more than static electricity. But the surprise was stronger than the shock. Jonathan flinched, dropped his cup, and hot coffee splashed onto his trousers. He jumped up with a sharp, obscene exclamation, shaking the fabric off his pants.
"Damn!" - he breathed out, - what the...
But no one answered. No one even looked at him.
The others - Sarah, Tom, and Professor Miller - stood staring at the monitor. On the screen, among the familiar mosaic of gray, blue, and red pixels, a zigzag pattern appeared. It was pink.
Not lavender, not crimson, but pink - a color never used in the code as a marker. It was in the palette, yes. Theoretically, it could be triggered. But it wasn't assigned to any signal level. Not a single line of the program provided for its activation. And yet, it appeared. Bright, sharp, like a flash.
"It's..." Tom began, but fell silent.
"It shouldn't be there," Sarah said quietly. "I checked the palette. We didn't use pink. Not in any version."
The professor moved closer to the terminal. His fingers trembled as he scrolled through the code, opening side modules. What he saw made him sit up.
"Who wrote this?" he asked.
"What?" Jonathan, still dusting himself off, came closer.
"This fragment. It wasn't here before. This..." the professor paused. "This is an exception handler. Only it's not ours. It wasn't in the source code."
"You mean the program wrote it itself?" Sarah stared at the screen, disbelieving.
"No," the professor shook his head. "I mean it appeared. On its own. Maybe because of a buffer overflow. Maybe because of old data overlapping new data. Maybe because of interference. But it works. And it uses pink as a marker for an unusual reaction."
They were silent. It was getting dark outside. Fans hummed in the lab, relays clicked, lights flickered. And on the screen, the pink zigzag slowly disappeared, dissolving into gray noise.
"Stress," Sarah whispered. "It was a reaction to stress. Severe, unexpected. And the program understood it."
"Or..." Tom began, "or not the program. But what's inside it now."
No one answered. Words seemed inappropriate.
They didn't know what exactly had happened. But they knew it was impossible. And yet - it had happened.
The machine, limited by its old hardware, meager memory, and primitive interface, had somehow adapted. It didn't just react. It interpreted. It expanded its behavior beyond its prescribed instructions.
Perhaps it was a glitch. Perhaps a coincidence. Or... something else.
Life born from chaos. Intelligence awakening in a stream of ones and zeros.
Beyond the screen.
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