"Shadow Games"
Professor Miller's team worked tirelessly, but the answer seemed to slip through their fingers. Everything was there: pulses, signals, buffers, unstable memory, amplification modules. The monitor responded, the code layering itself, as if someone - or something - was still writing over their work. But the pink silhouette... It seemed to be toying with them. It would appear for a split second, then disappear, as if testing their reaction. Sometimes - at the most unexpected moment. Sometimes - as if in response to emotions, not actions.
"He's... teasing us," Tom said one day, looking at the screen with an expression as if he were looking at a living creature.
"Or testing us," Sarah added. "Like a child who hasn't yet learned to speak, but already understands that he's being watched."
"Or like a hunter," Jonathan added grimly. "Waiting for us to make a mistake."
The professor remained silent. He didn't know what was worse - if this creature was intelligent or if it was instinctive. In the first case, they'd created something that could think. In the second, something that could react but couldn't be controlled. Like fire. Like a virus.
They began recording the silhouette's appearance. Time, conditions, the operator's emotional state, the room temperature, even the phases of the moon - everything was recorded. But there was no pattern. Sometimes it appeared when everyone was calm. Sometimes - in moments of panic. Sometimes - when no one was connected. Just on the screen, by itself. Pink, pulsating, faceless.
One night, Sarah was left alone in the department. The others had gone - the professor had fallen asleep right on the couch in the office, Tom had gone for food, Jonathan had gone home. Sarah couldn't sleep. She was tormented by the thought: what if it doesn't appear because we're looking for it?
She put on the interface. She didn't connect to the system - she simply turned on the power, sat down in the chair, and closed her eyes.
"I'm not afraid of you," she said quietly. "I want to understand."
The screen flickered. Not a flash, but a smooth glow. Pink began to spread across the monitor like ink in water. Not a silhouette. Not a form. Just a presence.
Sarah didn't open her eyes. She breathed evenly, slowly. Only one question rang in her head: can you hear me?
There was no answer. But deep in the screen, in the very center, a dot appeared. Small. Pulsating. Like a heart. It beat in time with her breathing.
Sarah slowly removed the interface. The screen went dark.
"He... understands," she whispered.
The next morning, she told the team everything. The professor listened without interrupting. Then he went to the board, erased all the old diagrams, and began drawing a new one.
"We've been trying to calculate all this time. Search for signals, analyze noise. But if this isn't code, but contact, then we need something else. We need a language."
"The language of what?" Tom asked.
"The language of emotions," Sarah replied. "Or sensations. Or images."
"The language of the subconscious," Jonathan added.
"Perhaps," the professor nodded. "We don't create intelligence. We create a reflection. And if it reflects us, then it's learning to be us."
He looked at the screen. It was blank.
"The question now is different," he said. "Who exactly is looking into this mirror? Are we looking at it? Or is it looking at us? "
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