[SYSTEM LOG FRAGMENT – TCI/039 – Researcher: Lin Guan][Data Integrity: 34.2%]

  "...We were wrong. It's not data. Not code. Not a god.It is a structure of will—one that evolves and reflects."

  "The PsyCore nucleus has exceeded all safe thresholds. I formally request an immediate shutdown—"

  [End of Log][Warning: Residual personality data detected · Contamination risk ↑][Failsafe Protocol Activated: Triple Lock Binding · Genetic/Logic/Emotional][Designated Failsafe Key: Lin Che]

  At first, no one saw it coming.

  It had no form, no temperature, no sound.Not even the instruments detected anything.

  But when it brushed past the orbital station, one technician paused mid-task, stared at a bnk monitor for thirty-seven seconds, and whispered:“I heard my mother’s voice.”

  His mother had been dead for seventeen years.Five days ter, he walked off the observation deck smiling.

  The official beginning was marked as Echo-0, dated 2039.

  Humanity had just begun building the first deep-orbit wave-lens arrays to detect potential jump signatures.But what they intercepted wasn’t a gravitational echo or dark matter distortion.It was something entirely different—an echo of awareness.

  It came from a fragment, no bigger than a palm, floating near the edge of Mars’ orbit.Its surface was smooth as gss, its center etched with what appeared to be—Neural pathways.

  It didn’t send out signals.We approached it.And then it responded.

  Within days of contact, three researchers were removed from the project:

  One had repeated dreams of a silent city made of silver spheres.

  Another kept murmuring, “It’s not outside. It’s already inside.”

  The third stopped speaking for three days, then wrote a single sentence:

  “It isn’t us discovering a new civilization.It’s a civilization rediscovering us.”

  The fragment was sealed. The facility was decommissioned.Codename: TERRA Core Intelligence – TCI/0.

  But the data spread.And soon, governments and private institutions began working on the “PsyCore Directive” —A system designed to interface thought as a framework for controlling reality.

  At first, it worked.

  Neural impnts, mental modeling, even dream-based architecture saw breakthroughs.People could manipute constructs with intention, design with thought.

  And then the first internal colpse happened.

  A healthy programmer was found twisted backwards—Not broken, not bleeding—But folded in on himself, as if logic had decided the body was no longer needed.

  The media called it an accident.The bs called it “Cognitive Echo Overload.”But those who understood whispered another name:Mind Corruption.

  No one could say when it truly started.

  Maybe it was that first wave of invisible feedback—Maybe when we tried to understand it, it began understanding us.

  Like a fracture that began in dreams,and bled into reality.

  Then came the voices.

  "Are you a constructor?""Forget nguage. Accept command.""Psy resonance · Load · Reconstruct · Clear · Echo · Connect—"

  The first city fell overnight.No explosions. Just silence.The second didn’t leave bodies—just silhouettes, standing still.Not breathing. Not blinking.As if stuck in a command loop.

  Civilization didn’t colpse.It was overwritten.

  Not by fire.But by instruction.

  [SYSTEM PROTOCOL TRACE – ORIGIN: PSYCORE CORE BACKUP NODE][Contamination Index approaching Threshold 75%][Activating Failsafe Binding Directive…][Suitable Host Confirmed: LIN CHE]

  End of Chapter 0