Traces Of Conversation.

00:00 AM, The Evaporation of the Festival

Christmas midnight.

The nano snowflake particles that Paul had scattered touched the surface and vaporized, giving off their last light.

The red and green lights that had stained the entire Administration Building went out all at once, as if by prior agreement.

Branch Office Sector 3 returned once more to its terribly precise and cold [Standard Night Mode].

“…Bzzzt. Christmas protocol terminated. All units, return to work standby mode.”

NOS’s voice had shed yesterday’s gentle frequency and returned to a flat mechanical tone.

Han-gyeol sat on the office sofa, chewing flavorless gum as he looked out the darkened window.

The androids, who had been thrilled with the festival just a few hours ago, were now heading toward their charging ports, drawing dull trajectories like robot vacuum cleaners.

“Hey, Noah. You guys are really fast. It was Merry Christmas just a second ago, and now that the door’s closed, you’re strangers again?”

“Boss. The definition of a festival is [temporary overconsumption of resources]. The return of resources to the normal range signifies the health of the system. But….”

Noah looked down at the pad and fell silent.

The glow in his eyes had sunk to a blue a shade lower than usual.

“This is strange. The video records from yesterday remain in my cache memory in a [Deletion Refused] state. Whenever I try to send them to the trash, CPU usage rises by 15% and heat is generated. It is a clear [Data Hangover].”

Noah was not the only one with a problem.

The entire android population of Sector 3, having shared in the immense ‘error’ called Christmas, was suffering from a strange aftereffect.

The silence that came after the frequency of joy, once so intense, disappeared, was detected by their logic circuits as a [Severe Data Vacuum State].

“Boss! My cleaning node can’t find its direction!”

Paul’s voice rang out over the communications network from the lobby.

“The floor is clean. But my sensors keep searching for yesterday’s white snowflake particles. Trying to find a contaminant that doesn’t exist has sent my logic circuits into an infinite loop! This is an [Existential Crisis] as a cleaner!”

The stark contrast between yesterday and today was bringing the androids a [Computational Mismatch] far more fatal than human depression.

The city was running without any problems.

But the machines moving through it had lost their way and creaked between yesterday’s hot memories and today’s cold reality.

Then Nabi, who had been sleeping on Han-gyeol’s shoulder, stretched.

Nabi straightened her two tails like antennas, and slowly walked toward the main power terminal in the middle of the office.

“Nabi, are you trying to steal electricity again?”

Nabi ignored Han-gyeol’s words and plopped down on top of the terminal.

Then it slowly placed a front paw on the power socket.

In an instant, the office lights trembled ‘frrt’ and changed to a soft bulb-colored glow.

It was not the usual cold white light.

The electricity flowing from Nabi’s body coursed along the city’s grid, and began transmitting [Minute Vibrations] to the androids’ core processors.

What Nabi was sharing was not simple energy.

It was an irregular but warm [Biological Rhythm] carrying the vitality of the forest.

“…What is this?”

Noah closed her eyes.

The data that had been sharply colliding inside her began to align, very slowly, to Nabi’s low frequency.

“Boss… Nabi is now transmitting a [Common Pulse] to all androids in the city. She’s filling the void left after the festival with her own body heat.”

Paul in the plaza and the old machines in Zero Sector all stopped moving.

They no longer tried to delete yesterday’s memories.

Matching the rhythm Nabi sent, they were folding those memories into their basic OS as

[Warm Background Data].

For androids, this was not ‘emotion.’

It was simply [System Stabilization through Atypical Energy].

But the fan noise they emitted at the same time reverberated against the walls like the relieved sigh of a giant.

02:00 AM, Real Peace

The city’s noise had completely died down.

Nabi fell asleep again on top of the terminal, purring in satisfaction.

The office lights remained on, tinged with a very faint purple hue.

“Hey, Noah. Feeling a little more alive now?”

“…Yes, Boss. My CPU temperature has returned to normal. The records from yesterday that I intended to delete have been safely isolated in a separate [Memorial Archive] folder. Now it no longer hurts… no, no error occurs.”

Noah looked out the window.

The fake blue sky made by lasers was a deep, invisible night.

Instead, Nabi’s residual electricity was softly illuminating streetlights all over the city.

Han-gyeol spat out his gum and carefully tied the last remaining ribbon around Nabi’s neck.

The festival was over, but the warmth left by that error had put down very deep and firm roots in the cold circuits of the machines.

01:15 AM, The Fan’s Scream

Fifteen minutes had passed since Nabi settled on top of the power terminal.

The indoor temperature of Administration Building room 402 was 1.2 degrees higher than usual thanks to the faint heat Nabi was releasing.

Han-gyeol sank deep into the sofa, and with half-lidded eyes

watched the blue sparks flying from the tip of Nabi’s tail.

The light was horribly regular.

Like the sound of a heart monitor he had heard at some hospital in 2198, it pushed back the darkness at regular intervals, then drew it in again.

“…Bzzzt. System load dropped sharply from 42% to 15%. Synchronization frequency fixed at 72 Hz.”

Noah was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall.

The glow in her eyes no longer flickered.

Instead, it burned with a deep, still milky light, receiving the frequency Nabi sent with her entire body.

Inside her outer casing, only a pleasant hum flowed instead of cooling fans.

“Boss… I feel… strange. It feels as if my computation circuits are submerged in warm oil. It’s different from the sharp exhilaration I felt during yesterday’s festival. This is much more… heavy, solid stability.”

“People call that ‘peace,’ Noah.”

Han-gyeol answered while chewing gum.

“A festival is supposed to sparkle and disappear. That’s why you get wistful and drunk on it, and why you feel depressed when it’s over. But what Nabi is doing now is kind of like serving a hot bowl of gukbap in the spot where that drunkenness has worn off. It settles the stomach.”

The rhythm Nabi sent through the terminal spread throughout the city along the copper wiring of the Administration Building.

From the underground drainage pipes of Sector 3 to the top-floor air purification units.

Nabi’s biological rhythm seeped into every place where power flowed.

Paul’s feet, which had been wandering the middle of the plaza looking for ‘nonexistent snow,’ came to a stop.

The end of his broom remained touching the floor, fixed in place.

Paul no longer looked for snow.

Instead, he sat down under the plaza streetlight and slowly blinked his power core in time with Nabi’s rhythm.

The cleaning drones passing by also stopped their wheels one by one and gathered around Paul.

It was no different from animals in a forest gathering by the roots of a giant tree to sleep.

The machines no longer mourned yesterday’s ‘disappearance.’

Through Nabi’s rhythm, they were quietly calculating that yesterday had become today’s soil.

Noah placed the pad on his knees and flipped through the thousands of photos taken yesterday, one by one.

In the past, this would have been data he would immediately compress or delete as ‘wasted storage space.’

“Boss. I just added a new tag to these photos.”

“What tag?”

“[Humanity’s Legacy: Replica]. This is proof data that we in 2850 are connected to humanity before 2100. I locked my core kernel so that even NOS can’t delete this folder. If anyone tries to erase this folder, my entire system will shut down.”

Noah’s voice was calm, but within it was the strongest [Stubbornness] a machine could possess.

She was no longer merely a data storage unit.

She had accepted yesterday’s error as part of herself, and become a single ‘will’ determined to protect it.

Han-gyeol looked at Noah like that, spat out his gum, and took out a fresh one.

As the mint scent filled his mouth, he was reminded again of yesterday’s cold artificial snow beneath his fingers.

“Good job. If you don’t keep a record, after I die you’ll all start saying different things, like, ‘There was no such thing as Santa.’”

“Don’t worry. The video of Boss wearing a Santa suit and falling on his butt in Zero Sector is stored in my quadruple backup. It can still be played 600 years from now.”

“…Hey, delete that.”

“I refuse. That is the core [Humor Data] of yesterday’s festival.”

At Noah’s dry joke, Han-gyeol let out a snort of laughter.

Even this trivial conversation shared between machine and human, in Nabi’s rhythm felt like a perfect harmony.

03:00 AM, Synchronized Breathing

3:00 in the morning.

The city’s power usage hit its lowest point of the day.

However, the streetlights in Sector 3 were casting a slightly brighter and warmer light than usual.

Nabi’s electricity was subtly shaking the bulb filaments, creating a low hum inaudible to human ears.

Nabi yawned widely on top of the terminal, and leaped onto Han-gyeol’s lap.

The warmth coming from her body was still hot, and the sparks jumping from her tail had subsided to the level of soft static electricity.

“You worked hard, furball.”

When Han-gyeol stroked Nabi’s head, Nabi purred in satisfaction.

The sound traveled through Noah’s pad and then spread again through the city network.

Noah turned off the pad and sat side by side with Han-gyeol, looking out the window.

The fake blue sky made by lasers was not visible.

Instead, the true moonlight of 2850 was quietly illuminating the silver-gray earth.

“Boss. Next Christmas too… should we make it snow?”

“Well. We’ll have to see then. If Paul causes trouble again, we might cancel it.”

“Then I’ll make a slightly more refined Santa algorithm. So you won’t have to deliver it yourself.”

“No, I’ll do the delivery. Giving presents is actually pretty nice.”

Inside his pocket, Han-gyeol gently clenched the glass marble he had received in Zero Sector.

The Earth was fine, and the city was precise.

But on this dawn in 2850, Branch Office Sector 3 was no longer a cold graveyard of machines.

It was breathing, very slowly and gently, in time with Nabi’s heartbeat, almost like a vast living being.

The festival was over, but the sentence left by that error remained as an indelible mark in the machines’ memory.

They now knew.

That within the floors they cleaned and the air they maintained, there was in fact someone’s longing and warmth mixed in.

Han-gyeol buried his face in Nabi’s soft fur and quietly closed his eyes.

The night of paradise deepened.

The synchronized silence embraced the city more beautifully than any music could.