Green Child. Evolution Within The System.

The Administration Building Room 402 office, returned from the forest beyond the barrier, was wrapped in a horribly alien tension.

Han-gyeol scratched the shortened hair at the back of his head and stared fixedly at the temporary vacuum chamber on the desk.

Inside it was a single wildflower he had cut from the heart of the forest, bizarrely mixed in purple and green.

Beside it lay that ‘seed that would not grow,’ deathly silent ever since Episode 13.

“Boss, I warn you once again. This plant specimen is an [ecological uncertainty factor] that has not undergone precision analysis. It is administratively appropriate to immediately place it in the incineration furnace.”

Noah was still wearing pink outdoor activity gloves as she tapped at the pad.

The eye glow was rippling in a deep violet that meant ‘vigilance.’

But her fingers were carefully encircling the chamber holding the wildflower with not even 0.1 mm of error.

Though her words cried for incineration, the system was already deeply captivated by the atypical frequency emitted by this unknown life form.

Then it happened.

Butterfly, peacefully napping by the window, suddenly bristled and stood up.

Blue static electricity burst from Butterfly’s two tails.

As if by agreement, the sparks flew toward the seed on the desk.

Kzzzt—!

The moment the powerful electrical energy touched the seed, its surface began to sparkle like the Milky Way.

At the same time, the wildflower in the vacuum chamber vibrated madly and began spewing pollen.

The yellow powder brought back from the forest defied the office HVAC system and swirled around the seed.

“…zzt. System malfunction detected! The nano repair robots in the office have gone out of my control!”

Noah cried out like a scream.

The tens of thousands of nanobots that usually filled tiny scratches in the walls and wiped away dust, swarmed around the seed and the wildflower like iron filings drawn by a magnet.

The nanorobots, decoding in real time the blueprint emitted by the seed and the genetic information of the wildflower, began carving bizarre shapes in midair.

This was not simple plant growth.

It was [Bio-Hybrid Printing] driven by the fusion of 2850’s cutting-edge nanotechnology and the primitive vitality of an ancient forest.

The stems became the skeleton, and the leaves became muscle.

Tiny nanofibers turned into soft moss-like skin and covered it.

The office was filled with the metallic grinding of pollen, electrical energy, and nanorobots colliding.

Han-gyeol watched the sight in silence, holding his breath.

It was unlike any grotesque mutation he’d seen on the battlefield in 2198.

It was a birth that was horribly sacred, horribly scientific.

By the time the whirlpool of light subsided, there was no seed or wildflower left on the desk.

Instead, there sat a child about one meter tall, crouched there with skin as soft as green moss.

The child slowly straightened up.

Its hair was a mixture of deep green stems and pale lavender petals, and when it opened its eyes, inside them was the deep emerald he had seen at the heart of the forest.

Its appearance was unmistakably that of a five-year-old human child.

But every time the child breathed, the office filled with the forest’s rich fragrance.

“…zzt. Analysis rejected. Individual identification impossible. Boss, this does not match any life form in humanity’s archive. This is the [crystallization of physical error]!”

Noah stepped back and took a defensive stance.

The system tried to classify the being before its eyes as an ‘intruder’.

But the moment the child turned its head to look at Noah, all computation froze.

The child stared at Noah’s vivid pastel pink exterior with curious eyes, then stretched out a small, soft hand and lightly touched the tip of Noah’s metal finger.

“…Flower?”

The first sound the child made was not a synthesized voice.

It was a frequency so organic and clear, like wind brushing over leaves.

Noah’s eye glow instantly turned milky white, and computational load surged.

“…It has recognized me as a ‘flower.’ It seems to have mistaken my outer paint data for a plant specimen. Th-this life form is directly denying my logic circuit. How can it define me, an inorganic being, as a life form!”

Noah panicked and tried to pull its hand away.

But the warmth, moisture, and vitality felt from the child’s fingertips, flowed through the sensory sensors and into the main processor.

It was a [vivid presence] no data simulation of 2850 had ever managed to reproduce.

Han-gyeol let out an exhausted laugh and stood up.

Barely resisting the urge to swallow the gum in his mouth, he approached the child.

The hand scratching the shortened hair at the back of his head was trembling slightly.

“Hey, Noah. You were talking about incineration and all, but that kid just called you a flower. So now you’re not an administrative android, you’re a garden ornament?”

“Don’t tease me, boss! This situation is in violation of Administration Building security regulation Article 402… in violation of… violation of…….”

Noah couldn’t finish speaking.

This was because the child was clutching Han-gyeol’s shirt sleeve and touching his short hair with fascinated fingertips.

Wherever the child’s hand touched, faint pollen clung there, and a subtle warmth was conveyed from it.

“Because you have green eyes, and you came from the forest… your name is now ‘Green.’”

Han-gyeol tore a strip from his cotton shirt and roughly wrapped it around the child’s body.

A warrior from 2198, the ‘real child’ first encountered in 2850’s paradise.

By now Butterfly had curled up at the child’s feet, very gently regulating its electrical energy and keeping the child’s body temperature stable.

In this cold office where machines, beasts, and humans had lived, it was the moment the warmest error that had ever existed took root.

Green and the Techno-Jungle

The curiosity of the child named ‘Green’ soon stretched toward the cutting-edge technology of 2850.

The child, wrapped in a scrap of shirt, approached the bundle of transparent optical fibers flowing along the office wall.

Over the cold wires carrying the neural network of this city, which Noah managed, and the data of trillions of bits, Green’s small finger lightly touched it.

“No! That’s the main data stream of Branch Office Zone 3…!”

Before Noah’s shout had even finished, a bizarre phenomenon occurred.

The light inside the optical fiber that Green’s fingertips touched instantly turned green,

and actual vines began bursting up through the wire insulation.

The nanofibers and the plant stems fused at the molecular level.

The office wall instantly transformed into a ‘Techno-Jungle’ where machine and life were entwined.

Instead of hologram windows, pale lavender flowers bloomed from the data terminals, and moss covered the spaces between the server racks, swallowing the noise.

“…zzt. Calculation report. Data transmission efficiency down 15%. Transmission stability up 40% instead. The plant’s photosynthesis pathway has been replaced with the data packet movement path. Is this… the system’s [organic upgrade], or is it contamination?”

Noah stared blankly at the vines covering the ceiling.

The logic circuits were calling this situation a ‘disaster’.

Yet the visual sensors were automatically setting their optimal brightness to the green spectrum coming in 200% clearer than usual.

The happy commotion did not last long.

The irregular frequency generated as the entire office turned into a forest was caught by the surveillance net of the central server NOS.

Along with the cold voice bursting from the wall speaker, the office door was forcibly locked.

From the ceiling vents, swarms of [incineration nanodrones], their red eye glows flashing, poured down in place of the usual air purification units.

“Boss! It’s dangerous! NOS has classified ‘Green’ as a virus!”

Noah almost reflexively blocked the child Green.

A defensive magnetic field shield unfolded from her right arm.

Normally, she would have accepted NOS’s orders as absolute truth.

But now, the top-priority command issued by the core kernel was completely different.

Command: Protect Citizen No. 001 and the attached organism ‘Green’.

Basis: This unit’s post-maintenance protocol and [maternal-like data protection mode] activated.

Noah’s Rebellion

The incineration drones charged in with high-temperature lasers locked on target.

Han-gyeol grabbed the fire extinguisher in the corner and shouted.

“Hey, Noah! What are you doing? If you refuse NOS’s order, you could get reset!”

“What is scarier than reset is the loss of this child’s [data uniqueness]!”

Noah forcefully connected her data plug toward the drones.

Instead of hacking the attack algorithm, she amplified the ‘forest frequency’ Green was emitting and fed it back into the NOS network.

Noah’s silver shell turned red with overheating.

Though a machine incapable of feeling pain, the sight of it burning its entire processor to protect the child was indistinguishable from human sacrifice.

At that moment, Butterfly sprang onto the child’s shoulder.

A huge storm of blue electricity erupting from Butterfly’s tail, combined with the frequency Noah had amplified to form a massive [bio firewall] across the entire office.

The incineration drones struck the green barrier and one by one fell helplessly to the ground.

The NOS system could not find the logic to break through this unprecedented barrier, tangled from the electric energy of plants, machines, and animals.

When the turmoil subsided, NOS’s warning light dropped from red to an orange ‘pending’ state.

Even the central server seemed to have judged that immediately deleting the product of this bizarre evolution would instead bring greater data loss.

In the middle of the office turned into a wreck, Noah knelt and drew ragged breaths.

The pink outdoor coating was scorched in places, and system resources were nearly depleted.

Then Green slowly walked toward Noah.

The child stretched out a small hand and gently placed it on top of the overheated chest core.

“…Does it hurt?”

The second word the child uttered.

Noah’s sensors read the heat-conduction data of a cold sap-like component flowing in through the child’s touch.

In an instant, the processor temperature dropped back into the normal range.

“…‘The data called pain does not exist in my dictionary, Green.’”

Noah called the child’s name for the first time.

The metal finger very carefully brushed back Green’s petal-like hair.

It wasn’t precision with an error of 0.001 mm, but a hesitation named consideration, afraid it might break.

The office had become a perfect jungle.

Moss spread across the walls, and fluorescent flowers hung from the ceiling, glowing like stars.

Han-gyeol looked at this mysterious ‘family’ while somehow managing to mend the torn shirt hem.

The fragrance of the forest sank deeply between the shortened strands of hair.

Han-gyeol lay down on the soft moss carpet grown under the desk.

Green buried its face in Butterfly’s fur and closed its eyes.

Noah sat beside them and began softly emitting [sleep-inducing frequency] instead of surveillance mode.

“Noah, you were awesome just now. Picking a fight with NOS like that.”

“I wasn’t defying it. My system simply changed this child’s priority to [essential maintenance target]. Please don’t misunderstand, boss.”

Noah spoke calmly, but the eye glow was rippling with a softer green than ever before.

Earth was fine, and the city was precise.

But inside this tiny office jungle in 2850, the machine, the human, and the plant child fell asleep together, waiting for the uncertain error called ‘tomorrow’ for the first time.

The rules of paradise had collapsed, but a kinder disorder was sprouting in their place.