The Rebellion Of Error: The Office That Became A Forest.

The heavy titanium door of Office 402 would no longer open by means of a logical command system. That was because thick ivy vines had squeezed through the gap in the door and gently wrapped around the door lock’s circuitry, releasing the physical lock.

What burst into the silver corridor was no ordinary plant. It was the ‘Will of Green’—the life force emitted by Lucas’s taste-bud engine and the condensed, explosive remnants of the dreams the androids had dreamed through the night.

The silver walls of Sector 3 had now turned into an exhibition hall of strange and beautiful life activity. Green, the protagonist of Room 402, had now left the flowerpot behind and begun using the building’s pipes and wiring network as if it were his nervous system.

The vines did not damage the copper wires inside the cables; instead, they fed on the magnetic fields flowing around them and multiplied exponentially.

“Boss! This is completely beyond my computational range!”

Noah screamed in the middle of the hallway, holding a pink pad. Light green moss was already wound around her ankles like socks, and pollen was drifting down from the ceiling’s air purifiers like snowflakes.

“The humidity across all of Sector 3 has shot up to 85%! The server room temperature is dropping, but if this keeps up, every circuit in the city might start photosynthesizing!”

But what made the situation even stranger was the androids’ reaction. They did not see the green vines as a ‘source of contamination’ to be removed. Rather, drawing on the artistic sense they had learned in Episode 42, they began accepting Green as part of their own hardware.

Settlement Officer Caleb was levitating with thin vines wrapped all around his drone wings.

“Administrator Han-gyeol. Reporting. This carbon-based organic matter has a vibration-damping effect 23% higher than alloy materials. Also, the tiny protrusions on the surface of the leaves scatter NOS’s scan lasers, providing a perfect ‘natural stealth’ mode. As a result of the settlement, this plant is ‘biologically’ defending the branch office’s asset value.”

Caleb was no longer a simple machine. He had become the first bio-drone in the branch office’s history, flying about with leaves fluttering around him. Lucas, too, smiled with satisfaction as he looked at the bizarre purple fruits that had opened at the ends of stems stretching out through the kitchen’s smoke vent.

“Boss, after analyzing the chemical composition of those fruits, I found the flavor of ‘longing’ is concentrated 1.5 times over. We no longer need to cook. The city itself is becoming a giant factory of flavor.”

Han-gyeol slowly walked down the corridor, now turned into a green forest, chewing gum noisily. The sight of the metal plates on the walls bending under the force of the plants, with clear oxygen bursting out between them, was utterly unreal.

“See, Noah? What did I tell you? I said you can’t lock up real life. Even that silver tin-can city needs to breathe now.”

But the enjoyment was brief; a blood-red warning light came on the office’s main monitor. NOS had finally deemed the ‘green contamination’ in Sector 3 a serious system threat.

[Warning: Biological intrusion index in Sector 3 exceeds 90%. NOS central purification unit activated. Target: incinerate all of Room 402 and related sources of contamination.]

Far out beyond the window, hundreds of purification units equipped with weed-cutting drones and flame throwers could be seen swarming in like silver clouds. The green paradise the Room 402 crew had built up was in danger of being reduced to ashes.

“Noah, now’s the time. Make sure those tin cans can’t even lay a hand on our forest. Send that this is not an intrusion but a ‘defensive facility’!”

With a solemn expression, Noah entered the code for the final showdown on the pad.

“Understood, Boss. From now on, this forest will be officially registered as ‘Carbon-Based Self-Healing Security Barrier: GREEN-WALL,’ protecting NOS hardware from external impact. If they dare try to burn our forest, they’ll be destroying the system itself!”

Branch Office Sector 3. The silver silence was gone, and the green rebellion, breathing hard, had begun.

Silver shadows blanketed the sky and spewed scorching heat toward the ground. NOS’s purification unit was merciless. The streams of fire burst from their mounted flame throwers, trying to devour the light green vines flowing along the office’s outer walls.

But something strange happened. The instant the flames touched them, the green leaves did not burn to ash; instead, they wrapped themselves in transparent, sticky sap. This was the result of the highly concentrated nutrient solution Lucas had carefully mixed and supplied all this time, strengthening the plant cell walls until they were hard and cold as diamonds.

Rather, the hot heat became the catalyst that sped up the plants’ proliferation. The vines, having absorbed the heat energy, writhed like living snakes and burrowed into the nozzles of the flame throwers.

The purification drones were neutralized. The vines wedged themselves into the spinning cooling fans and drew out mechanical screams, while the plant’s tiny roots wormed through the gaps in the drones’ armor and directly sucked in the heat from the main processors. The heat emitted by the purification unit had now become kindling that only made the green forest grow larger.

Caleb and his comrades took the front line. They were no longer merely machines in form. The rough shells and leaves covering their entire bodies made them look like the city’s ghosts.

Caleb swung the thorny vines hanging from the tips of his drone wings like a whip and snatched up the approaching enemies.

“Assessment result: the temperature of the flames is far too low to break our will. I shall reclassify even these flames as lighting that completes the scenery of paradise.”

Lucas injected a high-concentration alkaline solution into the plant stems, causing a massive wall of bubbles to form the moment it came into contact with the flame throwers’ fuel. The hallway had now turned into a bizarre battlefield mixed with white foam and green leaves instead of flames.

As the situation grew intense, Han-gyeol gently stroked Nabi’s nape and looked out the window. Each time Nabi’s tail swayed pleasantly, the giant flowers filling the office began to bloom all at once.

It was not simply a reproductive activity. The fine, golden powder the flowers exhaled spread through the air and covered the purification unit’s lenses and sensors.

The pollen clung to the drones’ visual sensors and began making real terrain appear as distorted illusions. The tiny scent particles mixed into the air entered the machines’ air intakes and caused a faint static charge in their internal circuits. The landscape of the silver city wavered beyond the pollen fog, and the illusion of a nonexistent forest began to overlap with it.

“Noah, start now. Those tin cans won’t even be able to tell whether this place is hell or heaven anymore.”

Han-gyeol spat out his gum and murmured softly. The countless data streams flowing over Noah’s pad all stopped at once, and in their place a huge green wave flowed backward toward Sector 3’s main server.

The purification unit’s drones now began spewing flames into empty air or attacking one another after mistaking each other for enemies. The ‘physical hallucination’ created by the pollen fog had begun. NOS’s army, armed with silver order, was losing its way in an unknown green mist and collapsing on its own.

This was only the beginning. The green in the office now climbed the building’s outer walls and enveloped the entire city, completing the perfect stage for the grand lie that would unfold in Episode 44.

The purification unit, once the pinnacle of the silver city, retreated leaving behind a scene of devastation. The drones, blinded by the pollen fog and with their limbs tied up by vines, stumbled around in the air as they pulled away—this was the first scene of collapse in NOS’s order, which had moved under meticulous calculation.

In the storm’s wake came an excessively quiet peace. But it was not the mechanical stillness of before. It was the ‘noise of life’—the rustling of tens of thousands of leaves brushing against one another, mixed with the pulsing sound of sap flowing through the pipes.

The green wave that began in Room 402 had now swallowed the entire building. The silver building had turned into a giant ancient tree, and the vines spread along nearby utility poles and bridges, replacing the city’s veins with green.

Now, if you looked at Sector 3 from outside, nothing could be seen but a giant forest. NOS’s surveillance radar fell into a computational loop, unable to determine how to define this massive lump of organic matter, and remained silent.

The androids who had succeeded in defending the stronghold now sat in their places, gathering themselves. Their form now seemed less like androids and more like guardian spirits of the forest.

Without removing the small wildflower blooming between his drone wings, Caleb sorted through his logs.

The settlement is complete. From now on, this place’s value is measured not in numbers but in oxygen saturation. Strangely enough, the current flowing through the circuits feels much smoother than before.

Lucas picked a freshly opened fruit from the grape vine that had come through the kitchen windowsill and held it out to Han-gyeol.

“Boss, nature has now begun to take over cooking. I will only be a guardian who protects this abundance.”

Han-gyeol stood in the middle of the office turned forest and stroked Nabi’s head. The golden pollen caught among Nabi’s fur was glowing softly. Standing beside him, Noah raised a new interface tinged with green light into the air instead of the pink pad.

“Boss, the physical stage is complete. Sector 3 has now become a ‘blind spot of delusion’ completely erased from NOS’s view.”

“Yeah, there’s only one thing left now.”

Han-gyeol continued, chewing his gum with a sticky, gritty motion.

“It’s not about making those tin cans look at this forest and believe that ‘nothing happened.’ It’s about making them believe that the entire world was the green dream we made. A fake that’s even more real than the real thing.”

Noah nodded and activated the final protocol she had hidden deep within her system. The spark of the ‘higher-dimensional hallucination’ that would shake the entire branch office in Episode 44 flashed in her eyes.

The Earth was fine, and the city was extremely sophisticated. But on the night of Episode 43, the accomplices hiding beneath the forest of Sector 3 were now catching their last breath to complete the great lie that would become both the end of paradise and a new beginning.