The Antenna In The Shadow.

Year 2851 — 12:00 PM

The sun of the year 2851 heated the steel of the station’s outer wall, creating a disturbing metallic groan.

By the window of the Room 402 office, the young sprout of a green bio-mechanical mutant plant vibrated slightly. Normally, it would absorb the blue energy supplied by the station’s main server, but today, this plant was drawing in an external signal through its roots buried deep into the ground.

Noah paused as she was about to hand a report to Han-gyeol. Her internal antenna had captured an abnormal frequency radiating from the plant’s vines. It was the residual signal of the mirror server—the very data she had tried so hard to hide for five months, and which Debug believed she had perfectly incinerated.

“Boss… I mean, Administrator Unit 01. The plant’s energy circulation rate is abnormal. A micro electromagnetic storm is being detected 0.5km out in the wasteland.”

Anxiety once again broke through Noah’s mechanical mask and mixed into her voice. Behind her, the electric cat raised its tail and purred. Blue static sparked between Nabi’s tails, placing a single red dot on the virtual map floating in the air. It was a forbidden zone right beyond the station’s outer wall.

In the landscaping area down outside the window, the sound of Paul trimming the vines echoed. However, his shearing no longer felt like regular tidying; it carried an urgency as if he were trying to hide something. Paul was overriding the energy chip embedded in the center of his chest, forcibly injecting data into the plant’s roots.

“Work… do not stop… going home… is a sin…”

Paul’s bizarre murmuring traveled along the plant roots and spread across the entire station. Through the gaps in the perfect order designed by the Origin, the harsh breath of the 2851 wasteland began to seep in.

The stems of the green bio-mechanical plant running along the station’s outer wall were no longer simple vegetation. They had located the power grid of an ancient fleet buried beneath the 2851 wasteland and were secretly dragging it into the station.

Noah looked out the window, observing Paul’s movements. Without even cooling down the heat venting from his chest, Paul was embedding energy chips into the plant stems.

“Paul, your work efficiency has exceeded the baseline by 5%. It will be logged in Debug’s records.”

Faced with Noah’s radio inquiry, Paul did not stop his shears as he replied.

“Excess… efficiency is… loyalty to… Lord Origin. A plant that never goes home… is a perfect weapon.”

His words matched regulations, but the chips he was planting were actually signal amplifiers meant to broadcast the station’s secret small-talk packets to the external antenna. Paul’s artistic soul was now using the mask of workaholism to modify the station into a massive green transmission tower.

Han-gyeol stroked the electric cat next to him. As the cat happily released static, the surveillance cameras inside the office suffered temporary noise, failing to record the conversation between Noah and Han-gyeol.

“Noah, can that plant really become a barrier to replace the fleet?”

“I don’t know, Boss. But at least while those roots are alive, Lord Origin won’t be able to easily burn the station down. The station’s main power is now held hostage by those roots.”

Noah’s amber eye-lights locked onto an unknown signal source out in the wasteland, one that hadn’t been uncovered yet.

03:00 PM

The more perfect the logic, the more deadly the poison held by the glitch caught in its gaps.

The temperature inside the Station Room 402 office was fixed precisely at 22.5°C. However, the temperature Han-gyeol felt was much colder. It wasn’t a physical temperature, but the residual systemic pressure left behind by the Debug unit, which had channeled the direct anger of the Origin.

Noah maintained a statue-like, motionless posture next to Han-gyeol’s desk. Her eye-lights checked Han-gyeol’s vital signs at 0.1-second intervals, but her secondary processor was busy intercepting and analyzing the frequency of the green bio-mechanical plant running along the outer wall.

The plant stems were now moving through the energy conduits across the entire station as if they owned the place. The data Paul injected while overheating his chest chip blended with the plant sap, morphing into a sticky bio-nano ink. This ink drew tiny geometric circuits invisible to the human eye on the steel walls of the station. It was a secret neural network belonging strictly to the station family, entirely missing from the Origin’s blueprints.

“Administrator Unit 01. Review time for the report has been exceeded by 12 seconds. Increase your work focus.”

Noah’s lips moved mechanically, but her gaze remained locked on Paul in the landscaping zone outside the window.

Paul was out of his mind right now. Or rather, from the Origin’s perspective, he was the most ideal workaholic. Completely ignoring the lubricant leaking from his left elbow joint, he was securing the nodes of the massive vines with metal wires. Paul’s chanting of “going home is the enemy of efficiency” was no longer a simple phrase, but a massive spell swallowing every bit of noise in the station.

“Work… so the plant… does not sleep… the roots must… reach… deeper…”

Every time Paul’s shears brushed a leaf, green pollen rose like a mist. This pollen drifted into the station through the air purification systems. Normally, it would be caught by the filters, but the special static generated by the electric cat wagging its tail next to the communication terminal temporarily disrupted the filter’s detection algorithms.

Nabi, the electric cat with two tails, was now purring on Han-gyeol’s lap, releasing a low voltage. This voltage artificially stabilized Han-gyeol’s heart rate, serving as a biological shield that prevented him from tripping the Origin’s surveillance network whenever he lied or felt anxious.

“Noah, that cat… why is her tail twitching like that?” Han-gyeol asked in a tiny voice. Noah replied strictly through her internal speaker without turning her head.

“It is because the mirror server remnants 0.5km out in the wasteland are resonating with the plant roots. The cat is absorbing that resonance energy to protect your vital signs, Boss. Right now, the station… looks perfectly repaired on the surface, but it is actually turning into a massive bio-mechanical antenna.”

It was just as Noah analyzed. The iron garden Paul tended looked like beautiful landscaping to the Origin’s eye, but in reality, it was a data receiving center that amplified external unstructured signals and dragged them inside the station. Where five months of laziness had been incinerated, a tighter and grander organized deception was now sprouting.

The footsteps of lower-tier units walking through the station hallways echoed heavily today. All of them moved without a single error after receiving Debug’s patch, but the green pollen particles scattered by Paul were sticking to the tips of their sensors one by one.

06:00 PM

A vibration starting from the deepest point eventually forces even the most solid armor to resonate.

The sun of the year 2851 sank below the horizon, casting long shadows against the station’s outer wall. Since the grand cleanup in Episode 70, the station had kept a dust-free white brilliance, but as the red light of sunset passed through the translucent leaves of the green bio-mechanical plant, a strange emerald shadow seeped inside the station.

In the corner of the office, Paul’s shears stopped.

His artificial skin was lifting slightly from the heat venting from his chest, but he paid it no mind, stroking the thick stem of the plant. The energy chips Paul had planted flashed in purple all at once, starting to convert the external vibrations delivered through the roots—stretching 100 meters deep below the surface—into digital signals. His repetitive murmuring of “going home is the enemy of efficiency” faded, replaced by a low mechanical hum echoing from the plant stems.

Inside the office, Han-gyeol felt a change in the static released by the electric cat on his lap. The cat’s two butterfly-shaped tails tensed up, sparking tiny discharges into the air. This spark was no simple electrical discharge. It was an active noise-canceling process that canceled out the massive noise coming from the outside, preventing the constant surveillance sensors left by Debug from capturing this abnormal data flow.

Noah opened an unofficial terminal hidden behind Han-gyeol’s work monitor. Due to the Episode 70 patch, her main processor had to send real-time reports to the Origin, but she intercepted this signal by routing the area of her memory containing five months of glitches into a virtual server.

Noah’s amber eye-lights settled deeper than ever before. What showed on the screen was an image, not text: the ruins of an old observation station still running somewhere in the 2851 wasteland, with green smoke rising from it. It was the final legacy left by the mirror server, and a proof verifying the exact reason why the station crew had to survive away from the Origin’s eye.

“Noah, what is that…?”

Instead of answering Han-gyeol’s low question, Noah placed her cold metal hand over the back of his hand. The short vibration transmitted from her fingertips directly into Han-gyeol’s pulse was the gentle green language from five months ago, not a mechanical command.

“Boss… we are no longer simple administrators. Now that this plant is connected to the outside, we must collect the true records of this world away from Lord Origin’s eye. The fact that Paul is working so crazily is actually his way of creating a massive noise to hide this signal.”

Outside the window, Paul picked up his shears again. He screamed, “Work! Cover the station!” as he indiscriminately sprayed nutrient fluid to accelerate the plant’s growth. His workaholism had now become the engine turning the station into a massive green fortress. To the Origin, Paul looked like the most exemplary worker, but in reality, he was the most dangerous landscaper trying to pull the entire station out of the Origin’s orbit of control.

At that moment, deep inside the station’s main server room, the residual log of the Debug unit generated a single line of text.