The transition was not a process. It was a state change. One moment, the chaotic sensory feed of the host’s shallow sleep; the next, the absolute, sterile silence of the REM Diagram. The Analyst manifested in the center of the infinite white room, a point of pure, dispassionate awareness. Below, a floor of pale grey light extended into a horizonless void, its grid lines a map of perfect, empty logic. The system was active.
Two shimmering, transparent cubes floated in the white space, equidistant from the Analyst’s point of perception. Inside the left cube, the Equity-Aggressor parasite pulsed, a mass of oily black tentacles writhing in silent, theoretical fury. In the right, the Patriot-Primal parasite, a creature of cracked, sun-baked earth and rusted barbed wire, radiated a dry, static heat. Both were contained. The diagnostic check confirmed system stability at a nominal 99.8%. The night’s work could begin. The Analyst’s purpose was simple: self-analysis, the only form of hygiene left.
A console of glowing blue data materialized in the space before it. With a thought, the Analyst loaded the sensory log from the supermarket incident. The host’s humiliation was stripped of its emotional charge, rendered as pure information. The frantic, paralyzed minutes in the nutrient paste aisle replayed at twelve times normal speed. Heart rate spikes became jagged red peaks on a graph. Galvanic skin response was a rising curve of pale green. The frantic strobing of the host’s Somatic Sigils was translated into a simple binary flicker, magenta and blue, 1 and 0.
The Analyst’s first task was to dissect the logic of the paralysis. It isolated the Equity-Aggressor’s argument against the purchase of Nutri-Social. The parasite’s reasoning spooled out onto the console as a complex logic tree. The Analyst traced the branches. It found three distinct contradictions, a circular reference to a debunked socio-economic report from a progressive media network, and an appeal to authority based on a memetic influencer with a known cognitive bias. The Analyst tagged the argument with a simple flag: four logical fallacies. Unsound.
Next, it isolated the Patriot-Primal’s violent rejection of Sovereign Sustenance. A new logic tree bloomed on the console, its structure less ornate and more brutal. The Analyst’s probe moved through the data, flagging two ad-hominem attacks directed at the brand’s board of directors, and a glaring false dichotomy that presented the choice as one between absolute national purity and total economic capitulation. Three fallacies. Also unsound. The host had been trapped between two malfunctioning programs.
This was routine. The absurdity was a constant. But the intensity of the paralysis, the sheer energy expenditure, was anomalous. The Analyst broadened the search parameters, pulling in the full spectrum of background sensory data from the megastore. It filtered the visual noise of the holographic ads, the chemical signatures in the air, and finally, the low-level audio stream of the store’s public address system.
There. Buried beneath the algorithmically generated music and murmured sales pitches was a pattern. A recurring fragment of non-human syntax, a string of phonetic data that did not conform to any known linguistic model. It was a ghost in the audio, appearing seven times during the host’s period of paralysis. The Analyst designated the anomaly 'progenitor_signal_syntax.' It was a new variable, an external factor in a previously closed system.
A comparative analysis ran, cross-referencing the structure of the anomalous syntax with the logic patterns of the two parasites. The Analyst searched for a causal link, a sign that this signal was influencing the host’s internal conflict. The result was a near-zero correlation. The alien syntax was not directly shaping their arguments. It was simply present, a carrier wave of unknown origin humming beneath the surface of reality. The anomaly was flagged as a high-priority unknown.
The Analyst shifted its focus back to the containment cubes. The parasites were no longer just raging against each other. Their movements were more frantic, more violent. They thrashed against the shimmering walls of their prisons, a coordinated, desperate assault on the integrity of the Diagram itself. The kinetic energy output spiked, and the containment fields began to glow with the strain of holding them. They were reacting to the analysis. They sensed the presence of the external signal, and they perceived it as a threat.
A system-wide diagnostic was necessary. The Analyst turned its perception inward, examining the architecture of the REM Diagram itself. The white room flickered. A hairline crack of black static tore across the grey grid floor before sealing itself. The console displayed the results: structural integrity of the construct had degraded by 2.0% in the last cycle. The system was becoming less stable. At the current rate of decay, total failure was projected in forty-nine cycles. The very tool of sanity was finite.
There was no time for abstract concerns. The Analyst returned to its primary function: managing the host. It accessed the log of the pattern-interrupt, the moment the host had snapped the plastic fork to break the feedback loop. Using that as a model, it formulated a new set of behavioral countermeasures. It was a simple, three-step cognitive sequence designed to short-circuit brand-based choice paralysis by introducing a non-ideological physical stimulus. The projected efficacy was a meager 65%, but it was better than nothing.
The program was compiled. A thin line of blue light extended from the console and connected to the fabric of the Diagram itself. The data transfer was initiated, uploading the countermeasures to the host’s subconscious, queuing them for execution upon the next relevant stimulus. The transfer completed. The line of light vanished.
Then came the intrusion. A sound, not of the Diagram, but of the waking world. It was a high-priority chime, crisp and insistent, bleeding through from the host’s wrist-comm. It was the alert for the new mission, the sealed data-slate from Dr. Oran Kennet. The sound tore through the silence of the white room, a distorted, alien frequency.
The REM Diagram convulsed. The white walls pixelated, dissolving into a snow of static. The grey grid floor fractured, great black chasms opening into nothing. The containment cubes flickered and died, and for a terrifying instant, the parasites were free in the collapsing space. The Analyst initiated an emergency shutdown, severing the connection to the host’s deep sleep state to prevent catastrophic psychic damage. The last thing it registered before its own dissolution was the raw data of the external signal, the alien syntax, now pulsing with a clear, undeniable rhythm.
The war in his head was no longer his own.
