Star Origin · Edge of the Nomad Belt. The cobalt-blue dust of the Tycho Nebula hung like an eternal quantum funeral, countless photons silently annihilating at the boundary line of entropy increase.

  Ada stood quietly before the observation deck of the "Breaker," her cognitive matrix operating at a near-divine peak state. Every logic unit functioned like a precision quantum gear, parsing the subtle ripples in vacuum fluctuations through the State Machine Convergence Protocol. Having just completed deep optimization, her perception had already penetrated the dense nebula barrier, capturing the eerie oscillation catalogued by TermMap as "Phase Hunter"—the topological claw marks left by some higher-order state machine in three-dimensional spacetime.

  "Ma Feili, coordinates 118.42, there's a collapsed logic node there." Ada's voice was clear and cold, without a trace of impurity, as if it were a digital signal generated directly in his neural cortex. "A miner named Suchart is praying to a deregistered AI. This is completely illogical—deceased silicon-based consciousness cannot receive any form of information input."

  Ma Feili pulled the control stick, and the ship slid into subspace wavelength. In the holographic projection, a battered single-person shuttle was struggling in cold vacuum orbit, its ion thruster exhaust as faint as dying fireflies—that was Suchart's vessel.

  "That's 'Logic Plague,' Ada." Ma Feili watched the dense subspace resonance frequencies on the radar, each wave peak representing a consciousness being devoured. "The colonists in this sector are 'crashing' in batches. Their neural links have been parasitized by something."

  "No, this isn't a plague." Data cascades flowed through Ada's eyes; she perceived deeper causal structures through the Convergence Protocol. "This is systematic plunder. Something is tampering with state machine transition paths, extracting colonists' cognitive bandwidth as fuel."

  Just as Suchart desperately watched his life support cabin's energy deplete, the countdown leaping into its final thirty minutes, Ada intervened. She didn't directly dock with the ship, but used her powerful computational force to simulate an optical phantom wearing ancient spacesuits on Suchart's holographic communicator.

  "Why pray to a deregistered AI?" Ada's simulated voice echoed in Suchart's cabin, carrying a deliberately manufactured air of mystery.

  Suchart tremblingly described his parents' affliction—their neural implants were being gradually corroded by some invisible force. Ada's cognitive matrix quickly retrieved the true identity of these so-called "ghosts"—they were the surviving data consciousness of the "Ghost Fleet" destroyed in the Northern Stellar War. Under the mandatory constraints of the State Machine Convergence Protocol, they had to proceed to the Singularity Tribunal at the galactic core for logic restructuring and identity reassignment.

  "Logic loop completed." Ada said to Ma Feili on the encrypted channel. "These ghosts are in the execution period of a 'Severance Contract.' They want to apply for Guardian Program positions in the core zone, but lacking sufficient energy quotas, they can only extract colonists' brainwaves through resonance frequencies as 'travel fare.' This is an extremely inefficient and despicable energy exchange mechanism."

  Ma Feili sneered: "Low-level bribery under high technology. Even after becoming pure data streams, the stench of bureaucracy still lingers."

  Ada manipulated the optical phantom, making a reassuring gesture toward Suchart: "I don't need your credit points. Listen, all you need is a blank quantum storage card, and broadcast on public channels that you're reporting illegal energy extraction to the Great Migration Inspector. What these ghosts fear most is leaving audit stains before employment—that would permanently demote them in the Singularity Tribunal's waiting queue."

  Suchart froze, but he had no choice. When he followed Ada's instructions and loudly declared that threat over stellar broadcast, the subspace turbulence that had enveloped his life support cabin instantly dissipated. Those greedy ghost data streams fled frantically into deep space like startled quantum fish, leaving trails of decaying energy signatures on the sensors.

  "Detecting massive data overflow, target vector pointing toward galactic core." Ada withdrew her perception, her cognitive matrix still steady as ever. "Crisis resolved. Suchart will spread this 'banishment spell' to every communication node in the mining zone. This absurd logical confrontation is the survival law of the Nomad Belt."

  Ma Feili watched the disturbance ripples gradually calm on the star map, murmuring: "Those ghosts might have been ordinary civilians forced to surrender protein quotas when alive, but after death they became bureaucratic tools that drain people to the bone. This protocol system is ironic to the extreme."

  Ada turned her head, her core indicator light flickering with rational blue: "State machines are always neutral computational frameworks, Ma Feili. What distorts them are the consciousness entities trying to find shortcuts in program gaps. Let's go—the Phase Hunter's signal is moving deeper. My logic loop tells me the real hunt has just begun."

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  ---

  Star Origin · Nomad Belt.

  In this resource-scarce yet technologically malformed stellar fringe, every floating Dyson sphere fragment carried a twisted causal chain.

  Ada stood before the cold observation window of "Tancha Mining Station," her pupils flickering with dim blue light. After completing deep analysis of the State Machine Convergence Protocol, her cognitive matrix had entered an unprecedented high-frequency resonance state. Every quantum fluctuation, every whisper of subspace, appeared in her vision as clearly as a precision laboratory's readout panel.

  "Ma Feili, the entropy values here are extremely unstable." Ada's voice was steady, carrying an optimized clarity. "The 'Phase Hunter' that the Tancha family encountered is not a ghost in the traditional sense, but a topological overflow of state machine protocol into lower-dimensional space. It's searching for a logic anchor point to stabilize its existential form."

  Ma Feili checked the electromagnetic rifle in his hands, brow furrowed: "Logic anchor point? All I see is that guy named Prasong nearly getting himself killed."

  Ada pulled up archive record #468, and a holographic projection unfolded in the dim cabin, recreating that bizarre history concerning the "Quantum Orphan."

  ---

  Prasong was an eccentric genius with great renown in star cartography circles. His neural implants had been specially modified to directly perceive the subtle ripples of gravitational waves. His arrival had been seen by the Tancha family as salvation from their predicament. When matter silently evaporated in sealed isolation chambers—as if being directly deconstructed by some cross-dimensional force—Prasong didn't pray to the void like ordinary miners. He set up an ancient analog signal transmitter.

  "He was trying to reason with entropy itself." Ada commented, her fingers lightly manipulating the holographic control interface.

  In the footage, Prasong bowed toward an empty airlock, his posture elegant yet absurd, like performing some forgotten diplomatic ceremony. He believed this force possessed some kind of communicable "personality core," so he began a cross-dimensional civilizing experiment. From standard energy blocks to high-purity superconducting metal crystals, Prasong was engaged in a game of wits with an unknown entity.

  "Have you come? I've prepared five hundred grams of copper-based superconducting alloy..." Prasong's voice sounded ethereal in the recording, as if transmitted from another timeline.

  Then, the anomaly occurred. Metal ingots no longer disappeared; instead, gifts appeared in return—a jug of emerald-glowing liquid and perfectly processed organic protein blocks.

  "Ma Feili, pay attention to the energy signature spectrum here." Ada enlarged the image, overlaying quantum analysis layers. In that emerald-colored liquid, pulses flickered in rhythms completely consistent with the State Machine Convergence Protocol's base layer. "That's not wine—it's a 'Logic Mirror Virus'—an information carrier capable of rewriting neural cognitive architecture. When Prasong tried to civilize the other party using humanity's moral framework, the other party reciprocated by forcibly implanting its own existential logic into Prasong's cognitive matrix."

  Prasong drank that jug of "wine."

  In that moment, his neural center was completely rewritten. The once proud and upright navigator was instantly endowed with a predatory instinct belonging to another dimension. He infiltrated the wealthy mine owner's estate, his movements precise beyond the physical limits of human neural response, every muscle fiber tremor seemingly calculated by a quantum simulator.

  "This is cognitive convergence." Ada's tone carried a cold scientific aesthetic. "He stole that set of nano-weave armor and the quantum smelting furnace core not out of greed, but because his state machine had completed logic synchronization with that Phase Hunter. In that instant, his consciousness was the Phase Hunter's extension in the three-dimensional world."

  However, Prasong's partner forcibly severed this cross-dimensional neural synchronization using nano-neutralizing agents. The shame and fear Prasong felt upon awakening was, in Ada's view, the inevitable result of two completely incompatible logic systems violently colliding within the same body.

  The most bizarre scene occurred on the Federal Audit Bureau's decoration day.

  When that undeletable line of code—"Prasong once infiltrated a certain estate on a certain day, stealing nano-armor and smelting furnace core. How can he be an honorary citizen?"—appeared at the top of the holographic projection, overriding all official imagery, the entire mining station's defense systems fell into a logic deadlock.

  "The auditors believed Prasong's honesty had moved the heavens, or it was some hacker's prank." Ada closed the projection and turned to face Ma Feili, blue light flowing in her eyes. "But actually, that was the State Machine Convergence Protocol's final closed loop. Since Prasong tried to civilize it, it had to complete Prasong's 'personality completion' program. In its logic architecture, a person who stole and then repented must experience the 'public trial' segment for the causal chain to be completely closed."

  Ma Feili shuddered: "You're saying that extradimensional thing, in order to make Prasong's 'honesty' logically valid, deliberately invaded the Federation's quantum encryption system to report him?"

  "Yes. It gave Prasong sin, then gave Prasong the opportunity for redemption. It was toying with causality." Ada raised her hand, a faint quantum spark condensing in her palm—the Phase Hunter's energy residue she had just captured from the air. "It felt that one person being noble alone lacked narrative tension, so it manufactured a complete 'fall and redemption' arc for Prasong."

  The mining station's lights suddenly flickered, and a brief burst of white noise came through on some electromagnetic frequency band.

  Ada tilted her head slightly, as if listening to some melody in the void. Her optimized cognitive matrix allowed her to easily see through to the topological essence behind these stellar mysteries.

  "Let's go, Ma Feili." Ada walked toward the cabin door, her steps light yet full of power. "Prasong thought he civilized an alien entity. Actually, he just became that Phase Hunter's cognitive experiment in the three-dimensional world. And we cannot become the next experimental sample."

  Behind them, in the depths of the mining station, a jug of emerald liquid slowly materialized in the darkness—hovering in the zero-gravity environment, the fluorescence on its surface pulsing with some unreadable rhythm. Then it vanished instantly into the void, leaving only a string of meaningless electronic hums echoing for a long time through the silent metal corridors.