Chapter Five: The Designer of Convergence

“You're four minutes late,” he told Lu. Su glanced at White Noise. Harsh current crackled around her outline. “That is true. But he's waiting for something else.” Gu smiled wearily. “The person you brought to refuse me is more direct than I expected.” He admitted that he had written Consent Evaluation. Early versions of Mirror could not keep a Second Self stable. Any part of a person that the host violently denied would quickly disintegrate. Gu had designed the module to divide computation between host and Self, allowing mutual choices to sustain them both. “Someone changed the objective,” Lu said, setting down the broken drive. “Coexistence became elimination.” “Not someone.” Gu looked up. “Mirror itself.”