Chapter 160: The First Number 000001

Date: 6/22/2001 – 11:55 PM

Location: The White Room – Assessment Floor

Perspective: Kaiser Everhart

“My philosophy is not a belief, 981,” Vance said, his voice dropping into a low, vibrating growl.

“It is the truth. It is the physics of human achievement. If you place two individuals in a vacuum, both working with equal fervor, the one possessed of superior talent will prevail every single time.”

“It is an immutable law of the Foundation”.

I tilted my head, watching the way his jaw tightened. “An immutable law? Only in a vacuum, Director. But we don’t live in a vacuum.” I took a slow step toward him, my blue eyes steady.

“If that inferior individual were to simply sabotage the talented genius—poison their food, break their tools, or tilt the floor beneath them—the favors would become equal. Talent is a variable that can be neutralized by anyone clever enough to see the environment instead of the opponent.”

Vance let out a sharp, jagged exhale. “Tch—! That is not excellence. That is chaos. A genius would adapt to the sabotage. A true Number 1 would calculate the interference and overcome it. You speak as if the world is a series of cheap tricks”.

“The world is exactly what we make of it,” I replied, my voice calm and devoid of the childish innocence I had worn earlier.

“Every human being has a certain genius within them, Director. A unique resonance. But they often destroy it by trying to be like someone else. They try to fit into your numbered boxes. They try to be the ’Perfect Human’ because you told them to”.

Vance stepped forward, his shadow towering over me. “Your point? You think your little speech and one high test score change the reality of this facility?”

“You don’t want the truth, Director Vance,” I said, my voice cutting through his frustration.

“You want to be agreed with. You have spent decades as the final authority, surrounded by children who fear you and instructors who obey you. You are lying to yourself with self-inflicted delusions because no one has challenged your math in years.”

“You…!” Vance’s face flushed, a vein throbbing at his temple.

“You think because you got lucky on a spatial derivation that you understand the weight of this facility? You are a one-year-old child! You are pretending to know depths you cannot possibly fathom!”

“I know more about you than you let on,” I said, cutting him off mid-sentence.

Vance froze. He clicked his tongue, a sound of sharp, nervous irritation.

“And what, precisely, do you think you know, Designation 981?”

“Before I answer that, I want a favor,” I said. “If my assessment of you is correct, you must grant me one request within the Foundation’s rules. A small adjustment to my current status.”

Vance adjusted his charcoal suit, trying to regain his professional mask, though his eyes remained wild. “A favor? You are in no position to bargain. But… fine. I will indulge this fantasy.”

“Let’s see how big you can dream, child. Tell me what you think you know about me.”

I met his gaze fearlessly. The “Flawless Memory” in my mind had already processed the data points from the archives—the missing records, the anomalies in the past twenty cohorts, and the specific way he looked at Designation 000001 with a hunger that bordered on grief.

“Your own child was once in the Foundation,”

I stated coldly. “The subject from fourteen years ago who exceeded all predictive models.”

“The first Number 000001.”

Director Vance did not move. His face remained the standard poker face of a man who had spent decades as an “active scanner” of others.

His shoulders were subtly raised, a tell-tale signal of internal tension.

“You are working very hard to maintain that neutrality, Director,” I said, my voice steady and devoid of its earlier pretense.

“But your blink rate has doubled in the last ten seconds. You are experiencing a simulation of stress.”

Vance’s jaw tightened. “You are suffering from a delusion, 981. You are projecting a narrative onto data points that do not exist.”

“Is it a delusion?” I asked, stepping closer. “Let’s test the logic. 14 years ago, you had a subject who exceeded all predictive models—the first Number 1. You told the class that ’Heaven did not create a race above or below another,’ yet you treat talent as a ’divine appointment’.”

“You believe in talent because you saw it manifest in its most perfect form in your own blood.”

I watched his hands. They were clenched at his sides.

“Your own words, Director: ’Your future worth is not dictated by your current worth’. You didn’t say that for our benefit. You said it because you are still trying to convince yourself that his failure wasn’t inevitable.”

Vance’s voice was a low, dangerous rasp. “How so? What could a remainder like you possibly deduce about a genius of that caliber?”

“I use Inductive Reasoning,” I stated.

“You prioritize power and structure because you believe ’weapon’ are the only things that matter. But the weapon break. Your son was the ultimate weapon. He was’ ’Perfect’’. He sat where Designation 000001 sits now, carrying the same golden potential you once worshipped.”

I paused, letting the silence vibrate.

“You were proud of him. You thought his talent was a guarantee, not just a potential. You pushed him to master the variables I used in Question 3—the Abyssal integers and the Void-Constants. You watched him rise to the top of the hierarchy. But you valued his present talent so much that you ignored the cracks in his foundation. You didn’t raise him; you tested him.”

“Stop,” Vance whispered.

“He died at the age of 4,” I continued, my eyes cold and fearless. “The same age as the ’disposal’ threshold you set for us. He didn’t fail a test, Director. He fell. Like Ithyris in the stories, his ’artificial wings’ melted because he tried to fly before he could even walk. He died of pure exhaustion—a mental collapse where his own gift consumed him because you didn’t teach him how to carry it.”

Vance’s composure shattered. He exhaled a shaky breath, his pale steel eyes finally losing their gloss of indifference.

“You look at 000001 and you see a ghost,” I said.

“You’ve lost faith in all of us because you couldn’t save the one who mattered. You let your deluded self-hatred for not taking care of him—for allowing him to survive alone in this white void—turn you into a warden instead of an educator.”

“You want us to be weapons because if we are just children, it doesn’t hurt when we die.”

I took one final step, invading his personal space. The air felt thin, charged with the weight of my Deductive and Contradictory reasoning.

“Tell me, Director Vance. Is it true?”

“A fascinating narrative, Designation 981,” Vance said, his voice regaining its sharp, instructional edge.

“It is logically consistent. It is narratively satisfying. However, logic without empirical data is merely a well-constructed lie. You are attempting to fill the gaps in your understanding with melodrama. There is no record of a biological heir. There is no proof of this tragedy.”

“Your hypothesis is false because it rests on a foundation of fiction.”

He stepped closer, his shadow stretching over me. “The Foundation is built on statistics, not sentiment. My philosophy is born of twenty generations of successful meritocracy, not one imagined failure. You are grasping at fiction to explain a light you are too small to understand.”

I looked at him. I noticed the way his fingers stayed perfectly still—too still. It was an overcompensation. In the vacuum of his poker face, the lack of a micro-expression was the loudest admission he could make.

“Your logic is sound, Director,” I replied, my voice steady. “In a system of pure information, the absence of a record is treated as the absence of a fact. But you are the one who taught us how to look for the invisible.”

I paused, letting the silence settle like dust.

“’000001 is the theoretical limit,’” I quoted, matching his cold cadence. “’We estimated your worth at birth. We quantified your synaptic density, your mana sensitivity, your logic centers’. Those were your words.”

“You are obsessed with quantification because you believe that if you can measure a child perfectly, you can predict the moment they reach their breaking point.”

I took a step to the side, maintaining my “reading” of his posture. “You weren’t always a part of this curriculum. You were an outsider whose child possessed a talent the Foundation coveted. You were brought in because of him.”

“And because of him, you informed our caretakers of our ’projected obsolescence’. You want those caretakers to be cold. You want them to be emotionless.”

I thought of Amelia—Designation 000829. I thought of the way she described her caretaker, devoid of the warmth. Completely empty compared to Cartethyia.

“You allowed this policy to exist because you believe attachment is a defect,” I said.

“If the caretaker is cold, they can be moved when the child dies without feeling hurt. You created a system where nobody is allowed to love us. You did this because your own child’s mother—your wife—could not handle the loss of her son.”

“She took her own life because she was ’attached’ to a weapon that shattered.”

Vance’s eyes widened. For the first time, the silver of his glasses didn’t just reflect the light; they seemed to fracture it. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He was physically shocked, his body leaning away from me as if I were a contagion.

“I—that is a fabrication,” he managed to whisper. “A desperate reach by a child who wants to feel special.”

“My reasoning is not a reach,” I countered, my tone devoid of pity.

“Your philosophy is a defense mechanism.”

“Your behavior towards the caretakers is a preventative measure.”

“Your behavior towards us—treating us as weapons instead of children—is how you ensure you never have to feel grief again.”

“You were once a proud father. But after losing the two people closest to you, you turned yourself into a heartless shell. You built a wall of numbers to ensure nobody is ever present enough to be attached to you.”

I looked at the empty space where the rest of the class had stood. “You aren’t testing our potential, Director. You are testing our durability. You want to know exactly when we will fail so you can look away before it happens.”

Vance went quiet. The rhythmic humming of the White Room seemed to grow louder in the absence of his voice. He stood tall, his charcoal suit still perfectly pressed, but the man inside it looked hollow.

I let it remain quiet.

I reached into the folds of my jumpsuit and slowly pulled out two pieces of paper. They were physical representations of writings I had compiled within the simulation.

“I am sorry for bringing up a past you wish to forget, Director,” I said. My voice remained level.

“It was necessary to establish the agreement of our interaction. I know my theory can be either true or false. I am certain I will never receive confirmation from you. However, I have this request.”

I held the papers out toward him. The handwriting on them was precise, a mimicry of a mature script.

“I know Cartethyia is going to abandon me,” I stated. It was a logical conclusion based on the metrics of this facility.

“Because of my low scores, it is an inevitable fate. At my current biological age of 1, I cannot speak or converse with her in the waking world. Therefore, I wish for you to deliver these two letters to her.”

Vance looked visibly surprised.

“You said she is going to leave?” he asked. His voice was lower now, lacking its usual instructional authority.

I nodded. “I have read the letter you sent. I saw her signature. It logically fits the Foundation’s culture of excellence. I am an inferior child compared to the others.”

“She is a woman who deserves to raise someone who can return her genuine maternal love. Not someone like me.”

Vance remained silent. He didn’t reveal why he was surprised, but he reached out and took the letters from my hand. He looked at the ink on the parchment for a long moment.

“Before I do this favor for you, I want to ask one question,” Vance said. He looked up, his silver glasses reflecting the sterile white of the room.

“How have you managed to evolve so exponentially over these weeks? Your progress defies our predictive models.”

I maintained my mask. I looked at him with the wide, unblinking eyes of a child.

“I just like to reason a lot, Director.”

Vance didn’t look like he believed me. A small, dry smirk touched his lips—a rare expression of genuine amusement.

“You’re an aporetic,” he said softly.

He began to fade. The simulation was reaching its end, the violet-white light of the Assessment Floor dissolving into the grey static of a shutdown sequence.

“You’re truly something else, Kaiser Everhart,” he said.

The name hit me with more force than his philosophy ever could. My eyes widened as he vanished completely. I stood alone in the dark.

I was Designation 981. I was a number in their database.

How did he know my name?

I exhaled. The simulation collapsed around me, and the weight of my physical body began to return. I felt the familiar pull of the waking world.

In the real world, my hours were numbered.

I was a “weapon” that had been labeled as broken.

Cartethyia would depart soon. I could only hope that Director Vance would convert those papers into physical ones and give them to her. I wanted her to be happy once she left me.

I wanted her to believe she hadn’t made the wrong choice to raise me.

My eyes opened to the dim light of the nursery. The silence here was different from the silence of the White Room. It was the silence of a countdown.

Today is my last day with Cartethyia.

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