Rhythm Remnants

In 2147, humans build a "collaborative network" through brain chips, and 300 million implanted people share thoughts at the speed of light. "Natives" whose nervous systems reject chips are regarded as evolutionary defectives and exiled to marginal facilities to await elimination. Lin Zhao, numbered NEI-7749-2156, is on duty alone at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Monitoring Station. She cannot access the collaborative network, but she retains a certain sense that has been eliminated—a primitive sensitivity to rhythm and the complete holding of private memories. When the interstellar visitor "Oumuamua 2" sent a signal, the global network judged it as noise. But Lin Zhao, suffering from a headache in the early hours of the morning, captured a pulse that could not be analyzed by AI: its frequency exactly matched the lullaby hummed by her mother. Between collective intelligence and lonely individuals, between digitalized knowledge and physical memory, Lin Zhao began an impermissible dialogue. She gradually realized that Oumuamua 2 chose this frequency band precisely because only the "eliminated" could understand it. What is hidden in the signal is a truth about the origin of mankind that has been actively forgotten by the collaborative network. When orbit calculations show that 'Oumuamua 2 is turning towards Earth, and when the network decides to destroy this object that may carry unknown information on the grounds of "planetary defense", Lin Zhao must choose between two irreconcilable loyalties - to protect this connection that belongs only to her, or to return the information to the collective, even if it means losing the only possibility of understanding it?