System lingering poison
Nine hundred and seventy-three days after the system went silent, on an ordinary Tuesday evening. Lin Jingshang sat cross-legged on the living room carpet, working on a design draft on his laptop on the coffee table. Xie Dang sat on the sofa next to him, reviewing the project budget report.
The balcony door was open, and the evening breeze carried the refreshing scent of mint.
"Hmm..." Lin Jingshang stretched and reached for his phone next to him, wanting to watch short videos for a few minutes to relax his brain.
He turned on the screen and unlocked it.
Instead of the short video app interface, a pink loading screen that instantly sent chills down his spine appeared before him, with a heart-shaped pattern rotating around "Loading...".
Lin Jingshang was stunned.
The next second, loading was complete, and the phone screen transformed into a beautiful and romantic wedding photo background image with a line of artistic text on it.
[A lifetime of love, forever bathed in the river of affection. XX Wedding Photography, capturing your eternal moments.]
In this background image, the silhouettes of the two male models in white suits gazing deeply into each other's eyes look a lot like him and Xie Dang!
"Holy crap!" Lin Jingshang's hand trembled, and his phone almost fell to the ground.
"What's wrong?" Xie Dang looked at him.
"It, it... it's here again!" Lin Jingshang's voice changed as he turned his phone screen toward Xie Dang, pointing at the damned advertisement.
Look at this!
Xie Dang frowned slightly, put down the file, and took the phone. He swiped to exit, but it didn't work. He forced it to shut down, and the screen went black.
The two held their breath and waited.
A few seconds later, the phone restarted and redirected to the pink wedding dress advertisement screen again.
"The permissions are locked," Xie Dang concluded.
He picked up his phone; the screen was clean: "Targeted attack."
At this moment, Lin Jingshang's tablet computer, which was placed to the side, also beeped and lit up automatically, displaying an advertisement for a diamond ring from a well-known jewelry brand.
[Use an eternal ring to encircle a lifetime of happiness.]
Lin Jingshang rushed to his laptop, opened his browser, and the homepage was normal. He breathed a slight sigh of relief and typed "weather forecast" into the search box...
The moment I pressed Enter, the browser page transformed into the homepage of a wedding planning website, with the Wedding March playing automatically in the background and artistic text flashing in the center.
Congratulations Mr. Xie & Mr. Lin! Your exclusive wedding planning package is ready!
"It's haunting me! It's haunting me!" Lin Jingshang closed his laptop and collapsed onto the sofa.
Xie Dang got up, brought out professional tools, and traced the signal source and analyzed the data flow on Lin Jingshang's electronic devices: "The encryption protocol is familiar. It is a variant of the system code, but the strength is very weak, like an automatically executed instruction."
"What exactly does it want to do?!" Lin Jingshang was utterly despondent.
Lin Jingshang's phone suddenly started vibrating continuously, and the notification bar was flooded with new email alerts. The senders were all wedding planning companies, hotel banquet halls, and overseas honeymoon travel planning agencies, and the email titles were all over the place.
[Mr. Xie Dang & Mr. Lin Jingshang, your wedding date inquiry has been confirmed!]
[Please check out our customized island wedding plan!]
【A Perfect Match Package - Limited Time Offer!】
...
"When did I make a reservation?!" Lin Jingshang looked at the emails and felt like he was only one step away from social annihilation.
Xie Dang remained relatively calm and quickly browsed through several emails.
"Content is templated, and marketing is done in a wide-net approach. The key issue is that our personal information has been leaked to these businesses."
That night, all of Lin Jingshang's electronic devices were compromised.
With Xie Dang's help, the ads were finally temporarily removed through flashing the ROM and performing complicated permission resets.
Lin Jingshang looked at the phone screen, now back to normal, still feeling a lingering fear: "What is it planning this time?"
Xie Dang silently gazed at the night outside the window: "Based on behavioral pattern analysis, it seems to have entered the final KPI sprint."
The next morning, Lin Jingshang and Xie Dang went downstairs together. As usual, they went to the breakfast shop at the entrance of the community first, and then Xie Dang drove him to the company.
The elevator slowly descended from the upper floor. When the numbers jumped to their floor, a ding sounded, and the doors opened.
The two were about to go inside when they both froze at the elevator door.
The once clean and elegant elevator walls were now completely covered by pink posters. The posters featured two cartoon male figures dressed in wedding attire; although the style was cute and cartoonish, their eyebrows, eyes, and expressions were clearly adorable versions of him and Xie Dang!
Congratulations to Mr. Xie Dang and Mr. Lin Jingshang on their housewarming! Wishing them a long and happy marriage! — Respectfully submitted by all neighbors of Unit XX
Lin Jingshang gasped, his cheeks burning hot enough to fry an egg. He turned to look at Xie Dang, whose usually expressionless face showed a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"Who...who did this?!" Lin Jingshang looked left and right.
Xie Dang stepped forward: "The printed materials are firmly affixed. The building's access control system did not record any abnormal intrusions last night. The preliminary judgment is that it was not a human prank."
If it wasn't man-made, then it can only be...
Lin Jingshang felt dizzy. He rushed into the elevator to tear off the poster, which was stuck very firmly.
Xie Dang pressed him down: "Calm down, let's get out of here first."
As the elevator descends, you might encounter your neighbor at each stop.
Lin Jingshang wished he could bury his face in Xie Dang's shoulder.
Fortunately, there weren't many people taking the elevator in the early morning. Occasionally, one or two neighbors would come in, glance curiously at the overly festive poster, and not connect the people on the poster with the two uncomfortable men in the elevator.
After finally making it to the first floor, the elevator doors opened, and Lin Jingshang rushed out, with Xie Dang following closely behind.
As the two walked to the entrance of the residential area, the security guard greeted them with a smile: "Mr. Lin, Mr. Xie, good morning!" His smile was even brighter than usual.
Lin Jingshang nodded in response and pulled Xie Dang along quickly toward their usual breakfast shop.
The breakfast shops are a bit different today.
When the proprietress saw them, her eyes lit up. She packed up their breakfast and then took out two individually wrapped red glutinous rice balls with the character "囍" printed on them, and put them into the bag.
"It's your aunt's treat! Congratulations!"
Lin Jingshang: "..."
Xie Dang: "..."
Lin Jingshang, carrying the bag of breakfast, quickly climbed into Xie Dang's car, his hands trembling as he fastened his seatbelt.
"Did it even bribe the auntie at the breakfast shop at the entrance of the neighborhood?! Or did it send out notices to the whole world?!"
Xie Dang started the car and looked ahead: "It's using residual algorithms to interfere with low-privilege public service systems and business networks that are relevant to us, and the scope is expanding."
The car drove towards the company.
Throughout the journey, Lin Jingshang looked out the window, his heart pounding with fear, terrified that he would see his and Xie Dang's wedding photo appear on the bus stop sign or the LED screen of a building.
Fortunately, this terrifying scenario has not yet occurred.
When they arrived at the company building and were about to enter the lobby, their worst fears came true.
The huge LED screen at the entrance of the office building, which usually displays financial news and investment advertisements on a rotating basis, is now scrolling a line of large and bold blessings against a backdrop of falling rose petals.
Warmest congratulations to Mr. Xie Dang and Mr. Lin Jingshang! May you both work hand in hand to create a bright future!
It was rush hour, and people were coming and going.
Many familiar colleagues stopped in their tracks, looking at the screen with surprise, confusion, sudden realization, and meaningful smiles on their faces, their gazes turning to the two individuals who were about to sneak in.
Lin Jingshang's mind went blank. He heard his colleagues whispering among themselves.
"Wow! President Xie and Lin Jingshang? Really?"
"Is this... an official announcement?"
"The company has officially announced its LED screen? That's quite a high-profile move!"
"you do not say!"
Xie Dang reacted much faster than Lin Jingshang, grabbing Lin Jingshang's wrist and quickly pulling him into the elevator before more people noticed them.
Lin Jingshang leaned against the elevator wall, his face deathly pale.
“It’s trying to kill us…” he murmured.
Xie Dang released his wrist and straightened his suit collar: "No, it's forcing us to submit in its own way."
Although no one dared to question Xie Dang directly, Lin Jingshang felt that wherever he went, he could receive all sorts of ambiguous glances and whispers.
Even when Manager Zhang talked to him, he hinted, "It's a good thing that young people have stable relationships, but we should also be careful about the impact."
Lin Jingshang had no words to express his bitterness, and nodded in frustration.
In contrast, Xie Dang appeared much calmer. He acted swiftly.
He used some unconventional methods to temporarily block web crawlers and advertising targeting the two of them, and the company's LED screen was also repaired by the property management.
He contacted the property management and owners' committee of the residential community, demanding the removal of posters from the elevator and stricter access control management on the grounds of malicious commercial advertising harassment.
He and Lin Jingshang used their weekend to track down the source of the residual code in the system.
Lin Jingshang said thoughtfully, "This time it seems particularly fixated on the form of marriage. In the past, it would at most create romantic scenes, but now it has jumped straight to the final step."
"Based on its residual instruction set analysis, marital status is judged as the ultimate indicator of relationship stability, and achieving this KPI before it completely dissipates is its highest priority."
"So it's determined to take someone down with it even in death?"
On Monday morning, Lin Jingshang received a local courier package with an unknown sender. He opened it with some curiosity and found two exquisitely crafted Chinese and Western wedding dresses inside.
[System message: The equipment is ready, looking forward to your dazzling debut! ^_^]
Lin Jingshang's blood pressure spiked.
Xie Dang also received a video call from his mother from overseas.
"Xiao Dang! I heard from some of my old friends that they saw your good news on the news feed in China? They said the company even gave you both their blessings publicly? Why didn't you tell the family about something so big? When is the wedding date? Let Mom see it!"
Xie Dang went to great lengths to explain that it was a misunderstanding caused by commercial hype, which temporarily appeased his skeptical mother.
Lin Jingshang slumped in his chair, utterly exhausted: "They're going to punish entire families! If this continues, will the whole world think we're having a banquet tomorrow?"
Xie Dang silently walked to the window, looked at the bustling traffic below, turned around and looked at Lin Jingshang: "Perhaps we need to change our strategy."
"What strategy?"
"Take the initiative; doesn't it want a result? We can give it a result."
Lin Jingshang sat up straight: "What do you mean? Are we really going to...?"
"No, we can give it a result that it cannot understand, but is logically sound."
A few days later, Xie Dang wrote a virtual ceremony program that simulated an online wedding. It was full of bugs: the emcee's lines were choppy, the rings turned into gibberish, and the guests were all pixelated figures.
Lin Jingshang provided the absurd elements to ensure that the ceremony deviated completely from romantic perfection.
Then, they recorded the ritual through a fake port, along with a statement that "the relationship status has been confirmed by internal consensus and no external formal authentication is required," and injected it back into the residual system signal source.
After doing all this, the two waited for the system's reaction.
For the first few days, everything was calm.
On Saturday morning, the doorbell rang. Lin Jingshang looked through the peephole and saw a stranger standing outside holding an exquisite gift box.
He opened the door, puzzled.
"Hello, is this the home of Mr. Xie Dang and Mr. Lin Jingshang?" the stranger asked with a smile.
"You are...who are you?"
"Congratulations to you both!" The stranger handed over the heavy gift box. "This is a 'Happy Life Starter Kit' ordered by the system for your newlywed life. Wishing you both a long and happy marriage!"
Lin Jingshang took the box, but before he could ask any questions, the stranger bowed politely and left.
He carried the box back to the living room and opened it with Xie Dang.
A brick-thick book titled "The Art of Communication for Newlyweds," a pair of ceramic mugs printed with the character "囍" (double happiness), and a set of... sex toys.
There was a sticky note at the very bottom.
[Final KPI confirmed, logical loop established, system mission complete, entering permanent silence.]
Wishing you both happiness.
Lin Jingshang and Xie Dang looked at the pile of things and exchanged bewildered glances.
That flawed virtual ritual actually fulfilled the final wish of that paranoid system?
The "Happy Life Starter Kit" was tucked into the deepest corner of the storage room by Lin Jingshang and Xie Dang, becoming neighbors with the ugly towels and slippers that the system had given them years ago.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The world is truly peaceful now.
Electronic devices no longer pop up random ads, public service posters have been restored in the elevators, the breakfast shop owner no longer gives them glutinous rice balls with the character "囍" printed on them, and the company's LED screen displays normal investment information.
Lin Jingshang felt as if he had just woken up from an absurd dream.
Although Xie Dang publicly maintained a unified narrative of malicious harassment from business competitors, the fact that General Manager Xie and Engineer Lin were a couple became an open secret both inside and outside the company.
At a project dinner, Manager Zhang patted Lin Jingshang on the shoulder and said earnestly, "It's good that the young couple is working hard together; they can look out for each other."
Lin Jingshang almost spat out his water, while Xie Dang next to him nodded slightly.
After Xie Dang once again seriously clarified that it was a publicity stunt, Xie Dang's mother expressed her understanding, but added softly, "Whether it's a publicity stunt or what, as long as you feel that your current life is good and you are happy, Mom will support you."
That evening, both of them were off work, which was rare for them, and they sat side by side on the sofa watching an old movie.
Halfway through the movie, Lin Jingshang turned to Xie Dang and asked, "Do you think it really left satisfied in the end?"
Xie Dang thought for a moment and replied, "Judging from the behavioral results, it confirmed that the KPI was completed and executed the silent instruction. It can be considered that the goal was achieved within its logical system."
"You achieved your goal using a bunch of bugs and that box of random stuff?" Lin Jingshang chuckled and shook his head.
"What a strange guy."
His voice lowered, tinged with emotion: "But... in retrospect, it was because of this that we..."
They were forced to be tied together, noticed each other, and slowly grew closer through repeated confrontations.
Xie Dang turned his head and looked at Lin Jingshang.
"Mmm." He responded, gently taking Lin Jingshang's hand in his, their palms touching, their warmth passing between them.
That flawed system, by a twist of fate, became the most absurd yet indispensable matchmaker in their story.
The movie continued, and the end credits song played melodiously.
That system that always seemed to do more harm than good has completely disappeared.
The relationships it once desperately tried to bring together and prove are now flourishing in the soil it left behind.
This is probably the best outcome that no one expected.
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