Chapter 18: How to Get Along with a Meme

On the 65th day of living together, Lin Xia said she had to attend a training session at the branch office.

The topic was communication and cooperation agreement negotiations with friendly Memes.

The program would last one day, and all agents currently handling—or expected to handle—such work were required to attend.

Lin Xia was naturally no exception.

Before leaving that morning, she performed her usual inspection of the indoor surveillance equipment, making sure everything was online.

Then she said to Yin Qi: “I might be back pretty late today, so behave yourself at home.”

“Got it.”

Yin Qi sat by the window holding a book in her hands.

Without even looking up, she added:

“Hurry up and go. Learn something useful.”

“I’m not attending this training for your sake,” Lin Xia said.

“And what do you know about what’s useful?”

“I don’t know.”

Yin Qi turned a page.

“That’s why you should go learn properly.”

Lin Xia slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed out.

The branch office building always gave her a strangely subtle feeling whenever she entered it.

The building itself wasn’t particularly impressive.

But behind every door in its hallways was a functioning department.

Each department’s work influenced the Meme situation across the entire Yan Nation in one way or another.

And she was just a small employee.

The training was being held in the large conference room on the fourth floor.

Nearly forty agents had already arrived, all from the local branch.

Lin Xia found a seat near the middle and opened the notebook she had brought.

The speaker was a senior liaison officer whom Lin Xia knew.

She called her Sister Gu.

Sister Gu had been in the profession for twelve years.

She had personally handled nearly one hundred Memes of this category and was one of the most experienced people in the Yan Nation branch regarding this field.

“First, I need to make one thing absolutely clear.”

“Friendly Memes are not our friends, and they are not our pets. They are partners.”

“If you get that position wrong, problems will eventually happen.”

Only after saying that did Sister Gu formally begin the lecture.

Lin Xia listened while taking notes the entire morning.

By noon, her hand was already aching from writing so much.

During the lunch break, she sat in the hallway organizing her notes.

An agent she didn’t recognize sat nearby.

A glance at the woman’s badge showed the name Shen Yun.

She looked about the same age as Lin Xia.

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

Shen Yun looked at her while holding a lunch box.

“You’re taking notes pretty seriously.”

“I joined five months ago,” Lin Xia replied.

“So yeah, I guess I’m new.”

“I’ve been here a year and a half,” Shen Yun said.

“What are you working on right now?”

“A cohabitation surveillance assignment involving a humanoid E-Class Meme.”

“Huh? There are humanoid E-Class Memes?”

Shen Yun looked surprised.

“Is it easy to get along with?”

Lin Xia thought for a moment.

Her expression became complicated.

“…Hard to say.”

“Then that means it’s probably okay.”

Shen Yun took a bite of food.

“My first assignment was an E-Class too. Later it got reclassified as a C-Class, and my assignment ended along with it.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Nowadays?”

Shen Yun shrugged.

“Mostly ordinary field work. But sometimes I still think about that Meme.”

“It’s kind of strange. Back then, I never knew what kind of trouble it would cause every day, and I always had to figure out how to respond. Now that it’s gone, I actually feel a little…”

“Unaccustomed to it.”

Lin Xia listened without speaking.

“The Meme you’re responsible for,” Shen Yun asked.

“Does it ever leave you not knowing how to respond?”

“…Yes.”

Lin Xia rubbed her forehead.

“Every day.”

Shen Yun laughed.

“That’s normal.”

***

In the afternoon, Sister Gu spent an entire hour discussing a case she had personally handled.

It involved an A-Class Meme codenamed “Ferry.”

It had originated in a coastal city in southern Yan Nation.

An entity-type Meme with a mostly human appearance.

From the moment it appeared, it had voluntarily cooperated with GMRA’s registration process.

Later, it signed a cooperation agreement and became one of the most stable high-level Memes partnered with the Yan Nation branch.

“I worked with Ferry for a full eight months.”

Sister Gu smiled.

“Don’t think that’s excessive. It wasn’t because it was difficult.”

“It’s because its way of thinking was completely different from a human’s. Every sentence it spoke took a long time to interpret. The reverse was true too. It took a long time for it to understand what I meant.”

“Then how did you build trust in the end?”

Someone raised the question.

“You can’t always focus on pushing progress.”

“For this kind of Meme, if you spend enough time with it, trust develops naturally.”

“Sometimes you don’t even need to talk. Just sitting beside it is enough.”

“After enough time passes, it’ll naturally start trusting you.”

Lin Xia wrote those words into her notebook.

Then she remembered something.

After hesitating briefly, she raised her hand.

“Teacher Gu, what if the other side never answers your questions directly? Is there any way to deal with that?”

Sister Gu looked at her.

“Doesn’t answer?”

“Or answers in other ways?”

Lin Xia paused.

“…The second one, I think.”

“Then there probably isn’t any particularly effective method.”

Sister Gu smiled helplessly.

“You’ll have to try understanding it.”

***

The training ended at five-thirty in the afternoon.

Lin Xia left the building with her backpack and happened to run into Sister Gu outside the entrance.

Sister Gu stopped her.

“You’re the one responsible for… Plastic Heart?”

“Yes.”

Lin Xia blinked.

“You know about her?”

“Teacher Fang mentioned her to me last week,” Sister Gu said.

“He said that after all these years, he’s never encountered anything as bizarre as Plastic Heart. After that evaluation session, he went back and searched through a huge amount of literature and still couldn’t find another case where a level couldn’t be determined.”

Lin Xia remained silent.

“How long have you been with her?”

Sister Gu asked.

“Two months.”

“And how do you feel about her now?”

Lin Xia thought about it.

Then she answered honestly.

“She always gives me the feeling that she knows everything.”

“But she never tells me what she knows.”

Sister Gu reached into her pocket and handed over a business card.

“If you run into a situation you’re unsure about in the future, you can ask me directly.”

“No need to go through official channels.”

The card contained only a phone number.

No name.

No position.

Lin Xia accepted it and carefully tucked it into her pocket.

“Oh, right. One more thing.”

Sister Gu looked at her.

“That Meme from a few days ago. After a liaison officer contacted it, they reported that it reacted to the name ‘Moss.'”

“You’re the one who wrote that in the report, right?”

“Yes.”

“How did you come up with it?”

Lin Xia calmly met her gaze.

“Based on observations made at the scene.”

Sister Gu nodded.

“Alright. That’s all.”

“You can head home.”

***

When Lin Xia returned to the apartment and opened the door, she smelled food cooking.

Yin Qi was in the kitchen.

Hearing the sound, she poked her head out.

“You’re back?”

“Why are you cooking?”

Lin Xia changed into her slippers, sounding surprised.

“I couldn’t be bothered choosing takeout.”

Yin Qi retreated back into the kitchen.

“So I just made something.”

The two sat down together for dinner.

Lin Xia told her a little about the training and about the case involving Ferry that Sister Gu had discussed.

“Cooperated with registration and even signed a partnership agreement?”

After listening, Yin Qi tapped the table lightly with her chopsticks.

“That one seems pretty open-minded.”

“Teacher Gu spent eight months working with it before they reached an agreement.”

“Eight months, huh?”

Yin Qi nodded.

“Teacher Gu is pretty patient too.”

“She said you just have to stay with them slowly.”

Lin Xia spoke casually.

Then, for some reason, she looked up at Yin Qi.

“She said that if enough time passes, they’ll naturally start trusting you.”

Yin Qi pretended not to understand.

“Oh, right.”

She suddenly remembered something.

“Teacher Gu also asked me where the name Moss came from.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I inferred it from the scene.”

“…You’re pretty good at talking, aren’t you?”

“I couldn’t exactly tell her that you were the one who told me.”

“…Fair point.”