When the scavenger program appeared for the third time and started scanning her again and again, Marlene finally could be certain—something was wrong.
That gray-white shadow, like some kind of constantly writhing, shape-shifting snake mechanism, swam through the surrounding darkness, repeatedly scanning the characteristics of Marlene’s mental body.
The entire scanning process lasted about twenty seconds—very normal procedure.
Afterward, as if finding nothing unusual, it turned and left, just like the previous two scavengers, disappearing into the bottomless chaos of the Garden’s deep network.
Marlene dared not move recklessly, cautiously remaining where she was.
But besides the scavenger program repeatedly coming over to scan her, nothing else seemed to happen—her mental body was not under attack, nor did she receive any risk warnings from the Garden system.
“Maryse,” she cautiously called her servo assistant from the darkness.
“I’m here,” came the calm voice within the dim light orb.
“Check our connection environment.”
“Checking now... Connection environment normal, ‘Alice Tree’ contamination index is zero, Garden network full nodes are smooth.”
“From your perspective, is there any problem with my mental body’s operation?”