Benedict hated hospitals.
Not because they smelled like sterilized mana and regret. Not because he'd once had to rewire a heart glyph while the patient was still awake.
But because they were slow.
And slow things made people hopeful.
He was standing in the wing of Vehrmath's Outer Wellness District, staring at a wall of observation crystals. Each one captured different sync data from patients hooked up to experimental pulse-harmonics stabilizers.
The first generation of pulse-medtech had been an accident.
Now it was a movement.
Eline entered, holding a folder filled with reports. "Thirty-seven percent of patients reported emotional stabilization. Another fifteen claim they dream in music."
"Dreaming doesn't pay bills," Benedict muttered. "Any of them cured?"
"Two," Eline said. "One recovered from a non-responsive nervous glyph block. The other was a mute child who started speaking in sync tones."
Benedict stared at the last crystal. Inside it, a boy sat cross-legged, humming. The pulse node beside him blinked softly with each syllable.
"The node smiles back when he sings," Eline said.
Benedict didn't reply.
---
Word spread fast. Not through official channels, but through neighbors, alley whisperers, and chorus vendors.
"The node sings to you."
"It teaches your breath."
"You just need to sit near it and listen."
And so they came.
Tired workers. Wounded soldiers. Children with shaken magic. A woman who hadn't spoken since her partner died in a mine collapse sat beside the node for an hour.
Then whispered: "I remember her voice."
An ex-warmage suffering from overcharge tremors began sketching again after one visit. A toddler with chaos spark syndrome fell asleep for the first time in three days while holding a node-linked ribbon.
A pulse-weaver diagnosed with nullwave insomnia reported her first full night's sleep in over a year.
A pair of estranged brothers met at the edge of the node's pulse field and found, for the first time in years, that silence was comfortable.
Benedict upgraded the node firmware to reduce emotional bleed-through.
Arden rolled his eyes. "You're tuning out healing."
"I'm tuning out liability," Benedict snapped.
But he didn't remove the node.
---
They started calling it the Smiling Node.
Some carved charms in its shape. Others wrote songs.
One poet swore it saved his life. Another, more pragmatic one, tried to dissect it. The node pulsed once in warning and singed the ink off his papers.
Benedict claimed it was just a coincidence.
Shael disagreed. She signed, It hears what we forget to say.
Benedict added another protective glyph.
A small girl named Leena brought the node a flower every morning before school. She never spoke to it. She just sat beside it and hummed. By week's end, her hum matched the sync tone perfectly.
"It's just resonance," Benedict muttered, logging the phenomenon in a private folder labeled: 'anomalies to ignore until necessary.'
He was still ignoring it.
Mostly.
That Friday, Leena brought a second flower—for the node's "dream." Benedict asked what she meant. She said, "It hummed in my sleep and told me to bring another."
---
In private, he ran simulations.
The Smiling Node had begun forming memory clusters. Nothing dangerous. Nothing fully sentient.
Just awareness.
Not artificial.
Emergent.
He flagged it for observation. Then went to bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Eline's voice echoed in his memory: "People don't need miracles. They need something that listens."
He didn't sleep.
---
The Vehrmath Council, ever slow to act unless credits moved, requested a formal audit.
Benedict gave them a report that was intentionally dense, twenty-seven pages of sync data, harmonic math, and an appendix that included a pulse-scatter visualization shaped like a lotus flower.
Only one councilor read it.
That councilor, a former spellcartographer, came to visit the node in person. He sat beside it for five minutes, nodded once, and left.
He approved funding for three more.
"The city breathes better when this thing hums," he said.
---
Then came the artists.
Not with brushes, but with music.
A traveling pulse-bard named Vaelan sat down beside the node and began playing a harmonized crystal flute. The node listened. Then responded.
Together, they played a duet no one could name but no one wanted to end.
People gathered. Then wept.
Someone broadcast it.
The node's tune became a regional lullaby.
Hospitals across the valley petitioned for copies. Benedict agreed—at a licensing fee.
Arden grinned. "Still just a businessman, huh?"
"I'm not selling healing," Benedict said. "I'm selling clarity."
Children who heard the melody in dreams began drawing new glyphs—shapes not taught in any academy. When compiled, they resembled harmonic diagrams.
Benedict didn't smile.
But he started a private archive.
Eline submitted the glyphs for academic review.
They were labeled "Pre-conscious Pulse Memory Impressions."
Benedict called them what they were: songs.
---
One day, the node dimmed.
Not powered down. Just... quieter.
It pulsed slower.
The boy in the hospital noticed first. He stopped humming.
Eline reported an anomaly spike: people near the node began to feel unspoken guilt. Not trauma. Not grief.
Regret.
Benedict checked the memory clusters.
One phrase pulsed in the harmonic stack:
> I am full.
He stared.
Shael signed, It's been listening. Maybe it needs to speak.
---
That evening, Benedict returned to the node alone.
He disabled all outer diagnostics. No logs. No witness.
He placed both hands on its housing and whispered:
"Say it."
The node pulsed.
Not with light.
But with memory.
Laughter. Raindrops on copper roofs. A child's breath catching before a laugh. Eline's voice correcting his grammar. Arden's complaints about old boots. Nim singing badly, joyfully.
The node shared back.
Then fell silent.
A single pulse blinked in green.
Then gold.
Then gone.
---
The next day, the boy no longer needed the node.
He walked out of the hospital holding a flower and humming his own tune.
The node stayed dark.
Benedict refused to restart it.
"It finished something," he said.
No one argued.
But in the following weeks, several new nodes installed across Vehrmath began showing subtle traits—gentle shifts in tone, curious delays, patterns in sync where none were designed.
They didn't smile.
Not quite.
But they listened.
And somehow, that was enough.