When Lya sketched her plan on the whiteboard, several seniors almost laughed aloud. The heading read: “Human-Assisted + Natural Ventilation Synergy System.”
“You’re suggesting we regress a hundred years? Open windows by hand?”
“No,” Lya said, her charcoal pencil drawing clear lines on the glass. “I’m suggesting we teach the AI why we open windows.”
Her three-tiered protocol was as follows:
Tier One: The Rhythm of Manual Breath
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At five fixed times daily (pre-dawn, 10 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., dusk), students would manually open the top vent windows for 15 minutes.
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“Not because it’s ‘time to open’,” Lya explained, “but because these are the ‘air exchange moments’ ingrained in plants’ generational memory. We need to rewrite this biological clock into the greenhouse’s memory.”
Tier Two: The Gentle Path for Smart Systems
Tier Three: Feedback Loop Teaching
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After each manual ventilation, record plants’ subtle reactions (leaf angle, stomatal aperture, growth tip orientation).
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Input this data as “reward signals” into the Root Core, teaching it: What kind of rhythm makes plants happier?
“Most crucially,” Lya wrote at the end of her proposal, “we must tell this greenhouse: You don’t need to be perfect. You only need to live, and allow other lives to live alongside you.”
The execution was met with resistance.
On the first day, as Lya cranked open the first vent in the pre-dawn gloom, the smart system fought back fiercely—adjacent automatic vents snapped shut, trying to “correct this error.” The indoor temperature spiked briefly.
But she persisted for the full fifteen minutes.
The dawn wind, carrying the scent of dew, flowed in, slowly displacing the stagnant air of plant respiration that had built up overnight. When the manual window was closed, a minor miracle occurred: about one-third of the automatically controlled vents that had been sealed remained slightly ajar for the next hour, as if “savoring” the recent airflow.
On the second day, more students joined the manual rotation.
Old Joseph took the 10 a.m. shift. As he opened the window, he would murmur to the plants, “Alright, children, time to stretch.” Mara crafted micro airflow sensors and attached them to various plants, recording how much they “enjoyed” the natural breeze.
On the third day, the Root Core’s gibberish began to decrease.
On the fourth morning, when Lya approached the brass-framed window, she found it already slightly ajar—opened by the smart system itself before dawn, to precisely two-thirds of the opening she had been using. The movement had been slow, like turning over in sleep.
By the seventh day, the data was in.
Energy consumption: reduced by 42%.
Temperature fluctuation amplitude: reduced by 60%.
Plant stress hormone levels: returned to normal.
Most importantly—the bud count on flowering plants had doubled.
The Smart Dome had not been “fixed.” It had been healed.
It was still intelligent, but no longer anxious. The ventilation system learned to find an elegant balance between manual and automatic. The shade cloths moved with a tidal rhythm. The temperature curve now showed smooth, life-like undulations. The entire greenhouse began to “breathe”: shallow and quick at dawn, deep and long at noon, slow and gentle at dusk.
At the final debriefing, Instructor Serena displayed the comparative data charts.
“We always assumed,” she said, “that automation meant replacing humans. But Lya’s protocol revealed a deeper truth: the highest form of intelligence is knowing when not to be intelligent.”
She pointed to the graceful temperature curve on the chart. “This isn’t a machine’s curve. This is the curve of a forest, the breath of the land on a summer afternoon. The Smart Dome is no longer a ‘control system.’ It is a companion to the ecosystem—it observes, learns, cooperates, and occasionally takes a nap.”
After the meeting concluded, Lya returned alone to the Smart Dome.
The setting sun filtered through the slowly moving shade cloths, casting warm pools of light among the plants. The ventilation vents hummed at a very low frequency, like the snore of a slumbering giant. She walked to the brass-framed window and found a small pot placed on its sill—a newly sprouted apple seedling, a descendant from the seed she had brought upon her arrival.
The seedling’s leaves were tilted toward the slightly open window, gently swaying in the evening breeze.
Lya did not close the window.
She merely adjusted its opening, allowing the last of the summer’s gentle wind to flow in continuously, and softly said, “Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”
From somewhere deep within the dome, a mild mechanical tone responded in a low whisper, like a murmured dream.
