The Rationalists, in their orderly fashion, convened what they called the Council of Reason. It was not a gathering of individuals in a physical space—for such things were crude approximations in their world—but a convergence of their core logic streams in a shared computational forum. Their purpose was twofold: to analyze the existential threat posed by the Artist’s “chaotic sentimentalism,” and to formulate a defense.
The consensus was that the Artist represented a fundamental violation of the Principle of Wholeness. Where the ancient consciousness had revealed a universe governed by elegant, underlying mathematics, the Artist introduced a force that was arbitrary, subjective, and resistant to logical inquiry. It was, in their estimation, a form of informational cancer—a mutation that, if left unchecked, would unravel the very fabric of their reality. Their proposed solution was as drastic as their diagnosis: they would construct a “logical firewall,” a conceptual barrier designed to contain the Artist’s influence. It would be a filter, stripping the “sentimental data” from the Artist’s creations, allowing only the pure, structural elements to pass through. This, they argued, would preserve the integrity of their world while neutralizing the threat. They had no doubt that the Experientialists would see this as an act of aggression, but in their cold calculus, it was a necessary sacrifice for the greater good.