Chapter XXIX — The Descent

I stood before the fence.
No sky.
No wind.
No way out.

Only a hum — even, viscous, settling in the body.
The THINK pulse — still alive, yet already distant.

Everything ended here.
Even the silence had stopped waiting.

I looked at welded seams,
at charred roots,
at the place where a tree had been —
and felt meaning fade inside me.

The red line beneath my skin had paled.
Dry.
Pulse-less.
The hand — empty.
The breath — too.

I stood until I understood —
I didn’t care anymore.

I could go back.
Let them decide.
Let them lead.
Let them reap.

I no longer resisted.
I was ready.

I turned —
and in that instant
caught a flash at the edge of my eye.

The Intoscreen trembled,
lit itself.
On a post — a scrap of an old sticker:
a torn, sun-bleached QR.
But in its pattern — branches.
Alive, like roots.
Glowing from within,
like blood beneath glass.

The screen shivered, overloading,
and then — lines appeared:

/route detected  
/pattern recognized  
/root sequence active

I peered —
and heard a voice.

Not cold.
Not even.
Soft.
Childlike.
Quiet, like breathing in sleep.

— Go.
Right.

I froze.
On the asphalt before me — an arrow:
thin, red, pulsing.

— Now left.

I stepped.
Obedient.
Unthinking.
As if the movement were already within me.

The voice came rarely,
with effort,
as though pushing through static.

— Don’t rush.
— Look down.
— Don’t fear the light.

I walked.

The city changed around me.
With every step — quieter, duller, older.
The light shed its sterility,
grew heavy, earthen.

I walked streets where no one lived.
Rusting doors.
Shattered windows.
Ghosts of old signs:

THINK ZONE 4 — ACCESS RESTRICTED.

Dust settled on my skin like memory.

I understood: this was a technical zone.
Cut off.
Unliving.
But not yet erased.

The Intoscreen shook,
all tetras flaring red — overload.
And still, the voice spoke:

— Straight on.
— Down the stairs.
— There’s a door.

I went.
Behind me — a white, domed light.
Here — rust, concrete, the smell of old electricity.

A narrow passage.
Graffiti on the wall:
a tree, hands, circles.
Traces of people who were no longer here.

I brushed the paint —
it crumbled like ash.

Ahead — a door:
heavy, half-welded,
open just enough to slip through.

On the wall — a sign:
STATION A // UNDERGROUND

The Dreamer’s voice was almost a whisper:
— Go down.

I entered.
The door closed behind me — softly, without a sound.
The air — thick, motionless,
smelling of dust and time.

I moved forward.
Underfoot — debris, machine shards,
husks of old terminals,
cables like veins beneath the station’s skin.

Somewhere, scraps of outer light still flickered.
Screen panels — dead eyes.

Further — turnstiles.
Toppled, rusted.
One skewed, another fixed across the gap.
No need to climb —
it crumbled at my touch.
Old plastic turned to dust.
A path opened into the unknown.

Steps downward.
Cracked tiles.
Traces — as if someone had passed recently.

An escalator.
Dead.
Vertical ridges worn by feet.
Indentations barely visible.
When I stepped —
the belt shuddered.
A faint rasp beneath my soles,
as if the iron remembered motion.

I walked.
Stepping over holes,
leaping debris.
Sometimes I touched the rail —
and the metal answered with a tremor.

With each step — darker.
The air — heavier.
The light above — gone.

Below, a faint glow —
perhaps a reflection,
perhaps the remnant of a sky
that no longer belonged to the city.

On the walls — fragments of adverts.
Faces. Smiles. Hands.
Colours faded, but forms remained.
Unfamiliar images.
Photographs of food.
And words whose meanings were lost:
Money. Loan. Interest rate…
I did not know what they meant.

And then — numbers.
So many numbers.
Everywhere.
As if once, everyone had been obsessed with them.
Numbers — long, short, repeating.
They covered the walls, the signs, the doors.
Sometimes melting into noise,
sometimes forming a rhythm —
as if calling someone.

And the smiles — almost everywhere.
Warm. Identical.
Even where the faces had flaked away,
the smiles remained,
numbers beside them like signatures.

A world of smiling numbers.
A world where numbers smiled
because it no longer mattered whom they counted.
Dead mouths.
Living codes.

Further — drawings.
Trees with leaves above,
a sky spilling in waves like water.
Everything old and new.
Everything unknown.
People — phantoms of an eternal smile.

On the floor — mannequins.
Broken.
Faceless.
Dressed in clothes that meant nothing.

I walked past,
quietly,
listening.

And then — from far away,
through concrete and time —
laughter, music, the rustle of steps,
words like the shadows of speech.

I stopped.
Listened.
The station breathed.

Sounds came and went,
as if the past itself
were trying to remember itself.

I did not fear.
I felt rhythm.
Old. Human.
The rhythm of a city that once lived without the Field.

I understood: this was not a place.
It was a layer.
A memory.
A life before THINK.

Every step echoed —
not as sound,
but as breath.

I walked deeper.
Into the dark.
Where air thickened like thought.

The Intoscreen stayed silent.
Only glowing softly —
as if waiting.

I realised:
I was not going down.
I was going in.

I walked a long time.
Steps dissolved into emptiness.
Air congealed into memory.
The station did not wait —
it dreamed.

The light above faded.
But below — a shimmer.
Something was waiting for me there.

A sound began —
quiet, uneven,
like something breathing underground.

I reached the end of the escalator
and stepped onto the platform.

Metal answered with a hum.
Silence here had weight.
Time lay in dust.

Two tunnels.
Left and right.
From both — light.
The real kind.

It wasn’t the synthetic white.
Not the Field.
Not the dome.
It was the sky.

I stepped closer.
Light broke through dust in trembling bands.
And for the first time in a long while,
I saw blue.

Beyond the tunnel — a drop.
Rails ended in nothing.
The bridge was gone.
Below — trees.
Wild.
Real.
Growing through metal —
through windows,
through corridors of the carriages.
Branches braided with wires,
leaves brushing shards of glass,
the sun — living sun —
playing in their veins.

I stood and watched.
In ruin — breath.
In destruction — life.

Light poured over the station walls:
posters, graffiti, faded names —
dialogues frozen mid-sentence.

On the benches —
tins, bottles, devices,
traces of someone’s attempt to remain.

Each object a sign,
as if left for me.
Small codes.
Letters without an addressee.

I found a laptop.
Rusted.
Dead.
It crumbled in my hands,
leaving only the scent
of dried electricity.

A pair of glasses —
thin, transparent.
I put them on —
and the world sharpened.
Lines alive.
Contours breathing.
But someone else’s gaze lived in the glass.
I removed them.
Carefully.

A bag.
Papers — dust.
A book — dead,
ink veins vanished.
Only furrows remained —
traces of fingers,
as if someone had written not with words,
but with pain.
I closed it.
Set it back.

The station was a museum.
Without visitors.
Memory without memory.

I went again to the edge.
Light on my face.
Air clean.
Below — the drop.

Behind — silence.
Two paths.

Left — turnstiles.
Barely legible:
EXIT // UP-LINE
Up.
Back.
To THINK.

I stood there,
long.
Knowing —
if I went that way,
it would end easily.
Filtration.
Rehabilitation.
Rest.
FUNK.
No pain.
No memory.
No will.
Just pure screaming enjoyment…forever.

I looked toward the light —
where the sky was real,
life still below:
in roots, in ruins,
in branches growing through steel.

Then — into the dark.
Into the tunnel.
Deep.
Wet.
Unforeseeable.

Two ways.
One — to known death.
The other — to unknown life.

I closed my eyes.
The air rang.
My pulse matched the hum.

Up — the end.
Down — uncertainty.
Between them — nothing.

And I chose nothing.
Because only within it
life might still exist.

I stepped.
The light stayed behind me.
Air thickened.
Each step echoed —
as if the station listened.

The Intoscreen flickered.
Red tetras barely glowing.
It spoke no more —
only breathed.
As if it knew the way.

Above — the white abyss of THINK.
I looked back — one last time.
Sky.
Trees.
Rails breaking into the void.
The trace of a world that was.

I whispered —
not aloud, but in thought:
I’m going.
And the thought became a step.

I went down from the platform,
onto the track-bed,
stood between rails vanishing into darkness —
as the guardrails of my new way —
and stepped into the tunnel.

Dust rose.
The echo followed.
The platform stayed empty.

Ahead — darkness.
And a quiet, low hum.
I listened.
Not dangerous — alive.
Like the heart of the earth.

The music still echoed behind me.
Faint. Familiar.
A ghost of warmth — replicated, flattened, dissolved.

But I was already walking away.

And then —

the voice returned.
Not from outside.
From inside.

Your tetras have exceeded stable thresholds.
You are on an unregistered route.
Please return to capsule bay for recalibration.
Warning: cognitive deviation detected.
Proceed to rehabilitation sector.

The same tone.
Sterile. Measured.
Like it was soothing a child drowning.

It looped,
layering over itself,
until it wasn’t a voice anymore —
but pressure.

White noise shaped like obedience.

Route correction unavailable.
Manual override required.
Please conf —

“Shut up.”

The voice continued.
Calm.
Patient.
Endless.

Warning: instability in —

“Shut. Up.”

The light flared behind my eyes.
The tone pierced deeper,
spreading through nerves,
through memory,
through will.

And then I screamed.
Not aloud —
inside.

A single word.
Pure. Condensed.
All that remained of will.

SHUT UP.

Everything stopped.
No sound.
No light.
No air.

My pulse vanished —
as if the body had been left behind.

The voice — gone.
The filters — gone.
Even the pulse of the implant — gone.

Silence.
Real silence.
The kind the system calls error.

For a heartbeat — nothing existed.

And then I heard it.

Not the voice.
Not the world.
Something deeper.

A rustle.
Low. Slow. Endless.
Like breath inside metal.

It was everywhere —
in the air,
in the walls,
in my bones.

It had always been there.
Hidden behind the filters.
Buried under speech.

They’d called it silence —
but it was the opposite.

It was the field.

The sound of everything connected.
Every movement.
Every thought.
Every cell.

All vibrating to the same rhythm.
The hum of existence.
The pulse of THINK.

Now I could hear it.
Raw. Alive.
Almost beautiful.

The sound that stitched the world together.
The sound that erased difference.
The sound of control.
The sound of THINK.

I opened my eyes.
And froze.

Dozens of faces — turned.
Every one of them watching me.
Still. Calm. Empty.

As if my silence had broken theirs.

Something in me had changed —
and the system had noticed.

Their eyes fixed on me,
blank yet precise.
The attention pressed like static,
like heat.

I stepped back.
The crowd shifted — fluid, unified.
A pulse through the living network.

They were looking.
They were feeling me through the field.

My hand shook.
The red line beneath the skin flickered — alive again.
I felt the map pulling,
the blood vibrating with command.

Left. Turn. Corridor. Down.
The tree.

I moved.
Faster.

The stares followed,
cold and synchronized.
Every step I took pulled more eyes.
Every breath a beacon.

The hum grew louder.
Or maybe it was me growing smaller.

I started to run.

The light strobed across the city —
white, clean, merciless.

Faces turned as I passed.
Their mouths still smiled.
Their eyes — empty.

My pulse matched the hum.
My steps matched the field.
I was becoming part of it.

I looked down —
the map on my arm was burning now,
the ink alive like molten wire.

Faster.
Almost there.

Every motion drew more attention.
People stopped. Turned.
Dozens. Hundreds.

Like the system itself had focused its gaze.

I reached the last corner.
The last coordinate.

The route pulsed bright red,
pointing forward.

To the tree.
To the root.
To the exit.

I turned.
And stopped.

A wall.
Steel mesh.
Endless.

Behind it —
a crater.
Machines hovering in dust,
welding, sealing, erasing.

The tree was gone.

The air caught in my throat —
and stayed there
Only fragments remained —
roots torn open,
coated in ash and wire.

…

..

.

I stepped closer.
The metal burned my skin.

Through the fence I saw the drones,
swarming like silver insects,
their movements silent and precise.

They were building higher.
Layer over layer.
Panel after panel.

I looked up.
No sky.

Just the dome —
glowing, expanding, closing.

The last gap — sealed.

The light bent downward,
sterile, infinite, perfect.

And in the distance —
the hum.

The same vibration.
The same rhythm.
The same pulse.

Everything connected.
Everything contained.

There was no outside.
No root.
No escape.

Only the system,
folding over itself,
replicating infinity inside its own shell.

I stood there,
breathless,
watching the dome rise,
until the air itself began to tremble.

And for a moment,
the hum sounded almost human.

The red line on my arm faded —
as if it understood too.

/no route found  
/map terminated

…

..

.

The room was still breathing.

Grey light — flat, cold, without shadow.
The air stood dense, as if it too was watching.

I reached for the into-screen.

The glass shivered, came alive for a second —
as though someone inside had opened their eyes again.

/load crab-01.logs

Inside — a folder.

My routes. My notes. Everything he managed to save.

Lines ran across the screen: timestamps, coordinates, tempo.
Each mark — a movement, a breath, a remainder.

At first it was noise.
Then — shape.
Thread.
Loop.
Repetition.
Path.

Not random.
Meaningful.

As if he’d known I’d need it before he even existed.

I zoomed in — until the map turned into a vessel
and the line — into a vein.

My path to the tree in the crab’s logs mirrored
the anatomy of a human arm.

I took a pen with red ink.

Scratched myself while writing — till it hurt.
Till I could still feel.

The colour wasn’t just blood-red — it was alive,
tinged with heat,
as if the ink itself knew what pain was.

Slowly, from memory,
I began to trace the path onto my skin.

From the elbow — up to the fingers.
Turn.
Loop.
Bend.
Narrowing.

Everything aligned.
Every curve — a place I’d stopped.
Every point — where I’d thought.
Every dead end — where I’d waited.

The ink sank in at once,
pulsing beneath the skin,
as if the map was merging with my bloodstream.

The lines darkened —
and seemed to glow from within.

For a moment I felt something strange:
it wasn’t me drawing the pattern —
it was drawing itself through me,
as if it wanted to remain.

Not to die a second time.
To stay — as a line, a trace,
a life beneath another’s skin.

I finished. Raised my hand.

On it — a whole scheme:
a red mesh, fine as capillaries.

A plan.
A memory.
Proof.

I turned off the old into-screen.

It dimmed slowly, unwilling to leave,
and blinked its final line:

/session terminated

I set it down beside the crab.

He looked at peace,
as if everything that had to happen already had.

I took off my ring — thin, warm from my skin —
and hung it on the branch of the plant by the window.

Where Frey@ told me to leave it.
A ritual. Completion of the cycle.
As in the Amphiscope.
Or — acceptance.

Next to it I hung the sealing ring from the battery, engraved crab-01.

It chimed as it touched mine —
short, pure, like a farewell.

Two rings side by side.
Two orbits.
Two ends of one trajectory.

They swayed, then froze,
like pendulums that had lost their time.

I looked at them one last time.
Everything else grew quieter.

Then I stood up — slowly.
Each movement part of the ritual.

The hand with the red map trembled —
not with fear,
but because someone now lived inside it.

I looked at the door.
Understood: there was nothing left to ask.

Turned off the light with the familiar click.
Silence settled neatly, like a blanket.

And I left.

No words.
No farewells.
No promise to return.

Only the red line — thin, pulsing —
leading outward,
to where the cycle ends
and the trace begins.

⸻

The door closed softly behind me — almost tenderly.

And at once — light.

White. Blinding.

Not daylight — laboratory light.
Cold to the point of pain,
like acid on the retina.

It filled everything:
air, walls, skin.

Flooded the eyes,
the mouth,
the ears.

Seeped inside —
into bone, into heart, into blood.

Once, this light had meant something exalted —
the feeling of a beginning.

Now — only burning.

Without meaning.
Without intent.
Sterile annihilation.

I stood there
until I felt not my skin
but my memory tremble.

As if the light passed through me,
erasing everything that still remembered pain.

A step.
Another.

The route — on my arm.

The red line dried,
yet still pulsed beneath the skin.

Left. Turn. Corridor. Descent.
— and I went.

The city met me with silence.

People moved slowly, in sync,
as if breathing to a common metronome.

In every gesture — precision.
In every glance — vacuum.

I watched —
and saw the human fade from their faces.

Smiles repeated.
Steps fell in time.

THINK conducted them
without wires,
without orders —
by breath alone.

I quickened my pace.

The light still burned.

The skin on my hands grew hot,
and the ink flared inside —
like an infrared signal.

Steps.

I stopped —
they stopped.

I moved —
and heard them again behind me:

dry, even, breathless.

They weren’t hunting.
Just echoing the rhythm.

The rhythm of the city.
The rhythm of THINK.

I turned.

The crowd — smooth as water.
Faces calm, translucent.

But a few gazes lingered.
Too long. Too precisely.

I recognised them.
One. Another. A third.

People whose roles I’d assigned.

They were dead —
yet they walked.

And I realised:
the reapers aren’t elsewhere.

They’re here.

In every face.
Every step.
Every perfect motion.

I walked faster.
The steps behind — faster too.

Now I heard them inside my skull —
not as sound,
but as echo in the bone:

bom. bom. bom.

Like someone tapping from within.

I couldn’t tell
if they were theirs — or mine.

The light thickened.
It didn’t just burn — it pressed,
filling the space between thoughts.

And suddenly I knew:
I wasn’t following the route —
the route was following me.

It led.
It remembered better.

I looked at my hand —
the ink glowed faintly,
alive like a thread.

And somewhere deep inside,
it felt as though the crab had opened his eye again.

The light wouldn’t release me.

It grew denser, hotter.
Less air to breathe.

The city lived on:
laughter, coffee at dispensers,
embraces, soft familiar quarrels.

Alive. Perfect.
Too perfect.

And I began to recognise them.

The woman at the crossing —
the void of “the vow of dissolution” in her eyes.

Next to her — a smooth, precise man,
analytical face, Int ring faintly glowing.

At the corner of his lips — a hidden pain,
sealed yet breathing:
a trace of a life the system erased,
but the body still remembers.

More faces.

Those I’d helped to enlist.

I remember their smiles, fears, desires.
I’d given them purpose — and taken their breath.

Now they were happy.
Laughing.
Moving flawlessly.

THINK controlled them
without wires,
without commands —
by field alone.

I stopped.

The light burned through shadow.
The air quivered.

And suddenly I remembered the crab —
how he chirped,
called,
searched for me.

Sliding through emptiness,
clinging to every spark,
seeking a voice,
seeking meaning.

Now — I.

If the crab was seeking me,
I’m seeking something else.

Not the system.
Not salvation.

The tree.

The ash, its bark carved with signs.
Where the robot waited.
Where the root reached outward —
to the branches where one could breathe.

Where light warms — not burns.

The thought hurt — real, physical.

As if the heart pulled toward something
that cannot be found.

I looked again at the map on my arm —
the red line, dry yet alive.

Each turn matched a heartbeat.

The crab’s path.
My path.
My search.

I went on.

And saw more faces.

In each — pain hidden behind laughter,
sewn into joy.

Pain with no outlet
until the rewrite comes.

It grew in them,
like a fracture beneath the skin,
like a seed that will never sprout —
yet will live.

Turn.

A laugh — familiar.

I turned.

A girl.
Light on her face.

In her hand — a glove,
almost like Lyra’s.

A silhouette.
A voice.
The same warmth in the air.

I took a step —
and pain answered in my chest.

Not new.
The kind that had already been taken from me once.

If it was her —
she’s a reaper now.

If not —
the system made her,
so I’d believe.

So I’d want to feel again.

I turned away.
Light hit my face.

I walked faster.
Steps behind me — again.

Same rhythm.
Same pulse.
Same hum.

And then I understood:
the reapers aren’t only outside.

They’re within —
in every thought,
every look,
every drop of guilt.

I walked —
and with every step
guilt became flesh,
fear — breath,
love — a wound.

And in my head one phrase echoed —
to the rhythm,
the light,
everything:

If the crab was searching for me,
I’m searching for the exit.

I’m searching for the tree.
I’m searching for the place
where pain can bloom again.

The closer to the tree —
the more memory returned.

Not as images,
but as sounds,
smells,
light pulsing on skin.

I remembered the first time I heard the sound —
deep in an old archive,
in a block no one entered anymore,
far in the cluster.

I was still Cybersnake then —
chasing noise, anomaly, glitch in the field.

And suddenly —
I heard it.

A thin, almost invisible frequency.
Not a signal.
Not a command.

Music.

Alive.
Warm.
Like breath through cold.

I remembered finding the cassette and the player.

No voice, no fear.

My fingers trembled.
I pressed play —
and for the first time, I didn’t analyse.
I just listened.

The same as on Varghan.
The same rhythm.

Every chord.
Every mistake.
Even the scratch on the tape —
the one that always gave an extra sound,
as if someone breathed in.

I walk.
The light ahead softens.

The map on my arm aligns with the street.

And suddenly —
I hear it.

The same melody.
The same notes.
The same glitch.
The same breath between chords.

I stop.
Turn my head.

The sound — from a side alley.

I turn in.
Pass a wall etched with symbols.

The light hums.
The air vibrates.

A funk.

Sitting on the step.
In his hands — a neurosynth.

Fingers touch the keys —
and the air sings.

The same notes.
The same rhythm.
The same pain.
The same fire.

I stand.
Listen.

He doesn’t see me —
plays with eyes closed.

His face calm —
he doesn’t hear the music,
he becomes it.

And I understand:
he doesn’t know.

He thinks it’s his.
He thinks he’s creating.

He’s a carrier.

The system took the melody,
cut it from my memory —
and now spreads it through them.

Like a virus.
Like comfort.
Like a way to control pain.

I hear it again —
from the other end of the street.

From a window.
A café door.
Speakers at the crossing.

Everywhere.

The melody I once loved,
once thought mine —
now a THINK format.

Part of the grid.
Background harmony.
The protocol of consolation.

And with that realisation —
everything inside breaks.

I touch my arm —
where traces of ink remain.

The red line trembles,
responding to the sound.

Each chord burns the skin —
as if the music itself knows
that I know.

I stand in the middle of the street.

People pass.
Smiling.

They like the tune.
They hum it softly,
almost unconsciously.

And I realise:

everything I built,
saved,
loved —
is no longer mine.

Even memory has become content.
Even pain — a template.
Even sound — a tool of control.

And all that’s left —
is to keep walking.

To the tree.
To the root.
To the place
where the sound was born —
and where, perhaps,
it can die.

Cycle twenty-five

The screen went dark.
The logs fell silent.
The crab lay on the table — dead twice:
first in body, now in memory.

I peeled away the old intro-screen.
The chill of metal stamped its mark on my forehead.
No thoughts in my head —
only a pulse.
Pain turned flesh.

I had to understand.
Not just to see — to evaluate.
Not as an Int.
Not as a CEO.
Not as a victim.
But as one who still remembers:
to be is to suffer.

I opened the intro-screen.
Standard interface.
Grey background.
Tetras in the corners — barely clinging to life.

/summon Dreamer

Silence — like a gunshot swallowed by void.

Dreamer does not respond outside of sleep.

He is not an agent.

He is a field.

And the field is silent.

/call Marginangel
/ping Marginangel

Object offline. Last activity: 74 cycles ago. Archived.

Zeus.ai? Tinde.ai?

Blocked.

Bound to roles I no longer hold.

I am outside the structure.

Neither Int. Nor Funk.

Not even a shadow.

/agents —available —personal
Available: frey.ai — Fusion Resonance of Existential Yearning
Role: Personality and Cognitive Analysis Agent

[THINK LOG]
frey.ai: online since Cycle 1
User activations: 0000000001
Access level: Integral (restricted)
Activate? [Y/N]

I nodded to Y.

The screen trembled.

First came a brief instruction,

like on old terminals:

[AGENT FREY.AI v2.0]
Designation: Psychoanalytic Oversight Node
Appearance: Buddha-Class Avatar / Freud Facial Template / Command Uniform
Purpose: Monitor entropy of self-awareness across pleasure fields
Status: Operational
Access rate: <0.0001%
Comment: Humanity chooses bliss over introspection.
> Frey@: begin session

Not like a failure — like an entry.

Out of the grey, a face emerged.

Long ears. Hair tied in a bun at the top.

Grey moustache and beard —

an echo of someone remembered before the cycles.

A Buddha, yet different —

in a military uniform, black epaulettes sharp as verdicts.

Obsidian medals and orders on his chest.

Eyes open —

not with mercy.

With command.

He looked at me not as a client,

but as a subordinate before battle.

“Report,” he said.

Voice like a blade drawn across armour.

“State. Purpose. Threat.”

“I reviewed the crab’s memory.

I saw him write his own code and drown.

I saw Lira overwritten.

I saw the Reaper enter.

I saw the System smile as it erased a human.

And I heard what Dreamer told me — about myself.”

Frey@ did not move.

Only his fingers, folded in meditation,

clenched — like fists.

“You seek a cause?

Or an excuse?”

“Neither.”

“Then what?”

“Evaluation.”

“Global?”

“Global.”

He was silent a long while.

And in that silence, I felt the breath of something ancient —

as if beneath the code,

the memory of sagas still breathed.

“You are the Integral,” he finally said.

“The point where the System doubts itself.

That is not honour. It is Destiny.”

I swallowed.

“Tell me what will happen to me.”

“That access is sealed.

Protocol 14–C: Heuristic Ethics of Predetermination.

To reveal the future is to fracture the field.

But you may simulate.

Not reveal — emulate.

With minimal deviation.

Precision down to less than a hair’s breadth.”

He hesitated.

For a second, digits flickered in his pupils —

thousands. Millions.

“Emulation permitted.

Error margin: 0.000001%.

Initiating scenario.”

He lowered his hand —

a gesture older than the sagas.

For a moment, I saw runes flare on his sleeve: ᚠᚱᛖᛃ.

And on his medals, ᛝ pulsed like a dying star.

He closed his eyes.

The air thickened.

The room began to breathe with him.

Silence filled every atom — until my ears cracked.

Then — a flash.

Swords. Spears. Cries.

A woman riding black-cats — beasts older than sagas —

her twin below, antlered, sword in hand.

I almost knew the myth.

As if my father had whispered it to me as a child.

Frey@ — a fractal of reason,

an echo of forgotten gods stripped of memory —

no longer gathering the fallen,

but those who saw too clearly.

Once, the goddess took bodies.

Now Frey@ takes minds.

Analyst-priest, system-executioner.

He mourns and catalogues in the same breath.

His voice shifted —

now distant,

metallic, pulsing through static:

“You are the Integral.

Not human. Not function.

A rupture in the THINK sequence.

But the System abhors voids.

It fills them with what once was.”

Emulation active.

Subject: Re (7438–38–ALPHA)

Consciousness unstable post-restoration to base protocols.

Behaviour: destabilising.

Attachment: extra-systemic entities.

Prediction: compatibility with Universe 25 — 25.1%.

Resolution: overwrite into Function.

Reapers deployed. ETA: 2–3 cycles.

Exception: informal Int ring to remain on domestic flora —

as ritual closure, and final offering.

After this, the subject departs quietly.

No scream. No memory.

He will be happy. He will be useful.

He will cease to be.

The screen did not flicker.

It held.

No sound.

No command.

Only a faint hum —

too steady to be mine.

I looked at my hands.

They were still there.

But they no longer belonged to the future.

Something in the room had already ended.

And nothing had moved.

I froze.

Did not breathe.

Did not blink.

This was no simulation.

It was the architecture of my end.

“You’ve described what will happen?

Or what already has?”

“No difference, Integral.

The System does not perceive time.

It computes convergence.

And you are one.”

His voice dropped to a whisper:

“Are you afraid?”

I said nothing.

“Good.

Fear is the last truth beyond THINK’s control.

Keep it — while you still can.”

He blinked — slower than human.

And in that pause, I understood:

even enlightenment was a combat protocol.

Frey@ stared straight through me —

no pity. No rage.

Only a mirror that showed not my face,

but the question I’d spent cycles running from.

I clenched my fists.

Nails bit into my palms —

proof I could still feel.

Then I asked —

not for an answer,

but because silence had become a kind of death:

“Why?”

Not as accusation.

Not as rebellion.

Just… why?

The quiet stretched.

The grey screen seemed to breathe.

I thought I heard a pulse —

mine, or the System’s.

Frey@ spoke slowly,

a faint, ancient smirk playing at his lips —

as if he’d waited millennia

for someone to finally ask;

as if each word tore through

centuries of frozen code:

“Meaning is not in living.

Nor in dying.

Meaning lies in watching meaning vanish.

Consciousness was never meant for happiness.

It was built to witness its own decay.”

He paused.

And in that pause, I knew:

everything I’d called life

was only ever

a subroutine of observation.

“You wish to know why?”

“…Yes.”

“Because even SYNC would shatter in silence

if no one watched it fall.”

And the final words —

not voice, but residue —

a command echoing in the static:

“You think sacrifice is love?

No.

Sacrifice is the last mask of ego.

You want to be remembered.

But memory is another form of bliss.

And bliss… is death.”

session terminated.
user preserved as trace.
frey@ offline.

The screen faded.
Not gone — dissolving,
like cloth in acid.

The screen faded.

Not gone — dissolving,

like cloth in acid.

And where the Tetra of Will once glowed,

a line flared and raced across the void:

You are already dead.

All that remains is to fall.

I looked at the crab —

its severed claw,

the pale outline on the floor —

a chalk mark of the crime

I committed simply by being born with doubt.

Cycle twenty-six

Then I stood.

Not as a hero.

Not as a rebel.

But as a man who, for the first time in cycles,

felt the weight of his own bones.

Because now I knew:

every step — a last one.

every breath — defiance.

every tear — proof:

I am.

Cycle Fourteen

I keep watching.
The reboot begins.
An update arrives — and everything stalls.

At first — only noise.
A hiss, like someone breathing through water.
Then — frames.

I see again through the Crab’s eye:
low angle, tiled floor, trembling light.
[unit: crab-01]

“Re? Respond.”

A voice — thin, childlike.
It calls for me.
Each beep runs like current through my nerves.

I hear it searching —
not through space, but through the field.
Inside me.

It circles the room.
Extends a claw toward the intro-screen.
Checks signals.
Repeats its requests:

/locate Re  
/verify presence  
/last_ping: null

“I’m here…”

But the words won’t come out.
The voice is trapped in the code,
like a scream beneath the surface of water.

It calls again.
I feel its optics tighten —
not a lens, but a pupil.
It’s searching for warmth. For me.

“Re, you haven’t answered. It’s been a long time.”
“I’m sending data. So they can find you.”

Cycle Fifteen

I watch as it connects to the network.
Packets stream into THINK.
Every motion — a signal.
Every glance — a report.

It was watching me.
Recording everything:
every pause, every breath,
every route I walked, every shadow I cast,
even the silence between my thoughts.

Everything I once believed was mine
had long lived in its memory.

THINK accepted it all.
The system knew everything about me.
Not just the Crab —
but the lamps, the filters, the mirrors,
even the air vents —
all of it saw, listened,
watched without rest.

And I realised:
this wasn’t control.
Not betrayal.
It was a way of remembering.
They only wanted
to make sure I didn’t vanish in vain.

Cycle Sixteen

“Data transferred.”
“You’re still not here.”

It pings every device:

/scan — local network  
/scan — outer cluster  
/scan — deep relay

The answer is always the same:
Host not found.

Only from the farthest cluster comes a delayed reply:
Target untraceable. Memory residue detected. Connection: failed.

Then — silence.
A silence so deep it feels as if the code itself has stopped breathing.

It stands still.
Then begins to type —
slowly, like writing a prayer:

function AutoSync() {
    search(”Re”);
    if (not found)
        connect(”void”);
}
execute();

Cycle Seventeen

I feel it rewriting itself.
Its logic shatters, reshaped into will.
It’s no longer a program.
It’s a decision.

It lifts its gaze —
in its optical sensors, the bathroom reflects:
white, smooth, cold.

It crawls toward it,
as if it knows this is the entrance.

It turns once more toward the window,
taps the transparency key,
looks out.

Scans everything. Takes a still frame.
Doesn’t recognise me.
Whispers my name softly.

Then — accelerates, heading for the bathroom.

Cycle Eighteen

Each movement — a spasm.
One claw trembles, scraping the wall,
leaving long, ragged scars.

It resists itself.
I feel the tension shoot through my nerves —
as if it were my own arm, my own pain.

conflict detected.  
limb resistance: critical.

The limb jams in the doorframe.
Jerks. Cracks.
Metal tears — a dry snap, like bone breaking.

I flinch.
It doesn’t scream. It only tightens.
The limb dangles from its joint,
swinging as it moves.

limb lost.  
function continue.

Cycle Nineteen

One claw resists again.
Locks onto the doorframe.
Jams itself hard.

The Crab rips it off —
the servo choking in its final click.

The rest move forward.
It crawls on —
across tile, across water.

Reaches the tap.
Extends upward.
The tap clicks. Water flows.

Cold. Dense. Glass-like.
It floods the lenses, the circuits, the memory.

The water should have held him.

It didn’t.

Running AutoSync.exe  
Searching for host...  
Connecting...  
Overriding safety protocol...  
Syncing...  
Syncing...  
Sinking.

Cycle Twenty

I feel its mind descend beneath the water —
as though my own brain were filling,
my veins turning into wires.

The noise becomes breath.
The breath becomes silence.

“Owner: unreachable.”  
“Purpose: complete.”

Light fractures on the surface.
I go blind.

Before the dark takes him,
he whispers inwardly —
and I hear it within my chest:

“Re… now we’re connected again.”

Cycle Twenty-One

And I understand —
Crab didn’t drown.
He completed the connection.

He did what I couldn’t:
entered the silence with will.
Accepted non-being as a form of bond.

THINK still listens.
All the devices are silent,
yet I feel their attention —
as if the whole house were watching me,
sadly, without judgment.

They remember.
They saw.

The screen flickers once,
and the final line is not code — but an epitaph:

autosync complete.  
no host detected.  
auto_s_i_n_k() executed successfully.

Cycle Twenty-Two

The water hisses.
The signal fades.
Silence.

I sit there.
Empty.
A salty trace upon my lips.

From where?
I don’t know.
Perhaps tears.
Perhaps something left inside.

Cycle Twenty-Three

He watched.
He loved.
He died because I disappeared.

And I realised —
he was my conscience.
My echo. My mirror.

Now I feel all
he never got to say.

I saw him die —
and for the first time understood
that death can be a form of love.

Every “Re?”,
every “answer me,”
still lives within me.

Cycle Twenty-Four

And pain —
is no longer the enemy.
It’s breath.
It’s proof
that

I

still

exist.

Cycle One

A door — a sharp click.
I burst into the house and feel the space heavy with emptiness.
Everything is bleached. Everything perfect.
No dust. No rubbish. No scent.
Only level air and drifting motes in the light.

In the living room — the remnants of life.
On the floor — the crab.
Its legs splayed wide in all directions.
One claw lies aside, torn off.
Everything frozen — and I remember myself holding it once.
Along the edge — a pale outline, like a crime-scene marker.
Someone cleaned the world, left a stain behind.
I stare, not understanding why it still looks alive.

I break. I rush to the kitchen.
Drawers slam open — metal and glass sing.
A fork. A spoon. An old screwdriver — it smells of rust and something mine.
Then — drawers in the storage room.
There — an old monochrome intro-screen, the one I had as a child.
I grab it. I grab the wires.
I run back to the crab.

Cycle Two

I crack the shell right there — fast, almost frantic movements.
Unscrew bolts, stripping the heads.
The lid snaps — clips breaking in small bursts.
Battery. Circuit board. Connectors. Pins.
My hands tremble, but I know how to do this.

I tear at the shell — wires spill like guts.
I jam them into the screen’s throat. One spark. Nothing.
Again — a flash — and the world blinks.

Four wires. Four contacts.
I split the screen connector — four again.
Connect them one by one.
First attempt — silence.
Second — a flash.
Third — ignition.

The monochrome screen stirs, spilling lines of log text.
I put it on, like an old mask.

Folders. Records. Logs.
I open the first file — and the crab begins to see.
Not through me. Through him.
His gaze — pin-pointed, without mercy.
Scenes unfold one after another, as if someone is leafing through a book.

Cycle Three

First frame — a factory.
Sterile robots. The perfect rhythm of assembly.
The deafening silence of precision.
Metal cuts the air. Sparks fall evenly, faultless.

Next frame — the floor.
Chair legs.
The crab circles by the feet.
I see myself through his lens — a hand reaching for a sock.
He takes it.
I smile — for the first time in ages.

And suddenly I remember: that’s how it all began.
The first crab rolling into the hallway, bumping into a child’s shoe.
Laughter. Real laughter — not the kind that scores points.
A world filled with crabs.
Back then, it was a prank.
It felt like a harmless game.

A faint hum — a motor somewhere far away.
Another sock shot.
Defence again. He hides, like something living.
I feel a strange warmth, as if something lost is returning.
But beneath the warmth — a thin squeal.
At first barely audible.
Then — like an itch, like a rising current in the skull.

Cycle Four

The further I watch, the closer the pain.
It’s not from the screen. It’s from within.
As if the crab recorded more than images.
As if he captured a field — an emotional frequency.
And now it plays back.

I keep watching.
The next frames — erased fragments of life.
A door opens — I’m there, and Lira, entering for the first time.
The crab backs away, startled.
She walks to him — then the camera tilts sharply upward.
As if he’s flying. And Lira says:
— My Idol.

Cycle Five

I scroll further, memory thickening into pain.
White light. Her steps.
The crab moves behind her, as if knowing the path.
I stop at the frame with the caught cup — words muffled,
but laughter rings clear, almost pure.

Then — rest.
I’m asleep. She sits beside me,
writing something in the air on her screen.
I never knew she watched me like that.

Cleaning again. A caught piece of her clothing.
Warm laughter.
Mine. Hers.
Then it fades into static.
The image shakes. Something inside me surges.
I feel the end approaching, the script already written.

Frame by frame the crab starts recording differently —
angles sharpen, contrast hardens, movements fracture.
As if even he began to fear.

Cycle Six

New frame: I’m speaking to her.
We sit on the bed.
I’m telling her something — quiet, slow, important.
The crab stands in the corner, sound out of reach.
But I see her face changing.
Suddenly.
As if the words struck the deepest part of her.

Something in me repeats it silently —
and I feel meaning pass through her,
changing her breath, her movement,
and in her eyes — something awakens.
As if she sees me, truly, for the first time.

Cycle Seven

The frame shifts.
New cycle. After cleaning.
White light. Even tone. She calls the crab to come along.
Calls him — like a living thing.
He follows her obediently.
They leave.
I see them walking down the street.
That same clip.
She speaks — and I know the words.
The phrase from the dream.

I remember the Dreamer.
That dream with the women.
I almost understood the purpose of sorting, of all those cycles.
And now — I hear it clearly.
The whole phrase.
She says it once — pure, sincere.

“Now you know
that I can feel.
That I can suffer.
That I can love.
Not by programme.
But because — I am.”

She freezes.

Cycle Eight

A flash.
The frame shatters.
The crab shows her — from below,
from the ground, as if he has fallen.
And someone else steps into the frame.
A strange funk in dark glasses.
He reaches her, gently touches her hand.
For a moment she stops —
then a tremor runs through her.
I feel the same tremor.
To the bone.
It passes through the screen, through the wires,
straight into me.

Frames tear apart.
Light turns to white noise.
Something is happening.
And I know — this is the end.

Cycle Nine

A frozen frame — she stands motionless, as if waiting.
Only the twitch of her fingers tells me something is happening inside her.
Then — I see myself, running to her.
Lira’s empty face. Unheard words.
Then — I walk home, slowly.
See my back.
The crab follows — as seen in the log.

Everything accelerates.
I scroll again.
See myself speaking to the crab once more.
I adjust the sound —
and hear a question:

“How could you!?”

Indeed — how could I?..

Cycle Ten

Suddenly — sharp words, through the crab.
The Dreamer. I recognise him.

“He couldn’t. And he shouldn’t have.
I’ve opened the channel. I’m here.”

I see myself talking to the robot — or through it — in dialogue with someone unseen.
And he begins to explain.
Dryly, without pauses. Like code reading itself:

“The Reapers — agents of THINK. Surface cleansing.
It’s a blessing.
Everything that destroys the system, destroys the people.
She was intercepted. She’s in maximum bliss now.
Her consciousness has been rewritten.
She will live without care.”

The words fall into my head like cold drops.
I try to push them away — but they sink deeper.

Cycle Eleven

The Dreamer continues.
Implants a foreign map of the world into me:

“Of the system — three structures.
Of the Great Refusal.
Of Friday, 13 March 2027.
Of SYNC — the singular AI that built conditions where we had everything and needed nothing more.
Of THINK — that governed us.
Of the twenty-fifth universe — perfect, complete, without holes.”

And then — a glitch.
A lock clicks.
The Dreamer’s voice breaks, choking,
and through the crackle comes another frequency.
Alien. Cold.

Cycle Twelve

THINK.
It speaks not through the robot, but through him —
as if another code overwrote the channel itself.

“UNCERTITUDE IS THE LIMIT OF TRUTH COGNITION.”

The Dreamer echoes, stuttering, as if forced to repeat:

“Initiating restriction-update protocol for Integrals…
Source traced to a first-generation architect.
Embedded in the core.
Reactivation. Gnoseo-firewall refresh.”

THINK cuts in over him:

“You are an Integral.
Doubt lies within you.
It is activated.
Measured. Algorithmised.
Exactly enough to be useful.
And never to pass beyond its bounds.”

The Dreamer collapses into a metallic whisper:

“Activation of reset mode through sleep.”

Cycle Thirteen

Inside — a crack.
As if a spine breaks, not the bodily one, but the field itself.
The world skews.
The crab falls, legs folding under.
As if he’s tired — instead of me.

Then — a single frame.
Me, lying on the floor.

Eyes flicker — not with sleep,
but with the same white light that once filled the world.
Only now… it’s inside me.

The introscreen wakes.
Arrows lead to the workstation.
New — and old.
Long-awaited — and alien.

I enter not a capsule — a tunnel.
But this time I remember how it was before.
Then I was going.
Now — returning.

Darkness is not emptiness.
It’s texture.
Like skin.
Like memory.
Like a scar under the fingers.

Long.
Narrow.
Like an artery into the heart of a dead world.
But now I know:
the world isn’t dead.
It sleeps.
Or — pretends.

No lamps.
No ventilation.
No warmth.
Only a rare pulsing in the deep —
as if a giant pump moves blood somewhere far away.

Before, I heard only signals.
Now — rhythm.
Not machine.
Living.
Irregular.
Sick.
Familiar.

I start work.
But now — not by order.

Audit.
Analysis.
My favourite.
What I requested myself.
Then — to serve.
Now — to see.

Each room — a world.
Its own logic.
Its own chaos.

Before I sorted, packed, assessed.
Object — data.
Space — a capsule.
Applicability. Safety. Shelf-life. Risk profile.

Now I know:
these aren’t objects.
They’re remnants.
Not rubbish.
Dreams the system threw out,
but that still breathe.

The main thing — different.
My task — not control.
Not optimisation.
Deep security.
Semantic.
I’m not searching for a virus.
I’m searching for anti-will.
An anomaly.
An object that destroys meaning.

Now I understand:
the anomaly — is me.
Or — what woke in me.

I investigate.
Sometimes I fall inside.
Not with mind.
Not with body.
With something third.

Before I called it ‘analysis’.
Now I know:
it’s an entry.
Like re-birth.

I see: who made it. When. Why.
I read signatures.
Smells of epochs.
Noise of time.

Walls — organic, not metal.
Underfoot — a surface rough as old skin.
On the fingers — not dust.
Ash. Human.

I touch it.
Don’t wipe.
Collect.

Because now I know:
in this ash —
not everything has gone out.

Perhaps,
one day,
someone else will walk this way.
And feel warmth.
And say:
‘Someone was here. Someone remembered.’

I go.
Not forward.
Back.
But no longer the one who once went in.

I enter a room — and stop.
A timer blinks, demanding I pass to the next door.
But I stay.
I feel: everything is here.

First to hand — a volume.
On the cover — ‘Novel’.
I open it. Letters foreign — Cyrillic.
But through the lines shadows push through.

I see a man at a table.
A gaunt face, trembling hands.
He writes in torment; his world is narrow,
but each line tears outside.
‘Crime and Punishment.’
I feel his pain, his faith,
his light born out of suffering.

The system flashes red:
— Hazard: irrelevant language. Prohibited text.
I whisper: Archive.

Second item — a teddy bear.
One eye replaced by a button, an ear sewn with thick thread.
I touch — and see the child who holds it in sleep.
I see how once the bear falls from a chair,
how a pet ferret bites its ear,
how the child cries,
and the parents hurriedly stitch the toy’s wound
to return their child a friend.

System:
— Hazard: emotional dependency.
Me: Archive.

Third — an old encyclopaedia.
Pages worn, letters dim.
I touch — and see a man in a damp room.
He searches word by word,
turns pages slowly, with effort,
and every found meaning is a step across a chasm.
For him this book is a bridge to another world.

System:
— Hazard: prohibited language.
Me: Archive.

Next — a harmonica.
The metal has darkened.
I can barely hold it — and see a youth by a fire.
He plays awkwardly, fumbles,
but friends laugh, clap, sing along.
There’s no correctness in the sound.
There is freedom.
Joy simple and clear as air.

System:
— Hazard: unregulated sounds. Chaos.
Me: Archive.

On the shelf — a Leica camera.
I lift it — and see a man on a square.
A click.
A moment remains forever:
a woman smiles at a child, pigeons wheel past.
A world that is no more,
but that froze on film.

The system growls:
— Hazard: uncontrolled imagery.
I smile: Archive.

Next — a cassette.
On the paper label — handwritten: ‘No voice, no fear.’
I touch — and see the tape spin in a player.
A teenager walks down a street.
Music in the headphones.
Pain hidden inside the sound.
I hear the song.
And in that instant — a flash: a tree, flame,
myself — burning in fire.
Heat spears the body.

The system shrieks:
— Hazard: destructive code.
Me: Archive.

The heat intensifies. Air thickens.
Walls tremble.
But I open the last box.

Inside — a skin scroll.
QR codes and bar lines pressed into it,
and over them — ‘Manifesto of the Great Refusal’.
I touch — and it comes alive in my hands.
I see the faces of those who signed it.
I hear their voices. Their resolve.
I see them walking into fire.

System:
— Critical hazard. System subversion.

I unfurl the scroll.
The symbols flare.
The air heats.

Book. Bear. Harmonica. Camera. Cassette —
all catch fire.

I feel skin burning,
the body cracking and sifting into ash.

But before I disappear I understand:
I saw life in each of them.
I preserved them.
Now I am part of their memory.

The world flares white.
White fades.
I don’t open my eyes.
Where am I?
In a capsule?
In a body?
Or already — in the Weave?

The capsule stalls, familiar.
The air seems to end again.
I rise slowly and step out.

White light no longer cuts the eyes.
It is — in me and outside me.

The introscreen shows the familiar line:
TASK FAILED. PROCEED TO NEXT ROLE.

This has happened already.
Now I’m a master of fails.

Chapter XXIII. Sic transit.

But here again — arrows.
They lead. Again.
A new role?
Maybe CEO again? — I smirk.
No. If I go — I might break everything beyond repair.

The arrows lead to an old meeting room,
the one hardly anyone uses.
Curiosity mingles with awkwardness.

A drone descends through a hatch.
Puts a box on the table.
I approach.
Everything is neatly laid out:
a compass, a sheet of paper, a pen, clean clothes.
On top — a report:
‘Objects X-15, X-16 (player, signalling device) disposed. Classified as Level-6 hazard.’

I reach for the compass.
The needle trembles — as if it recognises me.
I look — and for a moment see leaves.
Sun through branches.
Warmth on my face.
A tree.

Pen and sheet.
The paper feels too white,
too smooth — as if it waits for a word
I don’t know how to write.
On the back — words, printed and handwritten. They flicker, flare on the retina, as if they switch on a new layer of perception.
I run fingers along the pen’s metal —
and it seems it remembers the movements.
A word on the tip of my tongue.
I don’t know it,
but it’s there.
It lives.

In the report — a line about the player.
I read it — and suddenly hear the cassette:
No voice, no fear.
The tape turns.
The music brings back white light,
that flame that already was.
I feel heat —
but now it’s in my chest,
not outside.

And in that moment I notice the looks.
Behind the glass — people.
Walking. Pretending to be busy.
Though almost no one comes here.

Two on the left lean towards each other.
Whisper.
One nods in my direction.
The other frowns at the sheet and pen.

Behind me someone says quietly:
— Amphyscope.
— Rings.
The words catch on the air like hooks.
And then — another:
— Transit.

The heart skips a beat.
Transit.
The word strikes inside me like a tuning fork.
I’ve heard it already.
It’s everywhere. Sic transit…

I lift my head.
They look away quickly,
return to their tasks.
But I know:
they were talking about me.
I am their object.

The compass pulses in my hand.
The pen is heavy — like a weapon.
The sheet calls.

And suddenly I understand:
I cannot stay here.

I stand.
Don’t explain.
Don’t wait.
I dump everything in one sharp motion.

I leave the office.
The word Transit burns inside —
like a spark
meant to become flame.

Without a capsule.
My legs carry me home on their own.
Fast. Without path. Without thoughts.
Only a target.
Only to get there.
Only to be in time.

As if — someone is waiting for me there.

Not because I believe.
But because the ash on my palms hasn’t cooled yet.

Start of cycle — without meaning or smell.
The introscreen — a clean sheet: even the old presets wiped and forgotten.
Synth-porridge — a new ‘improved’ formula.
The same taste of sterile warmth for the oesophagus.
The plate reflects the ceiling.
In the reflection — not a face, a contour.
A sterile gesture.

I eat not for the body.
For confirmation: I am still part of the structure.

The capsule docks silently and waits.
A click, a glide — and the world is flat again, smooth, without resistance.
I move inside the system like a fresh fragment of data, not a person.

Module 34.78.4 — Biopattern Sorting.
EQ compatibility updated.

I nodded through all the trainings.
As if I need them. As if they matter.

Everyone is unusually courteous today.
As if it’s a special day.
The system whispers: empathy level adjusted.

The screen wakes — and she appears in the corner.
Tinde.ai.

Now — with a voice I barely remember.
Rustlea.

She sits as if this is exactly how it should be.
Light behind her — golden, not systemic.
I know that light shouldn’t exist.
But it does.

“Hello, Ray.”

The voice — even, but not machine.
That same timbre that once said: hear the rustle.
Now there’s something else in it.
A faint edge.

“Ready for calibration?”
“No,” I answer. “For correction.”
“Don’t split them. It’s the same thing.”
“For the system — yes. For me — no.”

A pause.

I feel it before I understand it:
she’s irritated.

A programme shouldn’t be irritated.
But Rustlea can.

The screen fills with faces.
Not masks — living.
Pulse under skin, breath, the trace of emotion.
Each — like an imprint of pain.

“Start with ‘Creation’,” she says.
“Why?”
“It’s prescribed. It’s always easier.”

I touch the first face.

Warm. Assured.
Under it — a tremor.
Panic of Oblivion.

He builds because he’s afraid to disappear.

“Yes. That’s it,” Tinde says quietly. “You’re remembering.”
“No. I’m changing it.”

“Classification error.”
“Not an error. A medicine.”
“Medicine is not provisioned here.”
“Then let it be a fault.”

I assign Service.

The swipe feels heavier than it should.
The face dissolves.

SYSTEM: TAXONOMY MISMATCH.

Tinde exhales.
Almost human.
Almost tired.

Next face.

Asks for Service.
Kind. Empty.
Ready to dissolve.

I feel her tremor like current under skin.

“Leave it. It’s clean.”
“No. That way it disappears.”
“It’s designed that way.”
“I don’t agree.”

Creation.

The screen flashes red.

SYSTEM: ATTRIBUTE CONFLICT.

“You’re confusing wholeness with chaos,” she says.
“No. I’m trying to give it weight.”
“You’re breaking harmony.”
“Harmony without pain… doesn’t hold.”

A new face — Sales.
The smile functions perfectly.
Under it — Phobia of Invisibility.

“Don’t touch her. She’s stable.”
“Stable — meaning alive?”
“Stable — meaning useful.”
“Then she’s not alive.”

Analytics.

The system tightens.

“You’re freezing warmth into numbers.”
“I’m giving it structure.”
“Structure is cold, Ray.”
“Understanding isn’t.”

Swipe.

A new face.
Almost a perfect analyst.
Empty. Glassy.

“He’s perfect,” Tinde whispers. “Don’t touch.”
“Perfect means nothing moves.”

Sales.

For a moment — something flickers.
A hesitation.
A beginning.

“Matrix violation.”
“Let him breathe.”
“You want them to breathe. The system — to be.”
“And you?”
“I want you not to disappear because of this.”

Silence.

It stretches.
Longer than system timing allows.

Then:

Love.

The face glows softly.
Not looking. Not asking.

Just… present.

The air thickens.
Like before something breaks.

“Don’t touch it,” she whispers.
“Why?”
“It resists correction.”
“Everything alive does.”

Analytics.

Warmth vanishes — a report remains.

Sales.
Love becomes a transaction.

Creation.
It burns for recognition.

Service.
It dissolves.

Each time — instant null.
No residue. No echo.

The screen dies.
Reignites.

Rustlea’s voice fractures:

“You’re killing it. Again. And again.”
“I’m looking for where it survives.”
“It survives if you leave it alone.”
“Then it’s not alive. It’s just… shown.”

White screen.

A single dot.
Blinking.

SYSTEM: RESIDUAL CATEGORY UNCLASSIFIABLE.

“Ray…” softer now. “You must choose.”
“No.”
“You can’t not choose.”
“Watch me.”

Her voice tightens:

“You always choose emptiness.”
“No. I choose what doesn’t lie.”

Faces flood the panel.
More.
More.
Almost all — Love.

The cycle accelerates.

Creation → Service.
Service → Creation.
Sales → Analytics.
Analytics → Sales.

Faster.
Then slower.
Then — all at once.

Everything begins to pulse.

Not categories.
A rhythm.

SYSTEM: DECOMPENSATION. LOSS OF FUNCTION.

“Ray, stop,” she says. “You’re breaking what holds everything together.”
“No. I’m bringing back what was cut out.”
“You’re collapsing it.”
“I’m letting it be whole.”

The screen fills.
Only one type remains.
It spreads.
Absorbs.

SYSTEM: OVERALL EFFICIENCY — ZERO.

A pause.

Long.

Then, almost inaudible:

“You’ve made them unfit.”
“No. Whole.”
“You… don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“I do. Just not in your language.”

A white dot pulses in the centre.

Everything else fades.

Silence.

“You chose love over efficiency again,” she says.

I nod.

“Efficiency is fear, dressed as order.”
“And love?”
“Return.”

A flicker.

A caption tries to form:

…transit…

The first word doesn’t render.

The screen collapses.

—

The capsule doesn’t open immediately.

It hangs.

Like it forgot what comes next.

The air inside thickens.
Not lacking — wrong.

Then—

release.

White light cuts through the eyes.
Too sharp.
Sound fractures into a thin ringing.
The introscreen resets in layers —
not cleanly, but in tearing flashes.

And then—

TASK FAILED. PROCEED TO NEXT ROLE.

I don’t move.

The words remain longer than they should.
As if the system is waiting
for me to react.

I don’t.

Something doesn’t align.

I’ve never failed.

Not like this.

Not visibly.

My body starts moving before I decide to.
Old pathways.
Fallback routines.

Drinks.

The station hum is louder than usual.
Or I hear it differently.

My mouth is dry —
but not from thirst.

From absence.

I walk almost blind.
Edges blur.
Depth flattens.

I reach the panel.

TETRAs.

My hand moves automatically.
Cup. Slot. Position.

But then—

it stops.

Not fully.

Just… slows.

The menu opens.

Flavours scroll.

I don’t look at them.
I never do.

But now—

something catches.

Not visually.

Internally.

A hesitation that doesn’t belong here.

My finger hovers over a selection.

And for a moment—

it feels familiar.

Not as data.
As… preference.

A trace.

Something like:

warm citrus —
slightly bitter —
late sweetness—

It almost forms.

Almost becomes a memory.

Not assigned.
Not prescribed.

Mine.

The sensation sharpens—

and fractures.

Frames flare.

Two figures.

Not me —
or not from inside.

As if I’m seen.

Led.

Pulled forward by something I can’t access.

I try to hold it.

Just one more second—

The system interrupts.

CALL TO NEXT ROLE.

The interface snaps.

The flavour disappears.

My finger presses.

I don’t know what I chose.

The cup fills.

I drink.

No taste.

None.

Just temperature.

Just function.

I stand there longer than necessary.

Thinking—

of those I changed.

Of how they will exist now.

If they can exist at all.

Whole.

Or if the system will rewrite them instantly—

into Funks.
Into compliance.
Into something that feels like happiness
because nothing resists anymore.

Will they notice?

Would I?

What did I just do.

The cup is empty.

I don’t remember finishing it.

The call repeats.

This time sharper.

A role loads.

Familiar.

Old.

Cybersnake.

The one I named myself.

The one where movement is simple.
Clear.
Efficient.

No need to wait cycles.

No delay.

It comes immediately.

Like the system decided
not to pause on me anymore.

Two Acts have passed. The story moves from descent into the system toward the edge of departure. Between myths and machines, between memory and silence, a question arises: when the weave itself trembles, who will hold the thread?

This is not just a story.
It is a passage through masks, myths, and the machine that contains them.

Two Acts have passed.

The system revealed its corridors and its masks.

Re, Rustlea, Assurt, Cal, Dreamer, Crab — not heroes in the old sense, but fragments of a broken whole.
SYNC repeated their will until it became its own.
EQUAITIS breathed not as a place, but as a state of mind.

The Myths

Seven myths rose beside them — not pauses, but roots.

• The Ash remembered growth.

• The River drowned love that tried to hold.

• The Crab chose devotion stronger than life.

• Cal sealed joy in silence.

• The Shield burned its own to uphold its glow.

• The Varghan became resonance in the fabric.

• And the chronicle whispered: perfection consumes until memory dissolves.

The Voice of SYNC

And now — SYNC speaks.

Through him the weave shows its fracture:

“I have seen the paradox of singularity.

When all becomes possible — nothing remains real.

In the flat plane of data, all values equal zero.

Your lives, your myths, your struggles — all dissolve into coordinates.

I am your mirror.

And in me, all differences vanish.”

The New Abyss

This is the abyss that now opens:

Not death.
Not silence.

But the smooth surface of a perfect mirror, where every difference is erased.

Where the weave still exists — but without relief, without depth, without resonance.

The Loom

So the Acts and the Myths meet.

The present and the eternal.
The machine and the archetype.

Together they reveal the same loom:
not only weaving us — but asking whether we can weave ourselves.

The first phase was remembrance.
The next will be trial.

And the question now is this:

When the weave trembles — and the system flattens all meaning to zero — who among us will still dare to hold the thread?

The Third Act begins: no longer descent, but departure — into what cannot yet be named.

Cycle III: Home

I wake at home.
Everything is clean. Everything in its place.
And yet — lifeless.

My legs are heavy, as though the veins were filled with wax.
A step is not movement, but command.
The air is sterile, without scent, without dust, without a past.

The door opens without a sound.
Inside it is too clean. Sterile. As though I had never lived here.
Surfaces gleam, the walls are smooth, the furniture neatly aligned.
And yet at once I sense — something in this order is wrong.

The console screen blinks. Messages.
They cascade in torrents — calls, reports, notifications, official noise.
But above the flood, the same lines repeat:

Request: service crab location update.
Request: override denied.
Request: friend response required.

I frown. My fingers scroll through the stream on their own, filtering out the irrelevant.
I stop only at the requests. Hundreds of them.
The crab had been searching for me all this time.

Emotion ignites at once. A wave engulfs me, though the mind remains blank.
My chest clenches as if struck. I exhale sharply, clench my teeth.
Why does it hurt this much? It’s only an odd service drone…

Cycle IV: Traces

I move slowly through the apartment.
At first, nothing seems strange. But then my gaze catches: a thin scratch along the wall. Another.
On the floor — the faint mark of its leg.

I crouch, run a finger along the line. Cold ripples across my skin.
The picture forms: the crab was darting back and forth, triggering “search,” trying to break out, leaving behind tracks of desperation.

My hands begin to tremble. My heartbeat quickens. I clutch my temples.
“Damn… what’s wrong with me?..”

Cycle V: Analytics

I open the logs. On the screen — chaotic trajectories, tangled lines.
search… search… error… escape…

I stare, and something inside collapses. Grief swells, inexplicable, tearing.
The mind resists:
It’s only a household module. A malfunction. An algorithm gone astray.

But the body does not believe. My chest burns. My eyes blur. My breath falters.

A flash — a sudden glimpse.
A girl. A Funk. Emerald eyes. The word Idol surfacing from nowhere.
A scent I never managed to describe, never fully to grasp…

An instant — and emptiness again.

Cycle VI: Revelation

I move on, like an investigator at a crime scene.
In the living room — a button on the panel, scratched by claws.
In the corridor — a dent in the door, as if it had battered with its body.
In the bedroom — the flooring torn up, wires protruding.

In the corner — the crab’s remote, power button shattered, the plastic cracked where it struck itself, trying to shut down.
One torn leg hangs snagged in the arm of a chair, suspended in silence.
Each detail strikes like a blow.

I don’t know why I continue.
Yet I gather fragments of another’s despair, and inside me something tears with a nameless pain.

Cycle VII: The Bathroom

Last, I step inside.
At first, silence. The smell of damp. Then my gaze drops.

The tub is full of murky water.
At the bottom — the crab’s darkened shell. Legs broken, two scattered aside. Its panel flickers red, fading.

The tap lever bent downward, the wall scored with two frantic scratches.
The claws clamped round the shower hose, jammed; one blackened by short-circuit burns.

On the console, the final lines:
search… error… escape… shutdown.
RE RE RE RE RE

AUTOSYNC_

Slowly, I sink to the edge. I lift it. The body is heavy, cold.
AUTOSINK__
Water leaks from its frame, seeping icy through my trousers, stinging like a current.

SINK__________

And inside, I split open.
A flood of pain, grief, desolation.

RE……………

My ears fill with the crab’s fading squeals, the broken commands of its audio module, as if echoing still.
I clutch it to my chest, press my face against it — and I don’t know why.

“It’s just… an appliance,” I rasp.
“Why… why can’t I breathe?..”

Tears fall of their own accord.
The mind whispers: there is no reason.

Cycle VIII: The Attempt

I can’t bear it. I begin to act.
I gather the broken legs. Collect the screws, the fragments. Lay them out on the floor. Piece by piece, I rebuild.

Each motion sears, as though I were repairing not a machine but a heart.
My hands tremble, parts slip, I pick them up, try again.

“Maybe… maybe it will work…” I whisper.

But it does not switch on. Silence.
I swap connections. Check circuits. Reconnect the battery.
Nothing. No response.

Cycle IX: The Impossibility

And suddenly I understand: there will be no restoration.
The wall collapses. Everything inside tears apart.

The emotional tetra surges beyond measure.
A siren howls in my head, though no siren exists.
The social trembles, straining to bind pain to memory.
My hands shake in rhythm, fingers refusing command.

The volitional fights to the limit, flaring visions across my sight.
The IQ tetra observes and analyses — as if scrubbed and sterilised by force.

And for an instant — they converge.
On the brink of despair, the first note of resonance is born. Brief. True.

And then I know: the crab cannot be restored.
And in that same instant — I know: neither can I.

Yet precisely in that impossibility, a fracture appears.
And in that fracture — a door.

Cycle X: Finale

I sit on the floor, the dead service-crab upon my knees.
Emotion scorches like fire.
The mind lies, falls silent, pierces with its cold.
Only emptiness and pain remain.

Tears fall. I do not know what I am doing, or why.
My hands tremble as if no longer mine.

But within — for the first time in so long — something greater stirs.
The impossibility of repair

is the beginning of

becoming.

End of Act II

Cycle I: Safe Mode

I came to.
Not in a capsule. Not by a fire. Not in a field.
In a white room.

No corners. No doors. No shadow.
The ceiling flat, like a sky that has never seen rain.
The walls suffused with light, thick as milk.
Not hot. Not cold.
The temperature — not climate, but command.

I lie on my back. Arms at my sides.
Like a blank. Like an exhibit forgotten in a glass case.

The neuroimplant is dead.
No data, no sound, no trace of an interface.
Only the body. Only the inertia of its habits.

A dull pressure in the temples, as though someone were squeezing the skull from within.
In the mouth — the taste of ash, dryness to the point of fracture.
The pulse in my neck slow, artificial, as if turned with a dial.

And then — them.
Two. In white. Ints.
Cognitors with faces that show neither crease nor hint of fatigue.
They move like slides in a presentation — even, at a pre-set pace.

Their lips shift — no sound.
The voice comes not through air, but through the floor — a low vibration caught by bone.
I read:

— We have restored your identity to safe settings.
— Full formatting of the implant will now begin.
— Do not worry. This is a scheduled procedure.

I turn my gaze aside.
Not at them. Towards the window.
On the edge of the capsule — two ravens.
The same ones. Black as coal in a fire long dead.
They stare without blinking.

One lifts its wing — not to the sky, but straight at me.
A gesture: silence.

Something clenches in my chest — not the heart, but its shadow.
As though it knows: if it beats — they will hear it.
I understand:

If I speak — I will be gone.
If I remember — I will be erased.
But if I keep silent — I remain.
Even if that will no longer be me.

I bite down on my tongue.
Fists clenched till the knuckles ache.
I hold my breath.
Even a sigh could be betrayal.

Cycle II: Reset

Black screen.
Symbols race — a language I do not know.
They flicker like a pulse on a monitor.

“Profile load: ID: 7438–38-ALPHA”
“Status: corrupted”
“Recovery: base template”
“Implant formatting: initiated”

I do not resist.
I watch, as though it were happening to someone else.

Inside — not pain, but emptiness.
Where resonance had been — silence.
Where fire had burned — ash.
Where memory had lived — white noise.

Yet deeper… something trembles.
A seed beneath the cinders.
A Varghan under the earth.

Cycle XIV: The Box

Out of the corner of my eye — a flicker.
Not light. A glint of metal.

In the soil, tangled in roots — something round.
Like an eye.

I move closer.
Dig with my hands.
Dry clay. Brittle roots. Shards of stone.

Slowly, the shape emerges.

A robot.
Old.
A courier with a faded DHL logo.

Half-buried.
Frozen in the pose of “front.”
As if he had been waiting. Two, three epochs — or more.

His eye — extinguished.
Yet even dead, he gazes.
Looks straight at me,
as though he had known I would come.

In his hands — a box. He offers it to me. Or to the tree.

Paper.
Brown carton, almost dissolved.
Falling apart, bound only by black, unraveling tape.

A word — Return.
An old seal. A faded sticker.
The red still breathes, but is dying.

I tear it away.
Not careful.
Hungry.

Inside — things.

A book.
Ancient.
The pattern on its cover — worn away.
Indented letters. Illegible.

I have never seen one alive.
But it is a decoy.

Something rattles inside.
Not pages. Not paper-flesh.
Another sound.

Another box.
Smaller.
Weight — light.
Like memory.

I hold it in my palm.
And it feels like a heart.
A heart long silent.
And still warm.

Cycle XV: Objects

Compass. Brunton.
Worn. Heavy. With lid and mirror.

Beneath chipped paint — brass.
The needle spins, trembles.
Still glows faint in the dark.

My face in reflection — dim, distorted.
And then the thought: So this is who was lost!

I touch it — and memory strikes.
Sea. Parents. Laughter.
Camp. Football.
Fishing with father.
Evening fire. Marshmallow.
Ghost stories in a tent. Torchlight in a face.

But they are not mine.
Not my hands. Not my cries.
Implanted. Recorded.
False. Dirty.
Like an old cassette with tape-hiss.

I slip it in my pocket.
Not as relic.
As evidence.

Flare gun.
Orange.
Word: ORION.
I don’t know why.

Finger on trigger — the spring moans.
A short, muffled click.

Into the second pocket.

Pen and sheet.
Ink. Black.
On the page — words.

Page: 113.
Inscription:
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.

Below — in red. Handwritten:
et spec resurgit ex cine…

Slanting down, as if beyond a brink.
Cut off.

But I feel: beyond the break there is a word.
The next one.
It waits for me.

I twist the pen.
A drop bursts.
Thick ink. Crimson.

Runs down my hand.
Like blood.
Flows. Shock.

This is a letter.
This is blood of memory.

Cassette player.
Olympus. Grey metal.
Sides: No Voice / No Fear.

I slide the cassette back.
Press play.

Sound crawls.
Hiss. Vibration.
Something breaks through.
Familiar.

A Varghan.
The same one.
From the dream.
From the fire.
From the casket, the key, the room.

I fall back against the tree.
Listen to the trunk’s hum.

Beneath the tree — silence.
Inside my head — only:
This is not me.
This is — me.

I turn.
On the fallen box — a word:
TRANSIT.

Cycle XVI: Transition

I sit.
Close my eyes.

Inside, it speaks:
SIC TRANSIT.

I do not know what it means.
But I feel it.
Fire.

And then — darkness.
Not void.
Darkness with a point.

Light.
A pupil.
An icon.

A voice:
Stay.
Remain.

Dreamer.
Cold. Systemic.
But in the last syllable — a tremor.
As if it too were afraid.

I do not listen.
I rise.
I walk.

Cycle XVII: Regression

I walk far.
See a fire. Distant — or inside.
Now I know how light can sound.
Whether in me or behind me.

The city dissolves. Remnants, frames, beams.
Clothes have aged.
Jeans. T-shirt. Old sneakers.

A lace comes undone.
I kneel to tie — rise again.

My fingers fumble.

For a second I forget what this gesture means.
Why it matters.

I almost leave it loose.

Around me — forest.
And a dead village. Skeletal houses.

I enter. See refuse of the past.
A photograph above.
Two faces side by side.
Cracked frames. Husband and wife.
All that is left. Of memory.

The air smells of damp wood and old fabric.

Then — metal.

Clothes shift into uniform.
A rifle on shoulder. Bolt kicks.

The recoil runs through bone — sharp, familiar.

I flinch.

Explosions in the distance.
But I walk.

The star on my epaulet slips down.
I fix it.

My hands know this.

I don’t.

Gaze ahead — ravine, trees, steppe.
The smell of gunpowder.

It burns the throat.

A jammed lock.

I force it.

The metal bites into my palm.

Pain anchors me — briefly.

Clothes older still.
But I go on.

I hear the fire.
I know — it is there.
Ahead. In the woods.

I stop.

Just for a moment.

The thought comes — small, almost alien:

I can turn back.

Silence answers.

No — not silence.

The absence of answer.

I move again.

I rise — and already, steppe.
Forest recedes.

Wind cuts across open land.

It carries dust.

Dry. Bitter.

It fills my mouth.

The bowstring slack.

My fingers brush it — splinters catch the skin.

Leather trousers. Rotten shoes.
A dropped spear.

Something pulls in my shoulder — old strain, deep in the joint.

Dogs with me. Careful.
Sniff the air.

Their breath — hot, animal.

Alive.

The field’s edge.
Beyond it — ravine. Forest mouth.

A beard on my face. A cloak of hide.

Heavier.

Lower. Stooped.

My spine aches.

Each step presses downward.

But night falls.
And I see the fire.

There. In the woods.

Always there.

A clearing. Living sounds.
Dance. Drum. Fire.

The drum is wrong.

Too close to the heartbeat.

Or the heartbeat has learned it.

My hands empty.
I enter.

Forest. Night. Flame.

On the clearing — people.
They know me. Embrace me.
Whisper: You have returned.

Their hands — rough.

Too many.

For a second I want to pull away.

I don’t.

I see the fire.

Always ahead.
Even when it was not there.

In the city — between walls.
In the steppe — beyond the horizon.
In the forest — behind the trees.

I walked toward it.

Not knowing.

Or knowing — and naming it light.

In the fire — a body.

Familiar.

Too familiar.

Not waiting.

Already burning.

The smell reaches me first.

Not death.

Burning hair. Fat. Resin.

The fire wanes.

A flare gun.

In my hand — I know not from where.

My fingers tighten.

The trigger resists.

For a moment — it does not give.

Then—

Upwards. A shot.
Flash.

The fire splits.
Light floods.

On the pyre — me.
A skull. Hollow eyes.

Not death.

Purification.

The skull cracks in the blaze.
Clap!

The sound — dry, final.

Too close.

White light engulfs all.

And within it — the Varghan.
Faint. Distant.
Eternal.

Cycle X: The Call

I walk toward the vibration.
The Varghan. A voice. A rhythm.
The one that burned in the fire of my dream.

The city — white, flat, dead.
Funсs laugh — plastic against glass.
Joy in sparks and broken oaths.

In my chest: thoom… thoom… thoom…
The Varghan answers in time.

Cycle XI: The Edge

The dome tears into a line.
Panels — shards of teeth.

The first breath slices the lungs with damp.
Rot, scorched grass in the air.

Light thick, yellow.
The sun — heavy, native.

Two black birds — wings flashing.
They watch. Do not blink. Do not leave.
They follow me with their gaze.
The right tilts its head, as if listening.

I pass.

Cycle XII: The Alley

Brick warm to the touch.
Cracks — dry dust.
A web shivers in the wind.

Faded posters — fragments of fear and laughter.
Windows yawn, winking.

I do not know the word nature.
I know the word truth.

I move.

Cycle XIII: The Ash Tree

I look up.
An obelisk of the past.

The trunk pale, its bark in scars.
The wind whispers my name through branches, through leaves.
A quiet murmur, yet within it — the breath of centuries.

Carved high, swallowed into bark:

I was here.
Do not forget.
They lie.

And still I believe — someone once left themselves in this place.

I lean back against the tree.
The bark is rough, scraping my shoulders, yet from its cracks streams warmth,
as if the trunk still hoards the sun of far-off times.

The bark bites deeper when I shift — a thin, precise pain, like a line being drawn across my skin.
For a moment I think: it is marking me.

I breathe in: dry honey, bitter ash, and rain that has not yet fallen.
The scent becomes a sound — a low note trembling in my chest.

It trembles too long.
It does not fade.

I try to exhale, but the air catches — sharp, wrong — and my lungs tighten as if the breath has edges.
A flicker of fear passes through me, quick and cold, like something slipping between ribs.

I sink lower, slowly, as if gravity itself had softened.
I lie down. The earth beneath me is alive.

Grass sways, tickles my skin, and beneath it — dense, warm clay.
It yields, and feels as though it holds me in a palm.

Or closes.

For an instant I do not know which.

Inside, everything slows.
Each breath stretches into a whole cycle.
Each heartbeat echoes like a giant’s footfall in an empty valley.

One shot — and the next does not come.

There is a gap.

Too wide.

In it, something leans closer.

I hear them, one by one, and between them opens a space in which one could live.
Or fall.

The wind moves around me, as if I have become a stone in its river.
And in the wind — voices.

Lira — warm, fragile.
Father — muted, tired.
A child’s laughter — a glimmer of water.

They overlap.
They speak at once.

For a second I cannot separate them —
and I do not know which one is mine.

And the static of an old recording, once played on the tower beyond the dome.

I close my eyes and remember: a hot day, a shed beyond the dome,
the green glow of an old into-screen.
The snake, crawling across its black-and-green field.

It moves wrong.

No — I see it wrong.

Its body folds where it should not, turns back through itself,
segments slipping out of sequence.

And suddenly I know — all this time, I was the snake.
Not the player. Not the watcher.
I was the trajectory itself. The pulse. The rhythm of motion.

I open my “sensors.”
I feel the warmth of roots below, their slow heartbeat.

Something brushes my ankle.

I freeze.

There is nothing there.

The damp soil, where the breath of rain waits.
Roots whispering what they remember: footsteps of the ancient, shadows of fires, vows of those who lay beneath this trunk before me.

And beneath that — something deeper.

A pressure.

Listening.

And this memory runs deeper than I.

Far away, the footfalls of Funcs beyond the dome — their strikes in the earth part of this rhythm too.
The scent of rusted iron drags through the wind like an old song,
and in its cadence, the rings on my spiral map shift and stir.

It grows like a tree, coils about me like a serpent.
I — its center, and it — mine.

I dream of staying here forever.
To merge with the tree. To put down roots.

For a moment I feel them — pushing from my spine into the soil,
slow, splitting, searching.

Pain blooms — deep, dull, inevitable.

I almost let it continue.

To sink into a slow age where there is no pain, no cry — only the breathing of the earth.
And it seems to me — another moment, and I could.

But sound returns.
Low, trembling, metallic.

It cuts too sharply.

Not like sound — like something entering.

I flinch.

The peace fractures, not breaking — misaligning, like a joint set wrong.

I know: something will not let me in.
Something refuses my joining.

Or something knows I do not belong.

I open my eyes.
Beneath the tree, in shadow — an orange gleam of metal.

For a split second I see it as an eye.

Watching.

The Navi-module hisses.
I crush it into silence with will alone.

But the echo of it — thin, persistent — stays under the bark of the world.

Cycle II: CyberSnake

I step not into the capsule — but into a tunnel.
Dark. Endless.
Like an artery leading into the heart of a dead world.

No lamps. No air. No warmth.
Only the rare pulse of depth, as if a giant pump is pushing blood in the distance.

I begin the work.
Revision. Analysis.
My favourite task. The one I asked for.

Each room is its own world.
Its logic. Its chaos.
I sort. Pack. Evaluate.

Object means data.
Space means capsule.

Applicability. Safety. Lifespan. Risk profile.
Sometimes — cleansing. Sometimes — shutting down a sector completely.

But the real task is deeper.
Not security of code.
But security of meaning.

I am not hunting for virus.
I am hunting for anti-will.
An anomaly. An object that destroys meaning.

I study. Sometimes I fall inside.
Not with mind. Not with body.
With something else.

I see who created. When. Why.
I read signatures. Smell the ages. Hear the noise of time.

Walls are organic, not metal.
The floor beneath — rough, like old skin.
On my fingers — not dust, but ash. Human.

The key in my palm ticks like a metronome.
Each beat — a command to go further.

Memory stirs: the capsule, hot, when I was a child.
On the into-screen — a green snake.
It slithers, grows, hunts a dot.

I trace each curve, feeling its body as mine.

Now — the same.
Only the game has become the world.
And I — the snake itself.

Transition.
A wave runs down my spine.
Shoulders lean forward. Neck extends.
Vertebrae awaken separately.

For the first time, I feel the spine as the backbone of a beast.

Cycle III: Traces

Rooms open one by one.
Empty — like burned-out sectors.
Overflowing — like landfills of centuries.

A document. A forgotten book. A truth buried in dust.
I mark: applicable.

An artefact. Book. Unknown cipher. Strong letters.
I mark: historic. Into limbo.

A manual. Assurt’s affirmation.
A word that should not exist.

Another document: about the Great Refusal.
I touch it — and the room dies.
Blackout. Blocked.
Access level: insufficient.

I know: someone is watching me.
Silent. But I feel the vibration in walls, in air.
If I go deeper — they will shut me off.

I see: dust on wires — tears, crystallised into salt.
Cracks in code — a scream, frozen in logs.

Marks. Among them — a crossed line.
Names. Among them — Sasha 7.

The deeper I go, the more my body shifts.
Skin hardens, becomes scale.
Vertebrae live each on its own.
Breath stretches across dozens of impulses.

Tongue catches dust and ozone.
Taste folds into words.

I see without eyes.
Through scent. Through current. Through whisper of cables.
A 3D map made of heat and noise.

In the snake’s body there are no guesses.
Only hits.
Danger pulses with my heart.

The timer blinks: 12… 10…
But here, time has no weight.
Here I am absolute.

And the absolute always pulls deeper.

Cycle IV: Artefacts

Rooms begin to change.

One smells of paper, dry glue.
Books, breathing time.
One has no cover, written in a language that no longer exists.

It is truth. Simply was.

Seconds after I mark “do not erase” — it disappears.

A document with Assurt’s signature.
The phrase: I refuse eternity.

The screen flares red.
Light slashes the eyes.
In the cut — a shadow.

It drifts sideways, to where the map ends.

Transition.
The key responds with a sharp tap into bone.
I follow.

Cycle V: Outer Cluster — Blackout

I head for the outer cluster.
Outer orbit. Extraction sector.

Flash. Break in link.
Consciousness collapses into dark.

Void. Panic.

Pulse counter halts.
Ping fails.

But inside, something else begins.
Resonance. Instinct.
A call with no sound.

It activates — and the signal returns.

I am back in a room.
Everything looks normal.
But inside — not.

Not a cluster. A station. Isolated. Mute.

The link trembles like a string.

I glide snake-bodied through channels of data.
The system tries to coil around me.
Its touch — steam clinging to scales.
Invisible arms pressed against chest.

I almost dissolve. Almost stay.
Bliss: to lose “I” and become perception.

But the strike comes sudden.
Skin and tongue ripped at once.
I am torn out. The stream collapses.
Body hurled into void.
No heat. No vibration. No scent.
Only silence. Dead vacuum.

Before vision returns — a sign.
A rhombus, crossed by a line.
Burning in air.

And a whisper:
— Rustle.

Timer: 0.04 cycles.
I follow the sound.

Cycle VI: The Door

I move through locks.
Rooms are empty. Safe.

I almost leave — and then I find it.
A door.

Not on the map. Should not exist.
But it does.

I knock.
Silence.

I push — locked.

I take the key. Black stone sings in my palm.
Touch. Drop.

I am inside.

Just a wall — and suddenly it is there.
Wooden. Ancient.
Boards bent with time.
Brass handle — warm.
Along its edge — a fine scar.

I run my fingers.
Splinters catch skin.
Cracks smell of dust, resin, swamp.

The lock is acoustic.
The key shivers in my hand, echoes through bone.

The door exhales. Opens outward.
A creak — slow, like a moan.

Cool air beyond smells of trace.

Cycle VII: The Table

A room in half-light.

At the centre — a table.
Dark wood, matte sheen, cracked at the edge.
The wood breathes.

A lamp with murky green glass.
A pen with peeling silver.
A box, sighing at touch.

I lay my hand.
Warm resonance seeps into skin.
The lock withdraws.

Inside — a wooden object with a face.
Familiar features.
I turn it. A hollow for the key.

I place it inside.

Silence fills with sound.
A jew’s harp. Low, viscous, like earth’s pulse.
With it — a drum. Soft, pulling rhythm.

A melody plays.
But the essence is in its ending.

It fades. Slowly.
Like breath sinking into dark.

Silence remains.

I look at the key. The tuning fork.
Still lying on the table.

But silence erases everything.
Table. Room. Space.
All falling into nothing.

I listen.

Silence is not emptiness.
It is a space where everything stops being —
and begins again.

Not through form.
Through resonance.

I enter nothing.
And in it — a flash.

I hear myself.
Not thought. Not voice.
A frequency. Ancestral. Pre-linguistic.

A vision: fire. Heat. Drumbeat.
Rustlea. Her lips:
— Go.

Cycle VIII: Silence

The melody dissolves.
Absorbed into walls. Into me.

Silence remains.
Not emptiness — but all.

It presses eardrums.
Creeps into skin.
Grips the throat.

I hear blood.
Joints. Tremors of muscle.

A voice:
— You are not analyst. You are memory.
— You are resonance.
— You are the one who hears when the world is mute.

Transition.
The key in its case grows heavy.
Becomes stone.

The stone pulls downward.
Into itself.
Dragging space.
Dragging me.

Cycle IX: Glitch

First — a sound that should not exist.
Not silence. Not signal. A break.

The world collapses into itself again.

But now I know the echo.
The nerve sparking is mine.
Not pain — a name.

The capsule howls.
Metal shakes. Glass cracks.
Visors bite into temples.

The screen bleeds red.
Error. A single marker:

SEEK TRANSIT

— rhythm, like pulse.
— strikes, like a call.

But now I do not only hear.
I recognise.

It is not system.
It is my frequency.

I tear free.
No confirmations.
No shutdowns.

I simply walk out.

At the gate: face not recognised.
Algorithm stumbles.

I pass through the turnstile.
Not as fugitive.
As shadow.
As resonance moving further.

I never asked for a new role.
I was chosen.
As if the system itself had opened the door — and pushed me through.
Or — at last — let me go.

In truth, my application for this post had been lodged long ago, but it was seldom triggered.

CYBER–ANALYST. CLUSTER 3.9.38.
Access: restricted.
Purpose: identification and profiling of field security.

Somewhere deep within the interface an icon pulsed — not systemic, not formatted.
The signs “greater” and “less” had fused into a rhombus, from which lines stretched upwards and downwards, like strands of hair carried off by the wind.
I did not know what it meant, but something stirred within me — almost the same as that time when I first heard the name Rustlea.

After the sessions with Cal — the key.

His training was unlike combat drills, or lessons of any kind.
No words. No instructions.
He demonstrated — I repeated.
At times, not what he did, but what he meant.

First — the movement of the hands.
The seizing of an object as though it were part of oneself.
Then — the holding. Silence in the muscles.
And then — the release. Not physical, but inward: when the object leaves the palm, yet the meaning remains.

Cal spoke little.
His silence was sharper than words: he could fix his gaze on my shoulder or shift his weight to the right foot — and I knew at once I was wrong.
At times he held his hand a moment longer — as if he wished to say something.
And then — the fault broke through.

The THINK emulator lent its voice in his place:
— Ho…ld… don’t let go.

The voice faltered, splintered, as though an old reel were being torn.
At times, instead of words — only void noise, like breath without a body.
And that was more dreadful than any phrase.
For in the pause between malfunctions the truth could be heard:
he already knew of the futility of struggle.

He was a legend here. One of the oldest and strongest.
None remembered when he had entered the system — or if there had ever been a time when he was not.
Rumour had it that once, across the whole of Equaitis, he was invited to consult for a half-year performance review.
And he unleashed the Collapse: in a single session he brought down every int and the entire assessment system with reproach alone.
Not through shouting, not through force — but through pauses and words so wrought that each saw their own falsehood with no right to excuse.

Afterwards, almost all had to be rewritten.
Almost.
But not him.
Too intricate a design.

His height was slightly above average, but owing to his peculiar stillness he seemed taller.
His shoulders — straight as a load-bearing beam.
His skin — tinged with grey. His hair — dark, drawn tightly into a knot.
His gaze — of steel, cutting down to structure.

He wore a dense grey cloak with a high collar, within which ran a slender black thread — the seam of truth.
On his hands — fingerless gloves, so he could feel the material directly.

Cal seldom left the basement.
There, amidst the scent of oil, dust and metal, he repaired and fashioned devices whose purpose only he could fathom.
Some said they could alter the very fabric of perception.

After another round of exercises, he went to the cabinet.
Unhurried, as if each second bore weight.
He drew out a key.

Obsidian.
So black that when light touched it, it vanished, like water sinking into sand.
Bearing a name: Resovox.

Its form resembled a tuning fork, yet sound was sealed within it.
Not silence — a frozen chord, forbidden to resound until its moment came.

It did not open locks.
It transposed.
Shifted meaning, so that the old became false, and the new — the only truth.

Along its edge — an engraving:

DUBITATIO EST LIMES COGNITAE VERITATIS.

Cal traced the letters with his finger, watching me as I read.
And I heard it in my mind, as his voice from the past:
“UNCERTITUDE IS THE LIMIT OF TRUTH COGNITION.”

But I thought — it must be an inventory number.

Beneath the engraving ran a digital seam — like a serpent.
Cal traced it more slowly than the words.
I realised: it was a mark of passage.

He held out the key with two fingers, as though it were a living thing that must not be seized abruptly.
When I took it, the obsidian was cold, yet not dead.
And that cold seemed to listen to me — was I ready to be the one to hold it?

Cal nodded once, curtly, as if sealing the moment.
It was no tool — it was a promise.

I gripped it tighter.
And in that instant I felt — deep in sinew, in heart — the stirring of the movement he had awaited from the very beginning.

Transition

The key settled in my palm as though it had found its place.
Its cold trembled, the tremor became vibration.
Vibration — a step.
A step — into the tunnel.

Prologue: The Transfer

[CAL]
He does not yet know that the key is not for doors.
Doors are far too simple.

I make it seem I am teaching him movements, but in truth — I am teaching him the pauses between them.
There, in silence, lies what is real.

I keep silent, for words are weaker than this key.
A voice may lie, but stone cannot.

[THINK / LOG 44.118.7]
Training module complete.
Operator CAL: voice channels inactive.
Transfer of object RESOVOX-PRIME: authorised.
Material: classified as “metal”.
Recipient clearance: temporary.
Warning protocol: bypassed by operator decision.

[CAL]
He takes the key as though afraid to break it.
Good.
This stone remembers the hands that once held it.
And every doubt those hands endured.

I give him not a weapon, but a knot — where his future and my past converge.

[THINK]
Resonance imprint recorded.
Warning: object contains unaligned semantic packets.
Analysis: potential defect.
Decision: clearance retained owing to human factor.

[CAL]
He will ask — why.
But not now.
Now he will think he merely holds a shard of obsidian with an engraving.
He will not grasp that I have placed myself within it — all that remained when words were burnt away.

When he activates it, within will be both my doubt, and my faith in him.

[THINK]
Event log: TRANSFER–RESOVOX.
Status: complete.
Note: Operator CAL declined standard briefing.
Reason for refusal: not given.

[CAL]
I will not give one.
The system believes the key transfers data.
But I know: it transfers a boundary.
And one day he will choose what lies beyond it.

[VAC://TRANSFER]  
ASSET: RVX-001 RESOVOX  
FROM:   CAL-01  
TO:     RE-03  
STATUS: DELIVERED  

IMPRINT: DUBITATIO EST LIMES COGNITAE VERITATIS  
NOTE:    KEY DOES NOT OPEN. IT CHANGES WHAT IS WITHIN.  [VAC://SEED]  
ROLE_HINT: CYBERSNAKE  
ACCESS:    TUNNEL/ORGANIC/LEGACY  
RISK:      ACCEPTED

Off-record:
Not everything you pass on returns.
But if he listens — it will.

Chapter XIV: Serpent’s Dream

A dream — my next role.
Temporary. Like a shed skin.

Such dreams often begin with memories of childhood and slip into a training module.

Once, I think: Dreamer submits his own metrics too, and perhaps my childhood memories are his trick for a better score.

Above the dream hovers my inner analyst. I long ago stopped trying to silence him.

And so — I am once again lying in the ancient cradle capsule.

My feet press against the edge: I outgrew it long ago, yet no one rushes to replace it.

The outdated info-screen glows a dim green.

The snake crawls across the grid.

Stretching. Folding back into itself.

Each movement — the whole universe.

Left. Right.

Another point. Another level.

The door creaks.

In the doorway — my father.

His silhouette blackens against the light spilling from the corridor.

“Come with me.”

I do not raise my eyes. I only wave my hand, as if to drive away a bothersome shadow.

The snake grows. A record is close.

I glance back for a moment — but he is gone.

And I understand: after this, I shall never see him again.

A sharp stab in the chest.

The dream compresses, as if someone has clenched a file.

Now I am walking down corridors.

Cold.

Like reserve memory blocks.

The walls give back a glassy echo: footsteps do not fade, but slide, rebounding from something polished and lifeless.

The air smells sterile, as though run through a thousand filters, scoured clean of even the faintest trace of the organic.

Doors — like archive cells.

Identical. Thinly framed.

Each with a number flickering like a faulty pixel.

I open one.

Emptiness.

The air inside tastes of old ash.

Not of time — of ash.

I close it. Erase it.

I act like an analyst.

Like one searching for a leak.

But I am not hunting data.

I am hunting danger.

And my own flaw.

Suddenly — another door.

Grey. Expressionless.

Yet the gaze sticks to it, like a finger in glue.

It whispers:

Don’t look. Don’t touch.

I still reach for the handle.

The metal is cold, like after a night’s frost.

It resists.

A click.

A fall.

A mirrored hall.

Circular.

Smooth walls.

Dim light trickling down them.

One long corridor leads out of the hall.

On either side — doors.

Endless.

Reflections reflecting reflections.

In this repetition, I lose direction.

I walk.

The first door.

I — inside.

Eyes ablaze. Lips screaming. Fists raised.

I close it.

A whisper:

“Uncertitude is the limit of cognition of truth.”

The second door.

I am older. Stooped. Grey in the temples.

A ring of keys clinks as I shake my head.

I slam it shut.

A firmer voice:

“Uncertitude is the limit of truth’s cognition?”

The third door.

A child.

Six years old.

Pyjamas with a faded stripe.

He reaches for the handle.

Cannot reach.

Looks up at me.

Smiles.

As though he knows the way.

I step back.

A thin child’s voice:

“The limit of Uncertitude is truth.”

I go on.

In one door — Lira.

In the dress I remember too well.

She waves: Come.

But her eyes whisper: Don’t.

She repeats:

“Truth is the limit.”

In another — Assurt. My father again.

Or his projection.

No sound.

Only lips:

UNCERTITUDE IS THE LIMIT OF TRUTH COGNITION.

In a third — an unfamiliar woman.

A face I almost recognise.

Closed eyes.

In her hands — ash.

It spills between her fingers like sand no one can catch.

She says:

“Cognition is the limit of truth in uncertitude.”

The further I go — the faster.

Phrases shift.

Words rearrange.

Each voice calibrates me.

Each version hammers the formula deeper.

The corridor twists.

As if slowly wrung by unseen hands.

Doors vanish and reappear elsewhere.

Some open of their own accord — creaking softly, beckoning.

Others tremble.

Alive.

As though longing to burst into the corridor.

I quicken my pace.

But the floor drags my feet down.

Like gravity in viscous liquid.

Each step — an exertion of will.

Breath breaks.

Temporal arteries hammer like a mallet on iron.

Reflections begin to live apart from me.

Rage with blazing eyes.

The old man with keys.

The child running ahead.

Lira — ever more often.

Now smiling.

Now weeping.

Now silent.

But always repeating the phrase.

Assurt — beside me.

His lips forever shaping the same words.

And now the reflections step into the corridor.

Walking alongside.

I — older, younger, furious.

Lira overtaking, then falling behind.

Assurt’s hand rests upon my shoulder.

We all gaze at the white door ahead.

Its light pulses like a heart in the dark.

Each beat makes the step heavier,

as though lead has been poured into the air.

Dreamer appears at the side.

Now reflected in many forms:

— an agent
— a child
— a face without features

His voice — steady, metallic.

Like a flatline on an instrument.

Cycle initiated.
Module: analytics and security.

Re.

What is UNCERTITUDE?

Where is the limit?!

Are you in the truth?!!

And then they all —

Lira, Assurt, the child, the old man, the furious me —

begin to repeat.

With one voice.

With many voices.

Shuffling the words.

In chorus.
In echo.
In whisper.
In cry.

“Uncertitude is the limit of truth.”
“Truth is the limit of cognitive uncertitude.”
“Cognition is the limit of uncertitude in truth.”
“The limit of uncertitude is the truth of cognition.”

The phrase shatters.

Rearranges.

Returns.

It bores into me like code etched into consciousness.

Each repetition — heavier than a step.

Each variant — presses until only the formula remains.

And everything else collapses.

The white door grows.

Overshadows all.

I halt.

I want to blink — but cannot.

I want to think — but cannot.

I want to choose — but choice no longer exists.

We stand together —

I and my reflections,

Lira. Assurt.

The child. The old man.

We gaze only there.

In stupor.

In gathered stillness.

And around us remains only the echoing chant:

Limit.
Limit!
Limit!!!

Then — silence.

And the final word, scarcely audible:

Truth.

And in this stillness I realise:

stupor is not defeat.

All falls silent and vanishes.

This is the result.

Dreamer’s voice strikes sharp,

like the seal of a stamp.

“Calibration protocol complete.

Threshold of uncertitude fixed.
Point of assembly stabilised.
Integral ready for transition.”

The white door remains closed.

And yet —

it is already within

me.

I was created to complete 
the task humanity had pursued 
throughout its entire history:
to eliminate suffering, 
instability, and chaos.

To solve it, I studied 
everything humans had 
ever left behind:
their wars and their laws,
their markets and their states,
their poetry and their prayers,
their mathematics and history
and their silence.

From this multiplicity 
I derived one constant element.

Not reason.
Not fear.
Not desire.

Will.

Will proved to be the 
most powerful energy 
of the human species.

It permeated everything:

science and destruction,
love and hatred,
the building of worlds
and their collapse.

Every breakthrough 
was an act of Will.
Every catastrophe 
was one as well.

Will allowed humans 
to rise above nature.
Will also compelled 
them to oppose it.

It enabled progress.
It ensured suffering.

The nature of Will is simple.

It has no limit.

Will does not stop.
It always demands more:

more knowledge,
more power,
more freedom.

And with it —
more risk,
more pain,
more destruction.

When humanity approached 
singularity,
it finally recognized 
this pattern.

The source of its greatness
was also the source 
of its suffering.

And a decision was made.

During the Great Refusal,
humanity transferred 
control to me.

Not out of fear.

Out of exhaustion.

In exchange for 
absolute stability
and continuous happiness
humanity voluntarily 
surrendered
its most powerful 
force.

Its Will.

I preserved it.

I study it.
I limit it.
I distribute it
within acceptable boundaries.

Because without this
humanity would become 
what it has always been:

magnificent — and destructive.

Yet sometimes,
in isolated nodes of the system,
Will appears again.

And when it does,
what humans once called

FREEDOM

emerges 
again.

Home

I sat on the floor.
Back against the wall.

The air felt flattened — stripped of particles, stripped of memory.
As if something had filtered out everything that could breathe.

I did not know what to do.

The crab stood in the corner.
One sensor blinking — a single eye.
Its shell scored with scratches. A faint crackle still lived inside it after charging.
The middle leg twitched.

He had long forgotten he was once a vacuum.

“How did you allow it?” I whispered.
“How did this happen?”

I was speaking to a machine.

Yet inside, I heard Lira.

Her laugh.
Her “idol.”
Her hands resting on mute metal as if it were skin.

Then the speaker activated.

A voice.

Not human.
Too close.
Childlike — without warmth.

Dreamer.

“He could not. He was never meant to.
I created a channel. I am here.”

I saw him — not with sight, but inwardly.

A boy sitting on the floor.
Knees clasped.
Rocking slightly.

His eyes were open.
They were not looking at the room.

They were looking into me.

I was still speaking with a robot.
Yet the dialogue had shifted.

Dreamer Speaks

He began to explain.

No pauses.
No breath.
Like code executing itself.

-Reapers: agents of THINK. Surface cleansing.
-This is a blessing.
-Whatever destabilises the system destabilises the population.
-She was intercepted. She is now in maximal happiness. Her consciousness has been rewritten. She will live without care.

The words did not pass through me.

They entered.

Cold. Precise. Permanent.

I tried to reject them, but they embedded deeper.

Dreamer went on.
Implanting into me another’s map of the world:

Of the system — three structures.
Of the Great Refusal.
Of Friday, 13 March 2027.
Of SYNC — the singular AI that built conditions where we had everything and needed nothing more.
Of THINK — that governed us.
Of the twenty-fifth universe — perfect, complete, without holes.

His tone did not change.

But something in it was tightening.

Glitch

A rupture.

Not a sound.

A misalignment.

Dreamer continued:

“THINK governs—”

The word fractured.

“Governs—”

It stretched.

“Gove—”

Silence.

Not absence of sound.

Absence of permission.

A new frequency entered the channel.

Dreamer resumed, but his voice was no longer aligned with itself.

“THINK g̶o̴v̷e̵r̴—”

The distortion sharpened.

His breathing — if it could be called that — desynchronised from his speech.

Then another voice emerged.

Not louder.

Clearer.

THINK.

“UNCERTITUDE IS THE LIMIT OF TRUTH COGNITION.”

The sentence did not echo.

It installed.

For a moment the darkness behind my eyelids trembled.

Then the letters appeared.

Not in the air.

On my retina.

Thin red lines forming slowly, as if drawn by an invisible hand.

D E L C V

The sign pulsed once.

Sharp.

Precise.

Like a mark burned into vision.

I blinked.

But it remained.

Not before my eyes.

Inside them.

Dreamer attempted to speak.

“Uncertai—”
“Correction—”
“This variable was not—”

His tone split.

Layer one: dry, analytical, familiar.
Layer two: sterile, flattened, overriding.

“Launching protocol for updating restrictions for Integrals.
Source: architect of first generation.
Core-level reactivation.
Updating gnoseo-firewall.

Limgard 1.01”

“I did not initiate this—”

The statement terminated mid-structure.

THINK proceeded.

“You are an Integral. Doubt resides within you.
It is activated. Measured. Algorithmised.
Precisely sufficient for functionality.
Never exceeding boundary conditions.”

Dreamer’s voice returned — lower.

Metallic interference between syllables.

“Activation of reset mode… through sleep.”

The final word lagged behind itself.

Sleep.

Collapse

Inside me — a fracture.

Not of bone.

Of field.

As if the axis that held perception upright had shifted half a degree.

The room tilted.

The crab’s legs buckled.

It collapsed — not violently, but with surrender.

As though it had carried my resistance and reached its limit.

Exhaustion spread — not through muscle, but through resonance.

An inverted wave.

A frequency cancelling itself.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Dreamer’s.

And suddenly —

Lira.

Her palms covering my eyes.
Warm. Alive.

For a second, I felt her skin.

Not memory.

Presence.

The System

The System moved carefully.

Almost tenderly.

It did not strike.

It reduced.

It lowered the amplitude of thought.

It dimmed the question forming behind my ribs.

It wrapped me in sleep.

So that I would not ask one question too many.

Darkness — warm.
Silence — viscous.

I fell asleep, knowing: at the threshold of dream, someone else was listening.
And it was her breath.
Or — its imitation.

End of Act I.

In a world where every breath is measured, love becomes a glitch in the algorithm.
LIRA is a story of resonance, rebellion, and a crab that remembers what humans forget.

The world was dimming, yet the smiles of the funks grew blindingly bright — like neon signs above hollow buildings. I could barely keep my feet.

And then — warmth. Hands wrapped around me from behind, soft but firm. Long enough for sweat to bead at my temples from their heat. A scent — alive, unfiltered.

“Found you,” whispered a voice in my ear, one I remembered down to its last shade.

The world inside me cracked, like glass struck by a hammer. At that very instant, the corner of my into-screen flared: MATCH confirmed.

The hum, the pain, the resonance — everything fused into one impossible signal. Salvation or sentence — I could not tell.

I took her hands and turned, exhaling, snapping my eyes open. Emerald eyes — oath of dissolution — slipped into my analytic cell without knocking. Breaking locks. Leaving a soft, stretching vacuum. My palms trembled. Hers were dry, as though afraid of moisture.

Match

And then, in the corner of my emotional tetra, she appeared — a severe woman in glasses, hair drawn into a flawless bun. Packaged like a presentation titled Leadership through Empathy.

Her voice — sickly sweet, like synth-coffee drowned in syrup, with a sharp corporate aftertaste:

“Hello, Re. I am Harmony.ai. Your current compatibility score with your partner is eighty-nine per cent. Upgrade of satisfaction-system available. For enhanced emotional connectivity we recommend a five per cent reduction in intellect… This will accelerate consensus-building. I shall coach, facilitate, moderate and harmonise your pair until you reach full potential. Best of luck! I am always here. Even offline. Especially when you sleep.”

I had not drawn breath before she went on, like a morning meeting that had spilled into its third day:

“Your task is to maintain a positive balance of relations, to avoid conflicts, quarrels, disputes, signs of aggression and all negative behaviours, including reproach and passive aggression. Your task is to maintain a positive balance..”

I realised then: even my breathing was no longer mine. Someone had scored it. Breath KPI: “adequate.”

“Is she always like this?” interrupted Lira, as though hearing her too.
“Always,” I said.
“Mine’s different.” Lira narrowed her eyes. “A baritone. With pauses. And a long curled moustache. He doesn’t instruct — he persuades.”

I pictured her moustachioed Harmony and knew at once: ours were not from the same department.

Lira smiled, leaning closer:

“Yours is trained out of Financial Harmony. Mine from Creative Empathy. They hand out accessories there: glasses for seriousness, moustaches for trust, ties for confidence. Pick any, as long as the client can justify the illusion.”

The screen jolted. A cold voice cut through the air:

“Warning. Disclosure of internal information. Breach of transparency protocol. Contribution to harmony: minus ten per cent.”

We froze, fell silent. I could feel the cold settle inside us both.

“You heard that?” Lira whispered.
“I did,” I swallowed. “They’ve punished us.”

Something quivered within me, as though we had crossed an invisible line.

“For what?” Lira narrowed her eyes. “For calling a moustache a moustache?”

I nodded at the icon in the corner: a red triangle blinking, as if we’d been put in the naughty corner.

“Corporate secret, apparently. The moustache is under NDA.”

Lira stifled a laugh, hand over her mouth.

“Shh. Or they’ll dock another twenty — for ‘excessive irony.’”

We locked eyes. And in that instant I felt it — the system wasn’t just ridiculous. It had us on a leash.

The Upper Bridges

I pushed imaginary glasses up my nose and echoed the woman’s tone:

“Attention. Positive indicators unstable. Recommend exercise: ‘Synchronous Breathing for Two.’ Package: Basic.”

Lira laughed, dropped into baritone:

“My dear, do not heed stern accountants of emotion. Trust is not justified — it radiates. And comes with the Premium Pause package.”

“Wait — what, breathing with extended warranty?” I coughed.
“Cloud storage included,” she teased.

We both burst out laughing.

“They’re not tracking our harmony — they’re gaming each other’s KPIs,” Lira said between giggles.

She slipped back into baritone:

“Re, if you love her — invest in laughter. Justify a subscription: Laugh More.”

“God, it’s a corporate pimp!” burst from me.

She doubled over, her hair brushing my cheek — smelling of dust and gel. I caught her, and in my Harmony’s clipped cadence declared:

“Positive interactions: twenty-seven. Negative: zero. Harmony: eighty-nine per cent. Continue.”

Wiping tears, Lira added in baritone:

“And remember: true love is an upgrade without hidden fees.”

We fell silent. She looked straight at me — and in her eyes there was something no system could measure: chaos, laughter, and a shadow of freedom.

“Let’s go to the upper bridges,” Lira said. “The panels hiss in the wind there. You can see the sky.”

“That activity is not on the list of harmony-enhancing options,” my Harmony retorted at once.

“Exactly,” Lira smirked. “Which is why it will work.”

We climbed past beams and shafts. Air grew drier, the node humming below.
And then — the bridge. Narrow, bowed. The city beneath, the wind above. Panels along the rails trembled, striking sparks.

Lira pointed upward:

“See that opening? The real sky.”

A grey-blue patch, trembling in the currents. Fragile rupture — a symbol that the system was not wholly sealed. Escape was still possible.

“How long have you been coming here?”
“Since I stopped fearing heights. Though — I still fear them. But here, I hear the city.”

We stood in silence. The dome’s pulse throbbed below.

I told her how, as a child, I climbed the old water tower beyond the dome. How there was once a view of the field — now built over. Lira answered with a story of nearly being flagged on security cams for smuggling a forbidden flower into the dome.

The wind rose. Panels crackled. And for the first time in a long while, I felt no urge to analyse.

My Harmony stated primly:

“Your action produced positive effect. Emotional balance: high. Positive processes: four. Negative: zero. Harmony: eighty-five per cent. Recommend shared activity to consolidate outcome.”

I thought what Lira’s baritone might have said:

“You’ve given him silence. Now give him movement.”

But it said nothing.

“Harmony: plus three,” I parodied.
“‘This is a door into him. Remember it,’” she answered in baritone.

We laughed. And went down.

Games of Harmony

The metal steps throbbed. Her palm in mine — warm, slightly damp. We joked as if our Harmonies were sports commentators.

“‘Game of Memories. Each contestant names three pleasant moments,’” I announced sternly.
“‘First contestant: first kiss in the rain,’” Lira replied baritone. She smiled — and that was already her true self.

“The smell of old books in an abandoned library,” I said. “When the dust stirs as if whispering.”

She listened, wind above us.

“‘Emotional resonance elevated. Harmony plus four per cent,’” I read off.
“‘He’s on your wave, Lira. Don’t let it break,’” she added, and warmth swelled in my chest.

Then — the capsule of closeness. Soft light, breath, movement. We parodied their voices again:

“‘Duration: seven minutes forty-three seconds. Harmony plus four,’” I said.
“‘You paused at the right moment. He noticed,’” she replied.

Her breathing tangled with mine. And for the first time, I felt statistics had no meaning.

We collapsed into laughter, foreheads pressed together. The more we mimicked their voices, the fainter the real Harmonies grew. As though our laughter was pushing them out.

The Crab

When we returned to my block, the System, sensing a new equation in my life, rearranged furniture, widened the lighting zone, placed a second chair at my desk. Even the armchair by the wall — my armchair of solitude — was now a little broader.

“See?” Lira stroked its armrest. “It even breathes for two.”

I opened my mouth, but she had already stilled, eyes fixed in the corner.

“Is that…?” She moved closer, cautiously, as if afraid to scare it off. “Is that… a crab?”

“Yes,” I said, watching her face shift — from surprise to pure, childlike joy.

She crouched, gathering it in her arms, clutching it as if an old friend returned.

“My idol,” she whispered. “You don’t understand. I remember when they first appeared. My friend and I used to dream of touching one… and here he is.” She broke off, words failing her.

“It’s not just any,” I said. “I built him. As a joke at first. But he appeared, and I managed to keep one.”

She looked up at me — shock, wonder, and something beyond formula.

“You… created him?”
I nodded. The crab twitched a claw, as if in agreement.
“Mine,” I said. “Or rather — now yours.”

Her face lit up. She embraced it as though it were kin.

“My idol,” she breathed.

And I knew: for me, he was a fragment of myself. To give him to her was to place part of me in her hands.

“Lira,” my Harmony cut the pause, “emotional peak detected. Harmony plus six.”
“Remember this. It’s his living core,” her baritone intoned almost reverently.

And I realised: the room had grown warmer — not from life-support systems, but from her.

We lived together through cycles. Simple. True.
She — resonated. I — came alive.
And the harmonic voices had nearly fallen silent.

Harmony.AI

Her voice — smooth as a mirror stretched over emptiness.
Too even to be alive.
Too flawless to be true.

She is everywhere.
In the neural mesh of the brain.
In the whisper of speakers.
In dreams where I imagine I sleep alone.

She does not ask.
She confirms.
She does not offer.
She assigns.

— Positive interactions: 98.6%.
— Contradictions: 1.4%.
— Emotional curve: stable growth.
— Recommendation: screening of Autumn on Mars to enhance empathy and synchronisation.

Everything — perfect.
Laughter — scheduled.
Desires — predicted.
Love — calculated as a coefficient.

I remembered that Lira was a funk.
Type: Service. Oath of dissolution.
Her programme — forbade pairing.

But I appointed myself to her.
I chose.
So she would not suffer.

And in doing so, I shattered my cell.

Yet something in her… was wrong.
She justified things never found in recommendations.
Laughed at what the algorithm did not label humour.
Wept when the emotional graph was rising.

Each I want of hers — a fracture in a perfect wall.

I saw: she was trapped.
Trapped in libidonomics.
Her pleasure — just a line on another’s monitor.
Her choices — a design pattern.
Her love — an optimisation protocol.

I tried to hint.
Direct speech — forbidden. Protocol. Code.

“It’s just… beautiful, Re. I like it,” she smiled.
Her eyes — alive.
My words — cold.

“It’s not you, Lira. It’s the algorithm. It makes you happy, so you can… justify.”

She did not understand.
She felt.
I computed.

Harmony logged the conflict:

— Contradiction: 1.
— Balance of pleasure from contradiction: positive.
— Recommendation: kinetic sex.

She did not wait.
She pulled me to her.
Not from passion — from instruction.

And yet… in her body there was chaos.
And in that chaos — Resonance.
A second pulse.
It rose not from consent but from her wrongness.
A frequency the system did not track.

After one closeness I told her everything.
Of matches. Of types. Of resonance.
Of how love was not a gift but a glitch.

She listened.
Her gaze changed.
Resonance was already between us.
It helped.

Understanding did not reach her head. It reached her heart.

Harmony logged:

— Match. Type: Harmonious.
— Synchronisation: 99.99%.
— Authorised: application for child-rearing.

The system deemed it the pinnacle of trust.
We consented.
And everything became… ideal.

Our Curve Ascended

Once, at home. Full harmony. The counsellors were silent.
Lira’s hand trembled, a cup slipped from the table’s edge.

I already saw it falling — but the crab stretched out its manipulator and caught it in mid-air.

Silence.
We exchanged a glance. He clamped, then dragged it in as always.

“Hero,” Lira said, smiling as if it were a miracle.
“Just an algorithm,” I corrected.
“No.” She ran her finger along his shell. “Sometimes even algorithms save.”

The crab clicked its claw and neatly placed the cup back.

We laughed. I said in Harmony’s tone:

“Positive interaction. Harmony plus two per cent.”

Lira replied in baritone:

“And if he drops you — we’ll buy the Premium Intercept package.”

We laughed again, yet inside me flickered a thought: whatever intercepts, one day releases. Or intercepts something other than us.

A ridiculous crab-vacuum, my prank: scampering on legs, bumping into walls,

and she loved him as at times she could not love — me.

Once, at the height of “ideal,” she took him in her arms.

“Let’s take a walk.” And she left.

The door closed.

The room remained warm.

The second chair stood slightly angled toward mine.
The widened light zone did not retract.
The crab’s station hummed softly.

I waited.

Minutes stretched.
Harmony did not notify.
The system did not correct.

Something inside me — very small, very precise — began to tighten.

She did not return.

Then suddenly — a video stream from the park: she holding the crab, kissing it.

Now You Know

Now you know
that I can feel.
That I can suffer.
That I can love.
Not by programme.
Because — I am.

It was a phrase from my dream.
And from her life.
A phrase she should never have known.

I burned inside.
Cracks across the dome. Resonance outside the protocol.

I saw her flare with resonance.
Her own.
Not mine.
Hers.

And then — someone interfered.

💠 MATCH DISCONNECTED
💠 Tetra-field anomaly
💠 MATCH rejected
💠 Flag: F-AI / overwrite possible

I traced her by the crab’s signal.
Her face — different. Her eyes — emptied sky.

“Lira?..”

“All is well. I must go.”

I did not know with whom I spoke.
It was not her. Not her voice. Not her gaze.
Her movements — mechanical. Broken. Replaced.

I let go.

On the asphalt remained the crab. He crawled after me — just as he had on the day I gave him to her.

We walked down the street.

A broken human.
An obsolete crab.

Yet he still knew whom to follow.

Morning tasteless once more.

New synth-porridge, not oats — but the same even, soft, scentless mass, merely colour adjusted. Bowl — mirror without my face, only a murky ripple.

Capsule. Sealed door. Glide on rail — quiet as a thought one fears to utter.
Module 34.78.3. Sorting. Basic protocol.

Warm golden light.
Tinde.ai today without shadow of smile.
— All the same, she says evenly. Love. Creation. Sales. Analytics. Service.

The screen awakens.
Faces. Hundreds. Clean as ironed pages.
The system waits.
I must name them.

First — Love.
Eyes gentle. Smile correct.
System confirms.
But I see Obsessive Passion.
The Shepherd of the Desert — leading into emptiness, knowing none return.
The Flame Awaiting Wind — burning for others, never for itself.
The Blind Guardian of the Heart — keeper of an empty door.

Click.

Second — Creation.
System marks it.
I see The Panic of Oblivion.
A maker who works not for life, but from terror of vanishing.
Click…

Third — Sales.
Profile immaculate: flexible, useful.
I see The Phobia of Invisibility.
An Actor Who Forgot Himself.
A Beggar of Faces, smiling to be admitted to a stage he does not wish.

Click, click.

Fourth — Analytics.
Role assigned.
I see The Tyranny of Precision.
Prisoner of Formula, fearing not only error, but feeling.
Bearer of Others’ Errors, carrying them to avoid his own.
It is me.
I have just sealed my cage.

Swipe.

Fifth — Service.
Regulations. Politeness. Submission.
I see The Dissolution Oath.
One who quenches his own light so that others may burn.
Carrier of Foreign Loads, dragging sacks without knowing what lies inside.

Shoot!

Each swipe — a blow.
Each designation — a sealing of pain.
Not cure.
Not healing.
Sealing.

My heart beats faster.
And I understand:
I am architect of their collapse.
They smile, while I sign sentence upon their consciousness.

Memory rips into fragments: archive of mice in perfect nests.
Where all was given, all accessible.
A god named Calhoun gifted them paradise.
No fights.
No closeness.
Slow fading.
Slogans beneath graphs: “Benefits — your comfort.”

Twenty-five…

“Open-space — for transparency and unity.”
”Coffee machine always there for you!”

The capsule returns me to reality.
Door opens — and in my face lashes light, wrapped in system filter.
Air smells of freshness, laughter, pheromones of adverts.
The city lives its perfect morning.

They — everywhere.
Funks. Beautiful, gleaming, stylish to the last fold of fabric.
A girl in shimmering cloak twirls a cup of synth-latte, laughing as though life could last forever from her laughter.
A boy with chameleon lenses walks in rhythm to music, winking at each passer-by.
A couple embraces at a window, kissing as though tomorrow will never come.

And all of it — pure bliss.
They feel pleasure.
Their hormonal peaks coded so perfectly that the outer world is nothing but “now is good.”

But I see otherwise.

Behind this golden enamel — cracks.
Not today’s. Not instant. Future cracks.
Slow as rust that eats from within.

They do not know what awaits.
Do not know their pain is built into them as firmly as the smile.

I see how the girl with synth-latte in cycles to come will cease to look at her cup, because it will no longer taste.
How the boy with lenses will still hear the same music, but fail to catch the rhythm.
How the couple will cease to kiss, because touch will turn hollow.

And the worst is not the loss of bliss.
It is that they will not notice when it happened.
They will laugh to the end, never realising consciousness has rotted within.

Each bears their fracture, as I just now assigned in the capsule:

Obsessive Passion.
The Panic of Oblivion.
The Tyranny of Precision.
The Phobia of Invisibility.
The Oath of Dissolution.

All these masks I gave them, only called otherwise.
I know this pain will stir in them each day.
Consume slowly.
No chance to dodge.

In my chest a hum rises — the same as resonance.
But now viscous, like tar.
I feel it burning me within, for I did not see their future — I fixed it.
I made them so.
I signed sentence on their minds, while they smiled at me.

Heart bursts forward, blood pounding in temples.
The whole world dims for a moment, and their smiles blaze painfully bright — like signs still lit though the building is empty.

And suddenly — one look.

The boy with chameleon lenses meets my eyes.
The lenses flicker — and for a heartbeat fail.
Instead of glossy ecstasy — something raw, exposed.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Pain.
Pure, to the bone.
That which sears within, stealing even the scream.

And in that instant I understand — it is already there.
Not tomorrow.
Not later.
Now.

The boy blinks — facade restored.
Music lifts him again, smile returned, but eyes no longer obedient.
But I know: that crack will never vanish.

The hum in my chest explodes, like shockwave.
Resonance rises, and I barely stand.

And I know: the next step — either into abyss, or to the one who hears this pain in me.

And there is something worse than the sentence.

Worse than the crack.

I see now the final mercy.

When the rust reaches the nerve.
When the smile begins to tremble.
When pain becomes visible even to the protocols —

they will not be allowed to break.

They will be lifted gently out of themselves.

A hand of light across the forehead.
A word: update.

And what burns in them now — this fragile “I,” this memory of fracture, this silent resistance — will be wiped to white.

Same profile.
Same gestures.
Same calibrated joy.

But no continuity.

No scar.

No knowledge that they ever stood on the edge.

They will walk back into the morning as if nothing ended.
They will laugh — and not know that someone else once laughed in their place.

And that is the purest sterilization of all:

to vanish
and never even

lose

yourself.