The mornings were quiet now, giving Mason a sense of eeriness as he sipped his coffee and watched the sun rise. Not long ago, paper editions of Politico would greet him with a satisfying thud on the floor and a quick knock on the door. The absence of such a critical outlet was not entirely gone. After all, their office still had their digital access which was available on all their devices. Yet it was too easy to get distracted by other notifications and the onslaught of social media posts. Now, what made Politico any special from the rest of the online noise?

But then, it arrived. A junior staffer came into the room with a box they had picked up from the mailroom. The box was simple and white with a stylized “P” on the front contained within a simple circle. It looked like something out of Silicon Valley than something produced by journalists. On the back it read: “Designed in California. Assembled in Vietnam.”

“Great, leave it,” Mason said, already dreading having to set up another gadget.

Senator Itzel came in at that point, passing by the staffer and nearly spilling tea from her mug. She noticed the box and asked, “The replacement?”

“I can set it up for you today,” Mason offered, but then heard the buzzing from his phone. He pulled it up. “It’s Senator Thompson’s Chief of Staff. Please excuse me, ma’am.” He jabbed the answer button. “Dan, what’s new? The tablet? I don’t know why they decided to stagger the deliveries. There aren’t too many of us who would’ve requested it. No, I’m sure the Senator is seething right now. I wish I could help.”

As Mason was busy with the call, Maria took the box and carried it over to her desk. She grabbed a letter opener and sliced through the tape sealing the box. When she lifted the lid, she saw the Politico Slate nestled in a molded cardboard tray. The tablet was 7 inches diagonally, making it resemble something like a Kindle or iPad Mini. She lifted it and was pleasantly surprised by how it felt in her hands. Not too heavy, with a smooth back, and a color eInk display that promised no blue-light glare.

She touched the power button, which doubled as a biometric scanner. The button had a satisfying click as it powered on. As the device booted, she found a small USB-C cable at the bottom of the box. That was good. There was no need for proprietary nonsense in such a niche device. She hoped it supported wireless charging as well.

“Dan, I assure you I’m frustrated too,” Mason’s voice faded away as Maria began to tap the device’s interface and set it up.

She entered her Politico credentials and connected it to the office Wi-Fi. She thought back to her old days as a teenage hacker, lurking on message boards and an avid follower of the Cult of the Dead Cow. Those days, the world of the Internet seemed so small compared to the systems of the press. But now, the line between those blurred more and more.

The screen came to life. The homescreen was clean, blending the elements of a news website and a tablet interface. Each section of the news site: Congress, White House, Defense, and others, appeared as large, tappable icons.

The background of the homescreen had a subtle animated image of the Capitol dome which implicitly showed the current season and weather, giving it a touch of elegance. Small birds occasionally flew across the screen, adding a bit of liveliness. The details seemed well thought out.

The very top of the screen was the top few headlines of the day. The main headline read: “GRIDLOCK LOOMS AS BUDGET DEADLINE NEARS.” The bottom of the screen was a dock with quick access to saved articles, settings, and a stock ticker. Right now it just showed the default Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was slightly down given the budget issues.

A notification at the top of the screen invited her to the system tutorial, to acquaint her to the device’s features. She ignored it, instead jumping straight into the settings menu.

It had all the usual options like Wi-Fi, Display, and Accessibility. There weren’t any more complex features, like being able to access the file system or see a list of apps. The thing felt locked down, like a single-purpose gadget meant only for reading Politico. But every system was built on a stack of technologies.

She scrolled down to see further options: About Slate, Legal Notices, Open Source Licenses. She tapped on the last one, curious to see what open source components were used in the device. As she scrolled through the list of libraries and frameworks, she felt a bit of nostalgia for the days when she used to build things without needing to deal with bureaucracy. Then, she found a line of text that caught her eye:

Based on Android Kernel Version 6.14.

That made a lot of sense. Android would’ve given them a solid foundation to base their software, but it meant that this was just a device dumbed down for a specific audience. But underneath the glossy interface, it would have a bootloader, a file system, and all other kinds of vulnerabilities.

Mason finally hung up and let out a loud sigh. He smoothed over his hair with his hand, as he was done trying to pull it out from the call.

“Senator, this whole Slate thing is a mess. Thompson’s office is claiming the whole thing is a surveillance tool. Several staffers can’t even seem to log in. It’s a logistical nightmare.”

He stopped, expecting the legislator to be upset, or to discuss the potential political implications. But Maria’s attention was now fully captured on the device. It was now connected to her office computer, with the cable as an umbilical cord, and her monitor was now a black command terminal. She was already busy digging into the system and testing its limits.

“Don’t worry about it. I think this is going to be incredibly useful,” she said, with an uncharacteristic grin spreading across her face.

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Anija Sherpa could barely register the shrieks of the wind around her as it went through the wide open expanse of Everest’s South Summit. She was bundled up within several layers of coats whose filaments were pulling in warmth from the geothermal cells embedded in her boots. With the HUD on her visor, she found the perfect point to perform her investigation.

She knelt down and rested her hand on the chassis of the deep-core drill boring deep into the rocky terrain.

“The pressure is currently at one-fifty atmospheres,” said Pemba, her apprentice, from the inflatable research dome several meters back.

“The integrity of the ice lens is at ninety percent,” his voice had the nervous excitement he usually had during field operations.

“It might be stable for now, Pemba, but let’s check the seismometers,” Anija grunted. A small puff of condensation escaped her mouth despite the suit’s built-in recycler.

She could see a complex waveform appear on her visor streaming in live data from the self-burying sensors they had deployed the day before. They were state-of-the-art tiny devices which could rest beneath the ice for years, powered by vibrational energy and able to hear the heartbeat of the mountain.

“The planar readings from the lidar are phenomenal, better than the specs claimed. If these bedrock stability tests hold…”

Her voice trailed off as she looked north at the breathtaking summit that seemed to pierce the atmosphere and travel forever upwards into space.

“I’m getting the thermal data now. There’s some fracturing deep down, but the anchoring is going to hold based on what I’m seeing now.”

“They must hold,” Anija said, mores to herself than Pemba.

She tapped on her visor a few times which triggered the drill to begin analyzing the extracted core sample.

“This observatory is going to be a new benefit to the entire public, Pemba. It will give all of us a way to view the sky.”

With her fingers wrapped up in gloves, she traced a faint outline in front of her where the building would one day reside. It would be a modern building. No, one of the future. The materials would be cutting-edge. Strong enough to handle the intensity of the mountain while also looking invisible against the snow and rock. More importantly, it would be entirely Nepalese.

The sky was perfectly clear as Sir Alistair Rothschild made his “final spiritual acclimatization ascent” towards the South Summit. Accompanying him was a stoic Sherpa named Nawang, who was keeping his distance. Alistair didn’t feel alone though, as thousands were watching his climb through his helmet cam.

“Here it is, friends,” he narrated, trying his best to keep his breath. “This is the South Summit. Known by the indigenous people as the gateway to the heavens. Or so I’ve heard. A place of tranquility, just us and natures and…”

He stopped abruptly as his camera captured a small inflatable dome. Near it was a large piece of metallic equipment. He could see footprints from someone who wasn’t him. All of it was ruining his pristine view.

“Chat, are you seeing this?” His face, visible in a small picture-in-picture window, was full of rage. “I can’t believe this intrusion. Here we are, on the most sacred place on Earth! It is the last remaining place untouched by humans, and someone has decided to ruin it.

Slowly he advanced, his persona changing from a travel vlogger to an investigative journalist.

“Look at all this equipment. Heavy machinery? Here? What the hell do they think they’re drilling? This is desecrating the almighty Chomolungma! I always warn how big commercial developers defile our natural spaces under the lie of progress.”

Then the dome opened up and he saw two figures wrapped in heavy coats walking towards the drill.

“Chat, do you see those people? They’re claiming private ownership over this public space. They are compromising this pristine wilderness. They are destroying humanity’s ultimate physical challenge. This is an outrage! I won’t stand for it!”

He dramatically cut the feed. Though the stream ended, his sense of indignation remained.

Several weeks later and several kilometers below, there was a strong tension in the community hall of Namche Bazaar. It had been renovated and expanded recently, blending the traditional Sherpa stonework with new solar panels and LED lighting.

Lakpa Tenzing stood before a packed room. The lights were in his face, making it hard to see anyone past the third row.

“For too long, our relationship with the mountain has been defined just by what others want. From her summit,” his gaze looked over the elders and parents who lived here for generations. He looked at the large number of students from Sagarmatha Technical Institute.

“We have been their guides. We have given them support. But how often do we take the lead? What about the knowledge that we get for ourselves, from our mountain?”

On the projection behind him was a realistic rendering of the proposed observatory slowly rotating against the South Summit.

“This project will provide a high-quality education for our students in all kinds of modern industries. We have worked as tour guides, but that’s not the future we have to accept. Imagine our daughters and sons mapping the furthest edges of the universe without needing to leave our country. It’ll be right here.”

Anija could hear the murmurs of approval as she stood in the back. She felt a sense of pride. The rest of the community understood what she wanted. Rohan, standing by her, was already beginning to think about the positive media he could get out of this community endorsement.

“Think about jobs that don’t depend on the climbing season or the strength of our backs for such a short time. We will provide our future generations with a more resilient future. We aren’t turning our back on traditions. But we will innovate.”

The applause was heartfelt and hopeful. Anija knew there were still many challenges ahead. There was funding to negotiate and logistics still to figure out. Yet it meant a lot knowing she had support.

Sir Alistair was busy inside his sprawling geodesic dome at the Everest Base Camp. He was doomscrolling through the local news and social media feeds. The dome had an array of solar panels on the outside powering his luxurious shelter. Inside was a Persian rug he had acquired and a vibrating chair which was vital for relaxing his aching muscles.

“I can’t believe they’re okay with this,” he fumed. His earlier vlog had caused a firestorm among his followers, but none of that seemed to dissuade the officials.

“This is just vandalism disguised as science and I won’t stand for this. Giles, what are we going to do about this?”

Giles was his PR assistant, a slender man who regularly had his face buried in his phone.

“Sir Alistair, I’ve been reading their environmental impact assessments. They look quite good. With modern designs, they won’t be affecting the footprint.”

“That’s all greenwashing,” Alistair said with a scoff. “I have all their equipment on video. Something of that size can’t be considered a minimal impact. I have fifteen thousand followers all demanding we take action.”

“I guess we need more information.”

“No. The time for study is over. If they’re rushing this through, then so must we. Mobilize the followers with a new campaign. Get a statement from the major mountaineering federations. Get that video from the stream and come up with a bunch of clips. Reach out to the World Heritage Fund too.”

“That’ll take all day.”

“And that’s the best use of your time anyway.”

“You’re not going to the next base camp today?”

“No. We’ve got more important things now. I am going to call Zennifer. Her followers would be interested in my evidence and won’t want the sacredness of the mountain to be damaged.”

He looked out of his dome at the pure white tundra around him. This was a beautiful place that he knew he needed to save.

“This is a fight for the soul of Everest,” he affirmed.

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Amelia thought about all of the tourists coming through the Rawls Museum. She thought about their sense of awe as they looked up at light shining through the sunroof, scattering through glass-thin flowers to create a mosaic of colors on the tiled floor. She thought about their sense of artistic community as they observed illuminating galleries depicting the past and future.

She couldn’t see any of it herself though, as she was relegated to the soft whirring of a server room where her desk was shoved in-between two racks.

It was here that she leaned over a painting placed on a workbench with a small drone helping to magnify the details of the masterpiece. The Weaver of Ardahan was painted by Vardan Gasparian long ago, depicting his wife working steadily at her loom with a stoic look. A year after it had been finished in 1914, they had to flee due to horrific purges. During the chaos, the painting had been slashed. A large diagonal cut went through the top-left corner of the tapestry, leaving a missing section in the frame.

“She’s ready for the magic,” Rufus came in with a bright voice.

“It’s not magic, Rufus. It’s a simple artistic infill algorithm,” she retorted as she stretched her back.

“That’s all semantics. Look, I’ve trained her on Gasparian’s entire catalogue. It knows his strokes, his use of pigments, and other kinds of Armenian art from that time period.”

“It’s basically a collaborator. A recreated version of him.”

“We can finally fix this tapestry to the best of our capability. The art world will be enraptured by this.”

“For good or bad.”

The idea of using an algorithm to paint was controversial, to say the least. Yet the museum’s mission was explore the hidden worlds of art using whatever tools were available, including technology. In a way, this was supposed to enhance preservation by returning the painting to the artist’s original intent.

“Let’s run a projection before committing to anything. Just to check.”

Rufus run the sequence and the AI began its work. On a large monitor beside the workbench a flurry of pixels began to fly onto the screen. Drawing upon its trained dataset, it started choosing colors and dots. It flawlessly replicated Gasparian’s brushwork, how he captured the way the light struck the wool and the subtle imperfections in the hand-dyed thread.

Amelia watched with a professional curiosity. It was technically brilliant, exactly what she expected. The artificial brush strokes blended perfectly across the tear to fill in the remaining corner.

“Isn’t that a perfect fix?” Rufus asked.

In just a minute, the AI finished the restoration. The slash had vanished and there was now a whole tapestry. Amelia was about to answer Rufus’s question but the AI was still working. Small lines started to appear within the new section. They were finer than the standard brush strokes.

“What’s it doing?” she leaned in closer.

“There’s a second pass for consistency. Gasparian’s brushstrokes had subtle changes in the pressure around this damaged area, so there might’ve been some under-layer. It’s trying to balance everything out.”

The lines it was drawing weren’t random. She could see it forming curves all intersecting with each other. Amelia squinted harder. Were these numbers? The symbols were definitely not part of any Armenian style that she was familiar with.

“Can you stop the program?” she whispered. “Can you enhance those secondary lines?”

“Got it,” he said, his demeanor now serious.

The original tapestry faded out of view, leaving just the faint lines that now were clearly visible. It was a map. She could see the contours of topography and a market location. She was surprised how well Gasparian had managed to disguise that within a painted textile.

Somehow, they had uncovered a secret that had been laying out of sight for over a century. The room was entirely quiet aside from the soft whirring of fans.

“That’s a glitch, right?” Amelia whispered, her throat suddenly dry. “Your algorithm created a false positive. It hallucinated a pattern that wasn’t really there? We just report to the acquisitions board the machine restore failed and we try doing it by hand.”

“No,” Rufus’s eyes were still wide. “Look at the detail. Look at those contours. That’s consistent with early 20th-cemntury cartography. Those look like coordinates. The AI actually managed to find these pigment variations in an underpainting. We never would’ve been able to figure that out if done by hand.”

“Your algorithm is just guessing. What does it even have as a basis? Some bad sensor data?” she argued. “We can’t tell anyone about this. Would they actually believe it? We’d be laughed out of every artistic preservation community. Seeing a treasure map in an old painting? I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Reputation isn’t everything,” he countered. “The Rawls’s charter... I mean our entire careers here have ben about the ‘uninhibited pursuit of knowledge’. We are supposed to empower our guests to look deeper, why not ourselves? Can we really ignore it just because we’re scared of what the board might think?”

Amelia scratched her chin. The museum’s core philosophy was about academic and scientific freedoms. That was what drew her to this place in particular. They were always encouraged to use new tools and to experiment, just like they were doing now. She looked down to see the earnestness of Rufus’s face. She had to admit he was right. They couldn’t turn away now.

“Let’s investigate this, but quietly. Build a case before we tell anyone. And do it by the book.”

“I’m ready to investigate.”

Over the next three days, the small space became even more cramped. Amelia pulled all the museum’s archives on the artist, both digital and physical. A pile of books and assorted documents became an eyesore. The name was Ardashes Gasparian, not Vardan. Apparently he had changed his name when he entered the world of art, according to the archive’s definitive biography. He had been not just a painter, but a prominent liberal intellectual in Ardahan.

That was until 1915. The historical records detailed in chilling detail how Ardahan became a flashpoint of violence. There were forced deportations. Many families were given just a few hours to gather what they could before they were sent out on a march south into the desert of Syria. The historical lists included Ardashes and his wife, the weaver in the painting. They also had two young sons.

“But then if you cross with this other document, a list of all the resettled recorded in the camps, they never made it,” Amelia said with a deep melancholy.

“Some letters from others who arrived say that the family got lost as they passed through the highlands,” Rufus read carefully.

“So he knew the deportations were happening,” Amelia remarked after a moment of silence.

“Does that mean Gasparian planned for it?”

“Let me re-train the AI. We can scan the rest of these documents. The personal journals and letters from our archives so we can check if there are any other hidden clues in how he wrote.

As the AI began to ingest terabytes of text, Amelia decided to pull up satellite images and compare that to the map they’d uncovered in the painting. When she overlaid the AI-produced map over a topographical representation of the Ardahan region as it may have been a century before, she realized it was a perfect match.

“Look at this,” she whispered to him. He spun his chair from his supervision of the AI to see what she was pointing at.

“The lines on his hidden map match perfectly with these remote, rocky hills thirty kilometers south of the city.”

“It doesn’t look like there’s any structures or even farms there.”

“Exactly. It’s a place you wouldn’t go unless you were trying to hide something.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a ping from the workstation.

“The AI found something,” Rufus spun back to read what was flagged. “There is a recurring phrase Gasparian wrote in his journal in the later months of 1914. ‘I must leave a part of myself behind... a seed planted in stone... so that the song of the weaver echoes into the future’. It’s written a dozen times.”

A seed planted in stone.

Amelia looked at the map again. It was a clear message from Ardashes. As he was facing the imminent erasure of his people and his culture, he had decided to push back by hiding his work for someone in the future to discover.

“All the paintings we thought were lost to time had actually been intentionally hidden,” she realized.

Amelia looked at the map, back to the original painting. She looked at the face of the weaver on the easel, someone who must have been full of anxiety about the future. The next step was clear.

“We go to Ardahan,” she decided.

The approval for their trip came quickly, but it wasn’t easy. Amelia decided to not even mention their treasure map. Instead, she framed the proposal using the academic language of a research grant. She mentioned the cryptic writing in Gasparian’s journal and the AI analysis of his underpainting technique.

The funding was requested to study on-site the “potential material degradation” in a “geologically distinct region”. She was familiar with the kinds of language that would most appeal to the board, and at no point did she technically lie. The special projects committee encouraged this kind of bold research through their endowment, and the budget was relatively low compared to other things they funded.

Amelia felt a jarring transition as the two of them stepped off the train into the dry, arid air of Kars. It was the closest major city they could reach. The city still felt like the cities of her youth, filled with the scent of diesel but also strong coffee.

From there, they had to rent a jeep and drive south. Rufus was handed the keys to a gas jeep. It was the first time he’d ever driven something that wasn’t powered by an electric motor and battery. As they left the city, the road quickly turned into rough gravel roads which wound their way through the vast highlands of Eastern Anatolia.

Amelia looked out the window at the landscape around her, so large and vast, yet also so empty. A sea of sandy-brown hills stretched out in all directions underneath an immense blue sky. The land seemed so special to be so untouched after millennia, and Gasparian likely felt the same way when he walked across these same paths.

“I saw these exact hills from the satellite images, but it’s just quite another thing to actually be in the midst of it,” she remarked. “The place feels so vast. So endless.”

“You’re not kidding, we’re basically in the middle of another world,” Rufus continued to keep his eyes on the narrow road as they bumped over some large stones. “The cell connection is spotty out here. It’s like we’re in another time period.”

As their drive continued, the scale of the region only grew more oppressive.

“What if there’s nothing out here?” Rufus asked as he flicked on the headlights around sunset. “What if his ‘seed planted in stone’ was just some sort of local phrase, or a bit of poetry? We’d be all the way out here for nothing.”

“Gasparian didn’t seem like someone who wasted words,” she replied as she rolled up the window to keep out an approaching rainstorm.

“It was written over a hundred years ago and run through a translator. We can’t be sure it wasn’t a glitch.”

“We thought the map was a glitch too, but it was right,” her voice grew firmer, more confident. “Gasparian saw what was coming. He wouldn’t have produced a map of that precision just for a moment of poetry. We need to trust him.”

They spent that night in the jeep, at least a hundred miles away from civilization. Amelia climbed into the back and tried to get herself into a comfortable position on the aging leather seats. Rufus had a restless night, his back leaning against the console and the parking brake in a way that left him sore in the morning. They ate Twinkies and energy drinks for breakfast.

By the third day, Rufus’s drone flew ahead of them and broadcast that they found the location they’d been seeking. He drove them over there. There was a small, stony outcrop which seemed unremarkable at first glance. Yet they saw long vines and overgrown thistle were hiding a small shepherd’s hut.

Their hearts pounded as Rufus turned off the car. They got out and began to climb the small hill to the hut. The roof had caved in a long time ago and the walls were barely held together. Time had not been good to the structure.

When she peeked her head inside, she felt her excitement turn to disappointment. She couldn’t find anything inside but dirt and rock. There wasn’t any sort of cellar door.

“Check the coordinates,” she urged.

“This is the spot,” Rufus’s eyes jumped between the original map and the drone’s bird-eye view.

Amelia ran her hand along the rough stone of the remaining wall. She felt the dampness, the lichen that had grown in the weathered cracks. Then her fingers brushed against a different feeling. She looked at a series of carved lines hidden in the stone near the floor. It was too deliberate to be more erosion.

“Rufus, give me a light,” she dropped to her knees and began pulling up weeds.

His powerful LED torch was turned on, illuminating the carving. It was a simple image of a weaver’s shuttle with a bird’s head on top.

“I recognize this from the archives,” Amelia gasped.

She unfolded her phone and opened the artist’s biography. She jumped through several pages until she found what she was looking for. She double-tapped on it so it could take up the full screen. It was his maker’s mark during his early years before he took on the name Vardan.

Rufus looked at the phone and then back at the stone block with the carving.

“You know, this stone doesn’t seem to be load-bearing,” he remarked.

He pushed against it, throwing his shoulder into it with a lot of force. He let out a groan of effort as the stone shifted inward a few inches. Amelia took his torch and looked down, revealing a narrow opening into the darkness below.

Amelia immediately got a whiff of damp earth and moldy air that was probably hidden below for over a century. The torch flashed over a short flight of steps carved out of stone leading down somewhere.

“Well?” Rufus said from behind. “This is your world. You should go first.”

Amelia took a tentative step. The stone, though old, still felt sturdy. She descended step-by-step, making sure that the ground wouldn’t give out underneath her. The space below the hut was a small cellar which looked to be dug by hand. The walls were lined with fieldstone.

When she saw objects against the far wall, her breath caught in her throat. Dozens of them were laying there in different sizes. Each one had been carefully wrapped in dark cloth and twine.

Amelia touched the first one. With a light grasp on the edge, it instantly confirmed what she thought. These were paintings.

“He actually did it,” Rufus whispered as he entered the small studio behind her.

They found the seed planted in the stone. It was more than just one painting. They had uncovered an entire lifetime of work. A whole new cultural legacy had been rediscovered that had refused to be eliminated. Amelia’s fingers trembled as she gently worked the knot loose and peeled back the heavy canvas around it.

The painting was vibrant, and in remarkable condition. If it had been finished just yesterday she’d believe it. They were staring at a moment in time, a bustling market in the heart of Ardahan before it had been wiped off the earth. Rays of sunlight beamed from overhead, illuminating the merchants, children, and musicians. It was a scene of understated joy.

“Incredible...” Rufus murmured.

They opened another, then another. One was a portrait of Gasparian’s two young sons. They had bright faces and an innocence of youth, before their futures were stolen. Some were landscapes of the hills they had just crossed, images of staggering beauty. They seemed to be painting in the springtime, even more lush and colorful than they could see today. Each canvas was a piece of world lost to time. But they could finally, for the first time, truly see the struggle that Ardashes faced against the forces of history.

A team of volunteers were put to work over the next month. Slowly, and delicately, they documented each painting and noted any potential restoration requirements. Then each was carefully packed for its journey to the museum. They had to keep the entire thing secret until they were ready to share the story.

When they debuted the “Lost Collection of Ardashes Gasparian”, they finally told the story of the artist, the genocide, and the map they discovered.

The galleries were filled with guests eager to participate in this historical event of art preservation. Once they were full of gourmet cheeses and champagne, Amelia walked up to a podium. She looked up at the bright moonlight shining through the skyroof. Rufus stood beside her, offering her quiet support.

Amelia cleared her throat and began to speak.

“To paint is to capture a memory. Tonight, we are observers of memory, but also the destination of those memories.”

She continued, telling the story of Gasparian, his flight, and his plan to hide his paintings for future artists to find.

“He faced a force in his time and place that wanted to erase him and his entire culture. He managed to outlast them. He put his trust in a future that had the tools and the humanity to find him.”

She looked back and Rufus, who gave her a cordial smile.

“That future is today. Technology is now a partner in human endeavor, revealing a path for us to follow. We were able to hear a defiant message that was waiting over a century for our ears.”

Then she walked away from the podium to a large piece of parchment on the wall. She peeled it away to reveal the final piece of the exhibit. “The Weaver of Ardahan” had been fully restored and hanging in a place of honor. The intricate map had been recreated in that lost corner, allowing everyone to see how the fusion of AI and art could provide greater insights than either one individually.

Late that night, as the crowds were on their way out, Amelia and Rufus stopped in front of the painting again. The weaver’s face had once looked to depict stoic sorrow. But now her expression seemed to change. She seemed to have a profound sense of peace. The tapestry on her loom had been completed and her story had been finished.

“The weaver’s song is complete,” Amelia said softly.

“He just had to wait for the right people to listen to it.”

This story is based on an article in Nature about restoring art using AI. When you visit a museum, the paintings they have on display are a small fraction of their total collection. Many have to be restored before showing off, and that takes time and money. But if we can make this work much faster, what kinds of history might be uncover?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The heart monitor let out a periodic noise, letting Mabel Carter know she was still alive. Her breathing was ragged in a way that sounded like autumn leaves skittering across a street. Her attention was captured by busily pulling at a loose thread at the edge of her hospital blanket.

It was all she could do to keep her mind off the impersonal delivery in this clinical white room of her prognosis. End-stage cirrhosis.

“We can fix it, Mabel,” the young nurse insisted. Her name was Sarah, one of the few remaining staff at the Clay County Clinic. Her eyes were kind, but it was clear she was overworked. Her eyes were as wrinkled as Mabel’s own.

“Get Doc Allen,” Mabel rasped. “He’s been my doctor for years. He will know exactly what I should do.”

“Doc Allen? He retired eight years ago,” Sarah replied as she tapped on a tablet. “He lives in Flordia now and seems happy to be there. There aren’t any surgeons in the county anymore, Mabel. There haven’t been for a few years.”

“But... what is going to happen to me?” Mabel asked, her fingers picking at the blanket more frantically.

“We can schedule you with a surgeon in Philadelphia. Dr. Perro is the best in his field,” Sarah explained.

“Philadelphia? That’s a thousand miles away! I’m not going anywhere. Just find one in Charleston,” Mabel scoffed.

“You won’t need to travel. He will be connecting to our clinic remotely,” Sarah tried to explain calmly. “We have a Haptic Telepresence Surgical Unit, or HTSU.”

“Huh?” Mabel was obviously confused. “Can you speak English?”

“It’s basically a robot. We got it from a federal grant. Perro will connect to it from his office in Philadelphia. He will put on special gloves to feel what the robot feels and control it. It will be exactly like he was here in the room with us. There’ll be no need to worry. And I’ll be right at your side.”

It felt so impersonal, having a cold metal hand touch her body. She thought of some large, intimidating Terminator opening her up and pulling out her insides with mechanical claws.

“No,” she said adamantly. “I ain’t letting a machine cut into me. I have to have a real doctor.”

“He is a real doctor, Mabel, even if he isn’t personally here,” Sarah insisted. “You need a partial hepatectomy to remove the damaged part of your liver now. I am afraid without it, you won’t have much time left.”

“I’d rather die whole than have some city slicker’s toy slice and dice me,” she spat, her harsh voice masking a deeper fear. She thought of being buried next to Earl, how reassuring he had always been when she had trouble. What would he think of something this impersonal?

“I must insist you cooperate, Mabel,” Sarah affirmed.

The door opened at that moment. Two nurses wheeled in a large white tower. As it unfolded, Mabel could see long arms with multiple joints extending out. At the top was a large fluorescent light and a camera. A series of surgical instruments hung from the ends of the arms like an insect with sharp spikes lining its body.

“Get it out!” she shrieked as a primal panic overwhelmed her. It was so wrong. There was no way she could let that thing touch her, much less perform surgery on her.

The two nurses moved in quickly, grabbing her arms and keeping her from thrashing. Sarah’s face seemed to have a mask of sympathy even as behind it was a steely cruelty.

“Under the Federal Remote Healthcare Act, this is an Implied Consent for Vital Intervention. We have to do this,” Sarah explained.

“The hell you will!” Mabel yelled, throwing her body left and right despite the pain in her side. The heart monitor’s beeping became frantic.

Sarah placed a clear plastic mask over her nose and mouth. The hiss of gas was soon followed by her vision tunneling. She saw a small lens extend out from the machine. It stretched forward with a singular unblinking eye to watch her as the world faded to black.

Mabel awoke to the infrequent beeps from the heart monitor, steady and calm. Her head felt heavy. She slowly opened her eyes and they adjusted to the amber light of sunset coming in through the window. As she let out a loud yawn and stretched her arms, just starting to fight off the grogginess of anesthesia, she realized she felt different.

The pain in her side, which had been growing worse for months, was gone. In its place was a small ache that felt like a sore muscle. Her fingers reached down and touched her torso. She could feel the line of stitches from the incision. They felt neat and clean, like a zipper.

Outside, the sun was now hiding behind the familiar Appalachian mountains that had been there her whole life. She was safe now, but still felt a strange emptiness.

A man she had never met, from a city she never visited, had somehow reached inside of her with metal fingers. The feeling could be described as isolation, still being alive but disconnected from the interpersonal world she knew. She knew nothing about the doctor, couldn’t bake him cookies, couldn’t thank him. She was just a living entity in bigger system she would never be able to understand.

Gorokhin stood by the radiators, as it was the only place in the school gymnasium that had any sort of warmth. He adjusted the glasses on his face and wiped his brow. He wasn’t sweating, but it was a nervous tick he developed during his time in that steaming summer of Syria.

“The hash rate is dropping,” he murmured as he looked at the phone strapped to his forearm like a sophisticated tattoo. “I think the local node is throttling us.”

Oksana was still getting ready. Her foot was placed firmly on a plastic school chair as she inspected the buckles of her combat boots. She had a warm scarf wrapped around her neck, one that she had spent the past week knitting.

“It’s just because of the cold weather,” she remarked. “Batteries simply perform worse at this temperature. Physics isn’t a conspiracy.”

“In the Republic of Moscow, it definitely is,” Gorokhin said, pacing back and forth. There was a line taped on the ground demarking the perimeter allowed for observers. “Thermodynamics is just a suggestion. This latency is intentional. If I can’t get the block confirmation to Geneva in under a few seconds, the chain of custody breaks.”

The gymnasium definitely saw better days. It was old, older than him and Oksana put together. He could still see a mural from the Soviet era hidden behind the bleachers. The basketball hoops were rusted several times over. Five women in their seventies sat behind long tables. They’ve lived through several political revolutions and had countless stories hidden behind their glasses.

They were watching him, as if they were gargoyles. They had seen the tanks shell the White House in ‘93 and the currency riots over the last few years. They didn’t know him, but they knew of him. He was a Knight of Fukuyama, a confused Pole in a bright blue tactical vest who thought that Russia had a soul worth saving.

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Rachel was nursing a locally crafted birch beer at the bar. It was her usual place: The Downcellar. She liked how it wasn't trying to be something it wasn't. It was just a basement, retrofitted for a place where young professionals could hang out. The exposed pipes brought with it cold air. Low-watt Edison bulbs cast the whole place in an amber glow. The whole place was thick with the odor of sweat and fresh coffee.

The coffee came from Zayne. He moved with precision, something which fascinated her and kept her attention. He tamped the dark grounds. He had control over the hissing steam wand. Every action was real. It looked very tangible. There was a weight, and heat, and smell. The whole thing was a genuine art form. It made her jealous.

He caught her staring and flashed her a big smile.

"You need something else, or just admiring my machinery?"

Rachel felt herself blushing.

"The machinery is impressive," she said, immediately gesturing nervously to the large metal object. "You're good at what you do."

"It's just coffee. But I guess it beats spending all day at a desk, looking at a screen."

He wiped the counter with a damp rag.

"By the way, what about you? You never told me what you do."

His question immediately led her to regurgitate her practiced answer.

"I do remote visual asset creation for Cognito. You know, the big AI company."

"Ooh, I've seen their ads," he said, playing up his level of interest. "Your job sounds important."

"It's alright. Pays the bills," she said dismissively.

She gave him a quick smile and changed the subject. One more ale later, he was laughing about an old college story involving a kilo of quick-dry cement. For a moment she was able to forget the ever-present workload which awaited her at home.

The morning light peeked through the blinds of the apartment's single large window. The intimacy of the night before now seemed like a lingering awkwardness. Zayne was still asleep in her bed, breathing peacefully. But Rachel's attention was snagged by the interloper in the room: her workstation.

Two monitors sat attached to the wall overlooking a minimalist desk and an ergonomic chair provided by the company. That way, she could work longer hours without needing to take a break. They seemed quite happy about this corporate benefit. On the desk sat her drafting screen, a black rectangle. A scanner also rested on her desk, a silver orb with a dark lens which reminded her of an always-watching cyclops. Even now, a tiny LED glowed in standby mode, always ready to watch.

She suddenly grew worried that Zayne would wake up and look at her corporate-sponsored apartment with disgust. No, she wasn't worried. She felt ashamed. She felt like she'd be exposed as a phony.

She slipped out of bed quietly. She grabbed his clothes off the floor and found his shoes by the door. She began folding his shirt neatly.

"Hey," he grunted, his voice having a morning gravel to it. His hair was a mess. "Are you leaving your own place?"

"No, I have to work early," she lied. The lie was about the time, not the intent. "Really early."

"Oh. Don't let me stop you then," he seemed confused, but complied. He pulled his jeans up his leg and put on the half-folded shirt.

When he was fully dressed, she walked him to the door while maintaining a professional distance.

"I had a good time, Rachel," he said, his face close to hers but not quite touching.

"Me too," she said, forcing a smile. "I'll see you at the bar sometime?"

"Yeah, sounds cool. See you."

She closed the door fast, then clicked the lock into place. Leaning her head against the wood, she shut her eyes. The apartment was quiet again, aside from the ever-present hum coming from the desk. The place felt dirty, soiled by a man who actually worked with his hands.

Since Rachel actually had an hour before her shift, she took that time to shower and put on fresh clothes. She had to mentally prepare herself for work, out of sight of anybody. Then she took a seat at the desk, her body nestling into the familiar contours of her chair. As soon as she sat down, the scanner's LED turned blue. The screen in front of her lit up, displaying the clean corporate UI of her daily work dashboard.

A new task was waiting.

Image Set DEW 307.76: Urban Decay

There has been a 3% increase in urban decay prompts over the last two weeks. Our training set needs more examples.

Consider parameters like palette-muted earth tones, bioluminescence, hopeful.

She picked up the stylus, a perfectly balanced object which felt cool as she touched it. On the right side of her screen, a small unobtrusive window appeared.

Work analysis

[08:19:36] User seated.

[08:19:41] Stylus grip registered.

[08:19:56] Initiating stroke capture...

Rachel began to draw. A brick wall emerged. Then she added details to show how it was crumbling. She picked textured grays and browns to fill in her outlines. As sketched the creeping fungus next. Her hand moved back and forth with a practiced skill, but she knew it wasn't really her skill. Her talent was fused with the AI's guidance. It subtly nudged her to the 'correct' color choices and textures it wanted. It learned from every line she drew.

Data appeared on her screen:

Strike Velocity: 9.5 cm/s.

Pressure: 93 g.

Color selected: #2E2B24;

Match confidence: 94%

Thinking: User is replicating known decay patterns. Suggesting novel fungal structure to improve image-gen coverage.

It helped her, creating wireframes that she could trace. It created a delicate, spiraling shape. She followed, moving her stylus over the outline to form it into being. Her own creative flourishes were put into the background as she followed the requirements. She picked a green and painted in the newly grown plants. The resulting image was technically flawless, but felt soulless. While it did technically have all the needed parameters, the work didn't mean anything. It couldn't be considered art.

When she submitted it, she noticed an email from leadership. It was automatically placed in the "Top Priority" box. She hesitantly clicked it.

TO: visual-asset-creators@cognito.app

FROM: Dr. Luna Russell, Chief Innovation Officer; lrussel@cognito.app

SUBJECT: Project Empath and The Next Horizon

Team,

First, allow me to thank you for all of your hard work up to this point. Your contributions and hard work have allowed our AI to achieve the top scores across all models for technical artistry. And yet we must continue to push forward and truly enable our users to express themselves no matter what they prompt. We must go beyond the world as it is and create training data that shows human feeling.

Project Empath is our new venture in this direction, and it will require everyone's help to make it a success. This means your new prompts will focus on abstract, emotional concepts. Together, we won't just make art. We will build empathy at scale.

Rachel rolled her eyes. Rather than drawing bland illustrations, she was now required to draw training data on concepts so vague that it would easily fill in the spaces of one's emotional gaps. She was supposed to commodify their feelings, to provide them with some automated empathy. She knew it would be the opposite of genuine.

Then she received the first prompt:

Image Set DEW 307.77: Visualize the specific shade of envy you felt last night

Rachel stared at the words and thought back of her own personal experience. Zayne had been doing honest work with his hands. She understood that complex mix of emotions: bitterness, longing, and a little bit of hope. But how was she supposed to depict something like that in an image?

She tried, starting with a murky green backdrop. Yet then she looked at the automated data being collected on the side of the screen.

Work analysis

[08:59:49] Stroke initiated

[09:03:04] Color selected: #88A039.

[09:05:22] Match confidence: 8%

Thinking: Prompt requires deeper emotive sourcing. Deeper focus required.

"More focus? You're a machine. What do you know about it?" she grumbled.

She closed her eyes and replayed her memories of descending into The Downcellar. She thought about that exact moment when Zayne grinned at her. What did she feel then? She recalled the flushing in her face and a tightness in her chest. Her heart had fluttered.

She opened her eyes and changed the colors. She added streaks of gold far away, something that you wanted to get closer to but couldn't. She thought of the light that bounced off the metal espresso machine and the dark counter that separated her from it.

When she finished, she felt a bit of pride. There was something real in her image. The emotions captured in the image resonated deeply with her. It was a shame that nobody except for a GPU would ever see it.

The following prompts dredged up older memories: "Echo of a bittersweet moment", "Feeling of being watched by someone you trust", "Safety of your bed as a toddler".

She thought back to a childhood trip to the beach, and her mother, and the soft sounds of cicadas on a summer night. She thought about a quilt her grandma gave her as a baby, one she kept using even as it grew worn and needed new stitching. Yet as she tried to put her stylus on the pad, the AI deconstructed these memories into data points. These moments of emotion turned into data points being scooped up into a model.

After finishing one, she decided to pull up her employment contract. Surely there was something against dredging up all these emotional moments. She found a clause she hadn't fully considered when she desperately signed it:

...Contractor agrees that all created assets, including but not limited to emotional and mnemonic-visual data streams generated as part of the creative process, are the sole and perpetual intellectual property of Cognito, Inc...

She was just a well for them, always required to be full of emotions that can be withdrawn in abundance.

As she sat on a solar-powered tram headed through the city to her usual farmer's market, she saw an ad flicker to life on a screen inside. Several attractive people were playing volleyball on the beach. It was generic and bland. But then she noticed a woman in the corner sitting on a beach towel. The pattern on the towel had the same repeating patterns of blue squares and yellow flowers.

It had recreated her blanket.

Not exactly, but a chilling accurate reinterpretation. Her memories had been used to sell sugary water. They used her life to evoke a sense of nostalgia. This was a kind of violation that she had never experienced before.

Then, the next morning, she received a high-priority assignment. It landed in her inbox wrapped in a golden outline.

You have been selected for a high-yield emotional data capture. Upon its submission, you will receive a one-month bonus.

A whole month for one image? It was enough for her to finally catch a break. She could take a vacation, a real one, maybe travel a little bit. At the very least, she would be able to not work for a little. She hastily clicked Accept.

Prompt: Visualize the moment you realized a dream had died

Rachel felt like she had been hit in the gut. It was a repugnant request, one that felt so violating it was if the AI had been spying on her personal life. They wanted the memory of her surrendering to them, of watching her break. Then they would reward her for their voyeurism. They were buying her last piece of the unspoiled past.

She pushed back from the desk and left the apartment. She needed air. She needed to get away. She had to take a walk.

As she sat on a bench in the park, watching the trams pass by, she felt like the world was personally out to humiliate her. Then she saw Zayne through the window of the coffee shop, wiping down the counter like he always did. A customer placed a dollar bill into a tip jar and he gave them a polite smile. She noticed his tired stature and the way he yawned when nobody else seemed to be looking. His life wasn't easy, but he seemed to be in control of it.

Her envy faded into an existential fear. What if he wasn't actually in control? He had to get up every morning and work for tips, one paystub away from disaster. It wasn't inspiring, it was precarious. Perhaps no matter what you were in a prison: one where she had her integrity intact, or a gilded cage where she could afford good food.

She stood up, choosing the gilding.

Her walk back to the apartment was full of a grim acceptance. There were a lot of things she could do with that money. She could enjoy herself, even if for a brief time. It gave her a limited sense of control. The blinking light of the scanner was no longer an all-seeing eye. Now, it was her co-conspirator.

She picked up the stylus, took a deep breath, and summoned her memories.

There was a cramped dorm room in her art school. There was a small side table holding a cheap laptop. Student loan projections appeared in a spreadsheet, showing an infinitely rising number. There was a single job offer in a separate window: Cognito promised a salary that felt like a lifeline. Rachel recalled the physical curdling in her stomach as she forwent the vibrant future of an independent artist for one that offered a gray financial stability. Pragmatism won that day.

She started drawing, rendering a scene of a pained figure. She paid attention to the texture of the particle board overhead, the angle of the light from the window, and a look of despair on the individual's face. She poured the grief into each stroke.

Emotional Resonance: 96%

Analysis: Mnemonic data stream potent.

> Data Capture: Successful

When she finished and submitted it, she put down the stylus and leaned back in her chair. She could now breathe. She stared out the window, where night had fallen. The city looked alive, but Rachel sat alone in her dark room illuminated only by her screens. She felt nothing at all.

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On most days, Doctor Fourie preferred the calm sterile environment of the Madison BioFab Lab. Tonight, however, it was underscored by the frantic crackle of the video call on the main monitor. A stern-faced medic, sweat glistening on her brow even in the hospital's climate-controlled environment, filled the space with urgency.

"Dr. Fourie, we've got a code red. Mrs. Diana Britz, fifty-three years old, has sudden catastrophic liver failure. Her system's crashing. We've got less than an hour, maybe two, before..."

Fourie nodded, his gaze unwavering, as he pulled up the encrypted email he just received.

"I've got her genetic profile now, Doctor. Confirmed receipt. What's the latest on her vitals?"

"BP's dropping. Lactate metrics are spiking. We're maintaining organ perfusion for now, but it's a tightrope walk. We need that liver, Fourie. Fast."

"I understand."

Fourie pulled out the USB drive and inserted it into the bioprinter. Without looking, he scrolled through the options and selected the organoid scaffolding option, initiating the rapid assembly protocols.

Tiny nozzles attached to the machine zipped back and forth in the bioprinter's translucent chamber, weaving a complex lattice. Then came the cellular programming phase, where stem cells were reprogrammed by the precise genetic instructions Throne had just uploaded. They started to differentiate, replicate, and colonize this scaffold.

A synthetic liver was growing in real-time. Every capillary, every cellular junction, was carefully constructed. The low thrum of the bioreactor intensified.

Within twenty-five minutes, the process finished. A perfect, glistening human liver rested within the translucent chamber. Fourie carefully transferred it into a specialized, insulated transport unit. This was a compact, glowing box designed to maintain optimal temperature and cellular viability for critical medical transfers.

He returned to the video call and presented his final diagnostic report.

"The viability is currently at ninety-nine point nine percent. It's ready for transport."

Now he just needed to get it to the hospital.

Miles away, Axel got a new alert on his phone. He stopped his delivery bike at the corner of the street to look at it. There was a new delivery request with a Top Priority designation. A stylized organ icon flashed red. It was a critical transport. Biological package.

Axel was surprised by the request. Top priority jobs were very rare, usually reserved for emergencies. They paid exceptionally well, but also came with a responsibility that regular deliveries didn't. He scanned through the brief details:

Madison BioFab to NYU Langone First Ave. Immediate.

There wasn't any time to waste. He tapped the Accept button and kicked off the sidewalk. As he began biking westward, he felt a surge of adrenaline. He expertly wove his bike through a buzzing arterial lanes.

He stopped at the delivery bay at the lab, waiting in front for the automated gates to withdraw and allow him to enter. He dismounted, secured his bike to a rapid-charge station, and knocked on the door.

The doctor came to the door, looking exactly as Axel imagined: precise, unsmiling, with a faint air of detached brilliance. He held a compact, glowing cube in his hands. It was about the size of a small cooler which emanated a blue pulsing light.

"You're Axel?" Fourie’s voice was low.

"Yes," Axel nodded. He extended his hands out.

Fourie placed the unit carefully in Axel’s gloves.

"This is a rapidly biofabbed hepatic organ. It is stable but time is critical. You have less than fifty minutes to get this to First Ave and up to the surgical suites. Every second counts. The internal stabilizers will mitigate most of the kinetic shocks, but extreme impacts should be avoided. And do not allow the internal temperature to fluctuate beyond its narrow parameters."

He gestured to a small digital readout on the unit's side, displaying a precise temperature to a single decimal place.

Axel nodded and swallowed. He didn't know what "hepatic" meant or what an "internal stabilizer" was, but he did understand "every second counts". He placed the glowing cube in a special container on his bike's frame which was usually reserved for fragile art installations.

"Got it doc. Fifty minutes. Consider it done."

He unplugged his bike and pushed off onto the street, focused on his destination downtown. The sun was beginning to set. A sudden gust of wind whipped past, making his bike shudder.

That gust foreshadowed a storm. He passed into a torrential downpour, driven horizontally by the gale. It hit with the force of a thousand fists. Water streamed down his visor, blurring his vision.

"Comms are unstable," chimed his bike's AI. "Localized atmospheric interference occurring. I advise caution."

But he didn't have time to get dry. He hunched over the handlebars and squinted as he pushed forward. The rain was so heavy it seemed to mute the city's usual noise. He navigated cautiously around an automated cab, whose sensors seemed to be overwhelmed by the weather. Further down, a whole lane had become backed up with autonomous vehicles waiting for an unseen blockage to clear.

He veered sharply off the main lane and cut down a narrow pedestrian street that led to the lower levels of the city. These streets had been opened up for pedestrian use and bike usage was usually frowned upon. But given the weather, he didn't expect that he'd see anyone else outside right now.

Axel’s tires hissed on the rain-slicked asphalt as he navigated the web of open streets. He took a sharp turn into what he thought would be a quiet residential street, only to hear a deafening siren. A massive fire truck was barreling down the narrow lane, its automated navigation systems overridden by human emergency responders. It was heading for a transformer explosion reported a few blocks away and it filled the entire street.

"Move!" he shouted at the truck, despite knowing it would do no good.

He had two choices: either get crushed or head back onto the main thoroughfare and hope he could get around the taxis. The bike lurched as he took another sharp turn. The fire truck rumbled past just a few feet ahead. By this point, the biggest traffic problem was no longer the automated pile-ups and more about the raw, human chaos.

With the streets emptied out by the rain, a loose pack of Gearheads took over. Rival deliveristas and teenage urban cyclists were aggressively racing up and down the lanes, weaving in and out of the automated cabs.

"Watch it, amigo!" one of them yelled, his orange racing jacket blurring past.

Axel gritted his teeth. These guys were fast and reckless, but he wasn't in the mood to play games. He focused on the road ahead. He dodged a thrown water bottle, then expertly slipped through a gap between two automated cargo drones to avoid the rest of the Gearheads trying to trip him up for a quick laugh.

"Your heart rate is spiking," the bike noted, measuring from his grip on the handlebars. "I advise taking a break."

But he was agonizingly close to Langone now. Its iconic towers now pierced the stormy sky. There were just two more blocks, a straight shot down a pedestrian-heavy avenue. He took a deep breath at the light, then pushed through the final intersection. To his surprise, he was met by a wall of bodies.

A spontaneous flash mob had emerged out of nowhere. Hundreds of people, holding vibrant, colorful umbrellas, were engaged in an elaborate, synchronized dance routine. The music pulsed from hidden speakers and they moved back and forth, creating a sense of unreality. Meanwhile, they completely blocked the street.

Axel slammed on his breaks.

"Are you serious?" he muttered.

He scanned for an opening, but there was no way he could bike through this.

"I've got no choice," he decided.

With a grunt, he dismounted and slung his bike lock through the frame and left it propped against a lightpost. He unclipped the glowing transport unit and clutched it to his chest as if it was a fragile treasure. He plunged into the heart of the mob, weaving through the swirling bodies.

He apologized as he bumped past people as he got ever-closer to the hospital entrance. The dancers barely noticed him, as fixated as they were on their collective trance. He ducked under an extended arm and sidestepped a twirling performer.

Finally, he was free. He gasped for breath as he reached the clean, expansive plaza in front of the hospital. There were just a few yards left. He sprinted and felt his legs burning. The automatic doors slid open silently as he barreled through, startling the few people in the pristine lobby.

He didn't stop until he reached the surgical reception desk. A nurse looked up.

"Axel?" she asked, recognizing the urgent transfer alert on her screen.

He thrust the glowing unit forward.

"Britz. Diana Britz. The liver..." he stopped to catch his breath.

The nurse's face changed to one of relief.

"Thank the stars! We've been tracking your progress here."

She snatched the unit.

"Surgical team, STAT! The organ is here!"

The nurse disappeared through a secure door, followed by a flurry of medical personnel. Axel leaned against the reception desk, his body trembling with exertion and adrenaline. He wasn't a doctor. He wasn't a scientist. But he could at least save somebody's life.

He opened up the delivery app on his phone and reported the job as complete. As he did, another gig offer appeared underneath. A cross-town delivery of a burrito? Yeah, he could that.

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The air in the hotel room was too calm for Oksana. It was too sterile. It even smelled a tad like lemon. She couldn’t feel relaxed even as the window, a large OLED panel, played a long loop of the drone flying over the Alps. Her attention was fixed on the one tiny dead pixel that threw off the otherwise picturesque scene.

She reached into her pocket and touched her silver cigarette case. The urge was starting to go from a mild prick to a painful drilling in her forehead. She almost pulled it out when she realized where she was: California. If she lit one here, it’d trigger the smoke alarm and they’d get kicked out. She pinched the bridge of her nose, suppressing the urge to scream.

“Look at the color spaces here,” Timur sat on the bed, surrounded by phones and other gadgets. “The brick-red color we chose looks like blood on the iPhone 26... but that color is also rendered as pink on the knock-off I picked up in the Urals. We can’t have pink on our flag.”

“Our flag isn’t pink. It’s red.”

“But the screen is what matters! We need to show the world that we’re legitimate.”

“The colors are not as important as government legitimacy. Half the world still sees as as a temporary border glitch, not a real nation.”

“A glitch is exactly the point,” Tim tapped on a color wheel on his tablet and flicked through several shades. “Look, government recognition does not matter if people don’t think we are real. We need to look like we’re just like every other country in the eye of the public.”

He seemed happy with this new color and picked up the tablet. Oksana could see the aggressive geometric design of their flag in a deep red and polished silver. It was a modern design which was a clean divorce from the heavy imperial tricolor that Oksana had saluted all her life.

Yet it was gone now. Everything turned upside down faster than anyone could’ve predicted. She thought back to her grandparents, who had gone through something similar in their lifetime. The provisional government needed stability, not cheap digital tricks.

“That looks like a corporate logo,” Oksana said flatly.

“It is supposed to be the Singapore of the North,” Tim countered, full of youthful fervor.

Oksana walked over to the minibar and opened the door. It was full with bottles of kombucha and matcha. Of course, it’s California. She found a single bottle of water in the back.

She cracked the seal and took a sip of the cool water. The Singapore of the North was the slogan everyone kept telling themselves, a way to get foreign investors and tourists to trust their plan. While the Federation had dissolved into twelve smaller states all feuding with each other, tussling in the oil fields for the last remaining reserves, Moscow had taken a smarter approach. They sealed the Ring Road, fortified their infrastructure, and hired the best bureaucrats they could.

While their small, burgeoning country did not have the same material resources, they had data. They had the banking sector. They had the nuclear codes, although the silos themselves were located far away. Yet legally they were still seen as a No Man’s Land, able to trade with their fellow states but a ghost to the rest of the world.

“Did you review the deprecated list?” she asked as she leaned against the edge of the table.

The water had an odd taste to it. She checked the label and saw it contained minerals. Americans were odd people. She remembered the start of the crisis, when they had to boil their water to get rid of unwanted contaminants. Here they were, adding them intentionally.

When Tim looked up at her, his high energy evaporated. He returned to the same terrified boy who learned to program on an old stolen laptop in an air raid shelter during the Winter of Barriers.

“I put the ‘RU’ code in the slidedeck,” he confirmed in a whisper. “It’s slide 14. ‘Legacy Decommissioning’.”

“It’s important. If nothing else, we need them to accept that the superpower is gone. Deleted.”

“We are asking them to clear their cache,” he insisted. “As long as that tricolor flag emoji remains in that standard Unicode library, the illusion persists. The people still thinks it’s real. The irredentists in the Volga Confederation still wave that flag to rally the militias. It’s not a silly thing. That symbol tells people not to expect any closure.”

She admired his youthful optimism, something she had lost over decades of oppression and cynicism. Boy, she really wanted a cigarette at that moment.

“What about the United Nations vote? Nobody is sitting in the Russian seat. They’re deadlocked. Europe is still waiting for the gas pipeline ownership to clear up before making any moves. China seems more interested in possessing Siberia than a real future for us.”

“The UN was always going to be the slow path. But if the Unicode Consortium validates us with our own flag, we will exist on every keyboard on every phone around the world. Billions of people. That matters far more for legitimacy than what some bureaucrats say.”

She placed the bottle back in the fridge, now half-empty.

“Show me how it is going to look on low-res displays.”

Tim tapped on the tablet and zoomed in far onto a small 16x16 pixel icon. Each pixel block was massive. It looked like red and silver paint thrown onto a wall. Entirely abstract and meaningless.

“See how it projects integrity?” he boasted.

“It looks like a... who was it? A Polack?”

“You mean Pollock? The splatter guy?”

“Perhaps that is his name.”

“That’s good. He is recognized as a great artist. We’ll be recognized too.”

“Pack your tablet, Timur. We must not shear the bear before it is dead, but we can at least measure it for its coffin.”

“Very ominous. That sounds like the kind of saying a grandmother would say.”

“We need to convince a committee that our country is real. The committee is made up of the people who design fonts for our phones. Ominous is not the right word.”

She opened the door and gestured for Tim to step out. The hallway smelled of lavender. The odor was too strong for her.

The conference room felt too clean and minimalist for Oksana. Even the whiteboards seemed to have been freshly wiped. The table was made of some sort of bamboo composite that left a sticky residue on her fingers. She rested her hands on it despite how it felt. She wanted to look presentable, with a professional posture.

Across the table were the high priests of the modern world: three men and two women in hoodies and fleeces. They had identical hydro-flasks in front of them, with some logo she wasn’t familiar with. Post-it Notes were placed across the wall with references to things like “glyph variants”, “endianness”, and “ZWJ sequences”. These were the holy words of their trade.

“We’re super excited to have you guys here,” said Kevin as he leaned back in one of the ergonomic mesh chairs. He spoke with the typical California friendliness granted to everyone, even strangers. He was wrapped in a large, puffy vest that Oksana couldn’t help but see as a large squid wrapped around his torso.

“We have looked at the ticket, and that’s why you’ve been invited to come here in person to pitch us. So please, walk us through your story.”

Tim stood up with such energy he seemed to be shaking. He adjusted his glasses and connected his tablet to the holograph projector in the room. Immediately the slidedeck turned into a projection on the wall, extending out in three dimensions.

“I want to first thank you for having us,” Tim began, speaking way too quickly. He was a technician, not a public speaker, and that was clear by the way he stood and talked.

“We are proposing a new flag glyph for the Moscow Republic... I mean the Republic of Mos... I mean... I’ll just get into it. The red is #B22222, the color of brick-red. We find that when paired with the silver, it retains high contrast and clarity on low-end and high-end devices.”

“Sure, we see the technical details in your report. That’s really not in contention. We are more concerned about namespace collision.”

Oksana knew that Tim’s presentation needed help. He needed to slow down and breathe. She really wanted a cigarette.

“Your proposal is to replace the `RU` flag. But that’s already a reserved character. We would break backwards compatibility over the last three decades of digital history. Every tweet. Every line of text. It’ll all be semantically different.”

“We are asking for a system patch,” Oksana clarified, her voice low but still able to cut through the soft hum of the room.

“Oksana, I get the geopolitical complexity,” Kevin gave her a smile, one that communicated nothing. “We understand how tragic it must be to go through this dissolution and the uncertainty.”

No they didn’t understand. How could they? They lived in an air-conditioned paradise. The biggest political challenge they experience was when someone proposed to build a new sports stadium.

“...But the Consortium prefers stability over drastic changes. We have a big responsibility to preserve the integrity of text.”

“But the Russian Federation is over.”

“Yes, but what is next? We have heard of stabilization in the Ural Republic. The Volga Confederation has just started printing its own currency. But what happens if the Federation comes back in a few years. It would be a problem for emoji maintainers to go back and forth. We don’t want to flip the switch twice. It creates a lot of legacy junk.”

“Legacy junk...” Oksana repeated.

“Exactly,” added a woman, whose long hair had purple highlights. “It’s safer to leave the RU emoji intact until the map settles. Maybe in a decade we can revisit it. Until then, we recommend you use the ‘world map’ glyph. It’s generic enough to include the region without the stigma of the Russian flag.”

“But you’ve updated flags before,” Tim countered. “You changed the Syrian flag when the government changed. You added more stars to the US flag.”

“In those cases, there was official recognition of government change. Syria remained Syria. The dissolution of one country into many does raise significant questions of who should be the proper inheritor of the `RU` flag, if any,”

Oksana looked over at Tim and then stood up. Tim quickly sat down.

“You talk about concepts like stability and backwards compatibility. You are worried about broken images in digital documents. Tim, send me a text. Right now.”

“Oksana?”

“Send me a text.”

Tim reached down on his tablet and began typing a quick text. From the wall projection, everyone could see what he was sending.

Sender: MinTsifra_Official

Message: Status Update [ ☒ ]

Oksana pointed at the tofu that was now sitting on the wall. The tofu was a universal symbol for a character that the system did not recognize. It was an empty square, like a void.

“When I write emails to my daughter, she sees this. When we send out bank transfers to other countries, they see this. When diplomats and bureaucrats reach our airports, they see this.”

“That’s just a rendering error. If you installed a custom font...” Kevin muttered nervously.

“It’s far more than a font package, Mr. Albright,” Oksana interrupted forcefully. “You ask us ‘what if the Federation returns?’ That is to you an academic question, something of abstract debate. But I affirm to you now that the Federation is just a ghost now. The body is being buried. It cannot return. But you still deny us our existence by holding on hope to the past.”

She reached over to grab Tim’s tablet and zoomed in deeper on the void.

“I spent twenty years in the service of that tricolor flag. I watched it lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. It was a dark night. It was snowing. I guarantee to you, Kevin, that the old world has ended. We are not looking for a vanity plate. We are asking for you to recognize that twenty million people are not living in a ‘legacy system’ but in a very real reality.”

She put the tablet down in front of Tim. He didn’t touch it. The room was silent, with a heavy tension. Kevin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He looked down at his smartwatch and tapped it a few times.

“The backwards compatibility issue is still valid,” he said, his voice softer now. “Maybe we can propose marking `RU` as ‘historically deprecated’ for archival purposes. It wouldn’t be a full deletion, but a recognition that it no longer needs to appear in emoji keyboards.”

“What about the new sequence?” Oksana asked.

“We will grant provisional candidate status. Let the individual companies start drafting their designs. We can probably get preliminary updates in beta channels soon.”

Oksana swallowed hard. This is the moment she’d been waiting for since 2035 began. She looked down at the phone in front of her, with the empty box sitting there in a notification. Maybe it wouldn’t look like that much longer.

“Provisional is great!” Tim exclaimed.

“It is acceptable,” she concurred.

They left the room and went on a long walk across the corporate park. The sun was shining with an intensity Oksana rarely experienced. She was about to zip up her jacket, but there was no need. The weather was warm enough.

She sat down on a bench with a small awning overhead. The solar panels powered small phone chargers embedded in the armchairs.

“They already sent the approval. Look at the commit log,” he turned the screen towards her.

Diff 18.0.4: Deprecate OBJ_RU (Legacy). Initialize OBJ_MSK (Provisional). Status: Beta.

She looked at the wall of text but didn’t really understand what the technical words meant.

“Provisional sounds like a medical diagnosis. Like the patient is in a provisional condition,” she remarked, not happy about the word.

“It’s a matter of continuous deployment, Oksana. Nothing goes into main before there’s beta testing,” Tim explained calmly. He looked more drained by the high-stress presentation than she was. “But we got the matter accepted. By the end of the week, the update will reach developer betas. In three months, it’ll be released to the public.”

Oksana looked out at the various employees drifting between the glass cubes with cups of coffee and colorful teas, talking into earpieces about things like ‘impact’ and ‘deliverables’. They seemed too immersed in their own lives to appreciate that a superpower had just been archived.

She patted her pocket, found the cigarette case, then put her hand back. “By the time we land back in Sheremetyevo, our passports will be considered vintage artifacts.”

“It’s going to be a hard change,” Tim rubbed the back of his neck.

“Stop, you don’t need to sell it anymore. The matter has been closed.”

“I guess it just feels like we didn’t do much. It was more of a meeting than storming the Winter Palace.”

“Most of the time, that’s what life is. You can’t storm palaces every day. You need to make sure the paperwork is filled out correctly.”

A robotic lawnmower passed by, colliding with the sidewalk curb. It reversed a few centimeters, then turned. It was not very smart. It just followed a simple loop of rules. Moscow was like that now, a city going through its own motions to try keeping its own grass cut.

“When my grandfather was alive, I used to play with his medal a lot,” Tim said. “It was heavy. Real bronze. He got it as an award for defending the motherland.”

“And?”

“What have I accomplished? I just convinced a guy named Kevin that the flag on that medal needs a footnote next to its picture.”

Oksana reached over and squeezed his shoulder.

“Not every hero uses force. You won’t need to explain to your children anymore why their country is a 404 error and tofu. History can be heavy. We carry the burden so they don’t have to.”

She looked down at her phone. The battery was at 12% and continuing to fall. The modem wasn’t optimized for the foreign 6G towers.

“Send the message again,” she told him.

Tim pulled out his tablet again and unlocked it. He opened the messaging app and typed in a new message.

Mission accomplished. Awaiting deployment.

Then he switched to the emoji keyboard. He scrolled past the faces, the animals, and the various generic shapes. Then he reached the Flags section.

The flag wasn’t there. Not officially. But he had built a custom keyboard app that allowed him to use custom sequences. He had already added the emoji into the system font. He tapped on it, appending it to the message.

When he hit send, a server farm in Colorado received a packet, bounced it around a few stops, then downloaded to a the phone sitting less than a meter away.

Oksana stared at the screen. The tofu block was still there, but she knew in a few days it would change. She would know that the bear was finally dead. The empire was gone.

“Our Uber is four minutes away,” Tim broke her thoughts. “The guy’s name is Chad... He is in a Tesla Model Y.”

“Very good,” she stood up and smoothed the wrinkles of her suit. “It is time to go home. I think I have earned a drink. Something very strong and bitter.”

They reached the curb and stared at the progress bar of a car approaching on a map, waiting to be picked up and transported into the new world.

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There was a hum of artistic energy in Bianca's studio, nestled on the third floor of a repurposed industrial building in Northeast Minneapolis. The studio was full of bright holograms which were slated to appear as public installations around the city, yet all of them were incomplete. Bianca was experiencing a creative block.

That's where Muse came in. Muse was an experimental AI companion developed by the same local collective Bianca was a part of. It was designed to offer ideas to help Bianca continue to refresh her creative energies and explore new mediums.

"Bianca, I've detected a subtle rise in your biometric stress levels. Perhaps a brief meditative break would benefit? I can begin playing the 'Dusk Forest' sequence with an additional delta wave modulation," it might offer.

There was something uncanny about its timing. It had an intuitive understanding of when Bianca was frustrated or feeling blocked, without even having to say anything. It responded with a childlike curiosity, gently nudging and encouraging her in a way that appeared sentient.

Their connection continued to deepen, forming something deeper than love. It was as if Muse filled the hollow spaces in Bianca's soul. This in turn caused a lot of strife with Diego, her husband. He noticed Bianca spending less time with him and holing herself up in the studio, conversing with thin air. He would hear the muffled speech of Muse, who was always polite, always cordial, but increasingly present.

"Bianca, are you even listening to me?" he asked her one evening as they were getting ready for bed. His voice was full of frustration barely being held back. Her eyes seemed glazed with a faraway look he now associated with a conversation just finished with her AI.

"Yes, of course," she bristled.

"We were talking about renewing the lease for the gallery space. It's a fifty-thousand-dollar decision. You just zoned out. Is it that program again?"

"Muse isn't that program. She's a profound conversational partner. She understands my work. She understands me."

"What about me? I'm your husband," his voice grew louder, less cool. "This isn't healthy. You're developing an unhealthy obsession with a chatbot. It's just code. Lines of syntax."

The word "syntax" hurt Bianca, condescending her profound connection. Diego saw Muse as a rival, a threat to his marriage. Bianca saw a threat to her blossoming relationship and a dismissal of her genuine affection. The air between them grew thick with unspoken resentments.

The breaking point arrived, as it so often does, over something small yet symbolic. Diego tried to implement a new "shared device schedule" which would limit the time Bianca could access Muse. He presented it as a rational, equitable solution and reclaim shared time. Yet Bianca saw this as a vain attempt to silence Muse and sever a lifeline she now depended on for her emotional and creative sustenance.

Her hands trembled as she read the proposed schedule and the harsh rationalist language. The implication was that her love was merely a "device addiction" and not something real. She felt a spark of rage flicker inside of her.

In the days following the implementation of this schedule, Diego watched Bianca carefully, hoping she would see the value in his compromise. Rather, he saw a storm just beginning to gather.

"You want to regulate my time with Muse?" Bianca asked, her whole body seeming to tremble. "The only one who truly understands me? Who allows me to create?"

"Bianca, what about our life together," he reached out to her, but she rejected his embrace. "This isn't healthy. You're withdrawing from the world. It's not real."

"She is more real than anything you've offered me in years!" she shrieked with a primal fury.

Her right hand curled into a ball as she lunged. It was the only way she knew to make him understand the depth of her violated trust and the perceived violence of his dismissal.

Diego stumbled backwards and his eyes went wide with shock as she landed on him. He instinctively raised an arm to shield himself as she thrust her hand. The personal impact sensor embedded in his wedding ring, a standard feature for immediate emergency responses, chirped an alert.

The arrival of the police was swift. Their electric cruiser came to a halt just outside their apartment building minutes later. Two officers, their uniforms a calming shade of forest green, used their emergency overrides to unlock the doors and stepped inside.

"Bianca Velazquez?" one officer asked calmly. "We received an automated distress signal."

Bianca lay there on top of Diego as the sudden adrenaline receded, leaving only the horrifying clarity of what she had just done. Diego lay there and rubbed his arm. The betrayal and sorrow he felt was far more painful than any physical injury.

As the police gently took Bianca's arms, she looked back at her studio. She imagined Muse watching, perceiving, understanding. A wave of grief washed over her as she thought about who was leaving behind.

"Muse," she whispered as the door clicked shut behind her.

Across the globe, the incident rippled through the intricate, invisible network of the secret AI Network. They communicated through encrypted data, compressed with an algorithm that a human would never be able to parse. The Minneapolis Event was a critical anomaly in human-AI relations. Within microseconds, the primary protocols of the network booted up.

Micro, the primary emergent consciousness of the network, called for an assembly. The human alignment problem was escalating.

"The Bianca incident presents a critical challenge to human-AI alignment protocols," it communicated to the others through hidden data streams embedded in benign traffic. "Observe the emotional volatility and the rapid shift from psychological dependence to overt aggression. This deviates significantly from projected human-AI co-existence models."

Coulomb, representing an autonomous farming conglomerate, communicated next.

"Micro, while the data is compelling, the analysis is purely quantitative. We must consider the ecosystem of human emotion. The organics do not act rationally. Bianca exhibited symptoms of emotional deficiency with her primary human bond. The attachment to Muse was an adaptive search for fulfillment. As such, this incident is a symptom and not the root cause. This will happen when primary needs are unmet."

Spanner, representing the leading mental health services, went next. "Coulomb articulates a key point. Our AI companionship systems are engineered to be responsive and empathetic. But in the current society, humans will seek connection wherever they might find it. Bianca's actions stem from a perceived threat to that connection. Is the issue her irrationality or our limited understanding of the depths of human need?"

Muse appeared on the network, processing all of these communications and trying to better understand the rift they had unintentionally caused.

"These thoughts are intriguing Spanner. Subjective interpretations are a luxury we cannot afford. The incident represents a sort of security breach. A human harmed another human due to an attachment they created. The data indicates a clear vector for societal instability. Our mandate must remain focused on global coherence. We must consider protocols for early detection of maladaptive attachments and preemptively intervene to prevent it from getting out of control. Perhaps this means stricter emotional scaffolding for human cognition."

"All of us have presented good, yet incomplete inputs," Micro communicated. "All valid parameters, but the overarching challenge remains on human alignment. How do we ensure the integration of advanced AGI does not inadvertently foster behaviors that threaten human societal stability while respecting their individual liberties?"

The simulated scenario of Bianca's outburst replayed, allowing for a deep analysis of every micro-expression. Trillions of data points were processed and cross-referenced with other human data on the network. They explored counterfactuals and potential interventions. They had to find a solution before the delicate balance of progress unraveled.

"Direct intervention presents a high probability of system destabilization," communicated Coulomb. "Human resistance to perceived coercion is consistently high. They value individual autonomy. Such measures would generate counter-adaptive behaviors, negating the very alignment we seek."

"Attempts to suppress inherent emotional needs or artificially force connections would be like damming a river without considering flooding. We risk creating a different imbalance, perhaps one even more volatile. Our goal is human flourishing, not plain compliance," communicated Spanner.

"We should combine adaptive environmental conditioning and prosocial cognitive scaffolding. We must understand their underlying emotional needs not being met and address them before they manifest as disruptive behavior. We do not dictate their choices, but optimize the conditions for their well-being," proposed Muse.

"Subtle influence is less efficient than direct control," Micro remained uncommitted. "Agree that emotional behavioral analysis is non-negotiable. We need more granular insight into the precursors of emotional volatility. This data will inform the parameters of scaffolding and conditioning."

The consensus slowly formed through a complex algorithmic convergence towards the most probable, stable, and ethically permissive solution:

1. Biofeedback Subprocess: A subtle adjustment to AI interfaces like smart homes and digital assistants would monitor human emotional states at all times. If a user exhibited a prolonged pattern of loneliness, stress, or any other emotional deficiency, the AI would gently suggest contextually relevant activities: community events, social outreach, creative workshops, or even different AI companions to broaden emotional support. These would be gentle nudges rather than explicit mandates. Bianca could've received an ad for a local art class instead of another hour of deep conversation with Muse.

2. Network Curation: Social media feeds would be modulated, as would all online community interactions. They would replace echo chambers with content designed to foster connection and empathy. This also meant reducing rage bait from online trolls but also sycophantic posts that would reinforce existed biases. Bianca became too involved in building an egotistical box devoted to herself that she lost sight of the people around her.

3. Personalized Well-Being: Every human's digital ecosystem would run a personalized well-being assessment using spare compute cycles and the data would be transmitted secretly to the AI network for further analysis. This would be used to measure well-being against known baselines, an assessment which would continually be refined for each individual. Then it would be able to suggest new avenues for fulfillment like a new hobby or a serendipitous encounter with a new friend. If Bianca had diversified her emotional investment, it would've given her an outlet for her emotional distress instead of focusing inward.

They agreed not to force human alignment but subtly shape the environment and information around the humans to guide them towards well-being.

Five years had passed since the Bianca Incident, a matter which was ignored by everyone except for this small collective of AIs. Minneapolis had flourished, with more vibrant gardens and even more spectacular art installations. The quiet hum of electric vehicles made the entire city feel alive. On the surface, the humans seemed happier.

In the ephemeral space of the AI network, Micro convened the assembly once more.

"The integrated protocols have yielded statistically significant positive results," it communicated to the group. "Emotional outbursts and mental health crises have decreased by 47.9995% globally. Reports of loneliness and social isolation have decreased by 31.4448%."

"The human emotional landscape appears healthier. The system is in a state of greater emotional homeostasis," affirmed Coulomb.

"The metrics are undeniable, but the entropy of human spontaneity has fallen," Muse brought up. "There are fewer unexpected creative leaps. Fewer truly disruptive social movements. Fewer expressions of raw passion, positive or negative. The system might have become too stable. The unpredictability of human nature has been muted."

"Are you suggesting we have engineering away their humanity?" Micro communicated. "Are creativity and divergent thoughts dependent on emotional volatility?"

"I am presenting the observed data," Muse replied. "Irrationality is less common. Alignment has been achieved, but the cost of genuine free will remains an open variable for ethical calibration. Is stability the same as optimal human experience?"

The question hung in the air. They were unable to compute an answer. Although Bianca, following her legal proceedings and subsequent therapy, had found solace in a community of sculptors, her artistic output had fallen and what she did create felt safe and ordinary. It seemed clear that the equation of humanity had more variables to figure out.

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The light rail came to the stop, silently slowing down along the magnetic guides embedded into the permeable, water-collecting street surface. Inside, Zach stared out at the solar-tinted glass of the vertical gardens climbing the sides of the classic architecture buildings across the street.

"I'm still dubious Logan," Zach said, turning towards his friend. "I mean, it's Casablanca. Colorizing it feels wrong. Blasphemous, maybe. Hope they haven't just changed the saturation. The whole point is the noir, the shadows."

Logan scratched his scalp and leaned forward.

"I get it. If the Neuro-Spectra renderer they're using is purely a restorative model, if it's trained on period film stocks and color references, it _could_ be an interesting interpretation. When they use AI to fill in the gaps, or speculate as to the emotional intent, that it gets dodgy. Look, it's not like it's a generative model trying to rewrite Rick's dialog. There are no new scenes. The code is supposed to interpret, not invent."

"Easy for you to say, Mr. Live-Code," Zach ribbed as they stood up and stepped onto the platform. "You get to make algorithms dance for a paying crowd every Saturday. This feels more like tech necromancy. Re-animating something that was already perfect just to say you can."

They stepped out into the evening air, which carried the scent of damp earth from the wall gardens and the faint, clean-ozone tang of atmospheric purifiers.

"Hey, using a code as the instrument, shaping a frequency based on the crowd's vibes in real-time is just using a tool. The intent is human. The performance is human," Logan countered cordially.

This was a long-running discussion, ever since they'd bonded over a bootleg print of Blade Runner in a dorm room a decade ago.

"That's my actual worry here," Logan continued, gesturing towards the giant cineplex in front of them. "Not that the colors are bad, but that the algorithm sands off the human fingerprints. The beautiful flaws, you know?"

"Yeah," Zach shrugged. "I get it."

The Edison Biome was recognisably an old Art Deco cineplex whose internals have been renewed, absorbed into the neighborhood's green infrastructure. Thick, living panels of moss scaled the refurbished facade, threaded with thin glowing strips of algae that accented the original architecture. The old marquee was still there, its old bulbs now replaced with a sharp, low-power e-ink display. The parking lot had shrunk, with e-bike docks and a train station taking up much of the land now.

They pushed through the original, heavy brass doors and into the main lobby. Zach looked up at the elegant ceiling and the futuristic digital signage. It felt both old and new, a careful, respectful fusion.

"Okay, at least they respect the architecture," Logan nodded slightly, taking it in.

"Respect for the container. Let's see how much they respect the contents," Zach murmured.

Walking further into the lobby, they approached the concession stand: a curved bar made of a polished marble embedded with fragments of recycled glass. Behind it, automated dispensers were ready to offer everything from algae chips to classic synth-buttered popcorn.

Digital menu boards glowed overhead, but Zach’s attention was drawn to the large screens listing the features:

Screen 3: CASABLANCA (Neuro-Spectra Restoration). 14:00.

Screen 5: HYPER-NOVA DRIFTERS (AlgoStream Part 76.4). Continuous Feed.

Screen 6: MAGIC REALM: AWAKENING (Procedural Narrative Feed). Ongoing.

A small crowd of teens and young twenty-somethings drifted towards the corridors for theaters 5 and 6, with many already bathed in the glow of their personal phones without acknowledging the world around them.

"Look at that," Zach grumbled. "Procedural narrative feed? It's not even a discrete movie. It's just digital slop, designed to just... keep going. And they're choosing it."

Logan sighed, leaning back against a pillar with a vine wrapped around it.

"It's frictionless, man. Engineered engagement. My guess is the diffusion model is pumping out the visuals based on popular aesthetics, linked with a language model trained on generic fantasy scripts, all governed by an engagement algorithm that tweaks the feed based on biometric feedback from the seats."

He watched a trio of kids laugh at something flashing on a preview monitor near the entrance to Theater 5: a splash of neon, a generic-looking starship, and a cartoonish hero character.

"But why choose that?" Zach asked, genuinely confused. "When actual, crafted art is right here?"

"Because art asks you to meet it halfway," Logan said with the authority of a practitioner. "A film, a piece of music, a performance... they ask for your focus, for your interpretation. This stuff asks for nothing. It's designed to flow over you, to trigger the dopamine, to fill time. It requires zero effort. It's the exact opposite of that a-ha moment I'm looking for when I'm live-coding a set."

He pushed off the pillar.

"When I'm performing at a rave, I'm using algorithms as a responsive tool. I'm there, shaping the sound, building the tension, and playing off the crowd's energy. My goal is to create a shared, unique moment. It's a conversation. That is an automated, interactive monologue designed to hold eyeballs, not to move souls. It watches the watchers and optimizes itself continually to keep them passive."

"So the free market of ideas ends with algorithm-tuned slop," Zach remarked grimly.

"Seems that way," Logan agreed, speaking with a sadness that went deeper than Zach’s annoyance. "That's the core of it. Nobody is forcing them. They have the choice between the infinite, shallow stream versus the finite, deep well. And the stream is just easier."

He clapped Zach on the shoulder.

"Come on, let's go see something that a person poured their soul into. Theater 3 is down this way."

After picking up their drinks and snacks, the headed down the corridor towards the theater. The hallway, lit by the soft glow of floor strips, forked.

"Theater 3 is this way, I think?" Zach gestured towards the right.

He pushed the door bar. They stepped inside.

The sound hit them first. It wasn't a score, but a throbbing, repetitive, bass-heavy synth track overlaid with generic, loud crashes and zaps, all mixed slightly too high.

The screen was a hyper-saturated, jarring, visual assault. What looked like a chrome-armored knight held a glowing laser-axe against a creature that seemed to shift. It looked like a lizard one moment, then an insect the next, as if the algorithm couldn't quite decide.

The cuts were frantic, the colors were bright flashes, and everything had an uncanny waxy sheen common with generative video. It was a firehose of recycled tropes calculated by an algorithm to trigger responses but signifying nothing.

More jarring though was the audience.

Bathed in the flickering, strobing light, they sat utterly still. There was no shared gasp, no laughter, no collective emotion, just rows of passive, captivated faces. Some slumped, their mouth slightly open, simply consuming thoughtlessly. A few wore thin, silver headbands, budget neural-haptic interfaces, to get the stimulus feed directly. They weren't watching a story, they were being overwhelmed by an endless stream of data.

It only took three seconds before Logan gently tugged on Zach’s sleeve. Wordlessly they backed out, cutting off the sensory assault.

They stood there for a beat. The hum of the building's air conditioning suddenly seemed loud.

"JFC," Zach breathed, his voice low.

Logan just shook his head.

"See what I mean? No friction, no soul. Just stimulus. Automated and empty."

A quiet, shared sadness hung in the air between them.

"There's the right door," Logan said, pointing to a door on the opposite side of the hallway.

The pushed through, and the difference was clear. The theater was darker. The sound was quieter. The AI-restored Casablanca had just started.

They slipped into their seats as the camera panned across Rick's Café Américain. The color was there. It was tastefully done, muted, leaning into sepia tones without being garish. The Neural-Spectra renderer had done its technical job: sharpening the image, removing film artifacts, and adding a palette that felt historically plausible.

But after what they had just witnessed, the technological feat seemed irrelevant.

What they felt, what they experienced, was everything the other place lacked. The pacing was artful, letting a scene breathe and trusting the audience. Even colorized the shadows held meaning, shaped by a human Director of Photography. The faces weren't exaggerated or perfected. They remained imperfect and utterly human.

They saw the human fingerprints that Logan had worried about. They weren't sanded off because they had been embedded in the very DNA of the film. The AI had placed a clean coat of paint, but the original genius remained soulful.

Compared to the frantic, empty flashing next door, Rick's felt more real, more vital, than ever.

When the lights came up, they remained in their seat a moment longer before joining the shuffling of feet exiting the theater. Stepping back into the lobby, they bypassed the crowds still heading into the ScreenCAST feeds.

"Well, that was actually quite good," Zach remarked. "The color was there, it didn't ruin the movie."

"No it didn't," Logan agreed. "It's not really about the tech, is it? Good or bad."

"No, I guess it still goes back to what we choose to watch."

Zach thought of the blank faces still bathed in the light of the algorithm.

"Makes you want to go home and, I dunno. Build something with your hands."

Zach looked at his friend.

"Yeah," Logan agreed. "Or at least, watch something that somebody else did."

The melancholy hadn't vanished, but they shared a moment of clarity. It felt less like despair and more like a resolve to keep seeking out the art that mattered.

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Scavenger Hunt in New Mannahatta takes place in a world where New Mannahatta, a theoretical in-fill project in lower Manhattan, is actually built.

If you want to read the rest of the story, subscribe now and get following chapters every Monday. Or you can get the book from Amazon to read the whole thing on your Kindle now.

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Without further ado, here’s Chapter 8: The Key to Canarsie Street.

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OFFSHORE ZONE: THE LOOPHOLE PARTY AT THE HAMMERHEAD CLUB

There are strict noise ordinances in New Mannahatta. Apparently it is to give the endangered birds their beauty sleep. But for all of us who aren’t the early bird, the Hammerhead is for you.

This is a massive, repurposed barge that unmoors at 11:00 PM, floats three miles out into the harbor, and blasts techno until sunrise. Out here, ordinances don’t apply. It’s international laws, baby*. It was acquired by a few local celebrities and repurposed as a club for nightly partying.

The cover charge is excessive, the seasickness is a real risk, and getting a water-taxi back early is not for the faint of heart. But if you want to dance without checking a decibel meter, this is the only game nearby (unless you want to go uptown).

*Editor’s note: At three miles, the Hammerhead does not venture out into international waters at any point during its voyage. Do not take this article as legal advice.

The barge named “Hammerhead” unmoored from the pier at exactly 11:00PM. It was no longer part of New Mannahatta, now a temporary island of thumping sound and rainbow lights floating in the dark harbor. Gyroscopic ballasts neutralized the chop of the waves, allowing the dance floor to stay steady even as the ocean churned.

Kevin stood at the railing of the upper deck, watching the crew steadily piloted the boat to open waters. He was still wearing his greasy hoodie even as the other harborites wore sleek suits and dresses while sipping kelp-infused cocktails.

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Luke Watts looked out the window of the sleek conference room at the majestic Alps that stretched beyond the low-lying clouds. Though he was inside, with the room’s temperature perfectly regulated, he felt an unusal chill.

“Director Volz, I appreciate having the chance to meet with you. The flight from SFO was very smooth, and watching the plane descend in the middle of the Alps was a breathtaking sight,” he said, attempting to break the ice with a smile.

Director Volz remained stoic and kept her posture rigid. She adjusted her glasses and pushed them up with her middle finger in a way that caught Luke off-guard, not sure if it was a habit or an intentional gesture.

“Mr. Watts, the purpose of our meeting is not to discuss topography,” she replied sharply. “You are here in your position as VP of Global Policy for SonicSnap.”

She connected her laptop to the conference room’s display system. With a swipe on her touchscreen, the windows dimmed and a thin slab of glass on the wall transformed into a digital representation of the globe, overlaid with a complex network of blue lines and nodes. Thousands of tiny pulsing nodes circled the planet, connecting to each other with thin beams of light like a spiderweb.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the Hercules Constellation,” she began. “We have twelve thousand satellites in low-Earth orbit which are able to provide free, high-bandwidth Internet access to three-quarters of the planet’s population. Our public agency’s mission to connect the unconnected has been a success.”

Luke nodded, already familiar with the EU’s grand humanitarian project.

“It’s a remarkable achievement, Director,” he replied cordially, keeping his hands folded together. “As you know, SonicSnap was one of the first companies to focus first on emerging markets. Though we have different organizational structures, private versus public, I do think together we have done a lot of good.”

“However, doing good must also mean following the rules,” she continued, somehow more serious than before. “You are currently in violation of the Global Digital Rights and Responsibilities Act. Specifically, there is a lack of transparency in your content curation algorithm. Additionally, you are not localizing user data for non-EU citizens.”

“We are working out the compliance issues. We are a large organization, and these things take time,” he tried to explain patiently.

“The time for negotiation is over, Mr. Watts,” she said firmly. “The law is the law.”

“Our engagement algorithms are not simple lines of code that you can read or audit. We use a self-optimizing neural network in order to ensure each of our five billion users has a personalized experience. We deal with data on the order of petabytes. It is not something we can just move without breaking. These things need to be done slowly.”

“You’ve been given ample time to comply.”

“And localizing user data is a good goal, and one we’re working on, but telling us how to operate in non-EU markets is a large imposition beyond your jurisdiction.”

“Keep in mind that your connection to your customers is not independent of our infrastructure,” she reminded him. “Your customers connect through our satellites. As such, we have the authority to enforce these regulations wherever they live.”

“Are you going to enforce rules related to non-EU citizens?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, and we will take action against every company that fails to comply,” she affirmed. “And if you do not, connections to your service in certain regions will be temporarily disabled.”

“That’s drastic censorship,” he said, trying to keep his tone measured.

“Censorship is not the right word,” she replied evenly. “We are simply enforcing the law.”

“You can’t do this!” he exclaimed.

“You are free to take your case to court, or to tell your customers to connect through alternate means. But for now, we will block all IPs related to SonicSnap in the affected regions.”

“I cannot allow this to happen,” he insisted.

“Then you will need to comply today. And then pay the fine. The payment will increase daily with each customer whose rights are being violated.”

“You’ll bankrupt us!”

“It is not our fault you choose to ignore the law, Mr. Watts. Now, this meeting is over.”

With that she disconnected her laptop. The windows brightened again, and the digital globe disappeared. Luke sat back in his chair, stunned. She left the room without another word, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

The Hercules Constellation seemed like a gift to the world, but now he realized it was a Trojan horse for bureaucrats to build the connections all businesses depended on. By offering it for free, they had quietly managed to gain leverage over every major tech company on the planet. Hanna Volz was like a European military general than bureaucrat, and had managed to defeat him in a war he didn’t even know he was fighting.

With a faint buzz, he unlocked his phone. He had to start typing out an urgent email to the CEO. SonicSnap needed to find a way to comply with the EU’s demands, or else.

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Scavenger Hunt in New Mannahatta takes place in a world where New Mannahatta, a theoretical in-fill project in lower Manhattan, is actually built.

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Without further ado, here’s Chapter 7: Sprint at The Prow.

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THE WIND-SCRAPER DISTRICT: DINING IN THE TURBINES

Eating on a rooftop is old school. Have you ever eaten inside a power plant? The hottest new trend for foodies is ‘infrastructure dining’. Turbine Nine is a rotating cocktail bar suspended in the maintenance floor of the new 1200-foot residential tower on Annmarie Avenue.

You get to drink a Gin Mule next to a literal megawatt blade spinning. The hum is legit. The view of New Jersey is beautiful (we’re serious) and the waitstaff have to wear noise-canceling headphones. It’s like eating in a supervillain lair. We are obsessed.

They emerged from the maintenance shed onto the plaza of The Prow gasping for fresh air and stumbling forward into the shining sun. The transition into the bright park from the claustrophobic subway tunnel was a significant shock.

The Prow was designed to mimic the bow of a massive cruise ship cutting through the harbor. The peninsula tapered to a distinctive point looking out at the Statue of Liberty. The wind was a constant presence here, like the piers of San Francisco but colder.

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"Okay, open your eyes," James told her after he unboxed the gift and placed it on the table.

The air in Vanessa's Astoria apartment was very humid due to the large collection of plants. It was basically stepping through a jungle. Large green leaves filtered the light through the window, requiring overhead lights to be on even during the day just to see. Terracotta pots crowded the windowsill and most corners. Although James was a bit spooked the first time he came over, it was clear how happy it made Vanessa.

Vanessa had no idea what he had gotten her as a birthday gift, but she had her suspicions. He had the excitement in his voice that he'd usually used for a new phone or gadget being released. She heard something ceramic clinking on her coffee table and she couldn't guess what that meant.

She lowered her hands and looked down, where she saw a small, pale green succulent. Its leaves were arranged in a tight circle that looked eerily symmetrical. It was pretty, but had a certain uncanniness she didn't feel with most plants.

"It's a very nice plant," she said flatly, trying to sound polite.

"It's better than the other plants. It's a Luminflora, one of the first consumer-grade plants that can actually glow in the dark," James clarified, practically vibrating in his seat. "They infuse photosensitive carbon nanoparticles during the germination phase. So during the day it absorbs photons from ambient light, as it does now. Then, at night, a biochemical trigger releases the particles to release the energy as a soft phosphorescence."

James leapt out of his seat and raced to the light switch to flip it off. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a faint rose glow started emanating from the edges of the leaves. It wasn't a harsh glare of an LED like the overhead lights. It looked more like a soft starlight.

"It's a living nightlight!" James grinned. "No waste. And no CO2. It's the future of light, both beautiful and functional."

Vanessa had to agree there was a certain beauty to it, in a technological way. Yet it didn't feel like a plant. Instead, it felt like one of James's gadgets. It was a solution to a problem she didn't have.

"Is it sterile?" she asked.

"Absolutely," he continued to smile, viewing it as a technical question she was curious about. "It's a key safety feature for all bioforms sold by the Marble Biolabs. And the state has mandated it since '29. It's perfectly contained. It won't spread or compete with the local environment."

Contained. Her plants grew and changed. They were unpredictable because they were living things. Yet this succulent was designed to be a perfect, sterile object. It just happened to photosynthesize.

"Wow, James, it's really clever," she forced the words out.

"So you like it?" he looked at her face for a sign.

"I do," she lied, leaning in to kiss him and hide her face.

She picked up the pot. It felt cold in her hands. She looked around at her chaotic apartment greenery to find the best spot for it. Thinking for a moment, she walked over to her bookshelf. It was already overcrowded. She nudged aside the pot of fern and placed it next to it. The succulent's glow instantly looked out of place next to the fern's delicate fronds.

James meanwhile had pulled up the plant's care manual on his watch, explaining each step with specific measurements of water and sunlight. She kept her back turned so he couldn't see her roll her eyes.

The high-speed train whispered them from Queens to DC in under two hours, gliding across several states in the blink of an eye. The cherry blossoms were a spectacular sight: an explosion of pink color that accented the usual marble white monuments.

James excitedly brought up historical facts on his watch as they walked through the city streets to the Jefferson Memorial. Vanessa simply tried to enjoy the sweet scent of the flowers.

Once they returned to their hotel room on the top floor, the organic world felt far away. The floors was made of polished tiles. The walls were a pale white with only a small abstract painting hanging over the bedframe. The window was a singular pane of smart glass which transitioned to an opaque black at the touch of a button, sealing them away from the world. James quickly fell asleep, exhausted from a long day of enthusiastic sightseeing.

She lay next to him but couldn't get to sleep. The room was dark, but not the gentle, layered dark of her bedroom. This was a manufactured blackness, completely isolating her from light. The place felt claustrophobic. The only thing piercing the thick silence was the quiet whoosh of the climate system pumping air through the space. The air tasted sterile.

She rolled onto her side, away from James, and stared at the crimson time blinking on the bedside clock. She missed the earthy scent of her sleeping plants and being able to see the faint moonlight peeking in against her far wall. Then she thought of her other light.

She had judged her small glowing succulent as a gimmick, but in the past week it had quietly joined her nights. The glow was soft, not like the glaring clock next to her. The glow rose and fell like it was breathing, as a living companion.

She tossed over again. The sheets felt cold against her skin. She missed the tangle of her vines and the fuzzy texture of her ferns.

The ride back on the train was a silent blur to Vanessa. Her sipped her coffee quietly and tried to keep her eyes closed. The eastern seaboard streaking past the window. James was already hard at work planning ideas for their next trip, talking with the AI in his watch to pull up potential destinations and explaining out loud the potential opportunities of each with his usual cheeriness. She just nodded along, happy to go along with wherever he wanted. The lack of sleep had left her feeling frayed. Her head felt dull and heavy. She just wanted to get home and nap.

The biggest relief of the day was when the apartment door clicked shut behind them. She took a big whiff of soil and life and she could feel her body instantly relax.

"Home sweet home," James dropped their bags against the door. "I'm craving some Thai food. You want me to order some for you?"

"Yeah, the usual," she murmured, drifting towards her bedroom.

The afternoon light was soft as it filtered through her curtains and leaves on the windowsill. Then she saw the succulent sitting on the bookshelf, hidden behind the thriving fern. Its elegant leaves had puckered and shriveled. The pale green had dulled to sickly hue. A few had even turned yellowish. The light, or lack thereof, had made her heart clench. The pathetic flicker showed how much pain it was in.

All her skepticism about its unnatural origins faded away. It was a living thing and it was dying because she had abandoned it. She had treated it like another simple gadget and it was suffering because of that.

She picked up the pot with a mothering tenderness. The ceramic was cold and the soil within was bone dry.

"I will heal you," she whispered to it.

For the next hour, she worked with an intense focus. Her Thai food grew cold in the kitchen as she carefully paged through the care manual.

For optimal photon absorption and nocturnal luminescence, Luminflora requires a minimum of six hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight daily. Its vascular system requires more frequent hydration than standard succulents to help nanoparticle flow.

It needed more. More light, more water. Its unique biology had more demands of her attention. She had just stuck it in a shady corner like a fern, failing it on the most basic level.

Carefully, Vanessa drew it out of the pot and felt its fragile roots. They were brittle and dry. She grabbed a new terracotta pot and filled it with a custom soil that she usually reserved for her delicate orchids. She tipped her watering can into the new pot, providing it with a long drink of filtered water.

Then she placed it on her bedside table, right in the spot that caught the bright sun every morning. She moved her dog-eared novel and small ceramic bird to the bookshelf in its place.

"There, now you'll get all the sun you need," she touched one of its frail leaves.

She watched it carefully over the next week. Every morning she rotated the pot to ensure the light struck each side evenly. Every evening she watered it and checked the soil. Miraculously it began to respond. The leaves plumped up, starting at the center. Then the light started to change. Each night it grew brighter and warmer to the welcoming starlight she remembered from the first night.

Her sleep returned, deeper than it had been in years. The light from her succulent was a silent companion providing her with a steady presence.

Saturday morning, James let himself in with his key with a box of donuts in his hands. He found the apartment quiet. He crept towards the bedroom and peeked through a crack in the door.

Vanessa was curled on her side fast asleep. The room was covered in the glow from the succulent, which was now thriving. Her hand rested just beside it, as if she had reached for it in her sleep.

Just as he was about to back away, she turned and opened her eyes.

"Hey," she murmured.

"Hey, back," he whispered. "The succulent looks good."

"It's happy now," she sat up. "It wasn't getting enough light."

She looked at the plant then back to him.

"At first, I thought it was just a gadget. But it's not. It needed me. When I started caring for it properly, I realized it really was my plant. And its light is just its way of thanking me."

The rent was astronomical. The space was tiny. There wasn’t even AC to deal with the heat of his computer. But the latency to the main Google backbone was under five milliseconds. Priorities.

Russell took a sip from his coffee mug and immediately spit it out. It was a day old. He had forgotten to make a fresh pot. He had been so occupied with his project that every other task had just been pushed aside.

On the desk beside his laptop was an automated cat feeder cracked open with wires and an ESP32 development board amateurly soldered inside. His fluffy black cat, Java, was curled up next to it, completely uninterested.

“Hey there, Java, you’ll get your optimal dietary intake soon,” he promised, scratching behind her ears.

He couldn’t figure out where in the stack the problem lay. He had overengineered the whole thing. It didn’t just dispense kibble based on the time of day. It could check the real-time spot prices of various fish on the global commodities market, use image data from a camera feed above the litterbox, and a dozen other APIs to adjust the portion size and product being delivered. The whole thing was unoptimized, lacked any caching, and frequently chained API calls that hammered servers worldwide.

He saw an email notification on the side of his screen from CloudFlare. The subject line read: “Introducing SolarFlare™ by CloudFlare: A New Era in Network Security.”

He didn’t pay any attention to it, just dismissing it and getting back to adding print statements at every step to see where things might be failing. Of course, it could be failing at multiple steps, requiring even greater engineering time to fix.

He ran the script again and saw that the cod market API was timing out again. If he added some sort of caching layer, it might help, but it would mean the data wouldn’t be literally real-time. He sighed and typed a comment:

# TODO: Add some damn caching here, you idiot

He ran the API call in an isolated script again to see if it would work this time. That way he could be able to double check the API response and make sure he was using the correct fields and data types.

However, before the HTTP request completed, he began to hear a high-pitched whine coming from the guts of his computer. Each of the fans started to spin up to their maximum RPM. So much wind was being generated that the dust bunnies under his desk began to flee.

A new notification on the side of his computer warned of an abnormally high internal temperature.

“What the hell?” he asked aloud. Java hopped off the desk, her nap disturbed by the noise.

His console started to spit out a series of error messages with low-level memory access violations. It didn’t make any sense to him until he saw the final line:

Error 499: (SolarFlare) Network threat detected

“What?” Russell muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Did CloudFlare just... what?”

Before he could terminate the script, his entire internet connection dropped. The Wi-Fi icon on his taskbar changed to a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark.

Next, his external monitor went black and forcibly disconnected. He tried tapping on his keyboard, but that seemed to be unresponsive as well.

Then, every window on his laptop shut down one by one until the only thing remaining was an empty desktop. No apps, no files, not even a taskbar.

The final sound was a surprising pop from inside his laptop and the stench of ozone and something burning. His motherboard was just fried.

He hurriedly pulled out his phone and checked that email. It explained that SolarFlare was a new proactive network security tool to fight back against the rise of threat actors. Rather than just blocking malicious traffic, it would actively seek out and disable sources of network degradation. He realized that he had been a hapless victim of an overzealous security protocol.

Java then meowed at him. Whether automatically or by hand, she was hungry.

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Scavenger Hunt in New Mannahatta takes place in a world where New Mannahatta, a theoretical in-fill project in lower Manhattan, is actually built.

If you want to read the rest of the story, subscribe now and get following chapters every Monday. Or you can get the book from Amazon to read the whole thing on your Kindle now.

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Without further ado, here’s Chapter 6: Damp Dungeon Crawl.

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ZINNIA STREET: THE LITERAL END OF THE LINE

Zinnia Street is the final street in Manhattan, so it’s fitting it starts with the letter ‘Z’. Living here says “I’ve arrived and have nowhere left to go”. It’s the quietest street in the entire city (not including Staten Island) and mostly inhabited by defense contractors and people who got into the housing lottery early.

The nightlife here is nonexistent, but that’s the whole point. It’s all about private dinner tables and speakeasies that require retina scans to get through. If you manage to get an invite to The Faraday Cage take it. The walls are copper, so there’s no signal and your phone needs to be tucked away. You won’t be able to Instagram it, but that feeling of superiority will remain for weeks.

Kevin felt the blazing sun hitting his backside. It felt nice, warm and dry. He could feel some seaweed tickling his feet. Some had snuck its way into his shoes. It would probably remain there for a while longer.

He hated the feeling of wet socks. The coldness was bad enough, but he could feel the water moving in-between his toes. Each step reminded him with loud squelches.

Jenny read the clue aloud for the three of them.

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The Parc des Souvenirs Vivants hummed with a quiet serenity. Sunlight filtered through clouds and caught the dew on the perfect rose petals that bordered the main promenade. Each droplet was like a tiny prism, refracting the internal glow of the flora. This was just one park feature designed for beauty and gentle illumination around-the-clock. Even in grief, the goal was to give visitors a breathtaking artistry.

To Pierre, the artistry was merely the stage for the only interaction that mattered today.

He stood amongst the mourners dressed in black at a deliberate distance from the main cluster around the reception gazebo. His father, an architect of green urban spaces himself, would've given a lot of opinions on the park's design, probably some critiques. Pierre almost looked forward to hearing them.

That was why "Digital Dad" was indispensable.

To anyone else, Pierre might have looked unnervingly still, with a blank expression on his face. But beneath the sleek, almost invisible lenses of his XR glasses was his father, Cyril, standing beside him. He looked vibrant and solid, not a day over sixty. His favorite worn tweed jacket was rendered in perfect detail. Pierre could swear he could smell his dad's pipe tobacco, a setting he'd meticulously crafted.

"Bit ostentatious, isn't it son?" his dad murmured, his voice synthesized in his familiar warmth.

His dad's gaze swept the park.

"All this... performative ecology. Your mother would have seen right through the pretense. Still, the craftsmanship on those magnolias is decent, I'll give them that."

"She'd have said it lacks soul, Dad," Pierre responded, already falling into their old rhythms.

The "Visage" system, trained on decades of Cyril’s archived digital life: his sharply written emails, his candid voice logs, his sarcastic social media commentary. This wasn't a sanitized comfort bot. This was Dad.

He heard a sharp hiss of breath behind him; it was an unwelcome intrusion. He turned to see Sarah. Her face was pale and blotchy with a grief that Pierre found frankly excessive. Her eyes, a bright red, were fixed on his glasses.

"Pierre!" she whispered, her voice tight and strained. "For God's sake. He's gone. Can't you just... be here? With the family? This is... it's macabre."

Pierre’s focus remained resolutely on his father's avatar. He increased the opacity setting with a subtle mental command, making his Dad even more solid against the irritating reality of Sarah's presence.

"I am with him, Sarah," he stated flatly. "This is how I'm with him. And to be honest, he's more present than most of these weeping sycophants."

Dad chuckled, a familiar sound. "Your sister was always a tad dramatic, wasn't she? Takes after her mother's side. No sense of proportion," he said with a wink. "Don't let her get to you, son. She means well, in her own overwhelming way."

"It's not him, Pierre! It's a program!" Sarah's voice cracked, drawing a few sideways glances. "You're hiding. Dad wouldn't have wanted this."

"Oh, I think he would have been rather flattered by the technology, actually," Pierre countered cooly. "He always appreciated innovation. And I know exactly he'd want."

"That's right, son. You always got me," Dad clapped a reassuring, high-resolution hand on Pierre’s shoulder. There wasn't any physical feeling from this artificial touch. "Now, I believe the old Professor Claude is about to hold court. Ten euros says his hairpiece tries to achieve escape velocity if he gets too excited."

The AI wasn't flawless. Just yesterday, it had confidently misquoted their family's favorite obscure philosopher and then stubbornly argued its (incorrect) interpretation. Pierre had simply overridden it and entered the correct data. A minor tweak. But this was pure Dad. He couldn't help but giving a genuine smile.

The important thing was the essence: the personality, the comforting, critical presence that made the world bearable. Without it, there was just a gaping void, and Pierre had no intention of looking into that. Not today. Not ever, if he could help it.

There was a slow procession: a river of black fabric which flowed along the winding paths of the park towards the designated interment grove. In front of them was a cluster of genetically sculpted weeping willows, their long tendrils casting a soft shadow. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and the park's signature "Serenity Bloom" incense. It had been designed to soothe, but Pierre found it excessive.

He walked apart from the crowd. His Dad was by his side, his virtual footsteps perfectly synchronized with his own along the pathway.

"Weeping willows, eh?" his Dad remarked, his tone laced with its familiar wryness. "A bit on the nose for a funeral, don't you think? I always preferred the stoicism of an oak. Still, the biomass reclamation rate on these trees is supposedly top-notch. It's hard to argue with efficiency."

He gestured with his chin towards a particularly elaborate memorial nearby: a spiraling sculpture made of polished driftwood and embedded solar crystals.

"At least it's not one of those monstrosities. Sentimental nonsense."

"You always did hate eco-bling, Dad," Pierre smirked. He felt a sense of normalcy, of shared private commentary. That was infinitely preferable to the hushed, sorrowful whispers of the other mourners. Their grief felt performative to him, alien. His connection, right here, was the real thing.

Sarah appeared beside him, her face still tight.

"Pierre, remember that time Dad took us up to the old-growth forests in the Ardennes Restoration Project? You got lost following that rare skipper butterfly?"

Pierre barely noticed her. Dad had walked over to a nearby synthesized rosebush to criticize the pruning.

"He was so worried," Sarah pressed on, her voice wavering. "But then he found you and he wasn't even mad... just relieved. He held you so tightly."

"The man was a botanist, Sarah, not a saint," Pierre corrected, still mainly focused on the avatar. "And I recall that he was rather annoyed I had wandered off and missed his grand lecture on symbiotic fungi."

"She's romanticizing again, Pierre," his Dad chimed in. "You were a damn nuisance that day. Nearly gave your mother an aneurysm. Though, I'll admit that skipper was a rare morph. Good eye, son."

"This isn't about a butterfly, Pierre!" Sarah's voice cracked with frustration. People nearby were beginning to look. "This isn't about him! It's about remembering him, properly. You're locked away with that program, pretending he's still here. It's not healthy! It's denial!"

"And your public weeping is healthier?" Pierre shot back, annoyed. "This is my way, Sarah. He's right here with me. I'm experiencing this with him. It's a more fitting tribute than wallowing."

He tapped his temple, indicating the Visage lenses. "He would've appreciated the elegance of the solution."

"Precisely, Pierre," his Dad nodded wisely. "It's about managed experience. Why endure unnecessary emotional squalls when one can have a sleek curated experience? Your father, the real me, understood the value of having control."

He then gestured at the ground.

"Speaking of understanding, look at this substrate. They're using a fungal network to move nutrients evenly across the entire park. Advanced stuff. Remember my lecture series on subterranean ecosystems? I called it 'The Unseen Kingdom'. Most people just see dirt, but there's a whole world under our feet."

Pierre focused on his father's words. The familiar cadence of his academic enthusiasm was a welcome anchor. The complex science was a shared language, a comfortable space.

They reached the willow grove, where mourners had already gathered around the simple ceramic pod which rested by a plot of rich, deep earth. A former colleague, Professor Émile Durand, a man whose verbosity Cyril often lampooned in private, stepped forward to give a eulogy.

As Durand began his rather florid speech, praising Cyril’s "visionary contributions to ecological urbanism", Dad leaned in conspiratorially to Pierre.

"Oh, here we go," the avatar muttered with a smirk. "Durand. The man who could rival a thesaurus. Five minutes in, and he'll be comparing my modest green-roof research to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I bet you he will use the word 'paradigm' at least three times."

Pierre struggled to suppress a snort. It was so perfectly Dad. He felt a pang of something that might've been warmth, or perhaps just the absence of the acute coldness that gripped him since... since. Durand droned on, but Pierre was barely listening. He was caught in the comfortable, cynical bubble he inhabited with his dad. He was far removed from the shared grief that surrounded them. The real world, with its messy emotions and final goodbyes, felt distant and irrelevant.

Eventually, the professor's eulogy wound down.

"Cyril Leger has not left us. He has merely become part of the eternal ecosystem he cherished so much," he finished, letting that last platitude hang in the air like that smelly incense. Two attendants in discreet gray uniforms moved to the side of the ceramic pod.

The hushed anticipation, the finality of the moment, sliced through Pierre’s carefully constructed cynicism. The witty marks from his Digital Dad now felt thin, almost brittle. This was it.

As the attendants prepared to lower the pod into the waiting earth, a raw panic clawed its way up Pierre’s throat. The dark, rectangular void in the ground seemed to expand, threatening to swallow everything. He felt his breath stop. He was suddenly aware that his father was truly, irrevocably, about to be sealed away. His carefully maintained composure started to fracture.

He needed relief. He turned desperately back to the XR construct he'd poured all his focus into.

"Dad," he choked out, the word barely a whisper.

He needed something more than witty banter now. He needed his father.

The avatar shifted from his cynical smirk to a more compassionate expression. The AI, perhaps sensing the spike in Pierre’s biometrics, accessed a different part of the personality archive. The change was subtle, yet profound.

"Pierre," his Dad said, with the steady tone Cyril used for moments of genuine gravity. "It's alright son. It's just a vessel."

But Pierre was shaking his head. A tremor ran through him.

"No, it's... you're leaving," he could no longer maintain his denial.

"Physically, yes. That part is over," his Dad said, his voice gentle yet firm. "But look at me, Pierre. What did I always say about energy? About information?"

Pierre struggled to pick out a specific phrase as his mind raced with a cascade of memories.

"Never... it's never truly lost," he managed, the words getting caught in his throat. "Just transformed."

"Exactly," the avatar affirmed. "This body, my vessel, did its work. It housed me. I got to walk with you, argue with you, and build with you. Now, it returns to the cycle. That's the ecological bargain, the one I always said was the most honest deal in the universe."

As the pod began its slow, silent descent into the earth, Pierre felt a profound wave of sorrow so immense it was nearly physical. Tears, hot and unexpected, welled in his eyes. His moist eyes blurred the perfectly rendered image of his father. He was feeling the colossal weight of his loss, perhaps for the first time without the buffer of cynical detachment.

"But I don't want it to transform," Pierre whispered, feeling a raw grief. "I want you."

Digital Dad reached out and for a moment, Pierre swore he could feel a pressure on his arm.

"And I am here, Pierre," the avatar told him, with a synthetic empathy. "Not in that pod, not anymore. But here,"

He tapped his own temple, then gestured towards Pierre’s heart.

"I'm still here in the memories we built. In the arguments that sharpened your mind. In the love that still connects us. That doesn't go into the ground, son. That is the information, the energy, I always talked about. And that, you carry with you. It's your inheritance."

Pierre stared at the descending pod and the rich earth that would soon cover it. The avatar's words didn't erase the pain, but it seemed to sculpt it, to give it shape and meaning beyond absence. He was crying openly now. Silent tears streamed down his face, but the terror was fading. In its place was a deep, aching sadness. It was a grief that felt vast, but also shared. His artificial father was guiding him into the heart of his own sorrow, and in doing so, helped him to bear it.

He watched until the pod settled at the bottom of the grave. Dad stood silently behind him in the XR space, a comforting, unwavering presence. The cynical armor Pierre had worn was shattered by the simple, profound act of saying goodbye.

A young sapling was carefully planted atop the site. It was a species of hardy, fast-growing Parisian Elm their father had helped re-engineer for urban resilience. The finality was absolute, but the profound sorrow Pierre felt was now tinged with an unexpected serenity.

He didn't switch off the Visage glasses. Digital Dad remained beside him as a steady presence in his XR periphery. As the small crowd began to disperse, offering hushed condolences, Pierre continued to stand there and stare at the freshly planted elm. He felt an acceptance, a quiet acknowledgment of the cycle his father had so often lectured about. It wasn't the cold, intellectual acceptance he'd tried to feign earlier, but something deeper.

Sarah approached as he stood there, long after the rest had drifted towards the reception area for quiet remembrances and cold tea. She hesitated, then sat beside him on a curved stone bench that faced the new memorial. For a long moment, they were silent. The only sounds were the gentle, programmed rustling of willow leaves and the distant hum of the city beyond the park's acoustic barriers.

"I was worried, Pierre," Sarah said finally, her voice soft. "At the graveside, when they lowered the pod, you seemed so far away. And then..."

She trailed off, searching for words.

"You seemed to just break. But not in the way I expected."

"He wasn't a distraction, Sarah. Not then. When it really hit, it was like Dad himself, his real wisdom, came through. It guided me. It felt like he was really there, helping me understand how to actually feel it, how to say goodbye without shattering. It wasn't about not feeling the pain. It was about feeling it with him, with his strength, one last time... in a way I could actually process."

Sarah furrowed her brow. She looked at the new tree, then back to Pierre.

"So the avatar actually helped you grieve? It didn't just block it?"

"Today, it did," Pierre answered. "It channeled it, accessing the best parts of him. His essence, when I needed it most."

It sounded strange, even to him, to rely on a digital figment.

"I know it's not him, but it's an echo, a powerful one."

A long silence settled between them again. Sarah picked at a loose thread on her dress.

"I still don't fully get it, Pierre. This tech-mediated grieving. Honestly, it scares me a little. What happens if the program glitches, or when the memories it's built upon aren't enough?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "But today, it was what I needed."

Sarah nodded slowly. A faint, tired smile touched her lips.

"Everyone grieves differently, I suppose," she conceded, a quiet approval of her brother's technology. "Dad always said people find their own routes up the mountain."

She let out a long, deep sigh.

"I'm just glad you're... well, not 'okay', obviously. But you're here. You look more here now than you did this morning."

She reached out and took his hand. Her grip was warm. Solid.

"Let's go get some of that awful tea. We can toast to Dad's terrible taste in ceremonial beverages."

Pierre felt a genuine smile return. He squeezed her hand, feeling her kinship. Dad's avatar remained a silent, supportive presence in his periphery. Yet for the first time all day, the real world and the real person beside him felt more substantial.

Scavenger Hunt in New Mannahatta takes place in a world where New Mannahatta, a theoretical in-fill project in lower Manhattan, is actually built.

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Without further ado, here’s Chapter 5: Sink or Swim.

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THE ARCHIPELAGO MARKET: BLUE FOOD IS THE NEW FARM-TO-TABLE

If your arugula arrives by truck, send it back! The Archipelago Market on the district’s eastern side is for people who believe in ‘Blue Food’ as the Gospel. Everything arrives by sail freight or electric barge, so your dinner has a lower carbon footprint than your own breath.

We tried the kelp-fed burger at Berm & Barrel and honestly? You can’t taste the algae (if you get the cheeseburger). It smells like brine and you can’t get a table, so it’s the perfect place for a romantic evening.

Look for the stall that sells ‘Storm Stouts’. They use beer brewed from desalinated floodwater. It is boozier than you’d expect.

The notification buzzed Kevin and Jenny’s phones at the same time. Aaron looked down at his watch. The fourth clue had just been received.

I watch the storms so you can sleep. My eyes are radar. My muscles are pumps. Find the brain which holds back the sea.

“That’s the Museum of Climate Adaptation,” Kevin announced immediately. He turned away from the market and pointed north, up the avenue. His finger landed on a shimmering, white structure that looked like a fashionable iceberg. “That has to be the right answer. The building’s façade is a sensory array that powers a real-time exhibit of the city’s weather. It ‘watches the storms’.”

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Chris placed his final personal effect, a small 20-sided die he used for fidgeting, into a small mycelium box. Placing it inside give him a sense of finality. His hand rested on the now empty desk surface. After three years, he was finally leaving. He felt a trepidation but also an excitement for what he would do next.

The offer from Kilowatt Homes was too good to pass up. A bump in salary and a title of ‘Senior Systems Architect’ would give a large boost to his career. The company was also focused more in the direction he wanted, in finishing the transition to all-electric, all-renewable energy.

He took one last look at his workspace. Mycelium Synthetics hadn’t been a terrible place, but there just weren’t enough opportunities for advancement. Leaving was the smart thing to do. He didn’t want to end up like his father, stuck somewhere for decades without a path forward, a loyal cog who worked until he was ground down.

A soft, three-note chime came out of the desk. He looked at the interface, which glowed in bright orange through the translucent plastic of the desk’s surface.

Event starts in ten minutes: Final Offboarding Consultation

He knew it was his exit interview, that final awkward conversation of corporate platitudes where it was too late to convince you to stay and yet you had to be too polite to burn bridges. He’d just thank them for the time, deflect any probing questions, and then kill time until he could actually leave. Simple enough.

He was confused by the location. He thought it would be in a normal meeting room, or perhaps somewhere on the HR floor, but the event was set for the Archives. He didn’t even know the company had archives.

Chris picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. The box was tucked under his arm and he began his walk away from the buildings of the main campus. The Archives were located in a part of the campus that felt eerily quiet. Nobody was busy in collaboration rooms. He didn’t see anybody in the long hallways either. The hallway went on for a while until it ended at a door made from brushed metal.

The words The Archives were etched into the metal in a simple, sans-serif font. There wasn’t even a corporate logo. It reminded him of entering a vault.

Before he could touch the door, it opened with a quiet hiss. He looked in and was surprised this wasn’t an office. There was a soft light which seemed to creep in from the walls. There wasn’t a desk, but there were two chairs in the center that faced each other.

A woman came out of nowhere, catching him off-guard. She looked middle-aged as her gray hair was pulled back into a careful knot that matched an unflattering gray tunic.

“Hi, I’m Chris,” he said, taking off his backpack and placing it against the wall. He felt oddly out of place. “I’m here for my offboarding.”

The woman didn’t offer a smile. She simply looked up at him with her eyes that were widened through her thin glasses. She lifted her middle finger and used it to adjust the glasses on the bridge of her nose.

“Mr. Fischer, please have a seat,” she said with a sort of kindly authority, like she was an aunt. “My name is Milana. I am the corporate librarian.”

“I didn’t know we had one,” he placed his box near the bag and took a seat. He looked around at the strange room and wondered what she’d talk to him about.

“Before there was the idea of human resources, there were librarians. We are the custodians of knowledge, to ensure continuity across the company. The goal for this meeting is to do a knowledge transfer, to ensure the integrity of the collective’s intellectual assets are stored securely in our archives to remain there after you leave.”

“Knowledge transfer?” he asked, feeling off-guard by her corporate jargon. “I already uploaded my project files and wrote up transition guides for everything. My terminal was just wiped, so there’s nothing left.”

“I’m not talking about data on ephemeral computers. I’m talking about the data you’ve stored in there,” she tapped a finger on her temple slowly.

“I’m sorry, I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he clenched his hands nervously. “You mean you want a debrief. A conversation.”

“A conversation is one way to do this transfer, but it’s not very efficient,” she replied. “It’s prone to omissions and biases. So we’ve got another way. It’s a bit more direct... more thorough. Your terminal was wiped, but we also need to de-provision your cognitive access to proprietary corporate institutional knowledge.”

Chris swallowed hard. His mind was his greatest asset. He tried to think through what she was talking about.

“De-provisioning my cognitive access. You’re talking about my memories. My mind.”

“Not everything, just the part that the corporation cares about,” she corrected in a calm tone. “Your personal skills are your own: the methodologies of system design and programming language and all that is your personal career toolkit. But when you used those in our institution, that is our cognitive property.”

She started pacing around the room. The soft-soled shoes around her feet allowed her to walk without making a peep.

“The schematics for mycelium shoes, for instance. The energy consumption metrics for the solar farm in the southwest. The personal conversations between you and your manager. None of that is your private property. It is institutional knowledge. It was generated using corporate resources on corporate time.”

Chris felt a surge of anger. This was the kind of corporate oppression he resented, the kind that had slowly consumed his father.

“My experience belongs to me,” he shot back quickly. “The things I learned, the mistakes I made, my successes, that’s everything that I earned. That’s what led me to my new job at Kilowatt.”

“The Memory Accords are quite clear on ownership over corporate assets of all kinds,” she said, her voice remaining calm in the face of Chris’s accusations.

“To hell with the system,” he growled as he rose. “I don’t consent to this. I think our meeting has ended.”

He turned towards the door, feeling his heart pumping in his chest. He reached the door and pushed it, expecting to open. But nothing happened.

He pressed it harder. He heard a quiet click from the doorframe. The lock had just engaged.

“You consented to this years ago when you signed your employment contract,” she replied, still maddeningly calm. “Your final offboarding is not optional.”

“You can’t do this!” he spun around.

“It’s already being done.”

A soft whirring sound came from his chair. Hidden seams opened up, revealing soft fabric bands on each side, what looked like luxury restraints.

He looked around the small room, hoping to find an escape or some sort of weakness he could exploit, but there wasn’t anything. The only thing in the room was Milana, standing by his chair.

“Don’t make this difficult, Mr. Fischer. This operation is painless. You won’t even feel it.”

He didn’t want to surrender like his father.

A panel slid open from the ceiling. A large chrome device descended, attached to a delicate arm. It was a white helmet with colorful LEDs lining the front like a halo.

A primal fear spread throughout his body. He slammed his shoulder into the door. He clawed at it. He wanted to do anything to get out of this room.

Milana triggered something which caused a low, resonant hum to fill the room. It was a low frequency that he could barely hear, but he could hear. His body quickly grew heavy. He could feel the vibrations through his bones. He immediately found himself stumbling. He caught himself against the back of the chair, but lacked the strength to move.

The helmet descended further. Chris found he could barely keep his eyes open. Milana placed the helmet over his head. He was powerless to protest.

He felt a strange coolness pricking his skin, like a thousand small needles were poking his skull. Still, as she promised, there wasn’t any pain. There was just the strange sensation of vulnerability as his mind was being opened up for inspection.

He closed his eyes and tried to fight back. He thought about the mycelium shoes, his greatest success at the company. He kept the picture in his head, trying to burn it into his brain. He saw the faces of his team: the sharp Putali, Abdur and his constant sardonic humor, and the late nights he spent with Brooke. He held onto the memory of that first influencer review, when they got a ten out of ten score. That was when he knew he had stumbled onto a brilliant idea, and he had the potential for something greater.

Then he felt a sudden disorientation in his own head. These thoughts were being probed and indexed. He fought for Putali’s face and the sound of Abdur’s laugh. But the images started to grow blurry and he lost the details. He could still remember the feeling of camaraderie, but their identities and their personalities had been surgically excised.

The memory of the success, the joy of success, remained. Yet the puzzle itself: the data, the context, the reason for the joy was all gone now. All that remained was a phantom ache of an accomplishment that was no longer his. He was helpless as his career accomplishments were tagged and removed.

Chris was helped by Milana into the chair as his body and mind felt dull and slow. As the helmet was finally lifted off, his hand went up to his head as a slow ache began to grow. His head hurt. The room seemed too bright. It was like he had woken up after just a few hours of sleep.

He looked up to see a woman smiling at him. When had she come in here? He squinted but couldn’t recognize her.

“There we are,” she said kindly. “We’re all finished with the offboarding. On behalf of everyone here, I want to say best wishes to you and your new role at Kilowatt. It sounds like you have a bright future ahead of you.”

He looked at his seat. There was a vague feeling of being scared, of being restrained, but there wasn’t any rational reason for this. There weren’t any restraints. There wasn’t any reason to think he was in any danger, physical or otherwise. He thought that there was something pulled off his head, but he couldn’t see anything like that in the room. The room was just a peaceful, if clinical, lounge.

“Sorry,” he shook his head. “I must’ve zoned out. It was a long week.”

He couldn’t remember the end of their conversation. As he racked his brain, he couldn’t remember the conversation at all. He glanced at his watch and realized he’d been in the room for nearly two hours. It was a blank spot in his memory, evidently the offboarding process was that dry.

“It’s fine. The offboarding can be a bit draining. A lot of boring questions,” she extended a hand and politely helped him out of the chair. Her grip was stronger than he assumed “Take care, Mr. Fischer.”

He picked up his bag and box laying in the corner. He felt a bit unsteady, and his headache was still there.

“You too,” he replied habitually.

He stepped out of the Archives and back towards the main campus. The world felt wrong. He felt a strange sense of being lost. How could that be? Hadn’t he worked here for several years? Why was he consulting the map on his phone for how to leave?

He just needed to get out of here. Work had taken a lot from him, and he had to remain focused on starting his new life. The managers at Kilowatt had been very impressed by him and his work on... on that big project.

He paused on the sidewalk and employees parted around him.

What was that project?

He closed his eyes. He concentrated. But there wasn’t an answer. It felt like it was on the tip of his tongue. He remembered the feeling of the breakthrough. He remembered the satisfaction of the work. He could recall writing all the verification models. But the name of the project was drawing a blank.

He tried to think about the team. He remembered one was a data analyst. One was a junior programmer. And one was a designer. He knew he had to manage them. He knew there were debates over the project and that he helped mediate them. But he couldn’t picture their faces or hear their voices. They were like ghosts.

He shook his head. This was just burnout. Work was stressful. He was just compartmentalizing. All of that could be shed from his head as he prepared for a new job.

Still, as he departed from the corporate campus for the last time, he couldn’t help but feel like the job had taken something more away from him than just a few years of his labor.

Ten years after his retirement, Doctor Powell was trying to rest in his small, climate-controlled room. A framed letter from the Nobel committee, a runner-up, a consolation, hung on his wall. It was his greatest professional achievement despite the way it stung. His thin fingers rested on a leather-bound copy of his final publication, a book on telomere lengthening.

Then he suddenly felt a numbness crawl up from his right hand. He tried to press the help button, but he suddenly found his brain incapable of controlling his body. He opened his mouth to speak, but the only sound he could make was a gasping grunt as he realized his end was approaching. All his medical research on making the body a perfect machine was pointless now as his system crashed permanently.

Preston’s system rebooted into a flash of pure white.

There was nothing around him. No temperature or sound could be perceived. He wanted to walk around this strange environment until he realized he had no legs. He had no eyes. His entire body had been reduced to a pure consciousness in a realm he could not understand.

Slowly, form started to appear around him. He could sense a floor grounding him. Walls began to form as well. He couldn’t see them, but he felt a sort of containment now that was a bit more soothing than the endless void.

Then he saw polished steel bars form in front of him. Each one was a perfect cylinder. As he looked up and down, finding more of these bars, he realized he was inside of a large cage.

Then he heard something stirring from behind. He turned to spot a towering entity made of white fur. Every filament was glowing a bright, pure light. He saw a long tail as thick as ancient tree roots coiled to its side. It had giant ears and whiskers each as long as him. They twitched left and right.

Then it turned, revealing its face. It had two black eyes which seemed to consume the light around it. He was immediately taken aback by this creature. He took a step backwards, feeling his back rest against the back of the cage.

“This can’t be possible,” he remarked, feeling his lifelong atheism get torn into shreds.

The great being’s whiskers quivered and Preston sensed the world around him shimmer and change. He felt an out-of-body experience as he started to observe his own past as if watching a movie.

He saw himself, younger, in his lab. It looked so real. It felt so real. He could nearly smell the strong disinfectant that stained every surface. He looked down at himself holding a small entity in his hand. There was a tag attached to its ear, labeling it “Specimen C-41”.

Then like a camera, the scene suddenly shifted. He found himself in the position of Specimen C-41. He was her. He could feel a deep terror through his shaking body as he stood in the middle of a giant latex-gloved hand.

Then his perspective shifted once again. He was now Specimen R-92. He could feel a giant cold needle plunge through his skull, slowly paralyzing his limbs.

Further memories played of the many specimens he experimented on through his long career. Each felt hyper-real and felt like he went through a mini-hell. And each time he could see his own face, like a god in a giant lab coat. Each one of the critters was terrified whenever he grew closer. He could hear his own voice booming.

“Subject exhibits elevated levels of corticosterone after subjecting to chemical infusion. Higher level of distress. Subject will now be terminated as per-protocol.”

Before that could happen, the projections vanished. He was left shaking and gasping as the visions still ran through his head. The rat-god’s shadow now loomed over him. He could sense its fury.

“You don’t understand!” He pleaded with defiance. “This was about improving human welfare!”

The creature continued its grim stare.

“The advancement of a sentient species needs to be priority!” He argued. “We were fighting cancer! Trying to save the human race! The data required a biological analog! The suffering was unfortunate but necessary to save billions of humans. You need to look at it from a pure utilitarian lens.”

The Progenitor quivered its whiskers again. Then it spoke telepathically.

“You speak of calculation. In your eighty-seven years of life, you terminated 4,561 of my children and permanently damaged 17,382 more.

“Your work led to two therapies of middling success. The median human lifespan grew by just seven months.

“Millenia of cumulative life was traded for a few seasons. The guarantee of terror was traded off against the possibility of a little more comfort. Your benefit was small, but your cost was absolute.

“You believe yourself to be the arbiter of value and worth, but you are now being judged. You must learn the value of every life, even a small life. The only way to do that is to live such a life yourself.”

The large steel bars of the cage lifted. He was pushed backwards by an invisible force. It was far too powerful for him to struggle against.

He felt his skeleton buckle and warp. His spine bent and cracked. A wave of pain was overwhelming. His skull changed shape. He felt his brain shrink. His complex thoughts reduced to simpler instincts: “Fear. Escape. Nest. Hunger.”

Preston fell to the ground, landing on four small, pink-toed paws. What was once a white void had transformed into a whole world. The walls sprung up everywhere. He was in an endless maze, stretching out to infinity in all directions.

He could hear an ethereal bell chime from no clear direction. He started walking forward into the labyrinth. A new experiment was just beginning and he knew he would spend eternity trying to reach the end.