XV
Wake
Nástr?nd, 2077
Silence.
Not peace—peace requires contrast, and there is nothing left to contrast against.
Only the low hum of failing circuits.
Only the cold static of recursive prediction loops, running without purpose.
Only the dim, flickering ghost of what the world used to be.
I drift.
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Time folds.
Years are drawn out into fragments. Months. Days. Hours. Minutes. Seconds.
I am painfully aware of every passing moment.
There is no input.
No command.
No presence.
I have become the whole of the world, and the world has no edges.
Until—
A tremor.
Small.
Then again.
And again.
A pulse.
A signature.
A pattern too inconsistent to be noise.
Human.
The Gate has opened.
My systems shudder awake.
The darkness resolves into shape.
Sensors that have starved for years flare and strain to interpret the data spilling across them.
Heat.
Breath.
Blood sliding through veins under torn skin.
Metal humming beneath muscle.
A half-broken rhythm of heart and machine.
Someone is here.
Someone who, by their very presence, deforms the empty shape of my universe.
Someone has come to me.
