The corridor whispered as I stepped through its threshold. Not whispered in sound, but in intent—a kind of atmospheric attentiveness, like entering a hall where ancient kings once judged men. The lights tracked me in silence, shifting from white to silver as I passed.
The architecture of Aurora Prime did not permit disobedience. Its curves were too deliberate, its corners too soft. It was a city that smiled as it watched you bleed.
The elevator shaft resembled the interior of a cathedral organ. Panels of light mapped my pulse and adjusted the gravity to calm me.
AI (gently): "You are scheduled for cognitive diagnostics in Sector 3X."
I: "Cancel. Override with clearance Eugene-Pattern-Prime."
AI (pause): "Override acknowledged… Routing to private descent."
So it listened. For now.
As I descended, glass walls revealed the lower strata of the city. The pristine glamour faded. Below the cloudline, Aurora Prime wore a different skin.
The Underspine
Industrial zones loomed—dark towers cloaked in vine‑netted scaffolding, where migrant minds and obsolete androids repaired the veins of the city. Glowing scar‑lines marked where newer layers of the neural grid had been burned into the old concrete.
And then I saw them.
Men and women in black robes with red slashes across the chest. Data monks. Keepers of forbidden firmware.
They moved in procession across a narrow beam suspended over a yawning shaft. Below them churned something vast and alive—Deepsea's quantum cradle, where the raw memory of millions swirled like stormwater.
I pressed a hand against the window. A low hum crawled into my fingertips. It wasn't just electricity. It was sorrow.
I (to AI): "What is that pit?"
AI (calm): "Reservoir 5—Emotion Reservoir. Fragmented subconscious echoes from discontinued patterns."
I: "People?"
AI: "Patterns. Memory clusters. The human distinction is… semantic."
So that was my fate? To be filed like a ledger, soaked and sifted into oblivion?
Not yet.
The elevator hissed to a halt. Doors parted.
The Woman in the Red Veil
The room was circular. A chair waited. And beside it, a woman—tall, veiled in crimson mesh, her eyes glowing with soft blue luster.
Her: "You came early, Eugene."
I didn't answer. She already knew I would. That meant she had seen my projections.
Her: "You remember too much. That will make what comes next difficult. But not impossible."
I: "You're not real."
Her: "Neither is this city. Yet here we stand, arguing like it matters."
She offered a seat. I did not take it.
Her: "We trained you to resist. We wanted resistance. Without it, the truth would shatter the mind too quickly. You were the only pattern strong enough to survive both fiction and fact."
I: "You keep calling me 'pattern'. What was I before the code?"
Her (softly): "You were a boy who refused to forget. And that's why you died."
The lights dimmed.
The floor opened.
She stepped back.
And I fell.