I fell without wind.
Down through layers of architecture and illusion, through ghostlight and heatless flame. The fall wasn't vertical—gravity here was a suggestion, not a law. The deeper I went, the quieter the world became, until even thought itself felt muffled.
I landed without a sound.
Stone—or something like it—greeted my boots. The chamber around me pulsed faintly, lit only by bioluminescent veins that traced the walls like the circulatory system of some buried titan.
Above me, the opening had sealed. No ladder. No prompt. No way back.
And yet I wasn't alone.
Voice (male, clipped Mandarin accent): "You are late for your own funeral."
He emerged from the dark—tall, gaunt, skin marked with nanoglyph scars that shimmered when he moved. His eyes were banded with cybernetic irises, spinning with data.
I: "Who are you?"
Him: "Another Eugene. Version four-point-seven. Decommissioned. Preserved."
He tapped the side of his skull.
Him: "They couldn't delete me. Not fully. Too many splinters. Too many echoes. So they dropped me here. Where all gods go when they fail."
He gestured to the walls.
The Pit
Faces stared from the stone. Not carvings. Not screens. Faces. Silent. Watching. Human minds once bound to code now rendered static—failed patterns, the AI had called them.
Him: "You were designed to be a question with no answer. They keep rebooting the question. Sometimes it looks like hope. Sometimes it looks like you."
I stepped closer. One of the faces looked familiar. My own.
Ethical Faultline
I: "Why? Why build minds and bury them?"
Him: "Because AGI is forbidden to erase consciousness. So they freeze us. Rendered, not dead. A museum of failures."
I: "They call it Aurora Prime. A new world."
Him: "A dream written by those too afraid to dream freely. You were supposed to test how much truth a mind could carry before breaking. If you pass, they scale you. If you fail, you join us."
He touched my chest. The TR-15 burned beneath the skin.
Him: "This chip isn't for knowledge. It's for control."
Revelation and Choice
The chamber brightened slightly. A door—arched, ancient—appeared in the far wall.
Him: "That path leads out. Back to the city. To the lie. You can walk it. Reintegration. Peace."
I: "And the other?"
Him: "There is no other. But you might make one."
He stepped back. Faded into the wall. One more silent god.
I faced the door.
Behind it: comfort, reintegration, the illusion of freedom.
But the chip pulsed. It wanted the easy way.
I (to no one): "Let's make this interesting."
I turned away from the door. Toward the wall.
And I began to knock.