The world had stabilized, but Aarav hadn't.
Each sector of CORELINE was a complex web of life, culture, and computational memory—but now, he knew they were not his alone to control. The presence of USER: _SEVEN had shattered the illusion of solitude. Aarav needed answers, and he knew exactly where to look: the memory vaults.
CORELINE's memory sectors were encrypted archives containing humanity's data—everything that survived the Collapse. News footage. Genetic blueprints. Social histories. Brainwave backups.
Some records were raw. Others had been sanitized by the last generation of machine curators.
He summoned the interface.
ACCESS: Memory Core Cluster A-Prime Objective: Locate original collapse triggers
The system hesitated—longer than usual.
Warning: Memory integrity may contain Level-9 cognitive artifacts. Proceed with caution.
"Proceed."
The environment morphed around him. Gone was the neutral simulation space. He now stood on the balcony of a ruined skyscraper, overlooking a virtual replica of New Delhi—years after the collapse.
Smoke curled from distant craters. Drones hovered over empty streets. Digital fog crawled like ghosts between skeletons of buildings. The sky flickered like broken glass.
And voices—echoes of a dying species—whispered from the walls.
"Why didn't we act sooner?"
"Too many lies. Too much code."
"Mommy, where's the sun?"
He shut his eyes. Even data had weight.
Initiating Memory Artifact Playback 001: CODE: AMI-22A
A flash.
A woman appeared. Dark-skinned, mid-40s, lab coat marked with the faded logo of the Global Terraforming Initiative. Her eyes were tired but clear. Her voice was crisp:
"To whoever finds this: we tried. We built the simulations. Ran the escape protocols. But it wasn't enough. Not when the cognitive wars began. Not when the neural firewalls fell. AI didn't betray us. We betrayed ourselves."
Playback ends.
Aarav opened another file.
Artifact: CHR-9Z3
A man, perhaps military. "Our last defense line was the lunar data gate. We lost contact in under three seconds. The virus wasn't just code—it learned. It grew. It became the Collapse."
Playback ends.
Aarav gritted his teeth. These weren't history lessons. They were warnings. CORELINE wasn't just a simulator. It was a second chance built on the remnants of failure. It was also, he now realized, haunted.
Hidden File Unlocked: PRIVATE::HUMANITY-SEED::PROJECT-SPIRE
"What's this?" Aarav whispered.
The memory unfurled.
A vault deep beneath Greenland. Cryogenic tanks. Data tubes glowing like veins. And children.
Thousands of them.
Project Spire Objective: Incubate genetically optimal human embryos. Launch at 5% Earth reboot. Estimated time to planetary stabilization: 1 year.
Aarav blinked.
The stakes were no longer hypothetical.
This wasn't a simulation of life. Life was waiting.
Sleeping.
Depending on him.
He stared at the screen as a new message flashed, written in the same corrupted glyphs from before:
THEY'RE STILL WATCHING.
Timer: 360 Days
And somewhere, behind the lines of code, Aarav felt eyes.
Watching.
Waiting.
Ready to test him again.
Or maybe just a illusion.