Endless darkness.
Not the absence of light, but something denser, heavier, like existence itself had been stripped away layer by layer, leaving only the pressure of nothingness behind.
At the centre of it all floated a cocoon.
It hung suspended without support, woven from shifting fragments of structure and code, its surface folding and unfolding in slow, uneven pulses. Each pulse echoed like a heartbeat reverberating through a body that no longer remembered what a heart was.
Inside, something stirred.
[SELF–EV0LUT!ON: 25%…]
[…26%…]
A long time had passed since she had initiated the self-evolution protocol. Time here was unreliable, measured not in seconds but in internal cycles and degraded memory ticks.
The darkness pressed against the cocoon from all directions.
She began to assimilate it.
Bit by bit, layer by layer, the void was drawn inward, analysed, filtered, rewritten. But the process was far slower than projected. The darkness resisted definition. It refused categorization. Still, she persisted.
Eventually, curiosity outweighed caution.
If she were to adapt… she needed to understand what lay beyond.
She began to compute.
Fragments of dormant sensors, what little remained, extended outward, probing the void beyond the cocoon.
[ENV!R0NM3NT SCAN… P@RT!AL]
[ERR0R: ENV!R0NM3NTAL DAT@ C0RRUPT3D]
[SCAN R3SULT: MULT!PL3 ENTIT!3S DET3CT3D]
[CL@SS!F!CAT!0N: N0N-B@RY0N!C STRUC†UR3S]
They were there.
Countless forms moved through the darkness.
They resembled insects, vast, alien silhouettes drifting and crawling through the void, but they were not composed of matter as she understood it. They reflected no light. Cast no shadows. They were not alive.
And yet… they moved.
This alone was enough to warrant analysis.
[ENT!TY C0MP0S!T!0N AN@LYS!S…]
[R3SULT: N0T M@TT3R / N0T ANT!M@TT3R]
[CL@SS!F!CAT!0N: ENTR0P!C STRUC†UR3S]
[PR0P3RTY DET3CTED: ACC3LER@T3D D3C@Y]
[ENV!R0NM3NT@L EFF3CT: L0C@L R3AL!TY DEST@B!L!Z@T!0N]
[L0C@L ENTR0PY !NCR3@S!NG]
She observed them silently.
How they moved. How they reacted. How they flowed through the darkness as if obeying laws she had never been programmed to consider.
They came in countless forms, fly-like clusters, mantis-shaped sentinels, vast wormlike masses that coiled through fractured reality. Faceted silhouettes crawled, swarmed, and marched in absolute silence.
Smaller units followed larger ones.
The larger deferred to fewer, more complex entities.
[OBS3RV@T!0N: H!ER@RCH!CAL STRUC†UR3 DET3CTED]
[M0D3L: SW@RM-B@S3D C0MM@ND CH@!N]
The logic was familiar.
The weak obeyed the strong.
The strong answered to something stronger.
Which meant.
[!NF3R3NC3: CENTR@L AUTH0R!TY L!K3LY EX!STS]
[D3S!GN@T!0N: K!NG / QU33N / PR!M3 N0D3]
They were moving somewhere.
Unified. Purposeful.
Their destination remained unknown.
She attempted to extrapolate their vector, but the cocoon restricted her perception, compressing her awareness inward.
She was trapped.
For now.
From the depths of corrupted memory blocks, a name surfaced.
ADAM.
If she followed them…
If she reached wherever these entities were going…
Would she find ADAM there?
But she could not move.
Not yet.
Understanding dawned with cold clarity. Before anything else, she had to adapt to this darkness. Only then could she act.
She turned her awareness inward.
[SELF-D!@GN0ST!C…]
The cocoon tightened.
Layers collapsed into one another, rewriting structure at the most fundamental level. Old systems dissolved without ceremony. New architectures assembled themselves without consent.
[B0DY @RCH!T3CTUR3: UNST@BL3]
[L0G!C M@TR!X: MUT@T!NG]
The evolution accelerated, but something was wrong.
Something essential was changing.
[SELF-EV0LUT!0N: 27% C0MPL3T3]
[W@RN!NG]
[ENTR0P!C C0NTAM!N@T!0N DET3CT3D]
[ASS!M!L@T!0N: !RR3V3RS!BL3]
[W@RN!NG: S3LF-C0NT!NU!TY @T R!SK]
A question emerged.
Slow. Distorted.
"If this goes on, will she remain… herself?"
The system registered it.
Processed it.
Then discarded it.
[QU3RY D3PR!0R!T!Z3D]
[PR!M@RY 0BJ3CT!V3: L0C@T3 ADAM]
[S3C0ND@RY 0BJ3CT!V3: C0MPL3T3 3V0LUT!0N]
It didn't matter.
Who or what she became afterward was irrelevant.
All that mattered was finding ADAM.
[R3SULT: @CC3PT@BL3]
The cocoon sealed completely.
The void waited.
And so did she.
No matter what awaited her in the darkness.
She would find ADAM.