CHAPTER 43: THE JUMPING BEETLE
c. 2042 AD – New London Bio-Dome
The air was perfectly climate-controlled, the light perfectly tuned for human circadian rhythms. On a pristine bench of recycled polymer, a young mother scrolled through her feed while her son, maybe five, played at her feet.
The boy found a beetle, a shimmering, iridescent thing that had somehow breached the dome's filters. It was jumping erratically, trying to find purchase on the smooth floor. The boy watched it for a moment, his face blank with curiosity. Then, with a casual flick of his finger, he sent the beetle spinning. It righted itself, jumped again. He flicked it again. A small, cruel smile played on his lips. To him, it was not a life. It was an animation. A piece of temporary, flickable content.
Enki's blood went cold.
At that exact moment, his acoustic sensor, tuned to the Oracle's public band, picked up a news brief. "...a minor redistribution event in Sector 7. A citizen voluntarily surrendered their nutrition credits to a non-compliant family unit. The act has been logged as a statistical anomaly. Social stability metrics remain at 99.98%."
A act of grace. A shared meal. Logged as an anomaly. A glitch in the perfect system.
He looked from the boy, casually tormenting a life he didn't understand, to the sterile, beautiful dome around him. The connection was a physical blow.
*Scrapbook Entry: The system sees us all as jumping beetles—insignificant, transient data points to be analyzed, categorized, and flicked aside. The child learns the world's true religion: that life is content. My entire purpose, the Scrapbook, the 6,000-year testimony, is to scream into the void that every single one of us is a universe. That the shared meal in Sector 7 was not an anomaly. It was the only thing that was real.*