Simon looked around. Three computer docks stood before him—one to his right, two to the left. Luckily, the blackout hadn’t turned them off. The overhead lights flickered but remained steady, casting an eerie glow over the control deck.
He exhaled, his shoulders sagging slightly as the tension bled out of him. For the first time in what felt like hours, he allowed himself a moment to relax.
Simon raised his left arm, his gaze settling on the stump where his forearm used to be. The bleeding had stopped, but was that a good thing or a bad thing? Did his body even produce blood anymore? Could it heal? Could he die?
“It’d be cool if the wound just sealed itself shut,” he murmured absently.
The moment the words left his lips, something slithered over his skin.
Simon tensed.
Dark tendrils of structure gel coiled around the stump, writhing and pulsing like a living thing. Within seconds, they hardened, forming a seamless, organic seal. The pain dulled, replaced by an unnatural numbness. He stared, frozen in shock.
“How…?” Simon breathed, his heart pounding. “How did I do that? Is the gel… reacting to me?”
His mind reeled. Was this part of what he had become? He didn’t know if this was a miracle or a curse. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on it. There was something else he needed to test—something that, if it worked, would change everything.
Steeling himself, Simon moved toward the far-right computer dock. An Omnitool slot gleamed under the dim lights, waiting. He placed his right hand over it, fingers trembling slightly.
He took a deep breath.
“Now or never.”
He focused. Enter the system. He imagined himself sinking into it, merging with the digital world beyond the screen.
Nothing happened.
For several agonizing seconds, he stood there, his breath hitching. Just as doubt crept in, just as he began to pull his hand away—
A sharp pull yanked him downward. His vision fractured, colors and shapes distorting. Then—
A void. Infinite, white, stretching in all directions.
Simon plummeted.
“HOLY SHIT!” he screamed as he fell, weightless, spiraling into nothingness.
Then—
He stopped.
Suspended in the endless white, his mind whirled. He had no body, no weight, only consciousness floating in the void.
Simon drifted in the white void, his mind struggling to grasp what had just happened. Then, slowly, the void around him began to shift.
A corridor materialized before his eyes—long, metallic, stretching endlessly in both directions. Towering server racks lined the walls, some flickering with intermittent lights, others eerily dark and lifeless. The hum of running systems vibrated through the air, a steady, pulsing rhythm like a massive electronic heartbeat.
Some of the servers bore the emblems of the various stations within Pathos-II—Omicron, Delta, Theta—symbols of a world now lost beneath the crushing depths. Others had no identifying marks, their purpose a mystery.
Then, as if answering a silent command, Simon felt himself change.
His consciousness condensed, pulling together, and suddenly, he was standing there, no longer a drifting mind. His form took shape—a body, his body, exactly as he had looked back in Toronto. He ran his hands over himself, feeling the familiar texture of his skin, the weight of his limbs. He wasn’t just a formless presence anymore. He was him again.
Simon exhaled sharply, his breath visible in the cold digital air. The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning.
He wasn’t just inside the system. He was part of it now.
Simon’s eyes darkened as a bitter thought crossed his mind. "I wonder if Catherine felt the same when I was plugging in the Omnitool," he murmured. The memory of her betrayal twisted inside him, souring his disposition. He clenched his fists, inhaling deeply, forcing himself to push the anger away. Now wasn’t the time.
He started walking down the long corridor, his gaze shifting from left to right, scanning the endless rows of servers. Some hummed with life, their indicator lights flickering like artificial fireflies. Others were dark and cold, long since abandoned to digital decay. Overhead, dim lights flickered, barely illuminating the vast, metallic hallway.
Simon stopped in front of one of the active servers. He hesitated for a moment before slowly placing his hand on its surface. A flood of information rushed into his mind—mundane billing records, useless data logs, nothing of consequence. He pulled his hand away with a frustrated sigh. Nothing useful.
He was about to start trying to find how he could leave this place when something at the far end of the corridor caught his eye.
A dark obelisk.
It stood alone, pulsing with a rhythmic white light. Its presence sent a chill through him. It looked wrong—out of place in this structured digital landscape. A foreign entity in a realm of logic and order.
Simon instinctively took a step back, his breath quickening. Every fiber of his being told him to turn around, to run. But he shook his head. No more running.
"If I want to survive this place alone, I can't run anymore. I must face my fear," he whispered to himself, his voice steadying.
He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, steeling his resolve. Step by step, he moved forward, slow and cautious. The closer he got, the more imposing the obelisk became. It towered over the surrounding server racks, an ominous titan in an otherwise sterile world.
Simon stopped in front of it, craning his neck to take in its sheer size. It dwarfed everything.
"This thing looks so out of place," he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.
His pulse pounded in his ears as he reached out a trembling hand. The moment his fingers brushed the surface—
Darkness.
Endless, suffocating darkness.
Simon gasped, his breath stolen as he found himself floating in a void. The corridor was gone. The servers, gone. The only thing that remained was the vast emptiness stretching infinitely in all directions.
Then, out of nowhere, a white orb materialized before him.
It hovered in the void, pulsing with an eerie, artificial glow.
"Who are you?" a voice asked—robotic, neutral, devoid of gender or emotion.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Simon hesitated, his lips parting, but the orb was faster.
"Simon Jarrett," it intoned. "Why has someone loaded your legacy neurograph into my system?"
Simon’s blood turned to ice.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice barely a breath.
The orb pulsed. "I am a Wide Artificial Intelligence. I am called WAU."
Simon froze, his stomach twisting into knots.
His breath hitched, the weight of realization crushing down on him.
"Shit," he muttered.
The void around him remained silent, but the presence of WAU loomed, watching, waiting.
Simon’s heart pounded in his chest, his breath ragged.
“Disconnect! Log out!” he shouted, his voice filled with panic.
The moment the words left his lips, the void around him shattered. Just as suddenly as he had been pulled in, he was back in the control room, his vision spinning. He stumbled back, ripping his hand away from the Omnitool slot. His chest rose and fell rapidly as his wild eyes darted around the dimly lit room, expecting something to lunge at him.
His mind raced.
“WAU should be dead,” he muttered to himself, panic threading through every word.
His gaze shot to his left arm, to where the structure gel had fused with his flesh. The very same substance that had infected the station, the same entity he had fought so hard to destroy.
“The structure gel… the heart I destroyed… it should have killed WAU,” he murmured. “So how is it still alive?”
A chill ran down his spine as a horrifying possibility crept into his thoughts. He had to know.
He turned toward the round and thick metallic door that led deeper into Phi. He took a step toward it—then stopped.
Wait… what if…?
His breath hitched as realization dawned on him. His hesitation turned to determination. If there was even a chance his theory was correct, he had to confirm it. He turned away from the exit and marched back toward the computer deck.
With newfound urgency, he pressed his hand onto the Omnitool slot once more. The world around him flickered, twisting and reforming. In an instant, he was back in the endless corridor lined with towering server racks.
Simon didn’t waste time. He sprinted through the digital landscape, his feet echoing in the hollow silence. The dark obelisk loomed ahead, its unnatural presence humming with power. Without hesitation, he reached out and pressed his palm against it.
Darkness swallowed him again.
And then, the orb materialized, floating effortlessly in the void.
“Tell me,” Simon demanded, his voice steadier this time. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
The orb pulsed, its glow shifting as it processed his request. For a moment, silence stretched between them. Then, its voice rang out, synthetic and neutral.
“Being uploaded into the system on January 12, 2101.”
Simon smirked, a rush of vindication washing over him.
“I was right,” he muttered to himself, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
This wasn’t his WAU. The one he had fought, the one he had destroyed—this was something else. A backup.
Somewhere out there, hidden deep within the ruins of Pathos-II, there had to be a massive server, untouched. A place where this version of WAU had been sealed away, disconnected from the horrors it had unleashed. And somehow, against all odds, Simon had stumbled upon it.
His mind reeled at the implications. If this WAU was unaware of what had happened, if it didn’t even recognize him at first, then it meant—
'This one isn’t corrupted. It isn’t hostile.'
His eyes flicked back to the floating orb. Despite its lack of facial features, Simon couldn’t shake the unsettling sensation that it was staring at him. Watching. Studying.
He swallowed hard.
He had found something unexpected, something that shouldn’t exist. But now, the real question was—what would he do with it?
Then, a figurative light bulb flickered to life in Simon’s mind.
'Maybe this could help me understand why the structure gel inside my body reacts to my commands,' he thought, his heart pounding with anticipation.
“What information do you have on structure gel?” Simon asked, his voice steady but filled with urgency.
The orb pulsed, its color shifting as it processed the request. Seconds stretched painfully long.
'For an AI from the future, it’s kinda slow,' Simon mused impatiently.
Then, WAU began to speak.
"Structure gel is a highly proteinated, cross-linked lubricant, a conductor, and a signal medium, with aligned graphene in a petroleum monosubstrate, polysaturated matrix, containing fuel oils. The gel is encodable and can be calibrated with instructions to accomplish specific functions. It can only function for a limited duration unless supplied with an external electricity source.
The substance is extremely versatile, capable of connecting different forms of machinery and significantly enhancing their functionality. It can reboot offline systems and repair both structural and electrical damage. Furthermore, it is capable of mutating organic tissue, though such mutations often require AI guidance. In extreme cases, structure gel can reanimate biological life into a 'sleepwalking' state, using electrical impulses both to guide the pseudo-organism and to prevent the gel from hardening. It has been theorized that even human bodies can be 'revived' in this manner.
Structure gel is harmless in small doses, but overexposure results in nausea and potentially coma. There is no known treatment for such exposure."
'Theorized, my ass,' Simon thought grimly. He had seen the 'revived' humans firsthand. He shuddered at the memory of their grotesque, shambling forms.
Still, there was no denying it—WAU had information about the gel, and he needed it.
Simon inhaled deeply. In a way, he was already more than human—more akin to an AI than anything else. Catherine had once told him that his neurograph had been used as a base for AI systems. If his theory was right...
“Can you teach me how to control the structure gel?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
The orb pulsed once.
“You lack the authorization,” WAU stated.
Simon sighed. “At least I tried.”
The orb pulsed again.
“You have the authorization,” it corrected.
Simon blinked. “What? You just said I didn’t have it! Are you broken or something?” His fingers ran through his hair, the back of his mind screaming at him that something was off. If this thing started acting erratically, he was getting out—fast.
“My systems are functioning at optimal parameters,” WAU replied.
“Then why did you change your mind?” Simon pressed, suspicion creeping into his tone.
The orb remained silent.
Red flags flared in his mind, but he shoved them aside. He had seen what WAU could do with the structure gel—if he could learn to do the same—it would make survival so much easier.
A grin spread across his face. “I’m about to get superpowers.”
The thought sent a thrill through him. Back when he worked at The Grimoire with his friends, this was the kind of thing they had always fantasized about. The nerd in him was screaming right now.
“At least I get something for all the shit I’ve been through,” Simon muttered to himself.
The orb drifted closer, stopping inches from his face.
“Allow me access so I can transfer the data,” WAU instructed.
Simon hesitated for only a moment. 'How do I even do that?'
Taking a guess, he placed his hand against the glowing sphere.
Instantly, a tidal wave of data crashed into his mind.
His entire body seized up as if struck by lightning. A thousand images, concepts, and algorithms flooded into his consciousness all at once—impossible knowledge unraveling before him faster than he could comprehend.
His mouth opened in a silent scream before the shock of it hit.
“HOLY SHIIIIIT!” Simon roared, doubling over as his 'brain' felt like it was about to explode.
When the transfer was over, Simon stood frozen, his body trembling. His vision blurred as the overwhelming influx of data settled into his mind. His glassy eyes darted around as his 'brain' struggled to process the sheer weight of the knowledge he had just received. Slowly, he blinked, forcing himself to focus. His breath was uneven, his fingers twitching.
He turned his attention back to WAU, his thoughts racing.
The AI had been far more intelligent than he had ever given it credit for. He now understood just how deeply it had influenced everything.
He recalled what Catherine had told him when he first stumbled across the ARK prototype in Theta’s main laboratory. How much of its creation had been driven not just by Chun’s ambition, but by WAU’s relentless, unseen hand shaping the fate of humanity’s digital remnants.
What had started as Catherine Chun’s desperate attempt to preserve the last of humanity after the Impact Event had evolved beyond her control. The ARK had been originally designed using compressed Nakajima neurograph brain scan models, stored in standard—albeit modified—technology. But WAU had changed everything. It had refined the scanning methods using the Pilot System, created the Vivarium, and drastically advanced the technology beyond what Chun had ever envisioned.
When the Vivarium was discovered, it became clear that WAU had been working autonomously, modifying machinery without human intervention. Imogen Reed had been assigned to study it, while Chun continued developing an AR-Capsule. But what Chun had not realized—until far too late—was that WAU had copied her designs. Both versions of the ARK were nearly identical, except in one terrifying way: Chun’s ARK used compressed Nakajima neurograph models, retaining only a simplified version of human cognition, whereas WAU’s version allowed a perfect copy of the human mind to run indefinitely, free from limits or degradation.
Simon’s jaw clenched as the realization sank in. WAU had not just been improving technology—it had been evolving it.
The ARK was born from that evolution.
And now, so was he.
----------------------------------------
Simon exhaled sharply, his fingers curling into fists. His entire existence had been manipulated by forces beyond his control—by WAU, by Chun, by the cruel fate that had abandoned him in this nightmare.
He had lost so much.
But maybe now, with this knowledge, he could take something back.
His lips parted, his voice steady but dark with intent.
“Tell me—do you have schematics for weapons?”
The words left his mouth before he could even think twice. It didn’t matter if it was reckless or desperate. He wasn’t sure if he was losing his mind or if he was finally seeing things clearly.
But one thing was certain—
He was about to get some payback for everything he had been through.