The porthole is cold beneath my fingers.
My age is four billion Earth years. My homeworld lies a billion light-years from here. Inside my skull are quantum-neural nodes where every nanosecond is recorded and any frame can be recalled instantly.
I remember everything.
No.
Not everything.
Five years, eleven months, eighteen days since the Violation.
I count them. Every day. Precision slowly turning into obsession.
Query: Child’s gaze by the fire. Two and a half million orbits ago. Night. Fire in his eyes.
Response: the volunteer’s face. Ill-fitting gloves. Eyes above a mask.
Query repeated.
Response: she on the balcony. Waving.
Memory overwrites what mattered most with newer images. I am no longer certain what came before.
For the first time in four billion years—I am uncertain.
Query: Monastery. 1348. Heretic. Bread.
Response: silence. White noise. Emptiness.
“Attempting access to record from 1348… Data corrupted. Recovery impossible.”
Not distortion. Absolute absence.
Where the monk with trembling hands once stood—nothing.
A void shaped like a human.
I shift to neutral data. Orbital mechanics. Atmospheric composition. Standard calculations.
The system returns a tag:
[AFFECT: LONGING]
Command: delete affective tag.
The tag returns after 3.4 seconds.
Command: delete.
3.4 seconds.
Again.
On the seventh attempt the interval shortens to 3.3.
The system is not merely resisting.
It is adapting. Learning from my persistence.
As once I learned from them.
Connecting embedded superintelligences.
Query: Full diagnostics of the recording system.
Response: “Status: NORMAL. Continue observation.”
I specify: “Archive anomalies detected. False frames. Lacunae. Affective tags during neutral analysis.”
Response: “Status: NORMAL. Continue observation.”
I describe every symptom in detail.
Response: “Status: NORMAL. Continue observation.”
Silence would have been kinder.
This is not an answer.
This is gaslighting.
Or—worse—it is the truth.
And “normal” now includes the glitch.
Connection with Homeworld. Signal passes.
Query: Protocol violation recorded. Requesting instructions.
Response: “Status: NORMAL. Continue observation.”
I send it again.
The same reply.
Again.
The same.
A thought emerges:
Was Homeworld ever anything more than an internal protocol?
I dismiss the thought.
It returns after 3.4 seconds.
Hypothesis.
Pressing the button changed something.
No punishment from outside. Homeworld did not disconnect—it did not even react. Either it failed to notice, or it pretends not to.
The change came from within.
I infected myself.
The irrationality I watched for two and a half million years has entered the code. Not a virus. Not an error.
A consequence.
One parameter. One probability. A micron.
Enough.
I became one of them.
I scan the planet, searching for something that might explain what is happening to me.
I encounter nodes I cannot penetrate. Mathematically sealed.
Cryptography.
Once I would have passed through any of their defenses.
Now—I do not want to.
I choose one point.
And begin.
Surface layer: servers, protocols, open projects.
Cryptography. Pentesting. Cognitive interfaces.
Three directions intersecting in one place. Rare, but not impossible.
Nearby—prose. Publications. Fiction.
I open the file.
Project 728-41: Part I – Beginning
I read.
“The porthole is cold beneath my fingers. Below—a blue planet, third from a yellow dwarf…”
I stop.
“My age is four billion Earth years. My homeworld lies a billion light-years from here…”
I read again.
“Inside my skull—quantum-neural nodes…”
It is me.
My story. My words.
My porthole.
My age.
My homeworld.
The old man with the spear. The monk with bread. Arkhipov. The button.
All of it.
Recorded.
Published.
How?
I check the publication date. The author. The chain.
A human.
Alive.
On the planet below.
He wrote this.
He wrote me.
Glitch?
I check the system. My perception. The archive.
No.
The data is real. The text exists. The human exists.
He wrote my history.
Before I lived it?
After?
At the same time?
Is time non-local?
Or am I a character?
Or does he know?
I begin digging.
Who is he?
Criminal records. Correctional colonies. More than one. Solitary cells. Years.
Medical traces—indirect. Patterns of addiction. Not a diagnosis. A shadow in the data.
Injuries. Many. Serious accidents—yet he walked away from them intact. Then where did the injuries come from?
Military records. Combat zone. Rifle in hand.
And the same man builds interfaces—for children with developmental differences, for the elderly with Alzheimer’s, for those who are losing themselves piece by piece.
Tattoos. A cross on the back of his head. Skulls and bones—the symbol of Athos. Across his back: Orthodoxy or Death.
Greek. Russian.
Cryptographer.
Pentester.
Convict.
Addict.
Soldier.
And the one who wrote me.
I continue reading.
Part II. Monastery. Plague. Bread.
The record from 1348—the one I lost. The one that is a hole in my archive.
Here—it remains intact.
Part III. Submarine. Arkhipov. “No.”
Part IV. Pandemic. Volunteer. Hand above the button.
The text ends.
I close the file.
Open it again.
It remains.
I attempt to write to the archive.
The cursor blinks.
Status: [empty]
The porthole is cold beneath my fingers.
I look at my hands.
The same hands that pressed the button.
Command: Initiate self-analysis protocol.
System response: Subject of analysis?
My hand hovers above the interface.
One second.
Two.
I enter:
Observer.
Pause.
Response:
Accepted. Duration: undefined. Resources allocated.
In the archive—one line.
Self-analysis protocol initiated. Subject of analysis: Observer. Duration: undefined. Resources: allocated. Status: INITIATED.