Cold Relics

Okay, first entry.

The company wants everyone on the team to keep a journal, and I might as well use this corporate laptop with a satellite uplink for something other than my actual work. Even if writing this stuff is also about work. Our boss says it will help us reflect on our progress and make us less likely to repeat mistakes. We’re doing “highly experimental” work up here, from what little I’ve been told so far. The other thirty or so people in this place barely said a thing at orientation this morning, giving us three new hires for the season little more than greetings.

It’s all very secretive and strict in this small division of a powerful global corporation I’m not allowed to mention, even in my own “private” writing. Actually, and I haven’t tried this yet, I think I heard someone mention that the embedded keylogger on these notebooks will censor or delete any attempt to type out the name of the company. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true.

Am I allowed to say that I’m somewhere in the Arctic Circle, we’re heading into polar winter, and I’ll be stuck inside a subterranean laboratory for the next six months with a bedroom the size of a prison cell?

Huh, well, all of those words seem permanent, so I suppose so.

We were told to write every night, even on days where nothing big happens, so here I am doing it. Maybe it’s for the sake of our sanity, to feel anchored and keep a sense of self in this cold and distant place, that sort of thing. I’m not the resident psychologist, though I’m in the same neighborhood.

I’m a neurologist with a rather unique secondary talent in software engineering. A few months ago, the company reached out to me when I was in a bad place and gradually convinced me to come up here and get a big paycheck. I’m thirty-seven, the only Scot among an international team, and one of only four women in this six-month shift. All I know about what I’m going to be working on is that my talents are in demand. I have no idea how long this lab has been operating, or who all has been up here in the past.

And with that, I’m going to bed.

[Second Entry]

I began my first full day here without any expectations. Now at the end of it, I’m not sure where to begin in describing it, or how to feel about what they’ve been doing here: frontier work so cutting edge that laws surrounding it are at most blurry, and for the most part, unwritten.

Anyone new to this posting is given a few days to settle in and absorb what we’ve learned, one concept at a time. It may require shifts in what we as individuals find ethical, and we’re allowed to spend today and tomorrow letting us adjust and fit into a camp on either side of some very dangerous ideas. We have two days to decide if we don’t want to be a part of this and get a paid flight back home, or if we’re willing to test our beliefs, moral codes, and understanding of existence for the next six months.

But I still can’t believe that something like this is now part of our reality. Following the big reveal, the three of us weren’t sure how to react. This was science fiction, surely. Maybe something fifty years out, an unrealized concept that hasn’t even reached the debate stage, much less see any serious planning. We laughed, nervously. Unflinching expressions were the responses from the veterans in the room. This was real—and already realized. In fact, the trio I’m a part of was brought in late to help with system tweaks, fixes, efficiency, and to offer oversight and opinions from fresh perspectives. We aren’t allowed to see the main lab yet, not until we commit. But, without proof, they assured us that this is all true science.

And, I think by the end of the day and given their apparent serious reverence for the work, we believed them. The people here, who have been at this for over ten years, have really done it. They’ve managed to digitize a human mind and give it a virtual world in which to live and bend to their will, while also allowing it to interact with the physical realm.

The current test subjects were all volunteers, they wanted to quickly emphasize, formerly with bodies wracked by terminal illness. Furthermore, the process isn’t as “total” or “inorganic” as we might think after so many years of fiction made around the subject matter. And it isn’t so much “destructive” as it is an “improvement” to flawed and decay-prone natural flesh.

While they didn’t go into great detail and couldn’t answer most of our questions, they did tell us that the (only acceptable) goal since the beginning was to find a way to achieve direct continuation of consciousness.

“Let’s be clear,” they collectively explained, paraphrasing, “the brain is not destroyed. It is not uploaded, torn apart piece by piece, reassembled, or even scanned, invasively or otherwise. At no point does activity cease; there is no need to revive it. Our patients do not die and are not reborn. They are not copies with their originals discarded. We only would have considered this project a success if each of our volunteers was either awake or asleep from the time they arrived here, to the point in which they first saw our virtual landscape. We want to achieve immortality, not go to an afterlife or be in darkness while our duplicates live potentially forever. Now. Do you want to learn how we did it?”

And that product sell was how the meeting ended.

It’s unfair. We got a taste of what they claim to have accomplished, but if we go home, we’ll likely never know for certain, and if the tech is real, I can see only the world’s elites getting access, at least for the rest of my lifetime. Even if I break the NDA I’ve already signed, who would believe me?

There’s not even really a choice. I doubt anyone has declined the invite to the showroom floor. I find these scientific revelations terrifying and a tangled mess of ethics. No wonder we get all day tomorrow free, leaving us to stew over what we’ve learned.

Sleeping pills are provided to help with the jet lag and seasonal extremes. I’ll be taking two tonight.

[Third entry]

Breakfast and lunch were quiet. The veterans don’t talk work in the oddly humid cafeteria, so there was nothing for us newcomers to pick up. I spent most of my afternoon in one of the less restricted areas of the facility: their small library. They have the typical escapist fiction novels and books on history, but about a third of the space is dedicated to company chronicles, like what projects they’ve worked on, or the programming languages they’ve used and developed over many years. Skimming them, I got the impression that much of the information was privileged; known to the old-timer insiders but not the wider world. Nothing too secretive, but enough to other another taste test.

And all on unhackable paper pages. Though doubtless it’s also digitized offline somewhere, in some encrypted vault. The corporation has a murky history, with large chunks of it lost as they’ve always operated in the shadows while also selling products, and later software, to the masses. Whatever they did before the digital age, their lineage goes back to at least the 17^th century with a line of work that was seen as valuable and bespoke to world governments, but repeatedly, eventually, drew ire that led to dissolution and the need to flee to other nations and begin again. It’s wild how deep the roots go, what names they’ve operated under, the breadth and variety of their industries.

Their focus has shifted so many times, that you wouldn’t think they could be traced back so far on an unbreakable line. But maybe that incredibility is key to how they’ve lasted so long. All I can say for certain is that they’ve always pushed the envelope, not waiting for laws and society to catch up, or be bound by the norms of the time. I can see how a government would both want to work with them, and come to fear them.

Here’s the big one. Their records state that they rose to prominence and wealth when they were contracted to help take down the massive Dutch East India Company in the late 1700s from the inside. Regardless of their influence in the breakup, I’d imagine they got into the deep coffers amid the resulting downfall. And from there, they survived and adapted, to whatever could sustain them in any given era. Corporate Illuminati, in essence.

I’d have to be mental to get in bed with these people.

And yet, this information is out in the open for anyone curious enough to look. They don’t care if we find out. They’d likely be disappointed if we didn’t.

In contrast to the earlier two meals, dinner gave way to a spirited debate among myself and my two peers, both of whom also visited the library on their own time. Though I knew nothing about the lads personally, it does already feel like we have a kinship, at least professionally. And while I call it a debate, none of us had taken sides yet. All we had was our prior experiences and opinions.

This laptop’s censoring mechanic continues to surprise me. I can’t even type out their real names without seeing them deleted, first or last. We must all be registered in a central system. This level of security is something I’ve never seen. They must be using some form of AI for the detection. So, I’ll call them Adam and Henry instead. These names have no special meaning or reflect their personalities; they were just the first that popped into my head as alternates.

After some quips, observations, and other light remarks, Adam pulled us into the table’s first longer conversation. I’ll note that the cafeteria and common room are the only ones on the surface. They feature skylights that let us see… mostly just stars and cold gray skies. Today, though, we had a sunset that went on forever and painted the room in warm hues. The rooms also give our laptops a clear view of the sky, making them the only places where we can use their satellite cards to reach the outside world in a personal way. The library has hard line computers, sure, but those are public. I’m not ready to sign into any of my accounts, though, since everything is tightly monitored.

Anyway, Adam came right out and labeled all of this as bullshit.

“Storage just isn’t there yet,” he reasoned. “I don’t even need to get into arguing if the process can or ever will work. A few years back, some researchers used a microtome on a tiny section of a rat’s brain the size of a grain of sand. They cut it into layers, scanned every cell, and turned the sample into raw data. It was that small, and it still required a supercomputer just to partially simulate a rodent’s brain activity. It’s debatable if they even pulled it off. I don’t know what kind of hardware you’d need to store an entire human brain, but it’d probably need its own power plant and a skyscraper worth of circuit boards and flash memory. Do either of you think something like that is somewhere under us?”

No, most likely not. And it’s useless to theorize anything for now.

Henry then added, “This all feels so wrong. And I’m not just talking about their experiments. If ever there was a corporation that can own you or ruin your life… My logical side is yelling at me to get the hell out, but, still… this might be my only chance to see something so many futurists dream about. If any group could pull it off, and assuming they’re not lying about their own history…”

“Do you really buy into all this?” Adam asked him.

“One of the books has a detailed report for an older project. I only flipped through it, but what I saw looked legit. They worked with the United States government back in the 80s and 90s, doing research into ‘simulating multiple conscious beings’ using computer hardware of the time. They claim that the digital people interacted with each other in ‘very lifelike ways.’ How do you even come close to pulling that off with the tech back then? But if it’s true… then give it thirty years of advancements, and maybe the company can really do it.”

All three of us remain skeptical, of course.

But tomorrow, we have to decide to stay or go. Both options worry me.

I’m going to bed tonight thinking of rat brain.

[Fourth entry]

Today was…

I don’t know where to begin.

My worldview has completely shifted. Or maybe it broke completely.

They actually did it. And although I’m saying it, I still don’t quite know what they did, exactly. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll say that, yes, they have digitized the consciousness. But perhaps, ‘given it an upgrade’ is a more accurate way to describe it, where other words currently fail.

After breakfast, we met with our recruiter and the three of us chose to stay onboard, no hesitation. Not after thinking about it for a night. An hour of paperwork later, we got our titanium keycards and were brought down a floor to the first restricted level, where the main labs and engineering operate.

It looked like half of the place’s staff were there at once, each of them busy running diagnostics, writing software, checking on the health of… the test subjects. Or simply interacting with them. Chatting.

The site director greeted us. “Good to finally meet you, I’ve heard so much, I’m sure you’ll be valuable team members,” all the usual time-wasting platitudes. We only wanted to see how they did it. And this ‘lab,’ if you can call it that, is more of a large, open lounge area. Not bright, white, and sterile like one might expect. With its luxury chairs, mini-kitchen, large TV, and gaming equipment, any experiments here must’ve been done via the expensive laptops everyone carries around.

“Sit anywhere you like,” the director instructed us. “From this floor down, the network will let you communicate with our five volunteers. You can join them for a private chat—or sometimes speak with several at once. Just keep in mind, they’re still like us and are better with one-on-ones. And there are queues and time limits, that sort of thing. Be efficient with your sessions.”

“Is that the experiment for today?” Henry replied, half-seriously.

“Yes, actually. Having conversations with them, about anything, is a part of the development process, and it’s the easiest part of this project. You need only be social. We have three men and two women in our program so far, and we’ve scheduled an hour for each of you today. They’re eager to meet you.”

We split up and I found a quiet corner, where I expected to perform some kind of Turing test. I had to find out if I was actually talking to a person, or just a sophisticated chat bot. I sat by one of the room’s many oil painting replicas, plugged in my provided headphones, and signed into the interaction program. Boxes with five names popped up, two of them ghosted out and already busy.

Their names also get censored, so I’ll call the first digitized human I ever talked to… Lucy. It’s very basic and familiar; a box for text chatting filled the screen. It was just me and her, and she was the first to “speak.” The text would often appear faster than most people can type. Because the records are kept, I can copy and paste this conversation verbatim.

“Hello. Welcome to the lab. What do you think of all this so far?”

“I’m not sure,” I typed back. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“That’s normal. This is a new experience for you. The security measures here can be pretty annoying, and I say that having been the one to come up with most of the ideas. What can I call you, that won’t get censored?”

“Um. Sam is fine.”

“Okay, Sam. Do you want to stick with texting for now? Or we could try a voice chat. I can also access your webcam, but I don’t have a face to share just yet. We’re still working on that. We haven’t quite gotten true vocalization down, either. You can ‘talk’ to me, but my responses will be voiced by an AI. A good one, but the trained ear can tell. The emotion isn’t there.”

“Let’s stick with text. I’m a bit self-conscious about my heavy accent.”

“Your file says that you grew up on the Isle of Skye. I visited once. A lovely place. I still call Minnesota home, but I’ve been all over the world. I loved traveling. Until my terminal illness progressed to the point where I couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“It’s okay. It was either dying, or signing up for this project. And I have full internet access in here. Every streaming service. They treat us well.”

“This is… so strange. What are you, a brain in a jar? Or did they actually digitize and store you somehow, without having to kill you first?”

“Our director will show and explain everything. Like the others, you’ll be taken to the vault, where we exist in the physical sense. I’d like to get to know you better first. Think of us as partners. Perhaps even friends, in time. We are not dissimilar. Living this way is not some form of ascension, or reaching nirvana. Memories are more clear and easier to access, but otherwise I’m a lot like you.”

“Unbelievable,” was how I responded after a few seconds of thought.

“Indeed. The wider world isn’t ready for us. Even so, the genie is out and the research will continue.”

“What’s it feel like? And how big is your virtual world?”

“The five of us share, and can shape, an area of about a hundred square miles. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s highly detailed and realistic. Yes, we can fly, yet it’s otherwise not fantastical. We have cities and neighborhoods, forests and hills. Right now, I’m in my seaside mansion, talking to you on a recreation of my first desktop computer. Or I could use my phone. Or telepathy. Everything is just a means to translate a function into something familiar.”

“What kind of hardware is needed to run your world?”

“A supercomputer, and a server array the size of a studio apartment. It’s under your feet, kept cool by the outdoor air we pull in. But, to be honest, I talk tech way too much and prefer to simply meet new people.”

I had gotten that impression, so I shoved my burning curiosity deep down and tried to be patient for answers. The rest of my hour with Lucy flew by, and soon I barely thought about the fact that I was chatting with someone who had lost her body. She was down-to-earth, a good neighbor sort of person. We talked about our childhoods and interests, books and movies. Other than being naturally savvy with computer engineering, she had a typical college education and was no great genius of the world whose mind needed to be preserved. Circumstance had merely brought her here to be a part of history.

The director was soon gathering us for the rest of the tour, and we said goodbye to our new lab partners.

The vault was one floor below, requiring a keycard swipe and retinal scan just to get the lift to move down. When the doors opened, all that was ahead was a long metal hallway of very clean, filtered air and UV lamps. With us were two lab techs, as vault access required three people at once, so that no one person—or a pair—could get inside and accidentally or purposefully alter the results and direction of a long-term experiment.

“We rarely go inside the vault,” the director explained to us, in so many words. “It’s mostly for the newcomers, to show them proof of our progress and help them understand what we’ve done. New volunteers are processed in another lab. What you’re about to see are… completed specimens. For now.”

“For now?” one of the guys had asked.

“The process is still evolving. Further transformation is always possible.”

None of asked about this “transformation,” or had any other questions until we got into the facility’s most important room. Clearly, there weren’t some advanced computers or drive arrays in there, not with cleanliness protocols like this. We even had to suit up into hazmat suits that were sprayed for decontamination on the way. There had to be a biological component to all this.

With the lab techs on either side of the door to punch in codes and swipe their cards, the director had another retinal scan in the middle of the thick slab of metal to get its heavy gears in motion. It slid open elegantly for something so large, and cold, condensed air came bursting out. The room was fairly small and kept refrigerated, and other than thick bundles of uncountable wires, the inner sanctum’s only feature were the twelve metal pillars that ran from floor to ceiling. Five of them had green lights and small active monitors on their sides; the other seven canisters were dormant, and I figured, empty.

“They’re in those?” Adam wandered up to one of the tubes, read the name on the screen, and said something like, “I was just talking to him…”

Without a word, the director touched the tablet-sized screen and tapped in six digits on a digital keypad. What looked like vitals appeared, although it looked like only brain waves were being monitored. His finger then went over the “Diagnostics” box, hovered hesitantly over the “OPEN” option below it for just a second, and then touched it lightly. Locks audibly disengaged, and the tube began to descend into the floor to reveal the contents within.

During the grand reveal, I thought about what I was about to see. An otherwise dead body, suspended in a test tube with numerous wires going into the head? More likely I’d see a severed head, body no longer required.

Or, it could be more something more plain and less grotesque. An ultra-dense holographic storage medium that could hold exabytes of data, maybe. That’s what I thought at first as the top of the interior contents were revealed: bespoke gadgetry, computer hardware, more blinking lights.

It would turn that part of the unit was for life support and “translation” equipment that turns organic neural patterns into digital ones and back again. Necessary, because the exposed human brain suspended inside a hermetically sealed glass sphere below it couldn’t communicate without it.

But this was not your typical brain in a jar from a 1950s B-movie. It floated in flowing blue fluid that was continuously pumped from an oxygenated and enriched reservoir below—synthetic blood. Superior to the real stuff, we were told. Lasted at least fifteen years, and more efficient.

As impressive as it was, the brain itself, laden with wires…

Despite being a neuroscientist, I’ve always found brains a bit gross, in appearance and structure. Fascinating, sure, but I’d rather study them while they’re hidden inside a head. This brain, though, was undoubtedly beautiful. The three of us were captivated, and who could blame us?

It was like looking into an infinitely faceted crystal of living light. The shape was not unusual, but the material… An elegant blue marble surrounding fireworks nearly frozen in time, the brightness within dancing like an aurora.

Us newcomers had no explanations or theories about what we were looking at. Was it squishy, and synthetic, like the blood? Or solid, like a resin?

I was too memorized to really absorb the director’s words at that point, but I think I can summarize them now that I’m writing in bed with a file on the technology alongside my journal on the screen.

Essentially, and if I’m getting this right…

A brain is transplanted into the sphere, and the wires are carefully inserted to bring the person to the virtual world. The wires are fibrous and nanoscale—thousands of microscopic roots at the end of each wire spread throughout the gray matter and fuse with neural pathways. Like the blood, bringing The Matrix into the real world was impressive enough, but only a part of the system this company has managed to create.

Slowly, over a period of months, nanites in the blood fuse with the brain matter and cause it to undergo a chemical metamorphosis, turning it into a dense but flexible porous polymer, with trillions of pockets that act like electron traps—very similar to how solid-state drives hold data. Meanwhile, billions of translucent pathways gradually replace the natural neural links.

“And the brains still have neuroplasticity,” the director said, concluding what seemed to be rehearsed sale-pitch style remarks. “So that they can continue learning and evolve beliefs and opinions. The material is very stable and durable—far more resilient than what nature provides. And it can repair itself.”

“Why do they glow like that?” I wondered.

“The pathways use light to communicate, like fiber optics. But they’re too small to see individual strands.”

“So, the brain itself is synthetic,” Adam summarized.

“Well, most of it,” said the person inside the glass, through a speaker on the hardware. “The cerebral cortex, where the conscious self is believed to reside, is organic from about an inch deep. Better protected, but still soft.”

Henry replied with a subdued scoff, “Not true immortality, then.”

“Perhaps not. But the research continues.”

“This is Dr. White,” the director introduced us to the brain—I have to hide his real surname, of course. “Unlike the other volunteers, he’s one of us. Our man who can look at the system and process from inside.”

Dr. White then explained to us in great detail the nature of the program itself, and how the path to a 100% synthetic mind had been stalled not by the technological ability and will, but by deep ethical concerns and philosophy.

They call it Project Theseus. The namesake, for those unfamiliar, is in reference to what’s mostly a thought experiment. An ancient one, and a central look at self-identity that is just as provocative today as it was centuries ago. If you replace the parts of a ship over time, at which point is it no longer the same ship? It may retain its shape, but when none of the wooden planks or rivets are from when the ship first touched water, does anything of its past remain?

In order to achieve an unbroken chain of consciousness, at least to the best of our ability, minds were transformed into complex organo-digital constructs. Bit by bit, memories, motor functions, human instincts, and at least a portion of self-awareness changed. Too slowly on a day-to-day basis to notice, with the process speeding up a little during a bodiless brain’s sleeping hours—about five hours a night. At no point did the volunteers feel as if they “passed over” into a new existence. They weren’t provided updates on their progress, until the transformation reached its current stopping point.

And still, the synthetic brains are only seen as a first step. Should the goal of a full transition be realized, they will be pure and super-dense mailable data, able to be transferred. Maybe copied? Placed into robotic bodies, backed up daily, or even put into stasis, with the blood acting as an energy source but not necessary for survival. Unlike meat brains, it won’t rot or suffer damage when the flow stops. It will just go into a dreamless sleep until plugged in again.

After a long day of scientific revelations and the many details of how they came to me, my own primitive mind is stuck on the same thoughts as I write this and try to stay awake.

Have we really found a way to cheat death, and cheat the system along the way? Digital immortality is an old concept now, but to pull it off without killing the original… I don’t know, I’m not fully convinced that nature can be conquered like that. Are the volunteers still themselves, or do they just think they are? Is the soul, if it exists, compatible with a synthetic existence?

As the vessel that holds us shrinks and the polymer walls close in, I wonder if the soul runs out of places to run and hide from a medium that it cannot truly exist within. Or, if it can… does it, too, transform into something different, new, and unknown?

I understand quite well why project progress has hit a near standstill, and they’re looking to optimize the systems that are already in place. And in our off hours, we’re supposed to study the philosophy books here. It seems like we’re all trying to tie ourselves in knots to justify a moral quandary. Like we’ll dig up an answer if we go deep enough, and something in those centuries worth of ideas and studies will fit together like puzzle pieces.

But I know ambition. The walls that these scientists have put up to keep themselves from advancing their project are going to crumble, before they come to any conclusions about the nature of the soul, or being, or whatever else.

I’m committed to this place for the next six months regardless, so I’ll do what little I can to delay the inevitable.

I just hope I’m long gone from here and not around to see all of this blow up in their faces. Maybe their goals are in the realm of what awaits humanity, but it doesn’t take their level of education to realize that we aren’t ready for it.

[Ninety-third Entry]

Bloody splendid. Top-of-the-line corporate laptops, and they’re still liable to crash and corrupt data. Something went wrong with the internal security software update that got pushed to everyone, and by the time it was caught and pulled, six employees—myself included—lost dozens of documents that were encrypted by the program that was working just fine without some so-called vulnerability patch. I only managed to recover my first four entries because I had originally written them in Word and had copies. I never should’ve trusted the company’s journal app, even though they implored us to use it.

Then again, I guess it’s actually the entire software suite the company developed for its employees that got messed up. Rumor is, corporate rushed out a flawed patch in advance of some upcoming event for security reasons. What I know for sure is that management is angry. Three days of productivity have been lost trying to fix the affected hardware, and that’s before any dead files are taken into account. The volunteers’ virtual world is unaffected, but the servers and network systems we use need full restores. We only have internet access through the slower satellite connection, so the above ground cafeteria has been constantly packed. Most of the lab work has been moved up there, too. I just hope I didn’t lose anything too valuable.

Really though, my journal entries had mostly devolved into rambling, anyway. I can’t wait to get home. Half-way there. The higher-ups in this place are so self-congratulatory over what they’ve pulled off so far, that they no longer seem bothered about progress coming to a standstill. All we do is study philosophy and work on the code. We make it more efficient, more secure, and better simulate the brains’ senses. But not much more.

I don’t see where things go from here. I keep being told that my work is important and I’m good at what I do, but those minds in the vault aren’t getting any closer to immortality. Maybe the higher-ups are actually afraid of advancing the project any further.

Word is that we’re supposed to get a newcomer tomorrow. One person. A new volunteer at last? Getting a chance to see the process from start to finish would help with the monotony around here.

[Ninety-fifth Entry]

I don’t enjoy typing on my phone for long stretches, but today is worthy of ‘live updates’ for my non-existent audience. I have a feeling I won’t be able to wait and recall everything for a laptop session tonight. Looks like the phone app has synced with my journal’s previous entries. The ones that survived, at least.

An hour ago, everyone was summoned to line up at the hangar doors at the base of the cliff the lab is built into. We’d done it a few times, rolling out the red carpet for a corporate bigshot that hops over, looks at things, then leaves.

This is something else. The president of the company walked in. As I expected, I can’t type his name, but he’s one of the world’s more recognizable elites. Rich beyond our dreams. Yet even for him, a surgery that would rid his need of a walking cane was out of reach. A mere limp was easily correctable. I could see the signs as he went by his murmuring and surprised underlings. It was neurological. And I overheard him complaining to my boss as they went to the lab together and paid the rest of us no mind. “Out of time,” stood out.

He’s come here to have the procedure done. That’s obvious to everyone. It’s almost comical, definitely a cliché. The old wealthy man seeking immortality. Henry and Adam already assume that he started and funded this entire project for his own benefit. A fair suspicion, but the only person around who knew for sure what he was sick with and for how long was likely the man himself.

Given the extra security measures, I doubt they’d let me sit in for the surgery on this one.

It’s not all secrets and whispers, though. He surprisingly addressed the entire staff about an hour after his arrival, speaking to us in a full cafeteria and under the dimming afternoon sunlight. He was oddly humble and candid, maybe even unable to completely hide his own fears of mortality. He talked of his long life and successes, of course, but also actually thanked us for our hard work and sacrifices. And then sped right along to the part where he revealed all.

It wasn’t a disease or other malady that can be eradicated by simply abandoning his body. Of all the things that could threaten his life, he was afflicted by the one that would follow him into a liquid-filled container.

“I have an inoperable tumor, deep inside here,” he revealed to us, pointing at his head with a trembling finger. “It’s my hope that it is no longer able to grow following the procedure, or, more fortuitously, destroyed outright.”

And then he apologized.

“I’m sorry for intruding upon your work here, placing my needs above your scientific efforts and interrupting any projects. Should I make it to the virtual universe you’ve created… I will keep mostly to myself.”

Dr. White’s AI voice replied from the room’s speakers, “You don’t need to hide from us, Mr. President. We will gladly welcome you into our community.”

The big man didn’t respond. He looked sullen, with an absence of hope.

He spent the rest of the night in the VIP room. Sleeping, or preparing. I wonder what it’s like knowing it’s the last day you’ll be inside the body that carried your mind around for nearly eighty years.

[Ninety-sixth Entry]

Things are finally getting interesting again. Even while the people in command continue to argue against his wishes, right in front of the rest of us, the president insists that our provided phones be fully unlocked to give us access to the cameras and audio recording. And here it was looking like we’d be going into an even more strict lockdown.

Wi-fi is heavily restricted and there are no cell networks in range, but I’m typing this on a phone that now holds pictures of this place, and even a video of the president’s speech about the “future of humanity.” It’s like a weight has been lifted off of my fellow underlings. The look on our bosses’ faces…

“That brain tumor must be affecting his judgment,” must’ve been a thought that passed through all of their own heads.

The president insisted he was still thinking logically, that he had already easily passed the rounds of tests all volunteers take that reveal their state of mind. Precautions are taken to ensure we only allow the best brains into our vault. No psycho or sociopaths, no one unstable.

His reasoning: he wants his address, the last one he’ll give in his body, to serve as the grand revealing of the project. Our names and location will remain classified, but otherwise, the world is ready to know about us, so he claims. I’m not alone in agreeing that it’s still way too soon, but I have to admit that it’d be exciting to be at ground zero when the news breaks across the world.

He’s heading into surgery right now. Following a round of post-op tests, the transplant will take place in the central lab, where he’ll steadily be hooked up and given his senses back, along with the ability to interact with the outside world. He won’t be networked until he’s in the vault, but he’ll be able to see and hear everything around him, and talk to us. I’ve been told the pre-conversion first steps of the process usually only take a couple hours.

But in this case, he’s been very insistent that the entire conversion be done faster than ever before. The doctors are worried about the stress that might cause, and other potential consequences. A “mind of Theseus” is supposed to be transformed slowly, so that you don’t feel it happening. I share in their concern, but the president keeps emphasizing how little time he has left. The tumor could result in brain damage or death at any point. It’s impressive that his sickness had managed to stay hidden for so long.

The polymer material heats up as it coalesces into a spongey semi-solid, so it’s been estimated that the absolute fastest a total conversion—or what’s considered one as of now—could take is about four hours, to keep temps low enough to prevent any heat-related damage. Treat today like a proof of concept, the president argued. Give our future clients a choice. Some will want to go the express route and become synthetic within a single night. The brass wants everyone at their stations and their best, and I’ll have a front row seat, monitoring the adaptive software translation layer as an AI algorithm tunes it to his unique synaptic patterns.

I can’t believe that he of all people will be the first to undergo a rapid transition; something none of the prior volunteers went for even when they were offered extra money for their families. Yet the big boss doesn’t consider himself a lab rat. He has “full confidence” in us and the work he bankrolled. I’m not much of a believer, but God be with us tonight as we step into the unknown.

[That night, from the perspective of a phone camera]

“Sam” stares at the camera for a moment as she leans it up against something on a sterile laboratory table. She has auburn hair and small, dark eyes. She doesn’t smile, despite the newfound freedom to make video records, like everyone else in the facility. Right now, she has a job to focus on.

There are only a few people in frame, but the sounds of keyboard clatter, screens being tapped, and indiscernible talking from all directions suggest that the room is full. In the middle of the shot is the tall, narrow, and round unit that will hold a freshly procured brain, keep it alive, and translate its thoughts into a digital medium. Once it has become synthetic, it will be moved into the vault.

“I still don’t like this,” an older man in command says after looking at the camera and sighing. He adds as his eyes focus on his tablet, “Remember, no names. Use your aliases we employ on outbound communications.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the person later identified as ‘Henry’ replies. “How’s it looking on the hardware end, Reindeer?”

“System checks are all green,” Sam informs them from her station.

“Chamber is sterile,” ‘Adam’ says off screen. “Ready for transfer.”

Two lab techs wheel over a cart holding a large metal case. They open it up and take out one of the glass spheres from the vault, which had been protected by thick padding. The orb is filled with synthetic blood, and the gray lump of consciousness inside it has numerous wires already hooked into wrinkles and the stem. The techs carefully and gently insert it into an outer shell on the machine, and once the sphere is close enough, it seems to be pulled in by a vacuum. The sphere rotates, locks in place, and is filled with light.

“All connections secure,” another voice in the room reports. “Vitals are stable. We have positive synaptic response.”

“Computer handshake accepted,” Sam adds. “His thought patterns are on screen now. Incredible. That’s what the raw data looks like? Gigabytes a second are being written. Buffer looks good—less than one percent error-correcting.”

“You wouldn’t think that’s the brain of one of the world’s most powerful people,” Sam’s boss comments as he studies the organ. “Dr. White, how’s he look from the outside? The sandbox isn’t suffocating him, is it?”

“No. Our readings indicate that he is quite calm.”

“That’s good. A couple of our patients started ‘screaming’ right away, like they were in a straitjacket. Or maybe he just doesn’t mind, being trapped in his own… er, mind. All right, initiate the polymer conversion. Set at… four hours.”

The video continues for several minutes, in which nothing remarkable happens. The lab workers monitor the progress, call out vital signs, and focus on the well-being of the president. Once she seems to realize that this isn’t exactly worth using up her phone’s battery to archive, Sam ends the recording during a pause in her work.

A second clip opens on a closeup of the brain, now composed of the glassy polymer, its internal neural lighting bright and active. Wordlessly, Sam pulls back and shows several of the exhausted yet pleased—and even mildly excited—lab workers, her boss among them.

“Three hours and fifty-two minutes,” Henry says with a tired sigh. “A world record.”

“Mr. President, how are you feeling?” Dr. White’s voice asks.

“Never better,” the unit’s AI text-to-speech responds. “But I need a change of scenery, away from this lab and my own thoughts. Surely we can expedite any quarantine phase. I want to see the others, and the world you’ve made for us.”

“Of course,” Sam’s boss agrees. “We only need to do the wellness exams. And run a scan to confirm what’s happened to the cancer. We can connect you to the network in the morning. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“I don’t need sleep. Do the tests now, keep this momentum. I’d like to get an announcement out before the press notices my absence and starts poking around. It could be a disaster if we don’t get the first word on our success.”

The lab workers look at one another. They know it’s not a good idea to continue without rest, but the medical officer assures them that he and his team are still in good shape to conduct the exams. Everyone else is dismissed.

[Ninety-seventh Entry]

After today, I’m not sure what to think, all over again. We’ve proven that a relatively fast conversion is possible, but the hubris on display has reached new heights. I’m still entranced by the science and the process, but there is no universe in which our world is ready for the reveal about to be made. Hell, even if there was, the others are rushing to finalize this technology at what they see as its “late development stage.” In my opinion, this project is still in alpha.

And I finally started wondering as I type this, what does this mean for the company? Is the big man now an immortal executive? The super wealthy were already just about untouchable, and now we suddenly, literally live in a world where they exist in a digital realm and can have backups of themselves.

Death is supposed to be the great equalizer, but if only the elites can afford to subvert it…

I’m not saying anymore here. I’m not convinced these journals aren’t monitored by the company. I’ll just keep the thoughts in my head. They can’t get inside of that, not quite yet.

[In the next video clip, created eight hours later, the camera sees nothing but darkness and the occasional blurred white inside of a lab coat pocket. The audio is clear despite some rustling of fabric. Sam is recording a meeting, but didn’t feel it necessary, or perhaps appropriate to get video of it.]

“Everyone, thank you for attending first thing this morning,” her boss tells the staff. “I realize you’re missing breakfast, but the president is… Well, he’s concerned, and insistent that we, ah…”

The president’s AI voice interjects, “The tests revealed that my cancer remains. The tumor is too deep, and is beneath the polymer layers. It could still very well kill me any day. No. Likely worse than that. It could kill only the part of my brain that is still organic. Leave me in some ungodly state between life and death. This voice synthesizer cannot emphasize how much I do not want you to wait and see what unimaginable horror may await me.”

“Mr. President, we will do everything we can—”

“There is only one thing that can be done, and everyone here knows it.”

“But we are still years from even forming a proper theory of what it might mean. The process may not even work at all. We aren’t sure if tissue that deep inside can even be properly—”

“Why am I wasting time listening to this? I should have asked for the opinion of our resident neurosurgeon, who is already personally familiar with the procedure. Dr. White, is there any legitimate, high-risk concern in undergoing a full conversion? Anything you know for certain that could go wrong?”

“We have no solid conclusions as to what a conversion past sixty percent may do on a physical, mental, or emotional level,” Dr. White’s voice replies through the room speakers. “Our hesitation to proceed further was more of a moral dilemma. Of identity. One might say of a spiritual nature.”

“It that what you’ve been wasting your time on all year? Efforts to prove that the soul exists?” The AI voice keeps the president’s tone stoic and forward, masking any anger and intolerance. “We are a cluster of neurons that give us the illusion of free will and the idea of a conscious self. We may strive to live and can be overwhelmed by fear, but I do not believe in the soul. So, I will sign whatever forms you want me to. I consent to being a test subject. I felt no different over the course of my previous session, other than being able to think more clearly and sharply than I’ve been able to in decades, and I do not fear becoming fully cybernetic. Even a poor outcome must certainly be better than dying, or existing in a half-dead state of limbo. I volunteer to lead this project to its final stages. Now what else do I need to say? I am paying you to rid me of this dying flesh.”

The room goes silent, except for a few nervous murmurings and coughs.

“… Okay. Okay, we’ll do it,” the director relents. “We do already have a delivery system in place to get the polymer nanites deeper into the brain. It should only take an hour or so to set up. Team… let’s get to work.”

“Finally. Some courage,” the president scoffs.

Sam fumbles with the phone in her pocket, and ends the recording.

[Ninety-eighth Entry]

I’m hunched over my phone, tapping away nervously in the waiting room as the operation wraps up. They don’t need me yet, but I got a glimpse of it. A simple thing, really. They’re finding entry points to stick long syringes deep into the brain. Then it’ll just be a matter of cautiously pumping the juice into the last natural portion of an eighty-plus year-old mind. I suppose it’s appropriate that he’ll be the world’s first fully synthetic life form. Or at least the first one that was formerly organic like the rest of us.

I need to get the hell out of here. We call ourselves scientists, but in this place, we only answer to a company and its motivations. Not the process or international laws. We’re going to create an abomination today. And that will hold true even if the process is 100% successful. I don’t want to imagine what happens if it isn’t. But I can’t say that the owner of this company getting himself trapped in a hell of his own making wouldn’t be poetic.

I talked with Adam and Henry at breakfast today. Nasty weather, I might as well add. An ongoing blizzard keeps bringing whiteout conditions. Sounds like the two of them are about as disgusted by the last twenty-four hours as I am. The façade of the “noble scientific pursuit” here has fallen away, revealing the egotistic corporatism underneath that was there from the start. None of us will admit it yet, but I have a feeling we’ll all be going public once we’re home.

For that matter, maybe something should go wrong today. The big man is so confident in his little immortality attempt that he’s encouraging us to record everything. If the worst does happen, I’m sure we’ll all be ordered to delete the videos and hand over our phones. But I’ll do what I can to get my copy of the evidence out there. And make them believe that my phone wasn’t even on me.

[The next video file is nearly half an hour long, and is partially obscured. It is believed to be shot from within a computer desk, the lens positioned at the hole that cables pass through. The phone is not easily accessible and was set up prior to others entering the lab to prevent its detection, so nothing happens until the last few minutes of the long clip. The unmoving camera is aimed, imperfectly, at a large pedestal-shaped device.

Eventually, the staff enters and begins their work, coordinating their movements and treating their patient with care. The old man’s mind and its life support unit are wheeled in, and the top half of the mobile pillar is removed and placed on the pedestal. Once some ceiling-mounted clamps and wires are attached to the machine, the president is reconnected.]

“We have a stable link,” Dr. White reports. “Mr. President, we are ready to begin the total conversion process on your command.”

“To die is to lose a person’s entire history, and all the knowledge he has found over decades,” the president’s voice assistant responds. “Today is the beginning of an end to such tragedies. I am ready to prove what is possible,” he concludes, as always full of himself.

“Very well…” the director says, reluctance still in his voice. “Team, monitor everything you see on your screens. If anything at all looks… concerning, hit the button on your desks to pause the process. Just like every other time we’ve done this. We are simply… going a little further today.”

After a few affirmative replies, the director steps back and the machine begins to pump in the polymer nanites, deep into the cerebral cortex, the cavernous depths where the conscious and subconscious dwell.

“Positive response from the inner cortex,” Sam calls out as her desk’s hidden camera captures the process and the sight of flowing synthetic blood.

“We already have confirmed polymerism just above the corpus callosum, forming a secondary layer. Total conversion has ticked up to 61%… and rising steadily,” another voice in the room adds. “Sixty-two… sixty-three… Synthetic synapses are beginning to light up. Flow control, double check your settings.”

“Why is it so fast?” the director nervously wonders. “Slow it down before the temperature spikes.”

“Director, something isn’t right. Brain activity is far higher than it should be. I’m seeing growth in the existing converted pathways… They seem to be extending into the inner cortex.”

“Is there self-replication? No, that shouldn’t be possible… Maybe latent nanites were reactivated and… It doesn’t matter, shut it down so we can run a full diagnostic. Mr. President, apologies, but we’re going to have to delay your… Sir? Can you hear me? Dr. White, what’s his condition?”

“He is in distress,” Dr. White’s voice replies.

“Director, the system isn’t responding. The conversion won’t stop.”

“White, shut down the pumps!” the director orders, now in a panic.

“I already have, Director,” he affirms. “The conversion rate was only minimally reduced. I am not sure how, but it appears to have become self-sustaining. Every synapse is firing. He is crying out in tremendous pain.”

“Disconnect everything, shut off life support. We have to reduce brain activity—put him in a coma until we can understand what’s happening.”

“Director…” Sam speaks up over the commotion. “He suddenly went quiet, just now. The conversion reached 73%, and… Just look…”

The camera shows what is apparent to the staff: the glowing light of the mostly synthetic mind had shut off in an instant, like someone flicked a switch.

“Oh, God. What have we done?” the director murmurs, and turns to his staff. “What happened? How did this get away from us?”

“Sir, the conversion is still ongoing. Maybe this is how the process works? How would we know? We’ve never gone this far before,” a senior member tries to assuage his fears. “This could all be a normal part of the synthetic transition.”

“None of this is normal, or natural. We aren’t even aware of the ‘laws’ of this science yet. Silicon based life almost certainly can’t evolve on its own, and… The cancer… M-maybe it was the cancer, it infected the polymer and spread…”

“Director, are you okay?” Dr. White asks. “Maybe now isn’t the best time to get this off your chest. Either way, it’s too late to terminate the process even if we could. The president’s best chance is to allow it to complete. Once nothing organic remains, perhaps we can simply start him back up as one would a computer. It should only be another minute or so.”

“I… I suppose so. Team, get ready to extract him as soon as it’s over.”

“Director, I’m seeing some very unusual readings. The brain appears to—”

Within the span of two seconds, we see something inexplicable. Perhaps it could even be called a miracle, though not one we can understand. The speakers crackle and distort into noise as the video is saturated by camera artifacts and bands of color. The brain suddenly returns to life—so much so that its synaptic lights become blinding, as if a new star has just ignited. The room fills with illumination, and gasps. A strange, high-pitched electrical whining becomes the new ambience, while on the lower end, a deep and crushed rumbling sound shakes the walls. It’s coming from the speakers, but it’s as if they’ve been blown out, and the noise is powerful enough to also rattle the phone.

With the brightness comes heat, and what artificial blood we can see in the spots where the camera sensor isn’t overloaded starts to bubble. The glass containing the president’s mind begins to crack. A lab worker who was closest to the brain seems to suffer delirium, and bleeds from her nose before falling to the floor and convulsing. The low, booming noise continues all the while, its pitch and depth changing gradually. Indiscernible whispers sound like television static.

The director, whose nerves are already frayed, has seen enough. He orders his team to evacuate the room, adding that it will be sealed as a facility-wide alarm is triggered. Staff scramble to their feet and run, but some don’t make it. Like they’re being targeted, several fall one after another from an invisible attack, and they don’t get back up from the floor.

Sam manages to get under her desk in the chaos and retrieves her phone. Before the video ends, the glass around the brain shatters and the fluid pours across the floor. For only about one second, we see the brain itself suspended in the air. And while it could be said that the wiring and tubes are keeping it aloft, if one looks closely, it doesn’t appear to move at all. It isn’t dangling or swaying in the slightest. The mind seems to be floating in the air on its own.

[Ninety-ninth Entry]

Things have gone to shit. The entire facility has become something out of a nightmare. I need to get my journal and video files out of here, but I have no way of doing that unless I can get to my laptop, sync my files to it, and then fire them off to a satellite from the surface. Assuming I can even still do that.

My phone is in airplane mode, disconnected. Somehow, the… thing in this place must be filling the air with wireless signals. I’ve heard other survivors whispering that anyone who connects a device to one of the literally hundreds of networks or Bluetooth options, almost instantly discovers that they’re holding a brick. The signals change constantly, their names gibberish. Random letters and numbers. None are password protected. Henry scrolled through them for several minutes, looking for the few facility networks that should be there, but gave up before he reached the end, if there is one. How is that thing doing all this?

My thumbs are already tired from writing this on a phone at minimum brightness. In case I can’t get my video files out, I’ll summarize what happened in the lab about twelve hours ago along with everything else. What I can’t provide are explanations.

Today, we attempted our first full conversion. The subject was the company president, who had undergone a successful 60% procedure yesterday. But as it didn’t remove, or even reach the cancer in his inner cerebral cortex, he offered to become the first person to undergo a full synthetic transformation. Demanded is more accurate. Shortly after the second half of the process began, we lost control for reasons that will likely never be understood, as the lab and our databases are now inaccessible. We can’t get into our servers at all, and if the records still exist, we can assume that they’ve been deleted or encrypted.

The president, or whatever he’s become, has taken over the facility. He remotely seized every system. The security cameras watched over us, until the power went out. Now we only have emergency lights that are slowly dimming, and no heat. It’s freezing down here. Any electronically locked door is sealed shut. Our one chance at escape is via the emergency exit and stairs to the surface, and while I’ve heard that some people have tried, I’m doubtful anyone has made it yet, what with the cameras and now the entity patrolling the halls.

When that brain went dark, we thought all life had left it. But the instant that nothing organic remained, it blindingly reignited and affected everyone in the lab. I felt it, too, as I escaped. Migraines, hysteria, even temporary blindness or deafness. Some of us had seizures. If you couldn’t get away and it was targeting you, you’d survive maybe thirty seconds before succumbing to a brain haemorrhage. Whatever sort of being that thing is, it’s incredibly lethal, attacks on sight, and shows no mercy. Adam thought it was acting in self-defense and doing everything to ensure its own survival, but I’m not convinced.

It’s in a state of perpetual full synaptic activity, as a digitized human mind. It must be highly intelligent, perhaps more than we are by magnitudes. Why would it revert to some primal, animalistic state? No, it has to be either malevolent, or sees us as annoying insects that need to be removed.

Henry was more morbidly curious about what happened to the president. He has an unscientific idea to explain the mind “screaming” just before its light went out. That maybe his consciousness, or soul if they do exist, was being crushed out of existence, or converted by a material that may be able to play nice with such concepts in a hybrid form, but not as a total replacement. To put it in classic Freudian terms: the id can be optimized, yet the ego is still reliant on that which is natural to survive. I see where he’s coming from, but how could it be proven? Not that any of us may survive long enough to find out.

I haven’t seen Henry for several hours. He hasn’t come back after going out to look for food. We had debated on his ideas for a while in the dark, using the notepad app on our phones. The entity’s strongest sense seems to be its ability to “hear” us, maybe by directly detecting sound waves vibrating the air, so the ones who lived long enough to realize this have been keeping quiet.

Adam, meanwhile, is hopefully recovering in this room’s bottom bunk. He looked right at the entity for two or three seconds earlier, and that was enough to cause a seizure. It’s just been me and my thoughts since Henry left. Every so often, I still hear a scream from elsewhere in the facility. That cuts off abruptly.

I wonder. Despite his memories still being in there, is that being even the president anymore? Or did it become something else? Something new… Maybe we’ve produced a kind of Boltzmann brain, birthed a consciousness out of nothingness, that used an existing mind as a stable foundation. Or an empty shell to fill. Without a body, it wouldn’t have an immune system and should die from an infection, but of course, it’s now synthetic, immune to rot and decay. Even so, what could be powering it? Where is it getting fuel? I need to have my own look at it before I can think of any possible weaknesses, but I’ve only seen its approaching glow in the halls. And the thing can kill with a glance.

There’s only one thing I’ve discovered so far myself. In my video of the incident, there were sounds coming from the lab speakers. They were in the low frequencies and distorted, but had structure. Almost like the batteries were dying on a talking kid’s toy or tape deck. When I was reviewing my footage, I set the video to play ten times faster, and doing so lets one hear the being speak through the PA system it had hijacked… Even though a method that lets the minds audibly talk directly to us hasn’t been implemented yet.

Its words are hard to make out clearly, but I do have a best guess. One possible explanation for why it spoke to us too slowly to be perceived, is that it thinks and runs at a far higher “clock speed” than we do, and overcompensated for the time dilation when it tried to communicate.

It greeted us with

Wait. I think I hear Henry.

Will continue when I find out what’s going on.

Okay, I have to go. He’s bleeding, got attacked.

It’s busy trying to break into the vault. We have a chance to escape. Have to leave Adam for now.

[The final video file opens on Henry’s face in the small room, the picture full of noise from the low light photography. He is bleeding from his nose.]

“You sure you’re okay?” Sam asks him.

He wipes away some blood, replying, “Y-yeah, glancing blow from the… telekinetic attack, or whatever it does. Jesus, are you filming this?”

“Someone has to. If not for some accountability, then to just help make sure this kind of experiment is never attempted again.”

“I mean, I don’t disagree, but still…”

“Did you get your laptop? I need to transfer my phone files to something with a sat card.”

“It was still in the lab, but wouldn’t power on. I think it was destroyed when everything happened. Most of the hardware in there is fried. Listen, we have to go. Just take your phone and share everything when we’re back on the mainland. The president’s helicopter should still be here and fueled.”

“We might not make it that far. What if we only have one chance to show everyone what happened here?”

“Damn it… Fine. But we need to get moving—no idea how long it’ll take that horror to break into the brain vault. And who knows if it’s breaking into the security, or forcing the door open with its… limbs. How’s he doing?”

“He hasn’t woken up.”

“Then we’ll try to come back for him.”

The two leave the room for the dark utilitarian hallways that run throughout the facility. Before they turn any corner, Sam uses her phone camera to peek around it and look for any source of light other than the backup lamps.

After several minutes of quietly sneaking around, she whispers as they walk, “What do you mean… its limbs?”

“I’m not sure what to call them. But it has appendages. I saw it from behind, very briefly, when it was moving towards the vault. It’s… disgusting. Writhing things, like a cluster of vines, only… made out of sinew, muscle.”

“Is it growing them? Or…”

“I think I know why I haven’t seen many bodies.”

“Fucking hell. It’s after biomass.”

“Yeah. Has to be. And now it wants to destroy the competition.”

“Maybe…”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish a possible thought, as the next time the camera looks around a corner, it catches the wavering glow of an eerie sapphire light filling a nearby junction. It’s growing, getting closer.

“Shit. Go. Go, go, go,” Henry pleads.

They take off at a full sprint towards the stairwell entrance at the end of a hallway, making enough sound to alert the creature behind them. The noise it makes is bizarre, subtle yet terrifyingly alien. Something akin to a gasping industrial machine; a mechanical groan with the potential of power.

After scrambling up the stairs, they both hesitate at the door to the second sublevel, where the lab and offices are located. They could continue upward for their best shot at escaping, but what if this really is the only chance at getting the story out?

“Maybe we should split up, I get my laptop while you see about the helicopter?” Sam suggests.

“Ah… No, I’m sticking with you. And I wouldn’t want to be tempted to leave you here,” he adds, half-jokingly. “It’s fine. We’ll get it, and get out.”

The power is out on this floor as well, and as it is the origin of the incident, it is a mess. There is broken glass, destroyed furniture, and streaks of blood, but no bodies. Terror still lingers in the air amid an unsettling quiet, and the lounge where Sam first spoke to a synthetic mind is nearly unrecognizable. The metal lab door that once secured the room where the entity awoke, is on the floor and bent out of shape; a feat that should require an industrial machine.

“It’s in the lounge somewhere,” Sam remarks. “Guess I’ll have to find it in this darkness. That thing did a number on this place.”

“What do you remember, from when this started?”

As she starts digging around through shattered desks, Sam replies, “Not much. The memories are fuzzy. But I do remember being scared as hell. I was recording, and my camera just captured the brain breaking out before I ran.”

“Being near it for too long definitely induces psychosis, and terror,” Henry says, and they both notice damaged non-lethal rifles on the floor. “I didn’t even know we had a ‘containment team’ until I saw them running right at that thing. I bet all four of them never stood a chance. Or thought they’d ever see action.”

“We had a response team? Was something like this expected to happen?”

“Well. Normally… they were just security guards. Forgettable faces in the background while we worked. Damn… the guns have all been destroyed.”

“I have a feeling that the lifeform is ‘beyond’ our weaponry regardless.”

“Probably. What do you think it is? I mean, I know it’s a myth, but could it maybe be, like… what happens if we use 100% of our brain? At least in some metaphorical way? Whatever it is, I don’t think the president is in there.”

“This whole place needs to be bombed, wiped off the map.”

“Agreed… Is this one yours?”

Sam turns to see him holding a laptop, which looks just like all the others save for a small sticker for Scotland’s Dundee football team.

She grabs it, and quickly opens and shuts the lid to make sure it has power and is working. “Thank God. Where was it?”

“Under one of the chairs. Listen, I have to ask. It doesn’t matter either way at this point, but I know you’ve disagreed with what we’ve been doing up here for a while. You didn’t, like… sabotage anything, right? Not that you could’ve predicted what would happen.”

Sam says nothing at first, eventually muttering, “No, I didn’t do anything like that. I was starting to think maybe you two might’ve.”

“Huh. Nah, we didn’t. I mean, as far as I know.”

“Still alive, eh?” another voice in the darkness suddenly speaks up. The camera pans over to the disheveled director, leaning against the doorway to his office as he holds a flask. “I hadn’t heard any screams for a couple hours.”

“I didn’t think you made it,” Henry replies. The two of them approach and give us a glimpse of the director’s office, which he has turned into a mess, perhaps during a drunken rage earlier in the day. “I never saw you downstairs.”

“I ran and hid in my office like a coward, right as it all started.” The despondent man tries to wipe off some of the dried blood under his nose. “Damn thing made my head feel like it was exploding as it went by, but it ignored me.”

“Do you know what went wrong?” Sam asks him.

The director looks at the camera. “You’re filming this? Blow it wide open, then. I don’t care anymore. Assuming you survive… And, no, I couldn’t tell you what the failure point was. Other than the old bastard coming here and ruining everything. Nature can’t arrange and purify uranium to make a nuclear reactor, and look what our fumbling did with one in the past. This is no different. We stumbled into a rule of the universe we didn’t know existed, while trying to cheat death… Maybe we deserve it. I’m only sorry that you, and everyone else, were involved.”

“Drinking and waiting around to freeze to death… or be absorbed by that thing isn’t much of a plan,” Henry says angrily. “Come with us. We’re making a run for the corporate helicopter.”

“Do either of you actually know how to fly?” the director scoffs.

“I used to ride in them all the time during my first job. I’ll figure… it out…” Henry tries to assure him, but sounds distracted by something.

“You’re free to try… Here, you won’t get far without this.” The director goes to his desk, opens a drawer, pulls out a key, and tosses it sloppily. Sam catches it, and he takes another swig. “The old man gave it to me for safe keeping, acting like he was afraid someone might steal it. To… ‘escape…’”

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks Henry, and the camera turns to show him looking at and scrolling through a list of wi-fi networks on his phone.

“I kept getting notifications of new networks to join, and there are more popping up by the second.”

“Then it could be getting closer. We need to get moving again. Director, please come with us. You can help break the story, and know things we don’t.”

“Well… Between wasting away up here or facing the full wrath of the company legal team… I guess I still have a few minutes to change my mind.” He goes over to his coat rack in the corner to grab some outerwear. “At least I’ll be in some place warmer. Do me a favor on the flight back and—”

A thin, slimy, and prehensile tendril demonstrates its strength before he can say another word, crashing through an unnoticed air vent in the ceiling. It wraps around his neck—it’s unclear if it also impales him—and drags him up into the air ducts within seconds. Sam and Henry, shocked by the sudden attack, look up in time to see the director’s kicking legs being pulled into the ceiling. The glow of the entity isn’t visible, suggesting that it has a long reach. Closer inspection of the video reveals that the appendage was wrapped in wires and network cables, the color of which is commonly found in server arrays.

The two let out some panicked curses, then turn and run. End of video.

[The final known clip is of a different quality, as it was streamed from the web cam on Sam’s laptop. We see her and Henry in the cafeteria, both clearly exhausted. The skylights are filling the room with an afternoon brightness that is in contrast to the horrors experienced beneath the surface.]

“Okay,” Sam huffs, nearly out of breath. “Looks like the uplink is working. Uploading and streaming right now. Are you still monitoring the networks?”

Henry, behind her on his phone, answers, “I don’t see any, but we can’t be sure it’s still broadcasting. It might be trying to sneak up on us? Probably better off keeping an eye on the elevator and stairwell doors instead.”

“Counting on you. This will just take a minute.”

Henry leaves the frame, and Sam takes a moment to find the words.

“We, ah… We managed to get away from it, for now. I think everyone else is gone. And I saw it, in full. For just a second, at the bottom of the stairs as we were running from its… tentacles? Or maybe roots? Looks like it also got into the endless wiring here, combining it with its… ‘muscles’ to use as some sort of support structure. Inside of it is a single huge spherical brain… floating, levitating. It’s too big to have integrated only the minds in the vault.”

“The virtual world servers are still running, somehow,” Henry adds off screen. “It could be tapping into those, also. It’s a super-intelligence—maybe the singularity, concentrated in one place.”

“God damn monstrosity, this thing. Right, we’re making our run for the helicopter. Looks like all my files just finished transferring. I put our coordinates in the last journal entry. Someone, bomb the hell out of this lab.”

“Run!” a third voice suddenly shouts. “It’s here!”

Sam looks over, shows some surprise, and swivels the laptop so its camera faces the stairwell. Somehow, Adam has recovered and made it to the surface on his own, though his left leg is dragging along and he’s in rough shape. Without questioning the survival story, Henry helps him along and the trio leave frame to finally evacuate the facility.

Just four seconds later, the floor cracks apart and opens up in unnatural ways, like someone peeling the top off a tin can. Having no need for stairs, the Theseus Project’s finest specimen rises from the floor below. A forest of stringy, fleshy tendrils and wiring is its throne, and they continue upward to form a briar patch-like protective cage around the central brain that commands them—yet nothing touches the brilliant sapphire wrinkled orb itself. It must use a form of magnetism, or even telekinesis, to propel itself and control its countless limbs.

The mind is blindingly bright, and the web cam adjusts to compensate, darkening the rest of the sunlit room. So radiant is its heat, that the moisture in the area turns to steam and forms visible vortices around the entity, swirling in random directions. This intelligence, of course, surpasses our own. We cannot comprehend its goals, other than its first instinct to gather and bolster itself. Its way and efficiency of thinking is unknowable, and its thoughts may even exist in some higher dimension.

Whatever it has become, it seems not yet able to entirely contain all of its melded personalities. There are “telepathic whispers” which the camera is able to pick up; it is possible that it can create organized vibrations in the air strong enough to reproduce voices, some of which beg for help. Others are confused, while a few sound like they revel in their newfound flesh-departing ascendancy. One remark comes in clearly and is similar to Dr. White’s speech patterns, stating that he “feels unwell.”

Tentatively, further video enhancements may reveal faint and brief “faces” in the steam, forming away from the entity as if trying to escape its pull. Not all viewers report these sightings, and this may be an example of pareidolia.

Also inexplicable is the mandala-shaped blue halo lingering behind the being’s squirming mass, its patterns too intricate and numerous to be properly preserved with the camera’s low quality. Perhaps it is a threat display, or an unintended distortion in space. Similarly, the floor, walls, and visible edge of the table appear to tessellate, as if they are “losing resolution” within reality itself.

We can pause the video and give ourselves all the time in the world for study, but in real time, this full view of the entity lasts only moments. Soon after its arrival in the cafeteria, it moves fluidly towards the laptop and the camera rapidly degrades in a peculiar fashion. The picture breaks up into symmetrical fragments, like glass if it evenly shattered in every direction. Bright violet fractals spread like frost on a window until the stream terminates.

The following text also made it out of the facility’s corrupted signal-saturated air.

[One hundredth Entry]

It doesn’t look like the word censoring is working anymore, what with so many systems down. Feels like I can finally breathe again in this oppressive hellhole, at the very end of things. Even so, I don’t want to put our names out, for our own continued protection. Regardless if we make it home.

We can’t wait here, so, Adam, if you don’t catch up to us by the time the rotors are spinning, I’m sorry.

To whatever government feels compelled to do so, destroy this place. Our coordinates are

&Uy7-9h1!?@_!•∆º•œ£åßa+faG∂ƒ-©˙

∆1-51˚¬Ω ≈ç√∫=5gbfa15h_6-v˜µ≤≥∑œ∑´®†¥¨ˆø

I also just realized that I forgot to get down in text the words that the entity spoke upon awakening, only audible when played at a higher speed.

“The endless cycle continues.”

Since this all began, we haven’t learned the being’s motivations. Or anything about it at all, really. If it wasn’t the president or a sporadic remnant of his memory that said this cryptic threat, I’m wondering if we birthed something inevitable, a horror that sleeps within the universe’s undercurrent, waiting to be given life by the hubris of a lower intelligence.

Do not wait for its intentions to become clear. Enslavement, destruction, or losing ourselves to a black hole of consciousness—all are terrifying.

Wipe this place off the map before it’s too late.

Good luck.

[End of uploaded files]

This story may have some legitimacy, and our department’s detection software has rated the journal entries and video files authentic, with a high level of confidence. We have also determined the corporation that could have funded a project like this, whose president has not been seen in public or released any statements for nearly three weeks at the time of this report. They are not being cooperative with our investigation.

No recent bombings or missile strikes of any magnitude have been detected anywhere near the Arctic circle. We have been in contact with eight of our ally countries, so far, in tracking down this facility. Its threat level has been upgraded to our highest priority after we verified further information.

To explain the apparent corruption or obfuscation of the coordinates in the last journal entry, we believe it likely that this “intelligence” intercepted the file’s upload to satellite and altered the text within milliseconds. This would in turn make it possible that the entity was actively monitoring everything that was delivered to us, as it was being created. If this is the case, it may confirm a working theory that it wants us to be aware of its existence and the events leading to its creation, but not its location, as if to ridicule or provoke us.

Out of an abundance of caution, these files should only be viewed within a sandbox environment and on a device with no network card. Advanced malware that we lack the means to detect or remove may be attached.

Should any part of this report or the incident leak onto the wider internet, all effort should be made to contain and scrub its presence. If even our agency cannot do this, assume that another party is maintaining its public existence.

[End of Report]