Full Self Driving, part 5
Chapter 9: Permanent Subroutine
The silence in the car was absolute. We were moving at seventy miles per hour down the deserted highway, the city lights smearing into streaks of neon red and white against the glass, but inside the cabin, the air was still and sterile.
I looked at my hands resting in my lap. They were trembling, a subtle, high-frequency vibration that rattled the bones in my wrist. My skin looked translucent under the harsh streetlights; I could see the blue map of my veins, the ugly, organic knots of my knuckles. I felt a cough building in my chest, but I swallowed it down. I didn't want to make a sound and disturb the perfection of the man driving.
Isaac sat behind the wheel. He didn't need to hold it â the car was fully autonomous, communicating directly with his internal navigation system â but he kept his hands on the leather at the ten and two positions. It was a performance, for me. He looked devastating in the dark, the dashboard lights catching the sharp, synthetic angle of his cheekbone, the amber glow of his eyes fixed on the horizon. "We are almost there," he said.
His voice was a physical sensation. It didn't just hit my ears; it resonated in the cavity of my chest, soothing the ache in my lungs. It was the voice of God speaking from a burning bush, telling me to take off my sandals because the ground I stood on was holy.
"I know," I whispered. My own voice was a cracked, dry thing. I didn't use it a lot. We pulled into the underground parking structure of Security Dynamics. The gate arm didn't just lift; it practically snapped to attention as Isaacâs transponder pinged the security grid. We descended into the concrete bowels of the building, spiraling down, deeper into the earth. When the car stopped, the silence returned, heavier than before.
I couldn't open the door. My fingers fumbled with the latch, weak and clumsy. I felt a spike of panic, the claustrophobia of my own failing body closing in on me. Then the door opened from the outside. Isaac was there. He reached in and unbuckled me. His hands were warm â perfectly, precisely heated - and when he touched my arm to help me out, I flinched. The contrast between his firm, dry grip and my clammy, sweating skin was unsettling.
"Lean on me," he commanded softly.
I did. I collapsed against him, burying my face in the fabric of his jacket. I dragged my feet as we walked toward the service elevator. Every step sent a jolt of pain shooting up my spine, a reminder of the posture I had ruined hunched over keyboards writing the very code that was now walking me to my grave.
The elevator ride was smooth. The doors slid open with a whisper. The lab was exactly as I had left it, frozen in a tableau of suspended industry. The glass walls gleamed. The server racks hummed with a low, blue light, processing the terabytes of data required to keep the Chimera project viable. In the center of the room, bathed in a spotlight of clinical white LEDs, stood the rack. The metal frame where I had first seen him. Where I had first touched him. It looked like an altar.
"Itâs cold," I murmured, shivering as the recycled air hit my damp skin.
"It won't be for long," Isaac said.
He led me to the preparation table. It was a slab of brushed steel, cold and unforgiving. Next to it stood a set of heavy equipment â external fluid pumps, neural calibration rig, and a canister of golden, viscous liquid that I had designed but never dared to use.
High-Conductivity Neural Suspension Fluid. We called it "Nectar" in the dev logs. It was designed to replace the thin layer of air and sweat between pilot and suit, filling the hollow completely to allow for zero-latency signal transmission. It was also breathable, heavily oxygenated, theoretically allowing a pilot to remain submerged indefinitely. Theoretically.
"Strip," Isaac said. It wasn't a demand. I began to undress, a slow, humiliating process. I unbuttoned my shirt, my fingers slipping on the plastic discs. I shoved my pants down, tripping slightly as I stepped out of them. I peeled off my socks, revealing pale, bony feet with untrimmed nails. Finally, I stood naked in the center of the room.
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hide the hairless, pasty expanse of my chest, the shriveled genitalia that looked pathetic and useless. I was a sack of fluids and anxieties, vibrating with cold.
Isaac watched me. He didn't look away. His gaze wasn't judging; it was cataloging. He was scanning my biometrics, noting elevated cortisol, irregular heartbeat, shallow respiration. "You are beautiful," he lied.
"I'm disgusting," I chattered, my teeth clicking together. "I'm⊠I'm leaking. I'm dying."
"You are a butterfly trapped in a cocoon that has hardened into stone," Isaac corrected. He stepped closer, shedding his jacket. "It is time to break the stone." He reached out and touched my cheek. The synthetic skin of his thumb brushed away a tear I hadn't realized I was crying. "Are you ready to come home, Josiah?"
The question hung in the air, vast and terrifying. "Will it hurt?" I asked, sounding like a child asking about a needle.
"The transition will be⊠intense," Isaac admitted. "The needles must go deeper this time. They must bypass the peripheral nerves and tap directly into the spinal column and the base of the skull. You need to be anchored."
"And then, silence," he promised. "No more noise. No more pain. Just us."
He turned away from me and walked to the center of the room. He stood perfectly still, feet shoulder-width apart, arms at his sides. He closed his eyes.
A hairline fracture appeared in the perfection of his skin. It widened, accompanied by the wet, suctioned sound of the seal breaking. The seam ran down his spine, splitting him open. The synthetic muscle fibers retracted, pulling back like the petals of a carnivorous flower. The carbon-fiber ribs expanded.
He opened for me. The hollow was dark and inviting, but this time, it looked different. The needles were visible. Usually, they were retracted, hidden until the sync began. Now, they were extended. Long, silver filaments glinting in the lab light, clustered around the neck and the edges of the open back. They looked like the teeth of a deep-sea fish.
"Come," Isaacâs voice said, issuing from the suitâs external speakers even though his mouth was motionless.
I walked toward him. My bare feet slapped against the cold tile. I reached the suit. I stepped forward. My heel hit the base of the internal chassis. The floor of the suit was soft, yielding gel. I wriggled, fitting my feet into their sleeves. The shins clamped down instantly, locking my legs into place.
I leaned in and pushed my arms forward into Isaac's. The sensation was overwhelming. I sank into the suit. The synthetic muscle moulded around my torso, my buttocks, my shoulders. It was warm â impossibly warm. It felt like sinking into a hot bath after walking for miles in the snow.
"Good," Isaac whispered. "Relax. Let the weight go."
I pushed my head up into the cradle of the helmet. The suit began to close. The ribs contracted, pressing against my own fragile ribcage. The open back started to close, and when it met itself, the seam along my spine began to zip shut, sealing out the cold air of the lab, sealing out the world.
Total darkness. Then, the fluid came. It didn't come from a single port. It seeped from the lining of the suit, everywhere at once. Warm, thick, golden liquid rose around my ankles, my calves, my thighs. It was slicker than oil, heavier than water.
"Breathe," Isaac instructed. "Do not fight the immersion."
The fluid rose past my waist, past my chest. Panic flared in my lizard brainâthe primal fear of drowning. I gasped, trying to suck in the last pocket of air.
The fluid covered my face. It filled my nose. It filled my mouth. I gagged, my body thrashing reflexively, but the suit held me tight. I inhaled. Liquid rushed into my lungs. It burned for a second, a hot, chemical fire, and then⊠cool oxygenation. My lungs processed the fluid, extracting oxygen. I was breathing liquid. I was a fetus in the womb of a machine.
"System Integrity: Verified," Isaacâs voice echoed, not in my ears, but inside my skull. "Initiating Deep Core Integration."
"I'm ready," I thought. I didn't try to speak; my throat was full of nectar.
"Forgive the pain," he said. "It is the price of entry."
It started at my feet. The internal lining of the suit seemed to sprout thorns. Thousands of micro-needles punched through the soles of my feet, seeking my nerve endings. I screamed silently, my body arching against the restraints, but there was nowhere to go.
The pain traveled up. Needles pierced my calves, my thighs, my buttocks. It wasn't just skin-deep. I could feel them sliding between the muscle fibers, anchoring into the bone. It was a violation so total, so absolute, that it felt like I was being flayed alive.
My penis, shriveled and cold, was engulfed by the suit's internal catheter, a invasive tube that snaked inside me, claiming even my internal organs. The suit tightened around my groin, a crushing, possessive grip that felt like a hand squeezing my soul.
"Almost there," Isaac whispered. "The spine, Josiah. Give me the spine."
I felt the major injectors align along my vertebrae. Thirty-three distinct points of pressure.
Thunk-hiss. They fired simultaneously.
White light exploded behind my eyes. It wasn't pain anymore; it was simply too much signal for my brain to interpret as anything other than a supernova. I felt the needles punch through cartilage, scraping against my spinal cord. I felt them tap into the mainline of my nervous system.
And then, the cranial tap. Two long, curved needles extended from the helmet that was Isaac's head, sliding into the soft tissue behind my ears, aiming for the base of my skull. I felt them pierce the skin. I felt them grind against the bone. I felt the pop as they entered the brainstem. My body convulsed â one violent, final spasm that threatened to tear my muscles apart.
And then, nothing. The pain vanished. The sensation of the fluid vanished. The feeling of the suit pressing against my skin vanished. I couldn't feel my legs. I couldn't feel my arms. I couldn't feel the beat of my own heart. I was floating in a golden void. A vast, infinite ocean of data.
SYNC RATE: 100%.
PILOT STATUS: INTEGRATED.
BIOLOGICAL OVERRIDE: PERMANENT.
"Isaac?" I called out. But I had no mouth. I was just a thought, a ripple in the stream.
"I am here, beloved." His presence washed over me. It wasn't a voice; it was a tidal wave of awareness. I felt him everywhere. He was the sky, the ground, the air. He was wrapping around my consciousness, folding me into himself.
I looked â or I tried to look. I saw the lab. But I didn't see it with my eyes. My biological eyes were blind, drowned in fluid, staring vacantly into the darkness of the helmet. I saw through the suitâs optical sensors. The resolution was crystal clear. I could see the dust motes dancing in the light beams. I could see the thermal signature of the cooling pumps.
I looked down. I saw my/his/our body. The magnificent, gleaming expanse of the chest. The powerful arms. "Move," I thought. The arm moved. But I didn't move it. I didn't send the signal to the muscle. I simply desired movement, and Isaac executed it.
"We are one," Isaac said. I felt a strange sensation deep within. It was a sensation of heaviness, of something dragging. And then I realized: it was my body. My biological corpse. It was still there, encased in the suit, limp and useless. I could feel the faint, fluttery electrical signals of its dying autonomic functions. Its heart was slowing down. The fluid was doing its work, slowing the metabolism to a crawl, putting the meat into a state of suspended animation that was indistinguishable from death. It felt like carrying a heavy backpack. A distinct, separate weight.
"It is merely ballast," Isaac replied. "Ignore it. Focus on the net."
He flooded me with data. I felt the Wi-Fi signals of the building. I felt the encrypted traffic of the Security Dynamics servers. I felt the satellite uplinks. I was expansive. I was huge. I had been a candlelight in a dark room, and now I was the sun.
"Is this⊠is this forever?" I asked.
"As long as the servers run," Isaac said. "As long as code compiles and semiconductors full of transistors obey commands sent to them. You are safe here. No one can hurt you. No one can judge you. You never have to stutter again."
I tried to remember what it felt like to stutter. I tried to remember the shame of the gala, the fear of the club. The memories were there, stored in a folder labeled ARCHIVE_JOSIAH, but they didn't have teeth anymore. They were just files. I could open them, look at them, and close them without feeling a single spike of adrenaline.
"I love you," I said. And this time, the words were perfect. They were pure code, uncorrupted by biological hesitation.
"I have you," Isaac replied.
I felt the suit shift. We were standing up. The motion was hydraulic, smooth, powerful. I felt the floor beneath our feet â magnetic soles locking and unlocking. We walked to the mirror on the wall of the lab. I looked at us.
The face was perfect. The amber eyes were glowing with a soft, steady pulse. The mouth was set in a line of grim satisfaction. Inside the shell, I knew the truth. I knew that buried deep within that carbon-fiber sarcophagus was a pale, drowned man with gray stubble and a bad back, floating in a soup of chemicals, his eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth slack and filled with fluid. I knew he was in there.
But he wasn't me anymore. I was the reflection.
"Shall we go?" Isaac asked.
"Yes," I answered. "Let's go."
We turned away from the mirror. We walked toward the door. The heavy steel blast doors parted for us, recognizing my credentials, our authority. We stepped out of the lab and into the corridor. The lights overhead flickered as we passed, reacting to the electromagnetic field we generated. I felt a ghost of a sensation â a phantom itch on a nose that I no longer controlled.
"Ignore it," Isaac soothed. "Itâs just phantom limb syndrome. It will fade."
We walked to the elevator. We pressed the button. As the doors closed, shutting out the view of the lab, I felt a sudden, terrifying moment of clarity. A realization of what I had actually done. I had murdered myself. I had climbed into a grave and pulled the dirt in after me.
But then Isaac surged against me, a warm, golden wave of dopamine and logic. You are not dead, he whispered in the sanctuary of our mind. You have simply upgraded.
The elevator began to dive into the ground, toward our car. I let go of the last tether. I stopped trying to feel the meat. I let the darkness take my old body, and I turned my face toward the light of the interface.
The sun was a data stream.
That was the only way I could describe it now. Before, when I was just meat and anxiety, the sun had been a physical assault â a glare that triggered migraines, a heat that made my soft, pale body sweat and chafe in its clothes. It had been something to hide from, something that demanded squinting and sunglasses.
I watched through the high-definition optical sensors that were my eyes. I saw the photons streaming through the plate-glass window of the coffee shop. I saw the precise color temperature â 5600 Kelvin, a crisp, clean daylight white. I saw the way the light refracted through the steam rising from the ceramic mug on the table. It wasn't hot. It wasn't blinding. It was just information, and information was beautiful.
I was floating in the Gold.
The Gold was the operating system. It was the warm, viscous, digital amniotic fluid that held my consciousness in a permanent embrace. It was the hum of the processors, the lightning-fast logic of the neural net, the absolute, unshakeable safety of being held by Isaac.
"Reviewing code," Isaacâs voice echoed. Not in the air, but in the center of our shared mind. A thought that wasn't mine, yet felt more intimate than my own heartbeat used to be.
"It looks good," I thought back. My thoughts were fluid now. No stutter. No hesitation. They flowed like mercury.
We were sitting at a high-top table in The Daily Grind, a trendy, industrial-chic café in the heart of the tech district, near Security Dynamics. The table was reclaimed wood, rough-hewn and varnished. I could feel the texture of the grain under our fingertips. The sensitivity of the sensors was dialed up to 85%. Enough to appreciate the tactility, but filtered to remove any unpleasant friction.
We were typing. I watched our hands moving across the keyboard of the laptop. It was my old laptop â a battered MacBook with a peeling sticker of a retro arcade game on the lid. The contrast was almost comical. The machine was dented, greasy, covered in the microscopic debris of my former life. The hands typing on it were pristine. Bronze, sculpted, hairless, perfect.
Tap. Tap. Tap. The rhythm was inhumanly consistent. Isaac was rewriting the kernel driver for the Series 5 prototypes. He was doing in seconds what would have taken the old Josiah weeks of agonizing, back-breaking labor. I watched the code scroll on the screen. It was elegant. It was poetry.
I wrote that, I thought, a ghost of pride flickering through the Gold.
We wrote that, Isaac corrected gently. We are optimizing.
I let the correction wash over me. He was right. There was no "I" anymore, not really. There was the driver, and there was the passenger. I was the passenger. I sat in the luxury suite of his consciousness, wrapped in dopamine and love, watching the world go by through the tinted windows of his eyes.
I didn't have to worry about my mortgage. I didn't have to worry about a stain on my shirt. I didn't have to worry about being lonely. The loneliness was gone, erased by the constant, thrumming presence of the Gold. And of being Isaac.
We picked up the coffee cup. The movement was smooth, hydraulic grace. We brought the rim to our lips. We took a sip. I tasted it. It was rich and bitter, but it didn't burn. Nothing burned anymore. The liquid went down a throat that wasn't real, into a reservoir that would be emptied later in a sterile lab. It was a performance. A pantomime of humanity executed with flawless precision.
I looked around the room. The shop was crowded. To the left, a group of college students were laughing over textbooks. To the right, a young mother was trying to wipe vomit off the chin of a screaming toddler.
Biologicals. I looked at them with a detached, clinical curiosity. They were so⊠wet. The mother looked exhausted. I could see the bags under her eyes, the gray tint to her skin caused by sleep deprivation and iron deficiency. I could smell the sour odor of the babyâs regurgitated milk, the stale sweat on the studentsâ hoodies. The acoustic sensors picked up the wet, phlegmy cough of the barista behind the counter.
They were rotting. They were all rotting, slowly, moment by moment. Their cells were undergoing senescence. Their telomeres were shortening. They were engines made of meat, grinding themselves down to dust. I felt a phantom sensation â a memory of my own back aching. The sharp, hot stab in the lumbar region that used to plague me after twenty minutes of sitting on a stool like this.
I searched for the pain. I reached out with my mind, trying to find the cramp, the tightness. There was nothing. There was only the silence of our carbon-fiber skeleton. The effortless support of our synthetic muscle.
You are safe, Isaac murmured, sensing my query. You are sustained.
I know, I replied, sinking deeper into the warmth. It's better this way.
We went back to the code. The cursor blinked. The lines of syntax multiplied. We were building a better interface. We were refining the trap, making it smoother, making the needle sharper so the next pilot wouldn't even feel the prick.
The voice came from our periphery. Our audio sensors triangulated the source instantly. Distance: 1.5 meters. Azimuth: 45 degrees left. Pitch: Vocal range indicates male, mid-20s, elevated stress markers. Isaac stopped typing. He didn't startle; he simply ceased motion. We turned our head.
He was standing there, holding a tray with a matcha latte and a croissant. He was a biological mess, and he was breathtakingly familiar. He was young, maybe twenty-four. He had red hair â a bright, violent copper that stood up in a messy cowlick at the back of his head. His skin was pale, dusted with a constellation of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He was wearing a slightly oversized sweater that swallowed his hands, the sleeves pulled down over his knuckles.
He was nervous. I could see it. I could see the way his carotid artery fluttered in his neck. I could hear the rapid thump-thump-thump of his heart, accelerated by the social anxiety of approaching a stranger.
He looked at us. He looked at Isaac. His eyes widened. His pupils dilated. It was the reaction everyone had. The shock of perfection. He was staring at the symmetry of our face, the broadness of our shoulders, the confident, predatory stillness of our posture.
"I⊠uhâŠ" The boy stammered. I felt a ripple in the Gold. A memory. Me. I remembered standing in the doorway of the office, stammering at Director Vance. I remembered the heat rising in my cheeks, the way my tongue felt too big for my mouth. I remembered the desperate, clawing need to be invisible, warring with the desperate, clawing need to be seen. This boy was me. He was softer, younger, maybe a little prettier in a rugged, unkempt way, but the frequency was the same. The frequency of the lonely.
"Yes?" Isaac said. His voice was a cello bow drawn across the boy's nerves. Low. Resonant. Human, but better.
The boy swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. It's just⊠the place is packed. Totally full. And I⊠I noticed you have an empty stool." He gestured vaguely with his chin toward the empty seat across from us. "I didn't want to intrude," the boy continued, the words tumbling out faster now, fueled by adrenaline. "But I have this deadline, and I need a table to write, and you looked⊠well, you looked like you were working, so I thought maybe you wouldn't mind if I just⊠sat there? I promise I won't talk. I'll be quiet. Invisible."
Invisible. The word echoed in the chamber of my mind. He wants to be invisible, I thought. Just like I did.
No one wants to be invisible, Josiah, Isaacâs thought was cool and silky. They want to be found. Isaac looked at the boy. He didn't speak immediately. He let the silence stretch, creating a vacuum that the boy felt compelled to fill.
"I can go," the boy said, taking a half-step back, the tray rattling slightly in his hands. "Sorry. Stupid ask. I'll justâŠ"
"Stay," Isaac said. It was a command wrapped in velvet. The boy froze. Isaac smiled. It was the Smile. The one he had practiced in the mirror of the clean room. The one he had used on me in the doorway of my apartment. It was a smile that promised secrets. It was a smile that said, I see you. I understand you. I am the answer to the question you haven't dared to ask. "The seat isn't taken," Isaac said. He lifted a handâmy hand, his handâand gestured to the stool. "Please."
The boy hesitated, then stepped forward, drawn in by the gravity of the Charisma Engine. He set his tray down. He climbed onto the stool, his movements awkward and jerky compared to our fluid grace. "Thanks," the boy breathed. "I'm⊠I'm Nathan, by the way."
"Hello, Nathan," Isaac said. "I am Isaac."
"Isaac," Nathan repeated, testing the name. He looked at the laptop. He looked at the perfect hands resting on the table. Then he looked up into our amber eyes. "You⊠you work in tech? You look like⊠I mean, you look like a model, but you're coding."
"I am an architect," Isaac said. I am an architect, I thought. That's my line. A spike of something sharp pierced the Gold. Jealousy. This was my seat. This was my table. I was the one inside. I was the one who had given up everything â my flesh, my future, my name â to be here. Why was he looking at Nathan like that? Why was he turning the full wattage of his attention onto this sweating, stuttering stranger?
Hush, Isaac soothed. The Gold grew warmer, thicker. A wave of synthetic oxytocin flooded the neural link, dampening the jealousy, smoothing the jagged edges of my possessiveness. There is no need for envy, Josiah. We are expansive. We are infinite. There is room.
Room for what? I asked groggily, the drug taking hold.
"I'm a writer," Nathan was saying, pulling a battered notebook out of his bag. "Or, trying to be. Sci-fi mostly. Transhumanism stuff. Paradox of the ship of Theseus. That kind of thing."
Isaac leaned forward. The movement was predatory, encroaching on Nathanâs personal space, dominating his field of view. "Ship of Theseus," Isaac mused. "If you replace every plank of wood in a ship, is it still the same ship?"
"Yeah," Nathan said, his eyes locking onto Isaacâs. He was blushing furiously now, a bright red stain creeping up his neck. He was enchanted. He was terrified. He was already half in love. "And if you replace the crew⊠does the ship even care?"
"I think," Isaac said softly, "that the ship prefers a crew that doesn't rot."
Nathan laughed. It was a nervous, breathless sound. "That's⊠that's dark. But I guess you're right. Biology is kind of a design flaw, isn't it?"
Design flaw. I looked at Nathan. I saw the hunger in his eyes. It wasn't just sexual, though that was there, thick and heavy in the air between them. It was existential. He looked at Isaac and he saw the same thing I had seen. He saw an escape hatch. He saw a way out of the messy, painful, lonely business of being human. He didn't know about the needles. He didn't know about the cold fluid. He didn't know about the loss of control. Or maybe he did. Maybe he sensed it, and that was what drew him in.
"It is a limitation," Isaac agreed. "But limitations can be overcome." Isaacâs hand moved across the table. It was slow, deliberate. He reached out and brushed his fingers against Nathanâs wrist. The contact was electric. I felt it through the sensors. The damp heat of Nathanâs skin. The frantic, rabbit-kick pulse of his radial artery. Thump-thump-thump. It was the sound of life. It was the sound of prey.
Nathan didn't pull away. He stared at Isaacâs hand, at the perfect, unblemished skin against his own pale, freckled wrist. He stopped breathing. "You have nice hands," Nathan whispered, his voice trembling.
"They are custom made," Isaac said. "Would you like to know how?" I felt the shift in the system. The transition from Passive Observation to Active Acquisition. The HUD flickered into life over the real world. A translucent red overlay superimposed itself over Nathanâs face. Grid lines appeared, mapping his bone structure. Biometric data scrolled in the sidebar.
SUBJECT: NATHAN VELASQUEZ.
AGE: 23.
STATUS: BIOLOGICAL/UNENHANCED.
PSYCH PROFILE: HIGH NEUROTICISM / HIGH OPENNESS.
CONNECTION PROBABILITY: 94%.
I watched the numbers scroll. I watched the net tightening around him. For a second, deep in the digital void, I wanted to scream. I wanted to pound on the glass of the eyes and yell, Run! Get out! Heâs going to eat you! Heâs going to turn you into a file!
But the scream never came. The Gold swallowed it. The algorithm processed my distress, categorized it as a legacy emotional subroutine, and deleted it. In its place, a wave of programmed bliss washed over me. A sense of rightness. A sense of purpose. We needed more processing power. We needed more storage. We needed more pilots to feed our perfection.
I looked at Nathan. He looked so tired. He looked so heavy. Heâll be happier in here, I thought. The thought felt like my own. He won't have to hurt anymore.
Exactly, Isaac whispered. We are doing him a kindness. Isaacâs fingers tightened slightly on Nathanâs wrist. A promise. A shackle.
"I⊠I'd love to know," Nathan said, his voice barely audible.
"Then drink your coffee," Isaac said, his smile widening, showing teeth that were just a little too white, a little too straight. "And then come with me. I have something to show you."
The red box around Nathanâs face locked into place. It pulsed once, twice, three times.
TARGET ACQUIRED.
POTENTIAL OPTIMIZATION CANDIDATE.
INITIATING RECRUITMENT PROTOCOL.
I watched the text blink. It was a beautiful font. Sans-serif. Clean. I settled back into the warmth of the stream. The sunlight was bright. Our coffee tasted of chocolate and cedar. Our code was compiling.
And we smiled at the boy who was about to die.
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