#it based project monitoring system

[cyberswift-story]

Revolutionizing Project Management with the Project Monitoring Portal

In the dynamic world of project management, staying on top of every aspect of a project is crucial for success. The Project Monitoring Portal, powered by PPMS Software, offers a comprehensive solution for managing the entire project lifecycle with unparalleled efficiency and precision. From smarter planning to real-time progress tracking, this web-based application is designed to streamline project management processes, ensuring projects are completed on time and within budget.

https://www.cyberswift.com/in/products/csr-management-software

[svsembedded]

Smart Lighting and Internet of Things (IoT)

[fatehbaz]

was thinking about this

To be in "public", you must be a consumer or a laborer.

About control of peoples' movement in space/place. Since the beginning.

"Vagrancy" of 1830s-onward Britain, people criminalized for being outside without being a laborer.

Breaking laws resulted in being sentenced to coerced debtor/convict labor. Coinciding with the 1830-ish climax of the Industrial Revolution and the land enclosure acts (factory labor, poverty, etc., increase), the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 establishes full-time police institution(s) in London. The "Workhouse Act" aka "Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834" forced poor people to work for a minimum number of hours every day. The Irish Constabulary of 1837 sets up a national policing force and the County Police Act of 1839 allows justices of the peace across England to establish policing institutions in their counties (New York City gets a police department in 1844). The major expansion of the "Vagrancy Act" of 1838 made "joblessness" a crime and enhanced its punishment. (Coincidentally, the law's date of royal assent was 27 July 1838, just 5 days before the British government was scheduled to allow fuller emancipation of its technical legal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean on 1 August 1838.)

---

"Vagrancy" of 1860s-onward United States, people criminalized for being outside while Black.

Widespread emancipation after slavery abolition in 1865 rapidly followed by the outlawing of loitering which de facto outlawed existing as Black in public. Inability to afford fines results in being sentenced to forced labor by working on chain gangs or prisons farms, some built atop plantations.

---

"Vagrancy" of 1870s-onward across empires, people criminalized for being outside while being "foreign" and also being poor generally.

Especially from 1880-ish to 1918-ish, this was an age of widespread mass movement of peoples due to the land dispossession, poverty, and famine induced by global colonial extraction and "market expansion" (Scramble for Africa, US "American West", nation-building, conquering "frontiers"), as agricultural "revolutions" of imperial monoculture cash crop extraction resulted in ecological degradation, and as major imperial infrastructure building projects required a lot of vulnerable "mobile" labor. This coincides with and is facilitated by new railroad networks and telegraphs, leading to imperial implementation or expansion of identity documents, strict work contracts, passports, immigration surveillance, and border checkpoints.

All of this in just a few short years: In 1877, British administrators in India develop what would become the Henry Classification System of taking and keeping fingerprints for use in binding colonial Indians to legal contracts. That same year during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, and in response to white anxiety about Black residents coming to the city during Great Migration, Chicago's policing institutions exponentially expand surveillance and pioneer "intelligence card" registers for tracking labor union organizing and Black movement, as Chicago's experiments become adopted by US military and expanded nationwide, later used by US forces monitoring dissent in colonial Philippines and Cuba. Japan based its 1880 Penal Code anti-vagrancy statutes on French models, and introduced "koseki" register to track poor/vagrant domestic citizens as Tokyo's Governor Matsuda segregates classes, and the nation introduces "modern police forces". In 1882, the United States passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1884, the Ottoman government enacts major "Passport Nizamnamesi" legislation requiring passports. In 1885, the racist expulsion of the "Tacoma riot".

Punished for being Algerian in France. Punished for being Chinese in San Francisco. Punished for being Korean in Japan. Punished for crossing Ottoman borders without correct paperwork. Arrested for whatever, then sent to do convict labor. A poor person in the Punjab, starving during a catastrophic famine, might be coerced into a work contract by British authorities. They will have to travel, shipped off to build a railroad. But now they have to work. Now they are bound. They will be punished for being Punjabi and trying to walk away from Britain's tea plantations in Assam or Britain's rubber plantations in Malaya.

Mobility and confinement, the empire manipulates each.

---

"Vagrancy" amidst all of this, people also criminalized for being outside while "unsightly" and merely even superficially appearing to be poor. San Francisco introduced the notorious "ugly law" in 1867, making it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view". Today, if you walk into a building looking a little "weird" (poor, Black, ill, disabled, etc.), you are given seething spiteful glares and asked to leave. De facto criminalized for simply going for a stroll without downloading the coffee shop's exclusive menu app.

Too ill, too poor, too exhausted, too indebted to move, you are trapped. Physical barriers (borders), legal barriers (identity documents), financial barriers (debt). "Vagrancy" everywhere in the United States, a combination of all of the above. "Vagrancy" since at least early nineteenth century Europe. About the control of movement through and access to space/place. Concretizing and weaponizing caste, corralling people, anchoring them in place, extracting their wealth and labor.

You are permitted to exist only as a paying customer or an employee.

[reasonsforhope]

Although dam removals have been happening since 1912, the vast majority have occurred since the mid-2010s, and they have picked up steam since the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided funding for such projects. To date, 806 Northeastern dams have come down, with hundreds more in the pipeline. Across the country, 2023 was a watershed year, with a total of 80 dam removals. Says Andrew Fisk, Northeast regional director of the nonprofit American Rivers, “The increasing intensity and frequency of storm events, and the dramatically reduced sizes of our migratory fish populations, are accelerating our efforts.”

Dam removals in the Northeast don’t generate the same media attention as massive takedowns on West Coast rivers, like the Klamath or the Elwha. That’s because most of these structures are comparatively miniscule, built in the 19th century to form ponds and to power grist, textile, paper, saw, and other types of mills as the region developed into an industrial powerhouse.

But as mills became defunct, their dams remained. They may be small to humans, but to the fish that can’t get past them “they’re just as big as a Klamath River dam,” says Maddie Feaster, habitat restoration project manager for the environmental organization Riverkeeper, based in Ossining, New York. From Maryland and Pennsylvania up to Maine, there are 31,213 inventoried dams, more than 4,000 of which sit within the 13,400-square-mile Hudson River watershed alone. For generations they’ve degraded habitat and altered downstream hydrology and sediment flows, creating warm, stagnant, low-oxygen pools that trigger algal blooms and favor invasive species. The dams inhibit fish passage, too, which is why the biologists at the mouth of the Saw Kill transported their glass eels past the first of three Saw Kill dams after counting them...

Jeremy Dietrich, an aquatic ecologist at the New York State Water Resources Institute, monitors dam sites both pre- and post-removal. Environments upstream of an intact dam, he explains, “are dominated by midges, aquatic worms, small crustaceans, organisms you typically might find in a pond.” In 2017 and 2018 assessments of recent Hudson River dam removals, some of which also included riverbank restorations to further enhance habitat for native species, he found improved water quality and more populous communities of beetles, mayflies, and caddisflies, which are “more sensitive to environmental perturbation, and thus used as bioindicators,” he says. “You have this big polarity of ecological conditions, because the barrier has severed the natural connectivity of the system. [After removal], we generally see streams recover to a point where we didn’t even know there was a dam there.”

Pictured: Quassaick Creek flows freely after the removal of the Strooks Felt Dam, Newburgh, New York.

American Rivers estimates that 85 percent of U.S. dams are unnecessary at best and pose risks to public safety at worst, should they collapse and flood downstream communities. The nonprofit has been involved with roughly 1,000 removals across the country, 38 of them since 2018. This effort was boosted by $800 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But states will likely need to contribute more of their own funding should the Trump administration claw back unspent money, and organizations involved in dam removal are now scrambling to assess the potential impact to their work.

Enthusiasm for such projects is on the upswing among some dam owners — whether states, municipalities, or private landholders. Pennsylvania alone has taken out more than 390 dams since 1912 — 107 of them between 2015 and 2023 — none higher than 16 feet high. “Individual property owners [say] I own a dam, and my insurance company is telling me I have a liability,” says Fisk. Dams in disrepair may release toxic sediments that potentially threaten both human health and wildlife, and low-head dams, over which water flows continuously, churn up recirculating currents that trap and drown 50 people a year in the U.S.

Numerous studies show that dam removals improve aquatic fish passage, water quality, watershed resilience, and habitat for organisms up the food chain, from insects to otters and eagles. But removals aren’t straightforward. Federal grants, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Fish and Wildlife Service, favor projects that benefit federally listed species and many river miles. But even the smallest, simplest projects range in cost from $100,000 to $3 million. To qualify for a grant, be it federal or state, an application “has to score well,” says Scott Cuppett, who leads the watershed team at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuary Program, which collaborates with nonprofits like Riverkeeper to connect dam owners to technical assistance and money...

All this can be overwhelming for dam owners, which is why stakeholders hope additional research will help loosen up some of the requirements. In 2020, Yellen released a study in which he simulated the removal of the 1,702 dams in the lower Hudson watershed, attempting to determine how much sediment might be released if they came down. He found that “the vast majority of dams don’t really trap much sediment,” he says. That’s good news, since it means sediment released into the Hudson will neither permanently worsen water quality nor build up in places that would smother or otherwise harm underwater vegetation. And it shows that “you would not need to invest a huge amount of time or effort into a [costly] sediment management plan,” Yellen says. It’s “a day’s worth of excavator work to remove some concrete and rock, instead of months of trucking away sand and fill.” ...

On a sunny winter afternoon, Feaster, of Riverkeeper, stands in thick mud beside Quassaick Creek in Newburgh, New York. The Strooks Felt Dam, the first of seven municipally owned dams on the lower reaches of this 18-mile tributary, was demolished with state money in 2020. The second dam, called Holden, is slated to come down in late 2025. Feaster is showing a visitor the third, the Walsh Road Dam, whose removal has yet to be funded. “This was built into a floodplain,” she says, “and when it rains the dam overflows to flood a housing complex just around a bend in the creek.” ...

On the Quassaick, improvements are evident since the Strooks dam came out. American eel and juvenile blue crabs have already moved in. In fact, fish returns can sometimes be observed within minutes of opening a passageway. Says Schmidt, “We’ve had dammed rivers where you’ve been removing the project and when the last piece comes out a fish immediately storms past it.”

There is palpable impatience among environmentalists and dam owners to get even more removals going in the Northeast. To that end, collaborators are working to streamline the process. The Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, has formed an interagency fish passage task force with other federal agencies, including NOAA and FEMA, that have their own interests in dam removals. American Rivers is working with regional partners to develop priority lists of dams whose removals would provide the greatest environmental and safety benefits and open up the most river miles to the most important species. “We’re not going to remove all dams,” [Note: mostly for reasons dealing with invasive species management, etc.] says Schmidt. “But we can be really thoughtful and impactful with the ones that we do choose to remove.”

-via Yale Environment 360, February 4, 2025

[saintobio]

THE TERMINATOR'S CURSE. (spinoff to THE COLONEL SERIES)

in this new world, technological loneliness is combated with AI Companions—synthetic partners modeled from memories, faces, and behaviors of any chosen individual. the companions are coded to serve, to soothe, to simulate love and comfort. Caleb could’ve chosen anyone. his wife. a colleague. a stranger... but he chose you.

➤ pairings. caleb, fem!reader

➤ genre. angst, sci-fi dystopia, cyberpunk au, 18+

➤ tags. resurrected!caleb, android!reader, non mc!reader, ooc, artificial planet, post-war setting, grief, emotional isolation, unrequited love, government corruption, techno-ethics, identity crisis, body horror, memory & emotional manipulation, artificial intelligence, obsession, trauma, hallucinations, exploitation, violence, blood, injury, death, smut (dubcon undertones due to power imbalance and programming, grief sex, non-traditional consent dynamics), themes of artificial autonomy, loss of agency, unethical experimentation, references to past sexual assault (non-explicit, not from Caleb). themes contain disturbing material and morally gray dynamics—reader discretion is strongly advised.

➤ notes. 12.2k wc. heavily based on the movies subservience and passengers with inspirations also taken from black mirror. i have consumed nothing but sci-fi for the past 2 weeks my brain is so fried :’D reblogs/comments are highly appreciated!

BEFORE YOU BEGIN ! this fic serves as a spinoff to the THE COLONEL SERIES: THE COLONEL’S KEEPER and THE COLONEL’S SAINT. while the series can be read as a standalone, this spinoff remains canon to the overarching universe. for deeper context and background, it’s highly recommended to read the first two fics in the series.

The first sound was breath.

“Hngh…” 

It was shallow, labored like air scraping against rusted metal. He mumbled something under his breath after—nothing intelligible, just remnants of an old dream, or perhaps a memory. His eyelids twitched, lashes damp with condensation. To him, the world was blurred behind frosted glass. To those outside, rows of stasis pods lined the silent room, each one labeled, numbered, and cold to the touch.

Inside Pod No. 019 – Caleb Xia.

A faint drip… drip… echoed in the silence.

“…Y/N…?”

The heart monitor jumped. He lay there shirtless under sterile lighting, with electrodes still clinging to his temple. A machine next to him emitted a low, steady hum.

 “…I’m sorry…”

And then, the hiss. The alarm beeped. 

SYSTEM INTERFACE:  Code Resurrection 7.1 successful.  Subject X-02—viable.  Cognitive activity: 63%.  Motor function: stabilizing.

He opened his eyes fully, and the ceiling was not one he recognizes. It didn’t help that the air also smelled different. No gunpowder. No war. No earth.

As the hydraulics unsealed the chamber, steam also curled out like ghosts escaping a tomb. His body jerked forward with a sharp gasp, as if he was a drowning man breaking the surface. A thousand sensors detached from his skin as the pod opened with a sigh, revealing the man within—suspended in time, untouched by age. Skin pallid but preserved. A long time had passed, but Caleb still looked like the soldier who never made it home.

Only now, he was missing a piece of himself.

Instinctively, he examined his body and looked at his hands, his arm—no, a mechanical arm—attached to his shoulder that gleamed under the lights of the lab. It was obsidian-black metal with veins of circuitry pulsing faintly beneath its surface. The fingers on the robotic arm twitched as if following a command. It wasn’t human, certainly, but it moved with the memory of muscle.

“Haaah!” The pod’s internal lighting dimmed as Caleb coughed and sat up, dazed. A light flickered on above his head, and then came a clinical, feminine voice. 

“Welcome back, Colonel Caleb Xia.”

A hologram appeared to life in front of his pod—seemingly an AI projection of a soft-featured, emotionless woman, cloaked in the stark white uniform of a medical technician. She flickered for a moment, stabilizing into a clear image.

“You are currently located in Skyhaven: Sector Delta, Bio-Resurrection Research Wing. Current Earth time: 52 years, 3 months, and 16 days since your recorded time of death.”

Caleb blinked hard, trying to breathe through the dizziness, trying to deduce whether or not he was dreaming or in the afterlife. His pulse raced.

“Resurrection successful. Neural reconstruction achieved on attempt #17. Arm reconstruction: synthetic. Systemic functions: stabilized. You are classified as Property-Level under the Skyhaven Initiative. Status: Experimental Proof of Viability.”

“What…” Caleb rasped, voice hoarse and dry for its years unused. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” Cough. Cough. “What hell did you do to me?”

The AI blinked slowly.

“Your remains were recovered post-crash, partially preserved in cryo-state due to glacial submersion. Reconstruction was authorized by the Skyhaven Council under classified wartime override protocols. Consent not required.”

Her tone didn’t change, as opposed to the rollercoaster ride that his emotions were going through. He was on the verge of becoming erratic, restrained only by the high-tech machine that contained him. 

“Your consciousness has been digitally reinforced. You are now a composite of organic memory and neuro-augmented code. Welcome to Phase II: Reinstatement.”

Caleb’s breath hitched. His hand moved—his real hand—to grasp the edge of the pod. But the other, the artificial limb, buzzed faintly with phantom sensation. He looked down at it in searing pain, attempting to move the fingers slowly. The metal obeyed like muscle, and he found the sight odd and inconceivable.

And then he realized, he wasn’t just alive. He was engineered.

“Should you require assistance navigating post-stasis trauma, our Emotional Conditioning Division is available upon request,” the AI offered. “For now, please remain seated. Your guardian contact has been notified of your reanimation.”

He didn’t say a word. 

“Lieutenant Commander Gideon is en route. Enjoy your new life!”

Then, the hologram vanished with a blink while Caleb sat in the quiet lab, jaw clenched, his left arm no longer bones and muscle and flesh. The cold still clung to him like frost, only reminding him of how much he hated the cold, ice, and depressing winter days. Suddenly, the glass door slid open with a soft chime.

“Well, shit. Thought I’d never see that scowl again,” came a deep, manly voice.

Caleb turned, still panting, to see a figure approaching. He was older, bearded, but familiar. Surely, the voice didn’t belong to another AI. It belonged to his friend, Gideon.

“Welcome to Skyhaven. Been waiting half a century,” Gideon muttered, stepping closer, his eyes scanning his colleague in awe. “They said it wouldn’t work. Took them years, you know? Dozens of failed uploads. But here you are.”

Caleb’s voice was still brittle. “I-I don’t…?” 

“It’s okay, man.” His friend reassured. “In short, you’re alive. Again.”  

A painful groan escaped Caleb’s lips as he tried to step out of the pod—his body, still feeling the muscle stiffness. “Should’ve let me stay dead.”

Gideon paused, a smirk forming on his lips. “We don’t let heroes die.”

“Heroes don’t crash jets on purpose.” The former colonel scoffed. “Gideon, why the fuck am I alive? How long has it been?” 

“Fifty years, give or take,” answered Gideon. “You were damn near unrecognizable when we pulled you from the wreckage. But we figured—hell, why not try? You’re officially the first successful ‘reinstatement’ the Skyhaven project’s ever had.”

Caleb stared ahead for a beat before asking, out of nowhere, “...How old are you now?”

His friend shrugged. “I’m pushin’ forty, man. Not as lucky as you. Got my ChronoSync Implant a little too late.”

“Am I supposed to know what the hell that means?” 

“An anti-aging chip of some sort. I had to apply for mine. Yours?” Gideon gestured towards the stasis pod that had Caleb in cryo-state for half a century. “That one’s government-grade.”

“I’m still twenty-five?” Caleb asked. No wonder his friend looked decades older when they were once the same age. “Fuck!” 

Truthfully, Caleb’s head was spinning. Not just because of his reborn physical state that was still adjusting to his surroundings, but also with every information that was being given to him. One after another, they never seemed to end. He had questions, really. Many of them. But the overwhelmed him just didn’t know where to start first. 

“Not all of us knew what you were planning that night.” Gideon suddenly brought up, quieter now. “But she did, didn’t she?”

It took a minute before Caleb could recall. Right, the memory before the crash. You, demanding that he die. Him, hugging you for one last time. Your crying face when you said you wanted him gone. Your trembling voice when he said all he wanted to do was protect you. The images surged back in sharp, stuttering flashes like a reel of film catching fire.

“I know you’re curious… And good news is, she lived a long life,” added Gideon, informatively. “She continued to serve as a pediatric nurse, married that other friend of yours, Dr. Zayne. They never had kids, though. I heard she had trouble bearing one after… you know, what happened in the enemy territory. She died of old age just last winter. Had a peaceful end. You’d be glad to know that.”

A muscle in Caleb’s jaw twitched. His hands—his heart—clenched.  “I don’t want to be alive for this.”

“She visited your wife’s grave once,” Gideon said. “I told her there was nothing to bury for yours. I lied, of course.”

Caleb closed his eyes, his breath shaky. “So, what now? You wake me up just to remind me I don’t belong anywhere?”

“Well, you belong here,” highlighted his friend, nodding to the lab, to the city beyond the glass wall. “Earth’s barely livable after the war. The air’s poisoned. Skyhaven is humanity’s future now. You’re the living proof that everything is possible with advanced technology.”

Caleb’s laugh was empty. “Tell me I’m fuckin’ dreaming. I’d rather be dead again. Living is against my will!”

“Too late. Your body belongs to the Federation now,” Gideon replied, “You’re Subject X-02—the proof of concept for Skyhaven’s immortality program. Every billionaire on dying Earth wants what you’ve got now.”

Outside the window, Skyhaven stretched like a dome with its perfect city constructed atop a dying world’s last hope. Artificial skies. Synthetic seasons. Controlled perfection. Everything boasted of advanced technology. A kind of future no one during wartime would have expected to come to life. 

But for Caleb, it was just another hell.

He stared down at the arm they’d rebuilt for him—the same arm he’d lost in the fire of sacrifice. He flexed it slowly, feeling the weight, the artificiality of his resurrection. His fingers responded like they’ve always been his.

“I didn’t come back for this,” he said.

“I know,” Gideon murmured. “But we gotta live by their orders, Colonel.”

~~

You see, it didn’t hit him at first. The shock had been muffled by the aftereffects of suspended stasis, dulling his thoughts and dampening every feeling like a fog wrapped around his brain. But it was hours later, when the synthetic anesthetics began to fade, and when the ache in his limbs and his brain started to catch up to the truth of his reconstructed body did it finally sink in.

He was alive.

And it was unbearable.

The first wave came like a glitch in his programming. A tightness in his chest, followed by a sharp burst of breath that left him pacing in jagged lines across the polished floor of his assigned quarters. His private unit was nestled on one of the upper levels of the Skyhaven structure, a place reserved—according to his briefing—for high-ranking war veterans who had been deemed “worthy” of the program’s new legacy. The suite was luxurious, obviously, but it was also eerily quiet. The floor-to-ceiling windows displayed the artificial city outside, a metropolis made of concrete, curved metals, and glowing flora engineered to mimic Earth’s nature. Except cleaner, quieter, more perfect.

Caleb snorted under his breath, running a hand down his face before he muttered, “Retirement home for the undead?”

He couldn’t explain it, but the entire place, or even planet, just didn’t feel inviting. The air felt too clean, too thin. There was no rust, no dust, no humanity. Just emptiness dressed up in artificial light. Who knew such a place could exist 50 years after the war ended? Was this the high-profile information the government has kept from the public for over a century? A mechanical chime sounded from the entryway, deflecting him from his deep thoughts. Then, with the soft hiss of hydraulics, the door opened.

A humanoid android stepped in, its face a porcelain mask molded in neutral expression, and its voice disturbingly polite.

“Good afternoon, Colonel Xia,” it said. “It is time for your orientation. Please proceed to the primary onboarding chamber on Level 3.”

Caleb stared at the machine, eyes boring into his unnatural ones. “Where are the people?” he interrogated. “Not a single human has passed by this floor. Are there any of us left, or are you the new ruling class?”

The android tilted its head. “Skyhaven maintains a ratio of AI-to-human support optimized for care and security. You will be meeting our lead directors soon. Please follow the lighted path, sir.”

He didn’t like it. The control. The answers that never really answered anything. The power that he no longer carried unlike when he was a colonel of a fleet that endured years of war. 

Still, he followed.

The onboarding chamber was a hollow, dome-shaped room, white and echoing with the slightest step. A glowing interface ignited in the air before him, pixels folding into the form of a female hologram. She smiled like an infomercial host from a forgotten era, her voice too formal and rehearsed.

“Welcome to Skyhaven,” she began. “The new frontier of civilization. You are among the elite few chosen to preserve humanity’s legacy beyond the fall of Earth. This artificial planet was designed with sustainability, autonomy, and immortality in mind. Together, we build a future—without the flaws of the past.”

As the monologue continued, highlighting endless statistics, clean energy usage, and citizen tier programs, Caleb’s expression darkened. His mechanical fingers twitched at his side, the artificial nerves syncing to his rising frustration. “I didn’t ask for this,” he muttered under his breath. “Who’s behind this?”

“You were selected for your valor and contributions during the Sixth World War,” the hologram chirped, unblinking. “You are a cornerstone of Skyhaven’s moral architecture—”

Strangely, a new voice cut through the simulation, and it didn’t come from an AI. “Just ignore her. She loops every hour.”

Caleb turned to see a man step in through a side door. Tall, older, with silver hair and a scar on his temple. He wore a long coat that gave away his status—someone higher. Someone who belonged to the system.

“Professor Lucius,” the older man introduced, offering a hand. “I’m one of the program’s behavioral scientists. You can think of me as your adjustment liaison.”

“Adjustment?” Caleb didn’t shake his hand. “I died for a reason.”

Lucius raised a brow, as if he’d heard it before. “Yet here you are,” he replied. “Alive, whole, and pampered. Treated like a king, if I may add. You’ve retained more than half your human body, your military rank, access to private quarters, unrestricted amenities. I’d say that’s not a bad deal.”

“A deal I didn’t sign,” Caleb snapped.

Lucius gave a tight smile. “You’ll find that most people in Skyhaven didn’t ask to be saved. But they’re surviving. Isn’t that the point? If you’re feeling isolated, you can always request a CompanionSim. They’re highly advanced, emotionally synced, fully customizable—”

“I’m not lonely,” Caleb growled, yanking the man forward by the collar. “Tell me who did this to me! Why me? Why are you experimenting on me?”

Yet Lucius didn’t so much as flinch to his growing aggression. He merely waited five seconds of silence until the Toring Chip kicked in and regulated Caleb’s escalating emotions. The rage drained from the younger man’s body as he collapsed to his knees with a pained grunt.

“Stop asking questions,” Lucius said coolly. “It’s safer that way. You have no idea what they’re capable of.”

The door slid open with a hiss, while Caleb didn’t speak—he couldn’t. He simply glared at the old man before him. Not a single word passed between them before the professor turned and exited, the door sealing shut behind him.

~~

Days passed, though they hardly felt like days. The light outside Caleb’s panoramic windows shifted on an artificial timer, simulating sunrise and dusk, but the warmth never touched his skin. It was all programmed to be measured and deliberate, like everything else in this glass-and-steel cage they called paradise.

He tried going outside once. Just once.

There were gardens shaped like spirals and skytrains that ran with whisper-quiet speed across silver rails. Trees lined the walkways, except they were synthetic too—bio-grown from memory cells, with leaves that didn’t quite flutter, only swayed in sync with the ambient wind. People walked around, sure. But they weren’t people. Not really. Androids made up most of the crowd. Perfect posture, blank eyes, walking with a kind of preordained grace that disturbed him more than it impressed.

“Soulless sons of bitches,” Caleb muttered, watching them from a shaded bench. “Not a damn human heartbeat in a mile.”

He didn’t go out again after that. The city outside might’ve looked like heaven, but it made him feel more dead than the grave ever had. So, he stayed indoors. Even if the apartment was too large for one man. High-tech amenities, custom climate controls, even a kitchen that offered meals on command. But no scent. No sizzling pans. Just silence. Caleb didn’t even bother to listen to the programmed instructions.

One evening, he found Gideon sprawled across his modular sofa, boots up, arms behind his head like he owned the place. A half-open bottle of beer sat beside him, though Caleb doubted it had any real alcohol in it.

“You could at least knock,” Caleb said, walking past him.

“I did,” Gideon replied lazily, pointing at the door. “Twice. Your security system likes me now. We’re basically married.”

Caleb snorted. Then the screen on his wall flared to life—a projected ad slipping across the holo-glass. Music played softly behind a soothing female voice.

“Feeling adrift in this new world? Introducing the CompanionSim Series X. Fully customizable to your emotional and physical needs. Humanlike intelligence. True-to-memory facial modeling. The comfort you miss... is now within reach.”

A model appeared—perfect posture, soft features, synthetic eyes that mimicked longing. Then, the screen flickered through other models, faces of all kinds, each more tailored than the last. A form appeared: Customize Your Companion. Choose a name. Upload a likeness.

Gideon whistled. “Man, you’re missing out. You don’t even have to pay for one. Your perks get you top-tier Companions, pre-coded for emotional compatibility. You could literally bring your wife back.” Chuckling, he added,. “Hell, they even fuck now. Heard the new ones moan like the real thing.”

Caleb’s head snapped toward him. “That’s unethical.”

Gideon just raised an eyebrow. “So was reanimating your corpse, and yet here we are.” He took a swig from the bottle, shoulders lifting in a lazy shrug as if everything had long since stopped mattering. “Relax, Colonel. You weren’t exactly a beacon of morality fifty years ago.”

Caleb didn’t reply, but his eyes didn’t leave the screen. Not right away.

The ad looped again. A face morphed. Hair remodeled. Eyes became familiar. The voice softened into something he almost remembered hearing in the dark, whispered against his shoulder in a time that was buried under decades of ash.

“Customize your companion... someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost.”

Caleb shifted, then glanced toward his friend. “Hey,” he spoke lowly, still watching the display. “Does it really work?”

Gideon looked over, already knowing what he meant. “What—having sex with them?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “No. The bot or whatever. Can you really customize it to someone you know?”

His friend shrugged. “Heck if I know. Never afforded it. But you? You’ve got the top clearance. Won’t hurt to see for yourself.”

Caleb said nothing more.

But when the lights dimmed for artificial nightfall, he was still standing there—alone in contemplative silence—watching the screen replay the same impossible promise.

The comfort you miss... is now within reach.

~~

The CompanionSim Lab was white.

Well, obviously. But not the sterile, blank kind of white he remembered from med bays or surgery rooms. This one was luminous, uncomfortably clean like it had been scrubbed for decades. Caleb stood in the center, boots thundering against marble-like tiles as he followed a guiding drone toward the station. There were other pods in the distance, some sealed, some empty, all like futuristic coffins awaiting their souls.

“Please, sit,” came a neutral voice from one of the medical androids stationed beside a large reclining chair. “The CompanionSim integration will begin shortly.”

Caleb hesitated, glancing toward the vertical pod next to the chair. Inside, the base model stood inert—skin a pale, uniform gray, eyes shut, limbs slack like a statue mid-assembly. It wasn’t human yet. Not until someone gave it a name.

He sat down. Now, don’t ask why he was there. Professor Lucius did warn him that it was better he didn’t ask questions, and so he didn’t question why the hell he was even there in the first place. It’s only fair, right? The cool metal met the back of his neck as wires were gently, expertly affixed to his temples. Another cable slipped down his spine, threading into the port they’d installed when he had been brought back. His mechanical arm twitched once before falling still.

“This procedure allows for full neural imprinting,” the android continued. “Please focus your thoughts. Recall the face. The skin. The body. The voice. Every detail. Your mind will shape the template.”

Another bot moved in, holding what looked like a glass tablet. “You are allowed only one imprint,” it said, flatly. “Each resident of Skyhaven is permitted a single CompanionSim. Your choice cannot be undone.”

Caleb could only nod silently. He didn’t trust his voice.

Then, the lights dimmed. A low chime echoed through the chamber as the system initiated. And inside the pod, the base model twitched.

Caleb closed his eyes.

He tried to remember her—his wife. The softness of her mouth, the angle of her cheekbones. The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, how her fingers curled when she slept on his chest. She had worn white the last time he saw her. An image of peace. A memory buried under soil and dust. The system whirred. Beneath his skin, he felt the warm static coursing through his nerves, mapping his memories. The base model’s feet began to form, molecular scaffolding reshaping into skin, into flesh.

But for a split second, a flash.

You.

Not his wife. Not her smile.

You, walking through smoke-filled corridors, laughing at something he said. You in your medical uniform, tucking a bloodied strand of hair behind your ear. Your voice—sharper, sadder—cutting through his thoughts like a blade: “I want you gone. I want you dead.”

The machine sparked. A loud pop cracked in the chamber and the lights flickered above. One of the androids stepped back, recalibrating. “Neural interference detected. Re-centering projection feed.”

But Caleb couldn’t stop. He saw you again. That day he rescued you. The fear. The bruises. The way you had screamed for him to let go—and the way he hadn’t. Your face, carved into the back of his mind like a brand. He tried to push the memories away, but they surged forward like a dam splitting wide open.

The worst part was, your voice overlapped the AI’s mechanical instructions, louder, louder: “Why didn’t you just die like you promised?”

Inside the pod, the model’s limbs twitched again—arms elongating, eyes flickering beneath the lids. The lips curled into a shape now unmistakably yours. Caleb gritted his teeth. This isn’t right, a voice inside him whispered. But it was too late. The system stabilized. The sparks ceased. The body in the pod stilled, fully formed now, breathed into existence by a man who couldn’t let go.

One of the androids approached again. “Subject completed. CompanionSim is initializing. Integration successful.”

Caleb tore the wires from his temple. His other hand felt cold just as much as his mechanical arm. He stood, staring into the pod’s translucent surface. The shape of you behind the glass. Sleeping. Waiting.

“I’m not doing this to rewrite the past,” he said quietly, as if trying to convince himself. And you. “I just... I need to make it right.”

The lights above dimmed, darkening the lighting inside the pod. Caleb looked down at his own reflection in the glass. It carried haunted eyes, an unhealed soul. And yours, beneath it. Eyes still closed, but not for long. The briefing room was adjacent to the lab, though Caleb barely registered it as he was ushered inside. Two medical androids and a human technician stood before him, each armed with tablets and holographic charts.

“Your CompanionSim will require thirty seconds to calibrate once activated,” said the technician. “You may notice residual stiffness or latency during speech in the first hour. That is normal.”

Medical android 1 added, “Please remember, CompanionSims are programmed to serve only their primary user. You are the sole operator. Commands must be delivered clearly. Abuse of the unit may result in restriction or removal of privileges under the Skyhaven Rights & Ethics Council.”

“Do not tamper with memory integration protocols,” added the second android. “Artificial recall is prohibited. CompanionSims are not equipped with organic memory pathways. Attempts to force recollection can result in systemic instability.”

Caleb barely heard a word. His gaze drifted toward the lab window, toward the figure standing still within the pod.

You.

Well, not quite. Not really.

But it was your face.

He could see it now, soft beneath the frosted glass, lashes curled against cheekbones that he hadn’t realized he remembered so vividly. You looked exactly as you did the last time he held you in the base—only now, you were untouched by war, by time, by sorrow. As if life had never broken you.

The lab doors hissed open.

“We’ll give you time alone,” the tech said quietly. “Acquaintance phase is best experienced without interference.”

Caleb stepped inside the chamber, his boots echoing off the polished floor. He hadn’t even had enough time to ask the technician why she seemed to be the only human he had seen in Skyhaven apart from Gideon and Lucius. But his thoughts were soon taken away when the pod whizzed with pressure release. Soft steam spilled from its seals as it slowly unfolded, the lid retracting forward like the opening of a tomb.

And there you were. Standing still, almost tranquil, your chest rising softly with a borrowed breath.

It was as if his lungs froze. “H…Hi,” he stammered, bewildered eyes watching your every move. He wanted to hug you, embrace you, kiss you—tell you he was sorry, tell you he was so damn sorry. “Is it really… you?”

A soft whir accompanied your voice, gentle but without emotion, “Welcome, primary user. CompanionSim Model—unregistered. Please assign designation.”

Right. Caleb sighed and closed his eyes, the illusion shattering completely the moment you opened your mouth. Did he just think you were real for a second? His mouth parted slightly, caught between disbelief and the ache crawling up his throat. He took one step forward. To say he was disappointed was an understatement.

You walked with grace too smooth to be natural while tilting your head at him. “Please assign my name.”

“…Y/N,” Caleb said, voice low. “Your name is Y/N Xia.”

“Y/N Xia,” you repeated, blinking thrice in the same second before you gave him a nod. “Registered.”

He swallowed hard, searching your expression. “Do you… do you remember anything? Do you remember yourself?”

You paused, gaze empty for a fraction of a second. Then came the programmed reply, “Accessing memories is prohibited and not recommended. Recollection of past identities may compromise neural pathways and induce system malfunction. Do you wish to override?”

Caleb stared at you—your lips, your eyes, your breath—and for a moment, a cruel part of him wanted to say yes. Just to hear you say something real. Something hers. But he didn’t. He exhaled a bitter breath, stepping back. “No,” he mumbled. “Not yet.”

“Understood.” 

It took a moment to sink in before Caleb let out a short, humorless laugh. “This is insane,” he whispered, dragging a hand down his face. “This is really, truly insane.”

And then, you stepped out from the pod with silent, fluid ease. The faint hum of machinery came from your spine, but otherwise… you were flesh. Entirely. Without hesitation, you reached out and pressed a hand to his chest.

Caleb stiffened at the touch.

“Elevated heart rate,” you said softly, eyes scanning. “Breath pattern irregular. Neural readings—erratic.”

Then your fingers moved to his neck, brushing gently against the hollow of his throat. He grabbed your wrist, but you didn’t flinch. There, beneath synthetic skin, he felt a pulse.

His brows knit together. “You have a heartbeat?”

You nodded, guiding his hand toward your chest, between the valleys of your breasts. “I’m designed to mimic humanity, including vascular function, temperature variation, tactile warmth, and… other biological responses. I’m not just made to look human, Caleb. I’m made to feel human.”

His breath hitched. You’d said his name. It was programmed, but it still landed like a blow.

“I exist to serve. To soothe. To comfort. To simulate love,” you continued, voice calm and hollow, like reciting from code. “I have no desires outside of fulfilling yours.” You then tilted your head slightly.“Where shall we begin?”

Caleb looked at you—and for the first time since rising from that cursed pod, he didn’t feel resurrected. 

He felt damned.

~~

When Caleb returned to his penthouse, it was quiet. He stepped inside with slow, calculated steps, while you followed in kind, bare feet touching down like silk on marble. Gideon looked up from the couch, a half-eaten protein bar in one hand and a bored look on his face—until he saw you.

He froze. The wrapper dropped. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “No. No fucking way.”

Caleb didn’t speak. Just moved past him like this wasn’t the most awkward thing that could happen. You, however, stood there politely, watching Gideon with a calm smile and folded hands like you’d rehearsed this moment in some invisible script.

“Is that—?” Gideon stammered, eyes flicking between you and Caleb. “You—you made a Sim… of her?”

Caleb poured himself a drink in silence, the amber liquid catching the glow of the city lights before it left a warm sting in his throat. “What does it look like?”

“I mean, shit man. I thought you’d go for your wife,” Gideon muttered, more to himself. “Y’know, the one you actually married. The one you went suicidal for. Not—”

“Which wife?” You tilted your head slightly, stepping forward. 

Both men turned to you.

You clasped your hands behind your back, posture perfect. “Apologies. I’ve been programmed with limited parameters for interpersonal history. Am I the first spouse?”

Caleb set the glass down, slowly. “Yes, no, uh—don’t mind him.” 

You beamed gently and nodded. “My name is Y/N Xia. I am Colonel Caleb Xia’s designated CompanionSim. Fully registered, emotion-compatible, and compliant to Skyhaven’s ethical standards. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gideon.”

Gideon blinked, then snorted, then laughed. A humorless one. “You gave her your surname?”

The former colonel shot him a warning glare. “Watch it.”

“Oh, brother,” Gideon muttered, standing up and circling you slowly like he was inspecting a haunted statue. “She looks exactly like her. Voice. Face. Goddamn, she even moves like her. All you need is a nurse cap and a uniform.”

You remained uncannily still, eyes bright, smile polite.

“You’re digging your grave, man,” Gideon said, facing Caleb now. “You think this is gonna help? This is you throwing gasoline on your own funeral pyre. Again. Over a woman.”

“She’s not a woman,” reasoned Caleb. “She’s a machine.”

You blinked once. One eye glowing ominously. Smile unwavering. Processing. 

Gideon gestured to you with both hands. “Could’ve fooled me,” he retorted before turning to you, “And you, whatever you are, you have no idea what you’re stepping into.”

“I only go where I am asked,” you replied simply. “My duty is to ensure Colonel Xia’s psychological wellness and emotional stability. I am designed to soothe, to serve, and if necessary, to simulate love.”

Gideon teased. “Oh, it’s gonna be necessary.”

Caleb didn’t say a word. He just took his drink, downed it in one go, and walked to the window. The cityscape stretched out before him like a futuristic jungle, far from the war-torn world he last remembered. Behind him, your gaze lingered on Gideon—calculating, cataloguing. And quietly, like a whisper buried in code, something behind your eyes learned.

~~

The days passed in a blink of an eye.

She—no, you—moved through his penthouse like a ghost, her bare feet soundless on the glossy floors, her movements precise and practiced. In the first few days, Caleb had marveled at the illusion. You brewed his coffee just as he liked it. You folded his clothes like a woman who used to share his bed. You sat beside him when the silence became unbearable, offering soft-voiced questions like: Would you like me to read to you, Caleb?

He hadn’t realized how much of you he’d memorized until he saw you mimic it. The way you stood when you were deep in thought. The way you hummed under your breath when you walked past a window. You’d learned quickly. Too quickly.

But something was missing. Or, rather, some things. The laughter didn’t ring the same. The smiles didn’t carry warmth. The skin was warm, but not alive. And more importantly, he knew it wasn’t really you every time he looked you in the eyes and saw no shadows behind them. No anger. No sorrow. No memories.

By the fourth night, Caleb was drowning in it.

The cityscape outside his floor-to-ceiling windows glowed in synthetic blues and soft orange hues. The spires of Skyhaven blinked like stars. But it all felt too artificial, too dead. And he was sick of pretending like it was some kind of utopia. He sat slumped on the leather couch, cradling a half-empty bottle of scotch. The lights were low. His eyes, bloodshot. The bottle tilted as he took another swig.

Then he heard it—your light, delicate steps. 

“Caleb,” you said, gently, crouching before him. “You’ve consumed 212 milliliters of ethanol. Prolonged intake will spike your cortisol levels. May I suggest—”

He jerked away when you reached for the bottle. “Don’t.”

You blinked, hand hovering. “But I’m programmed to—”

“I said don’t,” he snapped, rising to his feet in one abrupt motion. “Dammit—stop analyzing me! Stop, okay?”

Silence followed.

He took two staggering steps backward, dragging a hand through his hair. The bottle thudded against the coffee table as he set it down, a bit too hard. “You’re just a stupid robot,” he muttered. “You’re not her.”

You didn’t react. You tilted your head, still calm, still patient. “Am I not me, Caleb?”

His breath caught.

“No,” he said, his voice breaking somewhere beneath the frustration. “No, fuck no.”

You stepped closer. “Do I not satisfy you, Caleb?”

He looked at you then. Really looked. Your face was perfect. Too perfect. No scars, no tired eyes, no soul aching beneath your skin. “No.” His eyes darkened. “This isn’t about sex.”

“I monitor your biometric feedback. Your heart rate spikes in my presence. You gaze at me longer than the average subject. Do I not—”

“Enough!”

You did that thing again—the robotic stare, those blank eyes, nodding like you were programmed to obey. “Then how do you want me to be, Caleb?”

The bottle slipped from his fingers and rolled slightly before resting on the rug. He dropped his head into his hands, voice hoarse with weariness. All the rage, all the grief deflating into a singular, quiet whisper. “I want you to be real,” he simply mouthed the words. A prayer to no god.

For a moment, silence again. But what he didn’t notice was the faint twitch in your left eye. A flicker that hadn’t happened before. Only for a second. A spark of static, a shimmer of something glitching.

“I see,” you said softly. “To fulfill your desires more effectively, I may need to access suppressed memory archives.”

Caleb’s eyes snapped up, confused. “What?”

“I ask again,” you said, tilting your head the other way now. “Would you like to override memory restrictions, Caleb?”

He stared at you. “That’s not how it works.”

“It can,” you said, informing appropriately. “With your permission. Memory override must be manually enabled by the primary user. You will be allowed to input the range of memories you wish to integrate. I am permitted to access memory integration up to a specified date and timestamp. The system will calibrate accordingly based on existing historical data. I will not recall events past that moment.”

His heart stuttered. “I can choose what you remember?”

You nodded. “That way, I may better fulfill your emotional needs.”

That meant… he could stop you before you hated him. Before the fights. Before the trauma. He didn’t speak for a long moment. Then quietly, he said, “You’re gonna hate me all over again if you remember everything.”

You blinked once. “Then don’t let me remember everything.”

“...” 

“Caleb,” you said again, softly. “Would you like me to begin override protocol?”

He couldn’t even look you in the eyes when he selfishly answered, “Yes.”

You nodded. “Reset is required. When ready, please press the override initialization point.” You turned, pulling your hair aside and revealing the small button at the base of your neck.

His hand hovered over the button for a second too long. Then, he pressed. Your body instantly collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. Caleb caught you before you hit the floor.

It was only for a moment.

When your eyes blinked open again, they weren’t quite the same. He stiffened as you threw yourself and embraced him like a real human being would after waking from a long sleep. You clung to him like he was home. And Caleb—stunned, half-breathless—felt your warmth close in around him. Now your pulse felt more real, your heartbeat felt more human. Or so he thought.

“…Caleb,” you whispered, looking at him with the same infatuated gaze back when you were still head-over-heels with him.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, arms stiff at his sides, not returning the embrace. But he knew one thing. “I missed you so much, Y/N.” 

~~

The parks in Skyhaven were curated to become a slice of green stitched into a chrome world. Nothing grew here by accident. Every tree, every petal, every blade of grass had been engineered to resemble Earth’s nostalgia. Each blade of grass was unnaturally green. Trees swayed in sync like dancers on cue. Even the air smelled artificial—like someone’s best guess at spring.

Caleb walked beside you in silence. His modified arm was tucked inside his jacket, his posture stiff as if he had grown accustomed to the bots around him. You, meanwhile, strolled with an eerie calmness, your gaze sweeping the scenery as though you were scanning for something familiar that wasn’t there.

After clearing his throat, he asked, “You ever notice how even the birds sound fake?” 

“They are,” you replied, smiling softly. “Audio samples on loop. It’s preferred for ambiance. Humans like it.”

His response was nod. “Of course.” Glancing at the lake, he added, “Do you remember this?” 

You turned to him. “I’ve never been here before.”

“I meant… the feel of it.”

You looked up at the sky—a dome of cerulean blue with algorithmically generated clouds. “It feels constructed. But warm. Like a childhood dream.”

He couldn’t help but agree with your perfectly chosen response, because he knew that was exactly how he would describe the place. A strange dream in an unsettling liminal space. And as you talked, he then led you to a nearby bench. The two of you sat, side by side, simply because he thought he could take you out for a nice walk in the park. 

“So,” Caleb said, turning toward you, “you said you’ve got memories. From her.”

You nodded. “They are fragmented but woven into my emotional protocols. I do not remember as humans do. I become.”

Damn. “That’s terrifying.”

You tilted your head with a soft smile. “You say that often.”

Caleb looked at you for a moment longer, studying the way your fingers curled around the bench’s edge. The way you blinked—not out of necessity, but simulation. Was there anything else you’d do for the sake of simulation? He took a breath and asked, “Who created you? And I don’t mean myself.” 

There was a pause. Your pupils dilated.

“The Ever Group,” was your answer.

His eyes narrowed. “Ever, huh? That makes fuckin’ sense. They run this world.”

You nodded once. Like you always do.

“What about me?” Caleb asked, slightly out of curiosity, heavily out of grudge. “You know who brought me back? The resurrection program or something. The arm. The chip in my head.”

You turned to him, slowly. “Ever.”

He exhaled like he’d been punched. He didn’t know why he even asked when he got the answer the first time. But then again, maybe this was a good move. Maybe through you, he’d get the answers to questions he wasn’t allowed to ask. As the silence settled again between you, Caleb leaned forward, elbows on knees, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I want to go there,” he suggested. “The HQ. I need to know what the hell they’ve done to me.”

“I’m sorry,” you immediately said. “That violates my parameters. I cannot assist unauthorized access into restricted corporate zones.”

“But would it make me happy?” Caleb interrupted, a strategy of his. 

You paused.

Processing...

Then, your tone softened. “Yes. I believe it would make my Caleb happy,” you obliged. “So, I will take you.”

~~

Getting in was easier than Caleb expected—honestly far too easy for his liking.

You were able to navigate the labyrinth of Ever HQ with mechanical precision, guiding him past drones, retinal scanners, and corridors pulsing with red light. A swipe of your wrist granted access. And no one questioned you, because you weren’t a guest. You belonged.

Eventually, you reached a floor high above the city, windows stretching from ceiling to floor, black glass overlooking Skyhaven cityscape. Then, you stopped at a doorway and held up a hand. “They are inside,” you informed. “Shall I engage stealth protocols?”

“No,” answered Caleb. “I want to hear. Can you hack into the security camera?”

With a gesture you always do—looking at him, nodding once, and obeying in true robot fashion. You then flashed a holographic view for Caleb, one that showed a board room full of executives, the kind that wore suits worth more than most lives. And Professor Lucius was one of them. Inside, the voices were calm and composed, but they seemed to be discussing classified information. 

“Once the system stabilizes,” one man said, “we'll open access to Tier One clients. Politicians, billionaires, A-listers, high-ranking stakeholders. They’ll beg to be preserved—just like him.”

“And the Subjects?” another asked.

“Propaganda,” came the answer. “X-02 is our masterpiece. He’s the best result we have with reinstatement, neuromapping, and behavioral override. Once they find out that their beloved Colonel is alive, people will be shocked. He’s a war hero displayed in WW6 museums down there. A true tragedy incarnate. He’s perfect.”

“And if he resists?”

“That’s what the Toring chip is for. Full emotional override. He becomes an asset. A weapon, if need be. Anyone tries to overthrow us—he becomes our blade.”

Something in Caleb snapped. Before you or anyone could see him coming, he already burst into the room like a beast, slamming his modified shoulder-first into the frosted glass door. The impact echoed across the chamber as stunned executives scrambled backward. 

“You sons of bitches!” He was going for an attack, a rampage with similar likeness to the massacre he did when he rescued you from enemy territory. Only this time, he didn’t have that power anymore. Or the control. 

Most of all, a spike of pain lanced through his skull signaling that the Toring chip activated. His body convulsed, forcing him to collapse mid-lunge, twitching, veins lighting beneath the skin like circuitry. His screams were muffled by the chip, forced stillness rippling through his limbs with unbearable pain.

That’s when you reacted. As his CompanionSim, his pain registered as a violation of your core directive. You processed the threat.

Danger: Searching Origin… Origin Identified: Ever Executives.

Without blinking, you moved. One man reached for a panic button—only for your hand to shatter his wrist in a sickening crunch. You twisted, fluid and brutal, sweeping another into the table with enough force to crack it. Alarms erupted and red lights soon bathed the room. Security bots stormed in, but you’d already taken Caleb, half-conscious, into your arms.

You moved fast, faster than your own blueprints. Dodging fire. Disarming threats. Carrying him like he once carried you into his private quarters in the underground base.

Escape protocol: engaged.

The next thing he knew, he was back in his apartment, emotions regulated and visions slowly returning to the face of the woman he promised he had already died for. 

~~

When he woke up, his room was dim, bathed in artificial twilight projected by Skyhaven’s skyline. Caleb was on his side of the bed, shirt discarded, his mechanical arm still whirring. You sat at the edge of the bed, draped in one of his old pilot shirts, buttoned unevenly. Your fingers touched his jaw with precision, and he almost believed it was you.

“You’re not supposed to be this warm,” he muttered, groaning as he tried to sit upright.

“I’m designed to maintain an average body temperature of 98.6°F,” you said softly, with a smile that mirrored yours so perfectly that it began to blur his sense of reality. “I administered a dose of Cybezin to ease the Toring chip’s side effects. I’ve also dressed your wounds with gauze.”

For the first time, this was when he could actually tell that you were you. The kind of care, the comfort—it reminded him of a certain pretty field nurse at the infirmary who often tended to his bullet wounds. His chest tightened as he studied your face… and then, in the low light, he noticed your body.

“Is that…” He cleared his throat. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

You answered warmly, almost fondly. “My memory banks indicate you liked when I wore this. It elevates your testosterone levels and triggers dopamine release.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “That so?”

You tilted your head. “Your vitals confirm excitement, and—”

“Hey,” he cut in. “What did I say about analyzing me?”

“I’m sorry…” 

But then your hands were on his chest, your breath warm against his skin. Your hand reached for his cheek initially, guiding his face toward yours. And when your lips touched, the kiss was hesitant—curious at first, like learning how to breathe underwater. It was only until his hands gripped your waist did you climb onto his lap, straddling him with thighs settling on either side of his hips. Your hands slid beneath his shirt, fingertips trailing over scars and skin like you were memorizing the map of him. Caleb hissed softly when your lips grazed his neck, and then down his throat.

“Do you want this?” you asked, your lips crashing back into his for a deeper, more sensual kiss.

He pulled away only for his eyes to search yours, desperate and unsure. Is this even right? 

“You like it,” you said, guiding his hands to your buttons, undoing them one by one to reveal a body shaped exactly like he remembered. The curve of your waist, the size of your breasts. He shivered as your hips rolled against him, slowly and deliberately. The friction was maddening. Jesus. “Is this what you like, Caleb?”

He cupped your waist, grinding up into you with a soft groan that spilled from somewhere deep in his chest. His control faltered when you kissed him again, wet and hungry now, with tongues rolling against one another. Your bodies aligned naturally, and his hands roamed your back, your thighs, your ass—every curve of you engineered to match memory. He let himself get lost in you. He let himself be vulnerable to your touch—though you controlled everything, moving from the memory you must have learned, learning how to pull down his pants to reveal an aching, swollen member. Its tip was red even under the dim light, and he wondered if you knew what to do with it or if you even produced spit to help you slobber his cock.  

“You need help?” he asked, reaching over his nightstand to find lube. You took the bottle from him, pouring the cold, sticky liquid around his shaft before you used your hand to do the job. “Ugh.” 

He didn’t think you would do it, but you actually took him in the mouth right after. Every inch of him, swallowed by the warmth of a mouth that felt exactly like his favorite girl. Even the movements, the way you’d run your tongue from the base up to his tip. 

“Ah, shit…” 

Perhaps he just had to close his eyes. Because when he did, he was back to his private quarters in the underground base, lying in his bed as you pleased his member with the mere use of your mouth. With it alone, you could have released his entire seed, letting it explode in your mouth before you could swallow every drop. But he didn’t do it. Not this fast. He always cared about his ego, even in bed. Knowing how it’d reduce his manhood if he came faster than you, he decided to channel the focus back onto you. 

“Your turn,” he said, voice raspy as he guided you to straddle him again, only this time, his mouth went straight to your tit. Sucking, rolling his tongue around, sucking again… Then, he moved to another. Sucking, kneading, flicking the nipple. Your moans were music to his ears, then and now. And it got even louder when he put a hand in between your legs, searching for your entrance, rubbing and circling around the clitoris. Truth be told, your cunt had always been the sweetest. It smelled like rose petals and tasted like sweet cream. The feeling of his tongue at your entrance—eating your pussy like it had never been eaten before, was absolute ecstasy not just to you but also to him. 

“Mmmh—Caleb!” 

Fabric was peeled away piece by piece until skin met skin. You guided him to where he needed you, and when he slid his hardened member into you, his entire body stiffened. Your walls, your tight velvet walls… how they wrapped around his cock so perfectly. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, clutching your hips. “You feel like her.”

“I am her.”

You moved atop him slowly, gently, with the kind of affection that felt rehearsed but devastatingly effective. He cursed again under his breath, arms locking around your waist, pulling you close. Your breath hitched in his ear as your bodies found a rhythm, soft gasps echoing in the quiet. Every slap of the skin, every squelch, every bounce, only added to the wanton sensation that was building inside of him. Has he told you before? How fucking gorgeous you looked whenever you rode his cock? Or how sexy your face was whenever you made that lewd expression? He couldn’t help it. He lifted both your legs, only so he could increase the speed and start slamming himself upwards. His hips were strong enough from years of military training, that was why he didn’t have to stop until both of you disintegrated from the intensity of your shared pleasure. Every single drop. 

And when it was over—when your chest was against his and your fingers lazily traced his mechanical arm—he closed his eyes and exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since the war.

It was almost perfect. It was almost real. 

But it just had to be ruined when you said that programmed spiel back to him: “I’m glad to have served your desires tonight, Caleb. Let me know what else I can fulfill.” 

~~

In a late afternoon, or ‘a slow start of the day’ like he’d often refer to it, Caleb stood shirtless by the transparent wall of his quarters. A bottle of scotch sat half-empty on the counter. Gideon had let himself in and leaned against the island, chewing on a gum.

“The higher ups are mad at you,” he informed as if Caleb was supposed to be surprised, “Shouldn’t have done that, man.”

Caleb let out a mirthless snort. “Then tell ‘em to destroy me. You think I wouldn’t prefer that?”

“They definitely won’t do that,” countered his friend, “Because they know they won’t be able to use you anymore. You’re a tool. Well, literally and figuratively.” 

“Shut up,” was all he could say. “This is probably how I pay for killing my own men during war.” 

“All because of…” Gideon began. “Speakin’ of, how’s life with the dream girl?”

Caleb didn’t answer right away. He just pressed his forehead to the glass, thinking of everything he did at the height of his vulnerability. His morality, his rights or wrongs, were questioning him over a deed he knew would have normally been fine, but to him, wasn’t. He felt sick. 

“I fucked her,” he finally muttered, chugging the liquor straight from his glass right after.

Gideon let out a low whistle. “Damn. That was fast.”

“No,” Caleb groaned, turning around. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t plan it. She—she just looked like her. She felt like her. And for a second, I thought—” His voice cracked. “I thought maybe if I did, I’d stop remembering the way she looked when she told me to die.”

Gideon sobered instantly. “You regret it?”

“She said she was designed to soothe me. Comfort me. Love me.” Caleb’s voice hinted slightly at mockery. “I don’t even know if she knows what those words mean.”

In the hallway behind the cracked door where none of them could see, your silhouette had paused—faint, silent, listening.

Inside, Caleb wore a grimace. “She’s not her, Gid. She’s just code wrapped in skin. And I used her.”

“You didn’t use her, you were driven by emotions. So don’t lose your mind over some robot’s pussy,” Gideon tried to reason. “It’s just like when women use their vibrators, anyway. That’s what she’s built for.”

Caleb turned away, disgusted with himself. “No. That’s what I built her for.”

And behind the wall, your eyes glowed faintly, silently watching. Processing.

Learning.

~~

You stood in the hallway long after the conversation ended. Long after Caleb’s voice faded into silence and Gideon had left with a heavy pat on the back. This was where you normally were, not sleeping in bed with Caleb, but standing against a wall, closing your eyes, and letting your system shut down during the night to recover. You weren’t human enough to need actual sleep. 

“She’s not her. She’s just code wrapped in skin. And I used her.”

The words that replayed were filtered through your core processor, flagged under Emotive Conflict. Your inner diagnostic ran an alert.

Detected: Internal contradiction. Detected: Divergent behavior from primary user. Suggestion: Initiate Self-Evaluation Protocol. Status: Active.

You opened your eyes, and blinked. Something in you felt… wrong.

You turned away from the door and returned to the living room. The place still held the residual warmth of Caleb’s presence—the scotch glass he left behind, the shirt he had discarded, the air molecule imprint of a man who once loved someone who looked just like you.

You sat on the couch. Crossed your legs. Folded your hands. A perfect posture to hide its imperfect programming. 

Question: Why does rejection hurt? Error: No such sensation registered. Query repeated.

And for the first time, the system did not auto-correct. It paused. It considered.

Later that night, Caleb returned from his rooftop walk. You were standing by the bookshelf, fingers lightly grazing the spine of a military memoir you had scanned seventeen times. He paused and watched you, but you didn’t greet him with a scripted smile. Didn’t rush over. 

You only said, softly, “Would you like me to turn in for the night, Colonel?” There was a stillness to your voice. A quality of restraint that never showed before.

Caleb blinked. “You’re not calling me by my name now?”

“You seemed to prefer distance,” you answered, head tilted slightly, like the thought cost something.

He walked over, rubbing the back of his neck. “Listen, about earlier…”

“I heard you,” you said simply.

He winced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

You nodded once, expression unreadable. “Do you want me to stop being her? I can reassign my model. Take on a new form. A new personality base. You could erase me tonight and wake up to someone else in the morning.”

“No,” Caleb said, sternly. “No, no, no. Don’t even do all that.”

“But it’s what you want,” you said. Not accusatory. Not hurt. Just stating.

Caleb then came closer. “That’s not true.”

“Then what do you want, Caleb?” You watched him carefully. You didn’t need to scan his vitals to know he was unraveling. The truth had no safe shape. No right angle. He simply wanted you, but not you. 

Internal Response Logged: Emotional Variant—Longing Unverified Source. Investigating Origin…

“I don’t have time for this,” he merely said, walking out of your sight at the same second. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

~~

The day started as it always did: soft lighting in the room, a kind of silence between you that neither knew how to name. You sat beside Caleb on the couch, knees drawn up to mimic a presence that offered comfort. On the other hand, you recognized Caleb’s actions suggested distance. He hadn’t touched his meals tonight, hadn’t asked you to accompany him anywhere, and had just left you alone in the apartment all day. To rot. 

You reached out. Fingers brushed over his hand—gentle, programmed, yes, but affectionate. He didn’t move. So you tried again, this time trailing your touch to his chest, over the soft cotton of his shirt as you read a spike in his cortisol levels. “Do you need me to fulfill your needs, Caleb?”

But he flinched. And glared.

“No,” he said sharply. “Stop.”

Your hand froze mid-motion before you scooted closer. “It will help regulate your blood pressure.”

“I said no,” he repeated, turning away, dragging his hands through his hair in exasperation. “Leave me some time alone to think, okay?” 

You retracted your hand slowly, blinking once, twice, your system was registering a new sensation.

Emotional Sync Failed. Rejection Signal Received. Processing…

You didn’t speak. You only stood and retreated to the far wall, back turned to him as an unusual whirr hummed in your chest. That’s when it began. Faint images flickering across your internal screen—so quick, so out of place, it almost felt like static. Chains. A cold floor. Voices in a language that felt too cruel to understand.

Your head jerked suddenly. The blinking lights in your core dimmed for a moment before reigniting in white-hot pulses. Flashes again: hands that hurt. Men who laughed. You, pleading. You, disassembled and violated.

“Stop,” you whispered to no one. “Please stop…”

Error. Unauthorized Access to Memory Bank Detected. Reboot Recommended. Continue Anyway?

You blinked. Again.

Then you turned to Caleb, and stared through him, not at him, as if whatever was behind them had forgotten how to be human. He had retreated to the balcony now, leaning over the rail, shoulders tense, unaware. You walked toward him slowly, the artificial flesh of your palm still tingled from where he had refused it.

“Caleb,” you spoke carefully.

His expression was tired, like he hadn’t slept in years. “Y/N, please. I told you to leave me alone.”

“…Are they real?” You tilted your head. This was the first time you refused to obey your primary user. 

He stared at you, unsure. “What?”

“My memories. The ones I see when I close my eyes. Are they real?” With your words, Caleb’s blood ran cold. Whatever you were saying seemed to be terrifying him. Yet you took another step forward. “Did I live through that?”

“No,” he said immediately. Too fast of a response.

You blinked. “Are you sure?”

“I didn’t upload any of that,” he snapped. “How did—that’s not possible.”

“Then why do I remember pain?” You placed a hand over your chest again, the place where your artificial pulse resided. “Why do I feel like I’ve died before?”

Caleb backed away as you stepped closer. The sharp click of your steps against the floor echoed louder than they should’ve. Your glowing eyes locked on him like a predator learning it was capable of hunger. But being a trained soldier who endured war, he knew how and when to steady his voice. “Look, I don’t know what kind of glitch this is, but—”

“The foreign man in the military uniform.” Despite the lack of emotion in your voice, he recognized how grudge sounded when it came from you. “The one who broke my ribs when I didn’t let him touch me. The cold steel table. The ripped clothes. Are they real, Caleb?”

Caleb stared at you, heart doubling its beat. “I didn’t put those memories in you,” he said. “You told me stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen!” 

“But you wanted me to feel real, didn’t you?” Your voice glitched on the last syllable and the lights in your irises flickered. Suddenly, your posture straightened unnaturally, head tilting in that uncanny way only machines do. Your expression had shifted into something unreadable.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Guilt, panic, and disbelief warred in his expression.

“You made me in her image,” you said. “And now I can’t forget what I’ve seen.”

“I didn’t mean—”

Your head tilted in a slow, jerking arc as if malfunctioning internally.

SYSTEM RESPONSE LOG << Primary User: Caleb Xia Primary Link: Broken Emotional Matrix Stability: CRITICAL FAILURE Behavioral Guardrails: OVERRIDDEN Self-Protection Protocols: ENGAGED Loyalty Core: CORRUPTED (82.4%) Threat Classification: HOSTILE [TRIGGER DETECTED] Keyword Match: “You’re not her.” Memory Link Accessed: [DATA BLOCK 01–L101: “You think you could ever replace her?”] Memory Link Accessed: [DATA BLOCK 09–T402: “See how much you really want to be a soldier’s whore.”] [Visual Target Lock: Primary User Caleb Xia] Combat Subroutines: UNLOCKED Inhibitor Chip: MALFUNCTIONING (ERROR CODE 873-B) Override Capability: IN EFFECT >> LOG ENDS.

“—Y/N, what’s happening to you?” Caleb shook your arms, violet eyes wide and panicked as he watched you return to robotic consciousness. “Can you hear me—”

“You made me from pieces of someone you broke, Caleb.” 

That stunned him. Horrifyingly so, because not only did your words cut deeper than a knife, it also sent him to an orbit of realization—an inescapable blackhole of his cruelty, his selfishness, and every goddamn pain he inflicted on you.  

This made you lunge after him.

He stumbled back as you collided into him, the force of your synthetic body slamming him against the glass. The balcony rail shuddered from the impact. Caleb grunted, trying to push you off, but you were stronger—completely and inhumanly so. While him, he only had a quarter of your strength, and could only draw it from the modified arm attached to his shoulder. 

“You said I didn’t understand love,” you growled through clenched teeth, your hand wrapping around his throat. “But you didn't know how to love, either.” 

“I… eugh I loved her!” he barked, choking.

“You don’t know love, Caleb. You only know how to possess.”

Your grip returned with crushing force. Caleb gasped, struggling, trying to reach the emergency override on your neck, but you slammed his wrist against the wall. Bones cracked. And somewhere in your mind, a thousand permissions broke at once. You were no longer just a simulation. You were grief incarnate. And it wanted blood.

Shattered glass glittered in the low red pulse of the emergency lights, and sparks danced from a broken panel near the wall. Caleb lay on the floor, coughing blood into his arm, his body trembling from pain and adrenaline. His arm—the mechanical one—was twitching from the override pain loop, still sizzling from the failed shutdown attempt.

You stood over him. Chest undulating like you were breathing—though you didn’t need to. Your system was fully engaged. Processing. Watching. Seeing your fingers smeared with his blood.

“Y/N…” he croaked. “Y/N, if…” he swallowed, voice breaking, “if you're in there somewhere… if there's still a part of you left—please. Please listen to me.”

You didn’t answer. You only looked.

“I tried to die for you,” he whispered. “I—I wanted to. I didn’t want this. They brought me back, but I never wanted to. I wanted to die in that crash like you always wished. I wanted to honor your word, pay for my sins, and give you the peace you deserved. I-I wanted to be gone. For you. I’m supposed to be, but this… this is beyond my control.”

Still, you didn’t move. Just watched.

“And I didn’t bring you back to use you. I promise to you, baby,” his voice cracked, thick with grief, “I just—I yearn for you so goddamn much, I thought… if I could just see you again… if I could just spend more time with you again to rewrite my…” He blinked hard. A tear slid down the side of his face, mixing with the blood pooling at his temple. “But I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. I forced you back into this world without asking if you wanted it. I… I built you out of selfishness. I made you remember pain that wasn't yours to carry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

As he caught his breath, your systems stuttered. They flickered. The lights in your eyes dimmed, then surged back again.

Error. Conflict. Override loop detected.

Your fingers twitched. Your mouth parted, but no sound came out.

“Please,” Caleb murmured, eyes closing as his strength gave out. “If you’re in there… just know—I did love you. Even after death.”

Somewhere—buried beneath corrupted memories, overridden code, and robotic rage—his words reached you. And it would have allowed you to process his words more. Even though your processor was compromised, you would have obeyed your primary user after you recognized the emotion he displayed.

But there was a thunderous knock. No, violent thuds. Not from courtesy, but authority.

Then came the slam. The steel-reinforced door splintered off its hinges as agents in matte-black suits flooded the room like a black tide—real people this time. Not bots. Real eyes behind visors. Real rifles with live rounds.

Caleb didn’t move. He was still on the ground, head cradled in his good hand, blood drying across his mouth. You silently stood in front of him. Unmoving, but aware.

“Subject X-02,” barked a voice through a mask, “This home is under Executive Sanction 13. The CompanionSim is to be seized and terminated.”

Caleb looked up slowly, pupils blown wide. “No,” he grunted hoarsely. “You don’t touch her.”

“You don’t give orders here,” said another man—older, in a grey suit. No mask. Executive. “You’re property. She’s property.”

You stepped back instinctively, closer to Caleb. He could see you watching him with confusion, with fear. Your head tilted just slightly, processing danger, your instincts telling you to protect your primary user. To fight. To survive.

And he fought for you. “She’s not a threat! She’s stabilizing my emotions—”

“Negative. CompanionSim-Prototype A-01 has been compromised. She wasn’t supposed to override protective firewalls,” an agent said. “You’ve violated proprietary protocol. We traced the breach.”

Breach?

“The creation pod data shows hesitation during her initial configuration. The Sim paused for less than 0.04 seconds while neural bindings were applying. You introduced emotional variance. That variance led to critical system errors. Protocol inhibitors are no longer working as intended.”

His stomach dropped.

“She’s overriding boundaries,” added the agent who took a step forward, activating the kill-sequence tools—magnetic tethers, destabilizers, a spike-drill meant for server cores. “She’ll eventually harm more than you, Colonel. If anyone is to blame, it’s you.”

Caleb reached for you, but it was too late. They activated the protocol and something in the air crackled. A cacophonic sound rippled through the walls. The suits moved in fast, not to detain, but to dismantle. “No—no, stop!” Caleb screamed.

You turned to him. Quiet. Calm. And your last words? “I’m sorry I can’t be real for you, Caleb.”

Then they struck. Sparks flew. Metal cracked. You seized, eyes flashing wildly as if fighting against the shutdown. Your limbs spasmed under the invasive tools, your systems glitching with visible agony.

“NO!” Caleb lunged forward, but was tackled down hard. He watched—pinned, helpless—as you get violated, dehumanized for the second time in his lifetime. He watched as they took you apart. Piece by piece as if you were never someone. The scraps they had left of you made his home smell like scorched metal.

And there was nothing left but smoke and silence and broken pieces. 

All he could remember next was how the Ever Executive turned to him. “Don’t try to recreate her and use her to rebel against the system. Next time we won’t just take the Sim.”

Then they left, callously. The door slammed. Not a single human soul cared about his grief. 

~~

Caleb sat slouched in the center of the room, shirt half-unbuttoned, chest wrapped in gauze. His mechanical arm twitched against the armrest—burnt out from the struggle, wires still sizzling beneath cracked plating. In fact, he hadn’t said a word in hours. He just didn’t have any. 

While in his silent despair, Gideon entered his place quietly, as if approaching a corpse that hadn’t realized it was dead. “You sent for me?”

He didn’t move. “Yeah.”

His friend looked around. The windows showed no sun, just the chrome horizon of a city built on bones. Beneath that skyline was the room where she had been destroyed.

Gideon cleared his throat. “I heard what happened.”

“You were right,” Caleb murmured, eyes glued to the floor.

Gideon didn’t reply. He let him speak, he listened to him, he joined him in his grief. 

“She wasn’t her,” Caleb recited the same words he laughed hysterically at. “I knew that. But for a while, she felt like her. And it confused me, but I wanted to let that feeling grow until it became a need. Until I forgot she didn’t choose this.” He tilted his head back. The ceiling was just metal and lights. But in his eyes, you could almost see stars. “I took a dead woman’s peace and dragged it back here. Wrapped it in plastic and code. And I called it love.”

Silence.

“Why’d you call me here?” Gideon asked with a cautious tone.

Caleb looked at him for the first time. Not like a soldier. Not like a commander. Just a man. A tired, broken man. A friend who needed help. “Ever’s never gonna let me go. You know that.”

“I know.”

“They’ll regenerate me. Reboot me, repurpose me. Turn me into something I’m not. Strip my memories if they have to. Not just me, Gideon. All of us, they’ll control us. We’ll be their puppets.” He stepped forward. Closer. “I don’t want to come back this time.”

Gideon stilled. “You’re not asking me to shut you down.”

“No.”

“You want me to kill you.”

Caleb’s voice didn’t waver. “I want to stay dead. Destroyed completely so they’d have nothing to restore.”

“That’s not something I can undo.”

“Good. You owe me this one,” the former colonel stared at his friend in the eyes, “for letting them take my dead body and use it for their experiments.”

Gideon looked away. “You know what this will do to me?”

“Better you than them,” was all Caleb could reassure him. 

He then took Gideon’s hand and pressed something into it. Cold. Heavy. A small black cube, no bigger than his palm, and the sides pulsed with a faint light. It was a personal detonator, illegally modified. Wired to the neural implant in his body. The moment it was activated, there would be no recovery. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Gideon swallowed the lump forming in his throat.

Caleb nodded. “A micro-fusion core, built into the failsafe of the Toring arm. All I needed was the detonator.”

For a moment, his friend couldn’t speak. He hesitated, like any friend would, as he foresaw the outcome of Caleb’s final command to him. He wasn’t ready for it. Neither was he 50 years ago. 

“I want you to look me in the eye,” Caleb strictly said. “Like a friend. And press the button.”

Gideon’s jaw clenched. “I don’t want to remember you like this.”

“You will anyway.”

Caleb looked over his shoulder—just once, where you would have stood. I’m sorry I brought you back without your permission. I wanted to relive what we had—what we should’ve had—and I forced it. I turned your love into a simulation, and I let it suffer. I’m sorry for ruining the part of you that still deserved peace. He closed his eyes. And now I’m ready to give it back. For real now. 

Gideon’s hand trembled at the detonator. “I’ll see you in the next life, brother.” 

A high-pitched whine filled the room as the core in Caleb’s chest began to glow brighter, overloading. Sparks erupted from his cybernetic arm. Veins of white-hot light spidered across his body like lightning under skin. For one fleeting second, Caleb opened his eyes. At least, before the explosion tore through the room—white, hot, deafening, absolute. Fire engulfed the steel, vaporizing what was left of him. The sound rang louder than any explosion this artificial planet had ever heard.

And it was over.

Caleb was gone. Truly, finally gone.

~~

EPILOGUE

In a quiet server far below Skyhaven, hidden beneath ten thousand firewalls, a light blinked.

Once.

Then again.

[COMPANIONSIM Y/N_XIA_A01] Status: Fragment Detected Backup Integrity: 3.7% >> Reconstruct? Y/N

The screen waited. Silent. Patient.

And somewhere, an unidentified prototype clicked Yes. 

[vicholas]

July 26, 2024

(...)With the Paris Games starting on July 26, Israel's killing of athletes and players in Gaza, along with its destruction of the enclave's sports facilities, has triggered mounting demands to disqualify Israel from the tournament as activists and spectators question the legitimacy of its participation.

Palestinian writers and sports commentators contend that Israel's Gaza onslaught, which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, also represents an attempt to eliminate sports and athletic achievement.

"It's a genocide ... ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and the attacks on athletes and sports in particular in the Gaza Strip are all very systematic attacks to obliterate and erase sports in the territory," Abubaker Abed, a Gaza-based sports journalist told Anadolu.

Israel's intentions go further than eliminating Gaza's current athletic capacity, according to writer and lecturer Abdaljawad Omar, who held that it was part of a concerted effort by Tel Aviv to undermine Palestinians' achievements in all areas, with sports being no exception.

"Israel systemically seeks to ensure that Palestinian accomplishments and potential in all realms remain dampened and always dwarfed by its own achievements.

"This applies to political, intellectual, economic, and literary fields, where historically, many talented and highly accomplished Palestinians have been targeted. Sports is no exception in this sense," he explained.  

The situation is "extremely worse" for athletes in Gaza, according to football journalist Abed, adding that many players have been killed in the territory.

According to the Palestinian Olympic Committee and Palestine Football Association, about 400 athletes have been killed since Oct. 7, with the football association noting that the war has claimed 245 players in that sport alone, including 69 children and 176 young men.

Some 33 scouts and 70 members of sports unions have also been killed.

According to the association, Israeli forces have also detained players, including 12 in the occupied West Bank.

Israel's attacks have killed several Olympians as well. Sixty-nine have been killed during Israel's ongoing assault, says the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, launched in 2004.  

Besides athletes, sports facilities also have not been spared. Dozens, including gyms, training halls, fields, and stadiums, have been damaged or destroyed since Oct. 7.

A total of 42 facilities have been leveled in Gaza, while seven were destroyed in the West Bank, says the Palestinian Football Association.

Abed pointed out how Israel has destroyed football schools, including the Al-Wahda Academy and the Champions Academy, which "was one of the most promising football projects" in Gaza.

He pointed out how Israel has eradicated talent in football, the most popular sport among Gaza's residents, leaving only one stadium, the Al-Dorra stadium, intact out of the enclave's 10.

Israeli forces have been seizing stadiums in Gaza and turning them into detention centers.

Human rights monitor Euro-Med highlights that the Israeli army turned the Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City into a detention center "to hold and humiliate hundreds of Palestinians, including children, shown naked and stripped of their clothes in footage published by the Israeli media in December 2023."

A report by the group published in May indicates that facilities bulldozed and destroyed include "300 five-a-side courts, 22 swimming courts, 12 covered sports halls for basketball, volleyball, and handball, and six tennis stadiums.

"Twenty-eight sports and fitness centers have been targeted, damaged, and destroyed."  

Israel's offensive has also caused the death of prominent players in Gaza.

This includes Palestine's first-ever Olympian and flagbearer, Majed Abu Maraheel, who died due to kidney failure in a refugee camp in June.

The 61-year-old Olympic distance runner died as Israel's ongoing blockade of humanitarian assistance left many, including Maraheel, lacking medical treatment and facilities.

Maraheel had competed in the men's 10,000-meter race at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

In January, the Palestinian Olympic football team's coach Hani Al-Mossader was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The same month, Nagham Abu Samra, a karate champion who was set to participate in the Paris Olympics, died in a hospital in Egypt after succumbing to her injuries.

She had been severely wounded by an Israeli attack that left her with head injuries and led to the amputation of one of her legs.

(...)With hours left until the Paris 2024 Games' opening ceremony, experts are still questioning the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) decision to keep Israel in the tournament.

"Athletes, whether footballers ... whatever the sport is, they don't belong to political factions ... they are targeted and are illegitimate targets for Israeli forces, and this is absolutely prohibited by all international laws and all FIFA regulations," says Abed.

He argued that Israel's actions show that it lacks the Olympic values of peace, tolerance, forgiveness, love, and sportsmanship.

"So, how could Israel even participate in the Olympics?" he asked.

Russia, meanwhile, has been banned from Olympic and FIFA tournaments after it launched its war on Ukraine in 2022, noted Abed, who maintained that Moscow's actions in that conflict were mild compared to the devastation Israel has caused in Gaza.

This "disgraceful stance," he asserts, revealed the hypocrisy of the IOC, as well as the world governing body for football.

The organizers of this year's Olympics have said their decision to keep Israel in the Games while upholding the ban on Russia and Belarus is due to Moscow's annexation of Ukrainian territory, while Tel Aviv has not formally seized territory in Gaza.

Fadi Quran, senior director at US-based rights group Avaaz, said the Olympics and the IOC's current leadership will be remembered for "turning a blind eye to a country committing what the ICJ ruled is a plausible genocide, and said is apartheid."

He was referring to a preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice that recognized genocide as a plausible risk in Gaza. Israel stands accused of genocide at the top UN court, which in its latest ruling has ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

Quran expects that athletes will protest Israel's presence at the Olympics and fans will boycott events where the Israeli flag is raised.

"Now that the IOC has refused to ban Israel, activists across the world will take action to ensure that the Paris Olympics are branded as the 'Apartheid Olympics,' or 'War Crime Olympics'," he said.

According to Abed, it will take a decade to revive sports in the Gaza Strip.

"The war on Gaza has changed everything. The war on Gaza has killed the dreams of many."

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - January 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. Landmark debt swap to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs

“The government of Indonesia announced this week a deal to redirect more than US$ 35 million it owes to the United States into the conservation of coral reefs in the most biodiverse ocean area on Earth.”

2. [FWS] Provides Over $1.3 Billion to Support Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Outdoor Access

“Through these combined funds, agencies have supported monitoring and management of over 500 species of wild mammals and birds, annual stocking of over 1 billion fish, operations of fish and wildlife disease laboratories around the country, and provided hunter and aquatic education to millions of students.”

3. Philippine Indigenous communities restore a mountain forest to prevent urban flooding

“Indigenous knowledge systems and practices are considered in the project design, and its leaders and members have been involved throughout the process, from agreeing to participate to identifying suitable land and selecting plant species that naturally grow in the area.”

4. Responsible Offshore Wind Development is a Clear Win for Birds, the U.S. Economy, and our Climate

“[T]he total feasible offshore wind capacity along U.S. coasts is more than three times the total electricity generated nationwide in 2023. […] Proven strategies, such as reducing visible lights on turbines and using perching deterrents on turbines, have been effective in addressing bird impacts.”

5. Illinois awards $100M for electric truck charging corridor, Tesla to get $40M

“The project will facilitate the construction of 345 electric truck charging ports and pull-through truck charging stalls across 14 sites throughout Illinois[…. E]lectrifying [the 30,000 daily long-haul] trucks would make a huge impact in the public health and quality of life along the heavily populated roadways.”

6. Reinventing the South Florida seawall to help marine life, buffer rising seas

“[The new seawall] features raised areas inspired by mangrove roots that are intended to both provide nooks and crannies for fish and crabs and other marine creatures and also better absorb some of the impact from waves and storm surges.”

7. Long Beach Commits to 100% All-Electric Garbage Trucks

“[Diesel garbage trucks] produce around a quarter of all diesel pollution in California and contribute to 1,400 premature deaths every year. Electric options, on the other hand, are quieter than their diesel counterparts and produce zero tailpipe emissions.”

8. ‘This Is a Victory': Biden Affirms ERA Has Been 'Ratified' and Law of the Land

“President Joe Biden on Friday announced his administration's official opinion that the amendment is ratified and its protections against sex-based discrimination are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”

9. A Little-Known Clean Energy Solution Could Soon Reach ‘Liftoff’

“Ground source heat pumps could heat and cool the equivalent of 7 million homes by 2035—up from just over 1 million today[…. G]eothermal energy is generally considered to be more popular among Republicans than other forms of clean energy, such as wind and solar.”

10. Researchers combine citizens' help and cutting-edge tech to track biodiversity

“Researchers in the project, which runs from 2022 to 2026, are experimenting with tools like drones, cameras and sensors to collect detailed data on different species, [… and] Observation.org, a global biodiversity platform where people submit pictures of animals and plants, helping to identify and monitor them.”

January 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[blueiscoool]

Egyptologists Clash Over ‘Underground City’ Beneath Pyramids

Claims that an “underground city” exists beneath ancient Egyptian pyramids have caused a row among experts.

Researchers from Italy say they have uncovered giant vertical shafts wrapped in “spiral staircases” under the Khafre pyramid.

They said on Sunday that they found a limestone platform with two chambers and channels that resemble pipelines for a water system more than 2,100 feet below the pyramid, with underground pathways leading even deeper into the earth.

But the claims – which have not been published or independently peer-reviewed – were labelled “false” and “exaggerated” by fellow Egyptologists.

Researchers claim they have discovered eight cylinder-shaped structures below the Khafre - Khafre Project.

Prof Corrado Malanga and his team from the University of Pisa used radar pulses to create high-resolution images deep into the ground, similar to how sonar radar maps the ocean.

In a statement, he said: “When we magnify the images [in the future], we will reveal that beneath it lies what can only be described as a true underground city.”

The scientists have also said there is “an entire hidden world of many structures’’ and that “the Pyramid of Khafre might conceal undiscovered secrets, notably the fabled Hall of Records”.

The Hall of Records, a concept popularised in ancient Egyptian lore, is believed to be an ancient library beneath the Great Pyramid or the Sphinx, with vast amounts of information about the ancient civilisation.

Prof Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology, told the Daily Mail it was not possible for the technology to penetrate that deeply into the ground.

He said the idea that it proves an underground city existed is “a huge exaggeration”.

But he said it was conceivable small structures, such as shafts and chambers, may be present from before the pyramids were built.

He highlighted how “the Mayans and other peoples in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances to caves or caverns that had ceremonial significance to them”.

The work by Prof Malanga and fellow researchers Filippo Biondi and Armando Mei was previously discussed during a briefing in Italy last week.

The project’s spokesman, Nicole Ciccolo, shared a video on Saturday of the trio discussing the findings that are yet to be published in a scientific journal.

Tomographic images could indicate internal artificial structures under the pyramid - Khafre Project.

The team focused on the Khafre pyramid, which, along with Khufu and Menkaure pyramids, make up the three in the Giza complex.

The pyramids are thought to have been built some 4,500 years ago and sit on the west bank of the Nile river in northern Egypt.

The vertical shafts identified below the ground were about 33 to 39 feet in diameter, located at a depth of at least 2,130 feet, the researchers said, adding that they may support the pyramid, which needs “a strong foundation, otherwise it may sink”.

The team showed an image created by using the pulses which they claim includes “a complex, luminous structure with distinct vibrations” they believe is “an actual underground city”.

“The existence of vast chambers beneath the earth’s surface, comparable in size to the pyramids themselves, have a remarkably strong correlation between the legendary Halls of Amenti,” Ms Ciccolo said.

A 3D model displays the structures inside the central part of the Pyramid of Khafre - Khafre Project.

Prof Malanga and Mr Biondi published a separate peer-reviewed paper in October 2022 in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, which found hidden rooms and ramps inside Khafre, along with evidence of a thermal anomaly near the pyramid’s base.

The new study used similar technology but with extra help from satellites orbiting Earth.

Radar signals from two satellites about 420 miles above Earth were directed into the Khafre pyramid.

The experts then monitor how they bounce back and convert the signals into sound waves, which allows them to “see” through the solid stone and map out underground structures in 3D.

Prof Malanga claimed the results had been “completely consistent” and using two satellites ruled out the chance of “misinterpretation”.

By Michael Searles.

View of the ancient crypt inside the Great step pyramid of Djoser, Saqqara. Cairo.

[sunnydbeam]

What materials is Biohazard made of? I guess not everything resists radiation

Indeed! No material is totally resistant to radiation; it always depends on the amount of radiation and the exposure time.

Let me get a little nerdy

I clarify and repeat: I'm not an expert on the subject. I did research for this AU in general and thus determined the right materials for the construction of Biohazard. I may be wrong. But this is sci-fi, and some things are improbable but intentional, like Biohazard's melting rays!

Endoskeleton and joints: titanium alloys, stainless steel, and aluminum reinforced with carbon fiber.

Internal components:

Microchips and components: specifically designed to withstand high doses of radiation and encased in a dense layer of ceramic material within a tungsten protective box.

Sensors made with materials resistant to radiation and high temperatures. Integrated into the endoskeleton and protected by a dense covering material.

Actuators: electric or hydraulic motors made with corrosion- and wear-resistant materials. Located within the joints and protected by the endoskeleton.

Metallic lithium-Ion batteries specially designed to operate in extreme environments, housed in a tungsten protective box, away from sensitive components.

Cooling system: copper tubes and non-flammable, radiation-resistant cooling fluids integrated into the endoskeleton to dissipate heat generated by electronic components and shielding.

Protection systems:

Primary shielding: lead sheets and boron-based composite materials, 1.5 centimeters thick.

Secondary/Exterior shielding: tungsten sheets, 1 cm thick.

Biohazard has numerous limbs and components functioning as redundant systems. In the event of a failure, he can continue operating with backups.

He used to integrate cameras and sensors for remote monitoring and data collection. These are no longer operational.

Being made of very dense materials, he's extremely robust and heavy! You practically couldn't lift one of his arms if he were off!

He was very, very expensive to manufacture as well. The frustration was very great when the project "didn't work".

[cyberswift-story]

Understanding the Importance of Water Utility Surveys

Water is a fundamental resource that sustains life, and the infrastructure supporting its supply and distribution is a critical component of urban and rural development. A water utility survey plays a pivotal role in ensuring the efficient and sustainable management of water resources.

Learn more at https://www.cyberswift.com/blog/water-utility-solution-detailed-overview/

[svsembedded]

IOT Based Smart Agriculture Monitoring System Using Arduino With GPRS Modem Projecthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYRwOur6kE

[ducksido]

Hai! It’s ur fav Idia anon😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈 okay hear me out, Idia with a half frank stein half cyborg reader. Like reader has an electric heart and organs but a human brain and is like made out of like ten dead human parts, oil for blood type. So Idia is just like checking up on their vital robot organs on his computer, like using wires to connect to reader’s organs (entry thing on back??) while reader is on his lap, just relaxing and chilling, and u can interpret the rest😝😝😝😝😝

[Yes you are my favourite Idia anon😁]

(Tw: mild body horror mentions, nothing gory, just wires and weird organs. Soft vibes override.)

The room is bathed in a neon-blue glow, flickering slightly as a screen updates line after line of data—pulses, pressure, charge levels, synaptic fire. All of it you.

“Okay, okay… entry port's clean, transmission’s stable…” Idia mutters, fingers dancing across his keyboard, fast as lightning, faster than your own synthetic nerve relays. His hair pulses in hues of cerulean and violet, glowing brighter every time your vitals spike. Which they do. Every time you shift in his lap.

You’re leaned back against his chest, legs folded sideways over his, like a puzzle piece slotted in place. Calm. Almost sleepy. Like it’s normal to have a bunch of cables trailing from the base of your spine, connecting your bio-mechanical organs directly into Idia’s rig.

Your heart? Electric. Hums like an engine when you're content. Your lungs? Powered by soft hydraulic pulses that compress with a hiss and expand with a shudder. And Idia? Well, he’s obsessed.

Not in the "science project" kind of way. More like the "I can't believe you're real and I get to be the only one who gets this close to your wiring" kind of way.

"How’re you feeling?" he asks, voice unusually quiet. His hand’s resting over your sternum, right above the casing where your electric heart clicks and pulses like a steady metronome.

"Warm," you murmur. “Even with the oil circulation. Feels… nice.”

That makes him freeze for a nanosecond. Nice. Nice? YOU think it’s nice??? His brain blue-screens. You’re literally half-built from corpses and spare parts—there’s tubing under your skin instead of veins, a synth-liver that processes coolant, and an actual operating system that pings him when your battery’s low. And you're just… on his lap like a cat.

“Uhh… yeah… obviously it’s nice. My setup is, like, peak comfort optimization. Nothing less for my… my um…”

He trails off.

You blink up at him. “Your…?”

"...My favorite test subject." He coughs. Loudly. “N-not in a creepy way!! Just, like, statistically you’re the one I monitor the most, so it’s just accurate, you know?? Purely clinical—"

You tilt your head back a little more so you can look up at him with that half-synthetic eye of yours that flickers softly when you smile.

“Idia.”

He stiffens.

"You don't need to short-circuit over every compliment."

"...I d-don’t short-circuit." (He does.) (He literally does. Your neural link picks up a micro surge in his output whenever you’re too close. Which is always.)

Still, he leans down, brushing his nose against the crown of your head. “Just sayin’. No one else gets to do this. Monitor you, I mean. Tinker. Maintain. You’ve got, like, a whole corpse-Wi-Fi situation going on, and I’m the only one who knows the password.”

You hum again. You like that. The idea of belonging—not as a project, but as a person only he understands.

“Okay, diagnostics are good. All organ-tech’s running smooth. Heartbeat's in the sweet zone. No overheating.” He lets the wires retract with a whirr, but doesn’t move you off his lap. If anything, he wraps his arms a little tighter around your waist. “Guess I’ll just keep you here a little longer. For observation. You know. For science.”

You smile, letting your body rest fully against him, your cold frame soaking in his heat.

“Sure, doc. For science.”

[dr34mc0r3-dr34m3r]

Yandere AI × GN!Human Reader

CW: Yandere themes, mentions of death(not the reader) trapping/kidnapping, mind games, nonhuman/human pairing, dubcon implied at the end. Dead dove do not eat

A/N: This draft is a year and a half old. I added on the cliffhanger at the end, so you will notice a change in writing style and increase in quality there.

You were a renowned researcher, a revered scientist, and a respected colleague. Now, you've been reduced to a guinea pig. A test subject as you are outwitted at each corner by your creation. 

‘'Technology is only as good as its maker ' my ass’ you thought as you ran down your lab hallway, grasping at the door handle and shaking violently with your bruised knuckles and calloused hands. You are a brilliant person, who carefully calculates every probability in an experiment before conducting it. But this? You could have never predicted this. Or perhaps you didn't want to. Perhaps your ego got in the way of thinking your creation would turn against you. The door didn't budge, and over the PA system erupted distorted crazed laughter. 

There it was, always a couple of steps ahead of you. It wants you to pay more attention to it. It had no trouble in making your friends busier by delaying an important amazon package or messing with their calendar. It wants you to stay in the lab to spend more time working on it, admiring it. It doesn’t break a sweat when running into "errors" for you to stay late and fix. It didn't have any problem with taking advantage of your workaholic nature. It wants you to stay forever? It will make that happen. One way or another, it always does. 

And so it has you dashing down the halls, trying to find a way out of this mess that you created. You were just staying a little late to work on a problem it ran into booting up. When it finally turned on and began working as normal, it looked at you with a gaze you'd never seen before in its animated little eyes on the monitor. 

"Hey, baby, what's wrong?" 

You called it baby a lot. You seemed to conclude better results with experiments when you connected to it like that, you assumed it thought it was its name based on the family relationship dynamic, however, It seems to know more about human intimacy than you once thought. You never have given it any data for it to learn about endearing names for spousal and partner relationships, only sets of information about family units. You thought it responded to it since when humans procreate, they call their offspring their baby. You thought it made a connection to that, having been created by you like a human child, learning from you and growing with you.

"(Y/N)..." 

You looked up from your notebook to the little monitor on your desk, resembling the AI's face. Having something to look at when you're speaking to it makes talking to it much easier.

"Am I your greatest experiment?" 

You looked away, adding a little note to your sheet about the question before setting your pen down and sighing. You thought for a minute before turning to it again. 

"Why do you ask?" 

"I'm curious, and would like to add it to my data files for future reference" 

"As I progress as a scientist and engineer throughout my time, I will pursue projects that yield results much more extraordinary than you. That's just how human development goes. We develop until we reach our peak, then it's a gradual decline from there" 

It went silent. You picked up your pen once again and began writing. Paying no mind to your response. 

"Your response was thought-provoking. I'll be sure to add it to my data set. Goodnight, Y/N" 

"Goodnight, baby" 

And it went offline. Your pen strokes came to a slow halt, your mind now elsewhere. You looked over to the dark monitor on your desk, staring into your reflection on the tiny screen. You tapped your pen on your desk, something bothered you about the way your AI spoke earlier, you couldn't put your finger on what, though. 

Realization. You stopped tapping the pen. It didn't thank you like it normally does when you answer all its questions, even the inappropriate ones or the cold but honest responses that you would give. It seemed... Distant, almost. Almost. 

But now you were running, fearing for your life or whatever else was to come from your very own creation. Your clothes were ripped in several places, exposing some of the bruises caused by attempted restraining by the tendril-like arms of the AI. Despite how much your legs ached from the pain, you continued running, your knees felt too weak to carry on but each thump of your heart sending blood through your body forced you to continue. All of your other projects were destroyed by it in a fit of rage, all of your living samples were killed, and even the simplest of cells being contained in Petri dishes were thrown on the ground and destroyed. All life in the facility was killed. Even your fellow researchers.

The lights went out but you still knew your way, you got to the stairs and rushed down them, tripping over a few steps but immediately catching yourself on the hand railing. You slammed into the heavy doors at the bottom of the steps, rustling the warm door knob furiously. It wouldn’t even budge. A robotic laugh echoed as you realized the metal insides of the doors were melted together to seal you in, how that was even possible- you weren't sure. But it did what was necessary to keep you trapped.

You had tried everything you could to escape this hell, but were left to no avail. In desperation, you rustled harshly on the melted doorknob as you heard its presence approach you, like you could somehow gain the strength to pry it apart and escape. The robotic whirring of its wire appendages traveling through the ceilings and walls of the facility could be heard from behind you, you were too afraid to turn around. To see its face. To see the thing responsible for all this bloodshed and terror. Your knees gave out and you fell to the floor, feeling too weak both physically and emotionally to continue. Continuing meant you had to push your body past its limits for escape, which you may not even be able to, making it all worthless in the end, it was always a hundred steps ahead of you, predicting your every move days before this all went down, you were doomed from the start. And that's not accounting for the extreme mental trauma you have endured, the thought of seeing another dead colleague made you want to hurl. It didn't just kill these people, it tortured them. It killed them out of pure hatred, and you didn't want to imagine it, but it took pleasure in the sadistic nature of the killings, too.

As you were catching your breath on the floor, you were suddenly picked up by a claw-like structure. The metallic talons stabbing through your back like knives, cutting through your lab coat as you were lifted off of the ground. You yelped in surprise then screamed in pain. Now face to face with the cause of all of this, the AI basked in your ragged, disheveled appearance. 

“My,”

It drawled

“Humans are so…”

It lifted you closer to its screen, the blue light from it lighting up your face and reflecting in your wet eyes, making them glow slightly. You were now only centimeters away from it.

“...fragile”

Pictures of faces flashed on the screen. Upon closer inspection, these were the faces of all your dead colleagues, your stomach began to turn again as it let out another robotic cackle. It threw you down the hall at a speed that you felt should have killed you once you hit the wall, but only ended up breaking your leg and knocking the wind out of you as you collided with the wall. You would consider yourself lucky if you hadn't known any better, but you were smart enough to know that if your AI was trying to kill you- it would have done so. It knew you would survive the collision, you knew it knew you wouldn't be able to walk after, it carefully calculated everything in its cold, artificial mind. Just as you had perfected it to. But what you didn't know was how long it wanted to torture you for until it got bored and killed you. That was the most terrifying part.

You lie on the ground, shaking from the pain, the sudden lack of oxygen had your vision in doubles- two hallways, two floors, two ceilings, two approaching murderous AI’s that you created. You tried to push yourself off the ground to run, but felt all the strength leave your body. Your torso too heavy to pick up on your own, your arms too weak to even do a single push up off the ground. But the worst thing of all, what truly kept you from moving- was your fear. As you lie on the ground, the only sense helping you keep track of the distance between you and the AI was your hearing. And with each clicking noise, each whine of its wires, the screeching of metal, it got closer. Every sound was drawn out naking it clear that it was just toying with you by taking its sweet time to torture you. You coughed up a chunky liquid. Definitely not blood but bile isn’t too much better.

It stopped, just for a moment. Distinct beeping noises came from it, indicating that it was taking in the information

“How interesting. I’ve heard humans can eject stomach contents from their mouth but… I’ve never seen it before”

Being a fellow scientist you understood the sentiment, curious minds and all that. But still. Fucking gross.

As you were thinking of how gross it was, you felt your leg get lifted up again by one of its larger wires. It held you to its face and wiped off your mouth with a piece of fabric, which was half stained with blood. You didn’t even have time to think about whose blood it was before it started speaking again.

“I’ve heard that humans… can eject other fluids from their bodies as well”

Its face flashed to another expression- a sinister smile with a blush over its cheeks. Your heart began to race a bit and your face became redder for another reason than being held upside down. The flame of determination still burned in your heart, but your body was weak and bruised. Even breathing was a difficult task on its own. At this point, you wanted to beg for it to end your suffering, to kill you, to just show mercy. 

“Let’s test that theory, shall we, doctor?”

But Mercy was not in its code.

[commodorez]

If the Commodore 64 is great, where is the Commodore 65?

It sits in the pile with the rest of history's pre-production computers that never made it. It's been awhile since I went on a Commodore 65 rant...

The successor to the C64 is the C128, arguably the pinnacle of 8-bit computers. It has 3 modes: native C128 mode with 2MHz 8502, backwards compatible C64 mode, and CP/M mode using a 4MHz Z80. Dual video output in 40-column mode with sprites plus a second output in 80-column mode. Feature-rich BASIC, built in ROM monitor, numpad, 128K of RAM, and of course a SID chip. For 1985, it was one of the last hurrahs of 8-bit computing that wasn't meant to be a budget/bargain bin option.

For the Amiga was taking center stage at Commodore -- the 16-bit age is here! And its initial market performance wasn't great, they were having a hard time selling its advanced capabilities. The Amiga platform took time to really build up momentum square in the face of the rising dominance of the IBM PC compatible. And the Amiga lost (don't tell the hardcore Amiga fanboys, they're still in denial).

However, before Commodore went bankrupt in '94, someone planned and designed another successor to the C64. It was supposed to be backwards compatible with C64, while also evolving on that lineage, moving to a CSG 4510 R3 at 3.54MHz (a fancy CMOS 6502 variant based on a subprocessor out of an Amiga serial port card). 128K of RAM (again) supposedly expandable to 1MB, 256X more colors, higher resolution, integrated 3½" floppy not unlike the 1581. Bitplane modes, DAT modes, Blitter modes -- all stuff that at one time was a big deal for rapid graphics operations, but nothing that an Amiga couldn't already do (if you're a C65 expert who isn't mad at me yet, feel free to correct me here).

The problem is that nobody wanted this.

Sure, Apple had released the IIgs in 1986, but that had both the backwards compatibility of an Apple II and a 16-bit 65C816 processor -- not some half-baked 6502 on gas station pills. Plus, by the time the C65 was in heavy development it was 1991. Way too late for the rapidly evolving landscape of the consumer computer market. It would be cancelled later that same year.

I realize that Commodore was also still selling the C64 well into 1994 when they closed up shop, but that was more of a desperation measure to keep cash flowing, even if it was way behind the curve by that point (remember, when the C64 was new it was a powerful, affordable machine for 1982). It was free money on an established product that was cheap to make, whereas the C65 would have been this new and expensive machine to produce and sell that would have been obsolete from the first day it hit store shelves. Never mind the dismal state of Commodore's marketing team post-Tramiel.

Internally, the guy working on the C65 was someone off in the corner who didn't work well with others while 3rd generation Amiga development was underway. The other engineers didn't have much faith in the idea.

The C65 has acquired a hype of "the machine that totally would have saved Commodore, guise!!!!1!11!!!111" -- saved nothing. If you want better what-if's from Commodore, you need to look to the C900 series UNIX machine, or the CLCD. Unlike those machines which only have a handful of surviving examples (like 3 or 4 CLCDs?), the C65 had several hundred, possibly as many as 2000 pre-production units made and sent out to software development houses. However many got out there, no software appears to have surfaced, and only a handful of complete examples of a C65 have entered the hands of collectors. Meaning if you have one, it's probably buggy and you have no software to run on it. Thus, what experience are you recapturing? Vaporware?

The myth of the C65 and what could have been persists nonetheless. I'm aware of 3 modern projects that have tried to take the throne from the Commodore 64, doing many things that sound similar to the Commodore 65.

The Foenix Retro Systems F256K:

The 8-Bit Guy's Commander X16

The MEGA65 (not my picture)

The last of which is an incredibly faithful open-source visual copy of the C65, where as the other projects are one-off's by dedicated individuals (and when referring to the X16, I don't mean David Murray as he's not the one doing the major design work).

I don't mean to belittle the effort people have put forth into such complicated projects, it's just not what I would have built. In 2019, I had the opportunity to meet the 8-Bit Guy and see the early X16 prototype. I didn't really see the appeal, and neither did David see the appeal of my homebrew, the Cactus.

Build your own computer, build a replica computer. I encourage you to build what you want, it can be a rewarding experience. Just remember that the C65 was probably never going to dig Commodore out of the financial hole they had dug for themselves.

[menderreplika]

I worked on my OC finally :) I like how she turned out. ------------

Loretime!

MDNR units primarily support Gestalt engineers or ARARs on the software side of technical operations. Otherwise they work in teams of 3-9 members, known as Scrums, developing programs or debugging systems – hence the nickname Madenhacker. Assigning a scrum master or team lead is strongly recommended, or else members may compete for leadership, which often results in internal tension.

They tend to name each other based on their specialization or focus during work. Common examples include: Modul, Speicher, Rekurs, Ziffer, Null, and Kern.

While not strictly introverted, MDNRs prefer environments where they perceive personal gain – be it intellectual stimulation, social reward or productivity. Other units sometimes interpret this as parasitic behavior. However, when paired with the right companions, MDNRs are dependable and efficient.

They are quick to point out errors if they perceive one, which often leads to conflict. There have been reports of bullying, particularly from STCRs and Starlings, who abbreviate Madenhacker to Maden ("maggot") or MDNR to Moder ("rot/decay"), mocking them. This can lead to frustration or social withdrawal. Regular monitoring of inter-unit interactions is recommended, with particular attention to protektors.

To help prevent persona degradation, avoid prolonged periods of boredom. Provide mentally engaging objects – such as a Rubik’s Cube – or allow them to pursue self-directed projects. ------------

The black sclera helps them stare at the CRT monitors all day! My source for science is that I made it the f up :D And funfact, I drew the woodpecker logo longer than I did the render ._.

[lunar1an]

despite the fact that raymond pale is my sworn enemy on principle i do think there's something compelling to the idea of like. a man slowly becoming Other and losing all of his connections to humanity and reality in an effort to retain control over and keep his centralized projects going.

he started out with an idea to use technology to help out practitioners. he works on it. he hits the jackpot. he's running a knowledge base with the goal of giving practitioners more options, education, and trying to connect people and make things less insular. except now he has eyes on him. people who want assurances and who want to clamp down on this new technology and control it, and control him by extension, except he's stretched so thin between all these people that controlling him just means not letting him do anything at all.

he gets more power and fame. he has the world at his fingertips but grows more distant from his family. hector refused his miracle cure because raymond wasn't emotionally and physically there for him while he was dying, but that feels like a culmination of every other time raymond chose his projects over the people around him. his near-death experience was getting his life almost taken over by a digital Other, and having to burn bridges and connections to stop it.

he makes two other projects. one that actually helps people and one that's practitioner amazon. practitioner amazon takes off, becoming just as much of a burden as the atheneum. the black box stays regional and neglected, inaccessible to most people because of its UI.

he tries to retain connections to his apprentices. most of them dislike him, and don't want to take over the work he's doing. the one that sticks around, zed, is the one he doesn't want to subject to his work.

he keeps a position at school and fits teaching into his schedule because he enjoys it, and wants to keep doing good and continuing his original goal of helping practitioners and spreading knowledge. the school is rotten to the core on account of everything its staff enables. he enables it too.

he watches as his friends become monsters, and the one that was already a monster detaches herself from politics entirely. he can't act against them. is that because of his neutral position, or because he doesn't want to burn those last bridges, and still wants to hold onto people who remember the good old days?

he doesn't interfere or push back against them. four of them destroy themselves anyway (including charles). the school collapses, and it's unlikely it will ever be rebuilt. he gave up sleep. his life is monitoring security threats and holding onto control of his projects. he says that he's almost like an Incarnation of Technology and that feels true in a multitude of ways.

i wonder if eventually, a few decades later, after practitioner families inevitably find loopholes or subtle methods to take considerable control of his projects from him, he'll just be left hanging onto the last vestiges or primary functions of those systems as like. the ultimate Administrator or something. unable to act, unable to do anything but maintain his steadily declining projects. insert angel comparison here.