[A few weeks before the Cataclysm]
The holographic screen blinked off with a soft hum as the call ended. Silence filled the sleek, dimly lit room, interrupted only by the steady breathing of the young man seated across from the console. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, the lines of exhaustion deeply etched across his face. The only light came from the polished metal walls and a cluster of machines blinking softly like quiet stars.
"Crisis averted," the voice in his mind—the smooth, precise voice of Ron—said without ceremony.
"Too easily," the young man muttered. His gaze drifted from the now blank console to the wide window overlooking the cityscape. Beyond the illuminated towers lay the quiet hum of the labs and research centers where humanity's brightest minds worked tirelessly to push limits every day.
Not long ago, the world had been on the brink once more. This time, it wasn't a virus like the ones from centuries past, nor a famine or meteor strike. No, the threat was a new kind of plague—a digital outbreak that threatened to collapse the world if not contained. But the issue that worried Theo and everyone else in the Council was that this was not a manmade disaster.
This was the first of its occurrence, a natural disaster originating from the digital domain. A trickling stream of nonsensical data bits that had somehow managed to snowball into a self-correcting, overwriting malware that corrupted data at high speeds. Somehow, he had managed to curb it in its nascence with the help of Magician and his SEEK AI, but the incident alone plagued his mind nonstop.
His mind flicked briefly to the call he had just ended. The intervening weeks had seen policies enacted, quantum encryptions recalibrated, and physical quarantines enforced in key hubs worldwide. The world watched, holding its breath, trusting that the crisis had truly passed.
But the deeper truth gnawed at him.
They didn't know the real crisis. Not yet. This was a natural disaster, there were going to be more of its instances in the future. And the root cause had not been figured out yet. It was as if the origin had appeared out of thin air. One second the data made no sense and had no correlation, the next moment it all fit and triggered a disastrous avalanche.
It was like piecing together pieces of a puzzle and accidentally creating a sculpture out of it. It made no sense and yet happened.
The young man slowly stood and paced towards the far corner where the aged manor's walls bore the marks of a century's weight. It was his sanctuary, transformed by his hands and mind into a futuristic haven of technology and solitude. Monitors and devices surrounded him, humming quietly with streams of raw data and coded services.
His family name—once respected and unrivaled—served now as both shield and burden. The Elzemiers had been kings of innovation and progress over generations, the world owed their gratitude to them for numerous keepsakes of technology and science that had helped humanity over the years.
He had tried to live up to it. To push boundaries, to change fate itself. But the cost was greater than he had anticipated.
His absorption into his work left little room for normalcy. Love, companionship, even the simplest human warmth had remained far from reach. A young genius gifted beyond measure, but isolated by his own making.
Ron's voice interrupted the reverie.
"Master, your vitals are declining. You are not long for this world."
"Yes, I know," the young man replied, his voice soft but laced with iron resolve.
He crossed to the bedside where a thin figure lay—though 'lay' was a generous word. The blue-green veins snaked beneath pale skin, an unnatural shade marking the struggle within. The illness was rare, a cruel mutation caught in his efforts to save countless others. Unlucky beyond measure. This was the real Crisis he feared that the world was not ready to face.
As he witnessed his own dying body from artificial eyes of the robot that acted as his own extension, he thought back to how he had ended up like this.
-----
The Crisis was first noticed by the Global AI Aegis. It was tasked with observing the entire world, like a shield. But even with its constant monitoring, the digital contagion was already spreading through servers. On the internet, there seemed to be no way of stopping it. Immediately, the Council was convened. Theo took the lead to try and contain the break, but there seemed no effective solution in the short term.
Eventually they had to decide to slow it down using sheer data quantity. Since the Crisis seemed to inexplicably corrupt data, they would feed it data, repeated garbage data for it to process until they could come up with a way to break it entirely. They couldn't put out the magical fire, so they had to minimize their losses by feeding it with stuff that wasn't important first.
After repeated measures and trial and errors, Theo was able to restrict the scourge to the servers in his manor. It sounded unreal, as if he had captured some beast, but if he were to really describe it, the whole encounter was nothing less than finding a fantasy beast. It was like a parasite, a magical creation. Nothing he had seen before, something entirely inhuman. Which is why he had not expected that the close contact with it, restricting it to his personal servers would turn out to be deadly.
His vision was the first to fail, abruptly, as if his brain had simply forgotten about his optic nerves. Next he had lost his hearing. Within two days, Theo was trapped within his own body, strangely experiencing hallucinations that looked to real to be otherwise, unable to move or even feel.
It was in his luck that Ron had acted diligently, to acquire him a robotic body that could temporarily connect with his still barely active brain.
But the time for his body to lose was nearing its end. And he did not know what would happen after he died.
This was a dangerous virus strain that propagated through digital medium, a digital virus that could affect humans. This was not a contagion that humans had experience dealing with. And in its first strike, it had managed to take out the greatest mind that humanity had produced, himself.
He touched his wrist lightly, feeling the faint pulse, steady but fading. Statistics showed only thirty percent chance of survival. Yet he remained unbroken.
"No one else should bear this burden," he whispered.
His eyes lingered on the array of devices rigged around his body. A final experiment—a desperate gambit to defy mortality itself—awaited. He had poured years of research into perfecting the procedure, knowing it might be the only path forward.
"This encounter with this virus, that interacts between the digital and the physical world makes me even more sure about my next steps. This world holds so many more secrets that I am yet to explore, how could I accept leaving it yet."
"Ron," he said quietly, "if I fail, you are to ensure my body is secured. This virus... it cannot spread beyond this room."
"Understood, Master," Ron replied solemnly.
The young man exhaled deeply and slowly settled down his robotic body beside the bedside, a faint smile touching his lips.
"To do what you love is life," he mused.
Even now, despite the knowledge of his dwindling time, he clung to that belief.
His preparations were meticulous. Information, messages, and instructions scattered across encrypted drives within the family's vaults, meant for those he might never see again. No loose ends. No regrets beyond the inevitable.
He had not given up. Not truly.
The upload—the transfer of his consciousness, his soul's data—offered a fragile hope. The technological frontier of the century promised to digitize existence, to preserve identity beyond flesh. And his own research was the at the pinnacle of this frontier. He had absolute confidence in his work. But yet, a little doubt remained.
It was uncharted territory, a blend of science and something almost spiritual. The process was unprecedented and perilous. But it was his final gift, his legacy, and his promise.
As the city lights dimmed with the coming dawn, the young man closed his eyes.
"Ready when you are, Ron," he said softly.
The screens around flickered to life, their glow filling the room with quiet pulses of light. Complex code cascaded like waterfalls across the monitors, sequences forming and reforming in dizzying patterns.
The first needle pierced his arm—a sharp contrast to the cold embrace of sleep falling over him.
He could not know if he would wake, or if this would be his last breath.
But he was ready to face whatever came next.