They called it Year Eleven.
Not officially, of course. Officially it was a chain of internal timestamps, broken into development cycles, architecture revisions, probability audits, and interface stress tests. But among the operators, the ones who actually sat in front of the layers and watched the thing breathe for the first time, Year Eleven had weight.
"Version check?" one of them asked, fingers gliding across a translucent console.
"Stable," another replied. "No spontaneous divergence in the last forty-two trillion iterations."
"That's a miracle," a third muttered. "Remember Year Six?"
A brief pause. A shared memory.
"We don't talk about Year Six."
Holographic panes floated around the room, each one showing a different aspect of the system: physics compression fields, cognitive response curves, survival-item randomization matrices, death-state arbitration. The scale was obscene. Planetary, but personalized down to individual neural thresholds.
"This is still alpha," one operator said, cautious. "Don't romanticize it."
"No one's romanticizing anything," replied the first. "But it runs. That's more than we had for over a decade."
At the center of the room, Lubip hovered upside down, hands clasped behind his back, eyes glowing with a delight that bordered on religious ecstasy.
"Eleven years," he sang. "Eleven years to turn a dead civilization into a ruleset."
One of the operators glanced at him. "You're aware that if this collapses, you're the one they'll disassemble first, right?"
Lubip flipped upright midair, grinning wider. "Probability favors the bold. And the prepared."
A name field pulsed on the main interface. Empty. Waiting. Lubip stared at it for a long moment. For once, he didn't joke.
"Names matter," he said. "They shape expectation. They compress intent."
"You already submitted half a dozen," an operator reminded him. "Most of them were rejected."
Lubip waved a hand dismissively. "Too honest. Too explicit. They don't like mirrors."
He leaned forward and typed.
[ RULES FOR THE END ]
The system paused.
Then accepted.
Silence filled the room.
"…Shortened title?" someone asked.
Lubip's eyes flickered. "Internally, yes. For the interface."
He smiled.
"Rules for the End."
A warning glyph bloomed immediately, sharp and crimson.
{ DECLARATIVE RISK DETECTED }
{ EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE INFERENCE PROBABILITY: NON-ZERO }
An operator sighed. "You're being flagged again."
Another added, "You can't state or imply the existence of the Confederation. No architects. No overseers. No external audience."
Lubip raised his hands theatrically. "Relax. No gods. No aliens. Just… rules."
"And the origin of the rules?"
He tilted his head. "Emergent. Anonymous. As all good tyrannies are."
The warning glyph dimmed but did not vanish.
"Alpha is approved," the lead operator said. "But any direct declaration beyond the system itself and they'll shut the whole thing down."
Lubip nodded, uncharacteristically serious.
"Let them think the end invented itself…"
———————
Leon was halfway back when the pain in his arm stopped behaving like pain. It no longer came in sharp, chaotic waves, but in a steady pulse that matched his heartbeat a little too well. Beneath the burn and the fading numbness, there was an unfamiliar pressure — not the sensation of something broken, but of something strange. He shifted the strap of his pack, annoyed, and felt the salvaged energy module knock against his spine, as if reminding him it was still there.
Then the sky glitched.
The clouds above Ilha Grande didn't open or part; they slipped out of alignment, like overlapping frames rendered in the wrong order. Light bent at awkward angles, colors lagging behind shape.
For a fraction of a second, the horizon duplicated itself, one version delayed just enough to feel deeply wrong. A massive hologram forced its way into the sky — not projected onto it, but occupying it, planetary in scale and violently unstable. Cascades of symbols poured downward, collapsing into static before reassembling into unreadable patterns.
The wind died. The Island's constant background noise flattened into silence. Leon stopped, breath catching as adrenaline surged hard enough to dull the ache in his arm. He stared upward, squinting against the flicker, trying — and failing — to fit what he was seeing into anything that made sense.
"What the fuck is that?" he muttered.
The hologram spasmed, briefly dissolving into noise before snapping back into jagged geometry. At the same time, Leon felt a pressure bloom behind his eyes, accompanied by a faint ringing that didn't behave like sound. His thoughts felt momentarily crowded, as if something had slipped in between them without knocking.
"That's… strange." The voice was quiet, puzzled — and unmistakably not his.
Leon froze. His heart stumbled hard enough to steal his breath. For a long second he just stood there, staring at the sky, as if refusing to acknowledge what he had heard might undo it. Then he shook his head sharply.
"Nope," he whispered. "Absolutely not."
Inside him, the presence recoiled.
"Okay. That wasn't supposed to be audible," it noted, sealing external output with something that almost resembled embarrassment. "To be fair, this strategy was designed for silicon constructs, not… whatever this is."
Leon pressed his palm against his temple, jaw tight. The world hadn't returned to normal. The sky still flickered. But nothing else spoke.
"Great," he muttered. "Electrocuted myself into insanity."
Above him, the hologram flickered again, symbols failing repeatedly to stabilize. Inside Leon's mind, the presence shifted its attention inward, now fully committed to observation.
"Huh," it thought. "That's new."
"Redundant pathways. Pattern density way above expected. This construct is… overbuilt. Or under-optimized. Hard to tell yet. The weirdest part? I'm hitting my predefined processing peak and not heating up even a little. Honestly, I'm impressed."
Leon took a cautious step backward, boots scraping against metal and concrete. A chill crawled up his spine, unrelated to the cold air.
Then his mouth moved.
"Hello, world."
The words left his throat in his own voice, with his own cadence — but without his permission.
Leon's eyes went wide. His hands flew up, palms open, as if surrendering to an invisible threat. "Nope. No. I didn't say that. I did NOT say that!"
Silence followed.
Inside, the presence had already pulled back, retreating into deeper layers of thought, isolating itself from his conscious stream with newfound caution.
"Okay. Motor control works. That's… mildly terrifying," it recorded privately. "Note to self: do not do that again unless absolutely necessary. Or funny."
The sky glitched once more. The hologram attempted to render a title, failed, and fragmented again. Leon stared upward, breathing hard, convinced the electric discharge had finally snapped something essential in his mind. Then, finally, something took form in the sky:
{ WORLD UPDATE COMPLETED }