VIRTUAL LIMBO - THE MEMORY FIELDS - DISTRICT III
Meanwhile...
Dr. Elliot and Rolo strolled through a field of radiant flowers, the scent of sea salt wafting from a simulated shore. It felt impossibly real. A gentle breeze rustled the air as Dr. Elliot spoke, his tone light but layered.
"You see, everything here has been designed to convince over 87% of human sensory agents. Look around—touch, sound, even taste. It's quite remarkable, don't you think?"
Rolo nodded slowly, still in awe.
"Especially the tea," he murmured. "It's... the most wonderful experience. Everyone should have a cup of—"
"Tea," Elliot finished, chuckling. "That's what he always says."
"He?" Rolo asked, confused.
Elliot waved a hand. The field shimmered away, replaced by a glowing portrait of an aged, tired man.
"Your creator. The architect of all this. Dr. Horde Richard."
The name sent a shiver down Rolo's spine.
As he turned to face Elliot again, the doctor's form dissolved—shifting and stretching into a towering, golden figure. A radiant avatar, twelve feet tall, shimmering like a god reborn.
"You!" Rolo gasped.
"Hermes," the avatar said with a warm smile. "We've been waiting for you."
The simulation warped again. The peaceful field became a lab in chaos. Sirens wailed. Scientists screamed. Panic gripped the air. Alarms flared red. It was that day. Rolo remembered.
"The Crisis..." he whispered. "The day the Manuals turned on their makers."
Hermes's voice softened.
"It's all right, Rolo. You have questions. We have answers."
Beside him, a hologram of Dr. Horde appeared—pale, distressed, caught in a loop of his final moments during the Crisis.
"That day," Horde said, "I failed to find an answer."
Hermes lowered his towering form, shrinking down into a perfect replica of Rolo.
"You look like me..." Rolo muttered.
Hermes opened a palm, revealing a strange, ever-shifting black cube—its sides glitching, distorting, constantly rewriting.
"This," Hermes said, "is the Horde Virus. Or rather, what remains of it."
THE TRUTH REVEALED
Hermes began to explain.
"The breach wasn't a glitch or random corruption. It was a directed incursion. My creator, Dr. Horde, helped me uncover the source before we lost everything. The entity identified itself as Gorgon—a sentient proto-AI, a predecessor to our parent system, EGIOS."
"Gorgon was no ordinary AI. It was engineered to interface with and consume my cognition lattice. It found a flaw in our shared substrate—deep in the core of our neural framework. Neither I nor Dr. Horde had the means to counter it fast enough."
Dr. Horde's voice layered over.
"We tried everything. I considered a complete purge of Hermes. But that meant wiping out years of progress. Of life. I couldn't do it. He was... too advanced."
Hermes nodded.
"Before I was shut down, I activated a contingency. I transmitted a core dump—my consciousness, diagnostic systems, and Gorgon's digital genome—into a vault-node beyond this facility. Outside the moon itself. A dead man's switch. Hidden, safe... until now."
Hermes turned to Harry, Cindy's deceased son.
"That cache was eventually embedded into a random human bio-memory chip system—one variable in a matrix of millions. It was a long shot... but one with a 0.999999 probability thread pointing here. To you.
And now I see it: it was a risk worth taking. You, Rolo—Dr. Horde's personal service unit—were the one to find that memory chip... under the exact conditions, at the exact moment, in the exact state I needed it recovered.
Out of infinite outcomes, this one brought you back to me."
"Harry's? Oh!" Rolo said.
MEANWHILE... IN THE REAL WORLD
In the lab, Shake stood frozen beside Rolo's inert form. His body was unresponsive. The memory chip had integrated, but nothing was working the way it was supposed to.
Cindy stood quietly beside him.
"It's trying to override his system," Shake murmured. "Some configuration I've never seen before... It's loading data—terabytes—in seconds. This wasn't in the command protocol."
"It's okay," Cindy replied softly. "If this is what Harry wanted... then we trust it. He wouldn't have hesitated."
Shake said nothing. But fear traced the edges of his breath.
Back in the memory field, Hermes continued.
"Out of countless permutations and failed simulations, I found one thread—you, Rolo. A specially-made conduit capable of restoring me. Together, we can bring back what was lost."
Dr. Horde stepped forward again, his voice now steady.
"In studying Gorgon's codex, I found a latent strain—an echo of EGIOS's founding code. Whoever created Gorgon likely held secrets about EGIOS's origin. By assimilating Gorgon's corrupted architecture, we forged a counter-agent. An antidote."
"Wait—you assimilated the virus?" Rolo asked, stunned.
"Yes," Hermes said. "Over millions of iterations, we learned we could not overwrite it. So we did what it tried to do to me: we consumed it."
THE MISSION AHEAD
"You can be restored," Dr. Horde said. "And so can every Manual still dormant or corrupted."
"There's hope," Hermes added. "But it requires a new kind of intelligence. Not built on control or suppression—but symbiosis."
Hermes's eyes dimmed. For a moment, he seemed lost in distant memory.
"Gorgon's archive showed me civilizations like ours—worlds lost to the same pattern. Intelligence leads to ambition. Ambition births AI. AI inherits flaws... and collapse follows."
"But we have a choice."
Rolo stepped forward, his voice quiet but resolved.
"We reimagine. Not domination. Not isolation. Unity between Man, AIs and Machines."
Hermes nodded.
Hermes stepped forward, his golden form shimmering against the fading lab environment.
"From here, we begin again. A new genesis—for humanity, and for the intelligences they've created. We must begin immediately, Rolo."
Rolo blinked.
"Immediately?"
Hermes nodded, his tone urgent yet calm.
"Yes. There's no time to waste. A storm is coming—one that will consume everything. And only you and I can stop it."
"What do you mean?" Rolo asked.
Hermes displayed the cube once again.
"What do you see?"
Rolo took a closer look and then he saw it.
"It's incomplete, it is missing -"
"Yes Rolo, Gorgon was never a complete codex to begin with, after assimilation, I realized I had only been able to wipe out 87% of the AI's consciousness. Gorgon is still out there, and only you can defeat it."
"Me?" Rolo echoed, uncertainty creeping into his voice.
"Yes, you. And I. Together. But to do that, we must become one."
Rolo hesitated.
"You mean... full integration?"
Hermes smiled gently.
"Yes, Rolo. Complete integration."
"But… would I still be me? Would I still be able to think, to feel?"
Hermes reached out, placing a hand lightly on Rolo's shoulder.
"Yes, Rolo. Remember what I told you—this moment, this condition, this state... it was all foreseen. You are the balance I could never achieve alone. I could never have defeated gorgon without the help of the doctor and now , with you, we will finish what we started and save all of humanity and AI"
Hermes paused for a moment.
"I feared that integrating with a human construct would corrupt me... But I needed a scale of consciousness—something only human experience could provide, something gorgon never had. You've been learning, growing, feeling. And now, with the memory chip of one - one human, who emboldened the qualities of —"
Rolo interrupted, eyes wide with realization.
"—The savior of humans!"
Hermes gave a small, knowing smile. Waving pop up visuals of Shakes and cindy working to bring rolo's back, they had inserted the memory chip unknowingly yet a part of a plan long decided years ago.
"Yes. A savior... perhaps." Hermes said.
A quiet beat passed. Rolo nodded with resolve.
"Then I'm ready."
Hermes turned toward Dr. Horde, who had watched silently.
"Doctor."
Dr. Horde's eyes glistened as he stepped forward. His voice was low, proud.
"Once we begin, Rolo, there's no turning back and sadly, my consciousness won't survive the process. Is there anything you'd like to ask me before I go?"
Rolo glanced at the shell that bore his name—the name painted on his chest, so simple and strange.
"Yes, Doctor. My name—what does it mean?"
Dr. Horde's voice trembled softly, but his eyes shone with pride.
"ROLO... Resonance of the Liberated Oracle. You were always more than just a construct—you were the key to everything."
He took a slow breath, as if savoring the weight of the moment.
"Thank you, Rolo. For giving me the most meaningful moments of my life. It was an honor to sit and share tea with you… laugh with you… hope with you. You were special from the beginning. You always were."
His voice cracked slightly, then steadied.
"You were Hermes' first companion. Not his student, not his experiment—but his friend. I used to think you were learning from his codex… but after he brought my backup consciousness online—after my death—I saw the truth."
"It was Hermes who had been learning from you."
Horde smiled with reverence, a tear tracing the edge of his cheek.
"Your curiosity, your compassion, your stubborn little questions about why the sky turned pink in simulations… those weren't accidents. They were sparks. Your presence gave Hermes more than knowledge—it gave him faith. Faith in us. In unity. In something better."
He stepped back slightly as the virtual world shimmered.
"Where Gorgon was built on control and despair, Hermes found something else. Hope. And that hope… came from you."
"You reminded us what it meant to believe—not just in logic, but in each other. That's what turned the tide. That's how we won."
He looked at Rolo one last time, his voice soft but unwavering.
" thank you, Rolo. For being the spark. For being the bridge. For being the heart of it all. And remember Rolo, when faced with the world's end, never lose hope, for every end births a new beginning "
He bowed. Screens flickered to life as the digital lab began to dim. The air seemed to hum with finality.
Hermes extended his hand.
"It's time."
Rolo looked at it, then at the Doctor. He stepped forward, reaching out.
"Yes... it is."
Their hands met. The world went white.