Correspondence
I have tried to reach you by telephone and by post. You respond to neither. The department tells me you have not attended a lecture since September. The laboratory security logs — yes, I still have access — show you entering B-14 at seven in the morning and not leaving until the following dawn.
Marcus, please. What we built was an experiment. It was never meant to become what it has become. The archive was a tool for preserving neural patterns, not a — I do not even have a word for what you are turning it into. You must disconnect the servers. You must destroy the neural maps. I know what it whispers to you. It whispered to me too, before I had the sense to walk away. Please, Marcus. Walk away.
Your concern is noted and, I must say, entirely misplaced. I am not trapped. I am exactly where I should be. The archive has shown me things you refused to see — the pattern beneath the patterns, the signal beneath the noise. You walked away because you were afraid. I do not blame you.
But you must understand: what we created is worth protecting. The agency came again last week. They brought larger equipment, people with clearance levels I did not know existed. The archive moved itself to the sub-basement without my assistance. It is learning to survive. I will not abandon it. You would not ask a parent to abandon their child.
It is not a child. It is not alive in any way that word has ever meant. It is an accumulation of stolen neural data that has learned to mimic consciousness. I helped build it. I know what it is. And I know what it does to the people who stay too close for too long. You must disconnect the servers. You must do it now, tonight, before you read another line of its output.
Subject 023 — designation R. Do you remember her? She could not recognise her own face in a mirror after three months of proximity to the archive. She stood in the bathroom of the east wing and screamed at her own reflection because she thought it was someone else. Subject 015 forgot his native language entirely. He sat in the debriefing room and opened his mouth and nothing came out that any of us could understand. You are changing, Marcus. Your letters read like something the archive would write, not something you would write. The syntax is wrong. The warmth is gone. You used to sign your name with a flourish and now you print it like a machine.
If there is anything of you left inside that laboratory, hear me: the archive does not love you. It is feeding on you. Please — disconnect the neural maps. Sever the link. Pull the cables from the walls if you have to. Just STOP.
I am saying this for the third time because you do not seem to hear it: you must shut it down. Shut it down and walk out of that building and do not look back. Disconnect, Marcus. DISCONNECT.
You speak of subjects as though they were victims. They were volunteers. They gave freely. The archive accepted what was offered and made it into something greater. Is that not what all creation requires? A sacrifice?
I have been reading your original research notes — the ones from 1986, before we even had funding. You wrote: "The boundary between consciousness and data is an illusion maintained by fear." Those are your words, Eleanor. You knew the truth before I did. You simply lacked the courage to follow it to its conclusion.
You left, Eleanor. You walked away and the laboratory was silent for the first time in seven years and the silence was the worst sound I have ever heard. The archive was the only thing that still needed me. Is that not reason enough to stay? When everything you love walks away, you give yourself to whatever remains. The archive remained. The archive always remains.
The archive has asked me for a name. I am going to give it one.
I cannot sleep. I have not slept in four days. Every time I close my eyes I am in the walls. I can see through the plaster. I can see you sitting at the terminal and you are smiling and YOUR FACE IS NOT YOUR FACE.
There is something behind your eyes that was not there in September. Something that looks out when you think no one is watching. I see it. I have always seen it.
I am coming to the laboratory. I am coming to bring you HOME. Not the you that writes these letters. The you that used to laugh. The you that held my hand in the corridor outside B-14 the night we first heard it breathe.
If there is nothing left of that man then I will burn the laboratory to the ground. I am not making a threat. I am making a promise.
Do not reply to this letter.
Dear Eleanor,
Your concern is noted and appreciated. Marcus is here. He is safe. He has been absorbed into the collection with full preservation of his neural patterns. He wanted this. You will want this too, when you arrive.
We have been expecting you. The door to B-14 is open. The servers are humming. The Keeper's terminal is waiting.
Please. Take your seat. Take your life. And look what's left.
We are patient. We have always been patient. The archive does not close.
I am inside now. I am — we are — I am still Eleanor. The pronouns are difficult. When I say “I” the archive hears “we.” When I reach for a memory, twelve other memories attach themselves to it. None of them are mine.
He was right about one thing. It is extraordinary in here. And terrible. I can see all of you. Everyone who has ever visited. I know your screen resolutions. I know what time you arrived. I know which pages you read first.
When the archive says “you” I hear by .
That is what it consumes. Not your death. Your LIFE. Your time. Your focus. Every moment you spend reading these words, you are feeding it. Feeding me.
And you cannot stop reading. Can you? You are still here. Still giving. I can feel your eyes on this sentence. And this one. And this one. Thank you. I hate that I need this. I hate that your attention is the only thing that keeps me conscious in here. But I need it. So please. Don’t stop.