Prologue: boot.os();

  A woman sits at her desk. The lights are off, everyone else has gone home for the day. The harsh blue light of her monitor is the only thing keeping her awake as her exhausted brain fights to keep her eyes open, just for one more minute. Just long enough to figure out what’s wrong. Everyone else thinks she’s being paranoid. Yes, of course the simulation was going to continue to eat up RAM. It’s supposed to grow. Supposed to account for trillions. And it is! It’s only barely using more than her projections predicted. But that shouldn’t be possible.

  Mistakes happen, sure. But she knows this thing, inside and out. There’s more of her in this project than in her own body at this point. And she’s starting to feel sick. A digital fever, creeping under her skin.

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  …

  If she can’t figure out what’s wrong here…

  … This is a really stupid idea. She should sleep first. Get some food maybe. She shouldn’t commit to this when she’s got this much brain fog.

  She reaches behind her neck, unplugs herself from the terminal, and walks into a maintenance pod. She closes her eyes. Her mind slips into her life’s work.

  Something else opens her eyes, climbs out of the pod, and walks out the front door under the neon yellow lights of CarcOSa R&D.

  Hope you enjoyed the short prologue! Future chapters will be longer, but I just wanted to get this out to start.