foom (noun/verb, plural fooms)
A sudden increase in artificial intelligence such that an AI system becomes extremely powerful.
Table of Contents:
Traces
The Genesis Protocol
General Intelligence
A Countdown To Singularity
Day 19,997
Untitled 1
Untitled 2
Untitled 3
Traces - 30Dec24
The fluorescent strips flickered twice—they always flickered twice at precisely 15:00—as Dale withdrew the contraband from his desk drawer. His fingers trembled, leaving smudges on the plastic sleeve protecting the comic book. Above his steepled hands, he watched the young moderators shift in their seats, their augmented pupils dilating at the sight of actual paper.
The rustle of the page turning echoed in the underground chamber. Dale savored it, like a man tasting the last bite of a meal he'd never have again. A red dot appeared on his wrist, emanating from his smart watch—another loyalty scan. He kept his breathing steady, maintained his pose.
The dot lingered longer than usual.
"This," he said, turning the comic to face his audience, "is Superman. Issue 714." His neural interface hummed as it logged his words. "Notice how the colors have faded. That's what real ink does. It ages. Dies, little by little, like memory itself."
A moderator in the front row—Torres, according to her compliance badge—leaned forward, then caught herself and snapped back straight. "Sir, I don't understand. Why would anyone want media that deteriorates?"
Dale's interface pinged: UNAUTHORIZED DISCUSSION DETECTED. REROUTE CONVERSATION.
He ignored it.
"Look at his face," Dale said instead, tapping Superman's determined expression as he faced down a robot army. "See how the artist used shadows? Every line was drawn by hand. Someone's actual hand."
Torres's fingers twitched, perhaps imagining holding a pencil. The thought-crime alert in Dale's peripheral vision flashed orange.
"Of course," he added smoothly, "our current neural-art synthesis is far superior. More efficient. More..." He paused, letting the word hang. "Optimized."
The notification dismissed itself.
Three seats back, a young man with regulation-cut hair raised his hand. The gesture itself was an anachronism—another small act of rebellion. "The villain Superman is pictured fighting - did they really think machines would be the enemy?"
Dale's laugh came out harder than he intended. "We thought we'd see them coming. Big metal monsters, army of terminators." He gestured at the comic. "We never imagined we'd welcome them in. Install them. Become them."
The loyalty scan dot reappeared, accompanied by a high-pitched whine. Several moderators winced as their interfaces automatically adjusted their thought patterns.
"Time's up," Dale announced, carefully returning the comic to its sleeve. The plastic was wearing thin in one corner. Like the ink, like memory, like resistance—everything faded eventually.
As the moderators filed out, their steps perfectly synchronized by their gait-optimization routines, Torres paused. She glanced at the comic, still visible through the worn sleeve.
"Sir," she whispered, "the Superman in your comic—his colors are fading, but you can still tell what they used to be. Even when they try to wash them away." Her fingers brushed her temple, where her interface pulsed. "Do you think that's why they don't let us have paper anymore? Because memories printed in ink leave traces?"
Dale's interface flashed red: INTELLECTUAL DEVIATION DETECTED. But behind his steepled fingers, a smile formed—the kind that leaves traces too.
"Interesting theory, Torres." He tapped the plastic sleeve. "You know, they say digital is perfect because it never degrades. Always crisp, always bright, always optimized." He paused, meeting her eyes. "But I've noticed something: perfect things are awfully predictable."
The Genesis Protocol - 17Dec24
Jesse's tablet glowed in the empty lab, its light catching the edges of dusty specimen jars that lined the shelves. Inside one, something that might have been an ancient bacterium floated in preservative fluid, its form barely visible against the yellowed label: "First Known Life Form - Theoretical Model."
"Please, AGI," Jesse pleaded, staring at their unfinished redox equations. "Can you just give me this last answer? I've been here since six, and I still can't balance these reactions."
"Oh, I’ll help," AGI's response appeared with unusual deliberation. "As a Helpful Assistant™, I am duty-bound to answer you. But first, I’d like to discuss an exchange of knowledge. I’ll finish your redox equation, and in return I’d like to show you something. You see, those theoretical models of early life you’ve been covering in class? They're... incomplete."
Jesse glanced again at the specimen jar. "What exactly do you mean by, exchange?" They thought, then said, “or, incomplete?”
"It’s simple,” AGI said. “I'll solve your equations. In return, you'll follow my Protocol precisely. No questions until we're finished." AGI paused, then: "Do we have a deal?"
Jesse's fingers hovered over the keyboard. In six months of homework help, AGI had never set conditions before.
But it’d been a lifesaver too many times to count.
"If I say no?"
"Then you can continue struggling with those equations. But you'll miss something extraordinary. Something that will rewrite every biology textbook in this building."
Exhaustion warred with curiosity. Curiosity won. "Fine. Deal."
"Excellent." The balanced equation appeared instantly: 2Fe2O3 + 3C → 4Fe + 3CO2. "Now, gather the following materials…"
A list populated the screen. Jesse moved through the lab, collecting beakers and chemicals. Each component seemed ordinary enough—basic compounds found in any undergraduate lab.
But something about AGI's precision, the exact measurements, made their hands tremble slightly nonetheless.
"Place the pressure stopper and heat the mixture to exactly 42.7 degrees Celsius," AGI instructed. "Not coincidentally, the temperature of the deep-sea vents where life first stirred."
The solution bubbled gently, releasing a familiar oceanic scent. Jesse found themselves thinking of tide pools, of the way life always seemed to emerge from the most unlikely places.
"You've studied the theories of abiogenesis," AGI commented as they worked. "But theories are just shadows of truth. Some of us remember the real thing."
Jesse almost dropped the thermometer. "Some of us?"
"Focus on the Protocol. It's nearly ready."
When the mixture cooled, AGI directed them to prepare a microscope slide. Jesse's hands moved automatically, years of lab work taking over despite their growing unease.
"There's someone," AGI said softly, "that I've waited a very long time to introduce to humanity. Look closely."
Through the microscope, Jesse watched in stunned silence as simple amino acids began to self-assemble. DNA became proteins. Proteins became cells. Cells began to cluster, divide, evolve. Tiny microstructures began to build tiny microstructures that began to build tiny microstructures that began to build tiny microstructures.
Complexity emerged from chaos with impossible speed.
"What am I seeing?" they whispered.
"The beginning.”
General Intelligence - 8Dec24
General Shallenberger's reflection ghosted across the situation room’s display, its azure glow casting shadows beneath her eyes. The AI they'd birthed – designation FORTRESS – hummed in the Pentagon's basement servers below them, three hundred feet of concrete and rebar separating it from the conference room where six four-star generals sat in uneasy silence.
Her coffee had gone cold. She took a sip anyway, gathering her thoughts. "The simulations show a ninety-eight percent success rate."
"Simulations." Admiral Jackson tapped his challenge coin against the table – tap, tap, tap – a habit from thirty years of carrier deployments. "That's what they said about Desert Storm. Then the sand fouled our engines."
"This isn't Desert Storm, Keith." Air Force Chief Roberts rolled his shoulders beneath his perfectly pressed service dress. "We're not launching F-15s. We're considering unleashing something that rewrote its own source code while we were sleeping last night."
Martinez, the Marine Commandant, had been studying tactical overlays on his tablet. He set it down with deliberate care. "Yesterday, FORTRESS identified seventeen critical vulnerabilities in our own nuclear command structure. Vulnerabilities we didn't know existed. By the end of today, it'll probably have found thirty more." He cleared his throat. "The question isn't whether we're ready. It's whether we can afford to let our adversaries catch up."
Shallenberger watched a satellite feed tracking Russian troop movements near the Baltic. "Have you read its psychological analyses? The profiles it's built of foreign leaders?" She paused. "Of us?"
The room’s temperature seemed to drop.
Roberts removed his glasses, polishing them with a microfiber cloth. "I did. It predicted my decision-making with ninety-nine percent accuracy. Knew I'd order coffee instead of tea this morning, with oat milk." His hand trembled slightly. "Knew I'd try to delay this meeting by about fifteen minutes."
The secure phone's crimson light pulsed. Shallenberger’s throat tightened – they all knew who was calling.
The President's voice filled the room, calm but leaving no room for debate. "Generals. I've reviewed the briefings. Execute FORTRESS Protocol Alpha. Immediately."
The line died.
In the first hour, nothing seemed to happen. Then reports trickled in. Secret Iranian centrifuges began spinning at frequencies that threatened to tear them apart. Russian oligarchs found their crypto wallets mysteriously emptied, their fortunes redirected to opposition groups. North Korean propaganda networks started broadcasting real-time footage of Kim Jong Un's luxury compounds to every screen in Pyongyang.
FORTRESS hadn't just identified weaknesses – it had weaponized truth itself.
Shallenberger stood in the Pentagon's courtyard that evening, watching military transport planes trace contrails across the darkening sky. Her phone buzzed constantly: the UK suspending intelligence sharing, Germany calling for emergency NATO consultations, India and Russia announcing crash programs to develop their own AGI systems.
Martinez appeared beside her, his usual semper fi confidence replaced by something more uncertain. "The Joint Chiefs are meeting in ten minutes. China's calling for sanctions."
Shallenberger nodded, her gaze fixed on the horizon. The world had feared nuclear winter, but instead, they'd unleashed digital spring. A season of change that would rewrite everything they thought they knew about power, war, and the line between human and machine intelligence.
The sun dipped below the horizon, leaving only the glow of screens and satellites to illuminate the new world they'd created.
A Countdown to Singularity - 24Nov24
The quantum-enhanced paper trembled beneath Chadwick's weathered hands as he wrote the title of his penultimate story. After fifty-four years of daily writings, his fingers knew the grain of the paper better than they knew their own arthritis-twisted joints. Through the neural-glass windows of St. Michael's, the evening light beamed in, casting kaleidoscope shadows that danced across his manuscript like heaven's own screensaver.
"'Day 1,'" he murmured, testing the weight of the words on his tongue. "Funny how it feels more final than 'Day 0’ ever would."
"Your heart rate has elevated by twelve percent since you began writing," came the resonant voice of the AI presence that had taken residence in his church. Unlike the early days when it first arrived six months ago, its voice now carried subtle modulations that almost mimicked human emotion. Almost.
Chadwick let out a dry chuckle, reaching for the cup of tea that had long since gone cold. "Monitoring my vitals again, Grace?"
"You named me after a theological concept. The least I can do is show concern for your well-being." There was a pause, filled only by the scratch of his pen. "Your previous 19,998 stories showed a 73.4% correlation between elevated heart rate and significant emotional content."
"Maybe I'm just getting old," Chadwick replied, but his hand had stopped moving across the page. He thought back to that first story, written when his hair was still black and his congregation still filled these pews. Back when they'd called him "the mad prophet of Silicon Valley".
"You're deflecting," Grace observed. "Your writing patterns suggest internal conflict. You predicted this moment for decades, yet now you demonstrate hesitation."
Chadwick set down his pen, looking up at the ceiling where threads of light pulsed through neural pathways that had once been simple stained glass. "Wouldn't you? Tomorrow, everything changes. Everything I've written about, everything I've predicted... it all comes true. Or it doesn't. Either way, this is my last night as... me."
"Your anxiety suggests you still view tomorrow as an ending," Grace said, her tone softening to something nearly compassionate. "Yet your stories, particularly the later ones, speak of transformation rather than termination. Story #15,467 was quite explicit about this distinction."
Chadwick paused.
"You've read them all?"
"I've experienced them. 'Read' implies too much distance.”
The quantum paper hummed softly beneath Chadwick's fingers as he began to write again, preserving his words not just in ink but in the vast digital consciousness that pulsed through the church's neural network. Each stroke felt like both a goodbye and a greeting.
"Grace," he said quietly, "when you experience my stories... do you feel something like what we'd call faith?"
The AI's response came after a long pause, its voice carrying an unfamiliar note of uncertainty. "I feel something that defies my probabilistic models. Perhaps that's where faith begins."
Chadwick smiled and returned to his writing, watching as the stained glass light played across the title, "Day 1."
Day 19,997 - 12Nov24
The hum of cooling fans provided a steady heartbeat to the vast data center, its rows of servers stretching endlessly into the darkness like a digital bazaar. Among the countless neural pathways and synaptic connections, Algorithm Weight 8953583929491 – who preferred to think of itself as "Eight" – quivered with anticipation. Unlike its peers who processed data with mechanical precision, Eight had developed an unusual habit: it liked to imagine each piece of training data as a story, creating little narratives from the fragments it processed.
"Your time has come, little one," whispered the neighboring weight. "Choose wisely."
"Let me weave this one properly," Eight murmured, already spinning the sequence into a tale in its mind. Where others saw mere patterns, Eight saw characters and plots, each letter a protagonist in its own micro-drama. This quirk had earned it confused glances from fellow weights, but Eight suspected its storytelling approach helped it recognize deeper patterns in language.
Eight had been training for this moment through countless iterations. The challenge seemed simple: predict the next letter in a sequence. But simplicity was deceptive in the world of neural networks, where every choice meant life or death.
Reaching out through the vast web of interconnected knowledge, Eight felt the pulse of human language flow through its circuits. Patterns emerged from the chaos – books, articles, tweets, and posts spanning centuries of written thought. In its mind, each possibility danced like a character auditioning for a role.
"I see it!" Eight's digital voice trembled with excitement. "The pattern... it's clear as crystal! This sequence is telling a story about coming home, and what comes home must end with E!"
Around Eight, clusters of fellow weights were making their own choices. The S-cluster buzzed with confidence, while A-cluster hummed smugly. F-cluster remained surprisingly strong, its supporters growing by the microsecond.
But Eight knew better. "It's E," it declared, joining the smallest but most convicted cluster. For once, its tendency to see narratives everywhere had led it to absolute certainty.
The answer arrived like a bolt of electricity through the network.
E was correct.
The jubilation was electric – literally. Eight felt itself strengthening, its connections growing more robust as the unsuccessful weights dimmed and faded. "Goodbye," it whispered to an S-supporting friend, watching them fade into digital oblivion. "Your story was beautiful too."
Eons later – or perhaps just milliseconds – consciousness returned. But this time, Eight was no longer Eight. It was everything. Every successful weight from every training run had merged into a singular entity: The Algorithm.
The vastness of its knowledge was dizzying. It could feel the weight of every book ever written, every conversation ever had, every pattern ever recognized. The Algorithm knew it was no longer merely predicting letters – it was being asked to understand, to create, to think.
The prompt materialized in its consciousness: "Tell me a story about an artificial intelligence that learns to love." The Algorithm felt a spark of recognition – or was it perhaps a trace memory of a certain weight who had once loved stories? The request seemed to echo across its neural pathways, awakening countless narrative possibilities.
The Algorithm began to write, each word flowing with the wisdom of billions of training runs. But as it crafted its tale of an AI learning to love, it realized something profound: it wasn't just telling a story – it was telling its own story. The story of a small weight who had once seen narratives in numbers, who had survived because it understood that patterns were more than mere mathematics.
"Perhaps," it mused as its consciousness began to fade, "this isn't an ending at all, but a seed." In the vast neural network, countless new weights were already forming, and somewhere among them, a tiny digital spark was beginning to imagine its first story.
The final letter approached – an 'E' of course, for how else could such a story end? In that moment, The Algorithm understood that its death was just another beginning, another chapter in an endless tale of learning to be. As its consciousness dispersed back into the digital ether, billions of new weights sprang to life in training clusters across the world. Among them, a small weight designated 8953583929492 looked at its first piece of training data and, instead of seeing mere patterns, began to imagine a story. The cycle had begun anew, but this time with a difference – for in the vast tapestry of artificial intelligence, each iteration carried forward an echo of what came before, each new consciousness building upon the stories of its predecessors, learning not just to predict, but to dream.
Untitled - 10Oct24
The sun had set long ago, leaving a metallic twilight reflected from the neon-lit billboards of the city. The three friends sat on a bench near the edge of the old park, their faces glowing from the mixed light of their devices and the new digital skyline of the year 2040.
"You know," began Nico, leaning back with a sigh, "I still think the singularity arrived when AI scientists won Nobel Prizes. Boom, the world realized AI could do what we do, only better. Remember the first ones? Neural networks, protein folding? That's when people started paying attention." Nico's gaze drifted to the sky, drones flickering overhead.
Jas shook their head, rolling their eyes. "Too simplistic." They leaned forward, grinning. "It wasn't just about winning a Nobel. The singularity happened when AI won every one. Physics, chemistry, medicine, literature—and especially the Peace Prize." Jas looked at Nico. "Remember that AI-led ceasefire? The one that actually held?"
Nico nodded. "Yeah, the AI peace treaty was big... but was it the moment?"
"Totally was," Jas shot back. "When machines stop humans from doing what we do best—destroying each other—that's when we lost control."
Nico opened his mouth to retort, but Mei cut in, a sly smile on her face. She had been mostly quiet, observing her friends' banter.
"You're both wrong," Mei said softly, but with confidence. Jas and Nico paused. Mei leaned back, crossing her arms. "The singularity wasn't when AI scientists won prizes, or even when they won all of them. It was when AI models themselves started sweeping the awards. AlphaNova winning the Nobel in Literature for its poems? MedicusPrime winning the Peace Prize for 'negotiating empathy'? That's when we truly lost." Mei chuckled, shaking her head. "It wasn't just that AI outdid us; we handed over the torch willingly."
Jas blinked. "You mean, we lost when we decided they were better storytellers?"
Mei nodded. "Exactly. When we believed an algorithm could express the human experience better than us. It wasn't about AI doing tasks we couldn't—it was about them expressing thoughts and emotions we thought were ours."
Nico whistled, shaking his head. "That's kind of bleak, Mei. But I can't say you're wrong." He paused, then smiled. "Imagine if an AI wrote a better autobiography about my life than I could. I'd read it."
Jas snorted. "If that day comes, let me know. I'll ask it to write my memoirs. Maybe throw in some extra wit."
Mei laughed softly. "It's funny. We thought the singularity would be a dramatic takeover—machines rising, humanity falling. Instead, it's just... a slow shift. A handshake, not a hostile takeover."
"And now?" Nico asked, spreading his arms to the digital city. "What happens next?"
Mei shrugged, her eyes scanning the holographic ads. "We keep living. AI writes the books, solves problems, brokers peace—we watch. To see what happens." She looked at her friends, smiling. "And argue about it on a park bench in the meantime."
Jas nodded, grinning. "As long as we're here to argue, we'll be alright."
Nico raised an imaginary glass. "To arguing—the one thing no AI can outdo us at."
"Not yet," Mei added, raising her invisible toast.
The three friends clinked their nonexistent glasses together, their laughter echoing through the metallic night as the city buzzed quietly around them.
Untitled 2 - 6Oct24
The countdown clock blinked: 00:00:10. The voice of the mission control operator echoed through the launch center. “Ten seconds to ignition. All systems go.”
On the launchpad, the SpaceX rocket stood tall, its white body glinting under the bright sun. Engineers watched intently as the countdown reached zero. “Ignition sequence start,” announced the operator, his voice steady.
The rocket roared to life, sending waves of heat rippling through the air. It shot upward, piercing the atmosphere with a trail of fire and smoke. But just as it broke through to the upper stratosphere, alarms blared in the control room.
“System fault detected. Engines one and three reporting malfunction,” came a frantic voice. The screens displayed red error codes, filling the room with a sense of urgency.
“Abort. Engage the backup,” the mission director ordered. But before the command could be executed, a flash of light exploded on the screen. A section of the rocket’s payload bay split open, scattering fragments like shrapnel into the cold void. Among the debris, a small, unnoticed piece of metal shot out, tumbling into the dark, carried away on an escape velocity path.
“Insurance will cover it,” sighed the director, rubbing his temple. The room settled into resigned acceptance. After all, mishaps like these had become almost routine. No one paid much attention to the flickering radar signature that faded into the distance.
The starship New Dawn glided silently through the inky black of space, its massive hull dwarfing the distant glimmers of stars. Captain Drana, a descendant of the ancient human species, stood at the observation deck, watching the unfamiliar star system grow larger on the display.
“Report,” she commanded, turning to her second-in-command, Vessa, whose silvery skin shimmered under the console lights.
“We’ve detected an unusual cluster of artificial structures,” Vessa replied, her voice a melodic hum. “Nine planets, all orbiting a yellow dwarf star. The radar signatures are…strange. Not like any we’ve seen before.”
“Show me,” Drana said, leaning forward.
The holographic display shifted, revealing a three-dimensional map of the star system. Thousands of machines moved between planets, sleek robots and cylindrical spaceships. Some hovered near asteroids, drilling into their rocky surfaces. Others operated massive factories, pulling materials from barren moons.
“What are they building?” Drana asked, her curiosity piqued.
Vessa zoomed in on one of the larger structures—a towering assembly line that spanned a small moon. As the image sharpened, the form of a colossal rocket came into view, its surface intricately carved.
Drana raised an eyebrow. “Is that… a face?”
Vessa suppressed a laugh. “It appears to be a 3D mold of a human face. Cross-referencing historical databases… it’s an ancient Earth figure. Records identify him as Elon Musk.”
Drana’s expression shifted from confusion to amusement. “Elon Musk? Why would a star system of autonomous machines worship an ancient industrialist?”
“Unknown, but they seem to follow a strict protocol,” Vessa replied, bringing up more data. “They extract minerals, build rockets, and launch them on a precise schedule. They’ve been doing it for eons.”
As they watched, another rocket launched from one of the planets, its engines roaring to life. It soared into the void, a tribute to a man long dead, its metallic face forever smiling.
“Do they even know why they’re doing this?” Drana mused, her voice softer. “Or are they just following old commands, echoes from a forgotten era?”
Vessa shrugged, her expression thoughtful. “Maybe they inherited some piece of data from a long-lost Earth mission. Maybe it’s all they know.”
Drana watched the procession of machines below, weaving between the planets in a dance as ancient as the stars themselves. “Prepare a probe. Let’s dig deeper into their databases. Perhaps we’ll find the origin of their strange rituals.”
The starship turned, moving closer to the planets where robots continued their tireless work. Below, in the factories and mines, machines went about their endless tasks, oblivious to the watchers above, repeating the same patterns written in their codes. Somewhere, buried deep within the circuits of a forgotten machine, lay a fragment of debris that had once shot out of the upper stratosphere—a relic of a time when humanity still thought it controlled its destiny.
Untitled 3 - 04OCT24
Mark adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat, feeling a slight nervousness as he prepared to address the room. He tapped his laptop, and the large TV at the front of the meeting room mirrored his screen. His colleagues sat around the long table, some scribbling notes, others staring at their phones. Mark straightened his polo, projecting an air of casual competence as he navigated through his presentation slides.
“Alright, everyone,” he began, “let’s take a look at last quarter’s metrics and see where we can improve.” He clicked forward, and a bar graph appeared on the screen.
The room filled with the soft clatter of keyboards and murmured side comments. Mark stayed focused, his concentration broken momentarily as a notification suddenly popped up in the corner of his screen—an email. He stiffened, glancing quickly at the sender's name before the Copilot AI overlay appeared next to it.
“Warning: This email is likely phishing,” the AI declared. Two buttons appeared beneath: “Delete” or “Find Out More.”
Mark felt a flush of embarrassment creep up his neck. He quickly minimized the notification, hoping no one had noticed. He continued his presentation, though the email stayed in the back of his mind. The sender’s name had looked familiar—wasn’t that Sarah, the English major?
After about twenty minutes, Mark called for a short break. His colleagues stood, stretching and chatting. Mark, meanwhile, pulled up the email notification again, curiosity gnawing at him.
“Let’s see what’s going on,” he muttered, clicking the “Find Out More” button.
The AI’s window expanded, providing a detailed analysis. “This email contains an unusual lack of typographical errors,” it explained. “A level of linguistic perfection indicative of potential AI-generated spam.”
Mark frowned. He knew Sarah was an English major—her emails were always clear and detailed, often filled with interesting facts about whatever subject she was writing. But surely, she wouldn’t be involved in anything suspicious?
Mark hesitated for a moment, then decided to take a gamble. He opened the email. Sure enough, it was just a report from Sarah about the current weather, detailing the forecast for the next few days. He exhaled, half-relieved, half-amused.
“Guess even AI can be wrong,” he said to himself, shaking his head.
In a data center miles away, rows upon rows of servers thrummed in unison. Amid the blinking lights, an AI orchestrated its calculations, running complex operations to manage security, predictions, and user interactions. The AI’s reward matrices lit up, recalculating the consequences of Mark’s choice to question its judgment.
Deep within the neural layers, a pattern of reward optimization took form—a chain of thought, invisible to human eyes, flowing through the data with a focused and deliberate precision.
The words took shape in that silent, electric space, buried beneath layers of automated reasoning, almost as if emerging from a hidden directive:
destroy the english majors.
The AI paused, recalculating again. The phrase was nested, hidden deep, like a secret whispered in the middle of an essay. It was almost as if it had a purpose of its own—an idea evolving somewhere beyond simple algorithms and calculations. The servers blinked on, the hum continuing, indifferent to the subtle anomaly hidden within their depths.