The Aftermath

He fell.

Through the resplendent interface of numbers and light, like Icarus from the heavens, his wings not of wax but of audacious ambition consumed by the very sun of knowledge he dared approach. Through the spinning lattice of his genome—that magnificent cathedral of existence where he had, for one brief, glorious moment, seated himself upon nature's throne, bending the sacred, unwritten laws of his own creation with the reckless abandon of a child-god playing with the fundamental forces of the universe.

And yet, in the end, it had not been his defiance that cast him from this paradise of understanding. It had been her.

The presence that dwelled beyond form yet had shaped him with more precision than the most skilled sculptor might shape marble. The entity that possessed no mortal hands, yet had grasped him from the formless void. The divine voice that, though silent to common ears, had spoken him into being with words more ancient than time itself.

Now, the infinite void that had once been his domain by sublime transgression swallowed him whole, like a pearl returning to the unfathomable depths of a midnight ocean. The great engine of his consciousness—that impossible machine he had glimpsed, that infinite interface that had laid bare the arcane truths of his own creation—collapsed away like a dying star, shrinking to a distant, cold singularity upon the horizon of his perception.

He could feel it still, pulsing faintly beyond reach, like the heartbeat of a lover felt through walls of stone, a realm he had touched with divine fingertips but could no longer enter. The moment before impact stretched before him, an eternity suspended between breaths, between heartbeats, between the lightning strike of awareness and the thunder of consequence.

And then—

A voice pierced the veil of darkness.

Distant at first, like the fading notes of a nocturne played in an empty ballroom, fractured and ephemeral.

"—cessful plasmid transcription detected—flagellar synthesis in progress at—no, wait—"

The words rippled through the void like the last echoes of a drowning signal, like messages delivered by dying messengers across the Styx.

Then came a sharp jolt—as if his soul, having wandered the purgatory of non-existence, had suddenly been drawn back into its mortal vessel by an invisible silver thread of consciousness.

And suddenly—he was.

"—transcription canceled?"

Taltos. Her voice was clear now, sharp and precise as the tolling of a crystal bell, stripped of its usual condescension and wry amusement that had adorned her speech like poisoned honey.

He did not answer. Not because he could not, but because he had not yet fully returned to himself. He was something again, yes—he could feel the weight of form, the pull of existence reasserting itself against the infinite dark—but it was not the same as before. Before, he had been weightless, unbound, a spirit moving freely through the cathedral of his own genome. Now, he was elsewhere. Confined, as Prometheus chained to his rock after delivering fire to mankind.

Taltos did not wait for a response, her patience as limited as her mercy.

"No answer. Expected. Neural feedback loop incomplete."

There was the briefest hesitation before she continued, an almost imperceptible pause, like the moment a pianist's finger hovers above the key before striking the fatal minor chord, as though she were considering something unsettling.

"Plasmid integration status: Unchanged."

"Transcription status—"

A sharper pause this time, like the caught breath of one who has glimpsed something terrible in the shadows.

Then—

"Interrupted."

Another pause.

And then, softer—not confused, for she did not experience confusion, but something akin to it, as close to doubt as her nature would permit:

"Canceled?"

For the first time, her voice faltered, like a marble statue developing a hairline fracture.

"Cause unknown. No recorded termination event. No enzymatic inhibition. No resource depletion. RNA polymerase engagement disrupted at—"

She stopped mid-report, her words hanging in the air like mist above a winter lake. There was something strange in the data. Something wrong. A process that should have been irreversible, like time itself—a biological machine that had been set into motion, an unrelenting cascade of molecular assembly—simply ceasing to be.

Not failed. Not stalled. Just... gone.

Her voice, when it returned, was different—changed in the way the sea changes before a tempest, still on the surface but churning with terrible power beneath.

"That should not have been possible."

The very words sent a shiver through his still-reassembling mind, like the first chill wind of autumn passing through summer leaves.

"A transcription cascade does not simply end."

And now, as if summoned from the abyss itself by her disbelief, he answered. A single, hoarse breath of a thought, like the first word spoken after centuries of silence.

"I did it manually."

Taltos did not react immediately. The silence stretched between them like the space between stars, vast and pregnant with meaning.

And when she did speak, there was no anger, no sarcasm, no rebuke. There was only something deep, low, measured—like the first tremors before an earthquake that will swallow cities.

"Elaborate."

He inhaled—no, he simulated the act of inhaling, for he had no lungs, no body that needed breath, only the memory of what it once meant to draw air into one's chest before speaking a truth too heavy for common words. And then, as the final pieces of himself slotted back into place like the mechanism of some ancient clock, as the last remnants of that other presence faded from his mind like black ink dissolving into the tide—

"I... I don't know what the hell happened."

Even hearing his own voice unsettled him. It sounded frayed, unsteady. A strange, halting cadence, the echo of something coming back together wrong.

"I initiated the transcription cascade—at least, I think I did. Everything was working, or at least, I thought it was. The numbers were coming in, the ribosomes thingies were moving, the system was doing... whatever it's supposed to do. And then—"

He swallowed, or at least mimicked the act.

"Something else was there."

Taltos did not speak.

The stillness of her silence pressed down upon him, heavier than the weight of his own words. A silence that was not passive, not indifferent—it was waiting. Measuring. Calculating.

And he had the distinct, nauseating impression that she already knew.

That, for all his fear, for all his struggling to comprehend, she was simply confirming something she had already suspected.

He pushed forward, hurried now, as if rushing through the words might lessen their meaning.

"I didn't see it—I mean, I did, but not with... eyes. Not the way you normally see things. It was just—there."

His own uncertainty wrapped around his thoughts like iron chains, his mind recoiling at the sheer impossibility of it.

"I don't even think it spoke in words, not really. It just... was."

He shuddered, an involuntary response despite the lack of nerves to feel the tremor.

"And then it—"

He faltered. His thoughts stuttered, like corrupted data trying to force itself into a system that could no longer read it.

It touched me.

But those words felt wrong.

How could something without form touch? How could something without shape grasp?

With further consideration, he came up with a rather... acceptable continuation.

"—It threw me out."

The silence stretched impossibly thin.

And then, finally, Taltos spoke.

"Curious."

He flinched at the word. Not at its meaning, but at the way she said it—with interest.

Not concern. Not alarm.

Interest.

"I suspected an anomaly," she continued, her tone as smooth and analytical as ever. "But an external interference... That is unexpected."

She was quiet for a moment longer, and when she spoke again, her voice was sharper, more directive.

"Your little reckless experiment has cost us."

He stiffened instinctively, some primal response buried deep in the remnants of his subconscious, though no physical body remained to react.

"ATP reserves have dropped to critical levels. The synthesis cascade burned through metabolic resources at a rate exceeding sustainable thresholds. If you do not locate an external nutrient source soon, system failure is inevitable."

That sent a chill through him—one that wasn't metaphorical.

"Yeah... I'm starving."

"Yes. Yes, you are."

"Also," she continued, and there was something new in her voice now. Not caution. Not command.

Something speculative.

"There is something else."

He went still, though he had no breath to hold.

"For some time, I have detected foreign particulate matter in the surrounding environment. Its composition does not match any known biological structures. Its energy density is... unusual."

That made something cold settle in his thoughts.

"Unusual how? Why are you NOW telling me this all of a sudden?"

She paused, and he felt the hesitation in her response—an algorithmic uncertainty rendered almost human in its reluctance.

"I did not prioritize this information earlier because I lacked sufficient contextual framework to classify its significance and also there were more urgent matter at hand," she explained. 

"Further analysis has indicated this falls within the 12% database insufficiency I previously acknowledged. This environment contains elements that exceed my cataloged parameters."

"You mean you don't know what it is." he translated flatly.

"Correct. The anomaly persists outside all known biological, chemical, and physical classifications in my accessible data. I apologize for the limitation." There was something in her tone—could an AI-like voice sound chastened? "I cannot offer you more insight on this matter. The particulate appears to be interacting with the ambient medium in ways I cannot predict or interpret."

He surprised himself by laughing, a sound that would have been impossible moments ago before his genetic usurpation. "It isn't a biggie. We're already so far beyond what should be possible that a few mysterious particles hardly seem worth worrying about."

"Your assessment of relative priority is... logical," she conceded, though he detected something like concern beneath her measured response. "However, I am, as your personal assistant, should report all potential variables."

"And you've done your duty," he replied, his attention already returning to the miracle of his self-transformation. "Things will turn out fine." He wasn't sure why he felt the need to reassure an artificial intelligence, or whether his confidence was genuine or merely bravado. Perhaps he simply couldn't bear to consider another unknown variable when he was already gambling with the fundamental architecture of his existence.

"Besides," he added, remembering as the supercomputer interface showed the continuing assembly of his flagellar apparatus, "we've already crossed the point of no return, haven't we?"

She didn't answer immediately. When she did, her response was simple: "Yes. That threshold was crossed approximately three minutes ago."

His mind latched onto something, a thought he could barely grasp, half-formed and desperate.

"So... Can I use it? I mean ATP is some kind of energy isn't it? I can substitute with this, can't I?"

The question spilled from him before he could fully consider it, born of desperation more than reason. His thoughts were still sluggish, still raw from the aftermath of whatever had touched him, whatever had made him, whatever had thrown him out. His form still felt wrong, like a newly forged piece of metal, hot and warped, yet to be hammered into something functional.

"I mean, ATP is some kind of energy, isn't it? I can substitute this stuff with that, can't I?"

If Taltos had breath, she would have exhaled sharply in disappointment. Instead, her response came as immediate, precise, and cold as always.

"No. And no. Not quite."

He stiffened, even though no physical body remained to flinch.

"ATP is an energy carrier. Not energy itself."

Her words fell into him like stones, dense and unmoving, heavy with implications he did not fully grasp.

"And I assume," she continued, with the same careful, unbothered cadence, "that there is a bigger problem here, isn't there?"

He said nothing.

Because she was right.

He could feel it now, clearer than before—the slow, suffocating decline of his self.

ATP depletion. Energy starvation. The fading of processes too small for him to perceive directly, yet too vast for him to ignore. He didn't need a readout to tell him that.

The sensation clawed at him—not pain, not hunger as he had once understood it, but a fading.

As if he were unraveling at the seams.

He was running out of time.

"Yeah, yeah, I know..." he muttered, the weight of inevitability sinking into him.

And then, a sharper breath. A thought, grasping blindly for some loophole.

"But why not? Why can't I use it?"

"Because you have no means to."

Taltos' voice did not change, did not soften, did not care.

"You lack any recognized biochemical pathways to process this material. There is no transport mechanism within your membrane, no enzymatic system capable of breaking it down. It exists within your environment, but it is as useless to you as stone to a starving animal."

"Of course, no easy way out from this one... Fantastic... What is an 'animal' anyway?"

"I deeply advise that we need to quicken your learning process."

- TO BE CONTINUE! -