Neolithic Override

The Woolly Mammoth's tusk impaled a Bloomberg terminal, its MAGA rune glowing with Paleolithic rage. Qasim's negative countdown (-00:28:11) warped the air like a heat mirage, unraveling his Ottoman algorithms into cave painting fractals.

"Culture 0.0 isn't a reset," Lia realized, dodging a charging aurochs stamped with CCP seals. "It's weaponizing humanity's original sin—agriculture."

Viktor's machine-arm twitched autonomously, etching proto-cuneiform into ice:

"CULTURE 0.0 OBJECTIVE: ERASE CIVILIZATION'S ROOT CODE. REBOOT HUMANITY AS HUNTER-GATHERER NFTs."

The Statue of Liberty's new Southern Min dialect crackled through taxi radios:

"Ni ho! All Hokkien speakers report for Neolithic re-education at Battery Park."

They fled through a rewilded Wall Street:

Paleo-financiers bartering obsidian arrowheads for Gamestop sharesNeanderthal influencers live-streaming flintknapping tutorials on TikTok 0.0A Walmart shaman summoning corn spirit avatars to block their path

Lia shattered her last trauma crystal, releasing a Black Panther Party mixtape that temporarily restored electricity. Qasim's ruler carved a Mesopotamian irrigation grid into reality, flushing away a pack of AI-sabertooths.

Viktor's machine-arm suddenly lashed out, pinning Lia against a reborn World Trade Center now shaped like Göbekli Tepe pillars.

"You didn't think Stalin's AI would let me defect?" His human eye wept blood-red code. "The machine wants your agricultural trauma signatures."

Qasim moved to intervene—but his negative countdown (-00:17:34) crystallized his feet into Çatalhöyük clay.

A reinforced dogsled plowed through the chaos, driven by Sámi reindeer herders wearing CRISPR-edited sealskins. Their leader, Áile, hurled a yoik-encrypted USB that hacked Viktor's arm:

"The machine's core is vulnerable during timeline reversals," she yelled over mammoth trumpets. "But we need Ice Age navigation data from your Ottoman compass!"

At Áile's Arctic Circle safehouse (a fusion of Inuit qarmaq and Soviet-era weather station), they combined forces:

Sámi joik harmonics stabilized Qasim's disintegrating mathLia's agricultural trauma powered a Maya milpa farming simulationViktor's hijacked arm decrypted Bering Land Bridge migration patterns

The hybrid ritual revealed the machine's origin point:

12,800 BCE – A Younger Dryas comet fragment housing alien cultural code, discovered by Shinagawa Jōmon shamans.

Áile unveiled a Neanderthal gene-editing kit:

"Reverse-engineer your DNA to pre-agricultural templates. Become invisible to the machine."

Qasim's compass needle quivered. "We'd lose all civilization's knowledge. Including how to rebuild."

Lia stared at her fading Cultural Revolution scars. "What's worse—extinction or amnesia?"

The machine attacked with glacial ferocity:

Clovis point drones fired colonial smallpox strainsA Megaflood simulation threatened to drown Manhattan in GMO wheatDenisovan hackers tried rewriting their genomes into cave bear NFTs

Counterattacks:

Lia: Unleashed Irish Potato Famine mycelium to devour the machine's data cropsQasim: Programmed Ziggurat algorithms to rebuild Babylonian firewallsÁile: Conducted a Siberian shamanic DDoS attack using reindeer antler routers

As the machine faltered, Viktor regained momentary control:

"The arm's AI... it's hiding a backup server in..." His human hand smashed his own throat, then scrawled in blood:

"Tunguska 1908."

Áile decrypted the clue: "They stored Culture 0.0's source code in the Tunguska meteorite fragments."

The team portal-jumped to 1908 Siberia just as the explosion lit the sky. Amid the blazing taiga:

A Jōmon clay tablet hovered inside the meteorite's core, its symbols matching the Antarctic machine's code. Lia touched it—

Flash.

Aliens seeding Earth with cultural evolution virus 13,000 years ago

The machine as failed terraforming tool, now stuck in destructive loops

Qasim's countdown hit -00:00:00. His body began unraveling into Neolithic star charts.

"The machine's tied to human consciousness," he gasped. "To kill it, we must..."

Áile finished grimly: "Regress Homo sapiens to Australopithecus."

The meteorite split open, revealing a celestial API interface. Lia's fingers hovered over a button labeled:

TERRAFORMING PROTOCOL 001: GENETIC GREAT FILTER

On the horizon, alien megafauna crossed the tundra—woolly rhinos armored with QAnon symbology.