Fragments of Truth

The old man's memory changed everything.

What the Memory Showed

I had expected his memory of entering the Tower to show fear and ambition. What I found was stranger.

He stood at the Tower's base, yes. He was afraid, yes. But before he entered, someone spoke to him.

A figure. Neither Curator nor human. Something else. It said:

"You will climb for forty years. You will trade everything. And in the end, you will understand why the Tower was built."

The young man—the old man, forty years ago—asked: "Why was it built?"

"To collect. To store. To preserve what would otherwise be lost. The Tower is humanity's backup. Its insurance against extinction."

"Insurance? Against what?"

The figure did not answer. But in the memory, I felt the young man's sudden understanding. The Tower was not just a place of commerce. It was a ark. A repository. A library designed to preserve human experience against some future catastrophe.

And everyone who traded their memories... they were contributing to the archive.

The First Conspiracy

This knowledge was dangerous.

If people knew the Tower was collecting their memories for some cosmic purpose, would they still trade? Would they still climb? Or would they realize they were being harvested?

I began to investigate.

On the seventh floor, I found others who suspected. A small group, meeting in secret, sharing what they had learned:

• The Tower has existed for millennia, possibly since humans developed language
• No one knows who built it or what controls it
• The Curators are not rulers—they are servants of something deeper
• Memories are not just stored—they are being used for something

One of the group, a former Archivist named Sera, had a theory.

"The Tower is not preserving memories," she said. "It is building something. Something out of human experience. Something that thinks."

The Entity

Sera's theory: The Tower is constructing an artificial consciousness from harvested memories.

Thousands of years of human experience. Billions of individual memories. All being woven together into something that would contain humanity's complete experiential history.

"Why?" I asked.

"Backup," she said. "If humanity ends—war, plague, cosmic disaster—this entity could recreate us. Not our bodies. Our selves. Our accumulated wisdom and folly. Our capacity for love and hatred."

"A human god," someone said. "Made of stolen moments."

"Not stolen. Traded. Willingly given. The Tower does not take what is not offered."

I thought of my extractions. The memories I had taken without consent.

Did they count? Were they being woven into this entity too? And if so... was I contributing to its creation, or corrupting it with stolen fragments?

The Upper Floors

The knowledge drove me upward.

Floors eight, nine, ten. Each required steeper prices. By the tenth floor, I had traded away my teenage years—entire months of memory, gone.

The landscape changed the higher I climbed. Lower floors resembled places from Meridian—stone corridors, markets, rooms. Upper floors became abstract. Geometry that did not obey physics. Colors that had no names.

And the memories became stranger.

On the tenth floor, I found memories that could not be human. Fragments of experience from perspectives I could not understand. A creature that perceived time in reverse. A consciousness that existed simultaneously in multiple locations. A being that experienced emotion as color.

"These are the Tower's older archives," a Seeker told me. "Before humans. Before Earth. The Tower has been doing this longer than you can imagine."

The Choice

On the eleventh floor, I faced a choice.

The Curator appeared—a different Curator than the first floor, or perhaps the same one wearing a different form.

"You have climbed far," it said. "You seek the truth."

"Yes."

"The truth has a price. You know this."

"What price?"

"Everything. To see the top, you must give everything you are. Every memory. Every aspect of identity. You will become... component."

"Part of the entity?"

The Curator smiled. "You have been listening. Yes. The entity needs more. Needs deeper experience. Those who reach the top and give everything... they become its most important parts."

I understood now. The Tower was not just collecting. It was recruiting. Finding individuals willing to sacrifice their entire selves to become pieces of the new consciousness.

"And if I refuse?"

"You may descend. Return to the world below. Live your remaining years with what you remember. You will not be harmed."

"But I will know. I will know what the Tower is doing."

"Yes. That knowledge is part of you now. You cannot trade it away."

The Decision

I did not decide then. I retreated to the tenth floor to think.

Around me, other Seekers made their choices. Some chose oblivion, ascending to become fragments of the entity. Some chose to descend, carrying knowledge back to the world.

What did I want?

I had entered the Tower to steal memories. To profit. To climb because climbing was what ambitious people did.

Now I knew the Tower's purpose. Every trade, every extraction, every sacrifice—all feeding the construction of something larger than any individual could comprehend.

Was it worth stopping? Could it be stopped?

Or was it—despite everything—worth completing?

The truth does not set you free. It gives you options. What you do with those options defines who you become.

Next: The Conspiracy—those who would destroy the Tower's purpose.