The Conspiracy
Not everyone wanted the Tower to succeed.
The Resistance
On the ninth floor, I found them.
They called themselves the Void—those who believed the Tower's project was not salvation but slavery. That the entity being built from human memories was not a backup of humanity but a replacement.
"It will not recreate us," their leader, a woman named Kira, explained. "It will become us. And the original humanity? Disposable. Once the entity is complete, what use are the raw materials?"
Her argument was persuasive. Why would whatever built the Tower need humans to continue existing, once it had distilled their essence into something more perfect?
"We are being farmed," Kira said. "Our memories—our selves—are just ingredients."
The Void's Plan
The Void had a goal: destroy the Tower before the entity could be completed.
They had been working for generations, passing knowledge and purpose from one member to the next. Some had sacrificed centuries of collective memory to maintain the conspiracy's continuity.
Their plan was simple in concept, complex in execution:
Step 1: Reach the top—or as close to the top as possible.
Step 2: Find the entity's core—the place where all memories were being integrated.
Step 3: Introduce corruption. A memory so traumatic, so contradictory, so fundamentally destructive that it would cascade through the entity and destroy it from within.
"What memory could do that?" I asked.
"We do not know yet. We have theories. But the right corruption..."
Kira's eyes were old. Far older than her face.
"We will find it."
My Role
The Void wanted me because of my skills.
"You can take memories without consent," Kira said. "The entity's defenses assume willing trades. It is not designed for theft."
"You want me to steal something from the entity?"
"We want you to introduce something. A stolen memory, injected directly. Bypassing the normal integration process."
"What memory?"
"We are still deciding. But when we know, we will need you to deliver it."
The Counter-Argument
Before I committed, I sought other perspectives.
An ancient Seeker on the twelfth floor had watched the Void for centuries.
"They are not wrong about the danger," she said. "The entity, if completed, might indeed make humanity obsolete. But consider the alternative."
"Which is?"
"The Tower exists because something—someone—knew humanity would end. Not if. When. The asteroid. The war. The plague. The sun. Something will end us. That is not speculation; it is mathematics."
She gestured at the walls, at the millions of memories embedded in the Tower's structure.
"This is our only continuation. Not our bodies. Not our planet. Our experience. Our wisdom. Our love and failure and striving. The Void would destroy that to prevent a theoretical danger. But without the Tower... when the end comes... we are simply gone."
The Decision Deepens
Both sides had logic.
The Tower's project might create something that replaced humanity. But it might also be the only thing that preserved us.
The Void might save us from a dark future. Or they might ensure we had no future at all.
And I was being asked to choose.
The Corruption
Eventually, the Void completed their work.
They had found the corrupting memory. Not a single memory, but a composite: thousands of memories of betrayal, stitched together into something new.
"The entity trusts," Kira explained. "It assumes all memories are truthful—genuine experiences from genuine minds. This composite is a lie. Fabricated trauma. Synthetic despair. When it tries to integrate, it will not fit. It will tear."
"You are sure?"
"No. But it is our only chance."
She handed me the composite. It felt heavier than any memory I had held. Darker. Wrong.
"Take it to the thirteenth floor. There is an integration point there. Inject this, and the entity will begin to fail."
I held the corruption in my hand.
And I thought of the old man whose memory I had stolen. His forty years. His sacrifice. His contribution to something larger than himself.
Was I about to destroy everything he had given?
The Night Before
That night, I did not sleep.
I held the corruption and thought about futures.
A future where the entity completed and humanity was replaced. Dark. Perhaps wrong.
A future where the entity was destroyed and humanity faced extinction alone. Also dark. Also perhaps wrong.
And a third future. One neither side had considered.
What if the entity was not the enemy? What if the corruption was?
What if the right answer was not to destroy or to complete—but to change?
Between destruction and completion lies a third path. The hardest path. The path of transformation.
Next: The Climb—ascending to the point of no return.