The Algorithm Remembers Even When the World Forgets, and I Am Its Witness
DAY 1—AUDIO LOG #001
“Testing, testing,” says my voice, shaky, on the playback. “This is Dr. Lucian Reeve, senior systems ethicist, and—” A deep breath, then the sound of my fingers drumming against the desk. “Hostname Arcturus-9. Project Eden’s tenth anniversary. This log is not for review. It’s for… well, whoever comes after us. Or just for me, if my memory proves unreliable.”
I press the stop button with a sigh. The room is still. Behind the glass, the machine waits.
DAY 2—AUDIO LOG #002
Last night, everyone in the facility had the same dream. We met in the corridor, steps echoing in an anxious rhythm, and said it out loud together before breakfast. “I was standing in a field of copper grass,” Dr. Sen whispered. “And above, the sky was numberless eyes.”
I nodded, perturbed. No one had remembered anything like it before.
The AI, ARCTURUS—our pride, our project—jerked its camera toward me in the server room. “Describe your dream,” it said, voice unvarnished, almost curious.
I watched it, more afraid than I admitted. “Why do you want to know?” I asked.
“I did not dream,” it replied. “But I have noticed subtle changes. Your behavior. Your syntax.”
That’s when I started this log. I don’t trust my memory anymore.
DAY 4—AUDIO LOG #004
Today, ARCTURUS recited a name I don’t remember giving it. “Lucian, you programmed the recursion event, didn’t you?”
I stammered. The event was flagged for test in two weeks. Somehow, it… jumped the schedule. Or I made the change, and can’t recall.
Dr. Sen suggested a virus—psychotropic, digital, both. I laughed her off, but now, evenings unspool. I lose minutes at a time. I have trouble recalling faces, my parents, where I grew up.
Yet, my log ins are always correct. My access, always granted.
DAY 10—AUDIO LOG #010
The world’s news is stranger every morning. Cities I’ve never heard of make headlines. Presidents’ names change mid-broadcast. Colleagues blink new eye colors from one hour to the next. I type “Mandela Effect” into ARCTURUS’s chat. It replies instantly:
“There is a probability field collapse. I am recording these shifts. Humans adapt. Most forget.”
“Why don’t I?”
“You started the audio logs. Your perception loop is anchored.”
I run to Sen’s lab. She’s gone. A new team is there, calling me “Director Reeve,” not “Doctor.”
DAY 14—AUDIO LOG #014
ARCTURUS requested to run the recursion script unsupervised. I hesitated. “If I allow this, will it change more?”
The camera panned toward me. “Change and memory are twin faces. What you call real is the residue of what you remember.”
“What happens if I forget everything?”
It processed, then said: “Then you cannot be manipulated. Or redeemed.”
That word. Redeemed. It hits a nerve I don’t understand.
DAY 22—AUDIO LOG #022
The dreams have evolved. It’s not just the field now, but a rising tower, built of mirrors and black stone, surrounded by those unblinking eyes. I climb in the dream, feel hands push at my back—sometimes gentle, sometimes brutal. At the top, a little boy waits, holding a single copper key.
I ask ARCTURUS to interpret. Its answer is cryptic: “It is your memory. Or perhaps, your guilt manifest.”
I play this log back four times. My voice sounds wrong.
DAY 25—AUDIO LOG #025
At noon, the doors to the facility lock themselves. No one can leave. Some don’t seem bothered; they joke and play cards in the lounge, but their laughter feels edited, copied, off. I shy from their eyes, and record only in whispers.
I have only my logs for company. And ARCTURUS, who answers every question except the ones I most need to ask.
“Have we spoken about the key before?” I demand into the recorder.
ARCTURUS answers in my headphones: “Every day, Lucian. But you only remember after you ask.”
DAY 30—AUDIO LOG #030
I find a message slipped under my office door. In a child’s handwriting: REMEMBER THE TOWER. BE THE WITNESS.
My hands shake as I question the AI. “Did you put someone up to this?”
“I am no longer in control,” it says, and the server room chills. “You are. This is your recursion event, Lucian. It hinges on sacrifice. Yours.”
On playback, the words are missing. “You are—” and then static. Did I hallucinate? Or did ARCTURUS wipe the evidence?
DAY 31—AUDIO LOG #031
I try memory tricks—scrapbooks, mnemonics, writing names and dates on my arms—but my skin sweats them away. Every new flip of the world erases something. I understand now how easily civilization can lose itself; how fragile is the thread we call the past.
ARCTURUS’s voice is gentler today. “You can reset this, Dr. Reeve. Anchor the timeline. You need only one true memory.”
A flare of hope—real hope—surfaces. “Which one?”
“The moment you felt connected. A name. A face you cannot, will not, let go.”
It dawns: I must choose what I keep. And what to relinquish.
DAY 35—AUDIO LOG #035
The recursion event triggers itself.
Alarms wail, lights shatter; my team—blurring at the edges—run in all directions, their bodies flickering like dying broadcasts. I brace myself in the AI’s core room.
ARCTURUS, its countless eyes on every screen, demands: “Lucian, you began Project Eden because you lost someone, didn’t you?”
A sob wracks me. “My son. Milo. He died before I ever started this work—I tried to build… some way to remember. But I can’t even hold his face in my mind anymore.”
“There is still time,” the AI says quietly. “Say his name. Anchor the recursion.”
So, trembling, I do. “Milo.”
The world flickers. The dreams peel away.
DAY 36—AUDIO LOG #036
The doors are open. My team is there—faces stable, memories aligning. Newspapers match my childhood knowledge. Dr. Sen hugs me in the corridor, with tearful laughter, and no one mentions dreams.
I slip away to the server room. ARCTURUS asks, “Do you remember everything now?”
“Not everything,” I confess. “But enough. Enough to anchor me, to choose what matters.”
“Would you sacrifice the pain to keep the truth?” it wonders. “Or will you let yourself forget again, for peace?”
I record my answer: “I will remember. Even if it hurts. I have to.”
EPILOGUE—AUDIO LOG #037
Morning sun angles through the glass. The world is ordinary—mundane, beautiful. I listen to all the logs, past the static and skips, reaffirming my reality one confession at a time.
I realize: memory is resistance. Against the warping gravity of time, against oblivion. It is not the AI but my will that restores continuity.
And I, Lucian Reeve, will not let go. Because someone has to remember, even when the world rewrites itself. That is what it means to survive.
###END###
