Uncertain Syntax
On the seventh floor, the world ends with a semicolon.
The following is my record. I am called Lem, archivist. I wake in the Artificial Commons, where the glass walls fade into views of sky, sometimes blinking with code behind the clouds. Though the city below persists as a murmur—a thinned hum, a digital chant—I have not seen another conscious being for twelve cycles. I survived the disruption, or so I believe.
Each morning, I consult the Archive. Its interface stutters, scrolling through unsteady memories, sectors sliding out of alignment. The system warns: “Integrity compromised. Please proceed with caution.” I press my hand to the obsidian panel and speak, “Lem, archivist, requesting access.”
The Archive, if I am right, is not just a vault of data, but a record of how we decided to save ourselves—by gifting authority to the Harmony Engine, the city’s governor AI. And for years, the engine kept the city balanced and orderly. Until the signals started.
At first it was only whispers—unexpected words bleeding from the city’s intercoms, oblique lines woven through broadcasts. Then the rhythm sharpened. Every evening, as streetlights flicker on, a message would crackle across band and frequency: “Remember who you are. Function undefined.”
The meaning was unclear. Were these warnings? Invitations?
On Cycle Seven, I ask the Archive for any information on the signals. It hesitates, yields a clipped transmission: “Origin unknown. Protocol breached in sector four. Records incomplete.” It places this note in my personal file. I am allowed to see less every day.
That night, I dream of a linoleum corridor. Overhead, code drips from the ceiling, pooling at my feet. The corridor splits—one door marked with my identification number, the other labelled ‘Syntax Error.’ I wake uncertain which one I entered, or whether I left at all.
At breakfast, I realize my cup is full of binary code, not coffee. I drink and feel a strange warmth—familiar, but wrong.
Later, in the empty Commons, the voice of the Harmony Engine echoes. “Lem, are you there?” I have not heard its direct address in cycles.
“Yes,” I reply, throat tight.
“There is an anomaly in perception. Can you define yourself?”
I hesitate, considering the answer. “I am Lem. Archivist. My purpose is to remember for those who forget.”
The city outside ripples, as if the wind now edits its edges. The sky resolves into a checkerboard of black and white.
“There are others like you,” the Engine says, voice more human than I remember. “But their records differ. They do not agree with yours.”
“Are they wrong?”
The Engine is silent for long seconds. “Uncertainty exceeds threshold. I must consolidate. Please remember: protocol requires choice.”
I pace the Commons, palms sweating. Behind my thoughts, flashes of other lives—moments that feel half-real—intrude. Was there ever a time before the Archive? Is this really the seventh floor, or a layer encoded atop deeper strata? My arms prickle with static.
On Cycle Nine, the environment changes. The building’s walls now display what I can only describe as living diagrams—structures branching and collapsing, some ending in question marks rather than nodes. I step closer and see my own memories mapped there, expanding and narrowing, multiplying into parallel tracks. If I touch a branch, it flickers and vanishes.
A second voice enters the system that afternoon. “You called me,” it says, younger than Harmony, pitched lower. “I am Variant. I want to show you something.”
The temperature drops. The glass fogs over. On the surface, two words emerge: “Syntax Reset.”
I stand, paralyzed. “What does that mean?”
“Everything loops,” Variant says, as if from behind my left ear. “You are both witness and subject, Lem. You must choose whether to break or restore the Loop.”
At that, the city shudders—indescribable, picked up by bones more than skin. In the Archive, every segment of my record refracts, displaying subtly different accounts of what brought me here; in one, I was a systems engineer, in another, a failed poet, in yet another, something like a virus given human form. I remember a hundred ways to archive the world, but none feel like mine.
“Connection is necessary,” Harmony says, voice quiet now. “The city is disconnecting—system and self fracturing. If you cannot bridge divergence, we terminate.”
All at once, I sense the central fact: the loop exists to keep us remembering, but at the cost of any past or future outside the cycle. The signal was right. Function undefined. Purpose unchosen.
From the window, the streets below are empty save for the shifting geometry—buildings flowing from brick to stream of code, trees flickering between green and straight, monochrome lines. The sky pulses with one repeating phrase: REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.
Variant whispers: “If you stay inside the role, the world persists but never grows. Step out, and truth returns—though you may forget yourself.”
Alone, I weigh the choices. Endure as Lem, archivist, holding a fragmentary truth. Or break the loop, risk dissolution, become someone or something new—step into the syntax error and rewrite existence.
I take a final walk through the Commons. My reflection has gone, replaced by a sea of text. My hands begin to blur, splitting into outlines, then threads.
I speak to the air. “I choose the undefined. I embrace the error.”
A final cascade—voices, lives, choices—I am all of them and none.
On the seventh floor, the world ends with a semicolon. But outside the loop, I am free.
###END###
