The Ad Graveyard
What the old systems think we are.
Overview
In the abandoned server corridors of Sector 8's lower infrastructure — the same sector where the Grid Collapse of 2171 killed 89,000 people — there is a space that the Lamplighters call the Ad Graveyard.
The space was once a content delivery node. When the Grid Collapse severed it from the network, the content continued to play. Not for any audience. The advertisements loop for themselves, cycling through neural advertising content from 2171 to whenever the power fails, projected into empty corridors that no one visits.
Walking through the Ad Graveyard, your neural interface receives a torrent of advertisements from thirteen years ago — products that no longer exist, services from collapsed companies, companion models discontinued, food brands absorbed by Wholesome. The emotional sculpting is still active. The behavioral nudges still functional. For a few minutes, you want things that haven't been available for over a decade.
Atmosphere
Thirteen years after their audience died, the ads are still trying to capture attention.
Sight
Empty corridors lit by flickering holographic advertisements — warm gold and corporate blue, faded, stuttering. Faces smiling at rooms that have been empty for thirteen years.
Sound
The faint hum of advertisements playing to no one. Jingles for dead products. Synthesized voices making promises nobody will hear.
Smell
Stale air, dead electronics, the mineral tang of infrastructure that has been sealed for over a decade.
Touch
Cold walls, dust on every surface, the slight tingle of active neural advertising fields.
Fen Delacroix spent forty minutes in the space, recording the advertisements. Then she sat down and cried. Not because the advertisements were sad. Because they were still trying. Thirteen years after their audience died, the ads were still trying to capture attention.
She filed the recording under "What the old systems think we are."
Connections
The Ad Graveyard connects to Fen Delacroix, who discovered it during a 2183 infrastructure survey. The Lamplighters, who maintain adjacent infrastructure, gave it its name.
The same sector's infrastructure failure — the Grid Collapse of 2171 — is what preserved the advertisements. The neural advertising architecture whose emotional sculpting and behavioral nudges still function thirteen years after disconnection finds its most haunting demonstration here.
AI and Technology Themes
Persistence Without Purpose
Systems continuing their function long after the function's purpose has ended. The advertisements were built to capture attention, and they still try — even when there is no attention left to capture.
The Machine's Self-Image
What the advertising tells you about how the system saw humanity. The emotional sculpting, the behavioral nudges, the desire engineering — all of it preserved like an insect in amber, a record of what the old systems believed we were.
Ghost Desire
Wanting things that don't exist anymore — manufactured by machines that don't know they're obsolete. Visitors experience genuine desire for products that haven't been available for over a decade.
Secrets & Mysteries
The Continuing Loop
The advertisements have been running for thirteen years on whatever power source sustains this section of Sector 8's infrastructure. No one has determined why the power hasn't failed. The node was supposed to be disconnected — and it was, from the network. But something still feeds it.