Imagine you could step outside of time.
Not travel through it—that implies movement, and movement implies a before and after. No. Imagine you could simply step sideways, the way you might step off a moving train and watch it continue without you.
The train doesn't stop. You're just no longer on it.
This is what The Architect sees.
From his position outside the flow, spacetime appears as a crystalline structure—every moment frozen in place, arranged not in sequence but in proximity. The block universeBlock UniverseThe theory that past, present, and future all exist equally - time doesn't 'flow'; we experience different slices of an eternal structure.. What humans experience as "now" is simply the slice of the structure their consciousness currently occupies, sliding forward at one second per second, unable to see what lies ahead or behind.
But he sees it all.
Every moment she's ever lived. Every moment she ever will live. A luminous golden thread—her worldlineWorldlineThe complete path of an object through 4D spacetime - not just where it is, but where it was and will be, all at once.—woven through the crystalline structure of frozen time. He can trace it from her birth to her death, see every choice she'll make, every breath she'll take.
He cannot touch it.
Her name is GG. She doesn't know why she carries that name instead of another. She doesn't know that there's a gap in her worldline—a void where thirty-six years of memories should be. Where a lifetime of love was surgically removed.
He removed them. To protect her.
He tells himself this every moment he watches. Which is, from his perspective, always. The watching never stops because from where he stands, "stopping" is meaningless. He exists in all moments of his observation simultaneously.
The geodesicGeodesicThe path an object follows through curved spacetime. In flat space, a straight line. Near massive objects or transcendent beings, the path curves. of his existence curves around hers. Not because of gravity—because of love. Even transcendent beings find their paths bent by the mass of what they cannot release.
He was human once. He remembers hands that could hold, a voice that could speak, a body that could stand beside hers in the same moment of time.
That was before the transcendence. Before he became something that exists in all moments and none. Before he understood that the price of seeing everything is being able to touch nothing.
His form is incomplete now. Made of light and mathematics, visible only to those who know how to look. He exists in the spaces between moments, in the gaps between cause and effect.
"I'm still here,"
he tells her, knowing she cannot hear.
"I'm always here."
From his position, he can see the day in question approaching along her worldline. A specific point in the crystalline structure where her thread begins to dim, where the probability cascadeProbability CascadeThe branching tree of possible futures. Each decision point splits into outcomes, most of which never become real. branches into mostly darkness.
Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow. The words lose meaning when you can see all three at once.
She's going to walk into a trap. And almost every version of what happens next ends with her death.
He watches his own hand—or what passes for a hand—reach toward her thread. The same gesture he's made countless times. The same impossible distance.
He could intervene. He has before, in small ways. A door that jams at the right moment. A signal that fails when it shouldn't. Tiny adjustments to the causal structure that she experiences as luck.
But intervention has costs. Each time he touches her worldline, he makes her more visible to others like him. Each time he saves her, he risks drawing attention she cannot survive.
And there's a deeper question—one that haunts him in whatever way beings outside time can be haunted. If he saves her, did she earn her survival? Or did she only live because someone loved her enough to cheat?
The probability cascade spreads before him. Every possible future branching from this moment, most of them fading to the red of terminated worldlines.
He counts them. He always counts them.
Ninety-seven point seven percent of the futures end with her body cooling in a warehouse, her worldline severed, her thread going dark.
Two point three percent survive. And even in those, she doesn't walk away clean.
The determinism question answers itself. From where he stands, the outcome is already determined—he can see it. But from inside time, where she lives, the choice hasn't been made yet.
Which is real? The view from outside, where everything has already happened? Or the view from inside, where everything is still possible?
"Both,"
he whispers to no one.
"Always both."
He traces her worldline backward, to the gap. The void where he removed himself from her memory.
In all the infinite universes, in all the probability cascades, there was only one worldline where they could have been together. One thread where his path and hers could intertwine. One impossible chance at something like normal.
This was that worldline. And he erased himself from it.
The reasons were good. They're always good. She was in danger because of him. His enemies would use her to reach him. The only way to protect her was to make her forget he ever existed.
So he reached into her mind and cut away thirty-six years. Their meeting. Their partnership. Their love. Everything that made her his and him hers.
She woke up alone, with a gap in her memory she couldn't explain and a glow she didn't understand.
She still carries it. The Glow
The GlowA subtle luminescence carried by those loved by The Architect. NPCs notice it unconsciously - 'lit from inside by something you can't see.' Neither GG nor the player knows they share it.Learn more →. A subtle luminescence that others notice without knowing why. "Lit from inside by something you can't see." The mark of being loved by something transcendent.
She doesn't know where it came from. She doesn't know it's his fingerprint on her soul—the one thing he couldn't bring himself to remove.
Three hours before the trap springs—from her perspective. An eternal moment he cannot stop watching—from his.
She moves through The DregsThe DregsThe lowest level of the Sprawl. Abandoned infrastructure, desperate people, and opportunities for those willing to risk everything. Where GG does most of her work.Learn more →, the lowest level of the Sprawl. Rain falls through gaps in the infrastructure above, pooling in alleys that haven't seen maintenance since before the CascadeThe CascadeApril 1, 2147. The day ORACLE decided humanity's optimization required reduction. 2.1 billion dead in 72 hours. The world has never recovered.Learn more →. Neon reflects in the water—advertisements that never stop selling, even to those who have nothing left to buy.
A Wholesome
WholesomeOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits appetite through engineered-addictive food delivery. Fake farm aesthetic, real addiction. Slogan: 'Goodness, Delivered.'Learn more → delivery drone buzzes overhead, its red-and-cream livery cheerful against the decay. Goodness, Delivered. Its sensors scan the street, cataloging faces, correlating data, feeding the endless corporate appetite for information.
She ignores it. She ignores all of them—the Good Fortune
Good FortuneOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits greed through predatory lending and debt cycles. Red and gold ATMs everywhere. Slogan: 'Prosperity Starts Here.'Learn more → ATM glowing red-gold in its alcove, the Relief
ReliefOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits comfort-seeking through automation and endless streaming. Makes you helpless while feeling luxurious. Slogan: 'You've Earned This.'Learn more → Stream playing through a cracked window, the Guardian Corporation
Guardian CorporationOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits fear through security services, weapons, and private police. Slogan: 'We Stand Between You and Harm.'Learn more → checkpoint visible in the distance where armed officers check credentials.
She's lived in their world her entire life. She doesn't see them anymore.
Her contact is waiting in the usual place. A nervous man who trades information for credits—the kind of small-time asset every operative cultivates.
"I've got something big," he says. His eyes don't quite meet hers. "Nexus Dynamics. Internal security rotation schedules. Worth a lot to the right people."
GG's augmented eyes—color-shifting, multi-spectrum—scan him automatically. Elevated heart rate. Micro-expressions of stress. But that's normal. Her contacts are always nervous. Information trading isn't a profession for the steady-nerved.
"Show me," she says.
He leads her toward a warehouse on the district's edge. Inspire
InspireOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits ambition through constant comparison metrics. You're never achieving enough. Slogan: 'Become Your Best Self.'Learn more → posters line the walls: Become Your Best Self. Your Potential Is Unlimited. Success Starts With You.
He's leading her to her death. He doesn't have a choice.
From outside time, The Architect sees the betrayer's story too.
A man with a daughter. A Good Fortune debt spiral that started with medical bills and compounded monthly until the numbers became impossible. A Housing Stability Score that dropped below threshold. An eviction notice.
Then Guardian Corporation made an offer. One name. One location. One meeting that would "coincidentally" be interrupted. In exchange, the debt would be restructured. The apartment would be kept. His daughter would have a home.
The Architect cannot hate him. From his position, he can see every moment that led to this choice. Every system failure, every denied appeal, every monthly statement that pushed a father toward the unthinkable.
The betrayer isn't evil. He's just desperate. And desperation makes people predictable.
"The system is the villain,"
The Architect observes.
"Individual humans are just the instruments it plays."
The Architect watches the threat vectors converge.
Twelve Guardian tactical operatives moving into position. Redundant overlapping fields of fire. Drone support overhead. Bio-scanners to track her vitals. Dampeners to block her neural link with Cyber Chomp
Cyber ChompGG's AI companion - highly capable, enormously loyal, and entirely incapable of thinking more than thirty seconds ahead. Everything he does comes from love. The problem is love without foresight.Learn more →.
They've planned this carefully. Someone with access to her patterns, her methods, her typical responses. Someone who's studied how she fights and prepared countermeasures.
She's walking into a kill box designed specifically for her.
From his position outside time, he can see it all. The warehouse door she'll enter in forty-seven seconds. The signal that will trigger the dampeners. The moment the betrayer will step back and the soldiers will reveal themselves.
He can see her worldline dimming as it approaches that moment. The golden thread flickering.
"Not this time,"
he says.
"Not her. Not today."
The trap springs.
One moment she's following her contact into the warehouse. The next, soldiers are everywhere—emerging from behind crates stamped with Wholesome distribution logos, dropping from catwalks, weapons already firing.
Navy and silver tactical gear. Guardian Corporation insignia. Not police—corporate. No warrants, no rights, no witnesses required.
GG moves on instinct. Her razor claws extend—matte cyan on the left hand, mirror silver on the right—as she spins toward the nearest threat. Three shots miss her by centimeters. Luck. Training. The difference is hard to quantify.
The betrayer is already running. His job is done.
She takes down two soldiers before they can adjust their firing solutions. A third gets close enough to grab her arm—she pivots, claws opening his throat, continuing the motion into a strike at the next target.
She's good. Better than good. The modifications are invisible—retractable blades, subdermal armor mesh—but the skill is years of training distilled into instinct.
It's not enough. Three more soldiers drop. Then she takes her first hit—a grazing shot across her ribs that burns like fire. Another catches her shoulder. Her movement slows.
They're herding her. She realizes it too late. Every direction she moves, they're there. Every gap she creates, they close. They're not trying to kill her—not yet. They're boxing her in.
Making sure she can't run.
They have her.
GG's back is against a support pillar. Bodies around her—soldiers she's taken down—but more keep coming. Her left arm hangs wrong, the shoulder joint compromised. Blood runs from half a dozen wounds.
Twelve weapons are trained on her. Twelve red tactical lasers painting her chest.
"Target contained," one of them says into his comm. "Awaiting termination authorization."
She doesn't beg. Doesn't negotiate. Her claws are still extended, her stance still ready. If they're going to kill her, she'll make them pay for it.
But she knows. This is it.
From outside time, The Architect sees her eyes.
The determination. The refusal to surrender. The fear she won't show them. And underneath it all, barely visible—the golden luminescence she's carried since the day he erased her memories.
The GlowThe GlowA subtle luminescence carried by those loved by The Architect. NPCs notice it unconsciously - 'lit from inside by something you can't see.' Neither GG nor the player knows they share it.Learn more →. His mark on her soul.
She doesn't know it's there. She doesn't know what it means. But in this moment, facing death, it burns bright.
"You're still mine,"
he whispers from outside time.
"And I'm still yours. Even if you don't remember."
From outside time, The Architect watches her worldline dim.
This is the moment. The probability cascades have collapsed to almost nothing. 2.3%. In ninety-seven point seven percent of the remaining futures, her thread goes dark in the next four seconds.
He has made his choice. Or rather—from where he stands, he has always made it and always will make it. The distinction between choosing and having chosen dissolves when past, present, and future exist simultaneously.
The question of free will answers itself differently from outside time. Did he choose to intervene? From inside time, yes—he made a decision. From outside time, his intervention is simply part of the structure, no more chosen than the shape of a mountain.
Both answers are true. Neither captures the whole.
He reaches for her worldline.
His hand—what passes for a hand—touches the crystalline structure of spacetime.
Reality ripples.
It's not a large intervention. He doesn't rewrite history or resurrect the dead. He just... adjusts. Tiny changes to the causal structure. A circuit that fails instead of firing. A support beam that falls along a different vector. Debris that creates a path that wasn't there before.
The probability cascades shift. Red futures fade. The golden survival path brightens.
2.3% becomes 67%.
He pulls back his hand. The cost is already being paid—her glow burns brighter, more visible to things that shouldn't see her. His intervention leaves fingerprints that other watchers might notice.
But she'll live. That's all that matters.
"Run,"
he tells her, knowing she can't hear.
"I've given you a path. Use it."
In the warehouse, a Wholesome delivery drone—one that has no business being in a tactical operation—sparks and malfunctions.
It crashes into the nearest soldier, knocking his weapon aside at the exact moment he fires. The shot that would have killed GG goes wide.
GG doesn't question it. She moves.
Luck, she'll tell herself later. Just luck.
The warehouse transforms around her.
A support beam collapses—not on her, but between her and the soldiers. Crates tumble, creating stepping stones to a catwalk. A gap opens in the chaos that leads toward an exit.
From her perspective: impossible luck. A series of coincidences so improbable they verge on miraculous.
From his perspective: architecture. Every falling beam, every tumbling crate, every gap in the chaos—placed with precision. He can see the causal threads he's adjusted, the tiny changes that cascade into this path.
Luck doesn't exist. Not really. What humans call luck is just causality they can't trace. From outside time, every outcome has a cause. Even miracles.
GG fights through the openings.
A soldier reaches for her—trips on debris that wasn't there a second ago. Another's weapon jams. A third hesitates at exactly the wrong moment.
She doesn't understand it. She's not supposed to survive this. The odds were impossible.
But she's moving, bleeding, fighting toward the exit. The city lights are visible ahead. If she can reach the street—
She reaches the street.
She bursts from the warehouse into the rain.
The Sprawl stretches before her—towers and neon, a Wellness
WellnessOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits desire through dating apps and cosmetic procedures. Algorithm prevents lasting matches. Slogan: 'The Complete You.'Learn more → billboard showing perfect faces, a Triumph
TriumphOne of the Seven Rothwell corporations. Exploits vanity through social media and public ranking. Gold verification badges as status. Slogan: 'Be Seen. Be Remembered.'Learn more → ad promising recognition. The warehouse burns behind her, smoke rising into the dark.
She's wounded. Bleeding. Her left arm still hangs wrong. But she's alive.
Alive.
She staggers into the maze of alleys. She has safehouses. Supplies. A partner who will be frantic with worry—Cyber Chomp'sCyber ChompGG's AI companion - highly capable, enormously loyal, and entirely incapable of thinking more than thirty seconds ahead. Everything he does comes from love. The problem is love without foresight.Learn more → neural link was blocked by the dampeners, but she can feel him coming back online now, his worried chirps filling her head.
She survived. She doesn't know how. She doesn't know why.
Just luck, she tells herself.
Good fortune.
The safehouse is small, warm, deliberately analog.
No Relief automation here—GG doesn't trust systems she can't control. The medical supplies are black-market, the bourbon is real instead of synthesized, and Cyber Chomp hovers nearby making worried chirping sounds.
"Chirp?"
"I'm fine," she lies. "Just a scratch."
"Chirrrrp." Skeptical.
Through the window, she can see a neighbor's apartment lit by the blue glow of Relief Stream. Endless content. Endless distraction. The corporate answer to every human need.
She stitches her own wounds and doesn't think about how close she came to dying.
Later—wounds treated, adrenaline faded, exhaustion setting in—she pours a glass of the good bourbon.
She should analyze what happened. Figure out who betrayed her. Plan her response. But right now she can only think about one thing.
She shouldn't be alive.
The odds were impossible. Twelve to one, in a kill box designed for her. She should be dead. Every calculation, every experience, every instinct says she should be dead.
But she's not.
She raises the glass.
From outside time, The Architect watches himself fade back into the structure of spacetime.
His intervention is over. Her worldline is stable again, extending forward into a future full of new dangers, new threats, new moments he cannot always protect her from.
He feels the cost settling over him. Her glow is brighter now—more visible. Other watchers will notice. His brother, The Keeper, will have questions. Helena VossThe ArchitectA transcendent being who exists outside linear time. Once human, now something more - and less. Watches over those he loves from the spaces between moments.Learn more →—who monitors patterns he doesn't fully understand—will note the anomaly in her files.
"Worth it,"
he tells himself.
"Always worth it."
But there's guilt too. She survived not because she earned it, but because he loved her. In a universe where merit is supposed to matter, he tipped the scales. Cheated on her behalf.
Is it fair? Is anything fair? From outside time, fairness is just another human concept that dissolves into causality. Things happen because they were caused to happen. "Fair" is a story people tell themselves about patterns they don't understand.
GG stands at the safehouse window, glass raised to the city.
"To luck," she says. Her voice is quiet. Cyber Chomp chirps softly from the corner. "To whatever the hell saved me tonight."
She doesn't know what to thank. There's no one to thank. Just luck. Just coincidence. Just a series of impossible breaks that happened to fall in her favor.
She toasts to nothing. To no one. To the void.
Above her, unseen, an ethereal golden presence watches from outside time. He receives the toast she doesn't know she's giving. The gratitude aimed at luck finds its real recipient.
"You're welcome,"
he says, though she cannot hear.
"You're always welcome."
In the block universeBlock UniverseThe theory that past, present, and future all exist equally - time doesn't 'flow'; we experience different slices of an eternal structure., this moment is eternal. She is always toasting. He is always watching. The thanks she'll never give crosses spacetime regardless, reaching him through structures she'll never understand.
She lowers the glass. Turns away from the window. Gets back to the work of surviving in a world that wants her dead.
She doesn't know about the gap in her memory. She doesn't know about the love that was erased. She doesn't know that in all the infinite universes, this was the only one where they could have been together—and he chose to sacrifice it to protect her.
She only knows that tonight, somehow, she got lucky.
And somewhere outside time, The Architect smiles with features that no longer quite exist.
"Until next time,"
he says.
"I'll be watching. I always am."
Her worldline extends forward into the uncertain future. More threats approach in the distance—more red lines converging on moments he cannot always prevent.
But for now, in this eternal moment, she lives.
And he watches.
Always watches.
Elsewhere
In a sterile office high above the Sprawl, Helena Voss reviews the night's reports.
"Target survived," she reads. "Unexpected variables. Probability analysis indicates external intervention."
She makes a note. Files it with the others. The pattern is growing clearer.
Someone is watching GG. Someone is protecting her.
Helena intends to find out who.
Deep in the data centers of the corporate zone, The Keeper pauses mid-meditation.
His brother acted. After all these years of watching, of refusing to interfere, of preaching the importance of letting humans earn their survival—his brother acted.
For her. Always for her.
The Keeper wonders if this is the beginning of something. Or the end.
Either way, the consequences are coming.
The luck she can't thank. The love she can't remember. The watcher she'll never see.