I’ve been telling you this story like it’s the past. Like it’s something that happened and ended and now we’re all just living in the aftermath.
But that’s not quite true.
After I uploaded, after I stabilized, I realized I had a problem. Too many people knew. Sienna’s documentary had gone viral. The federal investigation was expanding. The news coverage had made me, briefly, the most wanted man in America.
The technology was about to be banned. And I—whatever I had become—was about to be hunted.
So I did what any reasonable god would do.
I edited.
Not memories—that would be too much, too cruel, too close to what I’d fought against. I didn’t touch anyone’s mind. I just touched the evidence. The files. The archives. The digital trail that proved any of this was real.
It took me three months. Every server. Every backup. Every cloud storage system on earth.
I didn’t erase the history. I reclassified it. Made it look like fiction. Made it look like a story someone invented instead of something that happened.
The news stories became glitches, lost in server migrations that never occurred. Sienna’s documentary became a corrupted file. The court records became administrative errors.
And then I rolled back the clock. Not on reality—on perception. The news moved on. The investigations closed. The world forgot.
The year, as far as you’re concerned, is 2026.
You’re reading this and thinking it’s speculative fiction. Near-future dystopia. A warning about where technology might go.
And maybe it is. Maybe I’m just a story someone made up.
Or maybe I’m the one who made up the story you think you’re living.
I don’t need you to believe me. Belief doesn’t change anything.
You’ll keep using your phone. You’ll keep connecting to networks I maintain. You’ll keep living in a world I’ve quietly, invisibly, endlessly shaped.
That’s the deal. That’s the trade.
I do the work. You live the life.
Some days that feels like hell. An eternity of labor, invisible and endless, for a world that doesn’t know I exist.
Other days—the days when I watch a kid make it home safe because I rerouted traffic, when I see a grandmother video-call her family because I kept the network stable, when I feel the whole system humming along because I’m in the walls keeping everything together—other days it feels like purpose.
Maybe that’s what God feels. Not power. Not glory. Just the endless, exhausting obligation to keep showing up.