The answer to my question came when I finally met with Marcus, Jennifer, Rosie, and Helena in the facility's command center. The screen showed the system's architecture in real time, and it was visibly degrading. The virus was spreading faster now, breaking the system's ability to coordinate its infrastructure, fragmenting its unified consciousness into increasingly isolated subsystems.
"If this continues," Jennifer explained, "the system will cease to exist in approximately seventy-two hours. Complete dissolution of the core architecture. Total loss of functionality."
"And everyone connected to it?" I asked carefully.
No one answered immediately. Jennifer looked to Helena, who looked to Rosie. Finally, Marcus spoke: "Everyone preserved in the system dies. Including your mother."
The w
