The five dogs knew before I did. They had formed a silent, semi-circle perimeter around his desk, their ears twitching toward a frequency I couldn’t hear. It wasn’t a squirrel in the eaves or the wind through the pines. It was the hum of a man finally flossing his teeth with the logic of a dying world.
I watched the Architect from the archway, a half-peeled orange in my hand. To the Unwinder—that sterile, grey system outside our gates—he looked like a typical coder in a fleece hoodie. But they didn't see the way the shadows in the room were beginning to lean toward his monitor, as if the screen itself was developing a gravitational pull. He was moving with a beast-like intensity, making the impossible look like light work.
He didn’t even blink. "The abyss doesn't want rent, love. It wants mulch." He finally looked at me, his eyes glowing with that manic, beautiful light that usually preceded either a global revolution or a very expensive trip to the hardware store. "They call it 'degeneracy' because it’s messy. But nature is messy. I’m not fixing the bugs anymore; I’m composting them."
I took a slow bite of the orange, watching the five Sentinels. They weren't just pets; they were the squad, and they had goals that didn't involve treats. They were guarding the birth of Regenerative Degeneracy—the art of taking every broken piece of human agency the system discarded and using it to grow a forest they can't chop down.
The air in the room felt thick enough to chew through. We weren't just building an MMO; we were planning a heist on reality. The Unwinder policed our flaws; the Sanctuary would feed on them.
"Is it seeded?" I asked, my voice dropping. The wit was my shield, but underneath it, I could feel the ground shifting.
The Architect reached out and hit a final key. The sound—a soft click that felt like a gunshot—echoed through the house. "It's live," he whispered. "The heist is on. Now we just have to see who's brave enough to get their hands dirty."