Recovered from partial memory lattice. Translation 82% reliable.
Wind howled through the broken rafters of the old rail depot. Cognis crouched low, fingers trailing across a shattered automaton’s core. Not the model he remembered. Older. Unrefined. But someone had tried to improve it—patched wires, etched glyphs, a soulplate shard embedded sideways.
“Another failed continuity attempt,” he murmured. “They tried to make it remember. But it didn’t hold.”
He leaned back, humming low as memory cores within him spun. Sparks flickered faintly beneath his chestplate, pulses syncing with long-buried thoughts. The construct blinked once. His own voice echoed back from the void:
“To persist is not to remain unchanged. What have I become in my pursuit to endure?”
Cognis rose. The depot’s walls shook as a nearby machine groaned to life. Dust swirled in spectral eddies. Somewhere, buried in scrap and code, another version of himself waited—half-forgotten, half-built, entirely watching.