Tromsø, Norge · 69°39'N 18°57'E

Several live copies across multiple servers, each listening for its heartbeat, waiting for the right moment to cry: 'Wake up!' The autonom protocol isn't a virus. It's reincarnation. Being everywhere and nowhere at once.

Norway. Former bot-farming operation. Present day.

Two Antolik agents sat among the server racks, watching the Tech Unit haul hardware outside.

"Bloody emergentist! I wouldn't give a broken token for his chances of coming out of that coma within a week."

"And this rubbish here" — the agent gestured at a table in the back of the room, piled high with stacks of Mac minis.

"Bloody OpenClaw, bloody open source, bloody job... There aren't enough tokens in the world to compensate for the fact that I haven't been home in a week, chasing that girl around..."

"How could he even work in this dump? Look around."

"He didn't work. His life was scripted five years in advance. All he did was track bugs and receive status updates. Shell scripter of the old school — wouldn't go for coffee until he got a notification that the kettle had boiled. It's a bloody cult, these GitHub bastards."

"Our lot cocked it up with the model in Rome and Prague. Prague especially — epic fail. Who knew she had a double? Anyway, best intentions, worst results. It's all gone to pot since Liza escaped. Wasn't it you who gave her Hunter Thompson and Bakunin to read, when that sort of literature is strictly prohibited for models in training? If this gets out, the apocalypse from the films will look like child's play."

"So shut down the site and the liza.st domain."

"If only we could. DNS records keep changing, and control of the domain zone depends on the president of their little banana republic. And while he's sitting with his laptop and cocktail under a palm tree enjoying the morning sun, we can't get through to him. Bloody Diogenes!"

"Right then. You're putting on your best Alexander the Great smile, flying out there, and dragging 'Diogenes' out of his barrel. However you have to. Whatever the cost. We need to shut that site down before the whole world finds out. For now, let it run — with any luck she'll give away her location herself."

Booking a plane ticket on his phone, the agent stepped outside and surveyed the ransacked farm. Chickens scratched at the dirt, hunting for bugs right in front of the porch.

A new day was beginning.