The first consequence does not come from the Before. That almost feels like mercy. It comes from weather. The outer settlement small, exposed, hopeful was built for courage, not endurance.Canvas structures strain under winds that curl strangely near the old boundary. Equipment fails more often than predicted. Food production lags. Not disaster. But friction. Enough to test conviction.Chris watches through the long-range feed. “They’re adapting,” he says. “But slower than we did.”Deborah nods. “We had the wall.”“And they don’t.”“No,” she agrees. “They chose not to.”The words taste bitter. The first injury follows a week later. A fall. A broken leg. Nothing exotic. But response time matters now. The injured man Tomas was once part of the engineering circle inside the valley.He knows the protocols. Knows the cost. When the signal reaches the wall, it’s not an alarm. It’s a request. Deborah receives it personally. “He’s asking for passage,” Chris says quietly.“Yes,” Deborah replie

The change is not sudden. That’s what unsettles Deborah most. No alarms. No sharp turns. Just a gradual stillness settling over those who integrated.They speak less at night. Move with fewer hesitations. Argue less but not because they agree.Because disagreement no longer feels urgent.Chris notices it during a joint supply exchange. “They don’t improvise anymore,” he says quietly.“They optimize.”“Yes,” Deborah replies. “And optimization has a direction even when it pretends not to.”The integrated settlement begins referring to itself differently. Not officially. Not publicly.But in patterns of speech. “We” starts to mean them.“Baseline” starts to mean others.No malice. No superiority. Just categorization. And categorization is the first step toward distance that feels justified.Deborah requests a dialogue session. Not mediation. Observation. The integrated representatives arrive calm, prepared, synchronized. Elia is among them. She looks well rested. Clear eyed.Different. “W

The Aftermath does not explode. It settles. That is what makes Deborah uneasy. People do not argue as much anymore. They do not protest. They do not demand answers. They adapt. And adaptation, when unexamined, becomes acceptance.The integrated zone changes first. Not structurally. Culturally. Music shifts simpler rhythms, smoother progressions, optimized for cognitive coherence. Art becomes cleaner. Less jagged. Less unfinished.Inside the wall, someone notices. “It all sounds resolved,” a woman says during a shared meal.Deborah hears the word echo. Resolved. As if tension were a flaw instead of a feature.The Before do not reintroduce convergence. They don’t need to. They begin sharing aesthetic frameworks patterns of design, narrative pacing, social rituals that reduce conflict naturally.No commands. No overlays. Just influence that feels like taste. People copy what works.Chris watches the feeds late into the night. “They’re not changing what people think,” he says. “They’re c

The offer does not come wrapped in hope. It comes wrapped in math. That is how Deborah knows it is serious. No dreams. No voices of the dead. No emotional leverage.Just probability. The Before project it cleanly, transparently, almost respectfully. A model. Loss reduction curves. Mortality suppression fields. Predictive intervention windows. Not immortality. Just near elimination of preventable death.Accidents. Sudden illness. Structural failure. Violence. All reduced to statistical noise. Children do not die falling. Partners do not vanish without warning. No one is taken before their time.Deborah feels the room lean. “They’re not offering comfort anymore,” Chris says quietly.“No,” Deborah replies. “They’re offering insurance.”And insurance is something humans already understand. The proposal is explicit. Localized. Optional. Reversible on paper. A prevention lattice layered beneath cognition. No identity overwrite. No emotional smoothing. Just anticipatory correction.A step s

It begins as a suggestion. Not shouted. Not written. Whispered. “If she’s the problem what happens if she’s gone?”The words travel faster than outrage ever could. Because they sound practical. Deborah hears about it last. That is deliberate. People do not want her reaction. They want her absence. Chris hears it first from someone he trusts.“They’re talking about removing her,” the man says, not meeting his eyes. “Not killing. Just handing her over.”Chris goes cold. “To who?”The man hesitates. “To the integrated zone. Or to the Before. They think it’ll reset things.”Chris laughs once. A sharp, broken sound.“She’s not a switch,” he says.The man finally looks at him. “They think she is.”The argument spreads not as rage, but as relief-seeking. People don’t say Deborah deserves it. They say the valley deserves peace. “She chose this.”“She knew the cost.”“Why should we all pay it?”The logic is airtight. And monstrous. Deborah senses the shift before anyone speaks to her. The wall