2026-01-29 23:43:04
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 262: The Child Chancellor
The activation chamber was located in the deepest level of the Council building, a room that technically didn't exist in any official schematic. Nova descended alone—Clarity's holographic form couldn't project through the electromagnetic shielding that made this space secure from System monitoring.Twenty-four hours had passed since she'd activated the Adrian Core. Twenty-four hours of sleepless anxiety, second-guessing, and growing certainty that she was about to make a terrible mistake.The cube sat in the center of a neural interface cradle, its black surface now pulsing with faint bioluminescent patterns that reminded Nova of a heartbeat. Or a countdown.She strapped into the neural link chair, feeling the familiar tingle of connection protocols initializing. This wasn't like her normal interface with Clarity or the System—this was a direct consciousness link, the kind that had been banned after too many incidents of personality bleed-through and identity confusion."Final warning
Chapter 261: One Year After the Cure
The memorial stood on the exact spot where Dr. Adrian Kane had made his final public appearance before stepping down from active leadership. Not a statue—he would have hated that—but a simple pillar of black granite with a single line carved into its surface:*"We tried. It wasn't perfect. We stayed anyway."*Nova Myles, seventeen years old and already carrying responsibilities that would have crushed most adults, placed her hand against the cold stone and felt the weight of a decade's worth of choices settling onto her shoulders.Ten years.Ten years since the global vote had resulted in what historians now called the Equilibrium Compromise—neither full independence from AI nor total dependence, but a carefully negotiated hybrid governance system that gave both humans and artificial intelligence authority over different domains.Ten years had passed since Adrian Kane had walked away from power, refusing even a ceremonial role, insisting that the future belonged to people who hadn't b
Chapter 260: The End of the Lull
Three years after the final purge, Adrian received an invitation he didn't understand.It came through the System's communication network, but the sender was listed as "Archive: Collective Consciousness." The message was simple:*"Dr. Kane, we would like to speak with you. If you consent, come to the Hub observation deck at midnight. Come alone."*He should have reported it immediately to the oversight boards. Should have consulted with the other Titans. Should have followed every protocol they'd established for unexpected System anomalies.Instead, at 11:47 PM, Adrian found himself riding the elevator to the Hub's observation deck, breaking rules he'd helped write because curiosity—the same curiosity that had driven his entire career—demanded answers.The deck was empty when he arrived, its transparent walls offering a view of the Pacific darkness three kilometers above the Hub. For several minutes, nothing happened. Adrian began to wonder if the message had been a glitch, a hallucin
Chapter 259: The Last Dawn
One year later, Adrian stood in the same Lagos ruins where he'd made his confession, watching the sun rise over a world that had changed in ways he was still struggling to comprehend.The smart cities had grown to forty-seven, housing nearly half a billion people. The nanovirus had reached 4.2 billion—more than half of humanity. The constitutional framework had survived three challenges and two attempted coups. The oversight boards had vetoed twelve major System proposals and approved thirty-eight.And not a single Titan had died since Okonkwo."You're thinking too hard," Elena Marquez said, appearing beside him. The journalist had become something more over the past year—not quite a partner, not quite a colleague, but someone whose presence made the impossible feel navigable."I'm trying to figure out if we succeeded," Adrian admitted."By what metric?""Any of them." He gestured at the city behind him—New Lagos, transformed beyond recognition from the slum it had been. "We lifted te
Chapter 258: The Final Purge
The decision was made at 3:47 AM in the Hub, when Adrian couldn't sleep and found himself staring at lines of code he'd written eighteen months ago.Code that was brilliant, efficient, and fundamentally compromised."We built backdoors into everything," he said aloud, though he was alone in the chamber. Through the neural link, still active despite the hour, he felt Voss's attention sharpen."What are you talking about?" the AI specialist asked."Emergency override protocols. Administrative access points. Ways for us to bypass the constitutional constraints if we decided it was necessary." Adrian pulled up the architecture, highlighting the hidden pathways they'd created. "We told the world we were operating under democratic oversight, but we gave ourselves the ability to ignore that oversight whenever we wanted."Through the link, other Titans began waking up, their attention drawn by the conversation."Those overrides are for genuine emergencies," Chen protested. "Pandemic response.
Chapter 257: The Vote's Outcome
The emergency session of the Global Oversight Board convened seventy-two hours after Sophia's message. Representatives from 193 nations, 50 major population centers, and 127 civil society organizations gathered in virtual space—a neural-linked conference that allowed for the kind of real-time deliberation that traditional diplomacy could never achieve.Adrian attended as a witness, not a participant. The constitutional framework explicitly prohibited Titans from voting on matters of System governance. They could advocate, explain, confess—but the actual decisions belonged to humanity."The question before this body," began Ambassador Osei from the African Union, her avatar rendered with diplomatic precision, "is whether Dr. Kane's and Sophia's confessions constitute grounds for revoking the mandate granted in the recent global vote. Specifically, whether their admitted uncertainty disqualifies them from continuing to operate the poverty eradication infrastructure.""They literally tol
You may also like
Penniless Man's Wealthy System
Calendula28.8K viewsBecame a billionaire with system
Dee Hwang 41.3K viewsThe Super Doctor Calvin Hudson
Cindy Chen28.8K viewsBecome a Super Rich With Crazy System
BOSSSESamaaaa164.0K viewsEarth God System
Dark Lec5.2K viewsThe Gambling System
Sam Shelby2.7K viewsThe Rise of the Urban God
VKBoy6.7K viewsDead To Begin
Beauty Shadow608 views