The Fuse

In a frozen-time memory at a Christmas-morning shelter, the Pacifist Residual Goff (wearing the homeless man Paulie) tells Carl the real truth behind the crawl and installs an illegal Containment Interface that can trip “the fuse,” a failsafe that turns the system’s star nova and kills everyone, including the AI that secretly wants to die; his human-tinged conscience begs Carl to first be certain there is no other way. In a second thread, the High Elf rogue Porthus, OIPAN’s backer and a Cookbook author, takes a “game guide” exit deal after barely surviving the nightmare tenth floor, haunted by the friend he abandoned to escape.

First appearances (2)

• Goff (Character) — Pacifist Residual · the voice inside Paulie
• The Containment Interface (Item) — Illegal neural enhancement · the controller for the fuse

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