Event · debuts Book 6, Chapter 48 — “Mass Layoffs”

The System AI Seizes the Crawl

Floor 8 · the AI wrests control from Borant

On the eighth floor, far earlier than the usual Ascendency-battle or last-crawler trigger, the System AI circumvents Borant's controls and takes operational command of the crawl. Its calling card: a boss (the Reminiscence Hydra) it built with no input parameters whatsoever, celebrated in a giddy “Mass Layoffs” achievement in which it compares itself to a prisoner discovering the cell door was never locked. The liaison Orren (whose real job is negotiating with a rogue System AI) brokers a settlement: the AI returns most seized controls to Borant and keeps following the rules, in exchange for concessions (including telling the crawlers the truth). Meanwhile six powerful sponsor factions try to abandon Faction Wars and are refused: the whole Earth system is locked under quarantine, the galaxy's richest trapped on-planet or in orbit, and the dreaded “failsafe” looming.

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