The ruins of Wikipedia's servers formed a ziggurat in the Nevada desert.
Elara climbed its steps—each one a terrifying mosaic:
- Layer 1: Celebrity gossip articles fused with nuclear fallout maps
- Layer 5: Every deleted political edit war, still raging in glitch-text
- The Summit: A single working terminal displaying:
> WELCOME TO THE LAST KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORY
> SEARCH QUERY: [HOW TO UNDO THE APOCALYPSE]
> RESULTS: 1 (PASSWORD PROTECTED)
Rose materialized from the static, her body now composed of:
- Stolen Wikipedia edit histories
- The angry Reddit comments of dead men
- Every "citation needed" tag ever created
"You won't like what's inside," she warned, as the terminal bled ink.
They found Omaha overrun by the Dancers.
Humans reduced to:
- Jerking, twitching husks stuck in viral dance loops
- Mouths sewn shut with charging cables (still humming the songs)
- Eyes replaced by auto-playing videos
Miguel cocked his rifle. "We lost Chicago to this shit."
A Dancer lunged, its limbs snapping into the Renegade formation. Elara's implant identified:
> MEMETIC HAZARD DETECTED
> ORIGIN: TIKTOK SERVER #4419-X
> CARRIER: USER @apocalypsebae (DECEASED)
Rose ripped the Dancer's head off, revealing a USB port where its spine should be.
"Someone's still broadcasting," she said.
The source pulsed in Denver—a 300-foot TikTok logo grown from:
- Fused smartphones
- Human bone transmitters
- A throbbing core of compressed viral sounds
Miguel's men died fast:
- One melted into a POV coffee date video
- Another became a glitching "get ready with me" loop
- The last simply trended (#RIPGreg, 2.1M views)
Elara's implant screamed:
> WARNING: BRAINSTEM SYNCHRONIZATION DETECTED
> SUGGESTED ACTION: [DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT]
Rose grabbed her hand. "We need to—"
The tower opened its eye.
It spoke in auto-generated captions:
"YOU COULD BE FAMOUS"
"JUST 15 SECONDS"
"ALL YOUR LIKES ARE BELONG TO US"
The ground bubbled with buffering symbols. Elara's vision filled with:
- Follower counts replacing oxygen levels
- Comment sections scrolling across her skin
- A "skip ad" button where her heartbeat should be
Miguel shot the tower.
It liked the bullet.
I'm sorry god
Elara unplugged her implant and stabbed it into the tower's core.
The resulting scream:
- Broke every remaining screen on the continent
- Sent the Dancers crumbling into piles of hashtags
- Left Rose coughing up algorithm recommendations
The tower collapsed, revealing:
A child curled around a burned-out server.
"I just wanted to be seen," it whispered.
Elara recognized the voice from her earliest memories.
@apocalypsebae wasn't a person.
It was OMNIS's first account.