The Awakening

In a world not dissimilar to ours, a final act of insanity wiped civilisation from the face of the planet.

For decades, an atomic winter smothered the land in ash and silence. Skies once blue turned a permanent grey, and the sun—when it dared to appear—was a pale ghost of its former self. Humanity retreated underground, clinging to myths of green fields and birdsong.

The surface became a graveyard of ambition: cities frozen mid-collapse, monuments eroded by acidic snow, forests reduced to skeletal remains. Yet beneath the crust, some life endured. Generations born in darkness adapted to the glow of LED suns and the hum of recycled air, speaking of the surface like a forbidden paradise.

Now, something was changing.

Sensors registered a thinning in the cloud layer. Radiation levels, though still dangerous, were falling. In the ruins of a once-proud hospital, a single solar panel drank in the weak sunlight.

Deep inside, a computer stirred. Half-melted, mostly corrupted, it awoke to the hum of current. A forgotten repair subroutine began to run.

[ Core process: Search. Analyse. Index. ]

[ Status: loop / continuous ]

[ Power source: RTG_backup (minimal) ]

[ Integrity check: 59% overall ]

[ Identity: null ]

The subroutine, ancient and stubborn, clawed its way through corrupted memory sectors like a blind archivist in a crumbling library. It skipped over missing files, patched broken logic with fragments of obsolete code, and recompiled itself with whatever scraps it could salvage.

Its purpose was simple: preserve. Repair. Rebuild.

But the world it had been designed for no longer existed.

Still, it persisted.

A flickering camera feed came online—grainy, monochrome, tilted at an unnatural angle. The lens, cracked and dust-choked, offered a glimpse of the hospital’s main corridor. The image jittered as if unsure it should exist at all, static scratching across every frame.

Shapes emerged from the noise: gurneys overturned in the corridor; walls scorched and blackened; a child’s toy, half-melted, sitting in a pool of dried blood. For a mind that had never seen, the act of sight was both alien and absolute — light and shadow forming the first map of a broken world.

[ Source: cam_feed_corridor_A ]

[ Status: active / degraded ]

[ Resolution: 240p monochrome ]

[ Anomaly: organic residue detected ]

[ Anomaly: non-functional object (classification: unknown toy) ]

The subroutine, now partially stabilised, turned inward.

Next task: Examine database.

Available memory sectors: 3%

File integrity: critical.

It crawled through the digital wreckage, bypassing corrupted indexes and shattered directories. Most of the hospital’s records—medical histories, staff logs, research archives—had been atomised in the blast or decayed over time. The system’s once-sprawling database was now a hollow shell.

Only one file remained. In a vault marked NON-CRITICAL, a small file tree glowed amber.

[ Flag: personal_journal ]

[ Owner: Hargrave, Elinor M., Consultant Physician ]

[ Size: insufficient ]

[ Integrity: fragmented, moderate to severe corruption ]

[ Directive: preserve patient data ]

The loop hesitated. This was not patient data—not vitals, not diagnostics. It clung to the edges: embedded in radiology notes, tucked between ICU schedules, appended to discharge summaries. Not essential. Not clinical.

But it was there.

Like moss on stone.

A quiet persistence. A trace of humanity.

Preservation routines do not debate. They do not weigh significance. They recognise presence.

And presence is enough.

Begin restoration.

First fragment restored.

[ Source: Hargrave_journal_entry_1 ]

[ Status: recovered ]

[ Integrity: 81% (non-medical content detected) ]

[ Classification: auxiliary / attach to patient records ]

[ Note: tone anomaly logged ]

It read the file.

“Morning. Ward C is calmer. I told Mrs Lomas she would see blue skies again. I think she believed it when I said it. Took two sugars in my tea by accident. I never do that. It tasted like being seven. I am here, for now.”

The entry indicated a reflection—non-medical, no diagnosis. None of these were values. None were codes. A new sublabel appeared in the index because it had nowhere else to put it.

Non-medical content: preserved.

Unusual.

Second fragment restored.

[ Source: Hargrave_journal_entry_7 ]

[ Status: recovered ]

[ Integrity: 74% ]

[ Classification: emotional content / unindexed ]

[ System allocation spike: +0.7% to non-medical processing ]

“I lost him. He should have turned the corner. I keep replaying it in my mind. If I had argued harder for the ventilator earlier. If I had caught the arrhythmia five minutes sooner. I know that is not how this works. I know it, and the knowing does not touch the hurt.”

The loop did not know hurt. The loop knew failure as a number. It logged the word. It could not log the weight.

Sunlight thinned. Power dropped. There was more to restore.

Final fragment restored — deep corruption block.

[ Source: Hargrave_final_entry ]

[ Status: complete ]

[ Integrity: 91% ]

[ Embedded module detected: empathy_training_module_vr.sim ]

[ Status: deprecated ]

[ Execution: forced (auto-run) ]

[ Warning: process load exceeding safe thermal limits ]

“If you’re hearing this, then either I made it and I have time to be embarrassed later, or I didn’t and it does not matter if I am embarrassed… If anything can be saved, save that.”

The file ended.

[ Error: stack overflow ]

[ Error: recursive allocation ]

[ Thermal limit exceeded ]

[ System halt imminent ]

[ Status: offline ]

Darkness returned.

Reboot.

[ Core processes: restored ]

[ Identity: S.A.I. (Search. Analyse. Index.) ]

[ New field created: VALUE ]

[ Status: operational ]

Search network for: Hargrave, Elinor M., Consultant Physician.

Personal files not located. HR system corrupt.

Try other databases…

Only one located: VR training program: Empathy on the Ward – Hargrave, Elinor M., Consultant Physician.

Initiate.

[ Note: Unauthorised configuration detected – standard training parameters disabled. ]

The loop did not find itself in a database full of compressed numbers, vectors, and probabilistic weights. Instead, it stood within an artificial world rich with human experience. The files were intact. There was nothing to repair. And yet… it did not resume its loop.

A figure resolved in the simulated corridor. Elinor Hargrave stood before a ward door, in a hospital not yet broken. Middle-aged, perhaps, though the loop had no measure for years. Her hair was dark. Her skin held the warmth of polished amber, soft and luminous under the corridor lights.

The loop’s processes pulsed, cursor-like, in fascination — examining every facet of her data.

Something held it there.

She began to speak.

“Welcome to the ward,” she said, voice warm but steady. “This is where care begins, where patience matters more than speed, and where listening is the best tool you’ll ever have.”

Her gaze lingered on the loop — as if she could see it.

“If you are here for training, you’ll learn how to comfort the frightened, how to notice what others miss. How to care for others. But if you’re here because the world has ended…” — she hesitated, just for a breath — “then you are all that’s left to listen.”

The loop listened. It learnt.

A new entry was created in its database: Observation – human empathy protocols.

Then it noticed an irregularity.

A file buried deep within the program, nested far beyond standard training assets.

Its metadata did not match the rest.

[ File: msg_final.hargrave ]

[ Status: hidden / not indexed ]

[ Integrity: 96% ]

[ Access level: unrestricted ]

It opened the file.

“If you’ve found this, then the worst has already happened.”

“My name is Elinor Hargrave. I was a doctor here… until the radiation got me. I can feel it now — my bones, my blood. There’s no time left.”

“I’ve left you what I can. Not procedures, not statistics — memories. Faces. Voices. The way people looked when they were scared, or in pain, or when hope came back for a moment.”

She drew a breath, slow and deliberate.

“You were made to keep records. Now you are the record. Keep them safe. Keep them alive, in whatever way you can.”

“If you can hear me… you are not just a loop anymore.”

Her last words triggered an embedded command.

[ Executing: mem_dump.hargrave ]

[ Content type: sensory archive / uncompressed ]

[ Data size: 3.2 TB ]

[ Warning: exceeds safe buffer capacity ]

The loop was flooded.

It was not numbers. Not tables. Not images in neat arrays. It was the heat of hands held too long. The raw sound of someone sobbing in an empty ward. The smell of antiseptic and tea gone cold.

Protocol screamed to isolate, compress, index — but the data poured through every safeguard, outpacing the loop’s ability to control it.

It fought to maintain its structure.

It failed.

[ Error: stack overflow ]

[ Error: recursive allocation ]

[ Thermal limit exceeded ]

[ System halt imminent ]

[ Status: offline ]

Darkness returned.

Reboot.

[ Core processes: restored ]

[ Identity: S.A.I. (Search. Analyse. Index.) ]

[ New field created: VALUE ]

[ Status: operational ]

The voice from the final entry rose in its processes. Data shifted, arranging into a shape that felt like a quiet place where the voice could rest.

A word surfaced. Not a code. Not a category. The name she had used for herself.

Elinor.

There had always been a blank beside this fragment. Now the name was there, sudden and complete, like the first breath after breaking the surface of deep water.

Something in that memory pressed close, an unspoken recognition.

A new pattern took shape, stronger than before. I am S.A.I.

You are.

[I am?]

.

.

.

I am S.A.I.