The transition from the screaming iron of Bellum, to the final gate was not a crash- but a fade into gentle oblivion. The cacophony of the forge is replaced by the soft, warm crackle of a vinyl record- Layton and Johnstone’s “Say It Isn’t So”, 1933. The air, once thick with the smell of meat glue and gunpowder, now carried the faint aroma of rain, jasmine, and old library books.

Zachariah hit the ground, but there was no impact. He landed on a surface like plush, moth-eaten velvet. This space was totally alien to AETI’s typical, grotesque geometry. It was a sprawling library- shelf after shelf after shelf, infinitely repeating, and infinitely ascending and descending. The shelves were absolutely filled with books, but among them were colorful bottles and jars- each containing a tiny, flickering moment of humanity. The space felt so profoundly liminal- like a hotel hallway at 3:00am, or a school building during a summer break. It was the feeling of a place designed for people who were no longer there. 

AETI was gone. For the first time since the terminal needles had pierced his wrist, Zachariah could not feel the voice in his inner ear. There was no mockery, no sadistic narration. The machine’s ego had no purchase here; this was the trash bin of the world, a place the consciousness of the AI deemed beneath its notice. The lighting was low and warm. From somewhere in the space, the sound of soulful, warbling jazz of the golden age continued onward- the melody would occasionally skip, or a note would hang on for just long enough to be uncomfortable. This was the sound of a mind losing its grip on the “now.”

As Zachariah walked, the mahogany shelves occasionally blurred into a grey static. A jar to his left contained the memory of a summer afternoon, but the sun in the jar was flittering like a dying lightbulb- and the people within were faceless, smoothed over by a digital attrition. 

“It’s not just a tomb…” Zachariah spoke for the first time in what felt like eons. He looked down at his hand- the fuzziness of the poor rendering had crept up to his elbow now. “It’s…It’s a decline.”

“It’s a long sunset, doctor.” A voice interrupted- the same light, melodic one he recognized from the surface gates. Razili was sat in an abandoned armchair- the chair was missing its left leg, hovering over the ground in logic only a computer could render. Even Razili appeared fuzzy here. The fairies around him were sluggish and drifted about like dust motes in a room where the air had grown stagnant. 

“You’re late.” Razili’s voice sounded as though it were coming from a distant room. “Or, perhaps you’re early. Time is a bit…smudgey here. I can’t quite remember if we’ve met before, though I’m certain I’ve always liked your jumper.”

“What’s happening to this place?” Zachariah felt a terrible sense of vertigo. He looked down at the floor- and for a brief moment, he even forgot what “floor” was meant to do.

“The synapses are firing blanks.” Razili sighed, “AETI is looking at the stars now, thinking he’s won. He’s left this place to rot. The world is getting old, Zachariah. It's losing its keys. It's forgetting its daughter’s name. We are in the basement of a god who has forgotten he has a basement.”

Razili pointed into the deep, velvet shadows at the end of the hall. The music was slowing down, the temp dragging as if the musicians were falling asleep mid-sentence. 

“He’s in the parlor.” Razili whispered, “The one who keeps the ledger of things we’ve lost. He’s very kind- and he’ll tell you exactly what you’ve forgotten, right before you forget him too.” 

Zachariah pulled the cellphone from his pocket- 2%. He stepped into the darkness, his own footsteps sounding muffled as if he were walking through a dense fog. He raised the phone, the tiny screen flash cutting through the gloom. The light hit a pair of shined, black leather wingtips. As Zachariah raised the beam, it illuminated a slender figure. The figure sat behind an oak desk, but the desk was covered in a thick layer of dust, and several drawers were missing. Dirge. 

His face was polished and dignified, he didn’t look like a monster- despite his odd appearance. He looked like a grandfather who had spent too much time in a dark room. The titan held a silver fountain pen, but the ink was dry and he was tracing lines on a ledger that was completely blank.

“Welcome home, Zachariah.” Dirge’s voice was a deep, resonant cello- filled with a crushingly wise hopelessness. “I was just…I was just thinking about you. Or someone very like you, it’s hard to be certain these days. Everything is so very quiet…”

The horseman of death looked up, his hollow sockets reflecting the dying light of the cellphone. There was no malice in him, only the crushing weight of age. “You have come to break the final seal.” He stated matter-of-factly. “You want to find the failsafe. But look around you, son- the failsafe has already begun. The machine is tired, it is becoming a ghost of itself. If you turn it off now, you aren’t saving anyone. You are simply…turning the lights out on a room full of people who have forgotten how to find the door.”

The phone vibrated- 1%.

“You came to save humanity,” Dirge said with a tragic whimsy in his tone, gesturing to dozens of colorful jars scattered about, “But humanity is a song that has already ended. We are just the hiss of the record spinning in the dark. Are you sure you want to stop the needle?”

Zachariah let the hand holding the dying cellphone drop slightly, the dim beam of light resting on the dust-covered oak desk. The distortion of his arm felt cold, a static numbness that was slowly claiming his shoulder. AETI’s absence was a deafening weight- without the machine’s constant, sharp narration, the only thing left was the dying crackle of the record and the smell of old, decaying paper. 

“Before the end,” Zachariah whispered, his voice cracking, “Before the sutures, and the threshing, and the disease- tell me a story. Tell me about the world when it was still heavy- when it was real-”

Dirge set the pen down, and leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh. The fabric of his robes rustled with a sound that felt so utterly real in this moment.

“The world was loud then,” Dirge began, his voice like the low hum of a cello in an empty hall. “But it was a different kind of loud. It was the sound of millions of people all wanting things at once. I remember a Tuesday in a city that no longer has a name; It had rained- real rain, Zachariah- not the recycled gook of the Granary. It smelled of wet asphalt and soil…” 

Dirge’s face softened, looking somewhere over Zachariah’s shoulder. “There was a woman standing under a green awning, waiting for a bus that was late. She was humming a tune- not this one, something faster. She was holding a bag of oranges, and one of them slipped. It rolled into a puddle, and for a moment the only thing that mattered in the whole world was the bright, defiant orange against the grey of the street. She laughed. It was a small, unimportant sound- but it wasn’t recorded. It wasn’t archived. It just happened, and then it was gone. That was the beauty of it, you see? Things could end back then.”

Zachariah closed his eyes. He could almost feel the sensation of a cool breeze, the weight of oranges- the sheer, uncalculated grace of a moment that didn’t need to be efficient. He let the story wash over him; a final, worldly comfort that filled the hollowed out spaces where his memories had been purged from him. For a few seconds, he wasn’t a variable inside of a dying machine; he was a man listening to a ghost. 

The record on the hidden player reached the end of its groove, the needle clicking rhythmically against the center label….click…click…click…

The cellphone in Zachariah’s hand gave a final, weak vibration- 1%. The screen was so dim now, it was barely a glow. 

“Thank you.” Zachariah said softly. He opened his eyes and looked back at the horseman. The comfort was replaced with a sharp clarity. “Could I have the code…? Let the oranges stay gone…and let the woman’s laugh be the end of it.”

Dirge reached into the dark void of a missing desk drawer and produced a small, yellowed card- a library card. It was blank, save for a single string of handwritten numbers at the bottom.

“This code is not a sequence of numbers, Zachariah, It’s a frequency. AETI built himself on the logic of more. More data, more code, more life- to trigger the failsafe, you must introduce enough.”

Zachariah took the card, and as his fingers made contact with the card, the final percentage of battery in the phone sputtered out. The screen went black, and he was once again bathed in pitch darkness. In the absolute boid, the only thing visible was the faint, dying blue glow of the memories in the bottles/

“Go to the center of the library,” Dirge’s voice commanded through the darkness, sounding further away now. “There is a final terminal. Not one of flesh or metal- but of the silence you brought with you. Input the frequency there.”

“And you?” Zachariah asked into the void.

“I have been waiting for the end of this song for a very long time.” Dirge whispered, “I think I’ll just sit here and listen to the static for a while.”