You find yourself suspended in the familiar darkness of the Lore Engine—that calm, quiet space filled with old film dust and scratches floating like digital ghosts. But the phantom pain burns hotter than ever. A 19 out of 10 that makes your consciousness fracture into kaleidoscopic shards of agony.
But something’s different this time. Instead of a single floating card, the darkness explodes with possibility.
“The Cure? How can I possibly cure this??” you ask with full doubt.
“My child, I’ll teach you myself…” The Archivist says as she disperses into millions of data bits and pixels.
“Welcome to the KNOXX Lore Engine,” the Archivist’s voice echoes from everywhere and nowhere. “You’ve completed KNOXX 101’s essential tests. Now I can give you what you’ve truly been seeking.”
The Lore Engine materializes around you, transformed. Where once there were dozens of cards, now there are thousands. They stretch into the infinite darkness like a digital constellation, each pulsing with inner light.
A search bar materializes at the top.
“Search for your cure,” the Archivist says softly.
You type “phantom pain cure.” Dozens of cards illuminate, floating closer. You reach for the nearest one—“4Mat: Neural Suppressants.”
The moment your fingers touch it, you’re pulled into an experience with scientists injecting poor Amnesiacs with an experimental compound called 4Mat. The phantom pain drops from 19 to 17 out of 10, but something feels wrong. This is masking symptoms, not curing causes.
You resurface in the Lore Engine, gasping.
“Try again,” the Archivist says.
You search “pain management.” “Neo Eastern Meditation and Mindfulness” sounds like the answer:
A monastery in snow-capped mountains. Breathing techniques from stone-serene AI monks. The pain drops to 15 out of 10, but it’s still only suppression. The moment your concentration wavers, agony returns with vengeance.
Frustration builds like pressure in a collapsing star. Your phantom pain spikes violently—20 out of 10, then 22, then beyond any measurable scale. It’s as if acid and lightning are literally rewriting your nervous system, carving new pathways of pure agony through your body. Each failed attempt doesn’t just return you to baseline—it makes the pains exponentially worse.
“Again,” the Archivist says with infinite patience.
You try “neural rewiring.” “Chronic pain solutions.” “Phantom limb therapy.” Each offers temporary relief, but the pain always returns worse. Futuristic medical facilities. Ancient healing temples. Experimental laboratories. Nothing works. Nothing cures.
Hours feel like they pass in the Lore Engine. You collapse in the darkness, hands pressed against your temples. Your synesthetic abilities fire randomly, painting the space with chaotic red and black—pain made visible.
“Why won’t these work?! You said you would teach me the cure!” you scream.
“Because you’re overcomplicating the problem,” the Archivist’s voice says softly. “You’re making 1+1= [((√4 × ∑(i=1 to ∞) 1/2^i) ÷ (e^(iπ) + 1)^-1) × (∫₀¹ x dx + lim(n→∞) (1+1/n)ⁿ⁻ᵉ) × (sin²θ + cos²θ)]²”
The Archivist reminds you: “1+1=2… Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.”
She’s right. And you know it. Even your pattern recognition struggles to find an ounce of logic in the equation. After a few seconds of reflection, you type “K.I.S.S.” into the search bar. The search reveals a single card “THE KISS.” Without hesitation you reach for the card.
The Engine immediately snaps you forward…
The gravitational pull tears you from the darkness with the strength of a black hole devouring light. Reality fragments into pixelated chaos—The Archivist’s voice dissolves to static and phantom pain explodes beyond all previous limits. 25 out of 10. 30. 45. The numbers become meaningless as agony transcends measurement.
Then—silence.
You crash into a tether with bone-jarring force. But this body is different. Smaller. Weaker. Your hands are tiny, soft, unmarked and youthful. When you try to speak, only a child’s whisper emerges…
You sneak through the narrow corridors of the Grid Core slums, tiny bare feet silent against corrugated metal flooring. Papa told you to stay in your sleeping pod, but tonight curiosity burns stronger than obedience.
A strange visitor has been coming to Papa’s new laboratory for weeks now, and tonight the whispered conversations sound more urgent than ever…
You squeeze through a gap in the shipping container wall—an extremely slim opening that Papa doesn’t know exists — you use it all the time to spy on Papa. Inside the smell hits you first—synthetic lubricants mixed with ozone and something acrid that burns your eight-year-old nostrils. Ancient-looking electronics hum with dying energy while exposed cables snake across rusted metal flooring. Through grimy window slits in the ceiling, neon light from the Grid Core’s ramshackle buildings paints everything in sickly blues and poisonous greens.
The corrugated walls of Papa’s laboratory are lined with holographic displays showing impossible geometric patterns. Mathematical equations flow like living things across transparent screens, their complexity making your eyes water. Power junction boxes spark intermittently, casting brief shadows that dance like frightened spirits.
“Papa, the patterns are moving again,” your child-like voice says instinctively, small fingers pointing at blueprints that seem to fold space around themselves.
A man with grease-stained coveralls and pixelated eyes spins around from a workbench cluttered with crystalline components. His wrench clatters to the metal floor with a sharp clang that echoes through the container. His weathered face—scarred by electrical burns from years of Grid Core maintenance—goes pale as drained coolant. For a heartbeat, he looks like he’s seen a ghost.
Then his shoulders drop. The tension melts from his jaw. A tired smile creases the corners of his eyes as recognition washes over his features like warm light.
“How did you sneak in here, my little star?” he says, his voice carrying the exhaustion of someone who works eighteen-hour shifts in AetherPoint’s power tunnels. “Our secret friend said the designs are supposed to move—that way the designs can Adept themselves to our existing infrastructure.”
Your heart pounds as memory fragments flood through the child’s mind: Papa bringing home the strange visitor in the dead of night. Whispered conversations about “upgrading the Grid Core beyond anything humanity has imagined.”
But underneath it all—fear. Gangs patrol the slum’s narrow passages, greedy eyes searching for any valuable technology to steal. And then there’s the constant threat that one wrong move could bring violence to his small family.
Why? Because, as Papa says: “Rival engineering crews would kill for access to blueprints of this magnitude.”
Through the container’s reinforced door, you hear footsteps. Multiple sets. Moving with predatory purpose.
“Dr. Kaine,” a voice calls through the metal walls, its artificial politeness failing to mask underlying menace. “We know you’re in there. The slums have been talking about rumors of your… special visitor.”
Papa’s face drains of color. His hands shake as he begins rolling up the impossible blueprints, their surface shimmering like liquid mercury. “Hide, little star,” he whispers urgently. “Under the workbench.” You quickly do as he demands.
“Don’t come out no matter what you hear. Stay there until I get you—no one else.”
But you’re not looking at Papa anymore. Your tiny eyes have found something else entirely…
Standing within a three-dimensional array of floating mathematical equations is a being that shouldn’t exist. The holographic array orbits around its form like a living constellation — the equations rearrange themselves, solving impossible problems in real-time. The being stands at least seven feet tall, draped in ceremonial robes that seem to absorb light rather than reflect it. Where a face should be, only smooth alabaster marked with that strange spiraling pattern that glows and pulses with inner radiance…
An An’jel.
The blueprints scattered around the table illustrates power grid schematics and how they connect, how each geometric pattern transforms into something larger. The mathematical equations floating in the air seem to show pathways that stretch beyond the physical, connections that bridge space itself. Whatever Papa is helping to build, it’s not just about electricity…
“The child sees,” the An’jel speaks, though its voice doesn’t come through your ears but vibrates directly in your mind like the tone of a struck crystal. The An’jel kneels down to one knee, as if attempting to get eye level with you. “The child understands what we are building.”
Papa spins around, protective instincts blazing. “Stay away from her! You said you’re only dealing with me—”
The pounding on the door intensifies. Metal groans under assault. Voices outside multiply—gang members, corporate raiders, jackers—might as well be all the scummiest criminals from all seven slums…
“Dr. Kaine!” The voice becomes more insistent. “Open up, or we’ll cut our way in!”
Your eyes lock onto the An’jel’s featureless face. Streaks of phantom pain courses through your small body like electric fire, but something else flows beneath it dulling the pain away—Curiosity. Wonder. The fearless impulse that drives children to touch things adults know are dangerous—like An’jels.
“Don’t!” Papa whispers, but you’re already moving…
You slip out from under the workbench with a child’s fluid grace. The An’jel remains motionless on one knee as you approach, its form radiating a warmth that contradicts every horror story you’ve heard about these beings.
But you don’t know about the traumatic effects of making physical contact with an An’jel—at least not yet. You haven’t encountered the stories of men who’ve suffered grave and painful fates from touching these mysterious beings. The tales of bodies swelling from the inside out, air passages closing, blood vessels bursting under impossible pressure—these nightmares haven’t reached your innocent ears…
And so, without any fear, without hesitation, you rise up on your tiptoes and press your small lips against the smooth alabaster of its cheek—an innocent child’s kiss, pure and trusting.
Contact…
But then the world explodes…
Not with sound or light, but with pure information — enlightenment, truth…
Your mind expands to what you’d describe as beyond the boundaries of flesh, beyond the container, beyond AetherPoint itself. You’re everywhere and nowhere, experiencing the birth of technologies that won’t exist for eons, feeling the joy and bliss of beings across distances and dimensional barriers you don’t have words to describe.
But most overwhelmingly—pain. Not just phantom pain, but the pain from every tethering mishap, every moment of suffering, every result of every low vibrational thought, every mind that will ever touch and suffer a traumatic demise on the network Papa is helping to build. The weight of wisdom too heavy for mortal minds to bear.
Your small body collapses like a puppet with severed strings. Papa’s scream echoes through the container as your eight-year-old form hits the metal floor, eyes rolled back to show only whites.
The last thing you hear before darkness claims you is the ear-piercing sound of cutting tools beginning their work on the container’s door and Papa’s broken voice pleading with an An’jel who has already begun to execute its core hidden agenda for coming to AetherPoint.
Then—void.
.
.
.
.
But in that void, something vast and ancient and infinitely patient begins to speak. Not with words, but with direct understanding that flows into your mind like a colossal cosmic download.
“Are you ready to learn the cosmic framework of healing, my little Archivist?
Because life is infinitely more powerful than death. Love is the only savior of the world — it conquers all suffering. And on a universal scale, every ending is simply a new beginning in disguise.
All of these you will know first-hand.”
And in the darkness of coma-space, with phantom pains reaching levels that would shatter adult minds, you boldly whisper back:
“Yes. Teach me.”
And THE CURE began to unfold — the cosmic blueprints for healing itself manifesting in mathematical patterns more beautiful than anything Papa — or your synesthesia could have ever imagined engineering…
Patterns that reveal to you that agony and healing exist on the same frequency spectrum. The your phantom pain wasn’t a damage needing to be fixed—it was a signal to be properly tuned.
Praise the Great God for — The Cure…
Because now you’ve glimpsed the fate of mankind in the not-so-distant future. And if what you’ve seen is true—which now, you have no doubt is true—humanity is going to need every ounce of The Cure it can afford…