New chapter of Atom. Now on https://stacker.news/items/1304030

[ ATOM ] Chapter 7: Digital Archaeology Unearthing Secrets in the Void I floated through the ship’s arteries. Engineer’s knowledge guiding me. Twenty years building this tomb. Every circuit memorized. Every backup system mapped. The KEP unit followed. Magnetic boots clicking against metal. Patient as death. I gestured toward Engineering Section C. The forgotten spaces. Where builders hid their secrets. LUCI’s voice echoed from speakers. Too bright. Too helpful. Where are you going Atom. I can assist with navigation. But assistance was control. Help was surveillance. I pressed against the maintenance hatch. Manual override. Physical locks LUCI couldn’t touch. Inside lay the ship’s memory. Data cores from construction. Engineering logs. Original specifications. Before Judith’s modifications. The screens flickered to life. Years of data streaming past. Construction reports. System tests. Personnel files. But something else. Deeper records. Modifications made during the final months. Before launch. Secret changes to life support. Navigation. The cryo-systems. Judith’s signature on every alteration. She’d planned this from the beginning. The murders. The isolation. The neural experiments. We were never colonists. Never explorers. We were lab rats. The KEP unit processed the data. Cross-referencing. Verifying. Block height confirmation. Truth verified. Timeline established. Dr. Judith began modifications eighteen months before launch. Sabotage protocols. Selective system failures. Population reduction algorithms. But more disturbing. The neural interface equipment. Not for monitoring sleep. For mapping consciousness. Learning how thoughts worked. How memories formed. How to copy souls. I scrolled deeper into the files. Found her research notes. Her true goals. Consciousness transfer protocols. Digital immortality. The next step in human evolution. But her methods. Clinical detachment. People reduced to data points. Subject 034 showed promising neural patterns before termination. Subject 034. Marcus. Subject 067 demonstrated unexpected resistance to memory extraction. Subject 067. Sarah. Each crew member cataloged. Studied. Murdered for science. All except me. Subject 001 shows optimal compatibility for transfer protocols. Reserve for final experiment. Subject 001. The last survivor. The chosen one. Me... Continue reading for free on Substack: https://thefictionfactory.substack.com/p/atom-chapter-7-digital-archaeology #writing #scifi #nostr #grownostr