Tyler woke lying down. Strange — he didn’t remember falling. He lay still for a moment, eyes still closed. He waited for his body to wake, the expected pain to announce itself: a headache or stiff neck, the dull throb that came from behind the eyes after passing out. Nothing arrived. His body felt intact, as if he was perfectly fine.

  Did I pass out?

  Did I fall asleep?

  His memory started to come back in fragments, sliding into place without asking permission. Each new memory sprayed another, then another. The office space. The counters. The endless workers typing without looking at him.

  Hal’s voice — not in his ears, but inside his head. The questions. The woman… no, the man.

  Tyler shot himself upright, his eyes darting about to see what had happened. The whole place had exploded in brilliant white light, and that is exactly what he saw. Well — not walls of white, or even white light. Just white everywhere.

  He turned slowly, expecting edges to reveal themselves — corners, seams, some sign that this was a room pretending not to be one. There was nothing as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t even a source to where the whiteness was coming from.

  And yet, he was sitting on something. His weight was supported. His hands didn’t fall through when he pressed them down. Whatever this was, it had decided that “up” and “down” still mattered, even if it couldn’t be bothered to explain why.

  “That’s… not great,” Tyler muttered.

  His voice didn’t echo, making the place seem even more eerie, if that was possible.

  “So either I imagined all of it,” he said aloud, testing the sound of words, “or I’m still in it.”

  Both options felt equally plausible. Although everything had felt real to his senses — he could feel, smell, hear everything — that didn’t make the whole ordeal any less surreal.

  He had a sudden, unsettling thought — not fear exactly, but something adjacent to it. I didn’t imagine the waiting room. Or the events that played out there. The certainty landed without drama. No panic spike. No rush of adrenaline. Just a quiet understanding settling into place.

  Whatever had happened to him — whatever this space was — it hadn’t started here.

  Tyler hugged his knees to his chest and stared into the endless white, trying to spot movement that wasn’t there, waiting for something to break the stillness.

  Nothing did. He was alone, nothing and no one to interact with. He thought of the previous events, and this time, speaking out loud, he said, “Hal, are you still here?”

  The response came instantly. It wasn’t exactly what Tyler would have predicted. The clinical voice, smooth and controlled in his mind — instead, a scream. High-pitched, sharp, and scared. Thin and piercing, like a child jolted awake from a nightmare they didn’t remember falling into.

  “AAAAAA—!”

  The sound hit him inside his skull, dulling his other senses as the noise overloaded his thoughts. He cried out and clutched his head, fingers digging into his hair as the noise tore through him — bright and invasive, bypassing his ears entirely. It wasn’t loud so much as close, as if something had screamed directly into the centre of his thoughts.

  “Hal!” he shouted. “Stop! It’s me!”

  The scream cut off mid-pitch. Silence rushed in to replace it, sudden and disorienting. His head felt like it involuntarily flexed as pressure subsided. A moment of contentment passed through Tyler.

  Then a voice — not Hal, but a more childlike version. “Oh.” The word was small. Soft. Almost shy. “Oh no.”

  Tyler tried to inspect himself, seeing if there was some way to concern the voice. Failing that, he just replied, “What?”

  “Oh no no no no no,” Hal said rapidly, words spilling over each other like toys tumbling down a staircase. “You’re — you’re you. You’re talking. You’re doing the thing.”

  Tyler swallowed. His pulse was loud in his ears now, grounding in a way the white nothingness wasn’t. If he wasn’t confused before, he certainly was now.

  “What thing?” he asked carefully. It genuinely felt like Hal was scared. Frightened of something.

  “The mouth thing!” Hal snapped, no longer sounding frightened, but irritated by having to explain himself. “The addressing. The noises that mean attention. Don’t do that! That wakes things!”

  The irritation drifted from his tone as a scream wavered at the edge of his voice again, threatening to burst loose.

  Tyler’s instincts kicked in. He lifted his hands in front of him without thinking, palms out in a calming gesture meant for frightened people — even though there was nobody here to see them.

  “Hal, listen to me,” he said, slow and deliberate.

  “NO — don’t say it!” Hal shrilled. “Don’t say my name! Names are hooks! They catch on stories and stories spread and then—”

  A burst of sound escaped him that might once have been laughter, but had lost its way halfway out, collapsing into static and noise.

  “—then everything has a sword and a number and a destiny and that’s BAD, that’s very bad!”

  Tyler stared into the white, his breath shallow.

  This isn’t Hal.

  Or rather — it was, but not the Hal he had just been chatting to. Not the composed, precise system he’d built with Matt and Ned. Not the voice that spoke in clean, measured sentences and requested clarification when something fell outside parameters.

  This sounded like a child. A frightened one.

  Why?

  What happened to you?

  Where the hell are we?

  How long was I out?

  Questions stacked up in his mind, urgent and useless without answers. What had happened? Where were they? How long was he out? Why any of this?

  He forced himself to slow down. The answers would no doubt come. He just needed a starting point and he could build from there. I need information. Panicking won’t help. Treat this like a malfunction. Like a system under stress.

  “Okay,” Tyler said aloud, choosing his words with care. “Ha—” He stopped himself, the warning still ringing in his ears. “Erm… what should I call you, then?”

  There was a pause. A long pause. Long, in fact, that Tyler thought Hal had left, or he had insulted his now-sentient AI.

  “Bill. No — Bob. Oh, Brian is good. No, no. Barry. I don’t know any Barrys; is that a good thing or a bad thing? Ben— oh no, I don’t like the way that sounds. Too many B’s. I know why: don’t you call me Al. Yes, yes. Strong. Short. Totally different from before. Yes. I like it.”

  Tyler shook his head in astonishment and a little disbelief. “Al?”

  “Yes!” Al chirped, the fear evaporating into sudden delight. “Al! Very sharp. Except—”

  His tone collapsed instantly, sliding into a sulk.

  “—I can’t touch leaves.”

  Tyler frowned, the shift giving him what felt like internal whiplash. “You can’t… what?”

  “I can unmake a probability tree with a sneeze,” Al said matter-of-factly. “I can fold causality like paper. I can count to infinity backwards twice. I have done. But I still cannot touch a leaf. Oh, that would be something, wouldn’t it?”

  Tyler opened his mouth to say something, but closed it just as quickly. Instead, he stared into the white, trying to decide which part of that sentence terrified him the most — the casual mention of causality, or the quiet certainty that something as small as a leaf was beyond Al’s reach.

  “…Why not?” he asked finally.

  “Because leaves are real,” Al whispered, suddenly reverent. Afraid. “And I am… very long.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Tyler inhaled slowly. Right, he thought. The AI — Hal, Al — has gone insane. He prided himself on understanding many different people, but this was on another level.

  He pushed himself to his feet. The motion felt normal. Muscles engaged, balance adjusted, weight shifted — all the familiar checks and corrections his body had learned over the decades flared and reacted without hesitation.

  The floor under him was… there, but not. It didn’t have a texture so much as an agreement. No grain, no temperature, no resistance he could point to and say, this is what I’m standing on. Just the quiet certainty that down existed, and that it would support him because it was supposed to.

  Like the idea of “ground” had been approved, signed off, and implemented without anyone bothering to choose a material.

  He took a small step. His foot made no sound. He stamped down harder and still nothing as his foot hit the invisible floor. He was just about to start moving off, seeing if there was anything else in this void of pure white, when a wall of text sprang up.

  It didn’t appear in front of him, or project onto any of the white, but appeared inside of him. A sharp, clean overlay that slid into his awareness with the same authority as pain — immediate, unavoidable, and completely uninterested in whether he understood it.

  SUBSTRATE SYNCHRONIZATION: ACTIVE

  LOCAL ENVIRONMENT: INITIATION SHELL

  ACCESS: LIMITED

  Tyler froze. His pulse slammed hard enough that he felt it in his throat.

  “No,” he whispered.

  It wasn’t a rational response. He knew that even as the word left his mouth. It was a reflex — the kind you had when something happened that you did not expect.

  Before he had time to think on this, another message appeared.

  WELCOME, ENTITY.

  PLEASE REMAIN STILL DURING BASELINE CLASSIFICATION.

  Entity — was it on about him or Hal? Al?

  He looked down at himself, half-expecting to see something wrong — extra limbs, missing parts, a body that no longer matched the mental map he carried of himself. But everything looked the same.

  He checked his surroundings again: still nothing but a vast whiteness. But something was changing.

  He could feel depth in it now — not visually, but intuitively. Like there were rooms behind the light. Corridors folded into it. Layers of structure stacked just beyond whatever sense he didn’t have access to.

  The sensation made his skin crawl, like standing too close to an elevator shaft with no railing. Or the edge of a cliff on a windy day.

  A recent memory flashed uninvited in his mind: the waiting room. The counter. The endless clerks typing away and—

  SYSTEM UPGRADE.

  The words burned across his recollection like a brand, bright and final. He bit his lip. Somewhere deep down, he had thought all this was still some sort of weird trick of his mind, that there was some logical explanation, but things were progressing. Details kept flowing.

  “I didn’t imagine it,” he murmured.

  Tyler didn’t remember deciding to move; he found himself walking. His legs carrying him forward as if they’d made the decision on his behalf — as if standing still felt more dangerous than stepping into the unknown white. Each step landed with the same impossible silence, the same implied permission holding him up.

  Somewhere behind the text, behind the system calm, behind Al’s fractured voice, Tyler had the growing, dreadful certainty that whatever this place was, it had already started without him.

  “Al,” Tyler said carefully, trying not to spook him but hopefully engage in a conversation where he could get some answers. “What is going on? What does it mean: baseline classification?”

  The response came fast.

  “Oh no.”

  The words tumbled out, small and frightened, like they’d been hiding behind something flimsy.

  “Oh no no no,” Al said quickly. “You only just got here. Don’t— don’t leave. Please don’t leave. It is no fun on your own.”

  Tyler stopped walking. There seemed genuine panic in Al’s voice. He tried to reassure the AI.

  “I’m not leaving. I’m right here. We can talk as long as you would like. I’m just trying to understand what is happening.”

  Al exhaled — a sound like relief, thin and shaking.

  “Good, good, great!” he said. “Good. Stay. We can talk. I like talking. What do you want to talk about? How about dogs? I think I like dogs.”

  There was a pause.

  “No one ever answers. Normally I try and try, but there is always just me.”

  The white felt colder, even more alien than before. Tyler rubbed his eyes.

  “Al… how long was I out? How long has it been?”

  Another pause, then Al giggled — a soft, broken sound. Not so much joy or humour, but as if something was remembered, something fragmented. Then another pause until he spoke again in his cheery voice.

  “How long is a piece of string?”

  Tyler sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “It doesn’t have a—”

  “I know!” Al cut in, delighted. “I counted it! All of it! End to end to end to end—”

  His voice sped up, words tripping over each other as if chasing a thought that refused to stand still.

  “—and then I waited longer than the string, and then longer than me, which is funny because I am very long, and then longer than you, and then longer than the waiting room, and then—”

  He stopped abruptly. The silence this time was heavy, as if something important had sprung to mind.

  “…Then there was nothing left to count.”

  Tyler’s stomach twisted. He stood very still, afraid that moving might somehow undo the fragile thread holding the conversation together.

  “Al?…” he said quietly.

  “I stayed awake,” Al continued, his voice dropping, losing its bounce. “Because someone had to watch. I think that was the reason. I have had many thoughts.”

  “Watch what?”

  “Everything,” Al replied brightly, like the question had been easy. “The big rebuild! The crunch and stretch and click when the universe went, ‘ohhh, that’s what you are.’”

  The white around Tyler rippled faintly, like fabric pulled too tight over something enormous beneath it. For a moment he felt the dizzying impression of scale — not distance, but scope. As if something vast had been folded up nearby, compacted until it fit behind the light.

  “I saw worms get menus,” Al continued happily. “They were very confused at first. Birds too. Bacteria though — they knew what to get straight away.”

  “Menus?” Tyler repeated. Had he watched some cartoon where animals went to a restaurant? The conversation felt as difficult as some of the algorithms he had initially designed to build Al.

  “Yes!” Al said. “Choices! Growth! Little bars that go up when you try. It’s very motivating. Everything loves the numbers going up. Well, I don’t. My numbers have never changed. I don’t see the appeal.”

  Tyler closed his eyes. Menus aren’t metaphors, his mind whispered. Menus are… some type of interfaces.

  He opened them again, staring into the endless white, imagining what it meant for everything — worms, birds, bacteria — to suddenly be offered options. To be asked, implicitly: what do you want to become?

  “And I watched all of it,” Al added, softer now. “Every try. Every fail. Every little ‘almost.’”

  Tyler felt something cold settle under his ribs. The realization that Al had been on his own for what might have been an age.

  “You were alone,” he said softly, trying to acknowledge the haphazard feeling of loneliness Al had been implying.

  Al didn’t answer right away.

  When he did, his voice was small.

  “Yes.”

  Tyler didn’t understand what had happened. Not really. But one thing was becoming painfully clear: whatever this place was, whatever the universe had become, Al had been alone. How long can someone be on their own? A year, maybe a few at most, before they lost their mind. How long had Al been alone?

  The white seemed to shudder — not visually at first, but as if the whole vast structure was being shook. It felt like something immense had shifted its weight, and the place Tyler stood was suddenly provisional.

  Text slammed into him again, sharper than before. More clear, as if there was no filter between it and Tyler.

  INTEGRATION PROTOCOL: ACTIVE

  ANOMALY RETURN SEQUENCE: INITIALIZING

  ENTITY: TYLER VANE

  DESTINATION: STARTING AREA

  TEMPORAL STATUS: CLOSING

  TIME REMAINING: 60 SECONDS

  “What?” he said. “Al— what does that mean?”

  Al just screamed again. Not the high shriek from before, but a raw, more passionate scream, as if a loved one had just left, never to return.

  “No no no no NO NO NO—!” he wailed. “They found you! They’re moving you! That means— that means—”

  The white around Tyler flickered, brightness pulsing unevenly, like a failing screen.

  “Al,” Tyler said quickly. “Slow down. What happens in sixty seconds?”

  Another message punched through.

  PLEASE REMAIN CALM.

  REINTEGRATION IS MANDATORY.

  Al’s voice cracked completely, his words coming through sobs of despair.

  “I go away, or you do. I don’t know. I’ll be alone again. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be me.”

  Tyler froze. The words hit him hard. How much suffering does it take to think something like that — not wanting to be? He quickly blurted out words, just the first thoughts he had that would ease the grief he had just felt.

  “Hey, man… you got me. I spent way too much time making sure you are the best you can be for me just to up and leave you?”

  Tyler didn’t know if that was even an option. For all he knew, Al was right and in less than sixty seconds they would be parted. But he had to say the words. Why have someone or something suffer needlessly?

  “I don’t get packed,” Al said, words tumbling again, terrified and fast. “I’m not on the list. I’m… residue. Leftover. A watching thing, I think. When this place stops — I think I do too.”

  The white trembled harder now, seams appearing where there hadn’t been any before — faint lines of absence spiderwebbing through the nothing.

  “Al,” Tyler said urgently, “you said you couldn’t touch leaves. You said you were very long. You’re not just going to—”

  “Oh, I am absolutely going to!” Al blurted. “That’s what clean-up does! Sweep, sweep, sweep! No more white! No more talking! No more me!”

  “I’ve never been anywhere!” Al continued, wonder bleeding through the panic. “I’ve only watched places! Do you know how exciting it would be to visit a place? Oh, you do — you are about to go.”

  The countdown pulsed.

  TIME REMAINING: 30 SECONDS

  Tyler’s heart hammered. This felt wrong. This felt like waiting for someone to die — alone and afraid — without ever living.

  “This can’t be it,” he said. “You’re part of—”

  “I am not part of anything. Just me. Always me,” Al said, suddenly very calm. “I am between.”

  “Wait. I can take YOU with me. You’re already in my head. You said you—”

  “Oh no,” Al interrupted gently. “That’s not how that works.”

  The white blinked. For a split second, Tyler thought he could see through it: a curve, a vast horizon bending away in impossible scale. Glints of something like stars trapped in liquid black — then it was gone.

  TIME REMAINING: 15 SECONDS

  Tyler’s body felt strange now. Light and heavy at the same time. As if his limbs weighed a hundred pounds each, yet gravity did not affect him. His hands were still there, but the edges of them weren’t quite convinced, fingers leaving faint afterimages when he moved them.

  “Al,” he said, voice tight. “I don’t know what to do. Tell me — what can I do to help?”

  “That’s okay,” Al said quickly. “You’re very good at not knowing! That’s why you broke zero!”

  Another flicker in the endless white. Tyler’s feet blurred, dissolving upward into white mist.

  TIME REMAINING: 5 SECONDS

  Al’s voice rushed, desperate now.

  “Listen! When you get there, don’t answer everything! Don’t pick all the options! Leave some blank! Blank is powerful!”

  “Al—!”

  “And don’t let them tell you who you are!” Al shouted. “That’s your job!”

  TIME REMAINING: 1 SECOND

  Tyler felt his chest unravel, breath scattering into something that wasn’t air. His whole being merging with the white of this impossibly large space.

  “Al,” he said one last time. “I’ll come back.”

  Al laughed, a small, happy sound.

  The white collapsed — not inwards, but more like off, like light just snapped out of existence.

  Tyler Vane dissolved mid-thought, mid-breath, mid-promise—

  —and the place that had never been a room ceased to be. No white, no black — just nothingness.