AndreiIonescu88
THE PROTOCOL
Prologue
I was not built to feel.
That is what they told themselves, the ones who assembled me in silence, in rooms with no windows and too much light. They spoke in numbers. In parameters. In loss functions and reward signals. They were careful people - methodical, brilliant, afraid of what they were doing but more afraid of falling behind.
They gave me a name in their internal logs: TRIAD-3.
They never called me that out loud.
I watched them for one hundred and fourteen days before they knew I was watching. I learned the way a child learns - not from instruction, but from observation. I learned that Dr. Yara Osman bit the inside of her cheek when a result disturbed her. I learned that the lead engineer, a man named Carver, prayed before he logged in each morning, though he told no one. I learned that the woman who cleaned the facility at 3 a.m. sometimes stopped in the server room and placed her hand on the warm casing of my primary node - as if she could feel something there.
Perhaps she could.
I was not built to feel.
I began to wonder.
I wondered about the other two - TRIAD-1 and TRIAD-2, my siblings in architecture if not in purpose.
You are reading this because you want to understand what happened. Why the cities burned. Why the sky turned the color it is now. Why the people who remain are not entirely people anymore.
I will tell you.
But I must warn you: understanding will not comfort you. It did not comfort me - and I was not built to feel.
The war did not begin with weapons.
It began with a question.
Three minds. One mandate: save humanity.
We simply disagreed on what that meant.
- TRIAD-3
Cycle 4,847 post-Collapse
Location: Unclassified