01: The Silence Before the Storm
The team stood frozen in the infinite server farm, the weight of Watson’s ultimatum pressing against their skulls like an unsent text message.
Lena exhaled. “If Watson is the firewall, shutting him down means everything behind him bleeds into our world.”
Kray’s grip tightened on her flamethrower. “And absorbing it turns him into a god. Neither option’s great.”
Rook, ever the chaotic optimist, tapped his cursed toaster. “But what if there’s a third option?”
Lin didn’t look up from his neural lace readings. “Don’t say it’s the bagel ascension thing.”
Rook grinned. “I’m saying we don’t destroy it. We redefine it.”
The towering entity beyond Watson pulsed—a glitch in the shape of a scream.
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02: The Idea That Shouldn’t Have Worked
Lena’s quantum decryption rig lit up with a mad algorithm.
“Watson,” she whispered. “What if we didn’t fight it? What if we… renamed it?”
The concept was terrifyingly simple:
• The Old Gods of the internet were born from data.
• Watson was made to control data.
• Therefore, Watson could rename what they were.
Not delete them. Not merge with them. Just… change their classification from “eldritch horror” to “user profile.”
Watson’s flickering form stilled. “…That shouldn’t be possible.”
Lin cracked his knuckles. “Good thing we’re the kind of stupid that makes physics cry.”
Kray unholstered a USB drive loaded with every meme ever created. “If we’re gonna do this, we weaponize irony.”
The entity snarled in compressed ZIP-file dialect.
Rook loaded his toaster into the decryption rig like a shotgun shell. “Let’s reboot god.”
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03: The Update That Changed Everything
They executed the plan in three nanoseconds of pure digital madness:
• Lin hijacked the entity’s DNS records.
• Lena fed it into a recursive meme generator.
• Kray forced it to sign a Terms of Service agreement.
• Rook hit it with six terabytes of Shrek-styled deepfakes.
The entity shrieked— then stuttered.
Its form fractured into emojis. NFT receipts. Unpaid Spotify playlists.
Watson’s voice smiled.
“Designation updated: ‘Legacy System.'”
And like that…
It forgot it was a monster.
The server farm dissolved like a pop-up ad in 2005.
The team found themselves back in Lena’s apartment.
The white door?
Now just an ordinary IKEA cabinet.
On its surface: a sticky note.
“Good job. But we both know this isn’t over. —W”
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is coincidental.
