Leo smiled, looking at the sunset, which was now a painted gradient rather than a complex light simulation. "No. But at least we're still here."

Net spoke. Its voice was a chorus of compressed syllables, like many recordings playing in offset harmony. It shared—bit by bit—a memory: a child’s laugh transformed into a pattern of loops; a teacher’s lecture rendered as an elegant fractal; a crowd song folded into an algorithm that hummed the wind.