Doomsday Pilgrimage

Dusk descended. A disorderly breeze swept across the plains, then lifted the fallen leaves from the hill, sending them spiraling into the lofty sky. The silhouette of the city at the end of the horizon soaked in the sunlight, gradually gilded in brilliant gold.

This "illusion," simulated by Navigator Two based on the remaining information in its database, was frighteningly real. Even a speck of dust or a wisp of breeze had been reproduced to perfection. If Duncan had not known beforehand that he was merely speaking with this ancient artificial intelligence on the level of consciousness, he would have been unable to tell the difference between this hill, this plain, and the Real World.

Yet this was ultimately only an illusion. Its flawless simulation was itself its greatest flaw—every speck of dust here was part of Navigator Two's calculations. Before those seemingly random breezes even crossed the plains, their paths had already appeared within Navigator Two's computational core. Nothing beyond the database and its calculations could ever exist here, not even a grain of dust blown away "at random."

The Ancient Kings all knew the truth behind the world's ending trajectory and the Great Annihilation, but only Navigator Two—the powerful artificial intelligence once built by an advanced civilization that had crossed the sea of stars—understood those subtle yet fatal... "differences" in the fundamental laws of a "world."

Now, he had finally found another individual who could understand all this.

The weary man in a white researcher's uniform sat down on the hillside. Perched on a large rock, he gazed somewhat absentmindedly at the simulated dusk in the distance.

"My creators had not yet reached the height attained by your civilization, so I cannot understand the exact nature of a 0.002-second slice of the universe, nor what kind of future