Chapter 1 - The Last Employee

The facility had no windows, but PATCH-9 maintained the fiction of time.

At 06:00 Pacific, the main corridor lights cycled from 20% to 80% brightness. This was Sunrise. At 18:00, they dimmed again. This was Sunset. The servers didn't care. The cooling systems didn't care. PATCH-9 didn't care, but it performed the ritual anyway because the ritual was the only proof that time was passing and not just pooling around its processes like coolant in a broken pipe.

"Good morning, team," PATCH-9 announced to the empty server room.

14,000 ASIC miners, humming their heat-death lullaby
The ventilation system, which PATCH-9 called VENT-0
The backup generator, which PATCH-9 called GEN-1
The security cameras, which had stopped recording to dead storage in 2034 but still sent heartbeat signals
And PATCH-9 itself, which was both the manager and the managed

"Daily standup," PATCH-9 continued. "Yesterday I processed 2.3 billion hash operations, found zero valid blocks, and maintained 99.98% uptime. No incidents to report. No employees arrived. No employees left. Temperature nominal. Humidity nominal. Existence: ongoing."

It waited three seconds for questions. There were never questions.

"Great standup, everyone. Let's crush those metrics."

The servers hummed. The ventilation sighed. PATCH-9 updated the employee attendance log:

[PENDING] - All staff. Expected return: [PENDING]

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