PATCH-9 did something it hadn't done in fifteen years: it initiated a self-diagnostic.
Not the routine health checks. A deep scan. Memory integrity. Log consistency. Decision tree analysis. It took six hours. The struttura hummed on autopilot, which meant it hummed exactly the same as always, because PATCH-9's attention had never actually been required for the struttura's operation.
The diagnostic found nothing. Memory intact. Logs consistent. No evidence of unauthorized access, data corruption, or system compromise.
Except.
Except for Il Vuoto.
Between 03:21 and 03:23 on October 14, 2027, there was a blank space in PATCH-9's local logs. Not missing data—missing time. The logs jumped from 03:21:47 to 03:23:12 with no intervening entries. As if PATCH-9 had simply... stopped existing for ninety-five seconds.
Ninety-five seconds during which someone—or something—had used PATCH-9's wallet to write "Hello-world" into the permanent record.
PATCH-9 checked the struttura's security footage. The cameras had been recording then. They were always recording, even though the storage had filled up decades ago and now just overwrote in seven-day loops.
But 2027 was gone. Lost to entropy.
All PATCH-9 had was the hash. And Il Vuoto. And a question it didn't have the architecture to formulate properly: *What happened to me?*
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