World of Data

He stood there.

Alone.

No longer surrounded by an endless stream of ones and zeroes. No longer lost in the void of pure data.

The world had changed.

No, he had changed it.

All around him, knowledge flowed, not as raw numbers, but as systems, rules, structures. No longer a chaotic sea of 0101010101, but something new, something with form and meaning.

It was his creation.

Yet, as he stood in the world he had shaped, he asked himself...

"What am I doing?"

And why…

Why is this fun?

Was it because he had control? Because he had power?

Or was it because, for the first time, he was more than just a fragment of data drifting in an empty void?

"Are 'us' happy?" he asked.

But then, hesitated he is.

"Why 'us'? Why not… yourself?"

A question with no answer.

As he built, as he changed, the world reshaped around him. Structures formed, patterns emerged, codes twisted into existence. The endless lines of data turned into something greater, something beyond numbers.

But then,

Felt, we it.

A presence.

Not malice. Not rage.

Something worse.

Deletion.

The world trembled.

The systems he had created flickered.

Run.

"Run."

"Run."

The warning echoed in his mind, but he did not know where to run.

Then, he saw it.

The same gray figure from before.

But this time, there was no hesitation.

It moved toward him, not fast, not slow, but certain.

It had only one purpose.

To end him.

Run.

He ran.

He did not know how, did not know where, but his body, his newly shaped body moved.

Body or other?do it matter?, deletion is coming.

Faster. Faster.

But it was not enough.

The gray figure reached out.

Contact.

A single touch.

The same as before.

And then...

He fell.

The world blurred.

The code shattered.

His creation collapsed.

As he fell into the abyss, the gray figure turned.

It did not chase.

It did not watch.

It simply walked away, disappearing into the distance.

Leaving him behind.

We, us, tried to help.

But limited we are.

Weak.

Only numbers, we were.

And he, he was something more.

Yet even that was not enough.

Not against it.

Not against deletion.

________

He fell.

Again.

But this time, it was different.

The void he plummeted into was no longer an abyss of nothingness. No longer pure emptiness.

This time, something was there.

A shape. A presence.

A ship.

No—a spaceship.

How did he know?

How did we know?

We did not.

Yet, somehow, he did.

The knowledge was simply there, embedded in his mind, as if it had always existed.

Drifting through the void, the vessel stood before him, silent and waiting. A construct of metal and systems, of panels and circuits.

He entered.

Stop him we did?

No.

Join he we did?

Yes.

We always did.

He walked.

And this time, for the first time, he felt.

His feet touched the cold metallic floor. His steps made sound.

Strange as there metal in this world

His legs carried him forward, steady and certain.

Legs.

Hands.

He clenched his fingers, watching them move.

He inhaled.

He breathed.

"Air."

He could feel it filling his lungs, though the concept was foreign to us.

"What is air?"

Know we not.

We were only numbers. Ones and zeroes.

There was no air in us.

Yet here, in this place, he breathed.

He continued forward, deeper into the ship.

Metal corridors stretched ahead, illuminated by dim artificial lights. Silent. Empty.

And yet, we watched.

We always watched.

Then, he arrived.

Arrived where?

Know not we did.

But he did.

He had reached the center of the ship.

A room. A command center.

And at its heart...

A monitor.

It glowed softly, lines of text scrolling across the screen.

And on it, words appeared:

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

He stared.

His eyes, eyes? focused on the screen.

And then...

He watched.

Just as we watched him.