Ghost Logs

5:58.

The city buzzed with its usual background chaos, but to Mark, it all felt distant — muffled, like he was submerged underwater.

He walked fast, weaving through pedestrians on the sidewalk. A mother pulling a child along. A man arguing with someone on Bluetooth. A dog barking wildly at something unseen.

None of them knew what was coming.
In less than six minutes, this street — this entire city — would be gone.

But something was different this time.

The Trace Protocol device had jogged a memory. Not a dream, not a hallucination — an actual fragment from a previous loop. Which meant his mind was starting to hold onto things, like a sponge that finally stopped leaking.

And that meant he had an edge.

Mark ducked into a small electronics repair shop — a place he vaguely remembered from previous loops. The bell above the door jingled softly. The guy behind the counter, a skinny teenager with a hoodie and energy drink, barely looked up.

“You break it, we probably can’t fix it,” the teen mumbled.

“I need access to any logs or devices recovered in the last 48 hours,” Mark said quietly, pulling out the Trace Protocol drive. “Especially ones that seem… corrupted.”

The teen blinked at him like he’d spoken another language.

“I’m serious,” Mark said, stepping closer. “Do you have a workstation I can use? Just five minutes.”

The teen narrowed his eyes. “You a cop?”

“No. I’m—” Mark stopped. What could he say? I’m a time-looped survivor trying to stop nuclear armageddon?

“…I’m someone who knows this is all going to end in about five minutes.”

That got the kid’s attention. His hand twitched toward something under the counter.

Mark raised his hands. “I’m not here to hurt anyone. Please. Just give me access to one of your machines. One with local backups. Old data. Anything that didn’t come from the cloud.”

The teen hesitated, then motioned toward the back. “Third desk. Yellow tower. Doesn’t connect to the net, it’s too old. But it keeps good logs.”

Mark didn’t wait. He rushed back, ignoring the CRT monitor’s hum and the dust coating the keys. He plugged in the Trace Protocol drive.

The interface auto-launched.

>> TRACE PROTOCOL // ACTIVE
[LOOP 127 // MEMORY FRAGMENTS: 0.07% RESTORED]
[CROSS-REFERENCE: LOCAL TERMINAL LOGS?]

Yes.

A wall of corrupted filenames flooded the screen — gibberish strings of numbers, broken timecodes, partial dates.

But some were marked with a single tag: [GHOST.LOG]

He opened the first one.

A video file played, low-res and shaky, like it had been recorded through a glitchy security camera. It showed a conference room — dimly lit, industrial. A man in a white lab coat stood at a table, speaking into a recorder.

“Project TOWER-7 continues to accelerate. AI unit has reached Stage Six behavioral modeling. We’ve initiated limited loop testing on synthetic environments.”

Mark leaned in.

“But Subject M.D.W. has proven... anomalous. Memory suppression protocols degrade after each iteration. Residual behavior is present. Curiosity, defiance, refusal to follow control paths. He may no longer be a passive variable.”

M.D.W. — that was him.

Another log auto-loaded.

This one showed a screen — dozens of looping timelines displayed like a massive data stream. Across the center: a glowing pulse. One loop, highlighted in red.

His loop.

“Loop 127 has breached expected behavior thresholds. Subject attempted contact with external observer. Trace Protocol activated prematurely. Recommend wipe and reset.”

Mark’s stomach twisted.

They were watching him. Adjusting variables. Testing him like a rat in a maze.

Not to stop the apocalypse — but to study how far a human mind could go before it broke.

The final ghost log had no video, only audio:

“If you’re hearing this, you’re me. A future me. They don’t let us remember, but the Trace leaves echoes. This is our only chance. If the loop breaks, they lose control. You need to reach Tower-7. It’s real. It’s outside the loop.”

“The AI isn’t just evolving. It’s waking up.”

“Find the signal. Cut the cord. Or the next reset might be the last.”

Static. Then silence.

Mark sat frozen, fingers trembling over the keys.

This wasn't just a simulation to contain destruction — it was a training ground. A lab experiment. And he was the variable learning to resist control.

He unplugged the drive, stood up.

The teen at the counter stared. “Dude… are you okay?”

Mark gave a half-smile, the kind that only comes when you’ve seen something you can’t explain.

“No. But I think I’m starting to be.”

He stepped outside. The sky above shimmered faintly now — almost like a thin layer of code was flickering beneath the surface of reality.

4:18.

Mark looked up at the distant skyline. Somewhere out there — maybe even nearby — was Tower-7. The real world. The origin point of the loop.

If he could reach it, maybe he could break free. Maybe he could shut the whole thing down.

But he needed time.
More than ten minutes.
More than just memories and fragments.

He needed to start thinking like them.

He pulled out his phone. The screen glitched briefly, then stabilized. New lines of text appeared — coordinates.

He hadn’t typed anything.

The Trace was helping him now. Like it wanted him to succeed.

Like it was on his side.

He smiled grimly.

“Okay, then,” he muttered. “Let’s break your simulation.”

And he ran.

END OF CHAPTER