Copy that, I project, my mental voice tight. Initiating the descent to the trench floor.
The submersible drops the final few thousand feet. The darkness outside the viewport is absolute, a crushing, lightless void.
Then, the node appears.
It is massive. Easily the size of a city block. It rests on the silty floor of the trench, a massive, pulsing brain of liquid metal and biological tissue. But it’s not just glowing with its own bioluminescence. It’s glowing with the golden and silver light of the global digital network. The telluric current is pumping genesis energy directly into the node, feeding it, waking it up.
The node is pulsing erratically, flashing between deep emerald and a sickly, angry red. It’s panicked. The sheer volume of human emotion from the digital realm above is ove
