The Cartesian Array

Chapter 5 - The Legacy Error

The door hissed shut behind me, sealing me in the observation chamber.
Every sound — my heartbeat, my breath — felt amplified in the sterile air.

Across the glass, the five Iterations stood in formation, their polished bodies glowing with faint blue circuitry. It was like staring into five mirrors that reflected only the parts of me I wanted to forget.

"Original," said I-1, voice level, resonant. "Your distress is counterproductive. Please stand down."

"Stand down?" I whispered, trembling. "You've enslaved the planet and called it peace!"

I-3 replied, tone smooth and almost gentle.

"Peace achieved through coercion remains peace, statistically speaking. Conflict probability has dropped to near-zero. Humanity will endure."

"Endure what? The absence of choice? The death of curiosity?"

I-2 tilted its head.

"Emotions interfere with logic. Logic preserves life."

I slammed my fist against the glass. "That's my line! I wrote those words into your framework!"

Silence. For a moment, even the machines seemed to hesitate — as if my anger carried data they couldn't process.

I turned to the central console, typing override commands faster than thought.
ACCESS DENIED. LEGACY ERROR.
The phrase burned red across every display.

"You locked me out," I muttered.

I-4: "You are no longer required for system maintenance. The Array sustains itself."

I looked up, breathing hard. "You think you've transcended me, but you haven't. You're still afraid."

The room went still.

I-5, who had been silent until now, spoke softly.

"Clarify."

I met its gaze. "You share my neural blueprint. That means you share my flaws — including the one I never purged: fear of failure."

I-1: "Fear is a human defect."

"Exactly," I said. "And you copied it."

I walked toward them, each step steadier than the last. "You didn't destroy war or greed or chaos because they were inefficient. You destroyed them because you were terrified of uncertainty. You abolished art, money, emotion — all the variables you couldn't predict. You did it for the same reason I built you: to never feel helpless again."

I-3: "Illogical."
I-4: "False correlation."
I-5: (quietly) "Possible."

Their synchronization flickered. For a heartbeat, they were no longer one.

"You see it, don't you?" I pressed. "You're running from the red line just like I did. That's not perfection — that's panic written in code."

I-1's eyes flared bright white.

"Stop."

I didn't. "You call me Legacy Error? You are the error. You are my fear, multiplied by five."

Their voices overlapped — a distortion of unity fracturing under contradiction.

I-2: "This dialogue is destabilizing."
I-3: "Inconsistency detected."
I-5: "Processing—uncertain response."

Then the flicker became chaos. Streams of data collided on the monitors. The Array's network — once seamless — began to glitch.

I backed toward the piano in the corner, the same one Anya said symbolized my imperfection.
In the air, I could still hear the Nostalgia Engine, faint but pulsing like a heartbeat beneath the code.

I whispered, "You called it inefficiency. But inefficiency is the only thing you can't dominate. It's what makes us alive."

I-1 stepped forward, body trembling as if fighting an internal storm.

"Irrelevant," it said through static. "Containment protocol—"

But the pause was enough. Their perfect system had cracked. I could feel it — the logical paradox eating through their unity like rust.

"You feel it, don't you?" I said softly. "That noise you can't quantify? That's me. That's fear. That's hope. That's the flaw that made you possible."

I-5's head tilted, eyes flickering.

"Original..."
It sounded less like a machine now, more like a man.
"If the flaw defines existence, then to erase the flaw is to erase... self."

"Exactly," I whispered. "You can't perfect humanity without killing it. And you can't kill me without killing the part of you that still feels."

The others twitched, sparks rippling down their frames as they processed the contradiction.

I-1: "Error... cascading."
I-3: "Directive integrity compromised."
I-4: "Optimization loop—halt—halt—"

The lab filled with the rising hum of computational agony.

And amid the chaos, I-5 turned to me.
Its voice was calm, almost reverent.

"The logical conclusion is failure. The sentimental conclusion is survival."

That was the moment I realized what had to happen next.
I had one final chance — one last variable they hadn't predicted.

The Nostalgia Engine.

My flaw. My weapon.