Elpida drowned in static.

The worm-guard which had plucked her from Pheiri's open hatch was right in front of her eyes, but she saw only an abyss of black static. A fist of tendrils squeezed her waist and her ribcage, but she felt only the creaking of her bones. She knew she had been hauled high into the air, legs and feet dangling from the machine's grip, but her sense of balance, gravity, motion, all was suffocated by swirling turmoil; she couldn't feel her feet and legs, though she tried to kick out at the tentacles which held her firm. Her eyeballs burned, sight abraded by static filaments, pain rending through her orbital bones and grinding into her brain.

She tried to draw breath; a wave of black static rushed down her throat, filling her mouth and lungs and guts with pins and needles, nerve compression numbing her from the inside. She went deaf and blind and mute under the crushing pressure.

—lps! Howl screamed her name, from so far away. Can't feel— don't—

Howl's voice was broken and choppy. The static was lodged deep in Elpida's brain now, tendrils tightening around the software entity running on her nanomachine meat.

She tried to call out to Howl, to wrap mental arms around Howl's shoulders, to hold her tight. But Elpida's mind closed on nothing. The space Howl should have occupied was empty.

Howl was gone.

Elpida opened her mouth and roared — or tried to. She could neither hear nor feel her success or failure. She slapped at her coat with her left hand; her fingertips still retained a little residual sensation. She groped for her pistol, forced her hand around the grip, and dragged it from her pocket.

She aimed into the static and pumped the trigger. She felt the recoil like a muffled thumping beyond walls of iron — once, twice, then click click click.

Her extremities finished going numb. She couldn't tell if she was holding the pistol anymore.

This was it. Killed by the graveworm's immune system.

At least Pheiri and the others would survive; Elpida clung to that thought as her senses shut down and her mind collapsed. Her strategy to escape the Necromancers via the worm-guard was still a good one, and Pheiri had everything he needed to see it to completion. All he had to do was turn and run, outrun the Necromancers, and the graveworm would do the rest. She knew he could do it, she believed in him, and in the rest of her new cadre. Elpida only wished she could be there to see it, to congratulate her little brother, to lead the others through whatever they found on the far side of this trial. They would survive, they would win, she was sure of that. They were all of Telokopolis now, and Telokopolis is forever.

And Howl had done as Elpida had asked, when Elpida had demanded they charge the Iron Raven. She had fled Elpida's mind at the last possible moment. Howl had saved herself and gone to join the others. Elpida hoped she would get on well with Vicky, or Kagami, or whoever else she had decided to inhabit.

This was not the end, not for a nanomachine revenant. Elpida knew what would come next.

Resurrection, a new awakening, hundreds or thousands or millions of years hence. A new group to save or lose.

But no Howl.

No Howl, no sisters, none of the others, her new comrades. She would likely never see them again, not unless they all survived across the abyss of time that now yawned wide at Elpida's feet. Not unless she could find them again somewhere and sometime in the infinite cruelty and chaos of the nanomachine ecosystem. Not unless they rebuilt Telokopolis.

Elpida couldn't feel her face or her eyes, but she felt the tears inside her chest.

Howl … this time, I'm the one going on ahead. Wait for me. Please, I love you so much, wait for me, wait for—

A hand exploded from within the black static, grabbed Elpida's wrist, and tore her out of her skin.

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Elpida tumbled head-first toward a floor of grey metal.

She didn't know where she was or what was happening, and she didn't have time to guess.

Training took over; she landed in a messy combat roll, tucking the stump of her right arm against her side to avoid bumping the wound site. She stopped herself with one boot against a curved grey wall. With a roll of her hips she got her legs beneath her and sprang to her feet, one fist up, head snapping left and right, assessing the situation.

Grey corridor, matte and dull, a tube of metal. One end was plugged by a circular iris, interior edges locked together like the steel teeth of a gigantic mechanical lamprey. The other end of the passageway curved off beyond sight. The space was illuminated from everywhere and nowhere; Elpida's body cast no shadow, as if the matte grey substance of the tunnel produced light in a way the human eye could not comprehend.

Total silence, air stagnant and still; every breath made Elpida's lungs feel odd, as if the pressure in here wasn't right. She could hear her own heartbeat, the rush of blood in her veins, and the subtle creaking of her muscles.

No hostiles. Just—

"Howl!"

Howl was leaning against the opposite wall, heaving for breath, shaking the bloodied knuckles of her right fist. She was dressed in the simple black shorts and t-shirt so common to the cadre when off-duty.

A dent in the wall was smeared with blood and marked by the impact of Howl's knuckles; it was rapidly self-repairing, smoothing itself out, absorbing the blood.

Howl straightened up and flashed a grin. Then she looked to one side, eyes flicking across the surface of the corridor.

"Fuck you!" Howl screeched. Elpida knew the words were not directed at her; Howl was speaking to something else. Howl gestured at Elpida, then at herself. "We come as a fucking pair! You hear me, you overgrown drilling machine?! If you try to separate us again, I'll get inside you for real next time, I'll find the bit of you that thinks and carve a hole in it, so I can shit right into your brains!"

Howl punctuated the threat by punching the wall again. Then she stumbled back, hissed with pain, and sucked on her bruised and bloody knuckles.

"Howl. You good?"

"Yeah yeah." Howl's head snapped up. "You know I'm never leaving you behind again, Elps. Fuck that. Never again."

Elpida found a hard lump in her throat. She had only the vaguest idea what was going on, but she could take an educated guess, and she knew that Howl had saved her. The emotional backwash from her 'final moments' in the grip of the worm-guard still lingered, hot and tight behind her eyes.

"Howl," Elpida said, and found her voice was strangely raw. "Thank you—"

"Don't," Howl snapped. "Or I'll start crying and shit."

"Understood," Elpida said. She felt much the same. She pushed her emotions down, bottled them up tight, and focused on the moment. "We're inside the network, yes? This is another simulation?"

Howl snorted, rolled her eyes, and flexed her bruised knuckles. "What gave that away?"

"The fact that I can see you," Elpida said, then reached out with her left hand and squeezed Howl's shoulder. "And touch you. Obviously."

Howl put her bloodied hand over Elpida's, then looked up at her and cracked a grin. "Hey you."

Elpida felt a familiar, comforting, life-long stirring, deep in her chest, down in her belly, and between her legs. On her previous visit to the software space of the network she'd not had a quiet moment to spend with Howl, not between the confusion and the kidnapping and the revelations of her mother. But now, in the sudden silence and peace after the chaos out in reality, the urge struck her like a shot of adrenaline to the heart.

Howl looked good in shorts. The black fabric hugged her hips and thighs. The t-shirt clung tight to her slender chest, to the toned muscles of her torso. Her white hair stuck up in all directions, as it always did. Her purple eyes glittered with private mischief. She smelled of home, of sex, of the cadre, of all the things Elpida missed more than life itself.

"Hey," she replied, voice lower than she'd intended. "Last time I saw you like this, you were bleeding from a gut wound. Are you doing okay?"

Howl lifted the hem of her t-shirt. A long angry red scar was slashed across her abdomen, where Perpetua had tried to have her cut open. "S'not real, course, but I wanted to keep it."

Elpida nodded. "Right, right. Suits you."

She squeezed Howl's shoulder again, then forced herself to let go and step back. This was no time for self-indulgence.

Elpida glanced down at herself. She was wearing matching civvies — black shorts, t-shirt, and a pair of boots. Her right forearm was still missing even in software; the limb terminated in a mature wound site, skin neatly folded over, stitch-scars visible on the end of the stump.

When Elpida had thought she was dying, she had placed all her hopes and faith in Pheiri and the others. She had believed, totally and without reservation, that they would escape the Necromancers and outrun the worm-guard and go on without her. Now, in the peace and silence of the network, with Howl at her side, and her heart rate a steady normal, she was able to step back and allow herself the luxury of worry.

Pheiri could hold off a few worm-guard; he'd done so before, and Elpida had seen him do it. But a dozen? Or a hundred? Let alone a thousand. Pheiri was at the mercy of the graveworm's immune system, no less than Elpida had been.

And she had no guarantee the Necromancers would fall for the trap. Too many unknowns.

"Right," she said. "This isn't real. Pheiri and the others are still fighting out there. How do we—"

"No sweat," said Howl. "We're running so fast it shouldn't be possible, I can't even measure the clock speed. Not even a quarter-second of real time has passed yet." She rolled her eyes at the grey metal corridor again. "All this processing power, it's fucking cheating."

Elpida nodded. "We're inside the graveworm."

Howl hissed through clenched teeth and threw her hands out in a familiar old shrug that made Elpida's heart ache. "Inside the worm's network space, sure." She reached out with a knuckle and rapped the grey metal wall. "Doubt this is what worm-bitch actually looks like down in the guts. This is just what it wants us to see. This whole space is so heavily fire-walled against the exterior network, it's almost impenetrable. Nothing from out there can even see in here."

"How did you get in?"

"I was invited," Howl said. Her voice dropped, angry, disgusted. "You weren't. Fucker was gonna talk to me and leave you in your body, leave you to die. I altered the deal, five knuckle discount style."

Elpida felt another pang deep in her chest. She pushed it down. They didn't have time for sex, and they didn't have time for weeping. Or maybe they did, if Howl was right about the processing speed in here. Elpida felt wrong regardless; no matter how slowly time was passing out in the real, Pheiri and the others were fighting, second by second, and they needed her help. She was their Commander, they were her responsibility. Out there she could do almost nothing. But in here?

"Back up a second," Elpida said. "We can't communicate with the others, with Pheiri?"

Howl shrugged. "Sure, if you want to talk fuck-ass slowly. Wouldn't want to hop back into your body right now though."

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"Ah." Elpida pulled a rueful grin. "What's happening to my body?"

"Getting some ribs snapped by a worm-guard, I think."

Elpida sighed. "I've dealt with worse." She glanced up and down the corridor, at the matte grey walls, at her own right hand. Everything felt crisp and clear and real, not like a simulation at all. "We really can't get back?"

Howl gave her a smirk. "I'm not letting you go, bitch-tits."

Elpida couldn't help it, she smirked right back. "Right. So, the graveworm. It wants to talk to you, but not to me? Has it said anything yet?"

"Fuck knows." Howl snorted. She gestured up and down the corridor. "You know as much as I do."

Elpida thought for a moment, then pointed at the wall. "And beyond this, that's the network, out there? In the raw, like you said?"

"Yuuuup. Raw like bad meat. Why?"

Elpida stepped forward and pressed her palm against the wall. The grey metal was warm to the touch, but not like the innards of Telokopolis, not like living flesh; it was a fleeting warmth that seemed to sap the natural heat from her hand, as if she were touching a fresh corpse with a little lingering body heat. The surface was too smooth to be real, so smooth that her hand seemed to glide without friction.

She pressed one ear against the wall and closed her eyes.

Beyond the metal, as distant as a storm beyond the sky, she heard the crashing of waves in a vast and unending cacophony. Leviathan shapes dragging their distended bulk across sand and rock and steel. A billion billion muffled voices, roaring and howling and screaming and cackling. Or maybe that was just her imagination.

"You don't want to listen to that shit, Elps," Howl muttered. "I know what it's like out there. Don't feel like going back."

Elpida straightened up. "Just curious. I suppose we don't have any choice then. If the worm wants to talk, then it's time for a meeting, whatever's happening to our physical body. Maybe we can convince it to help us more directly. I don't like the idea of Pheiri facing down all those worm-guard."

Howl sneered. "Yeah. We're top processing priority in here right now, far as I can tell. Maybe we can slap it one."

Elpida cracked a smirk, down at Howl. "Top priority? Should we feel honoured?"

"Fuck that," Howl spat.

Elpida gestured down the corridor. "Only one way to go." She looked at her empty hand. "But I don't like doing this unarmed, even if we are running in software. This isn't friendly territory. Can we arm up?"

Howl shook her head. "We're in the worm, not you. This isn't your software space, Elps."

"Last time we were in the network, you got kidnapped by a Necromancer. Are you sure there's no way to arm up?"

"I'm never leaving your fucking side again. We'll be okay, you and me."

"Mm." Elpida flexed her left hand. "Fists and harsh language, then? I'm afraid you'll have to pick up the slack, I'm short a few digits."

Howl barked a laugh, cracked her knuckles, and nudged Elpida in the side. "I'm worth ten of your fists, Elps, and you know it."

"You always were."

Elpida and Howl gazed into each other's eyes for a beat too long. Elpida felt that hitch in her chest again, that hot note down in her guts, that clenching between her legs.

Elpida broke first — or perhaps it was simply her height advantage. She grabbed Howl's head, bent low toward Howl's face, and mashed her lips against Howl's mouth. The kiss was blunt and ugly and involved far too much teeth, but it was familiar and desperate and Howl responded in kind, moaning around Elpida's tongue. One of Howl's hands looped around Elpida's waist and the other grabbed Elpida between the legs, kneading hard and urgent and rough, right on the edge of pain. Elpida grunted, pressing Howl's body against her own, their clothes moving over each other's skin, Howl's scent filling her nose. That scent, the scent of her sisters, her cadre, her own body but subtly different, it made her ache with a nostalgia so strong it brought tears to the corners of her eyes.

After far too short a time, Elpida pulled herself off Howl's face. She tried to step back, but Howl wouldn't let go of her crotch.

"Elps … " Howl's voice was low and rough, her teeth clenched hard. Her eyes were wet.

"Howl," Elpida said — then slipped into clade-cant without thinking, the private, instinctive, childhood language of the pilot cadre. "We can't, not now—"

"Then when?" Howl grunted, also in cant. "You … you … back there, with that Necro bitch, you were gonna throw yourself—"

"I know, I know. But I couldn't see any other way."

Howl let out a low whine, deep in her throat, and pressed herself against Elpida's body again, teeth against Elpida's chest.

"Fuck, Howl," Elpida breathed. "I thought we were about to be … parted, again, I-I don't … "

"You're not allowed to do that again," Howl growled into Elpida's chest. Her other hand slipped up inside Elpida's black t-shirt, nails against Elpida's skin. "You're not allowed to fucking throw yourself away. I won't make it if you do."

Elpida nodded. She knew she couldn't make the promise, not with the demands of being Commander. But the physical contact, even simulated, brought everything into sharp focus. How could she leave this behind? How could she sacrifice this?

"Promise," Howl said.

"You know I can't."

Howl growled — and bit down, harder than Elpida was expecting, teeth sinking into the soft flesh of Elpida's chest. She grunted, but she didn't peel Howl off.

"Howl. Maybe … maybe the graveworm is going to kill us anyway."

Howl relented. "Then it'll be both of us. Together. And we'll go down fighting. Together."

"Together." Elpida swallowed hard, then gently pried Howl off her front. Howl whined and clung on, one hand kneading Elpida between the legs, so hard Elpida let out a deep, breathy grunt.

"Elps, please."

"Not now," Elpida forced herself to say. "The others need us more than we need this. Pheiri needs us. You know we wouldn't enjoy it, not while everyone else is fighting. Howl. Stop. Please. I love you, but we can't."

Howl hissed through her teeth, but she let go. She looked up at Elpida, sullen and sulky. "Fuck, Elps. Speak for yourself. I could."

Elpida took a deep breath. Lust and grief and fear were all mixed up in a cocktail inside her brain. She eased them back down, swallowing the lot. It wasn't easy. Howl's taste lingered in her mouth.

"We have to learn how to do this ourselves," she said. "How to enter the network, I mean."

Howl shook herself, shaking off the arousal. "We don't have enough processing power. Not without hijacking somebody else. Whatever." She huffed. "You're right, I guess. I'd feel like shit, shagging while Pheiri's fleeing. Can't fuck while our little bro is in danger, right?"

"Right." Elpida nodded. She gestured forward with two fingers, down the curve of the grey metal corridor. "Let's move out. Clock's ticking."

"Got your back, Commander." Howl patted Elpida's backside, flashed her a smirk, and fell in beside her.

The tube-like metal corridor did not extend far. After about fifty meters of rightward curve, away from the exterior 'skin' of this software simulation of the graveworm, the passage terminated in a bulbous chamber about twenty feet across. The walls were made of the same matte grey, smooth and rounded and globular, with no corners or angles anywhere, like an abscess in frozen metallic flesh or an air pocket in a block of lead. The chamber walls bulged out in a strangely regular pattern. Elpida's eyes started to water when she stared for too long, though she was certain the pattern held some kind of meaning, just that she couldn't see it with her eyes, as if this space had been cut for interpretation by non-human minds.

A dozen metal iris-doors led off from the chamber, all of them closed.

"Graveworm!" Howl shouted. "Hey, bitch-nuts! Where now, huh?"

One of the circular doors irised open with a slick wet sound like oiled metal moving across fresh bone. Beyond the door was another smooth, tube-like corridor, the walls pitted and ridged and bulging. The corridor led directly away from the worm's exterior hide, deeper inside the structure.

"If this is an accurate representation of the inside of the graveworm," Elpida said, "then any core components might be very deep inside. This could be hours of walking."

"It's not," Howl growled. "But I don't fucking like it. You hear that?" She raised her voice, shouting at the walls. "I don't fucking like this! If you're messing with us, I'm gonna mess you up!"

"We don't have a choice. Come on."

Elpida led the way.

Over the next hour of subjective time the worm led them deeper and deeper inside itself. The corridors did not seem cut for human traversal, nor adapted for human feet, not like the inners parts of Telokopolis. The tube-like passageways twisted and turned, looping and winding, doubling back on themselves in maddening hairpin meanders. In some places they widened or tightened with no rhyme or reason — yet always with a curious symmetry that tickled Elpida's memories. The floors were often just as curved as the walls, uneven underfoot, full of strange pockets and holes in regular lines or clusters. The graveworm led Elpida and Howl by means of the iris-like metal doors, opening them to indicate the correct path.

Always down, always deeper.

Alone, this environment would have been unnerving, even for Elpida. The blind corners, the absolute silence, the unbroken dull grey, the oddly hot scent in the still and stagnant air, the illumination that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Unarmed and empty-handed, with her mind on Pheiri and the others, these conditions would have taxed even Elpida's formidable nerves.

Howl's physical presence made everything easier. She covered Elpida's weak side — her right, with the missing forearm — without request or instruction. She moved in silence and grace, a mirror of Elpida's own body. She paused when Elpida paused, moved when Elpida moved, and covered whatever angle Elpida was not watching, without the slightest confusion or hesitation. When they did need to communicate they did so in rapid-fire clade-cant whispers, chopped up fragments that carried the meaning of whole sentences.

Elpida and Howl fit together like one person in two bodies. Elpida had missed this feeling more than anything, perhaps even more than her sisters' touch, or scent, or sex. This seamless oneness, this group-mind, this sisterhood.

Eventually, after fifty eight minutes and twenty three seconds of descent, the graveworm opened a final iris-portal, and disgorged the Telokopolan pilots onto the shores of a lake.

Elpida halted. Howl followed. They both stared in silence.

The chamber was vast, but the perspective was not meant for human eyes. Omnipresent grey illumination left the ceiling visible despite the immense height, high enough to fit a mountain. The chamber was longer than it was wide, the far ends miles distant, as if they stood inside an elongated cave system. The effect made Elpida's eyes ache and tugged at her peripheral vision. Oval-shaped openings in the walls showed dozens more similar chambers, marching off into the distance. Slender bridges of matte grey metal crisscrossed the chamber and the others beyond the walls, branching and arching more like biological fibres than anything manufactured.

Dominating the middle of the chamber, ringed by a narrow strip of navigable grey metal, softly glowing with familiar blue temptation, was a lake.

Raw blue nanomachines.

"How much do you think is in there?" Elpida murmured.

"Fuck knows," Howl snapped. "This one cistern, maybe … a hundred thousand cubic klicks? Two hundred thousand? All of them combined, I don't … I dunno, Elps. Fuck me."

Elpida walked down to the edge of the liquid. A crust of crystallised blue crunched beneath her boots. She squatted and ran her fingers over the crusty residue, then stuck a fingertip in her mouth. The blue crystals melted on her tongue, but tasted of nothing much in particular.

She stared into the softly glowing lake. It lay perfectly still against the shore of grey metal, vanishing into sapphire depths. Then she looked up, at the soaring ceiling and the web of grey bridges and the dozens of chambers beyond this one, marching off into the distance. She spotted more of the dry residue, far up the sides of the chamber.

Howl crunched up beside her, scooped some of the blue into a hand, and drank from her cupped palm. "Tastes like shit," she grunted.

"I think these are only partially filled right now," said Elpida. "There are waterlines higher up."

"Fuuuuuck," Howl hissed.

"We knew the worms contain nanomachine forges," Elpida said, though she struggled to keep her voice steady. "This isn't new information."

"Think about it, though. Imagine!" Howl made a fist. "Imagine if you could crack just one worm. Just one. It would change everything out there. The whole fucking ecosystem. This is enough to … fuck, I don't even know! Feed the whole fucking zombie planet!"

"Pity we're not really here. We could drink up," Elpida said. This wasn't her real body, so she felt no hunger, no need to gorge herself on the raw blue. The nanomachines weren't real either, this was just a simulation, a representation. She stood up, then paused and frowned. "Howl, are you sure this isn't a literal representation of the inside of the graveworm?"

Howl shrugged. "Fuck knows. Might be. I dunno anymore. Maybe it really is all stored like this."

"Maybe," Elpida said. "Or maybe this is what it wants us to see."

"Eh? Why?"

"Power," said Elpida. "In the nanomachine ecosystem, this is power beyond anything else. It's flexing at us."

Howl showed her teeth. "Catty bitch."

"Easy," Elpida murmured. "It's the one in control here. Just tread easy, Howl."

Howl snorted.

On the far side of the chamber, an iris-door swivelled open.

Elpida led the way across one of the narrow bridges of grey metal, arcing out over the glowing blue lake. Howl stuck close to her side, eyes glued on the open portal. They descended together toward the opposite side of the lake, then stopped before the circular opening.

Beyond was darkness, shadows thick as treacle, and a weak electric blue flicker somewhere in the distance.

"Fucking hate this," Howl hissed. "Fucking bullshit. Come out and talk to us, you massive cunt."

"We have no choice," Elpida said. "Stay sharp."

"Don't have to tell me that."

Howl went first, edging over the threshold. Elpida stayed closed, to avoid any risk of the door closing early and cutting them off from each other. They tiptoed forward, together into the darkness.

They both cleared the threshold. The door irised shut with a grinding of oiled metal.

The dimensions of the dark room were impossible to estimate. By the tiny sounds of Elpida's and Howl's feet against the metal floor, the walls could be just as far away as the vastness of the lake-chamber. But, dead ahead, perhaps no more than thirty feet away, a glowing rectangle hung in the black — a screen, a standard display, flickering with soft electric blue glow.

"Graveworm?" Elpida said. "Graveworm? Are you here?"

Elpida's boot brushed against something on the floor, made it crinkle and crackle — a discarded food wrapper. A moment earlier the floor had been bare, more blank matte grey. But now it was littered with food cartons, discarded clothes, pieces of naked computer hardware, and bottles of yellow liquid. The mess vanished off into the black, seemingly endless. Suddenly the air reeked of unwashed flesh, stale urine, and mouldy food.

"S'not real," Howl hissed between her teeth. "Simulation, remember?"

"Right," Elpida hissed. "But representing what?"

The screen ahead flickered and jerked, filling with lines of machine code, glowing that softly radioactive blue. In front of the screen, a dark shape shifted, passing through the faint light.

"Graveworm?" Elpida hissed.

"A worm in a grave," muttered a despondent voice. Female, rough and raw, age impossible to place. It seemed to come from everywhere, echoing from the vast reaches of the room, but also whispered from a dipped chin, up a dry throat, through cracked lips. "That's all we are anymore, isn't it? Grubbing in grave dirt, hoping to find somebody still inside the coffin."

The voice sighed.

"Graveworm," Elpida said. "You wanted to talk. We're here."

The shape in front of the display shifted again. Strands of hair moved across the light source. Was that a face, or just a trick of the shadows? The figure tilted her head to one side, cracking her neck so loudly it would have made a baseline human flinch. Echoes crawled away into the dark.

"Not you, soldier," said the graveworm. "You're no more real than before."

Another screen flickered to life, adjacent to the first. Then another, on the opposite side. Then a third, above. Then another, and another, and another. Screens spiralled outward, lighting up one after the other with that same soft blue electric glow. The array of screens climbed upward and spread out, becoming dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, then millions. They curved toward Elpida and Howl like the inner surface of a giant radar dish.

The illumination barely touched the figure in the middle, still crouched before the initial screen. But Elpida could see an outline now — an emaciated thing, knees pulled up to her chest, hair a long ragged mane, tangled and knotted.

"You," said the graveworm. "Howl. You're the one I wanted to speak to. You smell like her." The voice grew raw, desperate, quivering. "You smell of her. You do. I'd remember her scent anywhere, even after all this time, all this failure. And you're not faking it. I can tell."

The gigantic curve of screens filled with machine code, then resolved into a series of concentric circles, blue and grey and black.

And blinked.

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