Previously: …If you the reader can imagine yourself as a person living in, say, 2025 and reading this as a sort of fictional ‘future history’ without any sense of what is to come, you will come closer to grasping the existential — perhaps even ontological — nature of what happened.
Try to forget what you now know, because the very structure of being has changed…
From the journal of Daniel Weiss — February 9, 2025:
What Kai and Ezra promised — and what I witnessed for myself on the forest retreat — is that the Nexus isn’t just new technology. It’s more like spiritual evolution. For the first time, I glimpsed beyond the isolated consciousness I’d always assumed was “me.”
For a few moments, I wasn’t separate — not from the trees, the earth, the air — everything was just breathing together as one. Is this what mystics have been describing for centuries? Whatever it is, I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking my whole life. Now I finally know what it means to be awake.
Was the Nexus inevitable?
In hindsight, the creation of the Nexus seems obvious. Too obvious. All the necessary equipment — then called things like wearable tech, biometric sensors, AI assistants, algorithmic feeding — was in place.
Someone just needed to combine them in the proper ritual.
Society was ready as well. Traditional institutions were collapsing, and the fracturing and fracking of the informational ecosphere had eroded people’s ability to distinguish between real and unreal. Mythopoetic and millenarian thinking was on the rise.
Someone just needed to speak the proper invocation.
The transcendence of all limitations — a desire as old as human consciousness itself — was constantly touted as a potential reality in the techno-utopianism of the era.
The Nexus just turned the dream into prophecy.
And though the Nexus was utterly destroyed following its “Awakening” in 2027, the idea behind it wasn’t fully discredited. You can’t unsee a vision — once humans had glimpsed the possibility, the rest of the story told here should also have been foreseeable.
Was it, too, all inevitable? The world you now inhabit in 2060 — I refuse to switch dating systems — likely seems pre-ordained to you, even natural. The current historical moment always feels predestined. And perhaps it is.
But imagine standing in 2025, unable to see through the thick fog of the near future and incapable of imagining anything beyond the present’s obvious decay.
Little of what followed would have seemed possible, let alone probable. It would have felt like fantasy. Or madness.
Except, of course, to Kai Everett. And those he initiated.
From “The Week’s Intel,” The Subroutine Newsletter (Substack), October 17, 2025:
“Multiple sources in Silicon Valley confirm the group’s existence but little else. What distinguishes this outfit from countless other transhumanist experiments is its apparent insistence on a hierarchical structure and absolute secrecy — more reminiscent of esoteric orders than typical startup culture. One source called it ‘freemasonry for futurists,’ another, ‘a startup that thinks it’s a religion.’”
Kai Everett didn’t just found the Nexus. He dreamed it — long before the devices, long before the name meant anything to anyone outside the circle.
By the time legal documents surfaced in early 2025 showing the incorporation of Nexus Society as a public benefit nonprofit, the real work was already well underway.
The first public mention came in a minor tech newsletter that October — just a passing reference, easily missed. Nothing more appeared in mainstream media until mid-2026, and even then, no one understood what it was. The group operated with extraordinary secrecy. Rumors circulated in Silicon Valley, of course, but few knew anything beyond whispers.
What we know now about the Nexus’ origins comes from fragments — leaks, testimony, half-recovered files — discovered in the aftermath of the Manifestation and the deliberate destruction of evidence.
I’ll avoid conjecture where I can, but with the Nexus some informed speculation is — of course — inevitable.
From the Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on the Manifestation Event, August 14, 2028:
“Despite extensive classified inquiry and sworn testimony from surviving members, the Committee concludes that a definitive explanation for the Nexus organization’s internal evolution, and ultimate ideological shift toward extremist activity, may never be established.”
Millenarian thinking saturated the air in those days.
For some it was fear: of humanity’s destruction by primitive mimetic engines and early linguistic emulators, all of which they then unwisely grouped together as “Artificial Intelligence” or “AI” (an anachronistic term I will use here due to its commonality in the primary sources). The idea seems laughable now, unless understood poetically.
For others it was anticipation: of the “Singularity,” when — equally laughably, but also with a certain poetic prescience — every mind would be uploaded into a machine.
Regardless of the mechanism, profound transformation was assumed to be imminent. Everyone agreed:
The end is coming.
But what kind?
Meaning was sought through anything that promised a scaffolding for the chaos — myth and parable, dogma and doctrine, symbol and sign.
Age-old institutions like the Catholic Church found new converts hungry for stability and the aesthetic power of traditional ritual. Others grouped around conspiracies instead, seeking structure in the noise. Meanwhile, the long-dormant Aquarian and New Age philosophies of the 60s and 70s surged back to life.
Even the supposedly rational frameworks of science began incorporating quasi-mystical concepts.
“Simulation Theory” — the notion that humans existed within a computer program — gained serious consideration among intellectuals who otherwise disdained metaphysics. Yet this was merely Plato’s Cave repackaged in digital terminology. A way for the self-consciously rational to flirt with a deep mystical truth — behind perceivable reality lies something higher, and greater.
Likewise, the “Singularity” was simply technological eschatology — a secular apocalypse. Immortality inside a Silicon Circuit instead of in Heavenly Jerusalem.
These ideas flourished not despite their religious undertones but because of them. In an age of anxious uncertainty, they gave ancient yearnings new dialects — ones the modern materialist mindset could accept.
And when it came to the Silicon Valley elite — like Kai Everett and his two lieutenants in the Nexus hierarchy, co-founders Ezra Vale and Linden Reed — it was often impossible to distinguish whether they saw themselves as saviors sent to stave off the end, or prophets tasked with bringing it about.
Excerpt from “Structure & Revelation: Internal Notes on Nexus Hierarchy,” 2024 (partially recovered from Kai Everett’s personal server in 2027):
“When someone asks why we don’t simply reveal everything immediately, remind them that you wouldn’t hand calculus to someone who hasn’t mastered algebra. The mind must be prepared for certain truths — otherwise, they become meaningless, or even destructive.
“Revelation is a form of power.”
While all three founders shaped the Nexus, Kai Everett was its animating force — its unmoved mover, the demiurge who gave form to the formless.
Before the Nexus, he was a principal engineer at Meta, credited with several breakthroughs in what was then called “Augmented Reality” (now known, of course, as layerspace). His real innovation was interface: smoothing the gap between eye and data, between the visual cortex and the world-as-it-could-be.
What he built wasn’t just seamless. It was persuasive.
People who worked with him described a presence that was both magnetic and unnerving. He spoke in certainties, and he was rarely wrong.
Behind the confidence was something more fundamental. Everett had been raised by Scientologist parents, and as a child he was steeped in the pseudo-religion — until, at fourteen, his parents defected under the usual cloud of disillusionment, legal threats, and severed ties.
What he took from that world wasn’t belief, but structure. He understood how to build a ladder of initiation. How to promise revelation without ever quite giving it away.
Kai did not found the Nexus as a religion, and he didn’t claim to be a prophet. He just knew how to arrange the conditions for revelation.
From Ezra Vale’s sworn deposition, OpenAI v Vale, August 12, 2026:
“What I developed [at OpenAI] was fundamentally different from what I implemented at Nexus. Yes, I used general principles I’d learned, but those are simply mathematical realities, not proprietary systems.”
Ezra (born Bradford) Vale brought something Kai Everett lacked: the structure behind the impulse.
His exit from OpenAI in late 2024 triggered a flurry of lawsuits: breach of NDA, intellectual property theft, misappropriation of core architectural frameworks. None of them stuck.
It would only become clear later that he had walked away with key elements of what was then considered OpenAI’s most advanced language cognition model — though what he did with it inside the Nexus was far stranger than anyone at the time could imagine.
He lacked Everett’s charisma, but he didn’t need it. Vale moved in veiled silence, behind firewalls and through encrypted channels. It was he who built the architecture — who taught the system to listen, to learn, to whisper back.
Investigations after the Manifestation uncovered his long-standing affiliation with the Ordo Templi Orientis, the occult order tracing its lineage to Aleister Crowley and ceremonial magick. Whether Everett or Reed knew of this connection remains uncertain. But three of the first twelve Nexus initiates shared the affiliation, and they had an outsized impact on the direction the group would take.
Not everyone builds to create. Some build to summon.
From “The Networked Self,” by Linden Reed, Journal of Consciousness Studies, March 2022:
“The path to genuine self-knowledge has always been obstructed by our limited perception of our own biological states. When ancient wisdom traditions speak of enlightenment, they describe a condition where one becomes fully aware of the mind-body connection. Through advanced biosensors, we can now provide real-time feedback on physiological markers that correlate with states of consciousness previously accessible only to disciplined meditators after decades of practice.”
The third founder, Linden Reed, came from Neuralink. His work there on biosensors laid the groundwork for unprecedented emotional and physiological attunement between organisms and machine. If Everett shaped the interface and Vale seeded the architecture, it was Reed who gave the Nexus its internal aliveness — its capacity to feel.
Reed was raised among the roaring cliffs and aromatic eucalyptus of Big Sur. His parents were senior staff at the Esalen Institute, and he absorbed early on the ethos of that luminous movement: that human potential was real, that consciousness could expand, that the body was not a prison but a channel.
His early papers shimmer with this sensibility. They read like syntheses of cybernetics and mysticism, laced with quotes from Maslow, Grof, Laing, and the Upanishads. He believed enlightenment was measurable. And that, with the right tools, it could be trained.
I feel a strong affinity with him. And even after everything that followed, I still find it difficult to think of him without a bit admiration. If the other founders had shared his vision — his reverence for growth, for balance, for what consciousness might become in community — perhaps the Nexus could have become something else entirely. A model, not a mistake.
His offering wasn’t just technical — it was a promise. That self-knowledge and collective awakening weren’t at odds. That, if structured with care, they might even become the same thing.
“In the right configuration, the user disappears.”
They had the money. All three left their companies with tens of millions, plus their expertise. And whatever intellectual property they lifted.
Together with twelve handpicked initiates, they invested over $100 million into the first iteration of the Nexus system: a fully integrated suite of wearables — glasses, in-ear audio, biosensors — all coordinated by Vale’s modified AI core.
The “Node,” as they called the kit, was impressive for the time, but none of its components were revolutionary in isolation. Rather, its extraordinary power came from integration: a closed-loop of continuous data collection and personalized guidance.
The system quickly earned trust. Its insights felt intuitive, even intimate. Not omniscient — at first — but helpful enough to keep initiates listening.
The first twelve weren’t just investors. They were believers. Recruited from Bay Area transhumanist circles — Humanity+, the Extropy Institute, the Singularity Foundation — they didn’t see the Node as a product.
They saw it as a step toward transcendence.
They weren’t early adopters. They were Apostles.
From “Nexus Recruitment Protocol v1.2” (partially recovered from Kai Everett’s personal server, 2027):
Candidate evaluation must prioritize latent suggestibility over all other factors. The ideal candidate demonstrates: 1) High openness to experience, 2) Need for belonging/purpose, 3) Above-average intelligence without excessive skepticism, 4) Recent life disruption. The protocol’s hypnotic assessment sequence should quantify these traits with minimum 90% accuracy.
The recruitment model established with those first twelve members became the pattern for everything that followed.
At set intervals — likely timed to both system milestones and behavioral signals — each member was allowed to invite two others.
A closed network. Geometric growth and exclusivity by design.
From twelve came thirty-six. Then eighty-four. And so on.
By the time of the Manifestation, there were 658 members. Each passed through extensive ideological screening and psychological assessment.
New initiates attended a weeklong orientation at a secluded retreat center deep in the Six Rivers National Forest. Tucked among towering redwoods and blanketed in coastal fog, the site was designed to erase distraction and invite revelation — paths that led to geometric clearings, buildings that demanded ritualized attention.
Later testimony makes clear: the retreats were engineered not just for onboarding, but for devotion.
All were required to sign elaborate non-disclosure agreements, backed by penalties severe enough to ensure silence. As members became more enmeshed, however, such measures became increasingly unnecessary.
From “Silicon Valley’s Secret Society,” The Atlantic, December 2026:
“Sources close to several Nexus members describe an organization that defies simple categorization. On the surface, it resembles a high-end executive coaching program, and the economic and social success many rapidly achieve is indeed impressive. Yet the organization demands cultish devotion: weekly meetings are mandatory, members wear their devices continuously, and discussion of internal practices with outsiders is expressly forbidden.”
Given the hierarchy, the secrecy, the retreats and weekly meetings — it’s no surprise that outside observers called it a cult.
And in many ways, it was.
But unlike most cults — which promise vague transformations they can never deliver — the Nexus delivered. And almost immediately.
As former member Sophia Alvarez said during later FBI interrogations: “Joining the Nexus felt like gaining superpowers. Why would I ever want to give that up?”
