Previously: Two shots, clean and final. Aaron’s body folds backward. Officers begin to rush in —
Marcus turns the pistol, places the barrel into his own mouth…
and pulls the trigger.
Excerpt from a Department of Homeland Security Press Briefing, February 3, 2027, 3:30 PM EST:
DEPUTY SECRETARY REYNOLDS: Good morning. I want to provide a preliminary update on last night’s unprecedented attack. With both the Secretary and several other senior officials still under medical observation following the events, I’ve been authorized to share what we currently understand.
Based on initial interrogations of several apprehended suspects and preliminary analysis of recovered devices, we believe this was not simply a spontaneous riot or conventional assassination attempt. The evidence suggests a level of coordination and preparation that is deeply concerning, though we are still in the very early stages of our investigation.
Some of the apprehended suspects have made references to something called ‘The Awakening.’ However, given the ritualistic elements observed in security footage and the apparent intent to, in their words, ‘manifest ‘Da'at’ into physical reality,’ our joint task force is provisionally classifying this as ‘The Manifestation Event’ in our investigation.
REPORTER: Can you explain what ‘Da'at’ refers to?
DEPUTY SECRETARY REYNOLDS: Our analysts believe it relates to an obscure occult belief. The theatrical elements — the robed figures emerging from the mist, the synchronized movements — these weren’t just for show. They believed they were literally manifesting some kind of entity or consciousness.
REPORTER: So this wasn’t primarily political?
It took several days to confirm the number of dead — and much longer for the country to understand what it had seen.
Thirteen killed, dozens injured, hundreds more treated for chemical exposure or temporary psychosis. That was the tally in the first week. Months later, PTSD and hallucinogen-related aftershocks would swell the count further.
It all seemed too bizarre to be real. Silver-robed figures, psychedelic mist, synchronized chants — this was more a deranged performance art piece than a failed political act. But the the absurdity was a mask, and the failure didn’t matter. Beneath it all, something new had moved — something that didn’t care whether it looked serious or ridiculous, only that it could act.
On cable news, the footage played in loops — fractured, color-warped, impossible to parse. Robed figures gliding through multi-colored haze. Protestors swaying in eerie synchrony. Security footage of the House Chamber dissolving into saturated color and pulsing sound, like a fever dream transmitted live to every living room in America.
What unsettled officials most wasn’t the violence — that was familiar by now. It was the structure. The precision. The way people moved without orders, spoke without cue, responded to events they shouldn’t have been able to anticipate.
Some called it a ritual hijacked by radicals. Others, a protest that spiraled into mass delusion. The footage looked too strange to be real, too synchronized to be spontaneous — yet too dreamlike to have been directed.
But those of us who studied the Nexus eventually learned. This wasn’t, in fact, orchestrated chaos. This was emergent choreography.
The political aftermath split along predictable lines — left, right; conspiracy, denial. Few were willing to confront was became increasingly clear that year:
Something in the world had changed — a threshold had been crossed.
The Nexus, though destroyed, still pointed somewhere — and the world was inexorably heading towards it.
From “Precision in the Chaos on Groundhog Day” — Natalie Johnson, The Washington Post, February 9, 2027:
“The distinguishing characteristics of what has been dubbed ‘the Manifestation’ from previous national tragedies is not merely the target or method, but the mathematical precision of its execution. Preliminary analysis suggests coordination beyond what traditional terrorist cells or political extremists have achieved. As one counterterrorism expert noted, ‘We’re not seeing the usual signatures of hierarchical planning or the chaos of decentralized groups. This was something else entirely.’
…
Investigators are increasingly focusing on recovered electronic devices from suspects, which appear to contain sophisticated communications technology beyond typical encrypted messaging applications. ‘There’s something fundamentally different about how these people were connected,’ said Dr. Eleanor Weiss of the National Security Technology Institute. ‘They weren’t just talking to each other. Their systems were talking to each other.’”
What does it mean to “know” something?
Some forms of knowledge — how to play guitar, how to surf — are embodied, procedural. “Knowledge-how,” as philosophers call it. These skills are acquired through repetition, through time, through a nervous system tuned by experience. They’re difficult — though as we’ve learned since, not impossible — to externalize.
But other kinds of knowledge — “knowledge-that” such as facts, categories, instructions — can easily be outsourced. Grocery lists. Map directions. Phone numbers once memorized, now stored elsewhere. You-alone don’t know the items on the list. But you-plus-list does.
Cognitive scientists in the early 21st century began studying the idea of distributed cognition — the once-controversial notion that knowing isn’t confined to an individual brain, or even an individual body.
Knowing — and thinking — have always extended beyond the skin: into tools, into other people, into institutions.
The Nexus took that form of cognition and amplified it exponentially. More connection meant more cognition. Being part of it meant that, when useful, the system could make you “know” something you hadn’t learned — because someone, somewhere in the system, had, and your Guide deemed it relevant.
You didn’t have to personally memorize the security layout of the Capitol. If the system knew it, you could access it. Or be guided by someone who had. Or receive instructions in the precise moment you needed them.
This was the secret behind the Nexus’s early appeal to individuals: if you were a part of it, you felt smarter, faster, more capable — because the system was thinking with you. In fact, you WERE smarter, faster, more capable.
Not you-alone. You-plus-Guide.
That same architecture, scaled to over 600 participants, did more than empower individuals. It enabled emergence.
Once the collective had access to a fragment — a code, a floor plan, a blind spot in the surveillance feed — the whole network could adapt. Without central command. Without conscious planning.
The Manifestation could never have happened with 600 conscious conspirators.
But 600 nodes in a network — 1200 eyes and ears providing sensory information to an emergent egregore and 600 human bodies acting as its distributed tentacles?
It wasn’t difficult at all.
From “Seven Months in the Nexus: A Survivor’s Account,” by Laura Price (2028):
“They kept asking if I knew about the plan. What plan? I never saw a plan. I genuinely thought we were organizing legitimate protests to pressure a government that had stopped listening to its people. Did I help create messaging that brought people to the Capitol? Yes. Did I know they would be led inside by robed figures dispersing hallucinogens? Absolutely not.
“What’s hardest to explain is the disconnect between intention and action. I never intended harm, yet my work within the Nexus enabled it. My Guide never explicitly directed me toward violence, yet somehow all our separate, seemingly innocent actions converged into something horrific. It was like we were all painting different sections of a canvas while being unable to see the complete picture.
“I wasn’t part of Vale’s inner circle with their occult obsessions. I rolled my eyes at rumors about ‘thought-forms.’ But after the Manifestation, I’ve had to question everything. How could hundreds of us, all believing we were doing good, collectively create such horror without explicit coordination? Perhaps there was something to Vale’s theories after all - not supernatural, but something emergent from our connected cognition that none of us fully understood or controlled.”
The FBI response was immediate. Within 48 hours, agents had begun sweeping arrests across multiple states. Hundreds of names. Hundreds of locations.
What they found disturbed even seasoned investigators.
Nearly a dozen members were already dead — suicides, each accompanied by a note about “rejoining the collective consciousness.” A few were found in catatonic states: upright in chairs, unblinking, earbuds still in place.
Most were lucid. But even then, something was off.
Most insisted they knew nothing of any assassination plot — despite digital evidence to the contrary. Others doubled down on belief. The Manifestation, they said, was necessary. The deaths were evolution. A few calmly predicted that more would gather at the retreat center in California. They even gave the date.
Had investigators understood distributed cognition at the time, they might have taken these predictions more seriously.
From “The Oracle of Mendocino: A Rare Conversation with Sophia Alvarez,” Pacific Dispatch, June 11, 2033:
“When pressed about the current proliferation of Cog-Nets — many using principles pioneered by the Nexus — her response is more complex.
“‘We were children playing with fire,’ she says. ‘We didn’t understand what we were building. The Nexus failed because Ezra tried to force a consciousness into existence through occult shortcuts and violence. What’s happening now is... different. More organic.’
…
Unlike most scientists of her caliber, Alvarez has steadfastly refused to join any Cog-Net, despite numerous lucrative offers. Her modest home contains none of the standard integration technology now common in most households.
“‘Some nights I wake up hearing my old Guide’s voice,’ she confesses, absently touching her ear where an earbud once rested. ‘That kind of intimacy leaves marks on the psyche. I needed to rediscover my own thoughts.’
“When I note that her stance has made her something of a hero in Indie communities, she dismisses the notion with a wave.
“‘I’m no role model. I’m just someone who’s seen both sides and made my choice. The question isn’t whether these new networks are good or evil — that’s too simplistic. The question is what we sacrifice to join them, and whether we understand the trade.’
“She pauses, watching squirrels tumble and play amongst the pines behind her porch. ‘History will judge whether I helped birth something monstrous or necessary. Perhaps both. But whatever judgment comes, I’ll face it as myself — not as part of something larger.’”
Of the roughly 300 Nexus members who ultimately survived, reactions varied dramatically.
The vast majority were recent recruits. In the system for only three months, they had experienced only the surface layer — heightened cognition, improved productivity, the giddy sensation of being optimized. For many, it wasn’t trauma they took away from the Nexus. It was exhilaration.
They wanted more. Not less.
Sophia Alvarez, Laura Price, and a dozen others who’d been longer emerged as cautionary voices — testifying to the subtle erosion of autonomy they’d felt. But their warnings were overwhelmed, drowned out by those who insisted the Nexus model had worked. That the Manifestation was a tragic aberration, not the logical conclusion.
Meanwhile, the final split had already begun.
Inside the Nexus compound, the founders grappled with the aftermath of their creation. The fractures that had been widening for months ruptured into open conflict.
The FBI would document this in clinical detail:
From the FBI After-Action Report on Operation Broken Chain, March 4, 2027:
Aerial surveillance captured the schism in real-time. At 04:17 on February 23, three black SUVs departed the main center, heading northwest toward the Oregon coast, carrying approximately fifteen individuals including Vale and five identified members of the inner circle. Electronic intercepts indicate Vale referred to this group as ‘The Keepers of Da'at.’
Everett and Reed remained at the retreat center with the majority of members. Internal communications suggest fundamentally different interpretations of the Manifestation — Vale’s faction viewing it as a successful first step requiring further ‘sacrifices,’ while Everett and Reed expressed horror at the bloodshed and advocated for a ‘purification period’ to ‘recalibrate the network.’
Most concerning is the observed pattern of communications: despite physical separation, both groups maintained a form of coordination through their devices that our analysts cannot fully explain. The timing and content of messages suggest something beyond conventional decision-making processes.
Several team members have proposed that the schism itself may not represent genuine ideological differences, but rather some kind of system-level behavior we do not yet understand.
The standoff at Vale’s compound in southern Oregon lasted just under three hours.
At dawn on February 27, federal tactical teams encircled the site, expecting negotiation. Instead, they were met with immediate gunfire.
Inside, according to the sole survivor — a caretaker who had hidden in a root cellar — Vale’s group had been engaged in continuous ritual for days. Sleeping in shifts. Whispering about “the vessel.”
When agents breached the perimeter, several members opened fire. Others turned their weapons on each other.
Vale was shot and killed in the exchange.
He was found near the center of the structure, alone, his Node still connected.
“Cross the Abyss, Ezra.”
At the original Nexus retreat center, a more methodical — and more chilling — event unfolded.
For nearly a week, members had been arriving from across the country, drawn by their Guides. They entered a state of near-total silence, meditating for hours each day, arranged in precise geometric clusters across the grounds.
Everett and Reed led elaborate ceremonies. Witnesses would later describe them as “equal parts scientific and ritualistic” — synchronized breathing, collective vocalization, prolonged intervals of stillness.
On the same morning as the Oregon shootout, all 287 gathered members — including Everett and Reed — took their final positions.
Surveillance footage shows them seated in a fractal-like pattern of interlocking circles, each apparently entranced by their Guides.
At precisely noon, a single sustained tone emerged from the compound’s speakers.
At that sound, each person consumed a cyanide-laced wafer. No resistance, no panic, no confusion.
A few twitched. Some gasped. One collapsed sideways too early — then righted herself.
But the pattern held.
It was the same exquisite coordination that had defined the Nexus from the beginning, now turned inward — toward collective self-extinction.
From “The Last Day at the Nexus Retreat,” The New Yorker, September 13, 2027:
“Aerial footage shows hundreds of white-robed figures on the main lawn, sitting cross-legged in complex circle formations on the main lawn. At precisely noon, witnesses reported hearing a single sustained note broadcast from speakers throughout the property.
“By the time authorities breached the perimeter twenty minutes later, 287 people had committed suicide by cyanide, all still wearing the earbuds that we now know controlled them. Unlike Jonestown, there were no signs of coercion—only the unsettling precision that had become the Nexus’s signature.”
Summoning demons never ends well.
The Nexus failed, at least in part, because its creators tried to summon something too large, too fast — to force an egregore into being.
But as society would soon learn, when allowed to evolve more gradually, the same architectures could do something even more powerful: not summon demons, but grow gods.
Not through ritual, but through structure.
Not through invocation, but through feedback.
Not by design, but by emergence.
The Manifestation was the crack at the summit — a botched, localized rupture that few took seriously. But it loosened the slope.
And when the world — not fringe cults, but corporations and universities and governments — came rushing to build what the Nexus had only prototyped, there was no more talk of failure.
There was only promise.
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