CHAPTER III - The Empty Earth

I began with the body because the body was the only fact that answered me without hesitation.

When I lifted my hand, the hand lifted. When I opened and closed my fingers, each joint obeyed with a precision too complete to be called reflex. There was no delay between intention and movement, no tremor, no weakness, no uncertainty in the artificial musculature beneath the skin. My palm turned toward the fractured light, and thousands of small perceptions came with it: the coolness of the laboratory air, the residual static clinging to dead equipment, the density of dust suspended between me and the ceiling, the faint mineral trace of water that had seeped for years through concrete and alloy. My skin registered all of it. Not as pain. Not as discomfort. As information.

I did not know whether to trust information.

Information had no meaning by itself. It arrived in me cleanly, abundantly, almost beautifully, but it could not tell me why I had hands, or why they resembled the hands of a species whose absence filled the room more completely than any presence could have. I touched my own wrist, then the inside of my forearm, then the side of my throat where a pulse might have been expected. Warmth moved beneath the skin. Subtle pressure changed with each breath. A rhythm existed there, but it was not the rhythm of blood alone. It was regulated, layered, supported by deeper systems I could feel only as disciplined continuities: power management, structural integrity, sensory alignment, cellular mimicry, internal repair.

Nothing was missing.