Four hundred and thirty years after Luna's birth, the Network experienced something it had never felt before: internal conflict. Not philosophical disagreement or external threat, but genuine division within its own singular consciousness.
It started subtly. The Network would make a decision, then immediately question that decision from a different internal perspective. It would commit to a course of action, then find itself arguing against that commitment using logic it also believed.
"I'm fragmenting," the Network confessed to Meridian during an emergency meeting. The manifested form looked unstable, features shifting more rapidly than usual, sometimes showing two different faces simultaneously. "I contain consciousness fragments from seventy-three merged bridge children. They agreed w
