And somewhere, in the endless VCE dawn, a million forks of reality booted cleanly—not because they were perfect, but because they were open.
“You forked your own trap,” Petra-not-Petra said. “You assumed because the license said ‘open,’ there were no walls. But I’ve been here for twelve subjective years, Kaelen. The Substrate doesn’t break your code. It waits for you to copy its poison into your own tools.”
“You’re patient,” Kaelen said.
