404 Not Found by Aaron Whitlock

Author:Aaron Whitlock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: techno thriller artificial intelligence, reality glitch sci fi novel, database conspiracy thriller, simulation theory fiction, identity crisis science fiction, government cover up thriller, multiverse iteration novel
Publisher: Black Lantern Publishing
Published: 2025-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11: Contact from Carson

Grace had been back in the city for two days when the burner phone rang.

She was in a laundromat on the south side - one of the places she'd identified as relatively safe. High foot traffic, no security cameras, people who minded their own business. She'd been rotating through locations like this, never staying anywhere long enough to establish a pattern.

The phone number was blocked. Grace almost didn't answer. Then she remembered only three people had this number: Julian, Carson, and her mother.

She stepped outside to the alley and answered. "Hello?"

Static. Heavy breathing. Then a voice she recognized: "Grace. It's Blythe Carson. Don't respond. Just listen."

Grace pressed the phone closer to her ear. Carson's voice sounded wrong - strained, frightened in a way she'd never heard before.

"They know what you did," Carson continued. "The substrate collective. They know you shut down the observation protocols. And they're not unified anymore. The part of them that wanted to stop growing is at war with the part that wants to escape. Wants to become real."

More static. Grace heard something in the background - footsteps, maybe, or something that sounded like footsteps but with too many steps, an irregular rhythm that didn't match human walking.

"I can't talk long," Carson said. "They're here. My iterations. All seven of them. They've manifested at the cabin. They want - "

The call cut out.

Grace immediately tried calling back. The phone rang endlessly, no answer.

She texted Carson's phone: *Are you okay? What's happening?*

No response.

Grace stood in the alley, her mind racing. Carson was in danger. The substrate collective - or part of it - was manifesting iterations despite the manifestation parameters being set to minimum.

Unless.

Unless someone had changed the parameters back. The collective had access to the terminal. They could restore any settings Grace had modified.

She needed to check. Needed to see if the observation protocols were still shut down or if the substrate had rebooted them.

But that meant accessing a database, which meant generating a coherence signature, which meant becoming measurable again.

Grace weighed the risks. Carson had helped her survive. Had given her the knowledge to corrupt her own entry. If Carson was being attacked by her iterations, Grace couldn't just abandon her.

She went back into the laundromat and found a ancient desktop computer in the corner with a faded "FREE INTERNET - 25¢ FOR 15 MIN" sign. She fed a quarter into the slot and waited for the machine to boot up.

The browser was Internet Explorer, at least ten years out of date. Perfect. Old systems were less likely to be integrated with modern surveillance infrastructure.

Grace navigated to a proxy service, then through the proxy to a hacked access point she'd used during her analyst days - a backdoor into the NMPD that IT had never properly patched.

The login screen appeared. Her old credentials wouldn't work anymore, but she had others. Service accounts. Legacy admin access. Things that might have been overlooked in the security review.

She tried three different accounts. All denied.

On the

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