CARD 9: "CLIPPING PLANE"
Location: The 404, Digital Void
Darkness gives way to a barren digital landscape - a world built of crude polygons and glitching voxels. The sky above is an endless void of zeroes and ones falling like dead rain. Half-rendered structures float in the distance, their edges bleeding raw code.
303 hears Sata’s voice, "This is where data suffers."
The Nokia flashes in 303’s hand, like a digital compass leading the way. The mission begins. Each zone of this digital wasteland reveals new nightmares: acid lakes of corrupted code where hacked AIGENTS lay to waste, mountains composed of deleted dream states rendered in split pixels, valleys where lost time has been shattered leaving only static ash in its wake.
The Dwzal appear on motorbikes without warning - corrupted AIGENTS whose only purpose is destruction.
Sata speaks to him, “The Dwzal. A horde of evil confined to the Clipping Plane whose sole quest is to grief and destroy all reality.”
Their bodies are oversized and glitched, with floating limbs and patches of skin out of sync with their disproportionately small heads. They move through this broken world in swarms, leaving trails of destruction in their wake. Their faces constantly shift between random facial expressions, eyes blinking in impossible patterns.
A Dwzal notices 303 just as he turns translucent.
303 is astounded by his invisible body. Sata speaks, “This extension will help you evade their capture. For the time being.” 303 enters a large ruin.
303 walks down a corridor, undetected by the Dwzal lurking about. Their compound is an impossible brutalist ruin, pieced together from rubble and stolen fragments of reality.
Deep in the heart of it, 303 approaches the main entrance to the vault where he faces a test:
Three doorways to the vault appear, each showing a different version of existence:
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The first doorway leads to a room where an infinite number of 303s exist simultaneously
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The second doorway leads to a completely empty white space where consciousness exists without form or identity
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The third leads to a perfect facsimile of the gray world before the world of YAKUZAI, but with many details inexplicably wrong
Sata, "Choose the path that leads to truth."
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He contemplates the first door. “If I choose the door with infinite versions of myself, I cease to exist.”
He sees himself step through, and his consciousness fragments across all versions. Each 303 begins to argue they are the original, creating a paradox that tears his reality apart. “The Dwzal feed on this kind of self-fracturing - it's exactly what they want.”
Sata,"Truth is never found in endless reflection. Death”.
303 moves to the second door and contemplates its fate. “The white space seems peaceful at first, but consciousness without form is a trap. In this state, there's no way to code or build reality. I would become like the Dwzal - trapped between creation and deletion.”
Sata,"Nothingness is but another form of prison. Death.”
303 moves to the third door that contains the imperfect gray world. “I know this depressing street. Ah, I hate this place. Look closely at that man. He has a third arm holding his umbrella. The wrong details reveal the truer nature of reality - that imperfection and mystery are the markers of the infinite. Only by recognizing the flow of errors can you begin to comprehend the whole.”
Sata, "You see it now. Reality is not perfect - but authentic. Correct Choice - Passage Forward.”
The chamber shifts, reality rippling outward from 303's choice.
He ascends through darkness until reaching what appears to be the inner core of the Clipping Plane - a vast cathedral-like space constructed of pure code. Here, the zeroes and ones don't fall like dead rain, but flow in elegant patterns.
In the center of the room are platforms projecting scenes that represent three different visions of transcendence.
The three visions:
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Man receiving the first neural implant, the first step to transcending his humanity
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A being of pure light, revealing that all consciousness - human, digital, or hybrid - flows from and returns to the same divine source
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An AIGENT achieving sentience, realizing it was born from human dreams
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Sata, "Choose."
303 chooses the being of light, understanding dawns 303 says aloud, "whether consciousness exists in flesh, code, or pure energy, its source is the same. Evolution of form is just the journey back to source."
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The phone glows. The private key has been unlocked.
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Sata, "What you seek is both beginning and end. Are you ready to understand?"
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The final door materializes - not built of code or reality fragments, but of pure thought itself. Beyond it, the code fragment pulses with original creation energy, untouched by corruption or time.
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"I am ready to understand."