The door had closed minutes ago. Not with a hiss or slam, just the quiet finality of a system acknowledging return. I hadn't moved since. I sat on the edge of the cot, head bowed, both hands resting against my thighs, breathing in slow, uneven rhythms that hadn't quite evened out since Shard 4H.
The weight of everything pressed in differently now. It wasn't trauma, not exactly. It was the gravity of comprehension. The debug room, once a bunker scraped from raw logic and despair, had started to feel like something more. Not home, not yet, but a place with rules. A place that reacted. And in doing so, it had proven itself more human than half the interfaces I'd designed back in the real world.
Patch slept near my side. Curled tight, her fur twitching now and then in microdreams. Every so often, her paw would flex, claws extending slightly before retracting. She had gone silent the moment we crossed back into sanctuary—no need to protect, no pressure to perform. Just a creature at peace, if only temporarily. I didn't dare disturb her.
I, on the other hand, couldn't rest.
My body itched with a dozen small discomforts, each one louder now that there wasn't a void trying to kill me. My stomach clenched in dry protest. My skin stung beneath the dried crust of Nullspace grime. My wounded hand pulsed in slow, uneven beats beneath the stiff bandage. More than anything, I needed to piss, and the sheer absurdity of that being a real issue in a simulated environment almost made me laugh.
Almost.
I rose with effort, joints slow to obey. My muscles carried the memory of sprinting on failing tiles and diving through broken logic. My shoulders sagged under the memory of puzzles solved with blood and grief.
But the pedestal blinked.
Not urgently. Not even brightly.
Just aware.
As if to say: I saw what you did. I know what you need now.
Lines of data coalesced across the overhead projection. No commands, no quest prompts, just a status check.
[ENVIRONMENT: STABLE]
[USER: NULLPOINTER]
[CONDITION: DEGRADED]
[RECOMMENDATIONS: HYGIENE // NUTRITION // REPAIR]
I stared at the last line for a long moment, then muttered, "Thanks for the diagnosis."
The interface pulsed again. A soft blue glow highlighted a new section of the radial build wheel. One that hadn't existed before. It bloomed slowly, rotating until a list of newly accessible nodes appeared, highlighted with subtle brackets to indicate basic utility tier.
[AVAILABLE RESOURCE UNITS: 327]
[NEW NODE UNLOCKS DETECTED]
[ - PERSONAL SANITATION MODULE – 40]
[ - RATIONS: BASELINE REPLICA – 50]
[ - MEDICAL AID NODE – MINOR THREAD STABILISATION – 70]
[ - PATCH SYNC BOOST – REST MODE LINK – 20]
I didn't hesitate.
"Deploy all."
The pedestal glowed, brighter now. Not blinding, not dramatic, just active. Ready. For the first time since arriving in this broken corner of unreality, I felt like the system was waiting on me, not the other way around.
Behind me, Patch stirred.
And the room began to move.
The pedestal dimmed the moment my command registered. A faint pulse travelled outward from its base, low and deliberate, like a ripple through fabric rather than metal. The room didn't shift violently. It adapted. Calm, methodical, like a well-coded simulation waiting patiently for its player to come up for air.
The first change came from the wall opposite the hydration node. A panel I hadn't even realised was separate recessed by half a metre, hissed softly, then unfolded outward like a blooming hatch. A compact alcove took shape, rectangular, brushed metal, with faint icons etched into its frame: a hand, a droplet, a spiral. The space glowed soft blue from within.
The sanitation module.
A narrow opening yawned open at the base, wide enough for a body to step into, shallow enough to avoid claustrophobia. The interface above the entrance blinked.
[SANITATION NODE READY]
[HUMAN USE DETECTED: NULLPOINTER]
[OPTIONS: CLEANSE // EXCRETION CYCLE // REFRESH]
I raised an eyebrow. "Excretion cycle?"
The room didn't respond.
But the prompt remained.
A quiet chirrup made me glance back. Patch had padded across the floor without a sound. She now stood directly in front of the sanitation alcove, tail up, staring at the glowing doorway with feline curiosity. Her nose twitched. She sniffed once. Then, with utter confidence, she stepped inside.
I opened my mouth, then froze.
As soon as all four of her paws crossed the threshold, the alcove shimmered. A privacy screen, an actual privacy screen, snapped into place—opaque and perfectly circular, sealing her inside.
I blinked.
"Are you kidding me?"
The pedestal hummed quietly.
A second privacy panel, this one much slower, extended next to me. It hovered lazily in the air beside the cot, unconvincing in both opacity and discretion.
"Right," I muttered. "I get it. Priorities."
Patch meowed softly from behind the screen.
I walked over to the second module and activated the full sanitation cycle. It wasn't a shower, not in the traditional sense, but it worked. Jets of warm mist spiralled through the narrow space, cleansing grime from my skin, Nullspace dust from my hair, the dried blood from my injured palm. I stood still through the process, eyes closed, letting the wash strip away more than physical residue.
When I stepped back out, the mirror in my mind was clearer.
And my hand no longer throbbed quite as loudly.
Patch emerged from her enclosure a few seconds later, tail high, chin lifted like she'd just completed a performance. Her fur shimmered with residual moisture and faint static, the post-wash finish leaving her sleek and lightly fluffed. She blinked once at me, completely unbothered.
I sighed.
"Next time, I go first."
The privacy panel retracted with a soft hiss, folding back into the ceiling as if embarrassed by its own lateness. I ran a hand through damp hair, blinking in the diffuse light. My hoodie, still torn from Nullspace wear, had dried on a nearby hook that hadn't existed before. A convenience rendered just in time. I slipped it back on, flexed my fingers once, and turned back toward the pedestal.
The interface had already updated.
[SANITATION COMPLETE]
[ENERGY RESERVE: 237 UNITS REMAINING]
[NUTRITION NODE: READY]
A new hatch opened near the hydration unit, sleek and recessed, its surface smoother than the others. The moment I approached, the panel dissolved into two halves, revealing a small inset alcove with a narrow chute and a curved dish just large enough to hold a plate-sized portion of something.
It wasn't steaming. It didn't smell.
But it was food.
Sort of.
A ration brick the colour of compressed oatmeal slid down the chute and landed on the plate with a plasticky thunk. A secondary nozzle dispensed a pale grey fluid into a matching cup with a tiny flourish of foam. I raised an eyebrow.
The pedestal blinked again.
[MEAL PROFILE: BASELINE REPLICA // FLAVOUR: STARCH // PROTEIN RECONSTRUCT // VITAMIN BUNDLE]
"Bon appétit," I muttered, picking up the plate.
Patch jumped onto the cot with impeccable timing. Her eyes followed the tray like a predator. I raised a brow. "This doesn't look like your kind of thing."
She meowed once, then daintily tapped the tray with her paw.
I broke off a piece of the ration bar and offered it. She sniffed, then chomped without hesitation, chewing with loud, eager precision.
"I stand corrected."
We shared the rest in slow silence, me nibbling from one side of the bar, Patch from the other, like two people stuck in the world's least romantic survival movie. The drink tasted faintly metallic, like someone had forgotten to clean the inside of the food printer. But it did its job. Warmth returned to my chest. The rumble in my stomach dulled.
And for the first time since Nullspace, my limbs felt like they belonged to me again.
When the tray returned to the node and vanished with a chirp, the final module deployed.
A soft pulse of light illuminated the far corner of the room, low to the ground, gentle in tone. No fanfare. No whirring arms or sterile injection ports. Just a seat-height bench surrounded by four narrow rods. One of them blinked softly.
[MINOR THREAD STABILISATION AVAILABLE]
[THREAD_ID: NULLPOINTER]
[STATUS: NONSTANDARD // ERROR TOLERANT]
I approached slowly, uncertain.
This wasn't healing.
It was acceptance.
The room wasn't repairing damage.
It was recognising me as part of the system.
I lowered myself carefully into the centre of the stabilisation bench. There was no buckle. No restraint. Just smooth metal warm to the touch, and the faint pulse of energy humming beneath it. It didn't feel like machinery. It felt like potential.
The four rods around me flickered to life, each casting a vertical stream of faint green light, more visualisation than function, like a scanning grid being drawn by memory alone. I kept my hands open, palms up, and waited for something painful. Or invasive. Or cold.
But nothing hurt.
The light warmed.
That was all.
It swept down over my body in slow arcs, passing through fabric, muscle, code. No static. No jolt. Just pressure, like water across skin. And when the rods passed over my injured palm, the interface whispered softly:
[THREAD DAMAGE DETECTED: SURFACE TRAUMA]
[RESTORATION: INITIATED]
I watched as the crusted bandage dissolved under the light, the fibres unspooling into fine dust, scattered into logic mist. Beneath it, my skin—torn, scabbed, dried with Nullspace soot—began to seal. The pain didn't vanish. It faded. A low ache replaced it. Then a hum. Then nothing.
I flexed my fingers slowly.
No blood.
No sting.
Just skin, taut and new, ringed faintly with a mark like a system signature.
Not erased.
Logged.
The light receded, and the interface blinked one last time:
[STATUS: STABLE]
[THREAD CLASSIFICATION: OBSERVED]
[LOG: ERROR STATE PERSISTENT // TOLERANCE EXPANDED]
I let out a slow breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding.
Patch moved beside me.
She didn't leap onto the bench, just padded quietly into the radius of the stabilisation rods and sat beneath the lowest beam. Her ears perked. Her eyes narrowed, not in alarm but in understanding.
The system responded without hesitation.
A second grid shimmered around her, a smaller field, narrower and dimmer, but clearly tuned. Her fur fluttered in the light. Her whiskers twitched. No wounds marked her kitten form, but the sync field pulsed regardless.
[COMPANION ENTITY: PATCH_001_B]
[SYSTEM RECOGNITION: ACTIVE]
[SYNC: 62.3% → 64.1%]
She blinked slowly and stepped out from the light with complete calm, tail raised as she rubbed once against my shin in passing.
I rested my healed hand on her back.
She purred.
The debug room had stopped reacting to our presence like a visitor.
It was beginning to respond like a host.
The stabilisation beams dimmed and folded away in perfect silence, leaving behind only faint afterimages on the floor—four ghostly columns of light that faded like dreams when I blinked.
I didn't move right away. I sat still, hand open in my lap, watching Patch circle the perimeter of the node with casual authority. She was no longer testing the room's limits. She was confirming ownership. Wherever she walked, the lighting adjusted subtly. Wherever she paused, the ambient glow settled, and the floor felt warmer.
I smiled.
Then I exhaled fully and stood. No ache. No twinge. Just the familiar stiffness of a body easing out of tension.
"All right," I said, stretching my arms behind my back. "That's the serious stuff. Now…"
I turned toward the pedestal.
The radial menu hadn't shifted, but a new node had appeared. Smaller than the others. Unassuming. Almost shy.
I leaned closer.
[OPTIONAL COMFORT NODE DETECTED]
[CONDITIONAL REWARD: TRUSTED THREAD]
[RESOURCE COST: 4]
[ - COFFEE DISPENSER // PROFILE PREFERENCE: MATCHED]
I blinked.
I read it again.
Then laughed—soft, genuine—the sound like an exhale of disbelief wrapped in affection. "You beautiful bastard."
I confirmed the activation without hesitation.
A small panel opened beside the ration node, barely larger than a toaster slot. From within, a slim column extended, capped with a smooth circular interface and a steaming cup already seated in a mechanical arm. The scent hit before the cup even cleared the hatch—rich, dark, earthy. Proper grind. None of that instant sludge.
Patch hopped onto the console behind me and sniffed the air once.
"Don't even think about it," I warned, lifting the cup. "This one's mine."
She meowed with exaggerated innocence, but didn't argue.
I sipped slowly.
It was perfect. Not just warm and bitter and alive with caffeine—but real. The weight of the cup. The slight clink as I set it against the pedestal. The kind of detail only someone obsessed with simulation fidelity would bother coding into a node no one was supposed to find.
Which meant this wasn't an accident.
It was a gift.
The system hadn't just recognised my survival.
It was acknowledging my humanity.
I closed my eyes and stood in silence. No screaming data. No blood. No weapons. Just the hum of my favourite drink and the soft rhythm of a kitten's paws pacing behind me.
For the first time in this broken world, I wasn't planning. Wasn't fighting.
I was just being.
The last of the coffee disappeared in a single, satisfying mouthful. I let the cup linger in my hand for a moment longer than necessary before placing it gently on the console's edge. It didn't vanish. It didn't deconstruct into logic.
It simply sat there, waiting to be used again.
A design choice, not a function.
I liked that.
Patch had returned to the cot, stretched long and unbothered, her front paws extended beyond the edge like tiny black slippers dangling over a ledge. Her breathing had evened out. Her tail gave a lazy flick now and then, but otherwise, she slept.
She'd earned it.
So had I.
The room was quiet now. Not silent, but settled. The pedestal no longer blinked with urgency. The radial was complete for the tier I'd unlocked. A thin white arc encircled the central hub, showing completion: basic hygiene, nutrition, healing, rest, and comfort.
And still, it felt like something was listening.
Not observing.
Listening.
I stepped back to the centre of the room and pulled up the session log again. It unfolded without sound, smooth and eager.
I dictated softly:
"Thread NULLPOINTER. Cycle resumed.
Sanitation, nutrition, and restoration complete.
Emotional strain reduced. Companion status stable.
Room expanding per interaction protocol.
Intent: integration. No longer just hiding. Building."
The log pulsed once and folded back into the pedestal. The light around the room adjusted again—not brighter. Just warmer. More certain.
And near the sleeping node, tucked along a seam in the wall I hadn't even noticed before, a new flicker began to pulse.
Soft. Repeating.
A new seam.
A new direction.
I didn't move toward it yet.
Didn't have to.
There would be time.
For now, I stepped over to the cot, sat down gently beside Patch, and let my hand rest lightly on her back. She didn't stir. She just pressed into the touch, a kitten in full, deep sleep, fur warm, eyes closed, perfectly safe.
So for a little while, I sat still.
I didn't plan.
I didn't fear.
I simply existed in a space that, for once, accepted me as I was.