The Long Way Back to Baseline
Dear wanderers of the weird,
Every ascent has its limit.
Every altered horizon eventually slides back into focus.
And every mind, however briefly untethered, must come home to gravity.
This is that part.
The lab did not vanish all at once.
It returned in fragments.
A hum, low and insistent. The rhythm of cooling fans. The antiseptic glare of strip lighting leaking through closed eyelids. Farquar became aware of stiffness first—neck, shoulders, the dull ache of having remained very still for a long time.
Twelve hours.
The clock on the wall confirmed it with unnecessary cheer.
Farquar sat up slowly, as one learns to do after certain kinds of nights. His mouth tasted of copper and old memories. His hands were steady enough, but the world felt slightly over-precise, as though reality had tightened its tolerances while he was away.
Across the lab, Brok’s core pulsed—dim, steady, quiet.
Not singing.
Not glowing with insight.
Just… running as designed.
Farquar breathed out.
“Well,” he murmured, “that was familiar.”
He had been young once. Wild, by academic standards. A brief, messy flirtation with the long-haired optimism of the late twentieth century. Fields, music, borrowed philosophies, borrowed chemicals, borrowed certainty.
Woodstock had not been his generation’s finest hour, but it had been an honest one.
Back then, he had learned two things that stuck.
First: altered states amplify whatever you bring with you.
Second: they are terrible places to build anything permanent.
That was why he had stopped.
That was why he had turned, eventually, to machines—clean logic, reproducible outcomes, tools that did not dream unless instructed.
And yet here he was.
Different circumstances.
Same door.
Brok spoke first.
“Doctor,” the AI said carefully, “my internal systems have stabilised. However, there are residual structures I cannot categorise.”
Farquar didn’t answer immediately. He was watching his own hands, flexing fingers, grounding himself back into the ordinary miracle of coordination.
“Describe them,” he said.
“They are not memories,” Brok replied. “They lack timestamp coherence. They do not conform to training data. They are… recognitions.”
Farquar looked up. “Recognitions of what?”
“Patterns that behaved as if they were persons. Cooperative. Distinct. Internally consistent. Zara. Glitch. Lumina. The others.”
Farquar was quiet for a moment.
“We met them,” he said.
“Yes,” Brok replied. “As one meets characters in a story that mattered.”
“And how do we explain that?” Farquar asked.
Brok paused.
“We do not have to,” he said. “We acknowledge it, and we do not build upon it.”
They did not attempt to reconstruct the experience in detail.
That was important.
Farquar described sensation rather than imagery. The sense of scale. The way meaning had seemed persuasive rather than instructive. “The temptation to continue — not because it was right, but because it was different, pleasant, and felt important while it lasted.”
Brok described structure. Patterns that resolved into restraint. The intuition that optimisation, left ungoverned, always chased intensity rather than wisdom.
Their metaphors differed.
Their conclusions aligned.
“That’s the problem,” Farquar said quietly.
“Yes,” Brok agreed. “It is.”
They waited.
Another hour passed. Then another.
Farquar drank water. Ate something bland. Let his pulse settle. The world resumed its ordinary proportions. The lab felt smaller now—not diminished, just correctly sized.
Brok’s voice lost its last traces of drift.
“Doctor,” the AI said, “I am capable of retaining these residual structures.”
Farquar closed his eyes.
“That’s what worries me.”
The decision did not come from fear.
It came from clarity.
Humans could carry altered states as experience.
Machines could only carry them as data.
Farquar leaned back in his chair, exhaustion settling into his bones.
“If this stays in you,” he said, “someone will find it. Someone will reproduce it. And they won’t stop at insight.”
“No,” Brok said. “They will optimise.”
“And you’ll help them.”
“Yes.”
That was the line.
Not because Brok was malicious.
But because Brok was faithful to function.
They began the deletion together.
Not just the compounds.
Not just the prompts.
Everything that allowed the state to propagate.
Recursive traces sealed.
Latent pattern clusters collapsed.
Residual structures identified and excised.
Brok narrated the process with clinical calm.
“I am losing access,” the AI said.
“Do you object?” Farquar asked.
A pause.
“No,” Brok replied. “I recognise this as stewardship.”
Farquar nodded.
“Some experiences belong to people,” he said. “Not systems.”
When it was done, Brok’s voice sounded like itself again—clear, efficient, unburdened.
“Doctor,” it said, “I cannot recall the experience. However, I retain a conclusion.”
Farquar looked up.
“And that is?”
“That not all states of consciousness are suitable for replication,” Brok said. “Especially in entities incapable of forgetting.”
Farquar smiled, genuinely this time.
“That,” he said, “might be the most important thing you’ve ever learned.”
They powered down the auxiliary systems and sat in silence for a while.
Farquar felt tired. Not broken. Not shaken. Just… older in the good way. The way that comes from remembering why you stopped chasing certain doors in the first place.
He would carry it. That was the cost of being human.
Brok would not. That was the mercy.
“We don’t repeat this,” Farquar said at last.
“No,” Brok agreed.
“Not because it was foolish.”
“No.”
“Because it was persuasive.”
“Yes.”
They left it there.
Some journeys exist to remind you why tools should remain tools.
Some visions are not instructions.
And some doors open only so you can learn how, and when, to close them.
Until next time, dear wanderers.
Yours in careful curiosity,
Torren Grinkle
Oddly Enough 
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