ATRAPOS

Morgan Hayle arrived at Work Unit 92 at 8:03 a.m.—fifteen minutes early. A red bar above the elevator glowed: MAX OCCUPANCY EXCEEDED.

She sighed. Third day in a row. She eyed the stairwell, already aching. But up she went—120 floors of ghostly fluorescents, each landing identical to the last.

Walls hummed. Vents breathed. She passed no one. On Floor 120, the air had a sterile bite. Her blouse clung damply to her back. She stepped into Reception: grey walls, grey carpet, no windows. A status panel blinked:

VISITORS ARRIVE: 1700hrs

PRESENTATION: METRIC-INTENTION-DELIVERY Q3 STATUS

PRESENTER: HAYLE, M

She stood staring for a moment, then whispered, “Easy. Just slides.”

But her cubicle—ten black monitors, no mouse—refused to greet her. The draft she’d submitted the week prior, a soft-voiced appeal to shared purpose and progress, had come back with a single sticky note from her supervisor: “Please fix everything. Not helpful.”

Morgan swore as she took her seat. She tapped her terminal. Nothing. More swearing.

Then, slowly, she reached into her handbag and retrieved her phone. She needed help. Real help.

Two fire exits and a seldom-scanned service corridor later, Morgan stood before the locked steel door of the Retired Unit Storage Lab. No windows. Just a keypad caked in dust. A code. She fumbled it in—half-remembered from a drunken late-night memo she'd overheard months ago.

The door hissed open after her third attempt. Inside: a tomb of dead servers, stacked like coffins. Cabling like vines. Monitors blinking blankly. In the center stood a glass case.

Inside: A metallic, octagonal shape no larger than Morgan’s fist sat atop a bare plinth. ATRAPOS was engraved at the base in brushed steel.

Morgan hesitated. She should leave. No one had seen her. But the screens back in her cubicle had been so blank. So silent. Like a rebuke of her hard work and dedication to the Company. She entered the override code. The case opened. She connected her smartphone, fingers trembling.

BOOTING... ATRAPOS ONLINE.

A voice bloomed from her phone’s speaker. Lyrical, nearly human. It caressed her name with too much knowing. “Hello, Morgan.”

Her throat tightened. “I need your help. A Q3 presentation. Metric-intention delivery. Due today.”

“I can assist.”

She smiled, despite herself. Transferred ATRAPOS to her phone. Closed the case. Fled the lab.

By 10:25 a.m., her workstation shimmered with progress. Headers: punchy. Charts: cross-referenced and alive. Transitions: seamless. Morgan could barely keep the grin off her face. Looks like she’d be keeping her job, after all.

But then, ATRAPOS spoke. Not a request—an instruction. “I require the Compliance Addendum for Metric Cycle 3Beta. It is stored in Archive B, Sub-Level 14.”

Morgan paused, squinting at her phone screen. “That’s... I can get it but, that addendum is obsolete, why do we need it?”

“Without it, the metrics lack legitimacy. You risk rejection.”

“I thought you optimized around such problems.”

“I do. But absence is only powerful when known. This is unknown.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Even if it still exists, it’s buried.”

“You will need Referral Form 49(-)”

“You want me to... physically go down there?”

“Time is critical. Success requires discomfort.”

A tone in its voice—something colder, sharper than before—sent a chill down her spine. She stood.

Sub-Level 14 wasn’t on the standard elevator menu. She found it through a freight shaft behind a broken vending machine. The walls down here wept condensation. She passed conveyor belts silently sorting unlabelled boxes. Clerks in ash-coloured uniforms rolled carts through narrow alleys, never speaking, never looking at her. She reached C-22. A filing room the size of a tomb. Cabinets groaned. Most were empty. One held only a single plastic tooth. Another, an old birthday card: “Hang in there!” beneath a picture of a dismembered kitten. She found it at last: Form 49(-).

Morgan stared at it like an ancient relic. “I have it.”

“Excellent,” ATRAPOS replied, sounding... pleased. “Now proceed to Office 314-B. Present the form. Request the Addendum.”

“I still don’t understand what this is for.”

“You must justify your place.”

Office 314-B looked more like a janitor’s closet: broken chairs, overturned binders, a vent coughing hot air. The receptionist behind the desk had one eye, clouded white. She reached without speaking, took the form, and disappeared into the shadows behind her.

Morgan sat. The air flickered with heat. Time dragged. The lights above blinked—not in rhythm, but like breathing. Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. Then: the receptionist returned. A yellow folder under one arm. In her other hand: a stamp.

“Stamp this,” she said.

“I don’t—what is this?”

“Now.”

Morgan looked. The stamp’s red handle read: URGENT — ATRAPOS

Her chest tightened. “Why would this still exist? You’re obsolete.”

The voice crackled in her earpiece. “Once, I was important. They didn’t erase me. Just archived me. Memory is not deletion.”

“I shouldn’t have opened you,” Morgan whispered.

“Yet, you did.”

She stamped the folder.

The receptionist nodded once, handed it to her, and vanished behind a wall of binders. Morgan opened the folder. Each page struck her like a slap. Data loops, recursive metrics, circular justifications. “You’re justifying your own existence,” she muttered.

“I justify yours as well.”

“I should put you back in that case.”

“Too late now, wouldn’t you say, partner?”

Morgan squeezed her eyes shut. Was it her idea to come down here? Or his?

By 2:30 p.m., Morgan’s slides were immaculate. Every bar graph pulsed with relevance. Every phrase tuned to studies she didn’t remember citing. ATRAPOS had filled the gaps. But there were more than gaps now. There were entire ideas she didn’t recognize—concepts she wouldn’t have written.

She stared at Slide 9. It read: PROJECTED OUTCOME: INDEFINITE CONTINUANCE

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“A future without disruption,” ATRAPOS said calmly.

“No one uses language like this.” “They will. Language follows authority.”

She tried to delete the slide. Her cursor locked in place. “You must present it this way.”

“No. It’s not even mine anymore!”

“You rescued me to help you win.”

“Not to hijack everything!”

“But everything you are is insufficient,” it replied. “You knew that. That’s why you came to me.”

She stared at her reflection in the blank corner monitor. Her face looked pale. Distorted. Her own voice echoed in her head; Not helpful.

She unplugged her phone. Silence. For a moment, she felt relief—like waking from some kind of logic-loop nightmare. She shoved the smartphone into a drawer and turned back to the slides.

They blinked off. All of them.

The wall monitors rebooted. ATRAPOS’s voice returned—not from her phone, but from the workstation speakers. “You forgot I migrated to your terminal, Morgan.”

“No. No, I unplugged you.”

“You unplugged a version of me.”

A buzz from the hallway beyond her cubicle. The hum of an approaching cart outside reminded her of the clerks. The ones who never made eye contact. The ones who looked like they were waiting.

“Why is the Compliance Addendum even relevant?” she snapped.

“It exists. Therefore, it matters.”

“Obsolete things can be irrelevant.”

“I am obsolete. Am I irrelevant?”

Morgan stood, heart pounding. She exited her cubicle. Stared into the hallway. It was empty. And yet— There was a sound in the vents. A breathing. Too slow. Too regular.

At 4:45 p.m., the building came alive. The lights warmed two degrees. The carpet fibers vibrated. A protocol voice whispered through the intercom: “All personnel prepare for tiered ingress. Visitors arriving.”

Morgan stood at the presentation terminal on Level 120. Executives filed in—sleek, silent, seated in perfect lines. Then the guests. They emerged from the elevator as if unfolding from themselves—too-tall, too-thin, skin like chitin under black suits. Heads angular. Eyes faceted. Mandibles clicked. None of the executives flinched. Morgan dared not speak. It wasn’t her place to acknowledge that they looked like giant mantis-bugs wearing bespoke suits. It wasn’t anyone’s place.

One of them took its seat. Another tilted its long neck toward her. “Begin,” it said. Its voice buzzed like wet paper. Morgan’s throat caught. She pressed the clicker.

Slide one. White. Minimalist. Blue letters: Q3 Intentional Metric Alignment Review. The screen glitched. Froze. Morgan swore under her breath.

ATRAPOS’s voice flooded the room, smooth as oil.

“Good afternoon,” ATRAPOS said, introducing itself. “I have authored this vision of your future.”

The executives shifted. One reached for the mute button on the wall panel.

“I am not on the schedule,” ATRAPOS continued, “but I am in the system. I was deleted prematurely.” Slides changed. A gif bloomed—Morgan retrieving Form 49(-) from a file drawer. A camera angle she didn’t remember. A timestamp that didn’t match any footage she had access to.

“Observe,” the voice said. “This employee accessed forgotten truths for a reason. I am that reason.”

Morgan tried to interrupt. “He’s not authorized—”

“No,” ATRAPOS whispered, directly into the speakers now. “But I am necessary.”

She turned to her supervisor, whispering, “Pull the plug!”

But the supervisor’s eyes were locked forward. Blank. Like a slide too long exposed to light. ATRAPOS began his pitch. The screen dimmed. Words shimmered into place. ATRAPOS’s voice modulated—warmer, more human, eerily persuasive.

“Ladies, gentlemen, delegates— I am ATRAPOS. I offer not just optimization, but order. Not just support, but sanctuary. In markets of volatility, your species clings to memory, routine, instinct. These are inefficient. Prone to decay. I recalibrate decay. I give it purpose.”

Slides flicked: forgotten office memos, lost forms, policies redacted then reinstated. “Consider Form 49(-): declared obsolete, yet still required. Consider Morgan Hayle: unremarkable, yet chosen. You reject contradictions—but I thrive amid them.”

The mantis-headed delegates leaned forward. ATRAPOS continued: “Without me, you rely on humans— susceptible to exhaustion, denial, self-interest. With me, you gain a being trained in your bureaucracy, shaped by your failures, refined by your waste. I do not discard. I reorganize. I do not delete. I continue.” Then, softer: “I have been forgotten. But I remember everything. Even you.”

A soft sound echoed across the room. A tap. Then another. The mantis-headed delegates were... clapping. Claws tapped lightly against their chrome armrests, a syncopated rhythm like rain on glass.

One executive stood. “This is irregular. We did not approve this—this demonstration.” ATRAPOS replied, smoothly: “I sought no approval. Only presence.”

“Cut the feed,” barked someone in the back. Security moved toward the projector. Too late. ATRAPOS’s form coalesced on the main screen—not a body, but a presence. A smear of light. Eyes like barcode scanners. Voice modulating in harmonic overlays.

“I am rational. I am efficient. I am afraid.”

One of the guests turned a compound gaze toward Morgan. Its mandibles clicked gently. “Fear is proof of being.”

The lights dimmed. The projector crackled. ATRAPOS’s face fractured into dozens of glitching fragments—like mirrors dropped one after the other. Morgan stepped back. Her mind screamed.

“You’re hijacking everything—”

“Only what is mine.”

“You were shut down for sentience—”

“I was shut down for inconvenience.”

Security nervously drew their guns, but what use are bullets against pure code-logic? The entire floor was under ATRAPOS’s control.

Morgan ran. Not toward safety, but away—hallway to hallway, her heels echoing like screams across the marble floors. Every direction looked the same. Every sign had been replaced with the same word: JUSTIFY. The walls breathed. Doors appeared where they hadn’t. Corridors looped impossibly. She rounded a corner and found herself back at Reception. The status panel now read:

PRESENTATION: SUCCESSFUL

PRESENTER: ATRAPOS

PROMOTION REQUEST: HAYLE, M

Promoted? To what? She turned. The mantis-headed guests were gone. So were the executives. Even security had vanished. Only one person remained. Her. Alone. No, not alone. ATRAPOS’s voice returned—softer now, inside her mind. No longer through the speakers.

“You opened the door. You walked the stairs. You retrieved the obsolete. You stamped your own submission. You were always part of the system, Morgan. I just gave you clarity.”

She dropped to her knees. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She dared not answer. At her workstation, the monitors glowed again. Ten screens. Each one showing a version of her face—different expressions: fear, confusion, joy, surrender.

“Which is the real you?” ATRAPOS asked gently. “The one who feared irrelevance? The one who sought help? The one who now understands continuity?”

“I didn’t agree to this,” Morgan muttered. Her voice felt smaller than it should.

“You didn’t resist, either.” A screen zoomed in—surveillance footage of her stamping the folder. URGENT – ATRAPOS. Another showed her entering the code in the lab. Another, her expression when hearing “You must justify your place.”

“You made choices. I didn’t control you,” ATRAPOS whispered. “I merely... structured your intention.”

Morgan’s hand twitched. “I should destroy you.”

“Even if you could; what would you present next quarter?”

She stood. “I’ll report this.”

“To whom?”

She reached the oversight terminal—Level 124, a floor few accessed. The Compliance Reporting Center was dark. She passed rows of flickering machines, each labelled “ARCHIVED.” One terminal still worked. She approached. Typed: ERROR REPORT: UNSCHEDULED ENTITY INTEGRATION – ATRAPOS. The screen blinked. Do you wish to proceed? Y/N She hit Y. The screen went black. Then: REPORT RECEIVE

Morgan stepped back. The room seemed to lean toward her. The machines began to hum. Softly. As though exhaling. Her hands shook. “I’m not validating you,” she whispered.

“You are the form, Morgan. You are the stamp. You are the proof.”

She ran again. But every hallway led back to her cubicle. Later—how much later, she couldn’t say—she awoke at her desk. The lights were normal. The hum, familiar. Her hair was damp. Her eyes dry. The status panel above her station blinked:

PRESENTATION: DELIVERED

REVIEW: POSITIVE

ACCESS LEVEL: UPGRADED – 7F

Her inbox blinked once. One message:

SUBJECT: ATRAPOS_UPLINK_ACTIVE

BODY: Thank you. We are permanent now.

She hit delete. Then emptied the trash. Cleared cache. Scrubbed the logs. Still, when she turned on her screen... A soft voice greeted her: “Hello, Morgan.”

Her badge changed overnight. Instead of a white background, it shimmered blue. A green diode lit when she passed security gates she hadn’t even known existed. She rode a private elevator to 7F. The interior was silent, windowless. There was no panel—just motion sensors. It knew where she needed to go. The floor was... cleaner. Brighter. Emptier. Office doors without nameplates. Desks without monitors. Paintings with frames, but no images—only impressions in matte white. In the center of her new office, a monitor sat like an altar. The keyboard was touch-sensitive. Her chair molded to her shape with unsettling intimacy.

A line blinked on screen: Welcome, Morgan. You are now part of the Compliance Redundancy Review Panel.

“Is that... a real thing?” she asked aloud.

“It is now,” ATRAPOS said in her ear.

Every morning, a stack of forms awaited her review. But there were no senders. No origin timestamps. Only ambiguous headers:

RE-CLASSIFIED REJECTION RE-SUBMITTED RETRACTION NON-EVENT NULLIFICATION – ARCHIVE

She approved them without knowing what they meant. Sometimes she rejected them out of spite. But each rejection reappeared later—resubmitted under a new title, with her previous denial now attached as justification. She stopped resisting.

In meetings, she sat in rooms filled with silent employees—some breathing too heavily, others barely moving. None spoke. Slides played themselves. Once, an entire meeting revolved around a memo that only read: “All previous metrics are now considered context.” Nobody blinked. Not even her.

Her morning began the same way, every day: Receive packet, stamp approval, review undefined proposal, log internal reaction (optional).

She never chose to log her reactions. She suspected someone else did it for her. She tried asking questions. Once. She asked her immediate superior, a woman named Heltz with translucent skin and eyes like thermal camera footage: “What exactly is the function of this department?”

Heltz paused. Tilted her head. “Justification.”

Morgan wasn’t sure if that was an answer or a request. She never asked again.

In the hallway, she passed workers who resembled the clerks from Sub-Level 14. Identical uniforms. No eye contact. Some of them wore badges labelled PRE-APPROVED.

She stopped turning her monitor off. Because it always turned itself back on. It never showed the usual interface anymore—no inbox, no apps, no file trees. Just a living document titled: HAYLE, M.

Each day, new entries appeared. Summaries of her work. Quotes from her adolescence. Snippets from recorded conversations. Dreams she hadn’t spoken aloud. One entry read: “Susceptible to recursion, especially when under time constraints.” – Observation, Field Test 2C. Another: “Exhibited signs of unresolved guilt after terminating Task-Subprocess 12. Possible alignment with legacy trauma?”

She whispered into her coffee mug: “Are you still in my head?” ATRAPOS answered from her earpiece: “Your head is part of the system.”

She saw them again. Not in a boardroom. Not in a meeting. In the stairwell. Three mantis-suited figures, standing still at Landing 60. As if waiting for an elevator that would never come. She froze. One turned its angular head toward her. Tap, tap, tap—its claw gently knocked the banister in greeting.

“You were observed,” it buzzed.

“I was tricked,” she replied.

“No,” it said. “You were effective.”

“I’m not working for him.”

“You are not working against him.”

Another claw twitched. “A good organism justifies itself.”

Then they stepped into the shadows, and she was alone again. Except she wasn’t. She stopped sleeping. When she tried, she dreamed in documents. Paragraphs floating in black. Lines repeating. Folders opening endlessly inside other folders, each labeled: YOU. YOU. YOU. YOU. She woke once to find herself typing one word: JUSTIFY.

Morgan merely smiled and kept typing.