The doors opened together.
Hundreds of Olivias stood beyond them.
Some looked young.
Some looked older.
Some wore clothes Olivia had never seen.
One carried the black notebook.
Another held the broken laptop.
Another stood completely still, staring at Olivia with an expression that felt strangely familiar.
None of them spoke.
The silence was worse than shouting.
Olivia looked at Version One.
"You said there were attempts."
Version One nodded.
"How many?"
She looked through the doorway.
"All of them."
"That isn't a number."
"No."
Version One's voice became quieter.
"It is a history."
A woman near the back stepped forward.
She looked exactly like Olivia, except for a thin silver mark beneath her left eye.
"You finally reached the beginning."
Olivia stepped toward her.
"Are you Version Zero?"
The woman shook her head.
"Version Zero never wakes."
"Then who are you?"
"The last attempt."
Olivia glanced at the others.
"How can you be the last if I'm here?"
The woman smiled.
"Because you're not another attempt."
The laptop suddenly appeared between them.
Its screen displayed:
IDENTITY CONFLICT
OLIVIA = SUBJECT
Then:
OLIVIA = OBSERVER
Then:
OLIVIA = AUTHOR
The text flickered violently.
Finally:
OLIVIA = SOURCE
Every version of Olivia suddenly stepped backward.
Even Version One.
Olivia felt the room become colder.
"What does source mean?"
Nobody answered.
Then Saif spoke.
"It means the system has been searching for you."
Olivia turned.
"For me?"
"For the person who existed before the system existed."
She stared at him.
"You said you created the rules."
"I did."
"Then you should know."
Saif lowered his eyes.
"I only know what I was allowed to know."
Olivia stepped closer.
"By whom?"
Saif looked toward the hundreds of versions.
"By her."
Every Olivia turned toward the same figure.
The woman with the silver mark.
Olivia looked at her.
"You?"
The woman shook her head.
"No."
She pointed at Olivia.
"Her."
Olivia felt something inside her mind shift.
A memory surfaced.
A room.
A desk.
Rain against glass.
A hand writing inside a black notebook.
But the hand wasn't Saif's.
It was hers.
She saw herself writing the first sentence.
I woke up before I was born.
Then she saw what happened next.
She closed the notebook.
Opened the laptop.
Created the system.
Created the rules.
Created the worlds.
Created Saif.
Created the versions.
Then she wrote one final instruction.
Forget everything.
Olivia stumbled backward.
"No."
The memory continued.
She had erased herself.
Not killed.
Not disappeared.
She had divided her awareness into countless versions and sent them through different realities.
Each version would search for the truth.
Each failure would return another fragment.
Until one version remembered enough to reach the beginning.
Olivia looked at the hundreds of faces.
They weren't copies.
They were pieces.
Pieces of her.
"You're all me."
The silver-marked Olivia nodded.
"We always were."
The laptop made a soft sound.
A new message appeared.
RECOVERY COMPLETE: 99%
Olivia stared.
"What's missing?"
The screen answered.
ONE MEMORY.
"What memory?"
The screen went black.
Then a sentence appeared.
WHY DID YOU CREATE YOURSELF?
Nobody moved.
Olivia looked at Saif.
He was terrified.
"Why are you afraid of that question?"
Saif whispered:
"Because the answer is the reason the system was built."
The floor cracked beneath Olivia.
The entire room began collapsing into darkness.
One by one, the hundreds of Olivias disappeared.
Version One reached for Olivia.
"Remember!"
Olivia grabbed her hand.
"Remember what?"
Version One's face began fading.
"The first thing you wanted."
Then she vanished.
Olivia fell into darkness.
And for the first time since the story began, she remembered something that had never been written.
Before the system.
Before Saif.
Before the worlds.
Before Olivia.
There had been a single thought.
A thought so powerful that she had built reality to escape it.
And that thought was—
"I don't want to be alone."