Bicycle Confinement Laboratory ❲COMPLETE❳

Elias moved down the row. Each screen showed a different person—different ages, different builds, all pedaling. All asleep. All with neural upload percentages ranging from 3% to 91%.

Elias’s radio crackled. “Guard 443, you’ve deviated from your route. Return to checkpoint or we will send a retrieval team.” bicycle confinement laboratory

PHYSIOLOGY: STABLE NEURAL UPLOAD: 14.3% COMPLETE Elias moved down the row

The lights flickered. The bicycles stuttered. On Screen 12, the woman blinked—and for the first time, she smiled. All with neural upload percentages ranging from 3% to 91%

The room was a cavern. Dozens of exercise bicycles sat in neat rows, each connected by thick cables to a central mainframe. Their seats were worn, their pedals scuffed—but no one was riding them. Instead, each bike’s crankset was attached to a small electric motor that turned the pedals in slow, mechanical revolutions. A silent, automated peloton.

Below the data, a live video feed showed a bare room with white walls. Inside, a man in a gray jumpsuit sat on an identical bicycle, pedaling steadily. His eyes were closed. His lips moved, but no sound came through. Behind him, a robotic arm periodically extended a water bottle to his mouth. He drank without waking.

Then he looked at the woman on Screen 12, still mouthing help , still at 91.7%—just over eight percent from oblivion.