EPISODE 6: THE DESCENT OF NATIONS ## CHAPTER 1: THE LOGISTICS Five years before impact, the Great Descent began. It was the largest migration in human history—billions of people moving from the world they had always known to one they could barely imagine. The logistics alone were staggering: transport systems, communication networks, supply chains, the entire infrastructure of civilization being rebuilt on the ocean floor. PROMETHEUS BASE had been the seed. Now it flowered into something vast—a network of interconnected habitats stretching across the abyssal plains, built with a combination of human engineering and Architect technology that neither species could have achieved alone. "We're moving two million people per week," Powell reported during a coordination meeting. "At this rate, we'll have the Level One and Level Two populations relocated within four years." "And the Level Threes?" "They don't need physical relocation. Their transition is happening in place—consciousness transferring to the network while their bodies... remain behind." Sarah had witnessed one of those transitions. A woman named Margaret, sixty-three years old, who had chosen full unity after losing her entire family in the chaos that had followed disclosure. She had lain in a chamber surrounded by Architect patterns, and over the course of three days, her consciousness had gradually merged with the collective. Her body still breathed, still had a...