(Los Alamos Science Forum, 2035 CE — Backstage)

  Continuity Classification: FAEI Genesis Archive // Verified Continuity Record

  Primary Subject: Howard Anxo

  Source Integrity: 98.9 %

  Crosslink: Precedes B1.01 — “LOGOS”

  Howard Anxo leaned against the wall and listened to the murmur of the crowd beyond the curtain — hundreds of voices shaping themselves into anticipation.

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to massage the static out of his thoughts. The slides were already loaded. The video cues were tested twice. There was nothing left to do but wait for his name.

  And still his stomach wouldn’t believe him.

  He had given talks before, years of them. He’d warned about runaway data loops, about incentive-blind learning models, about the slow drift between function and meaning. Every time, the room nodded politely and went back to funding the next acceleration.

  It was hard not to feel like the man shouting fire in a theater built entirely out of matches.*

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  He caught himself thinking that and winced — melodramatic, even for him. The voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Tim would have teased him for it; Joshua would have told him to save the poetry for the grant proposal. But the fear never left, not really. Not fear of the machines, but of the people who thought they understood them.

  He looked down at his hands: too steady for how tired he was. He hadn’t slept properly in three nights. Not nerves, exactly — more like vigilance. Every time he closed his eyes, his brain kept trying to edit the presentation for clarity, as if one more adjustment might make people finally hear him.

  Through the curtain he heard applause fade, the moderator’s voice lifting. His cue was coming.

  Howard straightened his jacket, felt the sweat under his collar, and swallowed everything he couldn’t say, the irritation, the worry, the sense that history was turning faster than caution could keep up. He wasn’t here to scold. He was here to remind them that progress without patience was just entropy in a suit.

  A stagehand gave him the two-minute signal. He nodded, even though his throat had gone dry.

  He thought about the slides waiting on the screen, not a machine, just an idea ... a framework that, if taken seriously, might still slow the slide from curiosity to carelessness. If people didn’t learn how to guide what they were building, soon the guidance would happen without them.

  The microphone clicked live.

  He took a breath, found the version of himself that belonged to the world, and stepped into the light.