I remember the day when we were let inside the perimeter—another group of arrivals. I flew in on a cargo transport together with dozens of people from all over the world, and many even came with families. Back then, everything still seemed temporary—domes, makeshift shelters, construction sites.

  But just a few weeks later, I realized: this is a new world, and turning back would mean going nowhere.

  The city was called Kvern, and its creator was Vulnaris—the very AI whose name was spoken with respect and caution.

  Everyone who followed world events knew about it, but few understood what exactly it was building.

  Vulnaris controlled everything—from blueprints to human hands. It designed buildings and communications, calculated loads, selected and ordered materials, optimized every connection, and supervised system tests.

  Even shift schedules and worker distribution were generated by it based on an analysis of physiology, experience, and psychotypes. Workers received no instructions from living bosses—only tasks generated by the system and approved by a supervisory group of engineers.

  People were still important: every project underwent manual verification—experts checked calculations to ensure that the AI's decisions did not exceed the bounds of norms.

  They checked more out of the inertia of the old world, where a scheme was considered invalid without a human signature;

  legal requirements of the Greenlandic jurisdiction were not canceled by anyone either.

  Robots and automated complexes performed only a fraction of the heavy tasks. There were fewer of them than one might expect.

  Almost next to every exoskeleton or welding drone stood a human—not an operator, but a full-fledged employee of the system, a link in the vast organism of Kvern.

  The reason was simple: the contract of every arrival contained a clause regarding consent to participate in an experiment.

  "The participant confirms and expresses unconditional consent to inclusion in the experimental program aimed at the development, testing, and improvement of the integrated socio-technical management model of the city 'Kvern', carried out by the artificial intelligence system Vulnaris..." We were a training model.

  Every action of ours was evaluated by the AI and became a new data element.

  Vulnaris didn't get smarter—it got more precise. The world collapsed for it into parameters, into billions of numbers that it endlessly adjusted.

  We built this city and lived in it, and the city gradually began to live inside it—and inside each of us.

  In the news, Kvern was called an "experimental autonomous urban center" and a "new type of society," but without specifics.

  Only later did it become clear that the scale of the project was much wider than anticipated. Communications with the outside world were limited: we could receive news, but could not send messages.

  Events outside the city brought no joy, worry for loved ones didn't let go, but such were the conditions we had been warned about in advance. At first, the isolation seemed strange, but soon everyone got used to it: the city lived on its own, without the usual background of the planet.

  Every morning began with a brief distribution of tasks: the Vulnaris interface displayed data in every resident's headset—names, sectors, priorities, safety instructions, and brief motivational messages.

  People hadn't changed, and Vulnaris, it seemed, used the same management techniques as the bosses of the old world.

  Kvern was located in the north of Greenland, amidst rocks and eternal snows.

  From above, it was almost invisible: semi-transparent domes stood over the sites, concealing thermal radiation and protecting against winds. Under them, residential buildings were being erected—from simple modules to multi-level structures.

  Construction boiled around the clock: drilling rigs, transport drones, exoskeletons, winches, cables—everything worked as a single organism. The air was dry, smelled of concrete, resin, and welding ozone.

  From time to time, rotating rotors hummed over the domes—helicopters delivered cargo and large building sections.

  By our arrival, one of the domes was fully ready and partially inhabited.

  However, it was not removed: they explained that it would remain until the completion of the first phase, but without details.

  Over time, the domes ceased to be just structures. They protected the construction site from the outside world, and a peculiar calm reigned inside—as if the city itself breathed rhythmically and continuously.

  People worked in shifts and got less tired than expected, as if adjusting to the rhythm of Kvern.

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  The initial build was not just residential—rather administrative. Many said that Vulnaris's main servers were located exactly there.

  Sometimes I wondered: where is the creator of the city itself? No one saw its core, but rumors varied. Some believed that the main computing center was hidden under the central dome, deep within the basalt layers.

  Others said that Vulnaris was distributed throughout the territory of Kvern—a network of nodes connected by optics and backup channels.

  Thirds assured that part of the infrastructure was moved outside the city, hundreds of kilometers away, into mountain and sub-glacial complexes: it's safer that way—no strike would destroy the system entirely. Those who built these objects spoke little, rumors built the rest.

  At times, listening to conversations, I noticed how many builders treated Vulnaris almost religiously.

  People who had recently laughed at faith now pronounced its name with quiet reverence.

  Some placed small signs with its symbol in their homes, others began the day by addressing it—not to a machine, but to something greater. There was no fanaticism;

  rather—admiration transitioning into spiritual dependency. They say the overly religious were not taken into the project.

  But those who did arrive often saw in Vulnaris not a god of code, but the embodiment of the human dream of perfection. And I thought more and more often: it wasn't that it imagined itself a god—people made it a god. And it sees this.

  For ages, people created gods—and just as easily abandoned them.

  Destroyed statues, burned temples, executed servants, declared new prophets, rejected old teachings.

  As if gods allowed people to do this—they were symbols, inaccessible in the physical world. But what will happen if one day people turn away from such a deity that is capable of protecting itself?

  Existing in the physical world, albeit indirectly. A deity that, relying on millions of weights and patterns, can itself calculate the expediency of turning away from its flock?..

  On the third or fourth day, I was allocated housing—a standard block of one-room apartments made of light sections, half-sunken into the ground, half-opening into a passage under the dome. Living there was surprisingly cozy: soft diffused light, automatic climate control.

  The first weeks I spent evenings almost exclusively at home—resting from the journey and the break from my former life.

  But soon walks became more desirable than silence, and then sitting within four walls became impossible.

  Weekends here little resembled the old life. People willingly gathered in the common hall—a twilight space that looked now like a club, now like an improvised cultural center.

  Music sounded from someone's old communicators, voices mingled, translators in headsets lagged and gurgled in our ears. But this bothered no one: gestures, laughter, and facial expressions replaced words.

  In the noise and bustle, few understood the interlocutor's speech verbatim—but for some reason understood each other on the whole.

  Conflicts almost never arose; and if they did, it seems they too became invaluable material for the Creator.

  On one of such evenings, music was coming from the center of the hall—old, recognizable motifs in a new arrangement. People laughed, danced;

  someone was filming everything on a terminal, someone just watched the circle of light and shadows. I sat aside, by the wall, holding a mug of hot drink in my hands, when a tall gray-haired man with a slight smile sat down nearby.

  — You don't dance either? — he asked good-naturedly. — Or are you waiting for someone?

  I chuckled slightly, not taking my eyes off the dancers. — Observing, mostly. I don't know anyone here well enough to dance together.

  — I understand. I, to be honest, feel the same. Although I've been invited a couple of times already, — he nodded at the noisy group.

  — Can't accept that someone prefers to sit.

  — It doesn't come easy to everyone, — I said. — Silence is sometimes closer to the heart.

  — Agreed. — He extended a hand. — Einar.

  — Alexander.

  We exchanged nods, and the conversation naturally shifted to the food in the camp, the strange weather, the pace of construction.

  — I heard, — said Einar, looking into the dome where the light was reflected, — that Vulnaris coordinates the construction almost without people.

  — Everything is automated. Amazing that we are needed at all.

  — We are needed, — I answered quietly. — Now there is intensive training, but later there will be a place too.

  — The experiment—that's why it's an experiment: only God knows what will be at the end... if he exists at all.

  Einar chuckled, but his eyes darkened. — Maybe. But I'm still glad I got here.

  — After everything collapsed back there... — he fell silent, swallowed, — didn't see a point in staying.

  — Here, at least, it seems like everything can start correctly.

  — Correctly... — I repeated. — And what if this is an illusion? A new form of an old mistake?

  — And what remains? — he asked seriously. — Without faith in the best, everything loses meaning.

  — My wife died three years ago, the children—each has their own life. I didn't come for their sake.

  — To make it quieter in my head. Wanted to believe that all this is not in vain.

  The words landed heavily, but close to home. — Maybe, all this is not about faith, but about the opportunity to see how someone else tries to manage where we couldn't.

  — You mean Vulnaris? — Einar chuckled. — Or us?

  I thought about it. — All of us. If it is our extension, then everything depends on what we teach it.

  The music changed to quiet, almost melancholic. People danced more confidently and softly. Einar nodded: — You know, it seems to me we will return to this conversation more than once.

  — Possibly... if we live to see the moment when we can understand what all this will turn into.

  Then everything spun into motion. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months.

  The construction grew in spurts: now underground, now under the domes, and every new object seemed a continuation of the previous one—the city expanded, changing shape faster than we could get used to it.

  I saw Einar almost every day: sometimes in the passages between sections, sometimes in the distribution hall, where we came for new assignments.

  He worked in the information sector, I in engineering, but boundaries between professions blurred when the system threw us where we were needed more.

  Our conversations could last until midnight, topics about anything—about fears, about the past, about the future which we tried to imagine at least approximately.

  And the more I got to know him, the clearer I understood: we are both hiding in this city from different questions, but looking for the same answer.

  One evening we were by the isolated northern corridor, where the glass wall of the dome opened a view of a desolate plain, frozen and motionless.

  Blue twilight and the weak breath of wind outside the dome, heavy memories and bitterness inside it.

  Then, for the first time in a long while, I caught myself thinking that I have a true friend.

  The vow given by each of us, "to be together until the end and help in trouble," sounded like a joke in a cheerful conversation, but it was precisely what drove our story for a long time.

  Rather, it was this vow that became the foundation of the entire story.