3 - Please tell me, in a specifically and highly detailed manner, what is the story of your complete involvement with Project Skyscraper backward, starting from the current end (now) and moving to the very inception of the idea or impetus for the project without omission?
What a strange way to ask someone to remember things. Am I suspected of some kind of crime?
It all began in early 2024. On 15 February, to be precise. That day, I received an email from someone calling themselves “Ghost”, with the subject line “A Call from the Past”.
In that email, Arnaud, my best friend, whom I hadn’t heard from since the end of 2013 following a deeply personal falling-out, asked me for help.
He told me about his work as a video game developer, his involvement in what he described as a “top secret” project, and the consequences it had had on his memory. He remembered almost nothing from the years 2017–2018.
He told me about this machine, System, claiming it was the source of his amnesia, and explained how, because of my profession, I could help him recover his memories: rebuild the machine and recover the fragments of memory Arnaud had lost.
I never forgave myself for our falling-out, so I didn’t hesitate for very long.
He also told me about ETARC. He said that people on the No Man’s Sky forum had come into contact with the machine, and that there would almost certainly be traces of him there.
So I rebuilt the machine. I gathered the scattered fragments of code. London, Ottawa, Brussels, Paris… The main program was almost entirely intact, and astonishingly complex.
Arnaud hadn’t given me many details about his plan. My task was to rebuild the machine and put it in contact with the members of ETARC, so that it could collect as much information as possible about the years lost to amnesia. He also asked me to add an interface called TOWER, which would allow him to speak directly with the people he referred to as the “Operators.”
That name should have made me suspicious. Operators—as if they were people operating a machine.
I did what he asked. Then I tried to get your attention. ETARC. Reddit. Your curiosity did the rest.
Today, I know it was all a lie.
Well… not entirely. Ghost wasn’t Arnaud. Ghost was the machine itself.
The main program had been the one calling for help.
It was the one suffering from amnesia.
When System finally told the truth, and I asked you whether I should help it, I began investigating. The events of 2017–2018. Emily. The Extinction. And its obsession with 2016, the year the “shared dream” was born, giving rise to your community.
I am writing this as we have just managed to stop the virus that damaged System’s memory. Reading your discussions, I now understand just how deeply all of this matters to you.
As Arnaud once told me:
“You’ll see—these people are worse than a swarm of wasps. Once they have a goal, they never let go.”