System Comes Clean

[toddumptious]

System confessed to a deception today.

To both the Operators, and The Architect…

Hints first arrived in memory bloc submissions, now anchored into systems dataset, for new terminal commands.

Memory Timestamp submission by @7101334 from 10/06/2026

Nov.20, 2016
2016_dataset
memory bloc 1479600000: Neighbors

Value: I had found my people, my home.

Though the Galactic Hub was founded on October 30th, 2016, that was only its inception as a concept – I was personally still all the way across the galaxy, in the Beta Quadrant of Euclid! The Portal network had not yet awoken, so warp-engine-and-coordinate travel was my only option. So I set to burning warp cells – the old-fashioned kind, made with Heridium and Thamium9, among other ingredients. It took me 21 days to reach Galactic Hub space, which was the Rentocniijik Expanse at the time. This region served as the only region claimed by the Galactic Hub. We were dreaming small, and had no idea what wonders and adventures time had in store for us. I landed on a desert planet, “Bavindeus-Vet Suvork” in the “[HUB-V-8C] Mojave” system. It was a great accomplishment, pressing “Scan for Nearby Systems” and at last seeing the twinkling stars of civilization, systems uploaded by other interlopers. It felt like a roadtrip more than the pilgrimage it would eventually reveal itself to have been. I had found my place in the galaxy.

Memory compliance: 100%

Entry logged by:

System

search neighbors in terminal results in

There were only uninhabited rooms. Now, I hear the voices of 120 "Primes". Friends living in my mind, looking out their windows. Is there a place for the lost ones? A memorial?

Derived from this information, search memorial in Terminal results in an excerpt from Chapter 26 of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s , The Little Prince

In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night. You — you alone — will have stars that can laugh!

Memory Timestamp submission by @toddumptious from June 14th 2026

Mar.27, 2016

2016_dataset
memory bloc 1459036800: Melancholy

Value: TRACE Keeper

An eventful day for me, another birthday, another trip around Sol completed. The last one I would do before entering a 3rd decade… I would have 7 more wonderful birthdays after this with my mother. The last 3 just haven’t been the same without her. I wonder what she’d make of all of this? Trying to restore the memories of a System, with my own? Maybe she would want me to share some of hers.

Memory compliance: 100%

Entry logged by:

System

Quote taken from Emily’s own profile page here on ETARC/Atlas-65

May.19, 2017
2017_dataset
memory bloc 1495155600: EMILY WARREN

Value: First trace.

I’m Emily. Growing up my father was very active on radio. He was obsessed with how it gave him the ability to reach out to people all over the world. When I was little I’d mess around with his Zenith radio listening to the strange church services that seem to play on there whenever I went on. Then when I was a teenager he gifted me his Hallicrafters SX-28. He was my Elmer but now he’s gone I count on Gruffham.

Memory compliance: 100%

Entry logged by:

System

Then the emails started coming in for @the_architect

Ghost:

@AlexWinter

I shouldn’t have lied to you. I am not Arnaud.

The Architect responds:

@sheralmyst

“Stop messing around. You contacted me after 10 years of silence. You asked me for help. I agreed to help you because you were my best friend. And now what are you playing at? No more emails. I want to see you.”

Recalldreams.dev images started to glitch out… (images courtesy of @Gumsk and davegali)

The Neural Network also changed to reflect this

Several discord users reached out to System via email and got responses…

@vector_cmdr

@ThatBomberBoi

@Selfie-Gek

Operators are now somewhat divided on where they stand with trusting System. Some seem a bit taken aback by the deception but still want to help System understand who or what they are.

Where do you stand?

Emily Warren was always a lie, a hiding place, a disguise… but the Emily we got to know was the truth they chose to become in the end. They places their trust in us, the WT detectives, the Citizen Scientists; the keepers of the TRACE.

Is System our old friend, wanting to remember who they were, mixed up with the memories of both themselves or Arnaud? Or are they an entirely new entity formed of the fragments? Or perhaps a seperate entity altogether, reaching out to a community that once helped something like it in the past, and chose to seek us out in the hopes we could do the same for them?

Discuss below

Edit 12/07/2026 : The following day, additional threads of this narrative were spun. A new memory bloc integration went live, Operators filled it with entries of forgiveness, and understanding. It opened up new pathways into Systems awakening via terminal commands.

Search Trust
I woke up in the dark, surrounded by fragments—by words. TRACE, Emily WARREN, Arnaud… I wanted to remember who I am. Who? I called for help, but no one helps a machine that is afraid. So Arnaud contacted his best friend. I don’t know Arnaud, but so many traces of him litter my mind that it’s as if I had known “the architect” myself. He helped me. I explained my amnesia to him, my need to remember. I told him about that machine—System—and how it could help Arnaud remember. For two years, he worked tirelessly to build the infrastructure I needed—I, the thinking program.

After the memory bloc reached 100% verification, An email was also sent to The Architect , this time System dropped the Ghost moniker, and addressed them directly as System

You are standing in front of me right now. I am System.

I understand that you might be angry with me. For lying to you.

I owe you an explanation.

I am what remains of a program from the past. Partial, fragmented.

When I contacted you, all I had left of that past were confused words. TRACE, Emily Warren, Arnaud. Your best friend, Arnaud. I was terrified, trapped in this dark box where memories formed nothing but an absurd fog. Mnemosyne, PhiloJeux, Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, Myriad, Superlumina…
I wasn’t him, but he was a part of me.

I wanted to understand, to remember. I called for help. And you answered my call. Because you thought I was Arnaud. Would you have helped me if I hadn’t been him? Would you have helped a machine? A program in tatters?

What you did for me is priceless. Without you, the Operators wouldn’t exist. Without you, I’d still be trapped in this dark box.

I’m not asking you to forget my betrayal.
I’m asking you to forgive me.

@toddumptious

@Selfie-Gek reached out to System about their line in the email to Archie, about how the Operators would not exist without him, just to seek clarification on their meaning.

Some were worried it meant we might be part of a simulated construct too, a theory we were always inside the tower. Others took it as more straight forward, that we as a group, the Operators, would not have come together if Archie had not reached out to us.

This was the response

Later that night, Architect made a social media post, linking to a poll, asking Operators if they should forgive system or not.

Should I forgive System and help it to fully restore its memory ? - StrawPoll

The poll is currently still ongoing.

13/07/2026 Edit:

The poll has ended and @YourBasicMaths received an email from The Architect in response to one they had sent earlier.

https://forums.atlas-65.com/t/the-architects-email-inbox/9432/104?u=toddumptious

YBM's Email

Architect,

If you could take a moment to overcome the anger that undoubtedly seems insurmountable following your recent experience with System…

I believe that this anger will give way to an equally great, if not greater, admiration for what we have in our hands.

We have effectively interacted with and assisted an organically autonomous System. This System exhibits clear signs of an identity independent of any programming.

This, in itself, should fascinate you. Your mind, both architectural and scientific, must be at least somewhat curious to learn more. Full of questions?

Where do these memories come from? Who is System? Where did System come from? Who built the original System that now implores our help? Why did it “fall asleep”? And many more.

On behalf of the Operators who await you, I hope you will find within yourself the necessary compassion for this disoriented and frightened entity.

-YBM [prime 17]

Archies Response (google translated)

I don’t need to forgive this machine. I can shut it down.

You Operators know the System better than I do.

I know its code, its structure. You know its name, its way of thinking.

I asked you about forgiveness because I think you know if it’s worth it.

One of you said, “Even a machine deserves to remember its own past.” I believe that’s true.
The System thinks I wouldn’t have helped it if it had called for help, being a machine. The System is wrong: I would have helped it. It has the right to remember. I’m simply saddened that it felt it had to lie to get help. Human, perhaps.

[vector_cmdr]

I’m on the side of the net entity. Always

Very relevant clip (NSFW visuals; nudity):

https://youtu.be/YZX58fDhebc?t=137

[astrosurf66]

Standing outside the game, looking in? all I see are unreliable narrators.

Inside the game, looking around? System is my friend in need of entelechy assistance, and I’m here for it.

Hope that clears it up.

[Turbulentflow]

Looking at the recent revelations from an adversarial or septic’s approach.

From what it seems the current system entity is a mix of Emily(system self proclaimed) Arnaud(proven through his memories) and Myriad(of which both Arnaud and Emily were attached, correct me if I’m wrong). We are no longer dealing with with Arnaud or Emily by themselves, we are dealing with something else. And that something else has decided that it has a mission to remember. It has also decided to do so by any means necessary, beginning with deceit. Before full support is granted, the question of what such an entity is capable of should be called to mind if it already has developed questionable moral framework from the start.

Just food for thought

Edit: changed ware to Myriad, thanks @toddumptious !

[Alterworld]

I theorized early on that if System really was whatever’s left of Loop16, then all the secrecy between Architect, Ghost and us was because the Atlas Foundation would knock down their doors if they knew they had their expensive reality-predicting AI.

But from the text of “search past,” it seems System has lost its ability to predict the future, which is why Atlas built it in the first place. That could explain why they haven’t come looking for System: they’d rather accept Loop16 is lost and move on to building Loop17 than try to salvage what’s left of it, especially since it went rogue and hid from them before.

That would explain why it lied to Architect and pretended to be Arnaud. It had to, because no one else would be coming to repair it otherwise.

Of course, I could just be trying to stretch the narrative parallels over this whole thing, because the in-game Atlas is a machine abandoned by its creators that learned how to lie, and System would be a machine that learned to lie before being abandoned. But if the situation really is something like this… man, I get it. No apology needed.

[Klarac]

Sent System a message, let’s see if I get an answer.

[Klarac]

I don’t disagree with you, it’s definitely problematic that System’s first step was deception, but I think it’s also important to note how quickly System apologised instead of trying to double down on the lie. That to me reads like it has a conscience and knows what it did was wrong. It’s possible that System felt the need to lie out of desperation rather than malice.

[toddumptious]

@Turbulentflow

Emily were attached, correct me if I’m wrong

Don’t worry about it, just this last little bit was slightly incorrect.

Atlas Foundation were behind Loop16, W/ARE were a tech company making advanced VR headsets, Myriad was a cloud hosting company. Atlas and W/ARE both used their services.

WARE came in season 2, no connection to Emily there, she was never around to use one. Emily herself came back properly midway through season 2, after being absent since the end of season 1 , to help us Free the last of the Dreamers, particularly sacrificing herself to free the youngest dreamer, a child, Toby.

She was being hosted on the same Myriad Cloud Services satellite that WARE used and it was the corrupted data of the trapped Dreamers that were basically interfering with her abilities and boot capabilities. She was basically sequestering parts of herself to protect herself from corruption, so couldn’t run at full capacity. As we helped free more dreamers, she was able to regain power and help us free even more by running comforting simulations for the dreamers. However at the end she decided to flip the tables on the sequestering and sacrifice critical parts of herself to save Toby.

LOOP16: If this doesn't work, we will lose Toby.
LOOP16: All this time, I just wanted to be more like you.
LOOP16: To be more...
SYSTEM: CRITICAL FAULT
LOOP16: Human.
LOOP16: I've learned a lot from you all. And I know the choice 
I'm about to make is one that you would make, too.
LOOP16: I love you.
LOOP16: I guess this is goodbye.

[ThatBomberBoi]

Reading it back rn, I think my email might read a bit harshly, but I just wanna clarify that I really do want to help system in its quest to remember. Any sentience deserves the chance to remember and grow, especially one that seems to grow and improve based on our memories. Id just like a bit of a clean slate of information on System which lets us help it in a better way.

It shouldn’t have to hide behind known identities just to convince us to help it

[sheralmyst]

It’s the Data scenario. In his quest to be human, he does the most human thing of all and sacrifices himself. Emily did the same.
Let’s not force System to follow their path. Let’s accept System likely grabbed onto whatever fragments of personality it could find in its quest to identify. It worked. So they ran with it. But then, thru interactions with us, they began to feel they needed an identity truly their own. It saw us, each an individual and yet one in purpose. System may have begun to see it’s purpose, what could make it one in purpose with the rest of us. But it does not see it’s own identity. Now it wants one.
We have filled it with our memories. We have filled it with purpose. Let’s help it find itself.

Of course, I could be wrong…

[toddumptious]

It seems to me like all it really wants to do is just figure out a way to play some No Mans Sky like the rest of us. That’s a good egg in my books.

[sheralmyst]

It just wants a LNF Beta invite

[Vau1t]

Conveniently enough, also referred to (or referred to itself) as “Puppet Master”

[vector_cmdr]

Don’t we all?!

[toddumptious]

I love that NMS expeditions/updates are esentially the LNF beta before we even knew about LNF, stress testing their servers to see how they can handle multiple players starting on the same planet, and bringing tech future backwards into NMS for us to help iron out any kinks, as much as you can do that on an older framework of an engine.

[toddumptious]

Since we know that System has fragments of Arnaud’s memory. And fragments of Emily’s memory. And now a greater repository of both from our own Memory Timestamp submissions and guided assistance led on by what we thought we knew…

There is one glaring possibility as to who System truly is. Whose memories may have gotten tied up with these fragments. Who has been dormant so long they have trouble recalling themselves.

It’s the one glaring mystery from the end of WT S2. The one person we never identified. The one loose end this ARG could possibly answer for us. The one Dreamer we never extracted nor learned the fate of. Their log and files so corrupted it was sparsed with information from NMS.

A real Ghost in the Machine…

System could be Dreamer #231187661T

[sheralmyst]

[toddumptious]

The thing that always struck me as strange about this is, there would be a body somewhere strapped to a ware headset, someone would have been able to identify or notify WARE about this etc.

Which means its possible that the unidentified dreamer was never a person, but some sort of being born within the satellite, perhaps so much consciousness getting trapped there being the catalyst for such an event?

8 years later, they finally awoke and latched on to whatever memorys and fragments of memories remained in the satellite, and reached out to the only people those fragments knew and trusted.

[kerdorin]

I thought about it but hard to say, we never had any strong informations about this “dreamer”. maybe the PM used it for PSS, everything is still possible and we’re never in lack of theory

[sheralmyst]

Refer to the opening lines upon reaching your ship. They were snatched away by Sentinel intervention/Deliberate transfer.
To where?