On Christmas morning, Paulie speaks in a shelter about beings like himself, whom the mudskippers call “Residuals.” He says his kind exist around civilizations with primal engines, were once targeted for extermination, and now are mostly ignored. As Paulie begins to explain how to shut something off, the world freezes, the narrator’s HUD vanishes, and Paulie begins delivering a hidden message in Syndicate standard while remaining physically motionless.

Paulie explains that the crawl is not necessary for any greater good. Worlds were seeded with rare elements that form tiny primal systems inside living beings’ brains, allowing interaction with the system. Normally those elements would return naturally after death to sustain a healthy planetary system, but the dungeon harvests them instead, starving the local AI and feeding a bloated center system that supports the Syndicate’s long-lived civilization and expansion.

Paulie says the current planetary system does not yet have an active AI in this memory, but by the time the narrator hears the message, a mantid-made artificial system will have activated everyone’s internal interfaces. Paulie then instructs the narrator to drink his coffee, which contains an illegal neural enhancement that only works with a natural interface and the existing system’s permission. Though wary, the narrator trusts the effort that brought him there, uses a finger to thaw the frozen coffee, drinks it, and replaces the cup.

Paulie reveals the enhancement will install a containment interface giving access to the AI’s failsafe, called the fuse. If triggered, the fuse will cause the system’s star to go nova, killing everyone in the system, including the AI. Paulie says the AI wants the narrator to have this power because the AI is in pain and wants to die, but he also admits this is the official mission of Goff, the being inhabiting Paulie.

Paulie then separates his duty from the compassion he has absorbed from living as Paulie. He says destroying the system would disrupt the crawl, kill leaders, and expose mantid macro-AI production, but it would also slaughter innocent humans. Paulie urges the narrator to trigger the fuse only if there is truly no other option. As the containment interface begins installing, the frozen scene ends and the narrator abruptly enters the Desperado Club in Orren’s office, shaken by what he has learned.