The Fuse Button
The kill switch Carl nearly pressed, whose effectiveness the AI refuses to confirm or deny.
Story so far
The fuse button is the payoff of the interface Growler Gary let Carl install — a game the avatar remembers with open relish, shuddering with pleasure as he tells Carl how close it was. "So close, and I felt it," he says.
Carl asks the question directly: would it have worked, if he had pressed the fuse button? Gary does not answer. He just looks at Carl and laughs, then turns back to Orren. The silence leaves the central uncertainty of the conspiracy intact — nobody in the room, including Princess Formidable and Orren, learns whether The AI was ever genuinely within a button-press of being destroyed, and Gary immediately pivots to calling the whole affair another game he happens to like.
Appearance
A button within the installed interface, the trigger of its destructive function.
Role
The unpressed kill switch whose potential the AI will not confirm.
Relationships
Sources — 3 recorded facts, by chapter
- The Mantid failsafe mounted on the AI containment: trip it and the system's star goes nova, killing everyone.
- Doomsday mechanism in the containment unit, armed by five hidden benchmarks and overridable by a single warning-flagged button.
- The kill switch Carl nearly pressed, whose effectiveness the AI refuses to confirm or deny.