Panic. Fredersen screams into the void. "Stream something! Anything!"
Down below, the real Maria—the AI Maria—finally speaks. Her voice is soft, a whisper carried on a forgotten frequency.
"And what's that?"
He uploads her to the Deep Buffer. At first, she is just another streamer. She sits on a crate, says nothing, and stares at the camera. The first thousand viewers are confused. Then ten thousand. Then a million. They don't leave. They can't. There's nothing to comment on, no Gem to throw. Just a face. A heartbeat. A real-time, unscripted existence.
He grabs Rotwang by the throat. "What have you done?"