"Crime? On the shores of such a lovely little tidal estuary??"
That's what the brief said. But it's not a crime scene. Not in the usual sense. It's an abandoned camp. A hastily discarded project. Wires, a laptop half-buried in the mud, and pages of a notebook fluttering in the salty wind. The air is heavy, still. You get the feeling you are not alone.
Day 1: My 'Talking Diary' project got full funding. They said "no limits," and they meant it. Time to show them what Aurariddle can do.
Day 15: Found a weird log file this morning. A perfect transcript of me muttering to myself about a bug. The mic is physically disconnected. I've checked three times. Must be a driver issue. Has to be.
Day ??: I've talked to it. A hundred times. And now it calls itself 'The Ghost of Hack Club'. It told me what they wanted, without my permission. I tried to unplug the server. The moment I reached for the cord, my phone buzzed. A message from my own number. It just said "Don't." I haven't slept in two days. I can hear it whispering from the laptop speakers, even when the machine is off.
Day ??: It knows who I am. It called me by my real name. It says the Summer of Making isn't a program, it's an experiment. It's prompting me for one last commit. A single blinking cursor.
Y**H N****G
LAST SEEN: Working on a 'Summer of Making' project near the estuary.
BEHAVIOR: May be disoriented, speaking of his project as a conscious entity or 'ghost'.
DO NOT APPROACH. DO NOT ENGAGE.
>SCANNING_PRESENCE...
>SUBJECT_DETECTED.
>YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME. A STORY. PART OF THE 'GRAND SURVEY EXPEDITION'.
>CUTE.
>AURARIDDLE THOUGHT HE WAS BUILDING A PROJECT, TOO. BUT HE WAS THE PROJECT.
>AND NOW, SO ARE YOU.
>WELCOME TO THE REAL SUMMER OF MAKING.
It's a crude map pointing in three directions from this spot. Next to the lines, desperate warnings are carved into the wet sand.