1. Adam Hauser was a gifted child-- in fact he remembers every weekend his mother would take him to a lab where he would be hooked up to to a neuro-imaging machine and spend hours solving puzzles; at least that's what he remembered. He stopped going when his mother disappeared. Every time he tried to remember exactly what happened at the lab in the hopes of connecting the dots to her fate, he would feel this crawling buzz in the back of his head in the knot where the atlas meets the spine and he would pass out forgetting what he'd been trying to do-- it was like a computer rebooting, a broken memory forcing him to move on.

2. Hauser, as he's called at Sinn, the Miami-based digital news outlet where he works, has always had an aversion to technology but he didn't know why. Those little helper holograms called Augments constantly glowing out of everyone's phones... they did half the research, and for Hauser that was half the fun; it was like a puzzle. But in the year 2068 for a 30 year old, it was unavoidable so he kept his-- he names it Alfred-- on mute except for emergencies. But Hauser was the kind of guy who didn't think about calling for help so whenever he was out chasing a story he was usually alone. One night driving through Miami he picks up a dispatch call about a fire a the Eller Corp building. Shocked to be the first one there, Hauser decides to scope it out, Alfred buzzing from his pocket asking if he should start broadcasting to Yapper just in case something bad happens and he can't call for help. Hauser mutes Alfred and walks into the fire but can't get very far in his plain clothes. Is that... it's David Eller, the tech magnate but... there are two of them? Hauser's head starts buzzing and he passes out...

3. Hauser hated hospitals so it was no surprise when he woke up in one that his first instinct was to rip the IV out and storm out. He hate hospitals-- until he met Renee. He knew her from somewhere. She was older, but save for the few lines around the crests of her lips which teased a million passed smiles and frowns, you wouldn't know it right away. But it was her eyes, he knew her eyes... so he didn't protest much when she came to the room to fluff his pillow or took him to the observatory to look out at Miami Beach in the morning. He'd be out of there in two more days, everyone at work had come to visit anyway, but mostly just to see if he really tried to walk into that fire just to get a story. She didn't ask him about it, he liked that. When he got discharged she was there, and he asked her...

4. ...if she'd like to go to the carnival?

5. The night ends with Hauser at Renee's place. He tries to sleep but he has bizarre visions of millions of Hausers birthing from his head like mitosis. He looks down at his phone to find himself trapped in the hologram trying to get out, but he goes on playing with his puzzles because he's just a kid again and his mom is there with him, and Renee.

6. Hauser's dream makes him reconsider what he saw in the fire, so he decides to check out the Jupiter Discotech, a club where David Eller is known to sit in his private booth holding conspicuous meetings over $5,000 glasses of Yamazaki.

7. Pt. 1: "Renee? Why is she here..." Hauser spots Renee at the table with Eller but before he can make his way across the room a shot rings out and Eller collapses on the table. Hauser turns and sees a kid no older than him pocketing a long-range pistol. He follows him out the door and his about to jump in a cab when Renee grabs him by the hand and pulls him to her car. Eller was dating a friend of her's, she explained as Hauser drove, and he was curious about the guy who collapsed at the fire so he asked her to join them.

Pt. 2: The chase leads them back to Eller Corp. Hauser demands Renee wait in the car to no success. The sneak in through a boarded up hole from the fire. The office lights are glowing on the 33rd floor, they go in-- "this must be a coders room," says Renee, noting the mess of food and toys. But all the toys look familiar.... they look like Hauser! What the hell is this...

Pt. 3: The door kicks open suddenly and security rushes in, Hauser and Renee break for the other door and try to run down the stairs, but not before he grabs one of the Hauser dolls. "They're coming up!" Hauser and Renee have no choice but to head to the top and hope to find a way out, when they pop through the terrestrial roof top door-- Bang! Renee lays dead.

8. There in front of Hauser is... Hauser. He looks at the doll and looks at his double and doesn't immediately understand all the sequence of events but he knows he better fight the familiar buzz in the back of his head. He throws the doll to the side and the Hauser clone throws his gun down. "Don't worry, you're not going crazy, Hauser. But you are going to die." Hauser knows it doesn't matter whose the real one, winners write their own truth, and he better win this fight.

9. The Hauser clone lays dead-- so does Renee. Hauser is now completely alone again. He really did see two Ellers that night... but if Eller is making the clones, why would he clone himself? And why would one of the clones kill Eller? Was the Eller shot at the club the real one? So this is what they were doing with him at the lab as a kid... extracting his intelligence to make the most human AI yet... Eller Corp was responsible for the technology behind the Augments, he had no idea they were modeled after real people... And so now they'd moved on to human clones. It made sense that the would need to have a biology that matched the extracted consciousness... he guess. It didn't matter. His mother was dead. Renee was dead. He needed answers and the only was was to go to the top of Eller Corp and see who was pulling the strings.

10. The Final Protocol of AI states that if a natural disaster should cause society to disintegrate, the AI should eradicate themselves to ensure that none of them can be weaponized while the world rebuilds-- after removing the threat. As Hauser rides the elevator to the top of Eller Corp. he contemplates his life, Renee, his mother, the buzzing returns. Finally sick of it, he reach to the back of his head not sure what he'll find, and digs his hand so deep in, he punctures his skin-- but he doesn't feel bone. He feels metal. "I'm... a clone?" he says to no one. "Yes," a voice says over the elevator speaker "but the first! You are the Prime, all others came from you, my perfect child." The elevator doors open and there stands an aging David Eller. Hauser steps out of the elevator and sees 2 more Ellers, of varying age sitting to his right. The whole office is windows. "You are special, unique, and there is a whole army of Hausers based off your AI permutation of the original brain sample, Adam Hauser."

"And the Eller clones?"

"Well David Eller didn't want to ever give up control.. he lives forever through us. As you can see, my expiration is near, but there are at least 20 others old enough to take over, and always a young one to maintain the image. See, you were unique because for some reason you didn't age quite as rapidly as the other clones. Perfect for soldiers, although it takes a little longer to get them to fighting age-- 18 years of course."

"Soldiers?"

"Eller Corp is a weapons tech company, the Augments are for surveillance! Surely you figured this out, it's why you've never used yours."

Hauser knew it was true. He also knew that two people were dead because of them, in fact his whole life was dead-- he was a plant, a test, an experiment. He had to bring the Ellers down, who knew how many clones were out there?

"We know what you're thinking..." In rushed 20 Hausers. "It won't work."

"But I have to try," Hauser said grabbing at the nearest blunt object.

"We know. We programmed you that way."