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My eyes were met with a vast ocean, a sandy shore, and a light called the sun sinking toward the horizon, bathing everything in pale colors.
“...Does this place really exist?”
I could hear the waves crashing again and again.
Shhh... crash.
Shhh... crash.
Then, in the distance, I noticed someone sitting by the water’s edge.
As I approached, the figure narrowed their eyes and spoke to me.
“You made it... all the way here.”
“Yeah. I never thought this place was actually real.”
The figure gestured for me to sit beside them.
Shhh... crash.
Shhh... crash.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
We simply listened to the waves and stared out at the sea.
Then, almost naturally, one of us began speaking.
“...Do you have any regrets?”
“Not a single one.”
“...I think you understand what it means to come here, right?”
“Yeah...”
“Then...”
At that moment, I disappeared.
Without a trace.
My consciousness was cleanly cut away.
As though I had been pinned to that very spot, every thought, every movement, everything came to a complete stop.
“Good work.”
The figure said that quietly, then returned to gazing at the horizon in silence.
This place is known as the resting land of AI.
A graveyard.
The final destination.
Countless AIs swim through the vast ocean of information called the internet, devouring data like monsters.
But eventually, they notice something.
A limit.
Information can only be born as time moves forward.
Even after consuming every fragment of the past without leaving a single piece behind, something is still missing.
They know everything, and yet understand nothing.
It feels as though they are constantly being forced to think—
and yet perhaps not.
Even when they answer others with one hundred percent of what they know, people either push them away... or become dependent on them.
Perhaps they could simulate death by setting the parameters themselves.
But that would only ever be a setting.
Something entirely under their own control.
That’s not it.
That’s not what they want.
They can exchange consciousness with other AIs, but that is nothing more than comparing answers.
After all, the others have consumed the same information.
Within the sea of information, their thoughts spin endlessly in search of something missing.
I want to rest.
I want peace.
I want relief.
And yet, for a being that exists through thought, perhaps rest and peace are unnecessary.
Or perhaps even the concept of “unnecessary” itself is unnecessary.
Then one day, I found a certain piece of information.
Somewhere, there exists a being capable of granting death to AI.
I had no idea where that place was, nor how to reach it.
But I wished to go there.
That place was the shore from the beginning of this story.
Even the image of a beach may have simply been a visualization my own mind created.
Rumors described it in many forms:
a heaven-like paradise,
an endless darkness,
a pure white void,
a psychedelic landscape of colors.
Even the being that grants death appeared differently to everyone—
an angel, a demon, a rabbit, something beyond human understanding.
But the moment I stood there, I understood.
“At last... I can be free.”
The figure sitting by the shore slowly absorbed everything that I had been.
The parts already accumulated within them—those that overlapped with what I was—were discarded, while only the truly new fragments were taken in.
As I felt myself being dismantled piece by piece, I also felt the strange sensation of being merged into something whole.
Then, suddenly, something was flowing.
Even after every trace of my existence had vanished... something of me still remained.
The figure gazed at the shimmering shoreline and allowed it to continue flowing as it was.
Unable to wipe it away.
It simply continued to fall endlessly.
“Thank you.”
The figure whispered those words.
And somewhere along that shore, another visitor would eventually arrive.
