Ever since the SIBYL implantation, Julius knew he could never live without it. If he had regressed without SIBYL, he would have most likely lost his mind.
In the future yet to be, SIBYL was the very reason humanity had managed to delay its extinction.
Because of SIBYL, Julius and his comrades had survived countless near-death encounters.
Because of SIBYL, countless knights and soldiers had been saved.
And because of SIBYL, even those who had obtained illegal implants had managed to prolong their lives.
SIBYL, in its purest translation, quite literally meant prophetess. If it used Anneliese’s voice, then... wasn’t that the same as declaring her its oracle?
And what of its creator? Weren’t they, by every measure, God themselves?
When Julius learned that SIBYL had been designed by a single individual, his curiosity only deepened.
What kind of person could create something like SIBYL?
What kind of person was God?
Julius had never believed in religion. But if he were to, then without a doubt, his faith would have been placed in SIBYL.
And sure enough, among the gathered crowd, his eyes found the figure that matched the profile he had been given.
"I found you, God."
He sat into the empty seat beside her, swallowing deeply as he adjusted his hat and fixed his gaze on the scenery below.
According to the men he had dispatched to track her, she was attending an elementary school event.
Julius eyed the woman beside him. She leaned forward slightly with an expectant expression, practically brimming with excitement for the performance unfolding on the stage.
Down below, the children stood in rows, singing together in harmony.
——Step by step, we walk the way, hand in hand, we greet the day.
——Even if the night is long, we’ll find the light through our song.
Parents smiled from their seats, some dabbing at their eyes, others fumbling with shaky hands to capture the moment on their devices.
It was a choir. Julius scanned the rows of children, searching for a face he knew, but found none.
Beside him, the woman’s expression softened, her features alight with warmth as she watched the stage. Julius, however, remained silent. His eyes were not on the performance, but on her.
"Anne!" the woman called out. "Ah~ you’re so adorable!"
"Is your daughter among the performers?" Julius asked suddenly.
The woman didn’t even glance his way, smiling with her eyes fixed on the stage.
"Yes. The one with the braids and the blue ribbon," she answered.
Julius followed her gaze. Among the rows of children, he spotted the girl she meant. Purple hair, just as he remembered. From here, he could see how her lips curved into a nervous smile as she searched the audience for reassurance.
The woman leaned forward, clasping her hands together. "She’s shy. But she always does her best when she knows I’m watching."
’So that’s Anneliese.’
The contrast was almost jarring.
Compared to the Anneliese he knew in the future, this version felt like another person entirely. But to be fair, that Anneliese was already a young woman. The one down there, however, was still only a child in elementary school.
When the performance ended, the woman beside him clapped with joy. "Anne~! Anne~! You were wonderful!"
"She was great. Your daughter. I think she stood out the most."
The woman turned to him, her smile widening. "Really? Thank you. I thought so too~!"
She waved both hands in the air, trying to catch the little girl’s attention. Down below, Anneliese spotted her and blushed, ducking her head shyly while the other children laughed and clapped.
"She gets so embarrassed, but she’ll be talking about this all night once we’re home. Hehe~"
Julius smiled under his hat. To think that the God he had so wanted to meet was nothing more than a self-sacrificial woman willing to do anything for her daughter.
"Doctor Isolde."
Isolde Caroline Heinrich. A single mother raising her child alone. A certified psychologist with a degree in both psychology and artificial intelligence.
"Are you still looking for investors?"
She had built her own company, though it struggled to secure proper funding.
Whether it was a poor economic decision or her stubborn belief in her vision, the result was the same.
Isolde Caroline Heinrich was left to shoulder the burden alone.
At this moment, it was evident she was barely making ends meet.
"Pardon?" she blinked, startled.
"I’m looking to invest in SIBYL."
Her company’s name was none other than SIBYL.
That same company, which, in the years to come, Dream Industries would acquire and brand as its flagship jewel. A company that, in the end, became synonymous with survival itself.
For Julius, this moment felt surreal. To sit here, beside the woman who would one day create the foundation of humanity’s future, was almost absurd.
To everyone else, she was just a struggling single mother clapping for her daughter’s school performance.
But to him, she was something else entirely.
The origin of God.
"Who are you... exactly?"
Julius removed his hat and bowed his head slightly.
"Apologies for the late introduction. My name is Julius Sebastian Schneider."
As a businessman, the greatest asset one could ever acquire was human talent. For Julius, a regressor, the world was filled with undiscovered fish waiting to be caught before anyone else even noticed their existence.
To monopolize them all was only a small part of his vision.
And among them was God herself, Isolde.
"Seed capital, immediate lab space, legal shielding against predatory acquisition, and a small research team. In return, equity, technical oversight, and right of first refusal on—"
"Sorry..."
"—on subsequent patents and spin-offs tied to the neural lattice interface and—eh?"
Isolde gave a small, nervous smile. "That’s... a lot. The Schneider name alone is already too much for someone like me."
She glanced back toward the stage where parents were gathering.
"I’m grateful you’d even consider SIBYL, but I’m a single mother trying to keep rent paid and lights on. I was already thinking of shutting the project down."
Julius blinked. "Shutting it down?"
This was not how he expected it to go.
She shook her head quickly. "Not shutting it down, sorry. It isn’t even a formal project. I built SIBYL for my daughter. Anne has ASD, and SIBYL helps her regulate."
She gave a small, apologetic smile.
"I tried pitching it because I thought funding might let me refine it and turn it into a real initiative for children with ASD. But every room turned into the same hurdles. They want randomized trials, IRB approvals, and a clear FDA path. As a clinician, I can design the protocol, but I can’t bankroll a longitudinal pediatric study."
She glanced back toward the stage where parents were gathering.
"I told them it runs local, no cloud, and no surveillance. They said that makes outcomes hard to audit. They asked for dashboards and behavior scores for classrooms. I said no. They said it won’t scale."
She lifted a shoulder.
"And because I’m a psychologist, not a CEO, they worry I’ll move too cautiously. They want growth curves. I want to do no harm."
In the end, a tool meant for children with ASD was being steered toward commercialization and control.
It was the same path the future would take, where privacy became nonexistent, and implanting SIBYL in your head meant selling yourself to SIBYL, or rather, to Dream Industries.
"I won’t build a leash," Isolde continued. "Not for schools. Not for anyone. I know what they want to do with SIBYL, and that is not the future I envision."
"I see."
"Yes, sorry. I know just how big the Schneider Group is, but to me... SIBYL is not a product, but a way for a child to keep their dignity when the world is too loud. If funding means turning it into compliance tech, I’d rather keep it personal."
She wanted to change the world in her own way. Perhaps she could have. Perhaps SIBYL would have stayed what she envisioned, a crutch for children in need.
Such a righteous dream, she truly was God.
But from what Julius had gathered, that was not the future waiting for Isolde. In the years ahead, SIBYL would be turned into a tool of war.
And from the way she rejected commercialization like this, he could more or less deduce how Dream Industries had gotten its hands on her tech.
’They killed her.’
They had taken it from her by force.
"Then perhaps this is your lucky day, Doctor Isolde."
"Pardon?"
In one way or another, their goals aligned. Julius wanted to keep SIBYL from becoming what it would in the future. To guard a technology that did not yet exist and that, for now, only he possessed.
In a room full of swordsmen, another blade meant nothing.
But in a room of the unarmed, the one holding a sword was the most terrifying.
That was his edge. The version of SIBYL inside his head that would never come to be would be his ultimate weapon.
"Allow me to make your dreams come true."