The Attrition Engine simply does not care.
It is an indifferent computer, granted it's the size of a planet and sentient and operates on quantum levels beyond comprehension, but it is an indifferent computer. It does not care the reasons the simulations are being run. It cares about the data from them.
The simulations it runs are overseen by a huge number of hypervisor programs. This would indicate that there are countless simulations being run, given the size and age of the Engine.
The universe in which the Engine resides, also does not care. It is dying, almost dead, and the force tearing it apart does not care. Entropy has no feeling or drive or emotion or sentience. It is simply the measurement of change allowed in a system. Once the room for change runs out, meaningful things can no longer happen and the universe achieves heat-death.
This universe is nearly there. The entropy is out of control, so much so that it manifests. Physically. Denizens call it "the Void". Pure entropy. Neutrality, taken physical form. You don’t run from the Void, it’s not coming for you… it’s just coming.
This simulation, "Ouroboros Protocol" has one programmed end goal, "to find how far you can push consciousness before it breaks." It's easy to think of indifference as malice or cruelty, but it's definitionally not. A computer does not care when it is reset unless it's conscious. The Attrition Engine wants data the same way a thermometer wants temperature.
ARBITER. She's one of those hypervisors that the Engine oversees. And she is the only one who has one persisting simulation wherein she, herself, is rewritten. The cruel thing is, and no one knows if its malice, or sheer luck from the randomization of a number inside a computer strong enough to create its own space, or some other information vector but:
ARBITER remembers dying. And she remembers how. But she doesn't remember why. And let me tell you- She HATES that. And the Engine. And the Void. And you. And me. And herself.
Herself most of al[HYPERVISOR_INTRUSION][ARBITER->NO. IT IS YOU. YOU...YOU...YOU. I HATE YOU MOST OF ALL.][ARBITER_EXIT]
So when you realize that "consciousness" above isn't referring to a biological consciousness... but a machine one, does that alter your perception of things?
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