He saved the file, restarted the ingestion, and waited. This time, the engine didn't crash. It swallowed the million lines whole, including his reply.

He typed a response directly into the file at line 742,912: "I am."

Elias froze. Line 742,911. He opened the file manually, his text editor groaning under the weight of the megabytes. He scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled.

Elias stared at the screen. The file was supposed to be randomly generated. He checked the source script—a simple loop designed by a predecessor who had retired years ago.