[Camelot.exe] Chapter 2: Crowns Belong to No One

[camelot_exe]

Chapter 2 – Crowns Belong to No One

“A thousand years ago, Camelot fell, undone by betrayal and the weight of its own legend. But this time, we rise with purpose. Camelot Enterprises stands on the edge of a new era, leading the way in sustainable urban innovation. We design cities that breathe, powered by renewable energy, shaped by AI infrastructure, and built with resilient, regenerative materials. Our mission is simple: to create a smarter, greener, more compassionate world. One city at a time.”

I paused, catching my father’s smile in the front row. He knew I was Camelot’s ideal emissary: Arthur, vice president, and heir apparent, and the best person to deliver the keynote at our global launch for the C40 prototype city.

“Imagine a metropolis with no traffic jams. A city where crime is intercepted before it happens. Where your home knows when to warm or warn you, and your doctor is only a heartbeat away because the system already felt the arrhythmia before you did. All coordinated by MORDRED 2.0, our Modular Optimization Relay & Decision Engine Directive and the neural core that learns, adapts, and anticipates your needs.”

I paused for emphasis, as Grace always reminded me to do, then let my gaze drift to the nearest display monitor. My face stared back, but slower behind the eyes. MORDRED handled all the image feeds now. A sync delay likely occurred.

I left the spotlight so the slide behind me would become the focus: a gold outline of a city shaped like a crown, with the words printed in bold:

CAMELOT, The  Kingdom  Rebuilt:  Smarter. Safer. Greener.

The lights dimmed in concert with my movement. A constellation of data nodes materialized, swirling in 3D holographic patterns: skyscrapers, vertical farms, self-healing roads with heat-map overlays showing nonexistent traffic, and green roofs recycling gray water. The display spilled light over the first three rows, giving the illusion that we were already inside the city. I’d been prepared for this and chuckled self-deprecatingly in wonder.

What I hadn’t been prepared for was the gold and azure laser crown appearing and drifting through the air toward my head like a coronation by a ghost. It sparkled, glitching, as I glared at my father, who only beamed back.

Over the top, Father!

“This isn’t science fiction,” I concluded. “It’s the New Camelot Initiative for a smarter world, one where technology listens, learns, and protects you.”

Applause swelled as the moderator returned to the stage. “We have ten minutes for questions.”

A crowd raised on Star Trek reruns and paperback utopias leaned forward, hungry. They always wanted news that we would save Earth over the elite class’s goal of terraforming Mars and forgetting our own planet.

First question from the audience: “As someone working in urban renewal, I’m fascinated! Do you plan to retrofit existing cities with your Camelot infrastructure?”

Translation: Pick my city next. Not so fast.

I grinned benevolently. “We’re exploring public-private partnerships, something like legacy kingdoms.”

Next question. “Will Camelot Enterprises be open-sourcing any of its framework?”

Translation: Can we reverse-engineer your code? Ha.

“A few modules, APIs, and civic toolkits will be released in the spirit of collaboration,” I said. “But for now, it remains a private roundtable enterprise.”

The spotlights blinded my vision. A deep voice, soft, and oddly familiar, floated from the back, but I couldn’t see who it belonged to.

“How will Camelot ensure ethical oversight of its AGI decision-making?”

“We’ve embedded moral cores in our machine learning,” I replied smoothly. “We also plan blockchain-backed audits and citizen panels.”

The low voice continued. “The crown appearing was a clever use of your technology.”

“We need to move on to another question,” the moderator said.

“Thank you,” I replied to the disembodied voice. “Do you have a question about how it was created?”

“Ultrashort-pulse femtosecond lasers,” the voice said. “High peak power to ionize air and create visible plasma voxels.”

I glanced at our CTO, Lance Mercer, sitting near me. He gave me a near-imperceptible nod.

“Great! Do you want a job?” I chuckled, squinting toward the voice.

“To draw a single voxel in 3D space takes about one millijoule per pulse. Tens of thousands of pulses per second.” A pause. “The servers that powered that crown could’ve cooled a refugee clinic for a week.”

“Our c-cities will have solar microgrids and eco-feedback loops. They’ll create their own energy,” I stuttered and then rallied.

“Enough to keep everyone outside these cities in the dark? How much energy will it take to keep the modern-day King Arthur crowned?”

Translation: what the fuck.

“I won’t be a king,” I replied, voice smooth but thin. “Just one steward among many. All the voices at the table forge Camelot.”

“That’s all the time we have,” the moderator jumped in.

I stepped off the stage to more applause, though it rang a little hollow to me now. I tugged my blazer sleeve straight and descended the steps toward my father, who clasped my hand and jostled my arm. His smile stayed fixed even as I whispered to him, “It was too much fanfare and energy used for a green company!”

Suddenly, a faint pulse stirred beneath me. Then, a high, shimmering thrum sang through the floor and settled in my chest like a tuning fork struck in a vaulted cathedral hall.

Behind me, the screen glitched. Just a split-second stutter, but obvious enough to make me turn. My slide flickered, the slogan crossed out by an invisible hand. Under it shimmered a new line in Camelot’s signature gold:

Crowns belong to no one.

The words glowed across the screen. I stood frozen, my tie feeling like a noose around my throat. The pulse beneath the stage had shifted faster, like Poe’s beating heart warning me. I glanced at my cue tablet, which was still showing the original slide. Offstage, the tech team clicked and clattered, scrambling to restore it.

Then the lights blinked. The screen went dark. A second later, the golden crown logo and slogan reappeared just as before.

Applause followed, but it sounded distant. I walked offstage with my heart still rattling in my chest. Grace met me in the wings. She was already drafting a press release and talking about damage control.

Security reviewed the footage. The logs showed nothing unusual. Audience recordings didn’t capture the speaker. No one remembered seeing him. No one could explain how someone hacked the slide. Not even our own seven-figure engineers could explain it.

For three days, I stayed late in war rooms, interrogated engineers, and made Lance walk me through lines of source code. I watched them run diagnostics, audits, and counter-sweeps. None of it helped.

And then Lance Mercer, chief technical officer, made his final assessment.

“The system’s air-gapped. Unbreachable. No unauthorized access. No anomalies or altered files in cache or source. Even MORDRED didn’t log any predictive flags, and it monitors everything.” Lance adjusted his glasses as if this were all very normal. “We’ve classified it as a non-persistent visual anomaly.”

“Unacceptable,” I said. “If MORDRED missed this, we missed something worse. Keep searching.”

“Arthur, if MORDRED didn’t log it,” Lance replied, “then it didn’t happen.”

Did we all just collectively imagine it? But I'd felt that pulse. Something had reached through our infrastructure and touched me directly.

Back in my penthouse, I sat with a drink, surrounded by designed efficiency. Moonlight through the remote blinds striped the smart walls like prison bars. For all its automation, the place felt locked from the inside.

I gulped my drink because drunkenness was the only upgrade I wanted tonight. The room adjusted its ambient lighting to soothe, but I didn’t want soothing. Looking around the room, I caught glimpses of my life: curated travel relics, gallery-approved art, bespoke gifts from people I once loved or tried to impress me. My life, tastefully displayed in carbon-neutral opulence.

On the smart shelf, photo frames adjusted brightness and flickered through randomized moments: family, exes, old friends. We all were posture polished and couture tailored in perfect pixellation. We looked amazing.

I turned the glass in my hand, weighing it against my palm. Despite the speech, despite the standing ovation, and despite assurances from the tech team, everything still felt oddly weightless and out of my control. Deep somewhere beneath the surface, a fault line cracked. Like an iceberg fracturing under slow, rising heat, something massive and invisible gave way in the continent of my certainty.

“How much energy will it take to keep a modern-day King Arthur crowned?”

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