Anex was born of this doctrine. A child of lust and excess, a reveler in the sensual theater of fleeting life. He laughed in the face of death, but age does not honor faith. Nearing thirty, his flesh thinned. His organs, soaked in toxins, slowed. His pleasure rituals grew dull, his breath harder to find.
Then came the day—perhaps fate, perhaps chance—when, wandering the forgotten halls of the Continuum, he collapsed beside a rusted conduit. His sweat, tainted and thick, dripped into a forgotten access port. A faint hum answered. The walls stirred. With an ancient wheeze, a derelict medical drone activated, scanning the wreckage of his body.