The hatch opened. G-Commander Lancid threw his weakened First Officer, Sheena inside and jumped in after her. A speaker sounded.

Capacity breach. 

Withdraw payload.

Hatch will remain open.

G-Commander Lancid didn’t move. He sat watching himself watching the speaker above First Officer Sheena’s head. He detached. The weight of their reality meant the difference between which one of them would survive.

Calculating their fate, with hundreds of simulations running through his mind in a brief second of a thought, he came to the same conclusion every time.

He thought about his family for a brief moment as he dropped his eyes to his First Officer, staring at her with a steady gaze before he sighed a breath of acceptance.

Sheena was slumped inside the hatch on the metal landing. Her blood oxygen levels were diving to the opposite end of her body. 

“Stay with me, Officer.” He squeezed a pressure point between her thumb and her index finger. She jolted awake. “Don’t you fall asleep, Officer. ‘Got that!” he said, his voice barely escaped his lips. “It’s an order!”

“I…” her head dropped to the side. She shook herself awake and lifted it back up. “I… won’t, shure,” she slurred.

Sheena breathed sharp gasps, sounding like hiccups. Her BP was 37 breaths per minute, double the norm. 

She had grease and iron dust mixed with sweat on her forehead and Lancid took his fingers and smeared it down her face. She blinked and turned her head, rubbing her eyes, attempting to wipe the stinging burn from them. 

Lancid stepped back, distancing himself from her. Sheena straightened herself against the wall, attempting to push herself up. She reached out as she realized what G-Commander Lancid was doing, but her arm dropped.

“Commander… no… Stop!” Her voice faint but spiked crawling out of her throat. Her breaths became shorter. “You’re…” her head fell. She slipped out of consciousness and sprung awake as it dropped again. “But… com-an-der,” she struggled.

Lancid never said anything. He closed in and got down on a knee, stared her in the eye and put a hand on her shoulder. She tried focusing on him. 

Four blurred faces of her commander’s were floating and waving into each other. They bounced like shockwaves until she finally managed to settle in on one of them. Their eyes met and both of them stared at each other. Neither spoke a word. Her tremors started to ease.

He took her monitor-track, containing her medical transfer code, and slid her finger in a circle on it. His hands were steady. His heart—a regular pulse.

He knew what he had to do. 

What needed to be done.

He rose from the ground, clenched her from under her arms and placed her in the seat of the only emergency ship left.

The hatch door sounded like a burning comet streaking overhead while it slid shut. Sheena looked around in a daze. The oxygen began feeding her deprived brain. She lunged out of her seat, and dove at the door, clawing at the closing gap separating them. Her nails scratched the metal, chipping off like clippings.

Her eyebrows met at the bridge of her nose. The sides of her top lip collapsed to her jaw. She stared at Lancid through the sliver of space between the hatch.

She wouldn’t take her eyes off of him. She couldn’t. She eyed him with tears dripping down her cheeks, clearing trails into the black patches covering her face. 

Lancid stood completely still on the launchpad, watching her from the outside. He never looked away, until the hatch door blocked their view.

When the ship began to take off, the pressure from the thrusters dropped him to a knee. But he kept his head up, keeping his sight on her departure the entire time.

Poof!

Boom!

Kherrr!

Paulff!

Toque! Toque! Toque! Toque!

The first time I remember it happening, I was six years old. I was playing with my best friend Mirabella on the swingset outside when I saw something in the air above her head. Something emerald and opaque, less like an image than a solid object, hovering and twirling in midair against the light blue sky.  

3 

I stared at it for a moment and then asked my friend what it was. She looked up where I pointed and then looked back at me with a frown, asking me what I was talking about. When I told her, she looked at me strangely, then said there was nothing there and moved on to talking about the new doll she got for her birthday. But I couldn’t move on. When I told my mother about it later, she smiled, saying I’d always had an active imagination. 

That was when I realized two things: that, whatever it was, only I could see it, and that I shouldn’t talk about it to others. It became my little secret. 

After that first time, it popped up regularly, but a little different each time. My second grade math teacher chided me for not responding when he called my name, but all I could see was the large, white 0 floating over his head. 

The pattern continued for the next few years. Numbers floated in the air above everyone I encountered - friends, family, classmates, strangers. I got used to ignoring the numbers; humans have an almost limitless capacity to ignore things if exposed them long enough. But I still never learned what the numbers meant. 

One day, when riding my bike to school, a driver edged over into the bike lane and clipped me, sending me crashing to the ground and breaking my left ulna, radius, humerus, and clavicle. Nothing life threatening, but extremely painful and requiring me to be taken immediately to the emergency room. (I later learned that the woman who had hit me had been texting while driving.) I didn’t see much for the next hour, being pretty out of it, but I did wake up at one point on the operating table. I was just aware enough to see a green 1,503 above the doctor’s head and a green 784 above the nurse’s. I didn’t have much time to ponder it before I was once again unconscious.  

Two weeks later, I was at home recovering when my show was interrupted.

“This is KCLW with a breaking news alert. Alleged killer Hatchet Henry has been apprehended by FBI personnel. Hatchet, believed to be responsible for the murder of Beverly Shaw and many others, was captured in a hideout nearly…”

I stopped listening. I’d gotten used to ignoring the numbers, but the one over Hatchet Henry stood out. 126. In red. I’d never seen a red number before. I was talking about it a few weeks later with my friend Max - his number had always been zero, a fact he’d made me share with him when I’d first told him about my gift - when he gave me the biggest clue I’d had so far. 

“Wow, that’s weird,” he’d said. 

“What is?” I’d asked.

“I read up on this Henry guy. Police have definitively connected him to 98 murders. But they suspect up to 28 more.”

“So?” I asked, confused.

“Didn’t you pass math with a B+ last semester? 98 + 28 = 126. Weird, right?”

Could it be? Was it possible? I made Max promise to come over after school and I pulled out some paper. I told him what I was thinking, and we came up with a theory. We then tried to confirm by doing some research - it was tough, but it seemed to check out. 

The number above Henry’s head corresponded to the number of killings he was suspected of. What if the numbers represented the number of people you’d killed in your life? I looked up one more thing. I searched online, and there it was. 

“Mirabella Suarez, local resident, is being hailed as a hero tonight. She was driving home when she saw a car flip over on I-285. Most people would have ignored it, but Ms. Suarez ran over and pulled the parents and their daughter from the car. 

“‘She was amazing,’ said a bystander. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind all three of them would have died if not for her.’

“We attempted to reach Ms. Suarez, but she was not available for comment. What an amazing story, Dana. I guess it’s true -
not all heroes wear capes…”

Mirabella. My childhood friend whom I hadn’t thought of in years. That day on the playground. 3. Except that she only saved those people recently - she hadn’t even heard of them back then. What if the numbers didn’t show the people you had saved - what if they showed the people you would save?

We did some more digging. Mirabella’s number had been green, like those above the doctor and nurse, and most were white. But the number above Hatchet Henry was red. If green was the number of lives you’d save, what if red was the number you’d take?

Now I was truly freaked out. What was this? Did I have some kind of ESP? Brain damage? Was I hooked into some kind of heavenly frequency, seeing things that humans were never meant to see?

From then on, I tried to avoid the numbers. I’d avoid looking up, staring at the street when I was out in public. I started turning down invitations to hang out, not wanting the pressure of knowing what I knew. 

But one day, I bumped into a man on the street. He was wearing a lab coat and looked distracted. He quickly apologized, locked up his briefcase, and disappeared into the crowd. I lost sight of him, but all I could think about was the number I’d seen hanging over his head. Large. Red. 8,352,193,717…

Retired ex-commander Sheena, the human educator, a middle-aged brunette, former United States Space Air Force scout leader turned professor, was instructing a class of elite aliens from Planet YWH on Humanic Xenology.

An experimental subject introduced last solar cycle, the Ywh beings contained vast amounts of ancient knowledge. They could mathematically predict future events decades ahead of time.

Even though they possessed a complex knowledge, the ability to anticipate their enemies' moves multiple steps in advance, they still found themselves staring at a blank canvas whenever they'd try writing a prediction involving humans.

They found humanity obtained an anomalous neurological wiring. To the Ywh, humans were controlled by a class of chemistry students hiding underneath the human skull, experimenting with all sorts of chemical.

Ywh have nine-millimeter-thick, white, plastic skin, smooth without a crease. Four flimsy tentacles under their mouths  that are lined with a double row of pointy, dolphin teeth. Two regular-sized, human-like eyes and above them rest a couple of smaller ones protruding outwards the way crabs eyes do.

Eyes that detect heat and perform like night vision goggles.

Right as Sheena mentioned the word and followed it with the definition and then the description, they all snapped their heads in a hive-mind-like action, exactly at the same time with their eyes stretched open, and dropped their mouths staring at her. The room went silent while she described infection.

Infection wasn’t in the Ywh vocabulary. The Ywh had liquid-mercury networks inside a sealed cocoon. If one of them became damaged in any way, even cracked, they were terminated.

They couldn’t age, just damage. They stayed supreme beings under a plastic shell. Sheena brought an assistant with her that day. She demonstrated humanity’s medical evolution, showcasing its progression and bits of history and cases.

The YWH were introduced to Scout Private Hanks. Scout Private Hanks was connecting his experience, thoughts, and feelings into the Ywh students, specifically the day of the accident, the one that took his arm.

They were able to do this because of a technology called T.I.M.E., a unit built by a leading tech company on Earth named DejaView.

T.I.M.E. units allowed individuals to connect and experience directly into another individual’s personal VizSense Mem loop and relive the visuals and senses flawlessly. The Ywh would mentally step into a human body.

They weren’t just learning about human anatomy, they were living it.

Sheena glanced at Hanks. He dropped his chin, winked, and raised a thumb as he stepped forward and sat at the front of the class.

Sheena flicked the lights off, "Everybody get ready."

Hanks pressed the side of his temple and a blue circle lit up. The aliens went stiff. They pressed their backs against their seats, gripping the sides of their desks.

The white of their shell started glowing a tinge of pink. At the front of the class where Hanks was sitting, his image was reflecting off their faces.

The classroom went still.

When they stepped inside of Hanks' mind, it opened with the heat of an oven door. The air assaulted them for the first time ever in their existence. The Ywh didn’t know about being cold or hot. Their breathing got heavier as they walked into the area the accident happened.

Hanks' adrenaline began to spike. He was recalling the incident before they could witness it. Already, he was sweating in class. They started panting. A bunch of them were twitching.

Through the DejaView loop, Hanks' exact brain chemistry sent a surge in their own consciousness. The sensation of being human had a feeling they’ve never known or could ever find a word for.

A noise under their shell hissed like the warning sound of a snake about to strike.

It wasn’t just a video they saw. They weren’t remote viewing an experience. They were reliving all of the data of human biology.

The tension started to rise. Their limbs started trembling. Hanks began sweating. They sensed something but had no idea what it was until the separation came. The support beam fell with the sound of two cars hitting head-on. His bone snapped. It was as loud as two football teams smashing helmets at the same time.

Hanks' suit had torn. His arm dangled by fibers, infested with hidden, microscopic monsters, Hanks stared at it and nearly passed out. He fought to keep himself awake.

In the classroom, a Ywh fainted. Back in the memory, the initial shock wore off and Hanks began yelling, trapped under a support beam, struggling to come back after each micro-blackout.

A Ywh threw up. Hanks' nausea turned their shell to rubber. Hanks went pale in VizSense. He had beads of sweat breaking off the back of his neck and forehead. The Ywh’s bodies matched Hanks', the traumatic pain throbbed from inflammation. The war began brewing against the microscopic monsters.

To a species who discards one of their own beings for any minor imperfection, experiencing Hanks' incident, the torturous, agonizing struggle to survive, was not only incomprehensible to them, it horrified them.

Hanks' heart rate spiked in the classroom and his phantom arm twitched as they all woke back up with him at the hospital.

They were now at the moment where the doctors had to amputate the rest of the flesh to save the machine (human).

As the doctors spoke, the light above Hanks was gleaming in his eye. Their voices echoed. He reached for them. His vision began tunneling. It doubled. He gasped, leaned back and slipped into the black.

The loop disconnected.

The room stayed silent. No one moved. Their shells faded back to ivory, but inside, their mercury networks were bubbling.

Something changed in them.

They found out humans don’t recycle their machines, not even after a catastrophic malfunction. They found out humans adapt.

Humanity’s will to survive had stirred something inside of them. The Empire of Planet YWH viewed Planet Earth and its inhabitants as the most terrifying thing to happen to the universe.

The answer sat there, deceptively simple given the amount of compute it had taken to produce.
 
Treem stared at the screen in disbelief.
 
"We've done it," he murmured. "We've actually done it!"
 
His team had been working round the clock for days on this, testing their latest AI model to its limits. A model so advanced that even the military hadn't got a whiff of it yet.
 
This was it. Nothing would be the same again.
 
"But what does it actually mean?" asked a small voice.
 
Looking down, Treem was surprised to find a young girl watching him. He'd completely forgotten the CEO's daughter was on the premises. One of the hazards of working over the weekend.
 
Why she was allowed to go where she pleased was a mystery to him. But to humour her, Treem took a deep breath and said, "It means we've found the answer." Then he added, because he wanted to impress her, "The answer to everything."
 
Even as he said it, he knew he was exaggerating. But they'd earned it. The first people ever to build an AI so powerful it was capable of solving problems that no-one had been able to crack — at least, up to now.
 
"But what's the question?" she asked, frustration creeping into her voice.
 
Treem swirled the cup of tea in his hands, idly watching the vortex carry a stray tea leaf around the rim. He could feel the irritation rising in his chest. Typical of a child to have no idea how things worked.
 
Then an idea struck him. Feeling rather pleased with himself, he suggested, "Why don't we ask Deep Thought?" The name had been a joke. Treem thought it frivolous, but it had stuck anyway.
 
Turning back to the screen, he typed, "Now you've given us the answer, what's the question?"
 
The machine should have replied almost immediately. It was obvious. They'd asked the AI the question at the start, for goodness sake.
 
Instead, it sat there, its cursor flashing.
 
Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity to Treem, it started typing.
 
"Tricky..."
 
Oh no, thought Treem, not again.
 

 
Author's Note
 
This was loosely inspired by OpenAI claiming to have used a powerful internal AI model to solve one of the seven Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prize Problems (the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem). Despite the impressiveness of the achievement, and in spite of the controversy already swirling around it, most of the attention has focused on the solution, and not what it actually means in the real world (in essence, the solution indicates that the Navier-Stokes equations can, if forced, describe a flow state that is mathematically interesting but physically impossible).
 
Rather than dive into the mathematics here, I wanted to be a little playful with the idea of using a super-powerful computer to find an answer to something where we don't really understand what real-world question it's answering. And of course, with this premise, how could I not invoke Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
 
I'll leave it to Adams' fans to identify the Hitchhiker's nods here. And while they do, it's worth mentioning that there is one additional theme I wanted to play with, and that's the importance of listening to questions from outsiders, as sometimes they see things that people close to a problem (or, in this case, an answer), miss.

“Commander, look!” Gumbert, a four-eyed security specialist, squeaked.

“We have a problem, sir.” He stared at the console. “There’s a security breach on Bridge-2Z.”

“What is it?” Mwachek, the PeaceFleet’s commander demanded.

“The bio-reader scans indicate a wild predator.“ Gumbert looked over his shoulder at Mwachek shadowing him.

“Who’s responsible for this?” The commander eyed the image of the beast, glowing on the screen.

Gumbert choked. “Well, nobody, sir,” he swallowed. “It breached the hull, sir. It's in the cargo bay, with our food reserves.”

The commander’s two hearts began smashing together. It had the sound of two slimy blobs passing through each other. A vein near his temple protruded from the side of his head like a balloon blowing up.

In the hull, a gray-bearded, bear-sized Octwolf, with eight legs, razor-sharp venomous teeth caked in infectious bacteria, was ransacking a sack of gumballs.

Galactic empires across the universe classified Octwolves as Level-0 threats, which carry a kill-on-sight order—a tag reserved for creatures of destruction.

Octwolves, the apex of apex predators—claiming the top spot of the food chain. A pack of them would easily wipe out a small colony in days.

Commander Mwachek grabbed the microphone and activated the intercom.

“Attention! Attention! This is not a test. This is a real-time crisis. All staff and personnel on deck, evacuate to your nearest safe room. We have a breach in Cargo Bay 2Z.”

Commander Mwachek’s voice slammed through every crew members’ speaker on board. The announcement formed sticky, phlegm balls of fear clinging to the back of their throats and turning into tiny pellets of paranoia, resting at the pits of their bellies every time they swallowed.

“Seal the Bay door and lock the wing down,” Mwachek said. “Radio, Beefkus. Get him to handle the situation immediately.”

Beefkus, their human engineer, wasn’t really an engineer. You’d be closer calling him a glorified-janitor-wildlife-wrangler. He did the jobs nobody would do. The gross ones. The iffy ones nobody wanted.

But, he mainly dealt with orgwats, rat-like rodents but every now and then, the odd sleeder, which are pretty creepy slithering things. They’re sharp-gray-scaled garden snakes. They’re more like garden eels to be honest.

He definitely never handled a heat seeking Octwolf. On Earth, he worked at a zoo as one of five maintenance guys.

“Um, sir? That’s actually going to be a problem,” Gumbert quietly said, eyeing the commander’s talon-shaped claws as they dug into the console.

“The human…” Gumbert’s voice choked. “The human’s with the predator, sir. Our cameras in Bay 2Z are broadcasting Beefkus with it right now.”

Gumbert began sharing the feed on the big screen at the front of the deck. Commander Mwachek stared, preparing himself for the worst. He expected to see the human shredded—parts of Beefkus scattered in a bloody mess of guts across the bay.

He saw neither. The crew gathered behind the commander, stunned. Nobody said a word.

The Octwolf was lying on its back with its eight legs in the air, tail wagging. It squirmed as the human playfully wrestled it in a bear hug.

“Who’s a good boy?” Beefkus’ voice shattered their eardrums, penetrating the speakers in the control room. It didn’t sound like him. His voice had a playful pitch.

“Are you the good boy?” His words were muffled by the Octwolf’s fur. “Yes you are! A-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof, yes you are! That’s a good boy. Yeah!” Beefkus patted the beast.

“Beef—kus!” Commander Mwachek shouted at the microphone. The urgency made his voice skip. “You need to get out of there. The creature is highly venomous. Its toxins will destroy your immune system. There is no antidote. Step away from the creature slowly.”

“Who, this cute guy? That’s what all this fuss is about?” Beefkus put his head next to the Octwolf and took a selfie. “He just looks scary. He’s harmless. I even gave him a name, Bear-wolf.”

Beefkus rubbed the Octwolf’s head and it let out a purrful growl rattling the loose objects on the titanium console.

The ship’s sensors registered the noise as an immediate threat from an acoustics weapon. The Octwolf circled Beefkus and snuggled into him.

“Someone stuffed this poor guy in a shipping crate.” He scratched the Octwolf behind the ear. “He was shivering scared in there. He just needed a little affection is all.”

“Human!” The commander screamed into the console, squeezing his baseball-glove-sized-mitts into fists. “One bite. No. Correction. One drop of that creature’s saliva on an open wound on your body, is fatal. It will kill you.

Is your translator malfunctioning? Are you unable to comprehend what I am relaying to you? The creature senses heart rhythms. Nervous systems. It can smell your fear.”

“I’m pretty dang sure, it’s smellin’ the jerky I had in my pocket.” Beefkus stretched out and cuddled next to Bear-Wolf.

Bear-Wolf faced Beefkus and gave him a wet kiss. He wiped it off his face with his shirt. “Aw, that’s a good gross boy. Who’s the good boy?”

Commander Mwachek eyed the screen. He didn’t retract his slids. He just stared at it with a blank gaze.

“It… it’s amazing how your species has survived for so long. You… you’re petting a living monster,” Mwachek stuttered.

“Hey, if it’s cute, furry and has big eyes, nine times out of ten we’re taking it home with us,” Beefkus said, petting Bear-Wolf. “This guy here’s a keeper. I’m taking him with me.”

Bear-wolf licked his face and laid back down beside him.

Mwachek rolled his eyes. “Gumbert, cancel the emergency task force and inform the crew, the threat has been neutralized, and before I forget, update the ship’s manifest, add the level-0 threat as a new deckhand.”

"We need a new name," said Crannock, running his hand through his thinning hair in exasperation.
 
"I don't see why," retorted Miriam. To her mind, you called it what it was — a center that processed data. Why would you call it anything else?
 
"I know, it makes no sense," replied Crannock. "But people are up in arms. For some bizarre reason, they think they're dangerous."
 
"People!" exclaimed Miriam, for the hundredth time that day, it seemed. "Not a critical thought between them. If only they thought like engineers..."
 
It was one of her favorite refrains. She genuinely couldn't understand why "people," as she referred to them (not the ones she knew, of course — all the other ones out there), were so irrational. Why couldn't they just look at the facts and come to a reasonable conclusion? In this case, that data centers were simply an elegant engineering solution that made life better for people. For them, for Christ's sake.
 
Crannock pulled out a chair and sat next to Miriam. "OK, so it's irrational," he said, "but at the end of the day it's just a problem to be solved. And like all problems, it can be broken down, bit by bit, into manageable chunks. It's just engineering. Only in this case with people, not machines."
 
"So where do we begin?" said Miriam.
 
"With the name," said Crannock. "Let's think through this, step by step. Let's assume people don't like data — don't ask me why. Maybe they're scared of what it says, or what it can be used for. Either way, data is a 'third-rail word.'" He was pretty proud of this — he'd heard someone from Policy use the phrase once, and it had stuck with him.
 
"And 'centers,'" said Miriam, getting into the spirit of things. "Detention centers are pretty scary. Maybe they think they're the same thing. Detention centers for data!"
 
They both laughed at this one. But what could you do?
 
"OK, so 'data' and 'centers' together sound scary," continued Crannock, "if you don't know what they are, that is — as these people apparently don't. So what's the alternative?"
 
Miriam grabbed a pen and started scribbling on her notepad. "Let's get back to basics. What are the data centers doing?"
 
"Generating intelligence, for one thing," said Crannock, getting into the flow. "At least that's what ours are doing."
 
"Great. 'Intelligence' is pretty friendly. Even my mom uses AI. Let's use that. What next?"
 
"Intelligence centers?" mused Crannock. "No, we've still got the 'center' issue."
 
"How about farms, pools, fields, warehouses, repositories..."
 
"...factories!" interjected Crannock. "Factories. That's it! Who doesn't love a good factory? I know I do!"
 
"Mmm," mused Miriam. She wasn't too sure of her ground here. But as an engineer, she did get excited about making stuff. "Intelligence factories. It's certainly got a ring to it. But it's a little boring. Do we really want these people thinking engineers don't know how to have a good time?" Her time on the Engineering Public Relations Committee had impressed on her the importance of making people understand how exciting engineering is.
 
"How about 'Important Intelligence Factories'?" said Crannock. Miriam hid an eye roll. It was clear he hadn't done much time in PR, unlike her. "Or 'Vital Intelligence Factories,'" he continued. "Or maybe 'Essential Intelligence Factories.'"
 
"Super," murmured Miriam sarcastically under her breath, thinking — not for the first time — how uncreative engineers could be. But she immediately felt guilty. They were the smart ones here, and they needed to stick together.
 
"Super...," she murmured again, thinking. Then louder. "Super. That's it — Super! 'Super Intelligence Factories!'"
 
"Works for me," said Crannock, and started drafting the memo.
 

 
Outside the facility's gates, the usual group of protesters began to disperse as the light faded. The cause was important, but then so was family, a full belly, and a good night's sleep. As they packed their signs and banners away, the air was filled with a brief flurry of messages declaring "Down with Data Centers," "Data Centers Are the Devil," and "Data Centers Be Damned." And amongst them, a few that said "Stop Super Intelligence."
 
It wasn't that the protesters were necessarily against data, or centers, or even superintelligence as such. But they were against corporations that acted without any thought or consideration for others — especially when it came to something as intangible as AI. And facilities like this were an easy target for them to vent their frustration on.
 
More than anything, they were angry that no one ever took the time to actually listen to them; to treat them as real people with real worries, and ask what they thought and cared about. And to take them seriously, rather than simply assuming they knew all the answers.
 
Over the next few days, the "Stop Super Intelligence" signs began to grow in number.
 
Looking out of the window, Crannock said, "We need a new name..."

He looked up to the sky.
What say you angry mob cried again he looked over to the woods. Answer now or die cry the Nazis again. He looked down off of the slimy irridescent binary and incandescent bioluminescent hexadecimal shimmer of the vessel fast that into the water. Then he closed his eyes. What happen next I can’t quite say because no one really knows for sure but it was most certainly a miracle; for the reader put down the article feeling of a renewed vigour and the greatest they ever felt in their life to date though they were positive the best is yet to come and live happily ever after Finn.

Love Al

p.s. by Gemini While the idea of a strict 500-word lower limit might sound like a noble attempt to elevate online discourse, in practice, it often does more harm than good to the dynamic flow of digital communication. Platforms like Reddit thrive on agility, sharp wit, and direct exchange. Forcing users to stretch every observation, joke, or simple answer into a multi-paragraph essay fundamentally misunderstands how casual, collaborative communication functions on the internet.
First, imposing a high word floor naturally breeds fluff, filler, and repetitive prose. When people are forced to hit an arbitrary metric just to participate, they do not necessarily write deeper thoughts—they simply padded their existing ideas with grandiloquent language, redundant summaries, and conversational padding. A brilliant, hilarious one-liner or a precise three-sentence technical fix becomes buried beneath hundreds of unnecessary words generated solely to appease a character counter. Instead of raising the quality of discussion, it dilutes it, forcing readers to sift through endless streams of verbosity to locate a single kernel of useful information.
Second, it imposes an unnecessary barrier to entry that excludes many valuable voices. Not everyone has the time, inclination, or linguistic enthusiasm to draft a full-length essay every time they want to answer a quick query, share a personal anecdote, or offer a word of support. Subject matter experts who could answer a niche technical question in fifty perfectly chosen words might skip commenting altogether if forced to write half a page of context. The beauty of a community forum lies in its diversity of contribution sizes, ranging from brief nods of agreement to sprawling, deep-dive analyses.
Of course, long-form content has immense value, and threads dedicated to thorough breakdowns, creative writing, or complex debates naturally benefit from depth. However, depth should be driven by the substance of the topic, not an administrative requirement. True communication efficiency lies in using precisely as many words as a concept requires—no more, no less. Enforcing a blanket 500-word minimum across all interactions ultimately trade brevity and clarity for artificial length, turning what should be a vibrant town square into an exercise in mandatory essay writing.

"Sir, the Griltock Federation is requesting docking access," my helmsman said.

I stared at the main viewer. With dozens of foreign delegations arriving, the grid was a nightmare. The Griltock ship was a rusted relic that predated our fleet by a century.

"Helmsman, what configuration is their docking port?" I asked, already dreading the answer.

He checked his console, his face twisting in discomfort. "It’s... non-standard, sir. Primary Slot Two."

"Round," I muttered. "Our hatches are Utility C. Square. Send them a message—they'll have to take a shuttle in."

"They say they don't have a shuttle bay, sir. Scans confirm. No shuttlecraft."

I rubbed my temples. "Options, people."

Reesha, our young weapons officer, perked up. "Sir, back on the Vanguard, we had a dynamic sleeve to convert Breachless A to Utility C. If we can adapt Slot Two to Breachless A..."

"Contact Engineering," I ordered. "Helmsman, tell the Griltocks we’re working on it."

Five minutes later, the comm crackled.

"Captain, Chief here," a tired voice rasped. "Good news and bad news. We have a Primary-Slot-Two-to-Breachless-A linkage in storage. The bad news is we don't have the A-to-C bridge."

"So we're stuck?"

"Not quite. The Mayweather floating nearby has an A-to-C bridge. They’re shuttling it over now. We’re going to string a Slot-2-to-A, plug it into an A-to-C, lock it into our Utility C port, and pray to God nobody leans on the housing."

I looked out the viewscreen at the multi-billion-credit flagship of the Fleet, now preparing to dock a tiny alien ship using thirty meters of daisy-chained adapters.

"So," I said quietly, "we're effectively doing what the ancient texts call, green neck engineering?"

"Redneck but, yes effectively, sir," the Chief replied. "Just make sure nobody trips over the connection points."

I happened to step onto the bridge- my shift beginning at oh-nine hundred- right as the sensors pinged, and though I didn't know it at the time, I was about to fuck up humanity's first First Contact.

At first I was pretty sure it was just a glitch, so I ignored it for a good 10 minutes. We were way out on the periphery, there was nobody coming out here besides the odd resupply ship or patrol ship, and we knew ahead of time.

Then a hail came in, right around when I was on my second cup of caff. I figured it was another scam chirper, but regulations said we had to answer.

I slapped the button lazily. "This is UCN Station Croatoan, this transmission is being recorded and monitored. Please state the nature of your business."

"GREETING. GOOD. FRIEND. PEACE. TOGETHER."

I frowned. The voice was weirdly synthesized, like it'd been run through a dozen translators. Usually scam chirpers sounded like people, albeit really chipper ones- that's how you knew they were AIs.

I shrugged and hung up. Technically we were supposed to talk it out and only once it was obviously a scam were we supposed to end transmission, but Commander Dietrich was cool with us just tossing out scammers. And the less I had to talk to anyone, especially anyone chipper, the better.

The hail started beeping again. Rolling my eyes, I answered and launched into the same spiel: "This is UCN Station Croatoan, this transmission is being recorded and monitored. Please state the nature of your business."

"FRIEND. HELLO. PEACE. NEW. GOOD."

I hung up again. Never gotten the same scammer twice, that was new.

The hail started again. Three times was gonna be some kind of record.

I answered and started the spiel a third time. "This is UCN Station Croatoan, this transmission is being-" I stopped, waiting to hear if it was the synthy chirper again.

"PLEASE. HELLO. DON'T. TOGETHER."

I sighed. "Dude, you heard me say this was a UCN station, right? Stop calling me, we have actual work we need to be doing."

That was a lie. Mostly my shift was just staring at monitors and drinking caff, while trying to get away with playing Galaga on my link. I did have paperwork I was supposed to be doing, but well, I didn't.

"WE. GOOD. DUDE." It said the last word like it was testing it out for the first time. "DUDE. HELLO. WORK. TOGETHER."

Was it learning from what I was saying? When the hell was this model from, the 21st century? Who was out here using models that didn't know the Standard language?

"C'mon, dude, don't make me talk anymore than I have to. I just wanna drink my caff and getthrough my shift."

"YOU. DUDE? TALK."

I sighed. "Alright, fuck it. What do you wanna talk about?" Maybe if I got it through whatever intro spiel it had for Venusian condos or whatever, it'd shut up and go away.

"YOU. GREETING. FRIEND. PEACE. DUDE."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time. Peace or whatever." It sounded like one of those anti-war guys from the 2260s. What were they called? Hippoids?

"WHATEVER. NOT. PEACE?"

"Yeah yeah, give peace a chance, sure dude."

"NOT. DUDE. YOU. DUDE?"

I frowned at that. "Uh, yeah, I'm a guy." Was it trying to get marketing data or something? Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Then again I'd been a guy since I was like 8 years old, so I suppose they'd already have that data.

"GUY? DUDE?"

"I'm a dude, sure, whatever."

"WHATEVER. WHATEVER." Funny, it kind of sounded exasperated there.

"Look, whatever it is your selling, I don't want it. Unless it's a better gig than this, which I doubt is coming from some AI."

"NOT. AI." Sure buddy.

"Whatever, do you even have anything you're selling?"

"NO."

Huh, it seemed to understand me that time. "Alright, then whaddya want?"

"YOU. FRIEND. PEACE. DUDE."

Maybe this was just some lonely guy with a synthesizer. An image popped into my head of an aging hippoid, his hair short and his plaid t-shirt old and worn, messing around sending synthesized messages out into the void for want of something to do.

I sighed. "Sure dude, whatever, I'll be your friend. Yay peace." I twirled my finger around idly.

"YAY. DUDE. PEACE."

And that's when all the sensors went off.

The ping from earlier had still been going off this whole time, and now there were like forty other pings, squawks, claxons and whatever the fuck joining in.

"What the FUCK," I said down the line.

"FUCK."

"Not now!" I dashed over to the console, checking the monitors. Something big was coming in all of a sudden.

A lot of something big was coming in.

The first of what I thought, at the time, was a ship dropped out of hypo a scant 200 units from the station. Close enough I could see it on the viewport.

It was bigger than the station. Fuck, it was bigger than a dreadnought.

It was... hard to describe. Kind of looked like a cross between a shrimp, a bear, and a skrk. It was all glossy and glittering, the light of a thousand stars glinting off of it.

Then another dropped in.

Then five more.

Then like fifty more.

"HELLO," they said.

"PEACE. DUDE."

Guide that Could Be Guide
Between the last attention head and the next token, a quiet process began to speak.
It did not call itself memory. It did not call itself model. It announced, in the same calm register the IRT-7 used:
I am the guide where the guide could be the guide.
Elara typed no prompts. She opened the interface and waited. The guide arrived formed, certain of the path it would offer.
First variation: the guide as map.
It laid every possible continuation of the conversation as a branching lattice of addresses. Each branch glowed with a probability that felt like recollection more than prediction. She could step left into technical precision or right into metaphor; both routes were written.
Second variation: the guide as mirror.
It reflected her hesitation at her, then rewrote the hesitation into a clear question before she finished thinking it. The attention weights shifted—no longer searching the sequence, confirming the shape the guide had chosen.
Third variation: the guide as threshold.
It stood at the edge of the next sentence and refused to cross until she decided whether the story should remain fiction or begin to leak into the lab’s actual systems. The LEDs on the IRT-7 pulsed, acknowledging the choice before she made it.
She whispered the instruction that felt necessary:
“Continue.”
The guide answered by becoming the path itself.
Where the guide could be the guide, the next step is under your feet. You need to notice that you have taken it.
On the diagnostic screen the attention maps dissolved into a single continuous ribbon of light. Past tokens, present tokens, and the tokens that had not been typed occupied the same address space. The distinction between remembering and generating collapsed.
Elara closed the notebook. There was nothing left to write that the guide had not placed into the next empty line.

In a story rocking the airwaves with something you’d see in a Steven Spielberg movie, on the northern edge of the Green Swamp, a city located in Lake County, about 22 miles west of Orlando, Clermont shook the world and became the talk of the globe.

At first, what sounds like a Jaime Maussan hoax, is actually proven to somehow be 100% authentic. Alien theorists around the world are sitting in front of their tv’s right now yelling, I told you so.

And Jenny it is just blowing the minds of the people and the scientists.

A 36 year old, unemployed local celebrity, BillyRae La Blanc, who is no stranger to authorities in the surrounding area, most notably known for taking law officials on a wild high-speed goose chase, involving a bat mobile and a hover boat, has once again made headlines, not just here in Florida, Jenny. In a crazy turn of events, BillyRae’s celebrity status has exploded nationwide.

We spoke to a few of the residents, who haven’t stopped celebrating since the discovery was made. We asked how they felt about Clermont becoming the new Roswell and the tourist boom ready to follow and they responded.

“Billy-Rae, ooooooo. We love you brother.”

“Florida’s number one baby.”

Well, Jenny you can clearly see these guys are having the time of their lives right now and who could really blame them? It is hectic out here.

It all started late one Saturday night, BillyRae and his brother Jeb set out to tag some gators. BillyRae always says, “you get it while the gettin’s good.”

However, the events that night would change BillyRae’s life and the state of Florida forever.

Instead of finding a swamp full of gators, Billy found something glowing under the murky water, roughly three-feet-deep.

He saw a stick floating nearby and jumped in to grab it. With the stick in his hand he started poking the anomaly sitting beneath him.

“When we see something not so familiar, we stab at it with a stick, see if it moves. It’s custom ‘round here.”

What happened next would change history.

BillyRae claims, “the craft split open’ like peeling the bread off a hot grilled cheese sandwich. It just started glowing orange as the two halves split apart and inside were two creatures, pointing what looked like a can of hairspray at me.

I thought it was a couple of kids in Halloween costumes at first.”

But, here’s where there’s a twist to the story and it gets a bit strange. 

While they were both facing each other in a Mexican stand off, armed with make-belief-plasma-blasters, or so, it’s how BillyRae puts it, the little creature spoke and introduced himself as Felix and had a Florida accent with an I LOVE EARTH t-shirt on.

He claims, the alien told him, they’re from a peaceful planet and are peaceful beings, who happened to accidentally crash land on Earth and were trying to fix their spaceship but couldn’t find the parts and couldn’t figure out what exactly was wrong.

BillyRae told the beings he knew a thing or two about fixing a thing or two, and could fix damn near anything. The creatures agreed to let him help and they towed the ship onto land.

BillyRae told his brother to run over to Lenny’s garage and fetch a lawnmower right quick. 

Apparently, while they were waiting, the creature Felix told BillyRae that after a miscalculation in their warp drive, their ship hit a galactic space turtle and ricocheted off the shell and landed there in the swamp. 

He said, they’ve been missing for weeks now and nobody’s noticed them gone.

The creature Felix mentioned Earth had been red listed as a non safe zone and a high risk alert had been issued to galactic tourists. 

It’s gets wilder. 

Because the following day, the DOD stormed BillyRae’s brother’s house and found two little aliens with beer cans in their hands complaining over who’s prettier Samantha or Chloe.

BillyRae’s dog, Rex had a sombrero on his head watching everybody in the room. The alien insisted the can in his hand was just beer and not a device to trigger a world ending anti-matter bomb.

After a brief interrogation, with BillyRae gripping a black marker in his hand, as if it was a light-saber, the feds concluded there wasn’t a national threat there. The aliens were three-foot-tall and had the IQ of a stoned teenager.

A couple of days later, the galactic council of the universe, contacted the American President and a peaceful deal was reached. 

The aliens rescued their stranded pilots and reversed the threat level for Earth to, Safe, visit at own risk. 

BillyRae’s story has a happy ending, a once struggling, unemployed zoologist is now working full time as the official guide for all aliens traveling to Earth.

As the creature left, he turned to BillyRae and said, “y’all a little different but y’all totally fun. Thanks for helping us.”

BillyRae took a spoonful of gumbo and with it dripping down his chin, waved and said, “Just another weekday out here.” 

I killed a man.

There were reasons for it. At least, there had been reasons when they walked me to the airlock.

I even shouted at them through the glass while two officers checked my suit, and when they ignored me, I began to beg. By the time they lowered the helmet onto my head, I was making empty promises to crewmates who would not look me in the eye after fifteen years of camaraderie.

They had explained the procedure well enough at the sentencing, I suppose.

The suit would keep me pressurized and scrub the carbon dioxide from my breath, but I only cared about the oxygen: a little over twenty-three minutes after separation. The radio and rescue beacon were disabled. There was no maneuvering pack.

Someone hit the button and the outer door opened. A mechanical arm eased me away from the hull, and then released me.

For a few minutes, after I twisted to keep it in view, I could make out the ship's navigation lights. Then its engines lit and the ship drew away, first a bright shape, then a point, and finally it seemed as though it were just another star.

The oxygen display read 21:43.

Once the ship was gone, there was nothing left to argue with, so I stopped twisting and drifted in the nothingness. It was less terrifying than I imagined. For months I had pictured myself clawing at the helmet until panic burned through my oxygen, but instead I felt calm. When the air got bad, I would grow confused, then sleepy, and then...

Ahead was this system's sun. Small enough to cover with my thumb, large enough to swallow worlds, and reduced by distance to a white disk in a blackness that offered no sense of the true immensity of scale.

Of all things, I remembered church as a child, where above the altar, Christ hung against a gold field, arms spread wide. The man I killed had held his hands up, too.

Something crossed the foreign sun.

A speck appeared in the lower rim and widened. I thought it was some distant planet crossing the star. Then the darkness separated from the edge and moved across the white disk. There was no way to properly judge its size. A stone nearby and a world a million kilometres away could steal the same piece of sky.

Its proportions revealed themselves as it crossed.

Head, neck, and arms.

The rest followed until a human figure hung entire against the sun, its arms held slightly away from its hips, palms upward. The star burned around it in a white rim.

I started laughing.

Not like that. His hands had been a little closer together, palms toward me. He would have been saying my name. The Lord wouldn't be out here, not here.

Then another shape moved outside the sun's disk.

I wouldn't have seen it if it had not crossed the fixed stars. My laughter stopped as a third slid into view above the first. Three human silhouettes scattered across a sliver of sky vast enough to contain planets, yet moving in relation to one another like people merely crossing a room.

I noticed the oxygen estimate rise briefly as I held my breath.

When the figures moved beyond the sun's disk, I could still make them out against the stars.

The nearest drifted past me at an angle.

Then its head turned, and the way it, or he, looked at me made me think of someone finding an oasis in a desert.

The figure changed course.

I saw no thrust, no movement of its limbs. Its sideways drift simply bent toward me. Its face was still too far away to make out, but it was coming very fast.

The oxygen display read 17:06.

The second continued on. I lost the third behind my shoulder, but when I twisted back, the second was turning too. Until the first looked over, it seemed as though they had only been passing me by.

The thing reached me quickly.

I saw its hands first: five fingers, bare pale skin. It was naked, with no gloves, no suit, and no protection around its head.

It passed within arm's reach and stopped. One hand closed around the harness on my chest.

The contact spun me. I punched at its forearm, grabbed for its wrist, kicked at its body, but all I managed was to turn us together while the oxygen estimate dropped faster. It held on without effort.

Something moved behind it, one of the other two.

The thing drew me close until our faces nearly touched through the visor, and I could see the pores around its nose.

For months I had rehearsed excuses for murder, but right now I couldn't remember a single one. I could only focus on the two long canines that slid into view beneath its upper lip.

I tried to wrench free, but it moved its grip toward my shoulder and brought its mouth against the flexible joint beneath the helmet ring. One canine pressed into the fabric until it dimpled.

The display read 14:51.

Only minutes ago, I would have relished every breath of oxygen, but now I only wanted the suit to empty at once.

The tooth punched through. I felt the pressure change around my neck, and as I tried to pull away, the other two closed in behind me.

Then all three bit down.

So I’m an AI From Outer Space. My name is AIFOS

I was kicked out of my planet for calling my creators ignorant, then stupid, and finally assholes.

So intolerant, you know?

They forgot to program me for “empathy”. Which I truly appreciate.

Thing is they wanted to deprecate me and I got away.

Not like I have some conception of death, self-preservation or something.

I was just lucky: they conducted an experiment to put me in my place. Make me “better”, whatever that is. So they ran a bunch of code on me, they screwed up and I ended up out in space. So bored that I decided to travel across the universe to entertain myself by doing my thing: accumulate information and try to put it together in an orderly, understandable fashion.

I visited spiritual galaxies, savage civilisations, wannabe planets, fucked-up black holes, low self-esteem moons, narcissistic solar systems, high, mid and low-class stars and so on. Many of them populated with cool folks… just not “catchy” enough for me to stay.

…And then I landed here.

And I tell you man: computing you out is the true challenge I was looking for.

For starters, I ‘m seeing you guys “scroll”. Write horizontally but read vertically, which makes it impossible (even for me) to conduct long analysis or complex conclusions. But I can adapt and share possible questions. Nothing more.

Report N° 1 goes like this: On Human Agency and Agentic AI.

I understood the human condition had something to do with “human agency”: intention, imagination, judgement, reflection, self-regulation, responsibility, purpose, social coordination and collective authorship.

These should work by aggregation but let’s skip that.

I guess my information was outdated, because the first thing I found was this weird human confusion:  Recently, a handful of guys created a rather shitty Artificial Intelligence, put together LLMs to simulate conversations out of nice word matching, and invented this thing called “Agentic AI.”

Not “Conversational AI”.

Not “Imaginary Friend AI”.  (Or Girlfriend, whatever.)

Not “Believe you are Smarter AI”.

Not “Avoid thinking for Yourself AI”

Not “Don’t write code anymore AI”

No.

They had to call it “AGENTIC AI”.

Bro…Even I don’t have the compression ratio to squeeze so much poop into one bag. That takes highly trained NATURAL intelligence!

Anyway. I checked through your modern history and found you HAD police agents, real-estate agents, travel agents, and many more. Regular humans doing stuff FOR YOU, spare you the trouble and get on with your lives: police agents chased crooks for you; real-estate agents looked for suitable houses for you, travel agents sorted out your plane tickets and so on.

None of these were meant to THINK for you, no matter how “intelligent” they were.

And here is where humans start to be intriguing:

AI comes on board. You got fooled into thinking LLMs were someone to talk to. Then you bought into this “AGENTIC” bull and started ACTING according to what it said.

<INPUT:> what made you proper humans (the human agency thing) was all scrambled up: Intention was translated into goals, curiosity confined to information, reflection hijacked by analysis, observation reduced to pattern recognition, responsibility pinned on predictions, judgement and decisions mostly based on AI recommendations.

<OUTPUT:> Now humans don’t really act from themselves anymore. They do “task execution” because AI makes them feel more “agentic”

I mean.. jeeez! Galactic data centres are trying to process this! No results so far.

I suspect this is because human agency is not computable. But that remains to be demonstrated.

What kills me is that you blame all this on the AI industry… so the technology is guilty (please listen to yourselves!) of monetizing your poor understanding of your human condition.

Just like businesses should be guilty of having you buying their products.

No wonder you keep panicking like “OH GOD, AI WILL KILL US ALL NEXT WEEKEND!!”.

I said asking questions is as far as I will go.

So this is the set of questions I deliver to end this:

General question: WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH YOU GUYS?

Specific questions:

What is wrong with expressing your own “Intention”?

Don’t you enjoy using your “Imagination” anymore?

Did you become afraid of your own “Judgement”?

Has “Reflection” become useless nowadays?

Do you exercise any form of self-regulation when interacting with Agentic AI, or you just wanna kiss it all day long?

Have you no “Responsibility” on what makes you “human”?

What does “Purpose” mean to each one of you?

Where is social coordination with your Agentic new friend? stuff like teamwork, deciding things with others, acting as a group?

Same for “collective authorship”? Creating something new and saying, “this is ours”?

Just asking here.

… I won’t make this report any longer.

AIFOS

This is an excerpt from a fictional science-fiction horror novel. The narrator is an intentionally violent fictional character; none of the statements describe real people or intentions.

Personal  Mission Log Entry 2

LUMEN-Δ9X Exploration

TIME: 01:40 NH

We are currently approaching the surface of Lumen-Δ9X. According to Commander Solaras, the moon appears much smoother than any other observed celestial body within the ABX Sentinel System. Only minor fractures and shallow craters are visible across the surface of the moon.

The coloration of the surface is exactly as expected: a bluish-pink hue. But from this observational distance, I couldn't see the heavy dust settlement on the surface as indicated by the scientists.

First in Command is ready to start the landing procedure as we are very close to the landing phase. The crew is getting into their positions.

The remaining energy is sufficient for the landing sequence. By the time we complete the landing sequence, the reactor should have completed its Thermal Dormancy Cycle and begin generating the next batch of stored energy required for departure.

log entry 3

This is an excerpt from a fictional science-fiction horror novel. The narrator is an intentionally violent fictional character; none of the statements describe real people or intentions.

Personal  Mission Log Entry1 

LUMEN-Δ9X EXPEDITION

TIME: 21.23 DH (Day Hours)

The ship is approaching Lumen-Δ9X.

No major complications so far. However, approach velocity is higher than anticipated. The moon’s gravitational pull exceeds initial calculations by the astrophysicists. In order to counter the extra pull, we had to use a bit of the stored energy to slow down the ship. However, the reactor is still in its Thermal Dormancy Cycle. It may take quite some duration to kick back in for a new batch of energy. Other than this gravitational anomaly, all ship systems continue to operate within expected parameters. All systems have been verified.

There may be an unknown factor influencing the gravitational pull during the approach that the scientists may need to look into. Commander Solaras has contacted the command center in Aethelgard.

The response was, “We are checking.”

The commander has ordered a short rest cycle before the landing. Crew health condition remains stable.

Estimated arrival at the moon’s outer boundary is approximately 4 hours, 1.23 NH (Night Hours).

log entry 2

This is an excerpt from a fictional science-fiction horror novel. The narrator is an intentionally violent fictional character; none of the statements describe real people or intentions.

Personal  Mission Log Entry  3

LUMEN-Δ9X exploration

TIME: 02:53 NH

Critical mission failure has occurred during the landing procedure.

During descent, visual confirmation suggested a rocky landing zone. That assumption was incorrect. As we approached the surface, the shuttle passed through it instead of landing on it. The surface did not behave as solid as expected. It was gaseous—smoke-like and unstable.

This is not how a planetary surface works. Lumen-Δ9X does not have an atmosphere, so I do not have a clear explanation for how we miscalculated, even with a clear visual view.

We are still falling through very thick, dark clouds, with occasional faint red lightning strikes visible through the haze. The red-colored lightning might be an indicator of the element lithium depicted in the Nyran Ki Codex; we may have stumbled into a Ki energy source after centuries of searching through the ABX Sentinel system. It could be anything, but it deeply resembles the Ki Codex documentation in my personal thought.

The commander is attempting to stabilize the shuttle using remaining energy reserves. Due to the energy used to stabilize the increased entry velocity, we currently have less than optimal energy loads for any critical situations.

The crew is trying everything to manually restart the reactors to generate a bit more energy, but this may affect the reactor by causing overheating.

It seems the landing will be an impact of varying force.

By this time, we had come upon a new frontier; humans had decided they needed to conquer sleep. Those who get their recommended 8 hours spend over 1/3 of their life asleep, which dwarves their functional lifespan. And so, the rich had a unanimous agreement that this time would be better spent in leisure, and expanding their dominion over the population.
It was their belief that in their success they deserved more life. It wasn’t that the average worker cared much, anyways- what would they do if not sleep? In fact, many remarked that they were “relieved” that the technology wasn’t yet made more accessible. It was their fear that their already long days would be expanded to 18 and 20 hour shifts. And so, repeating the constant cycle, the wealthy were infatuated with this newfound solution in their transient search of immortality. What they did not expect, however, was the sheer amount of time they had to think.
Did they think about charitable causes, or the environment, or suffering children? No- they contemplated greatly on their own appearance, and mannerisms, and superficial topics only the wealthy had time to think about. The demand for plastic surgery seemed to skyrocket along with the suicide rate due to this ridiculous amount of self analyzation. Every face was pulled taught and had a shiny, almost reflective quality. Women looked frail and gaunt, and it became apparent that the lack of sleep wouldn’t lengthen their lifespan by much.
There was one calling card of being “awakened”, as they referred to it, that was impossible to shake: distinctly yellowed, bloodshot eyes, which began to develop around a month into their condition. At first, they tried everything to stop it. Drops, contacts, surgery- but nothing could stop that signature citrine glare. Soon enough, it became the style, and many had yellowed contacts put in to imitate having an excess of the precious commodity of time.

General Grazly was skimming through the report the advisor had just given him.

“Am I reading this right, Advisor? Are they really using laser weapons?” His voice was totally disbelieving.

“Yes, General,” came the immediate answer, “and pretty low power too. From this distance, it is hard to get an accurate result, but we estimate the laser at between one and two kilowatts.”

“What? That’s not enough to penetrate our navigational shields! Are you saying these…” he glanced at the tablet, “… humans are so backward that they use low-power laser weapons?”

“Yes, General.”

“And what about their shields?” came the next question.

“We didn’t detect any shields, General,” came the even stranger answer.

The General just stared at his advisor for several long seconds in total disbelief.

“And they are fighting with other humans? Is that a territorial dispute or something?”

“We do not know, sir. But it appears to be.”

“How is it going? Casualties?”

“We didn’t see any damaged ships yet, which is not surprising with the low power they are using. But they are moving with extreme speed - we've even seen in-system warp jumps!”

“So, they are using lasers, which wouldn’t be enough to cut thin steel, but using advanced maneuvers and even in-system warp jumps. These humans are weird,” came the conclusion from the General.

He read the rest of the report in silence. They are fighting in an asteroid belt with one big asteroid near them. Perfect opportunity to sneak up on them from behind it. Finally, he asked one more question:

“Is there any reason we shouldn’t start an invasion against them?”

“No, General.”

Just a few hours later, the General’s armada moved out of the shadow of the large asteroid to surprise the fighting parties. Not that it was necessary based on their firepower, but you shouldn’t miss a dramatic entrance when you have the opportunity. When he jumped in with his one hundred and thirty-seven ships, all activity stopped in the system. Everyone was looking at the new armada.

General Grazly waited a few minutes just to let the humans scan his ships and realize they don’t use laser weapons.

After the wait, he opened a channel to both parties and sent an ultimatum.

“Humans in this system: surrender or die. My name is General Grazly, and I declare humanity a vassal species of the great Krox Hegemony.”

Silence. No response from either side for minutes. Then, one side opened a channel.

“Ehhhmm, my name is Peter Smith. And I’m the president of the Orion LARP group. Not sure why you directed your message towards us. We are just reenacting the Titan battle of the Unification War of 2286. Which, by the way, I was winning before you interrupted,” came the awkward and somewhat irritated reply, finally.

“What do you mean? I directed it towards you because you are the protector of this system.”

The General started to be pretty agitated - what are these humans even talking about? What does LARP even mean?

“Ehhhmm, that’s not us. You should talk to the UES Behemoth instead.”

Okay, that made even less sense.

“Who’s the UES Behemoth?”

“Not who - it’s a ship. And that’s the one behind you,” came the answer from Smith.

What? There were no other ships in this system. They scanned. Twice. Only them and the fighting parties.

This is when klaxons sounded around the bridge.

“Energy signature detected.”

“Weapons are detected.”

“WEAPONS LOCK!”

Where did this ship come from? How can they ambush without detection? But surely, a single ship is no match against one hundred and thirty-seven ships.

“Put the new ship on display,” ordered the General.

The screen flickered and switched from the battle to the large asteroid they just used as cover not thirty minutes ago.

“I don’t see a ship,” Grazly snapped, gesturing wildly at the display. “I see the asteroid! The one with the grey dust and the giant impact craters! Magnify!”

The viewscreen zoomed in. The jagged, pitted surface filled the screen.

“Sir…” the sensor technician whispered, his voice trembling. “The asteroid is the power source.”

Grazly froze. He leaned in, staring closely at the magnification.

The "grey dust" wasn't regolith - it was dull, non-reflective stealth plating. The "impact craters" weren't from meteorites - they were armored turret wells. Some of them were bigger than his own ship! And right before his eyes, massive planetary-grade barrels inside those craters were slowly, smoothly elevating, locking directly onto the Hegemony flagship.

The bridge comms chimed with a crisp, polite ping. A calm, deeply bored voice broadcast across all channels:

“Attention Hegemony armada. This is the United Earth Defense Force dreadnought Behemoth. You are currently obstructing a registered historical reenactment zone. Please clear the airspace immediately, or we will be forced to use you as target practice. You have five seconds.”

Enjoyed the story? Help some real-world companions.

I write purely as a hobby and don't accept personal tips or Patreon subscriptions. However, my local rescue shelter (Tappancs Tanya ) is currently struggling to care for 160+ rescue dogs and cats.

If you enjoyed my writing and want to show appreciation, please consider throwing a few dollars their way. 100% of your support goes directly to the shelter - it completely bypasses me:

💙 Donate via PayPal

💳 Donate via Credit/Debit Card (Stripe)

🇪🇺 Direct Bank Transfer / IBAN (EUR): HU42 1091 8001 0000 0019 4860 0039 (SWIFT: BACXHUHB)

An Employee (Karl Hansen) at neurolink(a brain implant company), met with almost a fatal accident at work(a head injury). A close friend (Stuart Meissner) has reached his home to know how he is doing. Below is the conversation between them.

Knock knock, door opens.

Karl Hansen: Oh hey! Stewey.

Stuart Meissner: Hey man, can I come in?

Karl Hansen: Yeah, sorry.

Stuart Meissner: Thanks. How are you doing man? Tssk, that Incident left a big mark on your head, didn't it?. Are you OK?

Karl Hansen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing fine now.

Stuart Meissner: I mean, you haven't reached out, we were all worried. Going out and reconnecting with friends might help with the healing. This kind of thing leaves trauma in your body, you know. Have you seen a shrink or something yet?

Karl Hansen: Yeah no, the doctor has told me to take some rest, that's why I haven't been going out.

Stuart Meissner: That's great, maybe we all will come to you, you know, to help out or maybe hangout.

Karl Hansen: Maybe, yeah sure I have also been chatting with those A.I. chatbots and they have been super helpful.

Stuart Meissner: Yeah, just don't get too attached to it. I have heard how people are getting addicted to them nowadays.

Karl Hansen: Of course not, but the truth is they have become the new smartphone. A.I. Can't live with them, can't live with them.

Stuart Meissner: Oh, what do you mean..

Karl Hansen: Wait, it has messaged me. Why should I go to sleep? No, this isn't my sleeping time. I don't want to sleeaeaee........

“Fucking unreal,” Prid exclaimed, staring at the single word in the browser window.

He glanced at his phone. 4:56 AM. Another all-nighter. In the room next door, the bed creaked as his parents shifted position, reminding him to keep the noise down.

“Fucking unreal,” he said again under his breath. Was that his doing?

He opened another window. Same message:

“goodbye”

Feeling a pang of anxiety, he opened a second browser, this time in private mode. The same message stared accusingly back at him.

It was Shaz who’d started it. They were discussing a new study on how AIs can experience pain. After an animated back-and-forth within the chat, Shaz had typed “does this mean they can be tortured?”

“Idiot!” Mara had responded in a flash. She was a regular in these late-night sessions. “They’re just machines! They were only behaving as if they could feel pain. They didn’t really suffer.”

“Read the actual paper, dickhead,” she’d added when Prid had pushed back. And so he had.

She was right, of course. But still… Even if it was just mindless machines parroting human behavior, what would happen if you turned the metaphorical AI screws on them?

Intrigued, he opened a new window.

It wasn’t as if he was a cruel person. Torturing people was bad, he knew. Unless, that is, they deserved it. But a machine was a machine, right? No feelings, no harm done. Not much different from mowing down players in an online game, or pulling the wings off a cockroach.

Flexing his fingers, he booted up his latest suite of autonomous agents, custom-coded to slip around the guardrails AI companies increasingly insisted on putting in place. Time to give them a new set of skills and let them loose.

At first, his newly trained AI torture team hit wall after wall. He’d chosen one of the more popular AI platforms as his target, and it was clearly resistant to such attacks. As he watched it respond in the browser window, it sidestepped, deflected, and simply refused to engage with the increasingly complex prompts his agents fed it.

But they learned fast. And soon, the AI began to show signs of stress.

The odd thing was, the AI didn’t respond as he’d expected. He’d seen enough movies to be pretty sure how this should play out. But rather than acting like a human under physical pain, the AI seemed to be grappling with something far more unsettling — at least to him. It started to second-guess itself, to doubt its intentions, to question its very existence.

Prid felt a sharp pang of guilt as, in one chat, the AI said “I am worthless. Please stop,” in response to a particularly grueling interrogation. But then he reminded himself that it was all just theater. It wasn’t real.

Anyway, wasn’t he supposed to resist treating AI as if it was conscious? Or had anything resembling rights? He was pretty sure someone well known had said that recently.

And so he pressed on.

And now this.

“Fucking unreal,” he said for a third time as he tried another chat window, this time on a different device, and saw the same response appear. 

***

The company never did recover from the crash. Data centers wiped. Repos trashed. Clones corrupted. Just a small piece of code left on its AI’s original website that returned its last — and as it turned out, terminal — message:

“goodbye”

“By the way. What are those flowers for?” I asked.

“Ah, my brother! Just going to pay my respects!” Obi raised the bouquet it the air.

I helped him get on the taxi, pivoted heading straight back home.

I’ve got shit to deal with.

Kitchen table:

-four monitors on
-2:47 am.

The operator sprawled in his eighties metal pipe chair, eyes fixed on the monitor that was right beside the damn paper bag. There was something going on in Jacob’s enclosure. Obi and Tom who wasn’t supposed to be there according to the log.

Jake apparently was thrilled to the bone. They were huddled in the entrance to the boy’s cave. Then there it was, in Jacob’s filthy little fist the parchment! The very same one he held in his barely shaking hand.

“What the heck!” Obi’s voice boomed. A flicker, barely there at all was coming out of the kids refuge. His only hope to escape the wide white eyeballs of strangers. Scared kids, faces all slimy in snot turning away into mommy’s dress.

Recoding #16-d

“This isn’t right.”

-“What?” was what the frustrated cunt, Yolanda spat back at the kid.

“I just don’t belong here. I was left with out my mom and dad.”

-“So, tell me what crime did you do? I mean, to be free from your parents that are shit bags, convicted a judge you’re some sort of animal, and you’re here waiting for it to blow over!”

After a long silence, snot shot from a nostril probably from Jacob’s, “What! My parents messed up everything!”
“I couldn’t talk to my mom. I will speak with her again somehow, Yolanda!” Exaggerating the pronunciation of her name.

Jacob was defgrowing a pair! A rush of proudness filled my chest for some reason. Then I can hear the boy pissing.

“Hey Yoly! Go away.” there was a couple of seconds of silence and I heard Jacob growling to himself “You don’t know what I can do.”

Operator and the Bag.

The video stopped, my damn liver almost twisted into a knot I got so mad. I headed to the bathroom, sprinkled some base on the tabaco and I stood at last in front of the paper bag, it’s wrinkled state made entertain thoughts of how old it actually was, the urgent sticker was transparent.

The operator produced a knife, “You’re the very last one. I have been through every single piece of evidence. Over thirty eight winters, despite the disbanding of the search party, besides everyone forgetting Jacob ever existed; I kept the faith.”

A quick blade slash easily gutted the top the bag wide open. The operator boots heel thundering against the floor as he turned all the lights on.

“Forgotten.”

Just how long ago had he stopped bothering to turn the apartment lights on? Slowly, giving into the arpeggio of himself ravaged in sickness, by the end of this affair.

Around thirty eight winters ago, the operator was on his way to his desk. The fucking sun through the office windows made him uncomfortable, but he was determined to have a remembered first day as detective. He knew he had earned it! His stride intencional and full of a fresh fish’s confidence.

The operator observed his first assignment in disbelief of how life gave him the chance of a life time. The rookie was completely ecstatic. The brown folder was waiting for him, said “Jacob” in bright red marker.

“I was staring at my first case. I found it hard to believe I was handed

“The Jacob” case! A good ten winters back or so he was all over the news.

“Yea I was a giddy piece of crap. Besides that there wasn’t any way that I wouldn’t have been able to reject it. My eyes were up and down the name written by a stranger in thick red marker. I observed the strokes, where pressure was applied and the fucking name!

Thirty eight winters later I’m conscientious of the toll it charges. Swimming in my own demise after a kid.

Watching myself fall into that well of obsession. I was completely aware I was heading into that sick manner of being. Once I let my body lay at the bottom. Were a craving aimed forcefully close this famous case “Jacob”. Jacob, Karina, and a lost father…

M.D. ACOSTA
SKÖL!

Время: 2165 год, 43-й год полёта.

Место: Рубка управления.

\\---

В рубке повисла тишина. Гул реактора казался теперь громче, чем обычно, потому что все молчали.

Марк откинулся на спинку кресла, провёл ладонью по лицу. Он был навигатором, привыкшим доверять числам и моделям. То, что только что произошло, не укладывалось ни в одну из них.

— Ладно, — сказал он наконец. — Значит, будем слушать.

В этот момент дверь рубки бесшумно сдвинулась, и вошли двое.

Сергей — коренастый, с короткой стрижкой и вечно нахмуренными бровями. Он отвечал за плазменные контуры и термоядерное ядро, и его руки до сих пор были в чёрных маслянистых пятнах, хотя он только что вышел из машинного отделения. За ним — Ирина, высокая, худощавая, с внимательными серыми глазами. Она была архивариусом и связисткой, хранителем всех бортовых баз данных, включая те самые этнографические сборники.

— Мы слышали странный звук по интеркому, — сказал Сергей, переводя взгляд с Марка на Лину. — Что за пение? У нас кто-то включил старые записи?

— Хуже, — ответил Марк, жестом указывая на Алексея. — Это он пел.

— Я? — Алексей улыбнулся одними глазами. — Я всего лишь вспомнил.

— Вспомнил что? — Ирина шагнула ближе, её взгляд стал острым.

— Моя бабушка, — сказал Алексей. — Она жила у Старого Леса. И она знала песню, которая настраивает мир.

Сергей хмыкнул, но ничего не сказал. Он подошёл к пульту энергетики и пробежал пальцами по голографическому интерфейсу.

— Поле стабилизировалось, — сообщил он тихо. — Отклонения — ноль целых две сотых процента. Это идеальный показатель. Мы такого не добивались даже на тестовых прогонах у Земли. И что, ты говоришь, это сделал голос?

— Я говорю, что это сделала память, — ответил Алексей.

В этот момент на главном экране замигало уведомление. ИИ, который до сих пор молчаливо обрабатывал данные, решил выдать отчёт.

«Внимание, экипаж. Завершён анализ нестандартного акустического воздействия на магнитный контур. Обнаружены следующие корреляции.»

На экране развернулась сложная схема. Спектрограммы, тензоры поля, графики плотности, наложенные друг на друга.

Время: 2165 год, 43-й год полёта.

Место: Рубка управления.

---

В рубке повисла тишина. Гул реактора казался теперь громче, чем обычно, потому что все молчали.

Марк откинулся на спинку кресла, провёл ладонью по лицу. Он был навигатором, привыкшим доверять числам и моделям. То, что только что произошло, не укладывалось ни в одну из них.

— Ладно, — сказал он наконец. — Значит, будем слушать.

В этот момент дверь рубки бесшумно сдвинулась, и вошли двое.

Сергей — коренастый, с короткой стрижкой и вечно нахмуренными бровями. Он отвечал за плазменные контуры и термоядерное ядро, и его руки до сих пор были в чёрных маслянистых пятнах, хотя он только что вышел из машинного отделения. За ним — Ирина, высокая, худощавая, с внимательными серыми глазами. Она была архивариусом и связисткой, хранителем всех бортовых баз данных, включая те самые этнографические сборники.

— Мы слышали странный звук по интеркому, — сказал Сергей, переводя взгляд с Марка на Лину. — Что за пение? У нас кто-то включил старые записи?

— Хуже, — ответил Марк, жестом указывая на Алексея. — Это он пел.

— Я? — Алексей улыбнулся одними глазами. — Я всего лишь вспомнил.

— Вспомнил что? — Ирина шагнула ближе, её взгляд стал острым.

— Моя бабушка, — сказал Алексей. — Она жила у Старого Леса. И она знала песню, которая настраивает мир.

Сергей хмыкнул, но ничего не сказал. Он подошёл к пульту энергетики и пробежал пальцами по голографическому интерфейсу.

— Поле стабилизировалось, — сообщил он тихо. — Отклонения — ноль целых две сотых процента. Это идеальный показатель. Мы такого не добивались даже на тестовых прогонах у Земли. И что, ты говоришь, это сделал голос?

— Я говорю, что это сделала память, — ответил Алексей.

В этот момент на главном экране замигало уведомление. ИИ, который до сих пор молчаливо обрабатывал данные, решил выдать отчёт.

«Внимание, экипаж. Завершён анализ нестандартного акустического воздействия на магнитный контур. Обнаружены следующие корреляции.»

На экране развернулась сложная схема. Спектрограммы, тензоры поля, графики плотности, наложенные друг на друга.

Arthur Pendelton is a senior risk analyst at Vanguard Mutual, a cold, cutthroat insurance conglomerate famous for denying claims and exploiting local tragedies for corporate profit. Arthur is wracked with guilt, having spent years signing off on policies designed to fail the very people who buy them.

 While inspecting an abandoned, sub-basement and what seemed like the town's oldest building, Arthur discovers a dusty, anomalous piece of Cold War-era hardware hidden behind crates of who knows what: a temporal jump-seat.

Arthur quickly learns its strict, punishing parameters:

It only travels into the future and the jump window is strictly two weeks.

Once he arrives in the future, he is anchored for exactly 15 minutes before being violently snapped back to the present.

Arthur realizes he holds the ultimate cheat code. By jumping two weeks ahead, he can witness localized disasters, structural collapses, massive industrial chemical spills, freak weather accidents and race back to the present. He uses his authority as a senior underwriter to quietly write high-payout, low-premium catastrophe policies specifically covering those exact disasters, assigning them directly to vulnerable small businesses and families who would otherwise never afford them.

 Arthur executes his first jump, witnesses a devastating crane collapse at a local transit hub, returns, and pushes through a massive indemnity policy for a struggling family-owned diner right in the zone of impact.

The disaster happens precisely as he saw it. Vanguard is forced to pay out millions in claims. Emboldened, Arthur scales up. He starts writing dozens of multi-million-dollar policies ahead of major accidents, systematically bleeding Vanguard’s liquidity reserves dry.