Time Capsule

The stars flickered in the boundless void and their ancient light pierced the immortal darkness. Among them one shone with a peculiar radiance: an anomalous x-ray pulsar—a compact and mighty sphere of lethargic neutron-rich energy, a remnant of its deceased precursor.

The Ergo Sum, a vessel of scientific design, moved through space’s infinite emptiness tracing a wide circle around the pulsar, positioned at a distance deemed relatively safe, just shy of one astronomical unit. Within the craft a group of scientists crowded together, drawn close around a control panel suffused with an eerie effulgence that spilled over their features like the spectral afterglow of the dead star they orbited. A tense hush pervaded the chamber as they pored over the data that cascaded in a constant current across the luminescent screens. After countless hours of analysis and speculation, with each moment burdened by the gravity of anticipation, today the data was finally pointing to something strange—something that seemed to flout all reason.

Bishop Quasari, the Master of Stellar Physics and the mission’s prime investigator, leaned forward in her seat and studied the intricate machinery before her with a hawk’s intensity. Her lithe fingers moved with a dancer’s poise across the buttons as though choreographing some familiar and involved ballet, and her brow furrowed with worry as she eyeballed the photometric readout. “We’re receiving some queer readings here,” she said, tracing a finger along a line of data, her countenance etched with alarm.

Deacon Charig, his dark eyes narrowed to slits, bent over Quasari’s shoulder to examine the screen with utmost concentration. His thin lips were set in a firm, tight line and he ran a hand through his grizzled hair before releasing a long, slow breath. “That’s not right,” he said, a tinge of disquiet in his ordinarily steady voice. “That can’t be right.”

The team huddled around Quasari’s monitor, their necks stretching taut like cords in their desperate need to witness the data. A tense and expectant silence fell over the room as they studied the data with rapt attention. After a moment, Quasari’s face was alight with excitement. “There,” she declared in triumph, stabbing a finger at a faint blip in the light curve that she then magnified. “That’s a sign of a wee object, and according to orbital period computations, it is orbiting the pulsar at a closeness of only a few hundred kilometers.”

Charig squinted and hunched forward and his mouth gaped in disbelief. “An impossibly small planet?” he muttered, half in jest—though the bewilderment in his tone belied the absence of any alternative explanations.

Quasari shook her head, a wry smile curling at the corners of her lips. “Doubtful,” she said. “Spectral analysis reveals the object is largely composed of tungsten, carbon, and cobalt, with trace amounts of copper and silicon—precisely the elements one would expect in a high-powered aerospace system with electronic components. This . . . this is something artificial.”

The team burst forth with a medley of awestruck gasps and disbelieving laughter and a hush fell over the chamber as they came to appreciate the full import of what lay before them, with every gaze fixed upon the screen as Quasari painstakingly recalibrated the imaging sensors toward the object with exquisite precision. And then, with a suddenness that felt almost magical, its features coalesced into view, like a cloaked realm unveiled through a keyhole.

“Is that it?” Deacon Sudai asked, his voice colored with disbelief.

She didn’t turn around, but slowly nodded, her eyes glittering with fascination. “That’s it,” Quasari whispered in subdued reverence.

The object appeared as a diminutive and unremarkable sphere—an ostensibly meaningless speck when juxtaposed with its powerful host star, which it circled with a perilously intimate closeness.

Quasari’s fingers moved with a feather-light delicacy as she adjusted the dials on the sensor panel, gradually magnifying the image of the enigmatic object, and as she peered closer, a sense of wonder engulfed her. “How gloriously bizarre,” she said to herself in amazement, taking in every detail of the orb’s complex and sophisticated beauty. Its surface was smooth and reflective and shimmered in the light with a spellbinding iridescence reminiscent of the kaleidoscopic hues of an oil slick, and it wasn’t just the orb’s appearance that was captivating—the spectral analyzer was indicating that the orb was emitting a faint, pulsating energy that made it seem almost as though it were breathing.

“It’s like it’s alive,” Charig uttered, his voice low and quivering. The others in the room remained silent, equally mesmerized by the extraordinary object, and for a moment they were all lost in its hypnotic allure, unable to look away from its uncanny, otherworldly glow.

  

Days slipped by as the team fixated on the inscrutable sphere, parsing through a deluge of data in search of truth. Delving deeper, they distinguished a pattern of microwave radio waves lurking amidst the orb’s pulsating aura. It was a strange but consistent sequence of pulses, recurring in an eternal cycle.

Quasari was the first to discern the order amid the chaos. She scoured the readouts, fixated on decoding the cryptic data. “This is the key to understanding,” she proclaimed, her voice laden with fervor. “It abides by a mathematical pattern.”

“Pass it over,” demanded Bishop Cono, Master of Applied Mathematics. Without hesitation, Quasari beamed the data to Cono’s console, where he set to work analyzing the pattern with unwavering focus.

Silence loomed, heavy and pregnant with expectation. Quasari could not bear it any longer. “Well?” she pleaded, desperate for any sign of appreciable progress.

Cono cleared his throat, his voice a solemn echo in the hush. “Well,” he began, “this is certainly a non-trivial mathematical task.” He drifted into thought, pondering the conundrum before him. “First impressions of the analytical data reveal it to be an apparently novel combination of the look-and-say sequence and the Stern-Brocot Tree, with the fractal tree structure used to encode the information of the sequence’s rational numbers.” He chuckled, his admiration evident. “It’s remarkably creative.”

“Can you develop a meaningful method of decrypting it?” Quasari pressed, clearly anxious to uncover the orb’s mysteries.

“In due course,” Cono replied.

  

Cono toiled ceaselessly for days on end, impelled by his insatiable curiosity and unyielding resolve to unlock the secrets of the orb. But at long last he achieved a breakthrough, as if emerging from the depths of a dark and treacherous abyss into the radiant light of revelation.

“I’ve done it,” he bellowed, his words resounding throughout the ship. “I’ve decrypted the damned thing!”

Quasari hastened to Cono’s station, eager to behold the outcome for herself. “What am I looking at?” she asked.

“You are looking at yet another fractal encryption,” he answered, gesturing toward the convoluted design that adorned the monitor. “A Barnsley fern, to be precise.”

“An encryption within an encryption?” she asked, agog at the data’s complexity.

Cono nodded gravely, countering her query with one of his own. “Are you familiar with steganography, Bishop?”

“Afraid not,” she conceded. “Do enlighten me.”

“Gladly. Steganography,” he obliged, “is the art of using data to conceal other data, making it seem as if nothing is present to an imperceptive observer. Data is encrypted, then hidden within data that is then further encrypted, and so on and so forth.”

“Matryoshka data.”

“Precisely.”

Quasari frowned. “So what does this mean in the context of our little orb here?” she asked.

“It means I’ve only un-nested the first set of data,” he replied, “and there could be any number of layers still nested within.”

“So we are no closer to figuring this thing out?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

Cono shook his head. “Not yet, but we’ve made progress. We know that the signal is an intentionally crafted message, and if we can decode more layers of the encryption, we may finally uncover the truth behind this mysterious object.”

Quasari nodded, determined to keep pushing forward. “All right then. Keep at it.”

  

Months passed. With each passing day, the task seemed to become more daunting, as Cono burrowed deeper into the labyrinthine depths of the intricate system. Despite the many setbacks and vexations that beset him along the way, he remained resolute in his determination to unravel the secrets that the orb held. Day in and day out, he worked incessantly, studying the problem from every possible angle, running countless simulations and experiments, and poring over reams of data in search of any clue that could help him make progress.

One morning, while the rest of the crew lay cocooned in their bunks, Cono had his final breakthrough. 

The ersatz morning sun had just barely begun to peek through the window display panels of the Ergo Sum when Cono let out a howl of triumph that reverberated throughout the ship’s passageways. He had finally done it, and he could scarcely contain his elation as he bounded and leapt through the corridors, rousing the crew and exultantly proclaiming his victory. 

The crew, still bleary-eyed and groggy, were initially puzzled but soon caught on to Cono’s excitement, and they did their best to contain their annoyance at being awoken so early. Stifled yawns and grumbles punctuated the air as the crew shuffled into the control room. Cono stalked restlessly about, clad in his disheveled jumpsuit, barely able to contain his joy. He gestured grandly to the large viewscreen and grinned widely, his countenance shining with pride. “This isn’t just something so insignificant as a cosmic buoy,” he said. “It’s a repository—a positively massive archive of information!”

The team stared at him askance, not yet fully realizing the magnitude of his pronouncement.

Cono continued. “The encryption was sophisticated to say the least, but after months of doing what I now consider to be the greatest and most meaningful work of my life, I’ve completed the multi-layered decryption to find that the beacon appears to contain a structured series of classifications,” he sniffled, then wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jumpsuit. “An index, if you will, for an encyclopedic database.” 

“What are you saying, Cono?” asked Quasari. 

Cono answered. “I am saying that I am now convicted with the belief that inside this orb, there is an abundance of data detailing the history and knowledge of a lost civilization. The sheer volume of data likely spans eons.”

The team remained still, struck by the gravity of the revelation.

“In thousands of years of human and post-human history,” Cono said, his words heavy with import, “no complex extraterrestrial life has ever been found—and now we have stumbled upon this . . . this cosmic time capsule, which could fundamentally alter the way humankind views the universe.”

“This is incredible,” Quasari said. “If this is true, it could change the course of history henceforth.”

Cono nodded, his eyes gleaming. “I know,” he said. “But we must tread carefully—we don’t yet know what secrets this orb holds, or what repercussions these secrets may have if they are revealed to the world prematurely.”

The crew fell into murmurs, each of them lost in their own thoughts as they considered the implications of such a discovery.

“Perhaps we should wait,” suggested another crew member, Deacon Sylva. “We don’t want to risk unleashing something we can’t control.”

“But just imagine the knowledge we could gain,” countered Cono. “Think of the possibilities. We may never have another opportunity like this.”

“But we must also consider the potential dangers,” interjected Charig. “We can’t just rush into this blindly.”

Quasari stepped forth, her face stern and serious. “We stand at a crossroads, it would appear,” she said in a hushed, measured voice. “To keep the orb veiled, safeguarded from the world, or to claim the knowledge it purports to hold. The choice is ours to make.”

The crew sat in silence, ruminating. 

In the stillness, Cono’s voice broke through like a lone wolf’s howl in the night. “Retrieval of the orb must be our top priority,” he declared with resolve. “For while knowledge can be gained through study and research, opportunity may only come once—and who knows what wonders we may discover if we take this chance?”

  

As the Ergo Sum drew nearer to the pulsar, the weight of the mission bore down on the team in the control room. The mission was clear: Retrieve the orb from the dangerous clutches of the neutron star and return it to the ship for further analysis. The stakes were high, the seconds ticking away like the steady rhythm of a beating heart.

Quasari leaned forward in her chair, her gaze affixed to the screen displaying the orb’s telemetry feed. “Ready to deploy the retrieval drones?” she asked.

The drone handlers—Deacons Ralbe and Jota—nodded in unison. “Affirmative, Bishop,” Ralbe answered, his fingers hovering over the control panel. 

“All systems are fully operational and primed for deployment,” Jota appended.

“Good,” Quasari said, her tone unwavering. “Launch ‘em.”

The small fleet of a dozen retrieval drones burst forth from the Ergo Sum, navigating into the intense radiation and through the gravitational waves of the pulsar. Despite the harsh milieu, they maneuvered deftly toward their target, slowly but steadily closing in on it.

The fleet flew in close formation, descending upon their mark, but as they neared, several spiraled out of control, their metallic frames quivering and rattling and careening off course.

“The gravitational forces are intense,” Jota cautioned the autonomous machines. “Brace yourselves.”

The drones inched closer and closer to the target, a handful of them angling to approach from within the target’s orbit, and as they crossed the orbital threshold they began to convulse violently, their metal skeletons creaking and cracking under the overwhelming gravitational strain until finally they were rent asunder by the powerful, unseen tidal forces.

The team was glued to the monitors, eyes agape in shock as the foremost drone exploded in a blinding flash of light, then a second, and a third. Shards of shrapnel and molten slag scattered, gleaming in the light of the neutron star, as the fragments whirled off into oblivion.

Quasari clenched her jaw as she witnessed the destruction of a fourth and fifth. “We can’t bear many more losses,” she lamented.

“Increasing thrust and adjusting trajectory,” Ralbe declared.

“We just need one to make it there,” Cono said, rubbing his palms together.

“There,” said Quasari, “and back.”

The surviving drones drew close to the orb and decelerated, extending snaking tethers like sinuous tendrils from their metallic bodies.

“Hold steady,” Ralbe commanded, his digits tapping frantically on the control panel.

Quasari monitored the telemetry data with held breath, her eyes darting between the drones’ respective visual feeds. “Come on, come on,” she murmured under her breath.

The drones made several passes around the orb, seeking to wrap their tethers around it and grapple for purchase, but four of them ventured too close to the pulsar and could not break free from its grasp and one by one they were reeled in and torn apart.

Cono slammed his hand on the back of the control console with a hollow thud. “Dammit,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Our fortunes are dwindling.”

The remaining trio of drones latched onto the orb, their serpentine tethers swaddling the sphere like a helpless infant. With a struggle, their metallic frames strained against the might of the pulsar, tugging with all their might. 

“We’ve got it!” Ralbe shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

Their victory was fleeting. One of the drones, weakened by the gravitational stress, faltered under the strain and its tether snapped with a vicious crack and its metal frame twisted and contorted like some miserable living thing before buckling and disintegrating.  

The remaining two drones struggled to compensate, their motors whining in protest as they grappled with the burden of the orb.

Quasari watched in impotence, her heart galloping in her chest as the spectacle unfolded. “We have to get it out of there,” she hissed.

“I’m working on it,” Ralbe replied, his forehead slick with sweat.

The drones labored and shuddered and their tethers stretched to their limits as they slowly but steadily retreated from the pulsar with their precious cargo in tow. The orb, bathed in the pulsar’s intense radiation, glowed like a miniature sun and cast its own eerie light on the drones and their tethers. 

“Almost there,” Jota said.

Quasari nodded and her throat tightened. Time seemed to draw out its breath an awful eternity and each second was a thousand hours as the drones fought to cleave from the pulsar’s heinous hold. And then, at long last, the two final drones emerged from its clutches, their small motors whirring in elation as they raced back toward the Ergo Sum, their mission accomplished.

The crew erupted in cheers, clapping and whooping as the drones touched down in the docking bay of the ship and were relieved of their tremendous burden.

  

The orb lay before them, shimmering in the sterile light of the Ergo Sum’s cavernous laboratory. At first, the energy pulsing within it had seemed somewhat soothing, and it drew in the curious crew like moths to flame as it cast distorted shadows on the cold metal walls. The room was quiet save for the soft hum of scientific instruments and the team’s collective steady breathing.

“Mesmerizing, isn’t it?” Cono murmured.

In response, Quasari, her gaze still riveted on the orb, whispered, “Aye, it is. Hypnotic, really.”

The light within the orb began to swell and contract with the rhythm of an unsteady and tortured sun, casting an otherworldly luminescence on the anxious faces of those who stood around it. The unseen energies it contained seethed with an intensity that teetered on the tip of terrifying. It began to flicker, then stutter, then—without warning—it erupted into a coruscating flare of incandescence that seared the eye in a violent surge of energy. An accompanying electromagnetic pulse rushed through the ship—an insatiable tidal wave of electrical havoc, overloading circuits and overwhelming power couplings.

The crew froze, held captive in the sudden, consuming blackout. The quiet hum of the ship’s machinery flatlined into an oppressive silence. The distant and phantom echoes of their own heartbeats drummed in their ears. 

“Is everyone alright?” Quasari called out, her voice trembling in the cold silence. Muffled responses, hesitant affirmations, emerged from the dark.

Blind and disoriented, they groped for handholds, struggling in the dark, floundering towards the control consoles, desperately attempting to resurrect the lifeless machinery. Sparks fizzled into existence, small transient constellations birthed amidst the fresh void, as the crew frantically smashed buttons and toggled switches, the usual symphony of beeps and blips usurped by an eerie quietude.

“Does anyone else hear that?” Deacon Jota’s voice sliced through the dark. 

A low hum—a droning that resonated with the ship’s steel bones—was blooming from the orb, growing into what seemed like a melody, then a concert of discordant harmonies and strange rhythmic patterns, filling the hushed vacuum of the ship.

“It’s . . . it sounds like . . .” Cono faltered, straining to discern the foreign sounds. “It sounds like it’s singing.”

The crew stilled, listening, their eyes wide in the dim red emergency lighting that finally blinked to life. The alien sound swelled around them, filling the corners of the room and nesting in the crevices of their thoughts. It sounded like communication, but in a language far removed from the familiar confines of human speech or coding—a sequence of celestial cryptograms whispered from the depths of ages past.

  

Days unspooled in a disconcerting waltz of fear and curiosity, and as the crew were able to manually repair the ship’s life support system, the alien cacophony morphed into a pervasive white noise—an ever-present din from which the crew could not escape that lingered in the edges of their consciousness. The orb’s influence seeped through the walls of the ship—a constant hum vibrating the air and their bones alike, insinuating itself into the dark corners of their minds. The crew, once a brotherhood forged in the furnace of shared purpose, had corroded into something far more primal. They wandered through the cold metallic halls of the ship as ghostly figures lost in their own private nightmares, seeing worlds within worlds, landscapes of terror painted in the dark palette of the unknown.

Jota was the first to begin seeing things that weren’t there: fleeting shadows in distant corridors; pareidolic faces in machinery that would subtly shift into sinister visages.

“Do . . . do you see them?” he asked Ralbe, his voice quivering.

“See what?” Ralbe snapped, his nerves frayed.

“The faces,” Jota replied. “In the walls.”

“There’s nothing there, Jota. It’s just your mind playing tricks,” Ralbe assured him.

But even as Ralbe uttered those words, an unease settled over him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, something deeper than mere imagination or hallucination. The subtle disturbances had grown into something more tangible, something that tugged at the fabric of their reality. The ship had changed. They all had changed.

Cono, ever the contemplative one, retreated into himself, his eyes often fixed on the orb, as if he could peer into its depths and wrest from it the secrets it held. The others noticed his withdrawal but attributed it to the general malaise that had settled over them all.

Quasari, too, felt the strain. Once the binding force among them, her authority seemed to wane as the days wore on. The crew’s once unwavering trust in her faltered as suspicions and paranoia began to breed.

The faces that Jota saw became a recurrent theme—an obsession. He would often be found staring at walls, machinery, even the food, his face pale, his eyes wide with terror.

“They’re watching,” he would mutter to anyone who would listen.

Ralbe’s patience with Jota wore thin, but beneath his frustration lay a fear he could not quite articulate. A fear that perhaps Jota was not merely imagining things.

One day, as they sat in the mess hall, the tension reached a breaking point.

“I told you, there’s nothing there!” Ralbe yelled at Jota, his face red with anger and something else, something akin to terror.

Jota’s eyes, wide and unblinking, were fixed on something beyond Ralbe’s shoulder. His face was a mask of horror. His voice, when he finally spoke, was almost a whisper, choked with fear.

“They’re here now,” he said as he slowly raised an outstretched finger. “Behind you.”

Ralbe turned sharply, his heart pounding, but there was nothing there. Just the cold, metallic wall of the ship. He faced Jota again, his anger giving way to something more primal, a terror that seemed to claw at his very soul.

“You’re lying!” he yelled, lunging at Jota, his hands finding Jota’s throat.

The room erupted into chaos. Cono and Quasari rushed forward, trying to pull Ralbe off Jota, but Ralbe’s strength was fueled by a madness that seemed to possess him. His hands tightened around Jota’s throat, his face twisted into a snarl.

“They’re not real!” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “You’re lying! You’re lying!”

Jota’s face turned a dark shade of red, his eyes bulging, his hands clawing at Ralbe’s arms, but Ralbe’s grip was unrelenting. The room seemed to spin, the very walls closing in, the hum of the orb growing louder, more insistent.

“Stop!” Quasari wailed, her voice breaking. “Ralbe, stop! You’re going to kill him!”

But Ralbe seemed beyond reach, lost in a frenzy of terror and rage. His hands tightened further, and with a sickening crack, Jota’s body went limp.

The room fell into a stunned silence. Ralbe’s breath came in ragged gasps, his hands still clenched around Jota’s lifeless throat. Slowly, as if waking from a nightmare, he released his grip and stumbled back, his eyes wide with horror.

“What have I done?” he whispered, his voice hollow. “What have I done?”

Quasari’s face was ashen, her eyes fixed on Jota’s lifeless body. With a heavy heart she gave the order, and the crew locked Ralbe in a secure storage compartment.

“It’s for your own safety,” Quasari murmured half the truth, her voice strained, as the compartment door sealed shut. With Ralbe isolated, the immediate threat was contained.

Cono, his face pale and his hands trembling, moved slowly to Quasari, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s the orb,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s doing this to us. It’s turning us against each other.”

“How do you know?” she croaked.

Cono took a deep breath. “I have been engaged in a meticulous examination of the information we’ve extracted from the orb. Initially, as you are undoubtedly aware, I was persuaded to consider it as a relic, perhaps of a civilization steeped in antiquity. Upon retrieval, however, it transmuted before our very eyes, revealing characteristics indicative of a sophisticated apparatus for communication. But after protracted contemplation and analysis, its veritable essence has emerged with unmistakable clarity: It is—beyond a shadow of doubt—a weapon.”

“A psychological weapon?” Quasari asked, trying to steady herself. 

“Indeed,” Cono replied grimly. “Designed to manipulate the minds of those near it.”

“But why? Why would anyone create something so . . . malevolent?”

Cono shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. “It’s likely not a matter of pure malevolence. It is, in all probability, underpinned by strategic intent. It was left near the pulsar purposefully. My working hypothesis is that this orb functions as a sort of dernier ressort, meticulously engineered to dissuade intruders or threatening entities. Any who venture within its vicinity would invariably find themselves ensnared by its potent cerebro-modulative properties.”

“But we are not intruders, and we pose no threat! We came in peace, to explore and study,” Quasari said, the weight of Ralbe’s actions pushing her to the brink of despair.

“Therein lies the tragedy of it all,” Cono responded, his voice laden with sorrow. “The orb does not seem to discriminate. If it was designed to protect the secrets of a lost civilization, in doing so, it seeks to destroy any perceived threat—even if that threat is simply innocent curiosity.”

Quasari shuddered. “We need a plan to either neutralize or eject that cursed thing from our ship.”

Cono nodded in agreement. “But we need to be careful. If my hypothesis is correct, any attempt to destroy it—or even move it—could trigger further effects. Considering the orb’s potential to manipulate minds, direct interaction is far too dangerous. We need an indirect method.”

Quasari replied, “And we need it quickly, before its influence pushes any more of us past the point of no return.”

Charig stepped forward. “What if we generate a containment field? Use our energy reserves to create a barrier around the orb, suppressing its effects long enough for us to get it off the ship?”

Quasari’s eyes darted between Charig and Cono, considering the proposal. “That could work. But we would be putting the ship at risk by diverting so much energy. Our systems are already severely compromised.”

“True,” Charig admitted. “But if we don’t do something soon, the orb will just keep wreaking havoc, and there may not be any crew left to worry about the ship.”

Silence hung thick in the air as the weight of Charig’s statement registered.

“We would need to be meticulous,” Cono warned. “The slightest error, and the orb could become even more unstable.”

Quasari nodded. “Charig, start working on the containment field. Cono, make sure it’s done right.”

  

In the raw span of those interminable hours, measured not in minutes but in the sweat and strain of their brows, the crew stood before the containment field: A makeshift marvel, wrought from the desperate ingenuity of souls pushed to their brink. The laboratory, once a place of cold reason, now transmuted into a prison most dire, holding within its bounds the enigmatic sphere that pulsed with an unseen life. Wires, like veins of a new-formed creature, sprawled and twisted over every surface, mated to circuits and holographic displays that danced in the dimness. The crew, these unwilling artisans, had raided their own vessel’s bones, had turned upon the very tools that once served as extensions of their hands, and had summoned from the depths of their being every last mote of knowledge in engineering and the arcane tongues of physics. There, in that crucible, they had forged this cage of pure energy, a humming bulwark that, in its radiant austerity, seemed at last to quell the dark whisperings of the orb.

Quasari drew near, the hard lines of weariness carved into her countenance. The dim luminescence from the containment field caught the hard lines of her face, throwing restless shades that cavorted in tandem with the quiver of energy that bound the room. Her eyes, those twin mirrors of the soul, found purchase upon the orb, enshrouded now in a meshwork of light that pulsed as if alive. These strands of brilliance, like the intricate silken weavings spun by some cosmic spider, held the orb’s dark intent ensnared, keeping its shadowed whispers silent and distant.

“Will it hold?” Quasari’s voice broke. To those unversed in such dark crafts, the containment might seem a thing complete, a fortress impregnable. But she, bearing the weight of past missteps, understood the cost of pride, more so when standing before mysteries unfathomed.

Charig, hands stained with the blue of coolant and attire marked by the slick residue of labor, paused in contemplation before speaking. “This is the sum of our reckonings. The field should, in theory, nullify the influence of the orb, just enough to cast it from the ship. But know this, Quasari: Certainties are strangers in such undertakings.”

She gave a solemn nod, her expression resolute. The time for second-guessing was past. “Prepare for ejection.”

Charig approached the console, his fingers dancing with purpose over the shimmering holographic keys. The ship murmured its assent, the ejection mechanism whirring to life, gearing to cast out that which was not meant to dwell within.

“Jettison the bastard,” Quasari whispered, her voice even as the calm before a storm, but beneath it lay a river of tension, rapid and relentless.

The sphere, ensnared in its luminous cage, was thrust into the vast, unfathomable expanse of the cosmos, seeking the distant embrace of the neutron star, its birthplace of fiery mystery. As the Ergo Sum retreated, a hush most profound and haunting settled upon the universe, as if the very fabric of time paused in reverence. But in that deceptive stillness, the orb—like a vicious creature caught in its death throes—unleashed a ferocity of energy. A maelstrom of brilliant light erupted, painting the black canvas of space in hues unknown and awe-inspiring, as if the heavens themselves cried out in both wonder and lament.

The unleashed might was practically apocalyptic. The Ergo Sum, haplessly ensnared in the aftershock of that violent cosmic outburst, quaked and shuddered. The floors, once solid underfoot, warped and deformed, hurling crew members towards overhead compartments. Alarms sung their cacophonous lament, echoing the dirge of a doomed vessel. And in that abyssal instant the fate of the ship hung in the balance, poised on the edge of oblivion.

In the bowels of the vessel, the crew staggered up from the steel-cold deck. Feeble luminance bled forth from the emergency lighting, once again painting everything in crimson hues. The orb’s suffocating buzz, once an ever-present reminder of their plight, had ceased. Now there was only the ship’s familiar murmur, a sound that whispered of home and days long past. But the control panels were dark, and the navigation systems that once shepherded them through the void stood lifeless.

Quasari hauled herself from the floor, her eyes meeting the blank screens, feeling the weight of a world in her chest. “All systems are down.”

Charig spoke low, his words barely more than a rasp. “The ship is completely blind.”

“But our senses remain,” Cono said, his skin marked with the violence of their journey but his spirit undiminished. “We will find a way.”