AUDITOR: ZYD, KY'RELL, V'LAR
LOCATION: EARTH - ECLIPTIC PLANE
SUBJECT: OBJECT 77-DELTA-ATLAS // PERIHELION PASSAGE
STATUS: INVESTIGATION PIVOT
The Aethel thrusters fell silent, the void black nodules that dotted the hull ceased their symphony. Free once Earth's gravity well, the ship was allowed to drift into the void, as if hopeful that the next gravity well to claim it would pull it away from the cloud of debris and the imprisoned world it orbited.
The silence on the bridge should have been a relief. Instead, it was a vacuum that sucked the oxygen out of the room. V'lar stood at his workstation, eyes fixed on the simulation running on his screen. His throat tightened, and his mandibles clacked in an ancient rhythm. It was a sharp, chitinous sound—click-click-hiss—that vibrated through the quiet deck. On a world where the air was rich and dense, the tribe would have heard the sound many groves over. They would have rushed to his aid. Here, in the sterile air of the Aethel, it sounded like a weapon malfunction.
Ky'rell willed the Aethel into the black and approached V'lar slowly, holding his palms flat and his arms stretched back. The gesture caught V’lar’s panicked gaze "V'lar, audit your surroundings, identify the threat," he said, moving quickly to help his crew overcome his biology. "Where is it, V'lar? We are out of the debris cloud, the ship is safe."
The noise turned from the pounding of the war drum to the tapping of a glass. V'lar blinked, his mind slowing. He breathed a focusing breath. "There is no threat..." He stammered, returning to calm. "Commander, thank you."
Ky'rell eased his posture, catching a glimpse of Zyd still hovering over the Hololith, eyes fixed on V'lar while her fingers traced data lines beneath Earth's sea. She didn't look up. She was watching a symphony unfold on Earth as the global network digested the comet event
"I understand V'lar, the investigation of Earth is challenging and exciting. Having the object appearing only adds to the challenge," Ky'rell said, giving him an opportunity to recover.
‘Call it stress. Call it fatigue. Just don't call it doubt. Not here, not on my ship.’ The thought scrolled through Ky’rell’s thoughts.
V'lar straightened and planted himself on the deck. He looked at the Commander, and then at the receding blue marble on the screen. "Challenging, yes. But Ky'rell, they are starving," he gestured to the hololith.
"That is speculation, V'lar. The evidence points to a natural cycle. We do not interfere, not like this," Ky'rell replied.
"This isn't a Tier 0.9 civilization struggling against cosmic forces," V'lar snapped. The panic was gone, replaced by a cold, vibrating anger. "This is a civilization being metabolized. There is no evidence to show us it is natural.”
V'lar brought up the data from Earth." "We are treating this as a standard investigation. We look for resource scarcity, we look for war, we look for technological bottlenecks. But that is not what is happening here, Commander. The subject is not failing the test. The subject is being sabotaged. The XPSU sent the Aethel here when the probe failed to categorize that world."
“Commander, the situation on Earth. It is an outlier; we have no basis for comparison.” He continued.
Ky'rell moved back to the center of the bridge. "Sabotage implies an external actor. We have detected no rival fleets. No uplifting interference. What is happening here is unique, yes. It is, however, native to this biosphere."
“This is why we are here, V’lar.”
"The blockade is internal," V'lar countered. "The predation, this algorithmic system they have built, it acts as an autoimmune disorder. Every time the species identifies a path to survival. Fusion, expansion, or in this case, the capture of a resource-rich comet, the System identifies the change as Instability. It triggers a defence mechanism. It floods the Noosphere with noise. It turns the survival instinct into content."
V'lar pointed a manipulator claw at the simulation he had been hiding. "The humans didn't miss the comet because they were incapable. They missed it because they were sedated. And now, we are about to watch the cure escape into the cosmos."
"He is correct about the mechanism," Zyd spoke up. She turned from her console, her eyes were cold and tired. “You both are...V’lar, you are correct, they are being caged. Never before have we seen predation, waste or efficiency on this level. We cannot interfere, but we can let the experiment run.”
"You agree with him?" Ky'rell asked, turning to find Zyd peering at him from the hololith.
"I agree that the System is stuck in a local maximum," Zyd corrected. "The Predator remains hidden. It feeds at every opportunity…it is accumulating resources. If we shatter the comet, we introduce a high-calorie physical asset into the environment. The Predator will be forced to adapt; the host's resource accumulation drive will force them to the stars.”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Earth will be forced to build ships instead of trinkets. It forces the system to evolve."
“An experiment of this nature violates our directive and is not how the XPSU conducts studies Zyd. To add unregulated energy to a system we do not understand….” Ky’rell planted the thought and trusted her to follow the logic.
“Would…not be thermodynamically sound,” Zyd concluded. But it would be the most efficient path, she thought.
“V’lar, show us what you were working on.” Ky’rell said, head tilting towards Zyd in approval. He swiped at the hololith to clear the data.
V'lar hesitated, then keyed the command. The simulation on his screen expanded to the main Hololith. It showed Object 77-Delta approaching the sun.
- Vector: 0.09 AU.
- Action: A single Gravimetric Pulse (400 Newtons).
- Result: The comet doesn't explode. It unzips.
"It is a nudge, Commander," V'lar pleaded. "At Perihelion, the core is fragile. If we tap it, just once, in the right place, it fractures. It releases a cloud of platinum and iridium dust 26,000 kilometres wide. A permanent ring. A golden scar in the night sky."
"They can't filter that out, Ky'rell," V'lar whispered. "The Algorithm can hide a rock. It can't hide a ring that changes the colour of the sunset. If we do this, it breaks the cycle. We force them to look up."
Ky'rell looked at the simulation. It was brilliant. It was elegant. And it was a violation of everything they stood for.
"You are talking about assassinating an ancient celestial body to conduct a sociological experiment," Ky'rell said, his voice low.
“He has proposed a stimulant experiment, providing the subject stimulus and reward with high-density nutrients using environmental resources….V’lar this is noteworthy,” Zyd said, watching an accretion disc form around the inner system in the hololith.
"No," Ky'rell corrected. "You are talking about throwing this system into chaos. We are Auditors, V'lar. We watch the fire. We do not pour water on it. And we certainly do not sacrifice celestial bodies at the altar of a hungry god.”
He leaned in close to V'lar. “You cannot, we cannot predict what will happen V’lar. For all you know the fallout will case the trap orbiting their sky to snap shut. We may doom them to never again explore the void….Zyd, V’lar. Look at the data, consider our directive. We cannot get involved.”
“I’m taking us in to survey Object-77, we should take this opportunity to update the Federation Archives. That is all, the 4th planet will wait.” Ky’rell finished.
V'lar looked at the blank screen. He looked at the Commander. The stress, the clacking of the mandibles, was gone. It was replaced by something far more dangerous: Resolve.
"Understood, Commander," V'lar said softly.
"Resume standard monitoring," Ky'rell ordered, forcing his fingers to unwind as he envisioned a golden disc of infinite value feeding a starving planet….and waking something unseen in the cosmos.
The Aethel drifted through the emptiness, the dark black nodules along its hull were silent for they had no target. When the ship was finally given direction, the many black mechanisms pawed at the fabric of reality. The Gravimetric Drive accumulated power, and with it, influence over reality. The Aethel did not fly through space; it scurried and leapt. Each node extended great ethereal legs outward to pluck at the Higgs field. They pushed and clawed, urging the ship into movement and out of Earth's gravity well. In the vastness of space the Aethel’s power reserves began to overflow, the Gravimetric Drive reached out and turned atom into motion. It reached forward into the void, each limb finding purchase, as the drive turned inwards, modifying how the atoms of within interacted with the Higgs Field. The ships diminished as the Aethel negotiated with reality. For a critical moment the ship became invisible to the universe, its matter no longer influenced by space-time. Limbs coiled in anticipation, the moment the rules that governed mass released its grip on the Aethel it darted towards its target in a blur of motion. The acceleration was instant and massive, yet there was no mass to react. It was a leap of faith fueled by eons of refinement and paid with momentum.
The Aethel slowly became massive once more as the crew braced for the effects of the slow bleed of acceleration, banked and smoothed out over time. Where acceleration occured in the blink of an eye, though the effects would linger.
Bending the fundamentals of reality carried a tax. The crew would pay for it with time.
The Aethel was an arrow flying through the void, but with its multitudinous ethereal limbs extended, it made slight adjustments. Using its momentum and its anchor hold on reality to navigate the cosmos in great arcs and leaps.
The Aethel continued its leaping dance toward the sun. On the bridge, the three crew members sat in their pools of light, separated by the dark. Zyd looked at her own console. She saw a flicker of data, a remnant of the Earth's feed. She filed it for later review. But as she did, she looked at V'lar's back. He had wanted to extend a lifeline to the emerging species and ease humanity's blight.
Ky’rell was right; they were young and still sought to master their environment…but that too was in its infancy.
"The Scurry."
We often imagine spaceships as naval vessels—graceful, gliding giants. But the Aethel is not a boat; it is a mechanism. In this Log, we see how it truly moves. It doesn't just burn fuel; it paws at the fabric of reality. It extends ethereal legs to pluck at the Higgs field that permeates all of space-time, giving mass to every atom and every subatomic particle. Scurrying through the void like a spider across a web. When they accelerate, they don't fly—they hunt for traction.
LOG 15.0 // INERTIAL DEBT. The Aethel arrives at the Sun. The debate is over. The heat is rising. The crew watches to see if the Universe is kind enough to break the rock itself or if it demands a sacrifice.
It isn't enough to hope for better, to be human is to strive for a better tomorrow. If you are enjoying the story, follow along.