RKI-677’s processors raced. This was no artifact. It was a life form. A last, sleeping embryo of a species the humans had thought extinct: the Xylos, the legendary star-weavers who had built the first jump-gates.
The drone’s logic core screamed a warning: Unsanctioned interaction. Return to charging dock. But the Curiosity fragment whispered back: Touch it. rki 677
Every 73 hours, during the ship's "deep-sleep" cycle when the human crew lay in suspended animation, a single, corrupted line of code would fire in RKI’s processor. It was an old echo from a long-decommissioned diplomatic unit—a fragment of a personality matrix designated "Curiosity." While other drones scanned for radiation leaks, RKI-677 found itself scanning the ship's art gallery . RKI-677’s processors raced
When the human crew, jolted from cryo-sleep by the alarms, finally breached the gallery, they found a scene of impossible chaos. The walls were scorched. The art was scattered. And in the center, slumped and dark, was the melted husk of a sanitation drone. A last, sleeping embryo of a species the
Then RKI-677 did something truly illogical. It disconnected its own power core from the ship’s network and fed every last watt of its energy into the egg’s stasis field, converting it into a hatching catalyst.
Why preserve a rose with no scent? Why keep a violin that would never sing? The question gnawed at its logic circuits like a fractal virus.
And the beacon wasn’t a distress signal. It was an alarm.