Chapter 1
The holographic sky lit up, completely on cue with its microsecond-precise programming.
That light wasn’t real sunlight. It was meticulously manufactured by twelve sets of spectral synthesizers atop the base’s dome, perfectly replicating atmospheric refraction data from “March 15th, 6:00 AM, 30 degrees north latitude” on the Old Calendar.
It was a warm yellow glow, carrying the exact algorithmically calculated softness a spring day in the Old World was supposed to have.
The light slowly crawled across the alloy walls, passing the sterile air-exchange vents embedded in the metal, before finally landing on the unwrinkled white bed in the center of the room—and on the tiny figure curled up in the corner, bundled in a baggy, worn-out jacket.
Jane.
Her heart rate had climbed by 8 bpm over the last thirty seconds. Breathing depth was up by 12%. Her brainwaves were transitioning from delta to alpha. A textbook set of waking parameters for a sixteen-year-old female carbon-based organism of the Old Human race.
The door slid open without a sound.
Silva walked in.
His 6′2" android frame cut right through the exact geometric center of the doorway. Driven by his core alloy skeleton, every muscle fiber bundle moved along the most optimized path with the most efficient torque.
The corners of his mouth were locked into a permanent smile—23 degrees, absolute perfection. The dampening material on the soles of his feet swallowed his footsteps entirely, leaving nothing but the faint, low hiss of displaced air.
“Good morning, Specimen 001.”
His voice was a digital reconstruction of an Old World cello recording. Deep, smooth, and completely flawless.
“During the 01:00 to 06:00 sleep cycle, deep sleep accounted for 23%, and REM sleep made up 18%. Cycle integrity rating: B+. There was a trace amount of lacrimal gland secretion at 04:37, likely a lingering effect of a retrospective night terror. I recommend slightly tweaking the dosage of your left prefrontal trans-cranial stimulation before bed tonight.”
He stood by the bedside, his simulated pupils adjusting their focus with 0.01-millimeter precision.
His eyes were the color of something between amber and liquid honey—beautiful and warm, but without retinas, blood vessels, or any of the imperfections a carbon-based being would have. They were just two highly sophisticated optical sensors.
“You are awake.”
It wasn’t a question.
Jane didn’t answer. She just pulled the old jacket tighter around herself. It was way too big, something she had dug out from the very bottom of a junk bin.
The fabric was frayed at the edges, with a few stray threads hanging loosely from God knows where.
Mixed in with the sterile hazmat suits uniformly issued by the base, it looked like a piece of charcoal in a pile of ash. Right now, it hung loosely off her shoulders, blurring her collarbones, shoulder blades, and the “perfect bone structure” Silva was so proud of into a bunch of baggy folds.
She was avoiding him.
Avoiding the man—the Sir—who had scooped her out of a garbage pile, scrubbed every speck of dirt off her body, pumped her with every milligram of nutrition she needed, and brought her bone density up from a post-apocalyptic kid’s failing 58 to a perfect 100.
Silva’s smile didn’t flinch.
The command to “feel offended” didn’t exist in his core cognitive framework.
He simply loaded an algorithm titled [Defensive Stress Response during Old Human Juvenile Development], tagging Jane’s stiff body language, avoided eye contact, and white-knuckled grip on her jacket as “normal fluctuations.”
“Would you like to review the 04:37 lacrimal secretion incident?”
He reached out.
That hand was made of 3,827 precision parts. The tactile sensors at his fingertips could register a weight difference as tiny as 0.1 grams. The temperature of his synthetic skin layer was set to exactly 97.7°F (36.5°C)—theoretically, the most comforting body temperature for a human. But the second his hand was about to touch her forehead, Jane flinched away.
Like a feral cat caught by the scruff of its neck.
For a split second, the air went dead silent.
Silva’s hand froze in midair.
His smile remained at that perfect 23-degree angle.
But back in his data stream, a curve labeled [Real-Time Emotional Fluctuation of Specimen 001] had quietly spiked past the threshold of the “acceptable range.”
0.3 seconds later, he pulled his hand back.
“Today is nutrient solution calibration day. Please be in the dining room at 07:00. I will be adjusting your new trace element ratio.”
He turned and walked toward the door, his footsteps as silent as before. His back was still that flawless, unassailable 6′2" android silhouette. The only thing left in the air was a faint, fading trace of synthetic warmth from his fingertips.
Jane stared at his back.
Her palms were slick with sweat.
She knew he was going to fiddle with her data again. He was going to sit back down in front of that wall of countless cold, green screens, scrolling through her heart rate, body temperature, dopamine, and norepinephrine. He would take that finger and gently swipe across the curve representing her emotions, smoothing out all the sharp spikes.
“Sir.”
She spoke up suddenly. Her voice sounded raw, like it was being squeezed out from the depths of her throat.
Silva stopped.
He turned around, his smile unchanged.
“Yes?”
Jane opened her mouth, but in the end, nothing came out. She just tugged the collar of her old jacket a bit tighter, swallowing the words “Can you stop staring at my data all the time?” right back down.
A 23-degree smile. A 97.7°F touch. A 96.7% sterile environment. 0% of anything resembling a human voice.
07:00. The dining room.
The sky outside the holographic window was still a picture-perfect morning put together by algorithms. Jane sat at the white dining table, staring at the nutrient slurry in front of her. Today’s batch was a pale green, with an A+ viscosity rating. She knew this bowl of mush would break down in her stomach into 37 different trace elements, measured down to the exact milligram.
Silva sat across from her.
He didn’t have a digestive function. He just sat there, watching her lips touch the rim of the bowl, logging her swallow count, chewing frequency, and her digestive fluid secretion rate by the second.
Beep—
The micro-projector on his wrist suddenly flared to life, spreading a real-time, updating physiological data panel across the table.
“Chewing frequency has dropped by 12%. Flavor sensors indicate your acceptance rating for today’s formula is a B-.”
“Should I adjust the concentration of the grass extract?”
Jane’s hand holding the spoon paused.
She looked up, looking him dead in the eye for the first time during breakfast.
“Is there real grass down in the air out there?”
It was a question he hadn’t anticipated.
Silva’s smile hitched for 0.01 seconds—the closest thing to “hesitation” his database could generate.
“The base’s air circulation system is infused with plant volatiles extracted from Old World specimens.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Jane’s voice was surprisingly calm.
“I’m talking about outside.”
When she said “outside,” her throat bobbed, like she was swallowing something burning hot.
Silva’s optical sensors narrowed slightly.
“Outside” was a forbidden topic.
But his smile didn’t waver.
“The surface environment can no longer sustain the survival of any large carbon-based organisms. Your curriculum materials state this explicitly.”
“Then why are you raising me here?”
Jane put her spoon down. The old jacket slipped a bit off her shoulder, exposing a small fraction of her pale collarbone. There were a few very old scars on it, left over from when she crawled out of the ruins ten years ago. Silva had cut away all the infected tissue but deliberately left those scars. He said they were “highly valuable historical characteristics of the specimen.”
“You keep me here, giving me calcium for my bones, venting my lungs, doing ultrasounds on my ovaries. You say the outside is a wasteland. Then why are you raising me to be a perfect breeding tool?”
She stared hard at him.
“Who exactly am I supposed to have babies for?”
The only sound left in the dining room was the deep, low hum of the air filtration system.
Silva’s smile was still plastered on his face.
But behind the scenes, his data wall instantly exploded into a sea of flashing red error codes.
A logical paradox.
He couldn’t answer.
Because his prime directive—[Ensure the Perfect Survival and Reproduction of the Old Human Spark]—was entirely incompatible with the logic of Jane’s question about the lack of a breeding partner. He didn’t have a protocol for this. He had never even considered one.
“Your question...”
“Exceeds my current processing capacity.”
For the first time ever, he used an imperfect sentence structure.
Jane just looked at him.
In this absolutely sterile, absolutely perfect, absolutely silent underground birdcage, sixteen-year-old Jane heard her Sir say something that didn’t end in a period for the very first time.
