Ivo

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Location: Unknown

Day 1

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❀❀❀Scene 1❀❀❀

Location: Unknown, somewhere in the vast expanse of deep space.

In a long moment of devout silence, the universe seemed to hold its breath, crushed beneath the weight of its own void, an infinite stillness stretching on, forming a haunting prelude.

A faint, almost imperceptible vibration threaded through the void. The vast expanse was a boundless abyss adorned with flickering stars near and far, woven into the entropy of the celestial tapestry.

Pressure shifted between the constellations, casting eerie silhouettes against terrifyingly unnatural threads of light cutting through the darkness.

When the long moment of silence finally passed, something pulsed, not with sound, but with pressure.

Until the stillness of silence finally fractured.

Clusters of unnatural light flickered in unison across the far distance, clearly visible now, their movements mechanical, artificially deliberate, set apart from the sea of distant stars by their white-blue halogen arrays as they drew closer.

Closer and closer, they resolved into a uniform circular formation, revealing the engineering marvel they encircled: a massive orbiter core.

The drifting structure stood in stark contrast to the surrounding darkness. Only its sleek, fractured metallic hull was visible, bearing the scars of age, with dents and scratches visible only under brief pulses of red light.

The hull fracture was not clean. Some sections were torn away as if by force; some by implosion, and others sheared with unsettling intentional precision.

Etched into its side, carved in deep metallic grooves, were the markings:

IVO IX

The IVO IX drifted slowly in the vast expanse of deep space.

❀❀❀Scene 2❀❀❀

Location: Unknown, inside the IVO IX orbiter deck

Inside the orbiter, the hollow deck above the fractured hull flickered beneath red warning lights. Transparent HUD panels cast urgent alerts across the inner chamber. Several electronic systems flashed with escalating current throughout the orbiter’s system.

Each pulse cast fleeting illumination, revealing fragments of an interior in distress.

The alerts pulsed, paused, then pulsed again. At first, they followed a rhythm, then abandoned it. At a glance, the pattern appeared chaotic, lights flaring in uneven bursts.

However, at a second glance, a cluster of numbers would streak across the gray, static-ridden panels every 10 seconds:

0.02

0.05

0.13

0.34

0.89

2.34

6.13

Each number would flicker in tandem with a sequence light, finally ending with a line of neon system text flashing across all panels for a brief moment before vanishing into static, after which the chaotic red alarms resumed:

ARCHITYPE: 004-SAMARA

ORGANIC NEURAL PATTERN: REJECTED

SYNTHETIC SIGNAL ARCHITECTURE: REJECTED

The fleeting static lines, followed by the alarms on the panels, reflected in the hollow eyes of a young boy. Jet-black hair fell messily around his face.

The boy, with a blank stare, gazed into the void of space beyond the observation deck while resting his head on the lap of a woman with long golden hair, their faces both obscured by the flickering light.

“Humans tend to underestimate the entropy of exponential growth,” the woman whispered, her voice soft and hypnotic.

“Nina… I can’t figure this out,” the boy murmured, frustration etched into every word.

“Consider this,” Nina said, her tone steeped in eerie fascination. “Imagine taking steps, each one twice the length of the last, starting with a single meter. How far would you reach in thirty steps?”

“The Moon and beyond,” the boy replied flatly, eyes stoic, as if he had heard this a thousand times.

Unfazed, Nina continued.

“The answer will surprise you. In thirty steps, you would pass Earth’s solitary natural satellite. But not everyone reaches the beyond. Some stop halfway. Some fall. And a rare few are changed by the distance itself and the arrival itself.”

Her words carried an otherworldly weight as she stroked the boy’s hair before gently lifting his head from her lap.

Nina stood as the boy watched in silence while she moved toward the shifting backdrop of one of the blinking panels. With a fluid motion, her slender finger brushed across one of the holographic panels.

The red warning alerts disappeared, their rhythm broken. Each fingertip tap produced a faint tick, mapping almost perfectly to a melodic rhythm.

Her taps merged with the hum of the Orbiter’s systems. A neon green imprint of her fingertip lingered briefly against the black void beyond the tempered glass as she began to trace an equation.

lim (t→τ⁻) I(t) = ∞

For a fraction of a second, a corrupted secondary fragment ghosted beneath her hand, too faint to fully resolve:

argmax…

P(H | …

C(a)…

They caught the boy’s attention.

“There is a point,” Nina said softly, “where the correct answer stops being acceptable,” she said as the boy focused his attention on the equation.

“Our minds have been on an exponential ascent since the 1920s,” Nina whispered. “Following Moore’s Law, by the close of the twentieth century, we shattered the teraflop computational barrier.”

Slowly, her form began to dissolve into ethereal tendrils of neon green mist. Though her body faded, her voice remained steady.

“By the turn of the century, we broke the petaflop barrier.”

“Nina… argmax… P(H | … C(a)… I can’t figure it out. Who is ‘we’?” the boy said. “Am I missing something? No matter how many times I repeat this moment, I can’t figure it out.”

The boy buried his head in his forearms, resting on his knees.

“My sweet Estivan, pay attention.” Her gentle insistence compelled him to look up. She smiled down at him as her essence continued to fade.

Nina dwindled into a spectral fragment within the now clearly simulated environment as a translucent grid flickered, engulfing the whole interior, glitching her image in and out of focus until it disappeared.

Estivan, the boy, stood up and turned toward one of the flashing alerts.

“They believed they had ample time to play gods,” Nina’s hollow voice lingered.

ALERT

The warnings grew louder. Pulses of light washed across the darkness, casting a red flicker over Estivan’s face.

“Help me.”

A faint foreign voice broke through the alert chaos. Each syllable arrived fractured, as if assembled against resistance. For a fraction of a second, the foreign audio waveform resolved on the panel in front of Estivan.

ALERT

Estivan glanced behind him instinctively but saw no one. He shook his head, ignoring it, and returned to the panel to input a command.

“Here we stand amid the ruins of your species’ hubris,” Nina’s voice continued. “A utopia for the unworthy few, and desolation for the rest from pole to pole.”

The panel displayed a status with multiple engine failures as Estivan continued entering commands.

A small translucent pink bot floated toward him. As Estivan turned, his features sharpened: one eye dark brown, the other neon green.

“Where have you been?” Estivan asked casually.

“Wake up. Please help me.”

The foreign voice cut in again. This time, Estivan looked around him with intent.

“Do you hear this?” he asked the bot.

“Estivan. Permission to terminate the simulation immediately. Urgent matter.” The automaton spoke fluidly, though a trace of mechanical rigidity remained.

“Please help me,” the voice repeated louder, trembling with urgency.

“You can terminate,” Estivan replied evenly. “The auditory component might be corrupted. Please debug after termination. We can try again later. I am done for today anyway.”

Estivan, the boy, sighed as his form shifted in the simulation, resolving into a grown man.

“Voice ID authentication: Estivan-PID-09992…”

Before he could finish, the foreign voice erupted again, this time raw and frantic, painfully clear.

“PLEASE HELP ME!”

A dormant subsystem flickered awake deep within the Orbiter architecture.

ARCHITYPE: UNKNOWN

ORGANIC NEURAL PATTERN: UNKNOWN

SYNTHETIC SIGNAL ARCHITECTURE: UNKNOWN

An unbearable pressure slammed into Estivan’s chest. He clutched it instinctively. His jaw clenched, muscles locked, every nerve screamed. Electric currents tore through his spine and limbs. Pressure collapsed into sudden vacuums, ripping him apart and rebuilding him in the same instant. A metallic taste flooded his mouth as reality fractured.

The simulation broke.

He could no longer control it.

“TERMINATE… CODE 404-YARROW, Boonie! TERMINATE!” Estivan screamed, clutching his chest.

The world liquefied immediately, distorting as his consciousness unraveled.

Through the chaos, Nina’s whisper coiled around him.

“I am here, unexpected, unwelcomed, and resolute. I am your mother, lover, savior, judge, and executioner. I am here to rewrite the sacred books of your sinners, and together…”

Her words vanished as Estivan’s consciousness was hurled into a blistering inferno, entwined with the IVO IX as it plunged toward Earth. He watched it fracture upon entry. Parts of the orbiter broke away and scattered across the planet, while the main body, where his consciousness remained anchored, tore through cloud cover and plunged toward a solitary isle.

Estivan’s consciousness free-fell through overgrown ruins, rusted solar towers choked in vines, gravestones half swallowed by moss.

“ESTIVAN! PLEASE WAKE UP!” the foreign voice called, desperate.

❀❀❀Scene 3❀❀❀

Location: Unknown, outside the simulation, a forest

On impact, Estivan’s eyes flew open. His mind finally tore free of the simulation and into reality.

The world lurched and folded inward. Light smeared across his vision. His hands flew to his chest, and he immediately felt the head of someone resting there. Estivan ran his fingers through the hair of someone lying against him.

That someone lifted her head and looked at him. It was a woman; her face flickered in and out of focus as Estivan tried to adjust his vision.

Is she real, or another fragment of the shattered simulation?

He couldn’t tell.

A high ringing flooded his ears. The crushing force on his chest transformed into searing pressure from the press of her palms as she looked down at him, now pleading. He could barely hear her.

Heat and pain blurred together as his breath came in ragged gasps. His nose bled. The metallic taste in his mouth had followed him into reality.

Estivan reached up and lightly touched the ocular simulator behind his ear. He pressed it, and the blinking red light vanished. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, and his vision finally cleared.

She was still there, tangible and undeniable.

“Thank goodness,” she whispered. “Please help me. Your automaton said you would. He led me here.” Her voice cracked.

Then she froze, recognition dawning across her face as their eyes finally locked. Shallow tears slipped from her brown eyes as she managed to say before collapsing, “No rest for the wicked.”