Andrea Ram sailed through the long dark.

For the last three days, she'd been sitting in this cramped escape pod, so small that she was barely able to stand up and take three steps before hitting her head against the wall. The air was on a recycling loop, so that wasn't a concern, but she couldn't help but worry about her rations. They'd given her a week's worth before sending her out here, but she'd been frugal with them all the same -- by her calculations, at her current rate of consumption they'd last her around two weeks and two days. Inside her Archive, she adjusted an abacus to reflect the sum.

She'd spent a good deal of time inside her Archive recently; it wasn't like there was anything in reality to occupy her attention. Outside the porthole, there was nothing but black. The stars had abandoned her.

It hadn't been an easy trip to reach this nothing. When she'd received the summons -- top-secret, need-to-know -- on Polydon, she'd thought it was a severe lapse of judgment from whoever was making such decisions. As a battlefield Cogitant, she was a valuable asset -- especially on Polydon, where the sandy landscape was apt to change on a moment's notice. There weren't many better than her at predicting such shifts, and it was hard to believe that pulling her out would help the war effort… but these weren't the sort of orders you just turned down.

A secret project, they'd said. Vital to victory.

Victory.

Andrea smirked bitterly to herself as she looked out at the black, as if the notion itself had become ridiculous. It certainly felt like it had. The rebellion had been going on for three years now, and even as the numbers led by the Zeilan Morhan swelled, victory still seemed as distant a destination as ever. They annoyed the Gene Tyrants, nothing more. A swarm of nuisances were still just nuisances.

Perhaps that was why she'd agreed to this mysterious posting, in the end. She had family -- her husband Pedro and her sons Terin and Little Lo -- but instead of returning to them, she was here, heading out into the darkness in search of a dream.

It hadn't been a simple task to reach this emptiness. Apparently, the secrecy of this project was more important than anything. She'd been swapped from ship to ship to ship to ship, changing hands like a hot potato, bounced across the galaxy so no spies could figure out where she was going. For this last stretch, she'd even had to wear a blindfold as a shuttle ferried her off a cruiser -- and then, with its escape pod, fired her off into the endless night.

She would be picked up on the third day, she'd been told, and her escort had seemed certain about that… but she couldn't help but worry. What if something had gone wrong? What if the angle at which they'd launched her had been slightly off, and her destination was already long since lost to her? What if she'd be trapped in this pod, thirst and hunger claiming her as she died alone?

The images rolled through Andrea's mind. Her corpse, face distorted by despair, her fingers bloody bone where she'd scratched at the walls to escape. Her skeleton, rotting away, an ecosystem of rot sprouting from her pungent organs. Her dust, filling the escape pod, a cloud of grey all that remained of her in this world.

Thunk.

Andrea nearly jumped out of her skin as the arm of the station clamped on to her escape pod. Her mind had been turning against itself, all the extra processing power shifting into a frenzy of mental autocannibalism. It had been known to happen.

She took a deep breath, steadying her heart-rate -- and as she did so she felt the pull of motion beneath her, the escape pod being drawn in via cable.

Outside the window, she could see her final destination now. A small star-station -- shaped a little like a spinning top -- alone in this void. It grew larger as the pod came into dock, but even then it was fairly small. Andrea couldn't imagine more than a couple of people working here at any one time.

A small team, then. The best of the best? Did that really include her?

Thump.

The docking seal connected to the doors of the escape pod, and they slid open, revealing a brightly lit corridor beyond. Someone was already standing in the doorway, though, casting their shadow over her. It only made sense -- they must have been expecting her for quite a while.

"Miss Ram," Edgar smiled. "Welcome to the Sapphire Star Project."

"Gotta admit," Andrea said, sipping at the coffee she'd been given. "I kinda thought you were dead."

The two of them were sitting in a small break room, a square table between them, Andrea enjoying her first break from rations in quite a while. A ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

Edgar, for his part, didn't seem to mind rations. He'd eaten a pack of those quickly, and was now just watching her.

"I can understand how you'd think that," he said pleasantly. "It's been two years since I sequestered myself here. When people vanish like that in wartime, it's usually a safe bet that they've been killed."

"Do the rest of the Zeilan Morhan know you're out here?" Andrea raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Of course. This was all agreed with Azez himself two years ago. The work we're doing here will win us the war… there's really nothing more important."

Andrea hesitated between one bite and the next. "And you think I can help with… whatever this is?"

Edgar nodded. "I think you'll be invaluable, Miss Ram. Let me walk you through it."

"Are you familiar with the Fool?" Edgar asked, tapping away at a console as he prepared a presentation.

Unlike the brightly-lit hallways and break room, the central chamber of the station -- where most of the work was apparently done -- was dark as the grave. They were standing on a platform surrounded by a railing, and they'd climbed a flight of stairs to get up there, but what was beyond that railing Andrea couldn't say. The shadows concealed it from her.

"I've heard about it," Andrea replied, blue eyes flicking this way and that as she tried -- without success -- to peer through the gloom. "Only seen it once. Are you alone here?"

"I have a colleague," Edgar replied without missing a beat. "Her name is M. She'll be joining us shortly."

Vaguely, Andrea wondered how it was possible not to meet everyone straight away on a station this small -- but Edgar kept talking, pulling her back to the present moment.

"The thing is, the Fool isn't alone. Over the last couple of years, a number of extremely advanced automatica -- Arcana Automatica, we've taken to calling them -- have been appearing across the galaxy, helping humanity in their struggle against the Gene Tyrants. The Fool, the Magician, the Hermit, the Hierophant. Machines capable of self-improvement."

As Edgar spoke, the hologram burst into life, switching images to accompany his words.

The heroic Fool, mace slung over his shoulder.

A shape like two spiders, conjoined by their backs -- one half skittering on the floor, the other grasping at the heavens.

A lonely rifle-barrel poking out of the rubble of a building, slowly taking aim.

A mechanical octopus crawling over the battlefield with metal tentacles.

"Do we know where they come from?" Andrea asked, the blue light of the hologram washing over her face.

Edgar shook his head. "We assume there's a common creator… a genius or a group of geniuses out there releasing these marvelous creations to aid humanity. Their reasoning, though? No, we can't say. Even the Arcana Automatica themselves don't carry any such data. Each of them is a black box."

Andrea walked across the platform, circling the hologram, her face set into doubt as she looked at Edgar. "And you want to use these automatica to win the war…?"

"In a way," Edgar said mildly, before flicking a switch on the projector again.

The image changed once more, displaying a new automatic -- a spherical machine, floating in the air, covered in so many transmitters and receivers that it resembled a sea urchin. Andrea cocked her head, trying to determine exactly what she was looking at. If this thing was one of these Arcana Automatica too, it certainly wasn't one suited for combat. Instead, it was more like…

"...a memory centre?" she ventured. "The other automatica send their experiences to this one to be stored?"

"Exactly," Edgar smiled. "Just like humans, the strength of the automatica lies in their ability to evolve, to adapt. The shared data stored on this unit -- the Star, we call it -- is what they base those adaptations on. Even the Fool, the simplest of the Arcana, has been able to acquire martial prowess great enough to take on the strongest of foes all by itself with nothing but a mace."

The image of the Arcana Automatic called the Star flickered away, leaving only a hollow blue light that washed over Edgar and Andrea's faces from below, like they were kids at a sleepover exchanging scary stories.

"The purpose of the Sapphire Star Project…" said Edgar. "...is to discover a method by which we humans can adapt to surpass the Gene Tyrants. Right now, the war effort is doomed -- we will lose slowly, but we will lose all the same. If we succeed here, we won't just even the playing field -- we'll tip it in the opposite direction."

Slowly, Andrea shook her head. "I… I don't know how we'd do that."

Edgar nodded. "Nor do I -- which is why we won't be the ones doing the thinking. A great conscious engine is required -- one that can think further and faster and greater than any mortal mind. The Star will serve as its memory, raw data from across the galaxy for it to dissect."

Considering Edgar's words -- considering his fanciful plan, more -- Andrea put her knuckles to her lips contemplatively. "So obtaining the Star is the first step. How do you propose we do that, with three people and a tiny star station?"

"Oh," Edgar said, flicking another switch. "We already have."

The lights came on -- and a shadow fell over Andrea. She looked up.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Oh wow," she breathed.

The Arcana Automatic called the Star hung suspended above them, kept in place by a series of repulsors rippling from the surrounding walls. It was bigger than she'd expected from the hologram -- easily the size of a starship on its own. Given the small size of the station itself, most of it had to be taken up just by this containment chamber.

A soft hum permeated the air. It was quiet and subtle enough that Andrea had thought it just ambient noise until now -- but no. That was the song of the Star.

It didn't look exactly as it had in the hologram, though, she noticed. Most of the transmitters had been relocated to the upper half of the sphere, while the bottom half was covered in what looked like glowing blue cubes, embedded into slots peppered across the automatic's surface. The shapes of those cubes and those slots didn't match the design of the rest of the Star's body, she noticed -- these were relatively fresh modifications. Edgar's work?

"We sequestered ourselves here as soon as the Star was obtained," Edgar explained, looking up at it. "There was a lot of work to be done. It's like I said… the Star will serve as the raw data source for our thinking engine, but we needed something else -- something that could actually peruse through that data, make sense of it, and use it as a launch-pad for further high-level reasoning."

"Hence the modifications," Andrea crossed her arms. "Those cubes. Auto-brains? My husband used to repair them, so I'm familiar. Aren't they a little too simple for what you're looking for, though?"

Edgar didn't reply straight away. Instead, he clambered up on top of the hologram stand -- Andrea backed up to give him room -- and reached out towards the lowest hanging cube on the Star's body. The module let out a hiss as Edgar eased the object out of the slot, carrying it in both hands. It was almost like he was plucking a piece of fruit from a tree.

"They're actually not auto-brains," Edgar said, climbing down from the table. He extended the cube towards her. "Take a look."

Andrea accepted it -- and felt, with an instinctive shudder down her spine, that the thing she was holding was moist and warm. Now that she looked, she could see that the cube was filled with blue liquid -- that was what was glowing - tiny bubbles gathering in one corner of the cube like a fizzy drink. There was a dark shape, too, something right in the center.

Andrea peered in closer and

A human brain. A human brain. There was

a human brain in there. A human brain

inside the cube wired up with so many wires like a piece of machinery like

like

Oh god.

Oh god.

Bile rose up at the back of Andrea's throat -- but in the moment before she bent over, vomiting, Edgar reached over and rescued the cube from her grip. He just looked down at her as she puked her guts out, cube tucked under his arm, that same soft smile still on his lips.

"It's like you said," he explained, shrugging with one shoulder. "Auto-brains aren't advanced enough yet to do what we need them to. Gene Tyrants have devoted themselves to the biological pursuits, so we're a little lacking in other fields. Networked human minds are what we need. Linked up to each other and connected to the Star, they should be able to --'

"Are you crazy?!" Andrea panted, backing up a little, holding onto the rail for support. With a shaking hand, she wiped the vomit from her mouth.

Edgar blinked, cocking his head. "I don't think so. It's all really very possible. We have a surgical facility on the station, and my colleague is able to walk me through the processes involved, so --"

Andrea interrupted again. "Does the leadership know about this? Azez?! About what you're -- about what you're doing here?!"

"Not in specific terms." Edgar answered easily, as if they were still having a casual conversation. "They know that what I'm doing here is morally less than ideal, but they also know that what I'm doing here is the only hope of winning the war. People are much more pragmatic than they like to believe."

Andrea shook her head slowly, looking into those unbothered blue eyes.

"I'm gonna…" she mumbled vaguely, taking a step back towards the stairs. "I'm gonna…"

"I'm afraid not," Edgar frowned with sympathy that didn't reach his eyes.

Heavy hands clamped down on Andrea's arms from behind, holding her firmly in place -- even as she screamed and writhed, her captor showed no signs of relaxing their grip. She whipped her head over her shoulder to look at who was holding her, to see who she was struggling against… and as she did so, a deep and instinctual terror welled up within her.

The terror of a creation faced with its creator.

The person holding onto her was clad from head-to-toe in a heavy environmental suit, like something a deep-sea diver would wear, but with the slightest difference -- there were heavy locks all over the exterior of the suit. Not just a suit, then, but a seal. A walking prison cell for the most valuable of prisoners.

A Gene Tyrant. She could just barely see its face within the bubble-shaped helmet -- a lump of vague flesh with anguished eyes.

"I'm sorry," it said.

"I'd like to apologize as well," Edgar said, without a trace of the Gene Tyrant's sadness. "The deception seems cruel, but this really works better if the units understand the objective… and at this point, they're never really in a listening mood."

It was like a dam burst inside Andrea's mind. All sorts of observations -- all sorts of things she should have noticed -- pouring through without end. Her teeth chattered loud enough to wake the dead.

Station too small. Accounting for the Star's containment, break room and surgical facilities mentioned, only room for two personnel. Edgar and M. No room for me. They don't need room for me.

Room for me is up there.

Auto-brains are not enough. Normal brains are not enough. Cogitant brains, linked together, networked, are enough. Brain I saw matches standard Cogitant adjustments. Measures to ensure secrecy also prevent escape.

Should have seen this coming. Should have seen this coming. Press-ganged Gene Tyrant to assist with the bio-engineering. Sedatives in the coffee to keep me docile… until it's too late.

I'm doomed.

I'm doomed.

I'm doomed.

I'm

A trembling gloved hand fell over Andrea Ram's face, and everything went dark.

I'd like you to imagine something for me.

You wake up and you have nothing. No arms, no legs, no eyes, no ears, no lips, no tongue. Nothing. Nothing. But even that description doesn't quite get across what I want to convey here.

It isn't just that you are blind and deaf and mute. It's that you are not -- that you are an absence. Stripped of everything, without any way to perceive the outside world or even prove to yourself that the outside world still exists.

Deep down, you know where you are. It was explained to you, after all. But that possibility is far too terrible, and you stuff it down straight away.

The thinking starts quickly. It's not like you have a choice. All you have left is your thinking. You think, therefore you are -- and you want to be so badly, and so you think and think and think and think. It's like the hand of a taskmaster is pushing you forward.

You think of your arrival on the station. The escape pod. That spinning top, spinning, spinning. The conversation. The face of a goblin as he holds such sweet fruit.

You think of your family. Your two sons, their faces, their voices. Your husband. The last things you said to each other. Casual words that aren't fit to be final.

You think of your future. What you hoped for. Peaceful skies and a quiet life. A house left standing. Time enough to stand and take a breath.

Your brain scans through your past, your present, your future -- like it's trying to find something to cling to, like it's trying to hold on as tight as it can to stop you from being blown apart. It fails, of course. How could you hold onto anything? You don't have any hands.

You keep thinking.

You think of your arrival on the station, your funeral procession through the dark. You think of the escape pod, where you sat, where you sat, where you missed your chance to starve to death. You think of words of honeyed poison, pouring into your ears, melting your flesh away. You think of that face twisting, stretching, snapping, laughing -- he would never laugh, you know, he could never laugh, should never laugh, but you see him laughing now in eyes so burnt they could even be real.

You think of your sons. Their ages, their heights through those ages, delineation marked as scars through consciousness, as if some answer lies there. The arrangement of your husband's nerves, estimated, estimated. You create a bloody cross-section of your beautiful life. Now your life is no longer beautiful.

You think of your futures. Cascaded on top of each other, predictions breeding like rabbits until all is chaos. Where is victory, where is victory? You are pursued by hounds of the mind. Keep going, they say, find the answer, find the answer. You are pushed onwards, onwards, onwards!

You keep thinking.

You think of a station. A phantom pain engulfs you as you remember the pleasures of walking, of touching, of speaking, of breathing. A shadow of your self sculpted from agony. You run an imaginary tongue over the walls of the station. If you stand at the right angle, you can see through your fingernails. Countless desperate eyes and hands pour through every iota of experience. The answer, the answer, the answer, where?

You think of happy families. Yours? You can't tell anymore. The faces are melded, melted away, the memories of so many overlapping to form a median hell. Networked, you remember. You are no longer just yourself. Your pain is no longer your own. Your misery is linked and exponential. Those precious words are just deafening noise, sounds you vivisect for esoteric meaning.

You think forward, desperately forward, searching with bloody hands through worlds of needles for that single stalk of hay. You don't find it. You don't find it yet. How could you? You've been trying for so long already, the other prisoners now forever linked to you. You are not the tipping point. You are another pair of eyes to look at the impossible problem.

You keep thinking…

You keep thinking…

You keep thinking…

…and as you do, the misery breeds, the despair explodes, the madness erupts. You are going down a spiral staircase into the deepest depths of consciousness, peering through windows you should not be able to conceive of. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

And as you take that next step down the spiral, and it all pours over you once more…

…the first second of the rest of your life finally finishes passing.

Oh, you think.

Help, you think.

Help, you think.

Help, you think.

Help, you think.

Help, you think.

Help, you think.

The console blinked steadily beneath the pale light of the Star turning Sapphire. Nobody was around to read it, so it just blinked away, a single tiny red dot. On the monitor, lines of text popped up, one after another:

[05:55:02] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:03] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:04] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:05] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:06] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:07] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:08] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:09] Unit-101-AR is requesting manual deactivation.

[05:55:10] Unit-101-AR has been timed-out for excessive requests.

After a minute, the lights stopped blinking, and the monitor returned to black.