The darkness was not gradual. It was absolute.
One moment, the observation deck was filled with the gray, sickly light of the Trex and the chaotic noise of three thousand terrified primates. The next, P-TR33K commanded the polarization of the hull, and the room plunged into a void.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The crying stopped. The arguments over food rations ceased. The chaotic vibration of human panic vanished, replaced by a suffocating silence.
P-TR33K stood on the upper gantry, his sensors sweeping the crowd below. In the dark, the humans were huddled masses of heat, shivering against the cold of the ship. They were looking up, waiting for the voice of their savior, or the hand of the executioner.
< Translation Matrix: Online, > the system chimed.
P-TR33K activated the speakers. He did not use his own synthesized voice; he used the Hive’s diplomatic archive… a voice that hadn't been used in ten millennia.
“Attention,” the voice boomed. It sounded rusty, distorted, like a machine trying to remember a dream. “Life... is rare in the universe.”
Below, the humans flinched. They grabbed each.
“Just as we found you,” the ancient AI voice intoned, “destruction laid in your wake. We tried... to save you.”
< Visuals, > P-TR33K commanded.
He turned the massive walls of the room into screens.
On the left, Earth appeared. It hung in the blackness, perfect and blue and swirling with clouds. It was so high-definition, so real, that the humans leaned forward, a collective gasp rippling through the dark. They thought, for a fraction of a second, that they were looking out a window.
Then, the red line appeared.
“Trajectory,” the voice said.
An object slid into the frame.
“Asteroid,” the voice clarified.
Green flashes erupted from the edge of the screen the Nexus defense grid firing, desperate to divert the mass. The beams struck the object.
“We tried to deflect”
The line bent.
For one heartbeat, the room held its breath.
It hit the moon instead.
The impact was silent on the screen, but the physics were deafening to the soul. The moon did not just break; it shattered. It turned from a solid sphere into a spray of glowing debris.
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Gravity took over. The largest fragment… a continent-sized slab of lunar rock… fell towards Earth.
And struck it.
The oceans flashed to steam. The atmosphere ignited. The crust cracked open like a dropped egg, glowing seams of magma tearing through the continents.
The humans made a sound then.
It wasn't a scream. It was a wail. A single, rising, harmonic vibration of pure loss that did not belong to any one throat. It belonged to the species.
On the right wall, P-TR33K displayed the data. A field of millions of white dots… consciousness signatures… turning red.
Red. Red. Red.
The map of their world became a map of their death. The avalanche of loss was too fast for the human mind to process, but the counter made it real.
Survivors: 13,247. Decreasing rapidly.
The room collapsed. Bodies sank to the floor. The wail fractured into individual sobs, a cacophony of broken things.
< Emotional levels critical, > a Vector transmitted from the safety of the bridge. < They will break. Prepare for riot control. >
P-TR33K watched. < Wait. >
And then, something changed.
They began to sing.
It was thin at first. Untrained and chaotic.
“Row me over...”
Another voice joined it. Then another. Then ten. Then a hundred.
“Row me through...”
P-TR33K searched the archive. It was a funeral hymn. An illogical response. They should be fighting. They should be screaming. Instead, they were building a structure out of sound.
“The water is wide...”
The gray energy of terror that had choked the room began to shift. It warmed. It condensed. It turned into something that registered on P-TR33K ’s sensors as physical pressure.
< Alert: Unknown Energy Signature. > < Wavelength: Golden. > < Intensity: Rising. >
The humans moved. Not randomly, but with purpose. They gathered their dead… the ones wrapped in the white cloth… and carried them to the wall, laying them down with a gentleness that defied the horror of their situation.
A small human female walked to the pile. She placed her hand on a wrapped body.
The energy flared.
It hit P-TR33K like a solar wind. It wasn't radiation; it was connection. It was the raw, unadulterated power of a species refusing to let go.
< What is this? > the Hive demanded, a thousand minds recoiling in confusion. < It is burning the sensors! P-TR33K , retreat! >
P-TR33K stepped closer to the glow.
Music.
Near the front, a woman was holding a dying woman. Her hands were shaking, but she didn't let go. She pressed her forehead to the dying woman’s temple.
It erupted from them… a golden lattice of light that the humans didn’t react to. They didn’t deem to see their energy. It connected the woman to the dying woman, the singer to the listener, and to everyone else in the room.
It was the energy the Nexus had sacrificed eons ago to become immortal. They had traded this chaos for silence.
< Unit P-TR33K ! > the Vector screamed in his mind. < Contamination levels are critical! Your avatar is compromised! Keep your seals intact! >
P-TR33K looked at the golden light washing over the room. He looked at the nurse, who was stronger in her grief than the Nexus was in its logic.
He reached up to his neck.
< Do not! > the Hive commanded. < You will be infected! >
Hiss.
The helmet released. He lifted it off his head and set it on the gantry railing.
For the first time in three thousand years, he breathed air that had not been scrubbed. It smelled of sweat and ozone and sickness.
And then the energy hit him.
It didn't hurt. It filled him. It flooded his ancient, biological nervous system with a density of feeling that nearly knocked him to his knees. It was grief, yes, but it was braided with love. It was fear held in place by hands.
He stood there, breathing in the tragedy of the human race, and feeling the golden warmth of their souls knitting together in the dark.
< Status report? > the Hive mesmerized.
P-TR33K looked down at the woman in front, who had just closed the eyes of the woman in her arms.
He answered with the only truth that mattered.
< Status: Learning. >
A draft of the music video for the crossing can be seen here