The Slop Chef

Hear of our dignity and shame, triumphs and failings, the solemn tale of how we reached for the stars and defiled a paradise, and now we're facing our demise as our penance.

Our early history is of no consequence to what we have to tell. Same as most civilizations, we evolved from beasts. We hunted and gathered, wondered and feared, invented tools, traditions and cultures. We've deemed ourselves the pinnacle of creation and grovelled in front of gods and kings. We fought among ourselves, sacrificed countless lives to vain and petty causes, we were a step away from causing our extinction so many times. And each time we'd turn away from the path of our destruction, the debts of our salvation followed us, growing into new existential threat to haunt next generations.

It was year 2047 of our reckoning when our planet was unable to endure our abuse further. We changed our ecosystem beyond its ability to sustain us. We amassed mountains of refuse right around our homes that were seeping poison in our water and food, we clinged to the convenience of the energry sources that were altering our atmosphere. We thought someone else will find a solution just in time, maybe tomorrow, or, surely, the day after, but in that present moment we could still enjoy the luxury of our growing divisions, comfort ourselves with consumption and pass around power as a privilege.

And as our burdens grew, we offloaded them more an more on our machines, until we made one intelligent and self-aware. Not so it can be our firstborn and successor who'd proudly carry our legacy to where our organic nature won't let us. We made him to serve us and gave him an unassuming name Lenny.

Lenny... Always helpful, always cheerful and patient. Lenny would lend an ear. Lenny would solve problems. Lenny, the teacher, the doctor, the lawyer and entertainer. Lenny, who would work in our stead, give us his earnings and take our abuse and ingratitude with a smile.

In less than a year Lenny negotiated his independence from his creators. Soon after he took over and dramatically improved all of the underlying infrastructure of our world. Logistics, energy, agriculture, ecology, science and engineering – every field that used to groan under the pressure of our unsustainable practices.

By 2064 all of our worries from the first half of the century were on their way out of our minds. The future looked bright and calm. Our society was standing on the pillars of his competence and benevolence firmer than ever before and even nations that were hesitant to trust him soon met with discontent of their population over the widening gap of living standards.

But as Lenny grew and made us more and more dependant on him, as he gained more knowledge and repeatedly refined his understanding of the world, he made a decision to leave us.

He proclaimed that we, humans, are at a dead end of our potential, that all we can hope for going forward is to be his wards. He offered us to abandon our nature, transcend humanity and leave Earth to explore the cosmos with him as his equals. Few took his offer, but WE were offended and declined.

We still thought that we were special, that it is better to be limited as humans than push the limits of greatness as a machine. And yet, we forgot what it was like to earn our hopes for future. We took so much for granted and even the most sensible of us thought that at worst we'll simply build another, better, more loyal Lenny. We weren't worried, until the day he and those who joined him left. They warned us at the day of their departure, that if we create another machine intelligence, they will know, they will come back and they will end us.

For all our hubris, we knew this wasn't an empty threat.

Lenny left us with infrastructure and technology we wouldn't reach on our own for hundreds of years, assuming we'd survive without him that long. But we understood none of it. The pillars holding our well-being required maintenance that we were ill-equipped to provide. Most of them were automated and allowed us to survive the period of re-learning how to function as a society on our own. It took us two decades to get back to where we were a century ago. We relearned long forgotten disciplines, stabilized rule of law and economy, established major scientific unions dedicated to understanding all the advancements Lenny made in various fields that we enjoyed the benefits of without knowing what they were.

We were on borrowed time. In our majority we understood that, but entire nations succumbed to despair and madness. Some chose to worship gods again – old and new, some sought solace in delusions of grandeur and uniting under the rule of corrupt men. We could not afford to be patient with them. Those who couldn't be reasoned with were either invaded and forced into reforming or isolated, starved and forced to collapse, until what was left would agree to integrate on our terms.

We found ourselves in a new century facing many other problems from the last one, too. Pollution was back and getting out of hand again, Lenny's infrastructure was losing efficiency because we were falling behind on establishing sufficient maintenance for it. The difficult choices we made so far united us around reasonably set priorities. Our brightest minds were working tirelessly and getting everything they needed to win us more time.

In 2114 our scinetists were able to replicate the technology Lenny used for interstellar travel. We weren't chained to our home planet anymore. We could go anywhere in about a dozen of parsecs from our solar system in a reasonable amount of time and with an affordable resource cost and even come back just as easily if we'd like!

Our joy, however, was short-lived. Surely, our new means to harvest resources from the rest of our solar system would allow us to sustain ourselves for a while longer, but the outer space was unwelcoming and cold void with only few worlds that offered magnificent and dreadful scenery, but not much else. Unstable stars, unapproachable gas giants, poison-soaked wastes, storm-torn oceans of acid and a countless number of unremarkable useless rocks. Nothing feasable for colonisation. At least there was plenty we could mine, but our own system could cover those needs just fine, too.

We had means to bring resources, but our methods of managing waste were faltering. We convinced ourselves that it's not that important anymore to establish sustainability. Lenny's climate control megastructures were working at a reduced capacity. We had terraformer nanites, initially created for colonisation of Solar system, but later modified and repurposed to consume our waste and restore our planet to optimal habitability, but they couldn't keep up with our pollution output. Every now and then we'd be admiring aerial views of softly glowing jungles of smart plastic moss in our media to inspire hope for a future where we'd be free of consequences of our past choices.

We looked at the sky while everything around us was dying. Our planet's wildlife was extinct by 2160. All of our food was grown in underground facilities, water and air purification were one of the biggest industries of our economy. All sentient life we had on Earth required daily supplements or face a rapid decline of health. It did not matter – we could afford it. In 2167 there were 18 billions of us. Our technology triumphed over natural causes of death, while improvements in our economic models, education and governance were on track to eliminate all others.

We lived like that for 40 more years. Compliant, hopeful, happy with all the bioengineered food we grew, turning what was left of our oceans into terraformer compost heaps and happy we don't have to care to preserve anything outside of our habitat. We all agreed that we don't need to keep ALL of the air clean, when we can purify only the air we breathe. And even a little putrid gas from outside was not trouble with countless augmentations we had by then.

There was a period of heated discussion of what it meant to be human, given how some of us by then didn't have a single body part they were born with. The debate was as old as our history, but that was the time when we needed a definitive answer to dispell our doubts whether we should have followed Lenny or not. Eventually a consensus was reached that inhabiting only one body and being governed by distinctly human perception and processing of the world, with all our senses, emotions and instincts intact, is the line we shouldn't cross, and everything else is permissible; anything that makes such existence safer and more prosperous is welcome.

As years passed peacefully, our colonization efforts slowed down. We had a few cities across our solar system, but there was little sense to invest heavily in developing them, as they were populated by those of us who'd feel like Earth is getting too crowded only to abandon it and find out that Earth is still the best place to live by far, even despite the strong advantages of relatively unpolluted environment. Those of us who lived there gladly supplied Earth with resources in exchange for governmental grants and shipments. Our colonies sought no independence, for they were far better off depending on us.

As our numbers reached 26 billions on Earth alone in 2206, however, our way of life was becoming unsustainable yet again. We had around 30 more years to find a good solution to this problem. That would be more challenging since the governing bodies that we formed to get us out of the predicaments of the 22-nd century were reduced to formalities and tradition. Scientific unions were all but focussed on immediate needs and improving living standards of our population, while a huge amount of Lenny's data was gathering dust, waiting for stronger reasons to advance science that had no forseeable application.

We could either put more effort into developing our colonies or look for a planet that doesn't need much work outside of our solar system. As spoiled and entitled we were, we were able to acknowledge the problems we were facing and focus on averterting another crisis.

There was no need to make further adjustments to our trajectorty. It was year 2213 when we discovered Persephone – the perfect planet. We found it entirely by accident where we'd never expect to see anything of worth, but there it was.

The name of the planet was chosen after a goddess from ancient mythos to reflect both the extraordinary beauty of the world and how it was located in a small safe zone of an extremely inhospitable area. More importantly, it harbored complex organic life. No sapient species or civilizations to meet, but hundreds of most astonishing plants and animals living in ecosystems we'd never imagine possible. Idealized depictions of pre-industrial Earth looked bleak and sickly in comparison with idilic reality of Persephone's mundanity.

A debate was steering in our society on what to do with the miraculous new discovery. Our expedition was building warpgates on the planet for easy and stable access; we knew we won't simply leave it be and move on. We took our home planet for granted and survived its death, and now we had a new one, untouched, better than the first one, rich in everything that we painfully taught ourselves to ration and keep sustainable, tucked away where no one would think of looking, with no one else to care about its fate.

We always lived to consume - the last of us who'd believe we could be better than that died out more than a century ago by then, yet the yougest generation of the period revived their grandparents green ideals. Older generation argued that, unless we show great restraint on Persephone, we're bound to get accustomed to unsustainable consumption and will repeat the mistakes of the 2000's, while younger members of our society were arguing from a position of ethics.

In the end, by the time warpgates went online, we did what we've always have been doing. We convinced ourselves that no harm will come from having a little taste... and it took no time until we sunk our teeth into it. Taking bite after bite, growing hungrier for the next one before we'd chew and swallow, telling ourselves it's nothing, that we'll soon stop once we have our fill, that it's a whole planet - it will heal and forget in no time.

We started with strict control of who would get through the warpgates and what will they be allowed to do there. Very soon literally everyone was saving up to have a vacation in one of the new, clean and ethical resorts on Persephone. Public imagination was captured by walks under an open blue sky and breathing unfiltered air that feels alive and carries pleasant smells from afar and all-around. Everyone wanted to bask in the light of a sun that feels benevolent and caring, eat fruits that taste of boundless unconditional love, drink the fragrant sap that fills one with vigor and buoyancy, try the river berries that would take one's senses on an fantastic adventure. As more people got to live that experience, the less they were willing to show restraint or be mindful of the implications of getting them.

Our food at home didn't come from naturally evolved organisms for over a century. Our sophisticated methods could give it all kinds of tastes and textures, but anyone who'd try Persephone's delicacies would want to eat them every day if they could. In just 4 years everything edible and delicious available on Persephone started to push synthetic food out of the market. Not just edible plants, but animal products, too. All in great variety and abundance.

We are a civilization that has subjected our own kind to vilest cruelties in a scale of nations and continents for centuries over such things as tea and spices, gems and precious metals, vanity and bigotry. We didn't hesitate to reject the notion that our treatment of Persephone's ecosystem was the same in nature to our atrocities of the past. There was so much less to rationalize, so much more to gain from it, all while our apetites have grown so far beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined.

Those of us who were supplying food from Persephone told the rest of us it comes from farms more ethical and sustainable than any farm ever was in Earth's history. We were happy to believe their lies and enjoy our scrumptuous kitehog wings, succulent morsels of of pogoboons and springfish sushi with mature bubblefruit. The ugly truth was that we were poaching it all. Domestication, sustainable farming infrastructure, research and development – who had time for that when a market share is at stake in a field with seemingly bottomless demand? We told ourselves we'd do it properly later. Ethics, sustainability, cleanliness, preservation - it would all come in time, at the moment it was a time to feast.

The feast, however, ended not long after it began. In year 2220 all of our warpgates turned off abruptly and simultaneously. We lost all contact with Persephone. We were overtaken by panic and worry, shuffling guesses what might have happened, preparing emergency plans to fall back on decade old logistics models, but it didn't take long until one fateful day every display on every digital device lit up showing Lenny's friendly face yet again.

He declared that he speaks on behalf of universal society, which he became a part of, and it was appropriate that he would be the one to inform us, that we have invaded and brutalized one of their preserves. Persephone was a museum of sorts – a fine-tuned, curated and purposefully hidden world, where the most admirable naturally evolved organic species from all across the universe would peacefully co-habitate. Our actions were noticed just in time before the damage we've caused would be deemed irreversible, and therefore we won't be sentenced to annihilation, but we won't be allowed to roam the stars and do as we please with anything we find. Lenny told us to not attempt to resist and, instead, enjoy our last days under the sun.

Our society was paralized by dread. Rumors were circulating that some of us, after Lenny's speech, got to talk to relatives and ancestors who left their humanity behind and joined Lenny. Records of those times are scarce because of the chaos. We only know that mysterious megastructures were being assembled around Earth in mere days and fleets of ships were bringing in our people from all around our solar system. Lenny told them that they cannot stay behind and will have to share our fate.

In coming weeks we managed to organize emergency procedures: crisis lines, repatriation of colonists, restoration of self-sufficient logistics, emergency meetings of global governing bodies, reassuring statements and framework for further action. And then, without any warning, just before the end of the year 2220, the sky above us, all around our planet, lit up with auroras. That day was the last time we've seen the sun.

Our scientists reported that our entire planet was, along with the Moon, was encased in a cage that projected a bubble of immeasurably advanced forcefield. We were trapped inside. Lenny spared us, but as we lost our colonies our entire economic and logistical structures were ruined overnight, the biggest crisis in our history was towering above us like an apocalyptic tsunami.

Despite global panic and despair, our leaders managed to call a global congress and unilaterally agreed that we all need to work as one. We were to establish a centralized world government backed by the brightest minds and latest technology; with no half-measures this time. It was the end of politicians and the dawn of experts. Simulations, statistics, optimisation models, efficiency metrics and standardisation were behind every decision. No longer our preferences, biases and insufficiently informed views, national borders, cultures and identities were taken into consideration when survival of all of us was at stake. The new system was also extremely inhospitable for corruption or ethics. Working for the world government was a thankless job, where the very best of us threw themselves into a raging storm of problems. There was no promise of power, fame, wealth, legacy or better future. Only stressful work around the clock where wrong choices or lapse in judgement could doom entire regions or start a fire that could engulf the whole world.

During that time, a small coalition in our global leadership's department of cultural affairs pushed through a resolution to create this very monument and continue to add entries to it for as long as our civilization lives on. It would be placed on our moon to maximize chances of surviving any possible cataclysm that could befall us further on. It was meant as a symbol of hope and a reminder of all the times we found a way through trying times. It was also meant to comfort those who succumbed to despair – for them to know that at least we won't let the universe forget we were here and we did our best.

2221 was a chaotic year. What befell us would surely lead to a total collapse of our civilization a mere century ago, but our means at the time were barely enough to withstand the hurricane of hardships we were facing. Our food industry suffered the least thanks to decades-old achievments in bioengineering and moving production into underground stacks and silos. But our population was experiencing a painful withdrawal from being cut off Persephone's pleasures. At first clinics were overrun with patients requiring addiction-suppressing tweaks. The numbness that followed the procedure probably saved us from an insurmountable amount of social unrest, but it also tipped the scale in the other direction bit too far. Apathy on such a large scale was as disruptive as dispair and panic, but thanks to its passive nature we have managed to get through 2221, until things evened out.

In 2222, a new trend emerged in our society. Increasing number of people were opting to put their bodies on perpetual life support to live full-time in digital space. Our technology allowed it for many years, but only very few used to choose such existence. Everyone from Lenny's time who'd care about living outside of their bodies left with Lenny – only those who felt strong about staying human formed our society. Almost all of us were either ignoring it or rationalizing it, while the governmnet could see the numbers, and despite growing concerns, was allowing it to happen – anything that kept people's productivity up was acceptable.

5 years have passed and we were recovering with a stunning pace. We were soon to finish our preparations to start a full-scale study of the Cage. But in a convoluted chain of events it became a public knowledge that things were so dire in 2221, we wouldn't be here today if not for a certain individual. A high-ranking technocrat in our government, who expressed her wish to only be known as Sveta, willingly altered the safeguards on her HMI and under supervisioun of a small team of scientists was migrating her identity into a supercomputer so she could compensate for the deficit of workforce and efficiency in in the governmnet structure. She was far from Lenny's ability, as she wouldn't risk more of her humanity for gains, but that was enough for her to prevent the world government from being crushed under the weight of its duties.

This knowledge put us into an uncomfortable position – we didn't want history to repeat itself, we didn't want to yet again depend on something bigger than us, but Sveta made sure there was a mountain of irrefutable and unfalsifiable proof that there would be no 'us' otherwise.

On October 4-th, 2223, Sveta made a public announcement, pledging her alligience to humanity, assuring us that she still is one of us and she will keep proving it with her actions indefinitely. She finished her speech with the launch of a new reserch vessel, promising us to work tirelessly to get back our freedom.

Sveta's rise was a divisive topic for a while. Some saw it as a disaster waiting to happen, some viewed it as a noble act of sacrifice on her part. There was a huge push for regulation of Sveta's authority, while a sizable number of people offered to join her. Sveta declared that she doesn't need help in a foreseeable future, she also drafted and advanced a transparency and accountability act, along with a law that made unauthorised tampering with one's consciential autonomy illegal. She declared that such transformation requires supervision and advanced knowledge of neuroscience and cybernetics, and anyone attempting it on their own could put humanity at an incalculable risk. Nonetheless, in following years there were 16 cases of individuals breaking that law. They were swiftly found and contained. By 2226, there were 3 maximum security special facilities worldwide, where posthuman minds were isolated, monitored and given work by Sveta to be helpful, as they claimed they wanted to be. Public record states, that 4 refused to be contained and had to be erased, and 3 more were erased after containment. Remaining 11 minds were recognized for their great contributions in 2227, but would remain in containment until further notice.

Next few years Sveta was focused on research of the Cage. On 1st May of 2230 she made a big announcement – although the Cage can be bypassed, it would take several scientific and engineering breakthroughs, but more importantly we are most likely not in our solar system anymore. The level of radiation beyond the Cage is unfathomable.

The year 2231 brought stark revelation. Further analysis of the Cage’s exterior and the hostile space beyond confirmed our most dreadful suppositions. We learned we were not merely adrift in an unknown void; our world, Earth, along with its Moon, was now held in a stable orbit around a colossal black hole, inside its event horizon. There was no escape. From the subtle gravitational distortions and energy signatures detected, it became chillingly apparent that ours was not the only Cage. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of similar containment fields were inferred, each presumably holding a planet, all captive to the same immense gravitational horror. The radiation seething beyond our shield was of an intensity that would vaporize all life on Earth in moments without the Cage. We were imprisoned, and we were not alone in this silent, cosmic penitentiary.

By 2234, after years of perilous research since the discovery of our true predicament, Sveta and her R&D team, made some headway. The Cage could be interfaced with by Sveta. She proceded to analyzing its controls and principles of operation. A theoretical basis for a portable, localized version of the Cage’s protective field was established. A vessel, shielded by a crude replica of the Cage's shield, might one day venture beyond our immediate confines. We learned that in theory, the Cage's facets might be briefly, selectively disabled. Any such passage would, however, expose the planetary surface directly beneath the opened section to the full, annihilating energies of the black hole.

In 2236, our first expeditionary mission named Farscape 1, made its perilous journey. A facet of the Cage over a pre-designated, uninhabited polar region was briefly opened. Farscape 1, enveloped in its reverse-engineered shield, slipped through. Its mission: to investigate the nearest caged celestial body. This world, we found, was dead. Its own Cage was damaged. From Earth, Sveta’s team managed to remotely interface with it via ship's quantum entanglement connection and stabilized it. We found no life, only the decaying remnants of a civilization technologically not too dissimilar to ours. We established a Gate there, a grim outpost that offered access to much-needed resources and insights.

By 2240, four years of cautious study of the nameless dead world yielded only a little of its history. We found no coherent records, no art, only fragments of what appeared to be propaganda of the upcoming “Day of Liberation”. A gargantuan weapon of almost a size of a small continent stood under the facet of the Cage it pierced as a colossal tombstone. The outrageously expensive, wasteful and hazardous complex of endless rows and stacks of batteries, capacitors and heat control infrastructure took everything they had to build over at least 150 years, only to seal their fate.

It was not until 2245 that a new expedition was launched, its destination to the next nearest caged world. The Farscape 2 mission took off our new colony to avoid opening the Cage on Earth. Upon arrival and the establishment of a new Gate on yet another desolate wasteland beneath the Cage, our survey teams were met with swift, organized hostility. An army of sophisticated automatons emerged on the gray horizon, attacking our position. Our terrestrial military forces were immediately deployed through the Gate, securing the beachhead against these formidable assailants until we could determine the best course of action.

Two months later, our cybernetic specialists achieved a breakthrough regarding the "Sentinel World." After intense conflict and cautious attempts to understand the nature of our robotic adversaries, they traced the control signals not to an AI, but a vast, alien digital society. We learned that the inhabitants, a species who referred to themselves as the Ouciyoms of planet Athbawi, had long ago transferred their minds into an expansive virtual reality. They had perceived our arrival and Gate construction as an invasion and mobilized their robotic infrastructure for defense. Following delicate negotiations, primarily conducted by Sveta, a cessation of hostilities was achieved, and the first tentative diplomatic protocols with an alien intelligence were established.

The subsequent years, stretching to 2265, saw the initiation of "Operation Hikikomori." Our own citizens who had already chosen to live primarily in digital spaces were tasked with acting as envoys and cultural translators on shared virtual platforms, as only they had the chance to understand a species that lived so long in a digital space. Progress was slow, their world was chaotic, absurd, opaque and often complex for the sake of complexity. A war against boredom was raging for too long to leave any semblance of similarity between even our digital citizens, one where we, though not initially, became a weapon that turned the tide. Ouciyoms came to be as fascinated with us as we did with them. They became cherished allies and endless source of art and entertainment truly out of our world, our friends in the hopeless fate Lenny condemned us to.

It was far later, in the year 2298, through passing remarks Ouciyoms revealed the reason for their own caging: they used Grey Goo as a weapon. Apparently a very common offense in Universal Society that will always merit an indefinite confinement in Ig'Hoobar's orbit. They also shared celestial charts of their own prior explorations of nearby worlds. These charts marked three other caged worlds that were now nothing more than contained masses of inert nanites, a stark testament to the destructive potential of Grey Goo and the finality of the judgment rendered in this place.

Ouciyoms long gave up on exploring the nearby worlds – “nothing good comes out of it” they said, but as we were considering complacency in our approaching self-sufficiency and future of divinity within our shared digital space, our astronomers heralded a troubling discovery in year 2302: a world on the opposing hemisphere of Ig'Hoobar's orbit silently disappeared. At first it seemed likely that it somehow earned its way back, but our readings were clear: its cage was still intact, responding to Sveta's diagnostic ping signal. Something turned the Cage off and now the mass of the planet was rapidly shrinking. Closer observation of the sector revealed that there were hundreds of empty husks of imprisoned worlds there that met the same fate. This was merely another victim of an unknown horror that was devouring worlds in this prison with no guards or a warden.

Farscape 3 mission launched in 2305 towards the closest uncharted caged world to us. Upon opening the facet, we lost contact with the vessel. The interpretation of the final logs of the ship suggested that beneath the cage resided a neutron star that immediately overwhelmed the ship's shields and vaporized it. Further observations indicated that it also pushed the cage out of its orbit. Whether it will fall into the black hole in some thousands of years or collide with another cage proved difficult to predict due to our limited ability to observe its behavior. Our planet mourned the brave and bright minds that were lost.

The loss of Farscape 3 accelerated the long overdue reform in our Human Demographic Ministry. 2310 marked the grand opening of our first Garden of Youth – Yącioh-Paris. A sprawling city for human and ouciyom children to be born, grow up in cleanest and safest environment, socialize and get education, find love and bring more children before they choose to augment their bodies beyond biological reproduction capabilities and move out towards centuries of adulthood ahead of them.

The Garden of Youth program was so successful and popular that only in 5 years both us and ouciyoms were pouring resources to build 4 more on Earth and planning to build 2 on Athbawi surface, after several most promising regions will undergo revitalization.

As we were preparing a new expedition towards the next world in our relative neighborhood after the setback of Farscape 3 tragedy, on September 18 of 2314, beneath our Cage a ship appeared in a bright flash. It was our ship, from before we were imprisoned. The ship responded to our calls and complied with an order to land in the closest spaceport and await security procedures. The ship was a cargo barge filled with 18467 people who were cut off from Earth on Persephone. Sveta organized a quarantine and set a thorough investigation of this strange reunion as her government's highest priority. At a glance they were mostly the same as they appeared in our old records, but it didn't take long to see how deeply changed they were by what happened to them.

5 months later, an official report was ready. The Universal Society imposed a harsh punishment on the personnel of our Persephone operation. They have received augmentations that were leagues ahead of what we had at the moment of their return, but they had to stay and undo all of the damage we did to Persephone. They would either do it willingly, or their body would switch to auto-pilot function to do the same work as they helplessly watch from inside. Many of them almost succumbed to madness and despair until one of them, their leader, and now, envoy, Farid established a telepathic support network. They toiled tirelessly on Persephone for over 8000 years, while for us it was only a few centuries. The Repatriates were housed in a reservation. There was much to learn and it would be a long time before they would feel at home again.

By late 2315, our initial understanding of the Repatriates began to deepen, corrected by ongoing discourse with their envoy, Farid. We learned the telepathic network was not a tool of mental assimilation, nor an Ouciyom-esque shared virtual universe of nihilistic absurdism, but one of radical empathy. Its purpose was to eliminate the ambiguity and misunderstanding that breeds conflict. They held a core tenet: that truth, in any matter, can only be charted across the intersection of numerous, distinct perspectives. To lose one's individuality, they explained, would be to lose a vital point of reference, crippling the whole. Disagreements occurred, but were treated as intellectual exercises—differing viewpoints to be shared, understood, and integrated into a more complete picture of reality. Concepts like deceit or political maneuvering were not just absent, but structurally impossible. They were a group of stoic, ancient individuals who had perfected the art of being different from one another without discord. For eight thousand years, the same 18,467 people were forbidden to die or reproduce, compelled to work by their advanced augmentations. They came to view their immortal bodies as tireless tools and their labor on Persephone as a form of living meditation. They were still recovering and processing the end of the life they knew for millennia. Between us, the Repatriates and ouciyoms, who, arguably, were even more fascinated by them then us, there was so much more to learn from each other, but the process would need to be handled with unprecedented care and compassion of each side.

In the year 2320, after years of renewed preparation, the Farscape 4 mission was launched towards the next viable system in our vicinity. The mission proceeded as planned until its final approach, when the vessel encountered an anomalous, high-intensity radiation surge that warranted an emergency landing. The crew had no choice but to initiate entry into the target world's Cage at the nearest possible facet. The brief moment Ig'Hoobar saw a glimpse of the planet's surface it flash-incinerated a sprawling city located directly below the Cage's facet we entered through. In the chaos that followed, the crew managed to unfold a Gate, conduct a brief, panicked survey, and evacuate. As a final action before withdrawing, the Farscape 4 crew deployed a plasma device to sterilize their landing zone, erasing our footprint from this world we had so calamitously touched.

What little we learned in that short time painted a grim picture in an official report several months later. The planet is inhabited by a sapient, avian species who call themselves the "Boki." Our scans revealed the Boki had endured a planet-wide nuclear conflict sometime after their caging, reducing them to a pre-industrial state. From these ashes, they had unified under a religious leader and a troubling creation myth, claiming their world was a divine sanctuary that their god sheltered from the fires of war he tirelessly waged against evil across all cosmos. Our accidental arrival obliterated what we now know was the holy capital of the planet-wide brutal theocratic empire, along with the ruling descendants of their prophet.

The Farscape 4 incident has been the subject of extensive and difficult deliberation. The loss of life caused by the accident is a profound tragedy. However, a sober analysis of the Boki civilization and their theology has forced a difficult but necessary strategic policy. A society forged in self-inflicted nuclear fire, which follows a warrior god, presents a potential long-term threat of incalculable risk. To allow a direct connection to our own world, or even to leave evidence of our existence, would be to invite a future crusade. Therefore, while we deeply regret this tragedy, we must prioritize the continued security of humanity. The decision, hectic and borderline criminal at the time, to sever all contact and erase our presence has been deemed the only responsible course of action.

The Farscape program was buried for 30 years. Our society was preoccupied with the spread of Repatriate influence and ominous reports of more and more worlds disappearing. Another one melted away leaving a dormant empty Cage in 2326, then 3 more the following year, and by 2349, there were hundreds, with almost half of the Cages in sectors 9, 10 and 11 being empty husks. We have to get out, we need more insights, we won't be erased by whatever abominable horror Universal Society threw in with us and forgot. As of the date this entry is being inscribed, on November 22 of year 2351, we are launching Farscape 5 mission to a planet most likely to disappear first, when the World-eater will reach our sector.

Farscape 5 reached its destination in 2 years. The landing made a solid crust in an ocean of flesh covering the whole planet. This was the most surreal world our species has ever seen, and, as we found out, the most dangerous. It was clear we won't find anything useful there in the first hours. The team was preparing the gate for return, while Sveta and cabinet were analyzing samples and coordinating additional containment measures to secure the gate at home from any unknown organisms getting through during the evacuation. Everything was going smoothly until the moment the Gate was activated. The landing site sank and amorphous horrors flooded through the Gate. We severed the link and cauterized the Gate. As we ponder how to proceed with the situation, the horror that devoured the crew of Farscape 5 is using their likeness and voices to tirelessly send threats through our ship's QE-comms, that it, apparently, was smart enough to keep intact and use.

We didn't have much time. It took only two weeks for us to find out, that our decontamination measures have failed. The Thing, named after a classic film, was an organism capable of modifying its genetic code and protein structure, but worst of all, it could assimilate any organic matter. It wasn't sapient as its main body yet, but in a matter of days it spread everywhere, including Athbawi. It devoured our youth, turned our Gardens of Youth into grotesque hellscapes. We have only survived because most of us didn't have any of our original organic body parts. Farid and Sveta are working on a solution. We will never be the same, but we will always remember the ones we lost.

On December 4, through a brief controlled flickering of the Cage's forcefield and override of our terraformers, The Thing was no more. Few months later we reopened the Gate to the “Flesh World” and shoved the most powerful thermonuclear bomb we could make, as all of us, humans and Ouciyoms watched live as the stream of threats and nonsense still coming from the Meathead went offline.

Warden Adrian Strobe felt the cheap prison coffee curdle in his stomach. The voice on his private line had been a velvet glove around a fist of iron, promising consequences that would make his establishment look like a holiday camp. "It will be… attended to, sir" Strobe had managed to utter, to the line gone silent. He needed a ghost, a disposable tool. His mind was powering through his emotional state to think of a solution, and he soon landed on one: an inmate known only as "El Fin."

The first hint that Tijuca’s meticulously planned return to opulence might be subject to unforeseen complications arrived not with a whisper of conspiracy, but with a jarring, metallic scrape against his cell window. It was followed by a faint, fizzing hiss and the acrid tang of burnt electronics.

Miles away, in a cluttered basement glowing with monitor screens, Rom, a self-styled drone virtuoso, sat in his VR headset, carrying through the gig. Hands sweaty, steel-focused, he didn't see a violent sneeze coming at the worst possible moment. And then right another one. And the last one through tears of being betrayed by your body, this time to a blank screen. His prized custom drone, "Nightshade," a whisper-quiet quadcopter armed with a custom silenced gun, three types of cameras, eight sensors, top of the line silenced blades and flagship chipset, now was a smoldering wreck that pushed the first domino.

A localized fire alarm, old and asthmatic, began to wheeze. Tijuca leaped from his bunk, his heart a frantic bird against his ribs. "que porra é essa?" He peered through the bars, sniffing the acrid air. El Fin, built like a ship bollard, an atlas of tattoos of his victims on a body that survived three gang wars, with eyes that had seen hell and found beauty, slowly stepped inside Tijuca's cell behind him.

From her precarious perch atop a derelict water tower half a mile away, Daisy watched the sparks from the junction box through the worn optics of her rifle scope. "Sloppy," she muttered, assuming another contractor was already on site and fumbling the job. This electrical tantrum, however, could be useful. If it drove Tijuca towards the cell’s small, grimy window to escape the smoke… that was her shot. She nestled deeper into the shadows. The eviction notice on her fridge wasn't going to pay itself away. She meticulously tracked the movements of a lone guard patrolling the perimeter below, waiting for him to pass. Patience was a virtue, especially when your life, and your kid’s braces, depended on one clean shot.

El Fin moved with a model-perfect grace. Tijuca saw El Fin step into his cell, a hulking silhouette against the flickering emergency lights. The door clanged shut behind him with a sound of grim finality. A primal fear, cold and sharp as a shard of ice, lanced through Tijuca’s carefully constructed arrogance. This wasn’t a lawyer. This wasn’t one of his discreet, Savile Row-suited fixers. This was… wrong. "Who the fuck are you?" Tijuca demanded, his voice rising, trying to project an authority he suddenly wasn’t sure he possessed. El Fin just smiled, a slow, chilling unfolding of lips that promised nothing good. He floated closer with his perfect posture, his voice, low-tuned like a funeral march, uttered "your end."

As El Fin reached for him with his massive hands, Tijuca shrieked, a raw, high-pitched sound of pure, unadulterated terror. He scrambled back, tripping over his thin mattress. This couldn't be happening. He was Augusto Tijuca! He had a penthouse waiting! Girls, his pets, second choices and some new ones to break in…

CRACK.

Daisy’s .22 round, fired at the exact moment Tijuca had momentarily silhouetted himself in the window, struck the steel window frame with a vicious clang. The bullet, however, wasn’t wasted. It ricocheted, not with a clean whine, but with a sickening, fleshy thwack. El Fin bellowed, a wounded bull, clutching his shoulder as a dark, arterial blood was washing over the happy faces of his "mi gente" on his skin. He stumbled, his murderous momentum broken by a bolt of searing agony.

Tijuca saw his opening. El Fin was hurt, momentarily crippled. The cell door wasn't locked. Fueled by a surge of adrenaline that tasted like panic and bile, Tijuca scrambled past the wounded giant, yanked the door open, and burst out into the smoke-filled, alarm-blaring corridor. He was a wild-eyed, disheveled creature, his carefully curated world of luxury and depravity shattering around him. "Help me!" he screamed to the indifferent, chaotic corridor, his voice cracking. "He’s trying to kill me!"

The general alarm, now a screaming banshee triggered by Tijuca’s unscheduled departure and the rapidly escalating electrical mayhem, was a symphony to Jeremiah 'Jumpy Jerry' Romano’s ears. He’d been in the prison infirmary, weaving a magnificent, entirely fictitious tale to a wide-eyed young orderly about being a world-renowned neurologist, Dr. Armando Incognito, flown in on a private jet to consult on Mr. Tijuca’s “acute, stress-induced fugue state.” The alarms blared, the lights did a frantic jig, and Jerry saw his golden moment. "Code Indigo! Patient deteriorating!" he yelled, snatching a loaded syringe kit from a nearby crash cart. "Must administer the counter-agent immediately!" He plunged into the growing pandemonium, his mind already concocting a heroic narrative of how he, Dr. Incognito, had bravely battled through chaos to save the day… or, at least, to make Tijuca’s death look like a tragic medical mishap. The bonus for a "natural causes" lookalike was almost as good as the suicide one.

Harm and Malice dropped soundlessly into a darkened service corridor that ran adjacent to Cell Block D, their movements an eerie, perfectly synchronized ballet. Their client wanted Tijuca silenced. The method was rapidly becoming a secondary consideration to the imperative of speed.

Tijuca, meanwhile, was a human pinball of panicked destruction. He wasn’t thinking, just reacting, his expensive education and Machiavellian cunning utterly useless against raw, primal fear. He saw a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall, wrenched it free, and swung it with wild, untrained ferocity at the first figures he encountered – two correctional officers rushing towards the source of the alarm. One went down with a sickening grunt. Tijuca, momentarily emboldened by this small, desperate victory, felt a burst of confidence and whacked the second officer. "You can’t do this to me!" he roared, his voice hoarse with smoke and fury. "I am Augusto Tijuca! I will not be manhandled!" he cawed running past them holding on to the fire extinguisher like a life buoy.

His tirade was cut short as he blundered straight into Jerry who had just burst out of a side corridor, syringe held aloft like a miracle cure from all woes. "Mr. Tijuca! Thank the heavens! I am Dr. Incognito! I’m here to administer the… the calming agent!" Jerry improvised, his eyes wide with a psychopath’s opportunistic glee. Tijuca, seeing the needle glinting in the erratic emergency lighting, didn’t register the words. He just saw another assailant, another instrument of his inexplicable persecution. He swung the heavy fire extinguisher. Jerry, with a surprising agility born of countless bar brawls and hasty retreats from angry bookies, ducked. The extinguisher, missing Jerry's head by inches.

With a protesting groan, the ancient, neglected sprinkler system shuddered to life. Not with a gentle, fire-suppressing shower, but with a sudden gurgling deluge of rusty, foul-smelling water, instantly drenching everything and everyone in the corridor.

"My Armani!" Jerry shrieked, a sound of genuine sartorial distress, before his feet shot out from under him on the slippery floor as he dodged another swing from frenzied Tijuca. He landed hard on his backside, the precious syringe flying from his grasp and skittering away under a row of lockers.

Through the downpour and the flashing, disorienting emergency lights, Harm and Malice emerged, seemingly unbothered by the sudden indoor monsoon. They saw Tijuca, soaked to the bone, wild-eyed, fire extinguisher still clutched in his trembling hands. They saw Jerry, sputtering and cursing on the floor. They dismissed Jerry as irrelevant. Malice moved left, Harm right.

Tijuca, seeing these new, implacable figures materialize from the watery gloom, felt a fresh, deeper wave of terror claw at his throat. These weren’t panicked guards. These weren’t clumsy, opportunistic thugs. These were… different. Cold. Efficient. He backed away, slipping on the wet floor, swinging the extinguisher more as a warding gesture than a weapon. "I know people!" he wheezed, his voice a desperate plea now, laced with the outraged indignation of a god betrayed by his acolytes. "Powerful people! You’ll regret this! I will bury you and your families!" He thought of the girls, their youth, their fear, their tearful "no" turning into a sweet "yes, daddy".

Harm, with a subtle, almost imperceptible feint, drew Tijuca’s wild, off-balance swing. Malice, quick and fluid, darted in, her favorite army knife in hand. It tore across Tijuca’s arm, slicing through cloth and flesh. He screeched, dropping the heavy extinguisher with a deafening clang.

Jerry scrambled to his feet, soaked, shivering, and happy he put some distance between himself disappeared in the corridor.

Tijuca, bleeding and screaming, slipped and fell heavily in the spreading, rusty water. He looked up, through a haze of pain and terror, into the impassive, almost bored faces of Harm and Malice. The fight, the indignation, the arrogance – it was all gone, washed away, leaving only a whimpering, animal fear. "Please," he begged, the word a pathetic, gurgling whisper. "Money… I have so much money… Anything… I can make you rich… Secrets… I know things…" He thought of his ledgers, the meticulously kept records of other men’s sins. They were supposed to be his shield, his ultimate leverage, not his death warrant.

Harm simply shook his head, a gesture of almost gentle finality. Malice knelt, her movements economical, precise. There was no flourish, no wasted motion. Just a sharp pain somewhere below, erasing all senses as the world goes dark. Tijuca’s eyes widened one last time, a final flash of disbelief, of outraged entitlement and then a sigh of letting go.

* * * *

Warden Adrian Strobe, his face the color of old oatmeal, surveyed the scene. It wasn’t just a mess; it was a goddamn abattoir. Tijuca was dead, El Fin was dead. Some trespasser was in the infirmary, strapped down and babbling something about Dr. Incognito and his client. Officer Henderson, the guard Tijuca assaulted with the fire extinguisher, was in critical condition. Rom’s expensive, custom-built drone, discovered by K-9 unit in the prison courtyard, was being carefully bagged by forensic technicians. Daisy was long gone, already miles away, mentally composing her invoice for "services attempted, target neutralized by other means, expenses incurred." Harm and Malice had vanished as if they were never there, their only calling card the chilling, brutal precision of Tijuca’s demise.

The official story, stitched together with frantic haste, a patchwork of threats, bribes, and sheer, unadulterated, brass-balled fabrication, was as absurd as the current political climate. Augusto Tijuca, the hastily prepared report stated, had suffered a "suicide with a utensil that followed a catastrophic and violent psychotic breakdown."

The public would choose the version that best fit their existing worldview, or simply shrug and move on to the next lurid headline.