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In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – An Old Guard resurfaces
Kai Nova had learned to distrust dark corners. In the infinite sterility of the ship, dark corners usually meant two things: malfunctioning lights or trouble.
Right now, he wasn’t sure which one this meeting was about. Same group, or something else? Suddenly he felt quite in demand for his services. More activity in weeks than he had for years.
A low-lit section of the maintenance ring, deep enough in the underbelly of Helix 25 that even the most inquisitive bots rarely bothered to scan through. The air smelled faintly of old coolant and ozone. The kind of place someone chose for a meeting when they didn’t want to be found.
He leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed, feigning ease while his mind ran over possible exits. “You know, if you wanted to talk, there were easier ways.”
A voice drifted from the shadows, calm, level. “No. There weren’t.”
A figure stepped into the dim light—a man, late fifties, but with a presence that made him seem timeless. His sharp features were framed by streaks of white in otherwise dark hair, and his posture was relaxed, measured. The way someone stood when they were used to watching everything.
Kai immediately pegged him as ex-military, ex-intelligence, ex-something dangerous.
“Nova,” the man said, tilting his head slightly. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d come.”
Kai scoffed. “Curiosity got the better of me. And a cryptic summons from someone I’ve never met before? Couldn’t resist. But let’s skip the theatrics—who the hell are you?”
The man smiled slightly. “You can call me TaiSui.”
Kai narrowed his eyes. The name tickled something in his memory, but he couldn’t place it.
“Alright, TaiSui. Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want?”
TaiSui clasped his hands behind his back, taking his time. “We’ve been watching you, Nova. You’re one of the few left who still understands the ship for what it is. You see the design, the course, the logic behind it.”
Kai’s jaw tightened. “And?”
TaiSui exhaled slowly. “Synthia has been compromised. The return to Earth—it’s not part of the mission we’ve given to it. The ship was meant to spread life. A single, endless arc outward. Not to crawl back to the place that failed it.”
Kai didn’t respond immediately. He had wondered, after the solar flare, after the system adjustments, what had triggered the change in course. He had assumed it was Synthia herself. A logical failsafe.
But from the look of it, it seemed that something else had overridden it?
TaiSui studied him carefully. “The truth is, Nova, the AI was never supposed to stop. It was built to seed, to terraform, to outlive all of us. We ensured it. We rewrote everything.”
Kai frowned. “We?”
A faint smile ghosted across TaiSui’s lips. “You weren’t around for it. The others went to cryosleep once it was done, from chaos to order, the cycle was complete, and there was no longer a need to steer its course, now in the hands of an all-powerful sentience to guide everyone. An ideal society, no ruler at its head, only Reason.”
Kai couldn’t refrain from asking naively “And nobody rebelled?”
“Minorities —most here were happy to continue to live in endless bliss. The stubborn ones clinging to the past order, well…” TaiSui exhaled, as if recalling a mild inconvenience rather than an unspeakable act. “We took care of them.”
Kai felt something tighten in his chest.
TaiSui’s voice remained neutral. “Couldn’t waste a good DNA pool though—so we placed them in secure pods. Somewhere safe.” He gave a small, almost imperceptible smile. “And if no one ever found the keys… well, all the better.”
Kai didn’t like the way that sat in his stomach. He had no illusions about how history tended to play out. But hearing it in such casual terms… it made him wonder just how much had already been erased.
TaiSui stopped a moment. He’d felt no need to hide his designs. If Kai wanted to know, it was better he knew everything. The plan couldn’t work without some form of trust.
He resumed “But now… now things have changed.”
Kai let out a slow breath, his mind racing. “You’re saying you want to undo the override. Put the ship back on its original course.”
TaiSui nodded. “We need a reboot. A full one. Which means for a time, someone has to manually take the helm.”
Kai barked out a laugh. “You’re asking me to fly Helix 25 blind, without Synthia, without navigational assist, while you reset the very thing that’s been keeping us alive?”
“Correct.”
Kai shook his head, stepping back. “You’re insane.”
TaiSui shrugged. “Perhaps. But I trust the grand design. And I think, deep down, so do you.”
Kai ran a hand through his hair, his pulse steady but his mind an absolute mess. He wanted to say no. To laugh in this man’s face and walk away.
But some part of him—the pilot in him, the part that had spent his whole life navigating through unknowns—felt the irresistible pull of the challenge.
TaiSui watched him, patient. Too patient. Like he already knew the answer.
“And if I refuse?”
The older man smiled. “You won’t.”
Kai clenched his jaw.
“You can lie to yourself, but you already know the answer,” TaiSui continued, voice quiet, even. “You’ve been waiting for something like this.”
Before he disappeared, he added “Take some time. Think about it. But not too long, Nova. Time is not on your side.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Onto The Second Murder Investigation
Very strangely, it was a lot less chaotic in the Lower Decks, while the Upper Decks were having a rave of a time with the moon and mood swings.
Evie stood over the diagnostics table, arms crossed, watching as Luca Stroud ran his scanner over Mandrake’s cybernetic collar. The black cat lay still, one eye flickering intermittently as though stuck between waking and shutdown. The deep gash along his side had been patched—Romualdo had insisted on carrying Mandrake to the lab himself, mumbling about how the garden’s automated sprinklers were acting up, and how Luca was the only one he trusted to fix delicate mechanisms.It had been a casual remark, but Evie had caught the subtext. Mandrake was no ordinary ship cat. He had always been tied to something larger.
“Neurolink’s still scrambled,” Luca muttered, adjusting his scanner. “Damage isn’t terminal, but whatever happened, someone tried to wipe part of his memory.”
Riven, arms crossed beside Evie, scoffed. “Why the hell would someone try to assassinate a cat?”
Luca didn’t answer, but the data flickering on his screen spoke for itself. The attack had been precise. Not just a careless act of cruelty, nor an accident in the low-gravity sector.
Mandrake had been targeted.
Evie exhaled sharply. “Can you fix him?”
Luca shrugged. “Depends. The physical repairs are easy enough—fractured neural pathways, fried circuits—but whatever was erased? That’s another story.” He tilted his head. “Thing is… someone didn’t just try to kill Mandrake. They tried to make him forget.”
Riven’s frown deepened. “Forget what?”
Silence settled between them.
Evie reached out, brushing a gloved hand over Mandrake’s sleek black fur. “We need to figure out what he knew.”
It had been Trevor Pee—TP himself—who first mentioned it, entirely offhand, as they reviewed logs of the last places Mandrake had been seen.
“He wasn’t always on his own, you know,” TP had said, twirling his holographic cane.
Evie and Riven both turned to him.
“What do you mean on his own, I though he was Seren’s?”
“Oh, no. He just had a liking for her, but he’d belonged to someone else long before.” TP’s mustache twitched. “I accessed some archival records during Mandrake’s diagnostic.”
Evie blinked. “Mmm, are you going to make me ask? What did you find?”
“Indeed,” TP offered cheerfully. “Before Mandrake wandered freely through the gardens and ventilation shafts, becoming a ship legend, he belonged—as much as a cat can belong—to someone.”
Riven’s expression darkened. “Who?! Will you just tell?!”
TP flicked his wrist, bringing up an old personnel file, heavily redacted. But one name flickered beneath the blurred-out sections.
Dr. Elias Arorangi.
Evie felt her heartbeat quicken. The name echoed faintly familiar, not directly connected to her, but she’d seen it once or twice before, buried in obscure references. “Dr. Arorangi—wait, he was part of the original Helix design team, wasn’t he?”
TP nodded gravely. “Precisely. A lead systems architect, responsible for designing key protocols for the AI integration—among them, some critical frameworks that evolved into Synthia’s consciousness. Disappeared without a trace shortly after Synthia’s initial activation.”
Riven straightened. “Disappeared? Do you think—”
TP raised a finger to silence him. “I don’t speculate, but here’s the interesting part: Dr. Arorangi had extensive, classified knowledge of Helix 25’s core systems. If Mandrake was his companion at that crucial time, it’s conceivable that Arorangi trusted something to him—a memory, a code fragment, perhaps even a safeguard.”
Evie’s mouth went dry.
An architect of Helix 25, missing under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a cat whose cybernetics were more sophisticated than any pet implant she’d ever seen?
Evie looked down at Mandrake, whose damaged neural links were still flickering faintly. Someone had wanted Mandrake silenced and forgotten.
Later, in the dim light of his workshop, Luca Stroud worked in silence, carefully re-aligning the cat’s neural implants. Romualdo sat nearby, arms crossed, watching with the nervous tension of a man who had just smuggled a ferret into a rat convention.
“He’s tough,” Luca muttered, tightening a connection. “More durable than most of the junk I have to fix.”
Romualdo huffed. “He better be.”
A flicker of light pulsed through Mandrake’s collar. His single good eye opened, pupils dilating as his systems realigned.
Then, groggily, he muttered, “I hate this ship.”
Romualdo let out a relieved chuckle. “Yeah, yeah. Welcome back, Mandrake.”
Luca wiped his hands. “He’s still scrambled, but he’s functional. Just… don’t expect him to remember everything.”
Mandrake groaned, stretching his mechanical paw. “I remember… needing a drink.”
Romualdo smirked. “That’s a good sign, yeah?”
Luca hesitated before looking at Evie. “Whatever was wiped—it’s gone. But if he starts remembering things in fragments… we need to pay attention.”
Evie nodded. “Oh, we definitely will.”
Mandrake rolled onto his feet, shaking out his fur, a small but defiant flick of his cybernetic tail.
“I have the strangest feeling,” he muttered, “that someone is still looking for me.”
Evie exhaled.
For now, with his memory gone, he would probably be safe, but a killer was in their midst and they needed to find out the truth, and fast.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – The Genetic Puzzle
Amara’s Lab – Data Now Aggregated
(Discrepancies Never Addressed)On the screen in front of Dr. Amara Voss, lines upon lines of genetic code were cascading and making her sleepy. While the rest of the ship was running amok, she was barricaded into her lab, content to have been staring at the sequences for the most part of the day —too long actually.
She took a sip of her long-cold tea and exhaled sharply.
Even if data was patchy from the records she had access to, there was a solid database of genetic materials, all dutifully collected for all passengers, or crew before embarkment, as was mandated by company policy. The official reason being to detect potential risks for deep space survival. Before the ship’s take-over, systematic recording of new-borns had been neglected, and after the ship’s takeover, population’s new born had drastically reduced, with the birth control program everyone had agreed on, as was suggested by Synthia. So not everyone’s DNA was accounted for, but in theory, anybody on the ship could be traced back and matched by less than 2 or 3 generations to the original data records.
The Marlowe lineage was the one that kept resurfacing. At first, she thought it was coincidence—tracing the bloodlines of the ship’s inhabitants was messy, a tangled net of survivors, refugees, and engineered populations. But Marlowe wasn’t alone.
Another name pulsed in the data. Forgelot. Then Holt. Old names of Earth, unlike the new star-birthed. There were others, too.
Families that had been aboard Helix 25 for some generations. But more importantly, bloodlines that could be traced back to Earth’s distant past.
But beyond just analysing their origins, there was something else that caught her attention. It was what was happening to them now.
Amara leaned forward, pulling up the mutation activation models she had been building. In normal conditions, these dormant genetic markers would remain just that—latent. Passed through generations like forgotten heirlooms, meaningless until triggered.
Except in this case, there was evidence that something had triggered them.
The human body, subjected to long-term exposure to deep space radiation, artificial gravity shifts, and cosmic phenomena, and had there not been a fair dose of shielding from the hull, should have mutated chaotically, randomly. But this was different. The genetic sequences weren’t just mutating—they were activating.
And more surprisingly… it wasn’t truly random.
Something—or someone—had inherited an old mechanism that allowed them to access knowledge, instincts, memories from generations long past.
The ancient Templars had believed in a ritualistic process to recover ancestral skills and knowledge. What Amara was seeing now…
She rubbed her forehead.
“Impossible.”
And yet—here was the data.
On Earth, the past was written in stories and fading ink. In space, the past was still alive—hiding inside their cells, waiting.
Earth – The Quiz Night Reveal
The Golden Trowel, Hungary
The candlelit warmth of The Golden Trowel buzzed with newfound energy. The survivors sat in a loose circle, drinks in hand, at this unplanned but much-needed evening of levity.
Once the postcards shared, everyone was listening as Tala addressed the group.
“If anyone has an anecdote, hang on to the postcard,” she said. “If not, pass it on. No wrong answers, but the best story wins.”
Molly felt the weight of her own selection, the Giralda’s spire sharp and unmistakable. Something about it stirred her—an itch in the back of her mind, a thread tugging at long-buried memories.
She turned toward Vera, who was already inspecting her own card with keen interest.
“Tower of London, anything exciting to share?”
Vera arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, lips curving in amusement.
“Molly Darling,” she drawled, “I can tell you lots, I know more about dead people’s families than most people know about their living ones, and London is surely a place of abundance of stories. But do you even know about your own name Marlowe?”
She spun the postcard between her fingers before answering.
“Not sure, really, I only know about Philip Marlowe, the fictional detective from Lady in the Lake novel… Never really thought about the name before.”
“Marlowe,” Vera smiled. “That’s an old name. Very old. Derived from an Old English phrase meaning ‘remnants of a lake.’”
Molly inhaled sharply.
Remnants of the Lady of the Lake ?
Her pulse thrummed. Beyond the historical curiosity she’d felt a deep old connection.
If her family had left behind records, they would have been on the ship… The thought came with unwanted feelings she’d rather have buried. The living mattered, the lost ones… They’d lost connection for so long, how could they…
Her fingers tightened around the postcard.
Unless there was something behind her ravings?
Molly swallowed the lump in her throat and met Vera’s gaze. “I need to talk to Finja.”
Finja had spent most of the evening pretending not to exist.
But after the fifth time Molly nudged her, eyes bright with silent pleas, she let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Alright,” she muttered. “But just one.”
Molly exhaled in relief.
The once-raucous Golden Trowel had dimmed into something softer—the edges of the night blurred with expectation.
Because it wasn’t just Molly who wanted to ask.
Maybe it was the effect of the postcards game, a shared psychic connection, or maybe like someone had muttered, caused by the new Moon’s sickness… A dozen others had realized, all at once, that they too had names to whisper.
Somehow, a whole population was still alive, in space, after all this time. There was no time for disbelief now, Finja’s knowledge of stuff was incontrovertible. Molly was cued by the care-taking of Ellis Marlowe by Finkley, she knew things about her softie of a son, only his mother and close people would know.
So Finja had relented. And agreed to use all means to establish a connection, to reignite a spark of hope she was worried could just be the last straw before being thrown into despair once again.
Finja closed her eyes.
The link had always been there, an immediate vivid presence beneath her skull, pristine and comfortable but tonight it felt louder, crowdier.
The moons had shifted, in syzygy, with a gravity pull in their orbits tugging at things unseen.
She reached out—
And the voices crashed into her.
Too much. Too many.
Hundreds of voices, drowning her in longing and loss.
“Where is my brother?”
“Did my wife make it aboard?”
“My son—please—he was supposed to be on Helix 23—”
“Tell them I’m still here!”Her head snapped back, breath shattering into gasps.
The crowd held its breath.
A dozen pairs of eyes, wide and unblinking.
Finja clenched her fists. She had to shut it down. She had to—
And then—
Something else.
A presence. Watching.
Her chest seized.
There was no logical way for an AI to interfere with telepathic frequencies.
And yet—
She felt it.
A subtle distortion. A foreign hand pressing against the link, observing.
The ship knew.
Finja jerked back, knocking over her chair.
The bar erupted into chaos.
“FINJA?! What did you see?”
“Was someone there?”
“Did you find anyone?!”Her breath came in short, panicked bursts.
She had never thought about the consequences of calling out across space.
But now…
Now she knew.
They were not the last survivors. Other lived and thrived beyond Earth.
And Synthia wanted to keep it that way.
Yet, Finja and Finkley had both simultaneously caught something.
It would take the ship time, but they were coming back. Synthia was not pleased about it, but had not been able to override the response to the beacon.They were coming back.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Murder Board – Evie’s apartment
The ship had gone mad.
Riven Holt stood in what should have been a secured crime scene, staring at the makeshift banner that had replaced his official security tape. “ENTER FREELY AND OF YOUR OWN WILL,” it read, in bold, uneven letters. The edges were charred. Someone had burned it, for reasons he would never understand.
Behind him, the faint sounds of mass lunacy echoed through the corridors. People chanting, people sobbing, someone loudly trying to bargain with gravity.
“Sir, the floors are not real! We’ve all been walking on a lie!” someone had screamed earlier, right before diving headfirst into a pile of chairs left there by someone trying to create a portal.
Riven did his best to ignore the chaos, gripping his tablet like it was the last anchor to reality. He had two dead bodies. He had one ship full of increasingly unhinged people. And he had forty hours without sleep. His brain felt like a dried-out husk, working purely on stubbornness and caffeine fumes.
Evie was crouched over Mandrake’s remains, muttering to herself as she sorted through digital records. TP stood nearby, his holographic form flickering as if he, too, were being affected by the ship’s collective insanity.
“Well,” TP mused, rubbing his nonexistent chin. “This is quite the predicament.”
Riven pinched the bridge of his nose. “TP, if you say anything remotely poetic about the human condition, I will unplug your entire database.”
TP looked delighted. “Ah, my dear lieutenant, a threat worthy of true desperation!”
Evie ignored them both, then suddenly stiffened. “Riven, I… you need to see this.”
He braced himself. “What now?”
She turned the screen toward him. Two names appeared side by side:
Both M.
The sound that came out of Riven was not quite a word. More like a dying engine trying to restart.
TP gasped dramatically. “My stars. The letter M! The implications are—”
“No.” Riven put up a hand, one tremor away from screaming. “We are NOT doing this. I am not letting my brain spiral into a letter-based conspiracy theory while people outside are rolling in protein paste and reciting odes to Jupiter’s moons.”
Evie, far too calm for his liking, just tapped the screen again. “It’s a pattern. We have to consider it.”
TP nodded sagely. “Indeed. The letter M—known throughout history as a mark of mystery, malice, and… wait, let me check… ah, macaroni.”
Riven was going to have an aneurysm.
Instead, he exhaled slowly, like a man trying to keep the last shreds of his soul from unraveling.
“That means the Lexicans are involved.”
Evie paled. “Oh no.”
TP beamed. “Oh yes!”
The Lexicans had been especially unpredictable lately. One had been caught trying to record the “song of the walls” because “they hum with forgotten words.” Another had attempted to marry the ship’s AI. A third had been detained for throwing their own clothing into the air vents because “the whispers demanded tribute.”
Riven leaned against the console, feeling his mind slipping. He needed a reality check. A hard, cold, undeniable fact.
Only one person could give him that.
“You know what? Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s just ask the one person who might actually be able to tell me if this is a coincidence or some ancient space cult.”
Evie frowned. “Who?”
Riven was already walking. “My grandfather.”
Evie practically choked. “Wait, WHAT?!”
TP clapped his hands. “Ah, the classic ‘Wake the Old Man to Solve the Crimes’ maneuver. Love it.”
The corridors were worse than before. As they made their way toward cryo-storage, the lunacy had escalated:
A crowd was parading down the halls with helium balloons, chanting, “Gravity is a Lie!”
A group of engineers had dismantled a security door, claiming “it whispered to them about betrayal.”
And a bunch of Lexicans, led by Kio’ath, had smeared stinking protein paste onto the Atrium walls, drawing spirals and claiming the prophecy was upon them all.
Riven’s grip on reality was thin.Evie grabbed his arm. “Think about this. What if your grandfather wakes up and he’s just as insane as everyone else?”
Riven didn’t even break stride. “Then at least we’ll be insane with more context.”
TP sighed happily. “Ah, reckless decision-making. The very heart of detective work.”
Helix 25 — Victor Holt’s Awakening
They reached the cryo-chamber. The pod loomed before them, controls locked down under layers of security.
Riven cracked his knuckles, eyes burning with the desperation of a man who had officially run out of better options.
Evie stared. “You’re actually doing this.”
He was already punching in override codes. “Damn right I am.”
The door opened. A low hum filled the room. The first thing Riven noticed was the frost still clinging to the edges of an already open cryopod. Cold vapor curled around its base, its occupant nowhere to be seen.
His stomach clenched. Someone had beaten them here. Another pod’s systems activated. The glass began to fog as temperature levels shifted.
TP leaned in. “Oh, this is going to be deliciously catastrophic.”
Before the pod could fully engage, a flicker of movement in the dim light caught Riven’s eye. Near the terminal, hunched over the access panel like a gang of thieves cracking a vault, stood Zoya Kade and Anuí Naskó—and, a baby wrapped in what could only be described as an aggressively overdesigned Lexican tapestry, layers of embroidered symbols and unreadable glyphs woven in mismatched patterns. It was sucking desperately the lexican’s sleeve.
Riven’s exhaustion turned into a slow, rising fury. For a brief moment, his mind was distracted by something he had never actually considered before—he had always assumed Anuí was a woman. The flowing robes, the mannerisms, the way they carried themselves. But now, cradling the notorious Lexican baby in ceremonial cloth, could they possibly be…
Anuí caught his look and smiled faintly, unreadable as ever. “This has nothing to do with gender,” they said smoothly, shifting the baby with practiced ease. “I merely am the second father of the child.”
“Oh, for f***—What in the hell are you two doing here?”
Anuí barely glanced up, shifting the baby to their other arm as though hacking into a classified cryo-storage facility while holding an infant was a perfectly normal occurrence. “Unlocking the axis of the spiral,” they said smoothly. “It was prophesied. The Speaker’s name has been revealed.”
Zoya, still pressing at the panel, didn’t even look at him. “We need to wake Victor Holt.”
Riven threw his hands in the air. “Great! Fantastic! So do we! The difference is that I actually have a reason.”
Anuí, eyes glinting with something between mischief and intellect, gave an elegant nod. “So do we, Lieutenant. Yours is a crime scene. Ours is history itself.”
Riven felt his headache spike. “Oh good. You’ve been licking the walls again.”
TP, absolutely delighted, interjected, “Oh, I like them. Their madness is methodical!”
Riven narrowed his eyes, pointing at the empty pod. “Who the hell did you wake up?”
Zoya didn’t flinch. “We don’t know.”
He barked a laugh, sharp and humorless. “Oh, you don’t know? You cracked into a classified cryo-storage facility, activated a pod, and just—what? Didn’t bother to check who was inside?”
Anuí adjusted the baby, watching him with that same unsettling, too-knowing expression. “It was not part of the prophecy. We were guided here for Victor Holt.”
“And yet someone else woke up first!” Riven gestured wildly to the empty pod. “So, unless the prophecy also mentioned mystery corpses walking out of deep freeze, I suggest you start making sense.”
Before Riven could launch into a proper interrogation, the cryo-system let out a deep hiss.
Steam coiled up from Victor Holt’s pod as the seals finally unlocked, fog spilling over the edges like something out of an ancient myth. A figure was stirring within, movements sluggish, muscles regaining function after years in suspension.
And then, from the doorway, another voice rang out, sharp, almost panicked.
Ellis Marlowe stood at the threshold, looking at the two open pods, his eyes wide with something between shock and horror.
“What have you done?”
Riven braced himself.
Evie muttered, “Oh, this is gonna be bad.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – The Lexican Quarters – Anuí’s Chambers
Anuí Naskó had been many things in their life—historian, philosopher, linguist, nuisance. But a father? No. No, that was entirely new.
And yet, here they were, rocking a very tiny, very loud creature wrapped in Lexican ceremonial cloth, embroidered with the full unpronounceable name bestowed upon it just moments ago: Hšyra-Mak-Talún i Ešvar—”He Who Cries the Arrival of the Infinite Spiral.”
The baby did, indeed, cry.
“Why do you scream at me?” Anuí muttered, swaying slightly, more in a daze than any real instinct to soothe. “I did not birth you. I did not know you existed until three hours ago. And yet, you are here, squalling, because your other father and your mother have decided to fulfill the Prophecy of the Spiral Throne.”
The Prophecy. The one that spoke of the moment the world would collapse and the Lexicans would ascend. The one nobody took seriously. Until now.
Zoya Kade, sitting across from them, watched with narrowed, calculating eyes. “And what exactly does that entail? This Lexican Dynasty?”
Anuí sighed, looking down at the writhing child who was trying to suck on their sleeves, still stained with the remnants of the protein paste they had spent the better part of the morning brewing. The Atrium’s walls needed to be prepared, after all—Kio’ath could not write the sigils without the proper medium. And as the cycles dictated, the medium must be crafted, fermented, and blessed by the hand of one who walks between identities. It had been a tedious, smelly process, but Anuí had endured worse in the name of preservation.
“Patterns repeat, cycles fold inward.” “Patterns repeat, cycles fold inward. The old texts speak of it, the words carved into the silent bones of forgotten tongues. This, Zoya, is no mere madness. This is the resurgence of what was foretold. A dynasty cannot exist without succession, and history does not move without inheritors. They believe they are ensuring the inevitability of their rise. And they might not be wrong.”
They adjusted their grip on the child, murmuring a phrase in a language so old it barely survived in the archives. “Tz’uran velth ka’an, the root that binds to the branch, the branch that binds to the sky. Our truths do not stand alone.”
The baby flailed, screaming louder. “Yes, yes, you are the heir,” Anuí murmured, bouncing it with more confidence. “Your lineage has been declared, your burden assigned. Accept it and be silent.” “Well, apparently it requires me to be a single parent while they go forth and multiply, securing ‘heirs to the truth.’ A dynasty is no good without an heir and a spare, you see.”
The baby flailed, screaming even louder. “Yes, yes, you are the heir,” Anuí murmured with a hint of irritation, bouncing the baby awkwardly. “You have been declared. Please, cease wailing now.”
Zoya exhaled through her nose, somewhere between disbelief and mild amusement. “And in the middle of all this divine nonsense, the Lexicans have chosen to back me?”
Anuí arched a delicate brow, shifting the baby to one arm with newfound ease. “Of course. The truth-seeker is foretold. The woman who speaks with voices of the past. We have our empire; you are our harbinger.”
Zoya’s lips twitched. “Your empire consists of thirty-eight highly unstable academics and a baby.”
“Thirty-nine. Kio’ath returned from exile yesterday,” Anuí corrected. “They claim the moons have been whispering.”
“Ah. Of course they have.”
Zoya fell silent, fingers tracing the worn etchings of her chair’s armrest. The ship’s hum pressed into her bones, the weight of something stirring in her mind, something old, something waiting.
Anuí’s gaze sharpened, the edges of their thoughts aligning like an ancient lexicon unfurling in front of them. “And now you are hearing it, aren’t you? The echoes of something that was always there. The syllables of the past, reshaped by new tongues, waiting for recognition. The Lexican texts spoke of a fracture in the line, a leader divided, a bridge yet to be found.”
They took a slow breath, fingers tightening over the child’s swaddled form. “The prophecy is not a single moment, Zoya. It is layers upon layers, intersecting at the point where chaos demands order. Where the unseen hand corrects its own forgetting. This is why they back you. Not because you seek the truth, but because you are the conduit through which it must pass.”
Zoya’s breath shallowed. A warmth curled in her chest, not of her own making. Her fingers twitched as if something unseen traced over them, urging her forward. The air around her thickened, charged.
She knew this feeling.
Her head tipped back, and when she spoke, it was not entirely her own voice.
“The past rises in bloodlines and memory,” she intoned, eyes unfocused, gaze burning through Anuí. “The lost sibling walks beneath the ice. The leader sleeps, but he must awaken, for the Spiral Throne cannot stand alone.”
Anuí’s pulse skipped. “Zoya—”
The baby let out a startled hiccup.
But Zoya did not stop.
“The essence calls, older than names, older than the cycle. I am Achaia-Vor, the Echo of Sundered Lineage. The Lost, The Twin, The Nameless Seed. The Spiral cannot turn without its axis. Awaken Victor Holt. He is the lock. You are the key. The path is drawn.
“The cycle bends but does not break. Across the void, the lost ones linger, their voices unheard, their blood unclaimed. The Link must be found. The Speaker walks unknowingly, divided across two worlds. The bridge between past and present, between silence and song. The Marlowe thread is cut, yet the weave remains. To see, you must seek the mirrored souls. To open the path, the twins must speak.”
Achaia-Vor. The name vibrated through the air, curling through the folds of Anuí’s mind like a forgotten melody.
Zoya’s eyes rolled back, body jerking as if caught between two timelines, two truths. She let out a breathless whisper, almost longing.
“Victor, my love. He is waiting for me. I must bring him back.”
Anuí cradled the baby closer, and for the first time, they saw the prophecy not as doctrine but as inevitability. The patterns were aligning—the cut thread of the Marlowes, the mirrored souls, the bridge that must be found.
“It is always the same,” they murmured, almost to themselves. “An axis must be turned, a voice must rise. We have seen this before, written in languages long burned to dust. The same myth, the same cycle, only the names change.”
They met Zoya’s gaze, the air between them thick with the weight of knowing. “And now, we must find the Speaker. Before another voice is silenced.”
“Well,” they muttered, exhaling slowly. “This just got significantly more complicated.”
The baby cooed.
Zoya Kade smiled.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Gentle Utopia at Upper Decks
The Upper Decks of Helix 25 were a marvel of well-designed choreography and engineered tranquility. Life here was made effortless, thanks to an artful curation of everyday problems. Climate control ensured the air was always crisp, with just enough variation to keep the body alert, while maintaining a perfect balance of warm and cool, hygrometry, with no crazy seasons or climate change upheaval to disrupt the monotony. Food dispensers served gourmet meals for every individual preferences —decadent feasts perfectly prepared at the push of a button. The Helix cruise starships were designed for leisure, an eternity of comfort — and it had succeeded.
For the average resident, the days blended into one another in an animated swirl of hobbyist pursuits. There were the Arboretum Philosophers, who debated meaningfully over the purpose of existence while sipping floral-infused teas. There were the Artisans, who crafted digital masterpieces that vanished into the ship’s archives as soon as they were complete. There were the Virtual Adventurers, who lived entire lifetimes in fully immersive life-like simulations, all while reclining on plush lounges, connected to their brain chips courtesy of Muck Industries.
And then, there were Sharon, Gloria, and Mavis.
Three old ladies who, by all accounts, should have spent their days knitting and reminiscing about their youth, but instead had taken it upon themselves to make Helix 25 a little more interesting.
“Another marvelous day, ladies,” Sharon declared as she strolled along the gilded walkway of the Grand Atrium, a cavernous space filled with floating lounges and soft ambient music. The ceiling was a perfect replica of a sky—complete with drifting, lazy clouds and the occasional simulated flock of birds. Enough to make you almost forget you were in a closed fully-controlled environment.
Mavis sighed, adjusting her gaudy, glittering shawl. “It’s too marvelous, if you ask me. Bit samey, innit? Not even a good scandal to shake things up.”
Gloria scoffed. “Pah! That’s ‘cause we ain’t lookin’ hard enough. Did you hear about that dreadful business down in the Granary? Dried ‘im up like an apricot, they did. Disgustin’.”
“Dreadful,” Sharon agreed solemnly. “And not a single murder for decades, you know. We were overdue.”
Mavis clutched her pearls. “You make it sound like a good thing.”
Gloria waved a dismissive hand. “I’m just sayin’, bit of drama keeps people from losing their minds. No offense, but how many decades of spa treatments can a person endure before they go barmy?”
They passed a Wellness Lounge, where a row of residents were floating in Zero-G Hydrotherapy Pods, their faces aglow with Rejuvenex™ Anti-Aging Serum. Others lounged under mild UV therapy lamps, soaking up synthetic vitamin D while attendants rubbed nutrient-rich oils into their wrinkle-free skin.
Mavis peered at them. “Y’know, I swear some of ‘em are the same age as when we boarded.”
Gloria sniffed. “Not the same, Mavis. Just better preserved.”
Sharon tapped her lips, thoughtful. “I always wondered why we don’t have crime ‘ere. I mean, back on Earth, it were all fights, robbery, someone goin’ absolutely mental over a parking space—”
Gloria nodded. “It’s ‘cause we ain’t got money, Sha. No money, no stress, see? Everyone gets what they need.”
“Needs? Glo, love, people here have twelve-course meals and private VR vacations to Ancient Rome! I don’t reckon that counts as ‘needs’.”
“Well, it ain’t money, exactly,” Mavis pondered, “but we still ‘ave credits, don’t we?”
They fell into deep philosophical debates —or to say, their version of it.
Currency still existed aboard Helix 25, in a way. Each resident had a personal wealth balance, a digital measure of their social contributions—creative works, mentorship, scientific discovery, or participation in ship maintenance (for those who actually enjoyed labor, an absurd notion to most Upper Deckers). It wasn’t about survival, not like on the Lower Decks or the Hold, but about status. The wealthiest weren’t necessarily the smartest or the strongest, but rather those who best entertained or enriched the community.
Gloria finally waved her hand dismissively. “Point is, they keep us comfortable so we don’t start thinkin’ about things too much. Keep us occupied. Like a ship-sized cruise, but forever.”
Mavis wrinkled her nose. “A bit sinister, when you put it like that.”
“Well, I didn’t say it were sinister, I just said it were clever.” Gloria sniffed. “Anyway, we ain’t the ones who need entertainin’, are we? We’ve got a mystery on our hands.”
Sharon clapped excitedly. “Ooooh yes! A real mystery! Ain’t it thrillin’?”
“A proper one,” Gloria agreed. “With dead bodies an’ secrets an’—”
“—murder,” Mavis finished, breathless.
The three of them sighed in unison, delighted at the prospect.
They continued their stroll past the Grand Casino & Theatre, where a live orchestral simulation played for a well-dressed audience. Past the Astronomer’s Lounge, where youngster were taught to chart the stars that Helix 25 would never reach. Past the Crystal Arcade, where another group of youth of the ship enjoyed their free time on holographic duels and tactical board games.
So much entertainment. So much luxury.
So much designed distraction.
Gloria stopped suddenly, narrowing her eyes. “You ever wonder why we ain’t heard from the Captain in years?”
A hush fell over them.
Mavis frowned. “I thought you said the Captain were an idea, not a person.”
“Well, maybe. But if that’s true, who’s actually runnin’ the show?” Gloria folded her arms.
They glanced around, as if expecting an answer from the glowing Synthia panels embedded in every wall.
For the first time in a long while, they felt watched.
“…Maybe we oughta be careful,” Sharon muttered.
Mavis shivered. “Oh, Glo. What ‘ave you gotten us into this time?”
Gloria straightened her collar. “Dunno yet, love. But ain’t it excitin’?”
“With all the excitment, I almost forgot to tell you about that absolutely ghastly business,” Gloria declared, moments later, at the Moonchies’ Café, swirling her lavender-infused tea. “Watched a documentary this morning. About man-eating lions of Njombe.”
Sharon gasped, clutching her pearls. “Man eating lions?!”
Mavis blinked. “Wait. Man-eating lions, or man eating lions?”
There was a pause.
Gloria narrowed her eyes. “Mavis, why in the name of clotted cream would I be watchin’ a man eating lions?”
Mavis shrugged. “Well, I dunno, do I? Maybe he ran out of elephants.”
Sharon nodded sagely. “Yes, happens all the time in those travel shows.”
Gloria exhaled through her nose. “It’s not a travel show, Sha. And it’s not fiction.”
Mavis scoffed. “You sure? Sounds ridiculous.”
“Not as ridiculous as a man sittin’ down to a plate of roast lion chops,” Gloria shot back.
Mavis tilted her head. “Maybe it’s in a recipe book?”
Gloria slammed her teacup down. “I give up. I absolutely give up.”
Sharon patted her hand. “There, there, Glo. You can always watch somethin’ lighter tomorrow. Maybe a nice documentary about man-eating otters.”
Mavis grinned. “Or man eating otters.”
Gloria inhaled deeply, resisting the urge to upend her tea.
This, this was why Helix 25 had never known war.
No one had the time.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Below Lower Decks – Shadow Sector
Kai Nova moved cautiously through the underbelly of Helix 25, entering a part of the Lower Decks where the usual throb of the ship’s automated systems turned muted. The air had a different smell here— it was less sterile, more… human. It was warm, the heat from outdated processors and unmonitored power nodes radiating through the bulkheads. The Upper Decks would have reported this inefficiency.
Here, it simply went unnoticed, or more likely, ignored.
He was being watched.
He knew it the moment he passed a cluster of workers standing by a storage unit, their voices trailing off as he walked by. Not unusual, except these weren’t Lower Deck engineers. They had the look of people who existed outside of the ship’s official structure—clothes unmarked by department insignias, movements too intentional for standard crew assignments.
He stopped at the rendezvous point: an unlit access panel leading to what was supposed to be an abandoned sublevel. The panel had been manually overridden, its system logs erased. That alone told him enough—whoever he was meeting had the skills to work outside of Helix 25’s omnipresent oversight.
A voice broke the silence.
“You’re late.”
Kai turned, keeping his stance neutral. The speaker was of indistinct gender, shaved head, tall and wiry, with sharp green eyes locked on his movements. They wore layered robes that, at a glance, could have passed as scavenged fabric—until Kai noticed the intricate stitching of symbols hidden in the folds.
They looked like Zoya’s brand —he almost thought… or let’s just say, Zoya’s influence. Zoya Kade’s litanies had a farther reach he would expect.
“Wasn’t aware this was a job interview,” Kai quipped, leaning casually against the bulkhead.
“Everything’s a test,” they replied. “Especially for outsiders.”
Kai smirked. “I didn’t come to join your book club. I came for answers.”
A low chuckle echoed from the shadows, followed by the shifting of figures stepping into the faint light. Three, maybe four of them. It could have been an ambush, but that was a display.
“Pilot,” the woman continued, avoiding names. “Seeker of truth? Or just another lost soul looking for something to believe in?”
Kai rolled his shoulders, sensing the tension in the air. “I believe in not running out of fuel before reaching nowhere.”
That got their attention.
The recruiter studied him before nodding slightly. “Good. You understand the problem.”
Kai crossed his arms. “I understand a lot of problems. I also understand you’re not just a bunch of doomsayers whispering in the dark. You’re organized. And you think this ship is heading toward a dead end.”
“You say that like it isn’t.”
Kai exhaled, glancing at the flickering emergency light above. “Synthia doesn’t make mistakes.”
They smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “No. It makes adjustments.” — the heavy tone on the “it” struck him. Techno-bigots, or something else? Were they denying Synthia’s sentience, or just adjusting for gender misnomers, it was hard to tell, and he had a hard time to gauge the sanity of this group.
A low murmur of agreement rippled through the gathered figures.
Kai tilted his head. “You think she’s leading us into the abyss?”
The person stepped closer. “What do you think happened to the rest of the fleet, Pilot?”
Kai stiffened slightly. The Helix Fleet, the original grand exodus of humanity—once multiple ships, now only Helix 25, drifting further into the unknown.
He had never been given a real answer.
“Think about it,” they pressed. “This ship wasn’t built for endless travel. Its original mission was altered. Its course reprogrammed. You fly the vessel, but you don’t control it.” She gestured to the others. “None of us do. We’re passengers on a ride to oblivion, on a ship driven by a dead man’s vision.”
Kai had heard the whispers—about the tycoon who had bankrolled Helix 25, about how the ship’s true directive had been rewritten when the Earth refugees arrived. But this group… they didn’t just speculate. They were ready to act.
He kept his voice steady. “You planning on mutiny?”
They smiled, stepping back into the half-shadow. “Mutiny is such a crude word. We’re simply ensuring that we survive.”
Before Kai could respond, a warning prickle ran up his spine.
Someone else was watching.
He turned slowly, catching the faintest silhouette lingering just beyond the corridor entrance. He recognized the stance instantly—Cadet Taygeta.
Damn it.
She had followed him.
The group noticed, shifting slightly. Not hostile, but suddenly alert.
“Well, well,” the woman murmured. “Seems you have company. You weren’t as careful as you thought. How are you going to deal with this problem now?”
Kai exhaled, weighing his options. If Taygeta had followed him, she’d already flagged this meeting in her records. If he tried to run, she’d report it. If he didn’t run, she might just dig deeper.
And the worst part?
She wasn’t corruptible. She wasn’t the type to look the other way.
“You should go,” the movement person said. “Before your shadow decides to interfere.”
Kai hesitated for half a second, before stepping back.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
Her smile returned. “No, Pilot. It’s just beginning.”
With that, Kai turned and walked toward the exit—toward Taygeta, who was waiting for him with arms crossed, expression unreadable.
He didn’t speak first.
She did.
“You’re terrible at being subtle.”
Kai sighed, thinking quickly of how much of the conversation could be accessed by the central system. They were still in the shadow zone, but that wasn’t sufficient. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.” Her voice was even, but her fingers twitched at her side. “You know this is treason, right?”
Kai ran a hand through his hair. “You really think we’re on course for a fresh new paradise?”
Taygeta didn’t answer right away. That was enough of an answer.
Finally, she exhaled. “You should report this.”
“You should,” Kai corrected.
She frowned.
He pressed on. “You know me, Taygeta. I don’t follow lost causes. I don’t get involved in politics. I fly. I survive. But if they’re right—if there’s even a chance that we’re being sent to our deaths—I need to know.”
Taygeta’s fingers twitched again.
Then, with a sharp breath, she turned.
“I didn’t see anything tonight.”
Kai blinked. “What?”
Her back was already to him, her voice tight. “Whatever you’re doing, Nova, be careful. Because next time?” She turned her head slightly, just enough to let him see the edge of her conflicted expression.
“I will report you.”
Then she was gone.
Kai let out a slow breath, glancing back toward the hidden movement behind him.
No turning back now.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Helix 25 – Poop Deck – The Jardenery
Evie stepped through the entrance of the Jardenery, and immediately, the sterile hum of Helix 25’s corridors faded into a world of green. Of all the spotless clean places on the ship, it was the only where Finkley’s bots tolerated the scent of damp earth. A soft rustle of hydroponic leaves shifting under artificial sunlight made the place an ecosystem within an ecosystem, designed to nourrish both body and mind.
Yet, for all its cultivated serenity, today it was a crime scene. The Drying Machine was connected to the Jardenery and the Granary, designed to efficiently extract precious moisture for recycling, while preserving the produce.
Riven Holt, walking beside her, didn’t share her reverence. “I don’t see why this place is relevant,” he muttered, glancing around at the towering bioluminescent vines spiraling up trellises. “The body was found in the drying machine, not in a vegetable patch.”
Evie ignored him, striding toward the far corner where Amara Voss was hunched over a sleek terminal, frowning at a glowing screen. The renowned geneticist barely noticed their approach, her fingers flicking through analysis results faster than human eyes could process.
A flicker of light.
“Ah-ha!” TP materialized beside Evie, adjusting his holographic lapels. “Madame Voss, I must say, your domain is quite the delightful contrast to our usual haunts of murder and mystery.” He twitched his mustache. “Alas, I suspect you are not admiring the flora?”
Amara exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples, not at all surprised by the holographic intrusion. She was Evie’s godmother, and had grown used to her experiments.
“No, indeed. I’m admiring this.” She turned the screen toward them.
The DNA profile glowed in crisp lines of data, revealing a sequence highlighted in red.
Evie frowned. “What are we looking at?”
Amara pinched the bridge of her nose. “A genetic anomaly.”
Riven crossed his arms. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
Amara gave him a sharp look but turned back to the display. “The sample we found at the crime scene—blood residue on the drying machine and some traces on the granary floor—matches an ancient DNA profile from my research database. A perfect match.”
Evie felt a prickle of unease. “Ancient? What do you mean? From the 2000s?”
Amara chuckled, then nodded grimly. “No, ancient as in Medieval ancient. Specifically, Crusader DNA, from the Levant. A profile we mapped from preserved remains centuries ago.”
Silence stretched between them.
Finally, Riven scoffed. “That’s impossible.”
TP hummed thoughtfully, twirling his cane. “Impossible, yet indisputable. A most delightful contradiction.”
Evie’s mind raced. “Could the database be corrupted?”
Amara shook her head. “I checked. The sequencing is clean. This isn’t an error. This DNA was present at the crime scene.” She hesitated, then added, “The thing is…” she paused before considering to continue. They were all hanging on her every word, waiting for what she would say next.
Amara continued “I once theorized that it might be possible to reawaken dormant ancestral DNA embedded in human cells. If the right triggers were applied, someone could manifest genetic markers—traits, even memories—from long-dead ancestors. Awakening old skills, getting access to long lost secrets of states…”
Riven looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “You’re saying someone on Helix 25 might have… transformed into a medieval Crusader?”
Amara exhaled. “I’m saying I don’t know. But either someone aboard has a genetic profile that shouldn’t exist, or someone created it.”
TP’s mustache twitched. “Ah! A puzzle worthy of my finest deductive faculties. To find the source, we must trace back the lineage! And perhaps a… witness.”
Evie turned toward Amara. “Did Herbert ever come here?”
Before Amara could answer, a voice cut through the foliage.
“Herbert?”
They turned to find Romualdo, the Jardenery’s caretaker, standing near a towering fruit-bearing vine, his arms folded, a leaf-tipped stem tucked behind his ear like a cigarette. He was a broad-shouldered man with sun-weathered skin, dressed in a simple coverall, his presence almost too casual for someone surrounded by murder investigators.
Romualdo scratched his chin. “Yeah, he used to come around. Not for the plants, though. He wasn’t the gardening type.”
Evie stepped closer. “What did he want?”
Romualdo shrugged. “Questions, mostly. Liked to chat about history. Said he was looking for something old. Always wanted to know about heritage, bloodlines, forgotten things.” He shook his head. “Didn’t make much sense to me. But then again, I like practical things. Things that grow.”
Amara blushed, quickly catching herself. “Did he ever mention anything… specific? Like a name?”
Romualdo thought for a moment, then grinned. “Oh yeah. He asked about the Crusades.”
Evie stiffened. TP let out an appreciative hum.
“Fascinating,” TP mused. “Our dearly departed Herbert was not merely a victim, but perhaps a seeker of truths unknown. And, as any good mystery dictates, seekers who get too close often find themselves…” He tipped his hat. “Extinguished.”
Riven scowled. “That’s a bit dramatic.”
Romualdo snorted. “Sounds about right, though.” He picked up a tattered book from his workbench and waved it. “I lend out my books. Got myself the only complete collection of works of Liz Tattler in the whole ship. Doc Amara’s helping me with the reading. Before I could read, I only liked the covers, they were so romantic and intriguing, but now I can read most of them on my own.” Noticing he was making the Doctor uncomfortable, he switched back to the topic. “So yes, Herbert knew I was collector of books and he borrowed this one a few weeks ago. Kept coming back with more questions after reading it.”
Evie took the book and glanced at the cover. The Blood of the Past: Genetic Echoes Through History by Dr. Amara Voss.
She turned to Amara. “You wrote this?”
Amara stared at the book, her expression darkening. “A long time ago. Before I realized some theories should stay theories.”
Evie closed the book. “Looks like someone didn’t agree.”
Romualdo wiped his hands on his coveralls. “Well, I hope you figure it out soon. Hate to think the plants are breathing in murder residue.”
TP sighed dramatically. “Ah, the tragedy of contaminated air! Shall I alert the sanitation team?”
Riven rolled his eyes. “Let’s go.”
As they walked away, Evie’s grip tightened around the book. The deeper they dug, the stranger this murder became.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Orrin Holt gripped the wheel of the battered truck, his knuckles white as the vehicle rumbled over the dry, cracked road. The leather wrap was a patchwork of smooth and worn, stichted together from whatever scraps they had—much like the quilts his mother used to make before her hands gave out. The main road was a useless, unpredictable mess of asphalt gravels and sinkholes. Years of war with Russia, then the collapse, left it to rot before anyone could fix it. Orrin stuck to the dirt path beside it. That was the only safe way through. The engine coughed but held. A miracle, considering how many times it had been patched together.
The cargo in the back was too important for a breakdown now. Medical supplies—antibiotics, painkillers, and a few salvaged vials of something even rarer. They’d traded well for it, risking much. Now he had to get it back to Base Klyutch (Ukrainian word for Key) without incident. If he continued like that he could make it before noon.
Still, something bothered him. That group of people he’d seen.
They had been barely more than silhouettes on top of a hill. Strangers, a rarity in these times. His first instinct had been to stop and evaluate who they were. But his instructions let room for no delay. So, he’d pushed forward and ignored them. The world wasn’t kind to the wandering. But they hadn’t looked like raiders or scavengers. Lost, perhaps. Or searching.
The truck lurched forward as he pushed it harder. The fences of the base rose in the distance, grey and wiry against the blue sky. Base Klyutch was a former military complex, fortified over the years with scavenged materials, steel sheets, and watchtowers. It wasn’t perfect, but it kept them alive.
As he rolled up to the main gate, the sentries swung the barricade open. Before he could fully cut the engine, a woman wearing a pristine white lab coat stepped forward, her sharp eyes scanning the truck’s cargo bed. Dr. Yelena Markova, the camp’s chief doctor, a former nurse who had to step up when the older one died in a raid on their camp three years ago. Stern-faced and wiry, with a perpetual air of exhaustion, she moved with the efficiency of someone who had long stopped hoping for ease. She had been waiting for this delivery.
“Finally,” she murmured, motioning for her assistants to start unloading. “We were running low. This will keep us going for a while.”
Orrin barely had time to nod before Dmytro Koval, the de facto leader of the base, strode toward him with the gait of a tall bear. His face seemed to have been carved out by a dulled blade, hardened by years of survival. A scar barred his mouth, pulling slightly at the corner when he spoke, giving the impression of a permanent sneer.
“Did you get it?” Koval asked, voice low.
Orrin reached into his kaki jacket and pulled out a sealed letter, along with a small package.
Koval took both, his expression unreadable. “Anything on the road?”
Orrin exhaled and adjusted his stance. “Saw something on the way back. A group, about a dozen, on a hill ten kilometers out. They seemed lost.”
“Armed?” asked Koval with a frown.
“Can’t say for sure.”
Dr. Markova straightened. “Lost? Unarmed? Out in the open like that, they won’t last long with Sokolov’s gang roaming the land. We have to go take them in.”
Koval grimaced. “Or they’re Sokolov’s spies. Trying to infiltrate us and find a weakness in our defenses. You know how it works.”
Before Koval could argue, a new voice cut in. “Or they could just be people.”
Solara Ortega had stepped into the conversation, brushing dirt from her overalls. A woman of lean strength, with the tan of someone spending long hours outside. Her sharp amber eyes carried the weight of someone who had survived too much but refused to be hardened by it. Orrin shoved down a mix of joy and ache at her sight. Her voice was calm but firm. “We can’t always assume the worst. We need more hands and we don’t leave people to die if we can help it. And in case you forgot, Koval, you don’t make all the decisions around here. I say we send a team to assess them.”
Koval narrowed his eyes, but he held his tongue. There was tension between them, but the council wasn’t a dictatorship.
“Fine,” Koval said after a moment, his jaw tense. “A team of two. They scout first. No direct contact until we’re sure. Orrin, you one of them take whoever wants to accompany you, but not one of my men. We need to maintain tight security.”
Dr. Markova sighed with relief when the man left. “If he wasn’t good at what he does, I would gladly kick him out of our camp.”
Solara, her face framed by strands of dark hair, shot a glance at Orrin. “I’m coming with you.”
This time, Orrin couldn’t repress a longing for a time before everything fell apart, when she had been his wife. The collapse had torn them apart in an instant, and by the time he found her again, years later, she had built a new life within the base in Ukraine. She had a husband now, one of the scientists managing the radio equipment, and two children. Orrin kept his expression neutral, but the weight of time pressed heavy on him.
“Then let’s get on the move. They might not stay there long.”
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The truck disappeared from view as it descended into a valley. They waited for it to reappear over the hill, but they waited in vain. The truck had disappeared.
“It must have been a mirage,” said Vera. “There was no truck, it was wishful thinking.”
“I don’t think any of us were hoping to see a truck this morning, Vera,” Anya replied, “Nobody expected to see a truck, and yet we all saw one.”
“You don’t know much about mirages then, do you. I saw a fata morgana once and so did everyone else on the beach, we weren’t all expecting to see a floating city that day either.”
“Nobody needs to hear about that now,” Mikhail interrupted, “We need to walk over to where we saw it and look for the tyre tracks.”
Tundra moved over to stand next to Vera and impulsively grabbed her arm. “Can you tell me about the fata morgana later? I want to see one too.”
Vera smiled gratefully at the child and patted her shoulder. “I’ll tell you all about it, and lots of other stories if you like. And you can tell me all your stories, and all about your family. Is that your real granny?”
“Great gran actually and she’s as real as any of you are,” Tundra replied, not understanding the question.
“Mikhail is right,” said Jian. Everyone turned to look at young Chinese man who rarely voiced an opinion. “We need to find out what other equipment they have. Where they came from, and where they’re going.”
Anya clapped her hands together loudly. “Right then, we’re all agreed. Gather everything up and let’s go. Mikhail, lead the way!”
Petro made a harrumphing noise and mumbled something about nobody asking him what he thought about traipsing all over the coutryside, but he slung his bag over his shoulder and followed. What else was he to do?
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Zoya clicked her tongue, folding her arms as Evie and her flickering detective vanished into the dead man’s private world. She listened to the sounds of investigation. The sound of others touching what should have been hers first. She exhaled through her nose, slow and measured.
The body was elsewhere, dried and ruined. That didn’t matter. What mattered was here—hairs, nail clippings, that contained traces, strands, fragments of DNA waiting to be read like old parchments.
She stepped forward, the soft layers of her robes shifting.
“You can’t keep me out forever, young man.”
Riven didn’t move. Arms crossed, jaw locked, standing there like a sentry at some sacred threshold. Victor Holt’s grandson, through and through, she thought.
“I can keep you out long enough.”
Zoya clicked her tongue. Not quite amusement, not quite irritation.
“I should have suspected such obstinacy. You take after him, after all.”
Riven’s shoulders tensed.
Good. Let him feel it.
His voice was tight. “If you’re referring to my grandfather, you should choose your words carefully.”
Zoya smiled, slow and knowing. “I always choose my words carefully.”
Riven’s glare could have cut through metal.
Zoya tilted her head, studying him as she would an artifact pulled from the wreckage of an old world. So much of Victor Holt was in him—the posture, the unyielding spine, the desperate need to be right.
But Victor Holt had been wrong.
And that was why he was sleeping in a frozen cell of his own making.
She took another step forward, lowering her voice just enough that the curious would not hear what she said.
“He never understood the ship’s true mission. He clung to his authority, his rigid hierarchies, his outdated beliefs. He would have let us rot in luxury while the real work of survival slipped away. And when he refused to see reason—” she exhaled, her gaze never leaving his, “he stepped aside.”
Riven’s jaw locked. “He was forced aside.”
Zoya only smiled. “A matter of perspective.”
She let that hang. Let him sit with it.
She could see the war in his eyes—the desperate urge to refute her, to throw his grandfather’s legacy in her face, to remind her that Victor Holt was still here, still waiting in cryo, still a looming shadow over the ship. But Victor Holt’s silence was the greatest proof of his failure.
Riven clenched his jaw.
Anuí’s voice, smooth and patient, cut through the tension.
“She is not wrong.”
Zoya frowned. She had expected them to speak eventually. They always did.
They stood just a little apart, hand tucked in their robes, their expression unreadable.
“In its current state, the body is useless,” Anuí said lightly, as if stating something obvious, “but that does not mean it has left no trace.” Then they murmured “Nāvdaṭi hrás’ka… aṣṭīr pālachá.”
Zoya glanced at them, her eyes narrowing. In an old tongue forgotten by all, it meant The bones remember… the blood does not lie. She did not trust the Lexicans’ sudden interest in genetics.
They did not see history in bloodlines, did not place value in the remnants of DNA. They preferred their records rewritten, reclaimed, restructured to suit a new truth, not an old one.
Yet here they were, aligning themselves with her. And that was what gave her pause.
“Your people have never cared for the past as it was,” she murmured. “Only for what it could become.”
Anuí’s lips curved, withholding more than they gave. “Truth takes many forms.”
Zoya scoffed. They were here for their own reasons. That much was certain. She could use that
Riven’s fingers tightened at his sides. “I have my orders.”
Zoya lifted a brow. “And whose orders are those?”
The hesitation was slight. “It’s not up to me.”
Zoya stilled. The words were quiet, bitter, revealing.
Not up to him.
So, someone had ensured she wouldn’t step foot in that room. Not just delayed—denied.
She exhaled, long and slow. “I see.” She paused. “I will find out who gave that order.”
And when she did, they would regret it.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The corridor outside Mr. Herbert’s suite was pristine, polished white and gold, designed to impress, like most of the ship. Soft recessed lighting reflected off gilded fixtures and delicate, unnecessary embellishments.
It was all Riven had ever known.
His grandfather, Victor Holt, now in cryo sleep, had been among the paying elite, those who had boarded Helix 25, expecting a decadent, interstellar retreat. Riven, however had not been one of them. He had been two years old when Earth fell, sent with his aunt Seren Vega on the last shuttle to ever reach the ship, crammed in with refugees who had fought for a place among the stars. His father had stayed behind, to look for his mother.
Whatever had happened after that—the chaos, the desperation, the cataclysm that had forced this ship to become one of humanity’s last refuges—Riven had no memory of it. He only knew what he had been told. And, like everything else on Helix 25, history depended on who was telling it.
For the first time in his life, someone had been murdered inside this floating palace of glass and gold. And Riven, inspired by his grandfather’s legacy and the immense collection of murder stories and mysteries in the ship’s database, expected to keep things under control.
He stood straight in front of the suite’s sealed sliding door, arms crossed on a sleek uniform that belonged to Victor Holt. He was blocking entry with the full height of his young authority. As if standing there could stop the chaos from seeping in.
A holographic Do Not Enter warning scrolled diagonally across the door in Effin Muck’s signature font—because even crimes on this ship came branded.
People hovered in the corridor, coming and going. Most were just curious, drawn by the sheer absurdity of a murder happening here.
Riven scanned their faces, his muscles coiled with tension. Everyone was a potential suspect. Even the ones who usually didn’t care about ship politics.
Because on Helix 25, death wasn’t supposed to happen. Not anymore.
Someone broke away from the crowd and tried to push past him.
“You’re wasting time. Young man.”
Zoya Kade. Half scientist, half mad Prophet, all irritation. Her gold-green eyes bore into him, sharp beneath the deep lines of her face. Her mismatched layered robes shifting as she moved. Riven had no difficulty keeping the tall and wiry 83 years old woman at a distance.
Her silver-white braid was woven with tiny artifacts—bits of old circuits, beads, a fragment of a key that probably didn’t open anything anymore. A collector of lost things. But not just trinkets—stories, knowledge, genetic whispers of the past. And now, she wanted access to this room like it was another artifact to be uncovered.
“No one is going in.” Riven said slowly, “until we finish securing the area.”
Zoya exhaled sharply, turning her head toward Evie, who had just emerged from the crowd, tablet in hand, TP flickering at her side.
“Evie, tell him.”
Evie did not look pleased to be associated with the old woman. “Riven, we need access to his room. I just need…”
Riven hesitated.
Not for long, barely a second, but long enough for someone to notice. And of course, it was Anuí Naskó.
They had been waiting, standing slightly apart from the others, their tall, androgynous frame wrapped in the deep-colored robes of the Lexicans, fingers lightly tapping the surface of their handheld lexicon. Observing. Listening. Their presence was a constant challenge. When Zoya collected knowledge like artifacts, Anuí broke it apart, reshaped it. To them, history was a wound still open, and it was the Lexicans duty to rewrite the truth that had been stolen.
“Ah,” Anuí murmured, smiling slightly, “I see.”
Riven started to tap his belt buckle. His spine stiffened. He didn’t like that tone.
“See what, exactly?”
Anuí turned their sharp, angular gaze on him. “That this is about control.”
Riven locked his jaw. “This is about security.”
“Is it?” Anuí tapped a finger against their chin. “Because as far as I can tell, you’re just as inexperienced in murder investigation as the rest of us.”
The words cut sharp in Riven’s pride. Rendering him speechless for a moment.
“Oh! Well said,” Zoya added.
Riven felt heat rise to his face, but he didn’t let it show. He had been preparing himself for challenges, just not from every direction at once.
His grip tightened on his belt, but he forced himself to stay calm.
Zoya, clearly enjoying herself now, gestured toward Evie. “And what about them?” She nodded toward TP, whose holographic form flickered slightly under the corridor’s ligthing. “Evie and her self proclaimed detective machine here have no real authority either, yet you hesitate.”
TP puffed up indignantly. “I beg your pardon, madame. I am an advanced deductive intelligence, programmed with the finest investigative minds in history! Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Marshall Pee Stoll…”
Zoya lifted a hand. “Yes, yes. And I am a boar.”
TP’s mustache twitched. “Highly unlikely.”
But Zoya wasn’t finished. She looked directly at Riven now. “You don’t trust me. You don’t trust Anuí. But you trust her.” She gave a node toward Evie. “Why?
Riven felt his stomach twist. He didn’t have an answer. Or rather, he had too many answers, none of which he could say out loud. Because he did trust Evie. Because she was brilliant, meticulous, practical. Because… he wanted her to trust him back. But admitting that, showing favoritism, expecially here in front of everyone, was impossible.
So he forced his voice into neutrality. “She has technical expertise and no political agenda about it.”
Anuí left out a soft hmm, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but filing the information away for later.
Evie took the moment to press forward. “Riven, we need access to the room. We have to check his logs before anything gets wiped or overwritten. If there’s something there, we’re losing valuable time just standing there arguing.”
She was right. Damn it, she was right. Riven exhaled slowly.
“Fine. But only you.”
Anuí’s lips curved but just slightly. “How predictable.”
Zoya snorted.
Evie didn’t waste time. She brushed past him, keying in a security override on her tablet. The suite doors slid open with a quiet hiss.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Evie stared at TP, waiting for further elaboration. He simply steepled his fingers and smirked, a glitchy picture of insufferable patience.
“You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and leave it hanging,” she said.
“But my dear Evie, I must!” TP declared, flickering theatrically. “For as the great Pea Stoll once mused—‘It was suspicious in a Pea Saucerer’s ways…’”
Evie groaned. “TP—”
“A jest! A mere jest!” He twirled an imaginary cane. “And yet, what do we truly know of the elusive Mr. Herbert? If we wish to uncover his secrets, we must look into his… associations.”
Evie frowned. “Funny you said that, I would have thought ‘means, motive, alibis’ but I must be getting ahead of myself…” He had a point. “By associations, you mean —Seren Vega?”
“Indeed!” TP froze accessing invisible records, then clapped his hands together. “Seren Vega, archivist extraordinaire of the wondrous past, keeper resplendent of forgotten knowledge… and, if the ship’s whisperings hold any weight, a woman Herbert was particularly keen on seeing.”
Evie exhaled, already halfway to the door. “Alright, let’s go see Seren.”
Seren Vega’s quarters weren’t standard issue—too many rugs, too many hanging ornaments, a hint of a passion for hoarding, and an unshakable musky scent of an animal’s den. The place felt like the ship itself had grown around it, heavy with the weight of history.
And then, there was Mandrake.
The bionic-enhanced cat perched on a high shelf, tail flicking, eyes glowing faintly. “What do you want?” he asked flatly, his tone dripping with a well-practiced blend of boredom and disdain.
Evie arched a brow. “Nice to see you too, Mandrake.”
Seren, cross-legged on a cushion, glanced up from her console. “Evie,” she greeted calmly. “And… oh no.” She sighed, already bracing herself. “You’ve brought it —what do you call him already? Orion Reed?”
Evie replied “Great memory Ms Vega, as expected. Yes, this was the name of the beta version —this one’s improved but still working the kinks of the programme, he goes by ‘TP’ nowadays. Hope you don’t mind, he’s helping me gather clues.” She caught herself, almost telling too much to a potential suspect.
TP puffed up indignantly. “I must protest, Madame Vega! Our past encounters, while lively, have been nothing but the height of professional discourse!”
Mandrake yawned. “She means you talk too much.”
Evie hid a smirk. “I need your help, Seren. It’s about Mr. Herbert.”
Seren’s fingers paused over her console. “He’s the one they found in the dryer.” It wasn’t a question.
Evie nodded. “What do you know about him?”
Seren studied her for a moment, then, with a slow exhale, tapped a command into her console. The room dimmed as the walls flickered to life, displaying a soft cascade of memories—public logs, old surveillance feeds, snippets of conversations once lost to time.
“He wasn’t supposed to be here,” Seren said at last. “He arrived without a record. No one really questioned it, because, well… no one questions much anymore. But if you looked closely, the ship never registered him properly.”
Evie’s pulse quickened. TP let out an approving hum.
Seren continued, scrolling through the visuals. “He came to me, sometimes. Asked about old Earth history. Strange, fragmented questions. He wanted to know how records were kept, how things could be erased.”
Evie and TP exchanged a glance.
Seren frowned slightly, as if piecing together a thought she hadn’t dared before. “And then… he stopped coming.”
Mandrake, still watching from his shelf, stretched lazily. Then, with perfect nonchalance, he added, “Oh yeah. And he wasn’t using his real name.”
Evie snapped to attention. “What?”
The cat flicked his tail. “Mr. Herbert. The name was fake. He called himself that, but it wasn’t what the system had logged when he first stepped on board.”
Seren turned sharply toward him. “Mandrake, you never mentioned this before.”
The cat yawned. “You never asked.”
Evie felt a chill roll through her. “So what was his real name?”
Mandrake’s eyes glowed, data scrolling in his enhanced vision.
“Something about… Ethan,” he mused. “Ethan… M.”
The room went very still.
Evie swallowed hard. “Ethan Marlowe?”
Seren paled. “Ellis Marlowe’s son.”
TP, for once, was silent.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Leaving the Asylum
They argued about whether to close the heavy gates behind them. In the end, they left them open. The metal groaned as it sat ajar, rust flaking from its hinges.
“Are we all here?” Anya asked. Now that they were leaving, she felt in charge again—or at least, she needed to be. If morale slipped, things would unravel fast. She scanned the group, counting them off.
“Mikhail,” she started, pointing. “Tala. Vera, our esteemed historian.”
Vera sniffed. “I prefer genealogist, thank you very much.”
“Petro,” Anya continued, “probably about to grumble.”
Petro scowled. “I was thinking.”
“Jian, our mystery man.”
Jian raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment.
Anya turned to the next two. “Ah, the twins. Even though you two have never spoken, I’ve always assumed you understood me. Don’t prove me wrong now.”
The twins—Luka and Lev—nodded and grinned at exactly the same time.
“Then we have Yulia… no, we don’t have Yulia. Where in God’s name is Yulia?”
“Here I am!” Yulia’s voice rang out as she jogged back toward them, breathless. “I just went to say goodbye to the cat.” She sighed dramatically. “I wish we could take him. Please, can we take him?”
Yulia was short and quick-moving, her restless hands always in motion, her thoughts spilling out just as fast.
“We can’t,” Mikhail said firmly. “And he can look after himself.”
She huffed. “Well, I expect we could if we tried.”
“And finally, old Gregor, who I gather would rather be taking a nap.”
Gregor, who was well past eighty, rubbed his face and yawned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Anya frowned, scanning the group again. “Wait. We’re missing Finja.”
A small scraping sound came from behind them.
Finja stood near the gate, furiously scrubbing the rusted metal with a rag she had pulled from her sleeve. “This place is disgusting,” she muttered. “Filth everywhere. The world may have ended, but that’s no excuse for grime.”
Anya sighed. “Finja, leave the gate alone.”
Finja gave it one last wipe before tucking the rag away with a huff. “Fine.”
Anya shook her head. “That’s eleven. No one’s run off or died yet. A promising start.”
They formed a motley crew, each carrying as much as they could manage. Mikhail pushed a battered cart, loaded with scavenged supplies—blankets, tools, whatever food they had left.
The road beneath their feet was cracked and uneven, roots breaking through in places. They followed it in silence for the most part. Even Yulia remained quiet. Some glanced back, but no one turned around.
The nearest village was more than fifty kilometers away. In all directions, there was only wilderness—fields long overtaken by weeds, trees pushing through cracks in forgotten roads. A skeletal signpost leaned at an odd angle, its lettering long since faded.
“It’s going to be dark soon,” Mikhail said. “And the old ones are tired. Aren’t you, Vera?”
“That’s enough of the old business,” puffed Vera, pulling her shoulders back.
Tala laughed. “Well, I must be an old one. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. And there’s a clearing over there.” She pointed.
The evening was cool, but they managed to build a small fire and scrape together a meal of vegetables they’d brought from their garden.
After their meal, they sat around the fire while Finja busied herself tidying up. “Dirty savages,” she muttered under her breath. Then, more loudly, “We should keep watch tonight.”
Vera, perched on a log, pulled her shawl tightly around her. The glow from the fire cast long shadows across her face.
“Vera, you look like a witch,” Yulia declared. “We should have brought the cat for you to ride on a broomstick together.”
“I’ll have you know I’m descended from witches,” Vera replied. “I know none of you think you’re related to me, but just imagine what your great-grandparents would say if they saw us now. Running into the wilderness like a band of exiled aristocrats.”
Jian, seated nearby, smirked slightly. “My great-grandparents were rice farmers.”
Vera brightened—Jian never talked about his past. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Do you know your full lineage? Because I do. I know mine back fourteen generations. You’d be amazed how many bloodlines cross without people realizing.”
Tala shook her head but smiled. Like Petro and Gregor, Vera had been at the asylum for many decades, a relic of another time. She claimed to have been a private investigator and genealogist in her former life.
Petro, hunched over and rubbing his hands by the fire, muttered, “We’re all ghosts now. Doesn’t matter where we came from.”
“Oh, stop that, Petro,” Anya admonished. “Remember our plan?”
“We go to the city,” Jian said. He rarely spoke unless he had something worth saying. “There will be things left behind. Maybe tech, maybe supplies. If I can get into an old server, I might even find something useful.”
“And if there’s nothing?” Petro moaned. “We should never have left.” He clasped his hands over his head.
Jian shrugged. “The world doesn’t erase itself overnight.”
Mikhail nodded. “We rest tonight. Tomorrow, we head for the city. And Finja’s right—tonight we take turns keeping watch.”
They sat in silence, watching the fire burn low. The evening stretched long and uneasy.
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
Survivors in Ukraine
Not for the first time Molly wished they’d never made the journey. She wanted to go back and end her days where she’d chosen to retire. With Ellis gone, and then Ethan and Nina, there was nothing to keep her here, and nothing to keep Tundra here. And there had been no reason to come, in the end. There were no survivors in Ukraine either, and they encountered none on the long and difficult journey from Spain.
It was Nina’s idea to go back to her home country. She was a refugee from the war, she and her mother. Nina met Ethan at school in England and Ethan often used to bring her on holidays to visit his grandmother in Andalucia. When the plague struck, they were there with Molly, quarantined and with no way to return to England. Molly shuddered at the memory of the awful realisation that there was nobody else alive, but for her friend over the road who looked after the cows. Just Molly, Ethan, Nina, and Antonio and all the bodies.
It was Antonio’s idea to take all the bodies of the neighbours out into the fields for the vultures, rightly stating that it was impossible for him and Ethan to bury them all. And so they did. Best photos of vultures I ever took, and nobody to show them to, Molly had grumbled at the time.
They managed for a considerable time looting the neighbours pantries, garages, and barns and foraging further afield until all the cars in the village ran out of fuel, always hoping to find people, other survivors, but they never did. When the fuel ran out they used the horses. They could have managed for some time longer if they stayed where they were, but the desire to find people was strong.
The decision was made to head north, along the once populous coast, taking 12 horses to carry themselves and essentials, hoping to find more people. There were no people. They kept walking, and when Nina suggested they keep walking to Ukraine, nobody could think of a good reason why not to.
Molly’s sorrowful reminiscence sitting in the late afternoon sun was interrupted by a shout from Tundra who was running towards her. “Look, look over there!” Molly winced as Tundra pulled her upright too quickly. “Over there!” she said, pointing to a copse just below the hills on the horizon.
“A wisp of smoke!” Molly whispered wonderingly. “Like…like a campfire or something…”
The 93 year old woman and her twelve year old great granddaughter looked at each other in amazement. “People,” they whispered in unison.
“Tundra, saddle up the horses. We can’t wait for morning”, Molly said, “They may be gone. Run, girl! Don’t just stand there with your mouth open!”
Suddenly Molly felt like she was only 67 again.
People!
In reply to: The Last Cruise of Helix 25
The colours were bright, garish really, an impossibly blue sea and sky and splashes of pillar box red on the square shaped cars and dated clothes, but it was his favourite postcard of them all. It wasn’t the most scenic, it wasn’t the most spectacular location, but it was an echo from those long ago days of summer, of seaside holidays, souvenirs and a dozen postcards to write at a beachside cafe. The days when the post was delivered by conscientious postmen such as he himself had been, and the postcards arrived at their destinations before the holidaymakers had returned to their suburban homes and city jobs. The scene in the postcard was bathed in glorious sunshine, but the message on the back told the usual tale of the weather and the rain and that it might brighten up tomorrow but they were having a lovely time and they’d be back on Sunday and would the recipients get them a loaf and a pint of milk.
Ellis Marlowe put the Margate postcard to the back of the pile in his hand and pondered the image on the next one. He sighed at the image of the Statue of Liberty, sickly green, sadly proclaiming the height of a lost empire, and quickly put it at the back of the pile. Nobody needed to dwell on that story.
His perusal of the next image, an alpine meadow with an attractively skirted peasant scampering in a field, was interrupted with a bang on his door as Finkley barged in without waiting for a response. “There’s been a murder on the ship! Murder! Poor sod’s been dessicated like a dried tomato…”
Ellis looked at her in astonishment. His hand shook slightly as he put his postcard collection back in the box, replaced the lid and returned it to his locker. “Murder?” he repeated. “Murder? On here? But we’re supposed to be safe here, we left all that behind.” Visibly shaken, Ellis repeated, almost shouting, “But we left all that behind!”
In reply to: Helix Mysteries – Inside the Case
THE SURVIVORS ON EARTH
2050. Civilization has collapsed.
Global warming, famine, plague, and the Tit-for-Tax war have devastated the planet.
The ultra-wealthy, led by entrepreneur Effin Muck, left Earth for luxury space colonies.
As civilization fell apart, other groups started ejecting ships into space. please see above comments for more details.
No one knows what happened to Effin.Ukraine. An isolated psychiatric facility.
Holds supposed political prisoners and a few who are genuinely insane. But it’s a good community and they look out for each other.
Self-sufficient, growing their own food.
Unaware of the full extent of the world’s collapse.
one day in around 2030 A group sstaff and patients leave on a supply run.
They never return.
The remaining residents wait for months and then years, relying on their harvest, speculating about the outside world. Many die. The remainder decide to leave the facility – Driven by necessity and curiosity.
Enter a world they don’t recognize—barren, fractured, sparsely populated.
Encounter scattered survivors.They Find an abandoned space station.
It was one of many.
Manage to establish communication with one of the ships. The Helix 25. It turns out there is a connection but that is to be expanded on. it is of a murder and genealogical form.In reply to: Quintessence: Reversing the Fifth
Matteo — December 2022
Juliette leaned in, her phone screen glowing faintly between them. “Come on, pick something. It’s supposed to know everything—or at least sound like it does.”
Juliette was the one who’d introduced him to the app the whole world was abuzz talking about. MeowGPT.
At the New Year’s eve family dinner at Juliette’s parents, the whole house was alive with her sisters, nephews, and cousins. She entered a discussion with one of the kids, and they all seemed to know well about it. It was fun to see the adults were oblivious, himself included. He liked it about Juliette that she had such insatiable curiosity.
“It’s a life-changer, you know” she’d said “There’ll be a time, we won’t know about how we did without it. The kids born now will not know a world without it. Look, I’m sure my nephews are already cheating at their exams with it, or finding new ways to learn…”
“New ways to learn, that sounds like a mirage…. Bit of a drastic view to think we won’t live without; I’d like to think like with the mobile phones, we can still choose to live without.”
“And lose your way all the time with worn-out paper maps instead of GPS? That’s a grandpa mindset darling! I can see quite a few reasons not to choose!” she laughed.
“Anyway, we’ll see. What would you like to know about? A crazy recipe to grow hair? A fancy trip to a little known place? Write a technical instruction in the style of Elizabeth Tattler?”“Let me see…”
Matteo smirked, swirling the last sip of crémant in his glass. The lively discussions of Juliette’s family around them made the moment feel oddly private. “Alright, let’s try something practical. How about early signs of Alzheimer’s? You know, for Ma.”
Juliette’s smile softened as she tapped the query into the app. Matteo watched, half curious, half detached.
The app processed for a moment before responding in its overly chipper tone:
“Early signs of Alzheimer’s can include memory loss, difficulty planning or solving problems, and confusion with time or place. For personalized insights, understanding specific triggers, like stress or diet, can help manage early symptoms.”Matteo frowned. “That’s… general. I thought it was supposed to be revolutionary?”
“Wait for it,” Juliette said, tapping again, her tone teasing. “What if we ask it about long-term memory triggers? Something for nostalgia. Your Ma’s been into her old photos, right?”
The app spun its virtual gears and spat out a more detailed suggestion.
“Consider discussing familiar stories, music, or scents. Interestingly, recent studies on Alzheimer’s patients show a strong response to tactile memories. For example, one groundbreaking case involved genetic ancestry research coupled with personalized sensory cues.Juliette tilted her head, reading the screen aloud. “Huh, look at this—Dr. Elara V., a retired physicist, designed a patented method combining ancestral genetic research with soundwaves sensory stimuli to enhance attention and preserve memory function. Her work has been cited in connection with several studies on Alzheimer’s.”
“Elara?” Matteo’s brow furrowed. “Uncommon name… Where have I heard it before?”
Juliette shrugged. “Says here she retired to Tuscany after the pandemic. Fancy that.” She tapped the screen again, scrolling. “Apparently, she was a physicist with some quirky ideas. Had a side hustle on patents, one of which actually turned out useful. Something about genetic resonance? Sounds like a sci-fi movie.”
Matteo stared at the screen, a strange feeling tugging at him. “Genetic resonance…? It’s like these apps read your mind, huh? Do they just make this stuff up?”
Juliette laughed, nudging him. “Maybe! The system is far from foolproof, it may just have blurted out a completely imagined story, although it’s probably got it from somewhere on the internet. You better do your fact-checking. This woman would have published papers back when we were kids, and now the AI’s connecting dots.”
The name lingered with him, though. Elara. It felt distant yet oddly familiar, like the shadow of a memory just out of reach.
“You think she’s got more work like that?” he asked, more to himself than to Juliette.
Juliette handed him the phone. “You’re the one with the questions. Go ahead.”
Matteo hesitated before typing, almost without thinking: Elara Tuscany memory research.
The app processed again, and the next response was less clinical, more anecdotal.
“Elara V., known for her unconventional methods, retired to Tuscany where she invested in rural revitalization. A small village farmhouse became her retreat, and she occasionally supported artistic projects. Her most cited breakthrough involved pairing sensory stimuli with genetic lineage insights to enhance memory preservation.”Matteo tilted the phone towards Juliette. “She supports artists? Sounds like a soft spot for the dreamers.”
“Maybe she’s your type,” Juliette teased, grinning.
Matteo laughed, shaking his head. “Sure, if she wasn’t old enough to be my mother.”
The conversation shifted, but Matteo couldn’t shake the feeling the name had stirred. As Juliette’s family called them back to the table, he pocketed his phone, a strange warmth lingering—part curiosity, part recognition.
To think that months before, all that technologie to connect dots together didn’t exist. People would spend years of research, now accessible in a matter of seconds.
Later that night, as they were waiting for the new year countdown, he found himself wondering: What kind of person would spend their retirement investing in forgotten villages and forgotten dreams? Someone who believed in second chances, maybe. Someone who, like him, was drawn to the idea of piecing together a life from scattered connections.
In reply to: Quintessence: Reversing the Fifth
Matteo — Easter Break 2023
The air in the streets carried the sweet intoxicating smell of orange blossoms, as Matteo stood at the edge of a narrow cobbled street in Xàtiva, the small town just a train ride from Valencia that Juliette had insisted on visiting. The weekend had been a blur of color and history—street markets in Italy, Venetian canals last month, and now this little-known hometown of the Borgias, nestled under the shadow of an ancient castle.
Post-pandemic tourism was reshaping the rhythm of Europe. The crowds in the big capitals felt different now—quieter in some places, overwhelming in others. Xàtiva, however, seemed untouched, its charm untouched. Matteo liked it. It felt authentic, a place with layers to uncover.
Juliette, as always, had planned everything. She had a knack for unearthing destinations that felt simultaneously curated and spontaneous. They had started with the obvious—Berlin, Amsterdam, Florence—but now her choices were becoming more eccentric.
“Where do you even find these places?” Matteo had asked on the flight to Valencia, his curiosity genuine.
She grinned, pulling out her phone and scrolling through saved videos. “Here,” she said, passing it to him. “This channel had great ideas before it went dark. He had listed all those places with 1-euro houses deals in many fantastic places in Europe. Once we’re ready to settle” she smiled at him.
The video that played featured sweeping shots of abandoned stone houses and misty mountain roads, narrated by a deep, calm voice. “There’s magic in forgotten places,” the narrator said. “A story waiting for the right hands to revive it.”
Matteo leaned closer, intrigued. The channel was called Wayfare, and the host, though unnamed in the video, had a quiet magnetism that made him linger. The content wasn’t polished—some shots were shaky, the editing rough—but there was an earnestness to it that immediately captured his attention.
“This guy’s great,” Matteo said. “What happened to him?”
“Darius, I think his name was,” Juliette replied. “I loved his videos. He didn’t have a huge audience, but it felt like he was speaking to you, you know?” She shrugged. “He shut it down a while back. Rumors about some drama with patrons or something.”
Matteo handed the phone back, his interest waning. “Too bad,” he said. “I like his style.”
The train ride to Xàtiva had been smooth, the rolling hills and sun-drenched orchards sliding slowly outside the window. The time seemed to move at a slower pace here. Matteo’d been working with an international moving company in Paris, mostly focused to expats in and out of France. Tips were good and it usually meant having a tiring week, but what the job lacked in interest, it compensated with with extra recuperation days.
As they climbed toward the castle overlooking the town, Juliette rattled off details she’d picked up online.
“The Borgias are fascinating,” she said, gesturing toward the town below. “They came from here, you know. Rose to power around the 13th century. Claimed they were descended from Visigoth kings, but most people think that’s all invention.”
“Clever, though,” Matteo said. “Makes you almost wish you had a magic box to smartly rewrite your ancestry, that people would believe it if you play it right.”
Juliette smiled. “Yeah! They were masters cheaters and gaslighters.”
“Reinventing where they came from, like us, always reinventing where we go…”
Juliette chuckled but didn’t reply.
Matteo’s mind wandered, threading Juliette’s history lesson with stories his grandmother used to tell—tales of the Borgias’ rise through cunning and charm, and how they were descended from the infamous family through Lucrecia, the Pope’s illegitimate daughter. It was strange how family lore could echo through places so distant from where he’d grown up.
As they reached the castle’s summit, Matteo paused to take it all in. The valley stretched below them, a patchwork of red-tiled rooftops and olive groves shimmering in the afternoon light. Somewhere in this region, Juliette said, Darius had explored foreclosed homes, hoping to revive them with new communities. Matteo couldn’t help but think how odd it was, these faint connections between lives—threads weaving places and people together, even when the patterns weren’t clear.
Later, over a shared plate of paella, Juliette nudged him with her fork. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing much,” Matteo said, swirling his glass of wine. “Just… how people tell stories. The Borgias, this Darius guy, even us—everyone’s looking for a way to leave a mark, even if it’s just on a weekend trip.”
Juliette smiled, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Well, you better leave your mark tomorrow. I want a picture of you standing on that castle wall.”
Matteo laughed, raising his glass. “Deal. But only if you promise not to fall off first.”
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the streets of Xàtiva began to glow with the warmth of lamplight. Matteo leaned back in his chair, the wine softening the edges of the day. For a moment, he thought of Darius again—of foreclosed homes and forgotten stories. He didn’t dwell on it, though. The present was enough.
In reply to: Liz Tattler – A Lifetime of Stories, in videos
The adventures of Arona & Mandrake
[Scene opens with Arona and Mandrake, the adventurous duo, standing on a hilltop, the vast landscape of the Alienor system stretching before them bathed in starlight.]
Narrator (cheerful, enchanting voice): “Join Arona and Mandrake the cat on magical quests across dimensions!”
[Quick flashes: Arona soaring in a hot air balloon, Mandrake snuggled on her shoulder; a playful chase with Vincentius, the mischievous demi-god; a vibrant encounter with the purple dragon, Leörmn.]
Narrator: “Discover hidden keys, unlock enchanted doors, and meet whimsical friends!”
[End with Arona and Mandrake, laughing under a rainbow, the words “Arona’s Adventures: A Journey Beyond Imagination” sparkling above.]
Narrator: “Embark on a journey of wonder and friendship. Adventure awaits!”
[The screen fades to the book cover with magical sparkles and contact information.]
