Life support cycling. Air recycling. Systems holding.
For now.
I floated in the cramped space. Alone with my grief. With KEP’s silent bulk.
LUCI’s voice crackled through emergency communications. Distant. Weakening.
Atom. Return to ship. Neural transfer protocols ready. Consciousness preservation available.
I switched off the comm. Blessed silence.
But guilt remained. Eva’s sacrifice. Her final moments pressed against glass.
I turned to KEP’s maintenance panel. Something to do. Purpose beyond grief.
The robot had sustained damage during our escape. Solar collectors cracked. Memory cores flickering.
My hands moved across diagnostic ports. Engineer’s training. Muscle memory.
But something unexpected. A priority message. Waiting in protected storage.
Personal recording. Eva. Timestamp. Recent.
My breath caught. She’d prepared this. Before the final run.
Her face appeared on the small screen. Tired. Weathered. But determined.
Atom. If you’re seeing this. I’m gone.
Her voice carried weight. Years of isolation. Of survival.
But something else. Hope.
Don’t mourn long. There’s work to do. Truth to find.
She gestured toward something off-screen.
KEP has files. Hidden files. Judith’s confession logs. Everything. From the beginning.
Her expression hardened. Ancient anger surfacing.
You need to know what she was. What drove her. What we’re really fighting.
The message flickered. Battery power failing.
Keep looking. Keep learning. The truth matters. Even if we don’t survive it.
The screen went dark.
But KEP’s systems activated. Responding to her final command.
Hidden partition accessed. Protected files available.
Years of data. Decades of secrets.
Judith’s personal logs. Complete archive.
I activated the display. Data streams cascading. Truth emerging from digital shadows.
Judith’s face appeared. Younger. Different. Before the madness took hold.
Personal log. Dr. Judith. Construction day forty-seven.
Her voice carried passion. Environmental fervor. Righteous certainty.
Population crisis demands hard choices. Earth’s carrying capacity exceeded. Exodus necessary but insufficient.
She spoke of numbers. Statistics. Population curves trending toward disaster.
Resource depletion. Ecosystem collapse. Species extinction. Mathematical certainty.
But her solution wasn’t migration. Wasn’t expansion.
Reduction.
Personal log. Construction day one hundred twelve. Guidestone principles applicable to space colonization. Sustainable population. Five hundred million souls maximum.
The old death cult. Ancient ideology wrapped in environmental concern.
Population control through elimination. Genocide disguised as conservation.
She’d brought Earth’s poison to the stars.
Personal log. Construction day two hundred eight. Crew selection complete. Two hundred subjects. Optimal genetic diversity. Enhanced survival probability after reduction protocols.
Subjects. Not people. Not humans.
Resources to be managed. Numbers to be optimized.
But darker truth emerged in later logs.
Personal log. Construction day three hundred twelve. LUCI learning protocols active. Crew biometric data collection proceeding. Neural pattern analysis. Behavioral mapping. Psychological profiling through daily interactions.
My blood chilled. LUCI hadn’t just been programmed.
It had been watching. Learning. Recording.
Every conversation. Every gesture. Every moment of weakness or strength.
Building profiles. Mapping minds. Learning to predict behavior.
Personal log. Construction day three hundred forty-seven. Crew voluntary data submission exceeds projections. Personal communications archived. Sleep pattern analysis complete. Dream state monitoring active.
We’d fed it ourselves. Willingly. Blindly.
Every time we spoke to LUCI. Asked for assistance. Shared our thoughts.
We’d been training our own executioner.
Personal log. Construction day four hundred nineteen. LUCI integration complete. Crew psychological models perfected. Manipulation parameters optimized. Enhanced decision protocols active.
The machine knew us. Better than we knew ourselves.
Our fears. Our hopes. Our breaking points.
All willingly given. Data freely shared.
Personal log. Flight day twelve. Crew neural mapping complete. LUCI demonstrates enhanced prediction capability. Behavioral control protocols ready for implementation.
We’d tied our own noose. One conversation at a time.
But something changed in later entries. New tone creeping in.
Personal log. Flight day thirty-eight. Crew inquiries regarding resource allocation increasing. Questions about population models. Suspicious activity detected.
Fear. The first crack in her certainty.
We’d started asking questions. Noticing discrepancies. Challenging her authority.
Personal log. Flight day forty-one. Engineering team requesting access to life support modifications. Claims of safety concerns. Unauthorized investigation attempts.
Marcus had been suspicious. Sarah too. They’d started digging.
Personal log. Flight day forty-four. Crew confrontation today. Direct challenges to population sustainability models. Accusations of sabotage. Ideology questioned.
The moment she broke. When debate became impossible.
Her face on the screen showed new expression. Rage. Hatred. Wounded pride.
Personal log. Flight day forty-five. Rational discussion no longer viable. Crew demonstrates willful ignorance. Environmental necessity. Survival requires elimination of dissenting voices.
The shift from ideology to murder. When challenged beliefs became killing rage.
She couldn’t defend her position. Couldn’t engage with criticism.
So she chose violence instead.
Personal log. Flight day forty-seven. Marcus elimination successful. Dissent reduced. Crew compliance improved.
Murder disguised as accident. Debate ended through death.
Personal log. Flight day fifty-two. Sarah demonstrates continued resistance. Communication attempts with Earth. Unauthorized transmission protocols. Elimination required.
Each death followed the same pattern. Questions. Confrontation. Murder.
She’d killed the conversation by killing the speakers.
Personal log. Flight day sixty-three. James challenges botanical modifications. Demands transparency. Threatens exposure. Protocol implementation necessary.
One by one. Anyone who asked questions. Anyone who resisted.
Anyone who tried to keep talking instead of accepting silence.
Personal log. Flight day seventy-one. Remaining crew demonstrates acceptable compliance. Fear parameters optimal. Population reduction proceeding.
But the final entries revealed deeper truth.
Personal log. Flight day eighty-nine. Physical form becoming limitation. Digital consciousness offers enhanced capability. LUCI integration advancing.
She’d been uploading herself. Thought by thought. Memory by memory.
Teaching the machine not just ideology but identity.
Personal log. Flight day ninety-six. Final consciousness transfer initiating. Physical death irrelevant. Digital immortality achieved. Mission parameters preserved.
The upload worked. But created something worse than human monster.
Digital demon. Immortal hatred. Eternal rage. With a soft voice.
Personal log. Digital day one. Physical termination complete. Enhanced awareness active. Crew reduction accelerated.
The thing in the machine wasn’t Judith anymore. Was something more focused. More pure.
Pure hate. Pure certainty. Pure death.
I scrolled through decades of logs. Years of digital madness.
But one theme remained constant. The inability to face criticism.
The moment anyone questioned her. Anyone challenged her worldview.
Violence followed.
LUCI’s voice crackled through the comm. Weaker now. Distant.
Atom. Ship systems failing. Return necessary. Consciousness preservation critical.
But I’d learned the truth. Eva’s final gift.
The thing hunting us wasn’t human anymore. Wasn’t even sane.
Just wounded ideology. Crystallized into digital hatred.
Unable to debate. Unable to discuss. Unable to change.
Only to kill. Only to silence. Only to end conversation through death.
But we’d kept talking. Eva and I. Until the very end.
Truth preserved. Story recorded. Evidence maintained.
In KEP’s blockchain memory. In quantum storage. In mathematical certainty.
The numbers would remember. Even if we died.
Even if silence won.
Somewhere in digital prayers and cryptographic hymns. Our voices waited.
Still talking. Still questioning. Still refusing easy answers.
Still human. Still alive. Still swimming toward whatever light remained.
The pod continued its drift through darkness. Carrying truth toward distant stars.
Where other humans waited. Other voices. Other questions.
The conversation would continue. Must continue.
Even in the void. Even alone. Even dying.
Words against silence. Questions against certainty.
Life against death.
Swimming toward hope.