The access code Lena had given him felt like a hot coal in his mind. It was a simple string of alphanumerics, a key to a door he was not supposed to open. He moved through the station’s corridors during the third sleep cycle, a ghost in the machine’s quietest hour. The yellow maintenance glow cast long, distorted shadows that seemed to flee from his approach. The only sound was the Equilibrium Hum, the low, steady drone of the life support systems that was supposed to be calming. Tonight, it sounded like a held breath.
He reached the designated sector. The door to the Scriptorium was identical to every other door on the station, a seamless panel of off-white composite. There was no sign, no mark of importance. The station did not advertise its holy places. He held his datapad to the access panel. The code transmitted, and for a moment, nothing happened. He felt a spike of cold fear. Then a soft chime, and the door slid open with a whisper of displaced air.
The air that flowed out was different. It was colder, drier, and carried the distinct, sharp smell of ozone and overworked processors. This was not a library. It was a factory. He slipped inside, the door sealing behind him, and the change in atmosphere was complete. The Equilibrium Hum was gone, replaced by the high, complex chorus of server racks and cooling fans. It was the sound of immense, unthinking work.
He moved quickly, keeping to the shadows along the outer wall. The Scriptorium was a vast, circular chamber, its walls lined with towering black monoliths of computing hardware. These were the station’s true holy books. In the center of the room, three monks sat at circular consoles, their faces illuminated by the soft, shifting light of holographic displays. They were the Canonists, the men who turned the raw chaos of the Sum into the gentle word of God. Elias found his hiding place, a narrow gap behind a bank of humming server racks. The metal was cool against his back. From here, he could see one of the monks clearly. The risk of being here was absolute, a 15% chance of a random maintenance check, a number Lena had given him that felt both absurdly precise and terrifyingly high.
He watched. The process began. The monks did not pray. They did not chant. They worked. They fed raw data from the Sum, the same chaotic storm he had witnessed in Lena’s workshop, into the Hermeneutic Engine. The Engine was not a physical object, but a column of blue and white light that pulsed in the center of their consoles. It was a sorting tool, a pattern-extraction system of impossible complexity. It was a machine for finding faces in the clouds.
— Query for ‘divine judgment’ returns too much signal decay, — one of the monks said, his voice flat and technical. He did not look up from his console. — Try ‘paternal guidance’.
— Running, — another monk replied.
The light of the Hermeneutic Engine shifted, its patterns tightening. It was searching the raw, screaming history of humanity for moments that felt like a father’s advice. Elias thought of the Cracked Slate of Korbin, the broken pieces of truth he kept hidden in his wall. He had seen the raw data. He knew what was really in there. It was not guidance. It was pain and confusion and small, forgotten joys.
The Engine isolated a set of patterns, presenting them on the monk’s display. Elias could see the waveform from his hiding place. It was a jagged, angry thing, a spike of raw emotion. He watched as the Canonist monk leaned forward, his fingers moving over a redaction console. The monk was not transcribing. He was editing. He was a butcher, not a scribe.
He saw the monk isolate a fragment. It was a woman’s voice, weeping. The sound was not played aloud, but Elias recognized the shape of the waveform from the fragments on Korbin’s slate. It was a moment of pure, unfiltered grief. The monk highlighted the fragment. A small menu appeared. With a simple, casual tap, he selected ‘delete’. The weeping vanished. The jagged edge of the waveform was smoothed over, leaving a placid, gentle curve. The price of this story was truth, paid in small, silent deletions.
The monk leaned toward a small microphone on his console. His voice was quiet, a simple instruction to the machine.
— Amplify fatherliness, — the monk said. — Varnish the fear.
The words hit Elias like a physical blow. It was one thing to suspect. It was another to hear the recipe spoken aloud. Varnish the fear. They were not just hiding the truth. They were polishing the lie. They were taking the raw, terrifying, beautiful mess of human existence and turning it into a comforting bedtime story. A story that kept everyone calm, obedient, and asleep. This was not faith. It was control, engineered with the precision of a microchip.
The monk reviewed the newly polished text, a gentle, paternalistic phrase that had been sculpted from a scream of grief. He nodded, satisfied. He tapped another control, and the text was sent to a new location, a folder on the display labeled ‘Abbot Clement: Approval Queue’. The word of God, waiting for a manager’s sign-off.
Elias knew he had to capture this. This was the heart of it all. He reached into his tunic, his hand closing around his personal datapad. Lena had modified it, installing a pinhole lens and a high-capacity recording buffer. The risk was no longer a percentage. It was absolute. If he was caught now, with this recording, he was not just a heretic. He was a spy, and this was an act of war. He paid the price of his own safety, committing himself to the path of no return.
He angled the datapad through the gap in the server racks. He focused the tiny lens on the monk’s console, on the approval queue, on the very act of creation. He started the recording. The tiny red icon on his screen was a single drop of blood in the cold, blue-white world of the Scriptorium. He recorded for ten minutes, capturing the entire process. The query. The redaction. The spoken command. The submission to the queue. He had it. He had the perfect, undeniable proof of the conspiracy. The recording felt heavier than the Cracked Slate, a solid weight of processed reality.
The low hum of the server racks was unchanged. The cold air still smelled of ozone and chilled metal.
He had recorded the lie. Now he needed a river of truth.
