The summons from the Orison Call had been serene, as all its calls were. It used the same placid, genderless voice to announce a new sleep cycle as it did to summon the Synod Assembly. The fourteen men who constituted the station’s governing council filed into the Synod Chamber, their off-white habits making no sound on the polished floor. The chamber was a perfect circle, its walls a seamless, non-reflective grey. There were no windows. There was only the station.
Abbot Clement was already there, standing at the center of the room beside the low, circular dais. He was not waiting for them. He was simply present, a fixed point around which the others arranged themselves in their designated seats. He watched them arrive, his cold blue eyes absorbing the light. He did not move. He did not speak. The silence in the chamber was heavy and absolute, a different quality of quiet from the engineered peace of the corridors. This was the silence of held breath.
When the last member was seated, the door slid shut, cutting them off from the rest of the Penrose Oratory. Abbot Clement inclined his head, a gesture so small it was almost imperceptible. It was the beginning.
— Brothers, — Clement’s voice was a calm, measured baritone that the room’s acoustics seemed to amplify without echo. — We have arrived at a point of spiritual hygiene.
He let the words hang in the sterile air. He did not pace. He did not gesture. His power came from his stillness, from the unwavering conviction that he was the calm center of a chaotic universe. The members of the Synod watched him, their faces impassive, their Cognitive Anchors humming quietly at the base of their skulls, dampening any flicker of anxiety.
— The garden we tend requires constant vigilance, — Clement continued. — A weed is not evil. It is merely a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. But it is also a plant that is in the wrong place. It steals light. It steals nutrients. It can choke the life from the crop we have sworn to cultivate.
He paused, letting the metaphor settle. No one spoke. They knew he was not talking about the hydroponic bays.
— We have a new weed, — he said, his voice dropping slightly but losing none of its precision. — A new variable has been introduced into our delicate ecosystem. A subtle corruption in the signal, a resonance that encourages… questions.
He did not need to say the name Elias Vance. Every man in the room felt it land in the quiet space of his own mind. The novitiate who heard nothing. The perfect blank in the data. The anomaly.
— It is our duty, our most sacred obligation, to protect the integrity of the Sum. To ensure that the voice we receive is pure. To do this, we must ensure the receivers are pure. We must engage in a period of focused, contemplative quiet.
Deacon Marcus, who sat at the head of the assembly, leaned forward. His face was warmer than Clement’s, his expression one of paternal concern. He was the one who translated the Abbot’s cold theology into something that felt like mercy.
— Abbot, if I may clarify for the assembly? — Marcus asked.
Clement gave another infinitesimal nod.
— What the Abbot proposes is a practical measure, born of compassion, — Marcus said, his gaze sweeping across the faces of the other men. — We have all seen the cost of an unprepared mind attempting to receive the full force of the Sum. We have all visited the Infirmary. We have all seen our brothers become Oracles. Their sacrifice is a testament to their faith, but it is a sacrifice we must strive to prevent in others.
He let that sink in. The image of the empty eyes and slack jaws of the men in the Infirmary was a powerful one. It was the fear that underpinned their entire society.
— This new… resonance… this anomaly, it creates a fracture in the certainty required for safe listening. It is a crack in the vessel. We cannot risk more minds being broken.
The mention of a fracture, a crack, made Elias’s hidden slate flicker in the back of several minds. The symbol of a broken truth was a contagion.
— Therefore, — Marcus continued, his voice full of gentle reason, — the Abbot proposes a new doctrine, a temporary but necessary adjustment to our listening protocols. The Doctrine of Gentle Obscurity.
He said the name as if it were a beautiful, calming poem. He was giving a name to the cage he was helping to build.
— We will protect the flock from a truth too vast to bear, — Marcus stated. The words were the core of it all, the central pillar of their shared, manipulated faith. The price of this protection was freedom, a currency they had long ago agreed was too volatile to possess. The move away from self-authored meaning was now being codified as an act of love.
Abbot Clement watched the faces of the men. He saw no resistance. He saw only relief. The relief of men who were being given permission to stop thinking about a problem that had no easy answer. The relief of being told that a smaller, simpler world was a safer one.
— We will vote, — Clement said.
There was no debate. There were no questions. The choice had been framed not as freedom versus control, but as safety versus ruin. It was no choice at all.
One by one, the hands went up. Smooth, pale hands in the cold, sterile light of the Synod Chamber. They rose without hesitation. Not a single hand remained down. The dissent was zero percent. It was a perfect, monolithic consensus. They had voted to save their brothers from the burden of a difficult truth. It was a kindness.
The motion passed. The Doctrine of Gentle Obscurity was now the law of their small, spinning world.
Deacon Marcus turned to a small, dark console embedded in the central dais. His fingers moved with quiet efficiency, typing a series of commands. He was queuing the announcement. He was taking the human decision they had just made and feeding it into the serene, inhuman voice of the Orison Call. The new restrictions, the gentle obscurity, would soon be a simple, unavoidable fact of life, as real as the nutrient paste they ate and the recycled air they breathed.
The Abbot gave a final, dismissive nod. The assembly was over.
The members of the Synod rose and filed out of the chamber, their faces placid, their duty done. They left the room to its silence, a space once more empty of men but heavy with the consequence of their choice. The holographic display at the center of the room faded, its column of light collapsing into a single point before vanishing. The only sound was the low, steady hum of the climate control, scrubbing the air of the heat of their bodies.
Then a priority chime, soft but insistent, cut through the quiet. It was a sound no one had heard in years.
