The priority chime was a sound no one had heard in years. It was not loud. It was not urgent. It was a soft, insistent, three-note melody that cut through the station’s engineered quiet with the serene finality of a dropped scalpel. It was the sound of the outside world remembering they existed. Abbot Clement was in his office, the only square room on the Penrose Oratory, when the chime echoed from the hidden speaker in the ceiling. He did not react. He simply placed his red pen down, creating a perfect line parallel to the edge of a data printout, and rose from his heavy wooden desk.
He moved through the curving, seamless corridors of the station. His off-white habit made no sound. The low, steady drone of the Equilibrium Hum, the 15-decibel note of the life support systems, seemed to dip as he passed, a machine holding its breath. He arrived at the Communications Hub, a small, circular room dominated by a dark, circular plate on the floor. This was the holoprojector, the station’s only throat to the universe beyond their delicate orbit. He stood before it and spoke a single word into the quiet.
— Accept.
The call was from the Sector Authority, the distant governmental body that paid for the station’s nutrient paste and oxygen. A column of pale blue light shimmered, coalescing from the floor plate. It formed the image of a man. The hologram was perfect, crisp, and deeply unsettling in its clarity. The man, the Ambassador Remote, wore a severe, dark suit that seemed to drink the light. His face was pleasant, his hair was perfect, and his eyes held the friendly indifference of a shark.
— Abbot Clement, — the hologram said. Its voice was smooth and synthetic, a corporate lullaby.
Clement waited. The time-lag was 72.3 seconds. A question asked now would not be heard for over a minute. A reply would take another minute to return. It was a conversation held across a gulf of silence, each pause a small eternity in which to weigh every word. He had to speak to a ghost who would not hear him until he had already fallen silent.
Finally, the Ambassador’s greeting arrived. Clement inclined his head.
— Ambassador. To what do we owe the priority signal?
He spoke into the silence. His words flew out into the void, traveling at the speed of light toward a man who was, in all likelihood, sitting in a comfortable office somewhere in the orbit of a much friendlier star. Clement stood perfectly still, his hands clasped behind his back, and waited for his own voice to cross the gap. The hum of the comms unit was the only sound.
The Ambassador’s image remained placid, smiling faintly. Then, after the long pause, it spoke again, its lips moving in sync with words that had been spoken a minute ago.
— A routine inquiry, Abbot. We’ve noted a recent increase in your station’s primary metabolic output. And a corresponding spike in the number of your… Oracles.
The question was an accusation wrapped in politeness. The Sector Authority did not care about their faith. They cared about their resources. Oracles, the monks lost to the Anamnesis Maze, were a drain on life support. They were a failure metric. Clement felt a cold, hard knot tighten in his gut. The external world was looking in. The anomaly of Elias Vance, the decision to tighten the Cognitive Anchors, the quiet removal of the Oracles from the main Infirmary—these were not just internal matters of faith. They were data points on a distant administrator’s screen.
He had to frame the narrative. He had to build the comforting story.
— We have entered a period of intense spiritual hygiene, Ambassador, — Clement said, his voice calm and measured. He was choosing his words for a man who would hear them in the future. — It has required certain adjustments. The Sum has been… turbulent. We are ensuring the flock is prepared. The increase in metabolic output is a sign of heightened contemplation, not distress.
He had offered them a story of faith. He knew they would translate it into a story of efficiency. He waited through another cycle of silence, watching the pleasant, empty face of the hologram. He thought of the Cracked Slate of Korbin, the physical object he had seen shattered on the floor of the Synod Chamber. He had destroyed the evidence, but the idea it represented—the fragmented, chaotic truth—was a contagion. It was spreading.
The Ambassador’s reply finally came. The smile did not change.
— We appreciate your contemplative efforts, Abbot. Your station’s charter is predicated on stable, predictable research. On compliance with established protocols.
The word hung in the air. Compliance. It was the word of a manager, not a partner.
— Stability is compliance, — the Ambassador continued, his voice losing none of its synthetic warmth. The words were a stiletto, sliding between Clement’s ribs. — And compliance is how we justify your supply shipments.
There it was. The price of his autonomy. The cost of his perfect, isolated world. It was not a matter of faith or truth. It was a matter of logistics. Of nutrient paste and replacement parts for the recyclers. His grand project of saving souls from a truth they could not bear was dependent on the goodwill of accountants who measured his success in kilowatts and casualty reports. The value of his manipulated faith was being weighed against the cost of his supply chain. He was losing.
The conversation was over. The Ambassador had stated the terms. There was nothing more to say.
— We understand, — Clement said into the waiting silence. He felt the words leave him, small and cold. They were the words of a subordinate.
He did not wait for the Ambassador’s reply. He ended the call. The column of light collapsed, the man made of photons dissolving into nothing. The Communications Hub was silent again, save for the low hum of the machinery. Clement stood alone in the center of the room, his expression tight, his jaw clenched. The pressure was no longer just from the inside, from the heresy of Elias Vance. It was from the outside, from the cold, hard reality of the universe he had tried so hard to keep at bay.
He was a shepherd, but his pasture was owned by a landlord who only cared about the price of wool.
He could not afford more anomalies. He could not afford more questions. The instability had to be cauterized. The source of the infection had to be purged. His plans, which had been moving with the deliberate pace of scripture, now had to move with the speed of a survival instinct.
He turned and left the hub, his steps quick and precise. He found Deacon Marcus in the corridor outside the Scriptorium, overseeing the work of the Canonist Monks.
— Marcus, — Clement’s voice was low, but it cut through the air.
The Deacon turned, his expression immediately attentive.
— We are accelerating the timeline, — Clement said. He did not need to explain which timeline. — I want every piece of unsanctioned hardware, every unauthorized data slate, found. I want the work of the technician Korbin, all of it, located. I want you to find every last fragment of his heresy.
Marcus nodded, his face grim. He understood.
— And then? — the Deacon asked.
Clement’s cold blue eyes seemed to look through him, past him, into the void itself.
— And then we will burn it to ash.
The order was given. The hunt was on. He would not just tidy this anomaly. He would erase it from history. He would make the station clean again, even if it meant destroying the last vestiges of a truth he had long ago decided was a poison. The memory of the shattered slate was not enough. He needed to destroy the idea itself.
He would start with the source. He would start with Elias Vance and the woman who had armed him.
The station hummed around him, a placid, ignorant machine.
He had made his choice. The price would be paid by others.
