The Hydroponic Gardens were the only place on the Penrose Oratory that smelled like something other than recycled air and ozone. It smelled of wet soil and chlorophyll, a damp, living scent that felt like a memory from a planet he’d never known. Elias watched Lena Petrova’s fingers move across the surface of the Cracked Slate of Korbin. Her face was illuminated by its pale, fractured light, a mask of intense concentration. She was running the final decryption algorithm, a brute-force attack on the last layer of Korbin’s paranoia.
They sat on a low composite bench, hidden from the corridor by a wall of broad, waxy leaves. The air was warm and thick. Above them, simulated sunlight poured from long amber tubes, humming with a low, steady energy. The only other sound was the slow, rhythmic drip of the irrigation system, each drop landing in the dark soil with a soft pat. Lena had brought a small flask of something that wasn't water. It was bitter and smelled faintly of fermented grain, a contraband luxury from some forgotten corner of the station.
— Almost, — she whispered. Her voice was tight.
On the slate’s screen, a progress bar crawled toward completion. It was the last lock. For weeks, they had picked their way through Korbin’s digital ghost, through encrypted data logs and signal analyses. But this last file was different. It was smaller, more personal, and protected with a ferocity that spoke not of technical secrecy, but of something private. Something he had needed to say, even if only to himself. The cracked screen made the bar of light look like a broken bone slowly knitting itself back together.
The bar filled. A soft chime, barely audible over the garden’s hum, announced its completion. The screen flickered, then resolved into a single icon: a simple text file. Lena’s shoulders slumped with a release of tension. She looked at Elias, her grey eyes catching the light. She did not have to ask. He nodded.
She tapped the icon.
The file opened. It was not a data log. It was prose. A personal essay. They leaned closer together, their heads almost touching, and began to read the words of the dead man. Korbin’s writing was clean, precise. The voice of a technician. He started by describing the Scriptorium, the place where the raw noise of the Sum was processed. He wrote about the Canonist Monks and the Hermeneutic Engine, the great sorting machine that found patterns in the chaos.
At first, he had admired the process. He saw it as a necessary act of translation, of finding the signal in the noise. He described the raw Sum as a scream, a billion lives shouting at once. It was a storm that would shatter any mind that tried to embrace it whole. The scripture, he had believed, was a lifeboat.
But then his tone began to change. He wrote of small discrepancies. A fragment of a lullaby, raw and full of a mother’s love, that was polished by the Engine into a hymn of obedience. A soldier’s dying curse, a moment of pure, terrified rage, that was redacted, smoothed over, and presented in the Canon as a prayer for deliverance. He had started keeping his own logs, comparing the input to the output.
The lifeboat was not a lifeboat. It was a grinder. It took the messy, contradictory, beautiful, and horrifying truth of being human and turned it into a simple, digestible paste. A story. A single, comforting story.
They scrolled down, their breath held. The final paragraphs were short. Korbin had found his conclusion. He had understood the full scope of Abbot Clement’s project. He understood the philosophy behind the peace that reigned on the Penrose Oratory. He understood the mercy they were being offered.
The final sentence stood alone.
If mercy means never letting anyone see themselves, it is not mercy. It is taxidermy.
The word landed in the warm, humid air and hung there. Taxidermy. The preservation of the form, achieved by killing the life within. It was perfect. It was horrifying. It was the truth. The Cracked Slate in Lena’s hands no longer felt like a puzzle. It felt like a tombstone. The words on its screen were not just an opinion; they were a verdict, delivered by a man who had been turned into a ghost for writing them.
Elias leaned back, the warmth of the garden suddenly feeling cloying. He looked at the lush, green leaves, at the perfectly regulated drips of water, at the flawless amber light. This garden was a lie, too. A perfect, contained, and completely artificial imitation of life. Just like the station’s faith. He had come here seeking a single, ordered truth, and he had found it. The truth was that the order was a cage.
He looked at Lena. She was staring at the slate, but her eyes were distant. He saw the exhaustion in her face, the years of holding this quiet, technical rebellion alone. She had known the data was a lie, but Korbin’s essay gave the lie a name. It gave it a motive. It was not just censorship. It was a form of murder, performed with the kindest of intentions.
— So that’s it, — Elias said, his voice quiet. — That’s the choice. Safety or a soul.
— There is no safety, — Lena replied, her gaze finally lifting from the screen to meet his. — Only a quieter death.
The space between them was no longer just the shared risk of conspiracy. It was the shared weight of this terrible, clarifying knowledge. They were the only two people on the station who understood the full meaning of the word mercy. He saw in her eyes the same thing he felt in his own chest: the profound loneliness of the truth. The intellectual partnership had burned away, leaving something raw and personal in its place.
He did not think about it. He did not plan it. He leaned forward and she met him halfway.
The kiss was not about passion. It was about confirmation. It was a quiet, desperate press of lips in the green, artificial twilight, a promise that neither of them was alone in this. It was the feeling of finding a single, solid point of ground after the whole world had turned to static. It tasted faintly of the bitter drink she had brought, of grain and resolve. It was a shared vulnerability, a commitment made without a single word.
When they parted, the air had not changed, but the silence between them had. It was no longer the silence of conspiracy. It was the silence of alliance. The bond was sealed.
Lena’s hand found his, her fingers lacing with his own. Her skin was cool.
— What now, Elias? — she asked. Her voice was steady. She was not asking for a plan. She was asking who he was, now that he knew.
He looked past her, through the thick leaves of the garden, toward the central spine of the station where the Abbot’s office was. The time for hiding in maintenance corridors and whispering in gardens was over. The time for collecting evidence was over. Korbin had died for his truth. He had left behind a map. It was not enough to simply hold the map. You had to follow it. The price was the end of their secrecy, the end of any hope of a quiet solution. It was the price of open war. He accepted it.
The water dripped from a leaf onto the dark soil. The amber lamps hummed their constant, placid note.
He would see the Abbot.
