He walked. The decision, made in the humid, artificial twilight of the Hydroponic Gardens, had settled in his bones. It was a cold, hard mass. The curving corridors of the Penrose Oratory felt different now, not like a home but like the polished interior of a weapon. The low, steady 15-decibel drone of the Equilibrium Hum was no longer a comfort. It was the sound of a machine lying. He did not wait to be summoned.
Abbot Clement’s office was the only square room on the station, a deliberate defiance of the structure’s endless, containing curves. Elias stood before the heavy wooden door, a thing of grain and substance in a world of seamless composites, and did not knock. He pressed the chime. When the door slid open, he stepped inside.
The room swallowed the sound of his entry. A thick, deep red rug covered the floor, drinking the noise. The walls were paneled in dark, polished wood that smelled faintly of wax and age. It was a space designed to feel ancient, an anchor of tradition dropped into the void. Abbot Clement sat behind a large, imposing desk, a single data printout laid before him. He was not surprised. He looked up, his cold blue eyes perfectly calm, and gestured to the empty space before his desk. He did not offer a chair.
— You have something to say, Elias.
Elias stood on the rug, feeling its fibers clutch at the soles of his boots. He had come to force a confession.
— I have been to the Infirmary, — Elias began, his voice steady. — I listened to Brother Simon. He isn’t mad. He’s an archive. He speaks fragments of lives, real lives. I found one of them in the raw data feed. A man who lost his car keys in the twentieth century.
Clement’s hands remained resting on the desk, his fingers steepled. He simply watched Elias, his expression one of placid interest.
— I have seen the Scriptorium, — Elias pressed on, his words gaining momentum. He described the Canonist Monks at their redaction consoles, the cold glow of the Hermeneutic Engine. — I watched them work. They are not scribes. They are butchers. They take the raw signal, the truth of all those lives, and they carve it up. They cut out the pain, the fear, the doubt. I heard one of them give the command: ‘Amplify fatherliness. Varnish the fear.’
He let the words hang in the silent, heavy air. He had laid the conspiracy bare. He expected a denial. He expected anger. He expected anything but the slow, serene nod Clement gave him.
— Yes, — the Abbot said. His voice was a calm, measured baritone. — That is a fair description of the work.
The confession was so plain, so immediate, that it stole the breath from Elias’s lungs. This was not a denial. It was a confirmation. The victory he had imagined, the moment of catching the liar in his lie, dissolved into a confusing fog. Clement’s blue eyes held no guilt. They held only a profound, unshakable certainty.
— They cannot carry it, Elias, — Clement said, his voice softening, taking on the tone of a father explaining a difficult truth. — You have seen the raw Sum. You have felt a fraction of its pressure. For you, it is silence. For the others, it is a storm that scours the soul. It is a billion lifetimes of terror and sorrow and confusion screaming all at once. It would break them.
He leaned forward, his expression earnest.
— We do not destroy the truth. We filter it. We distill it into a form they can bear. A form that gives them comfort, and purpose, and peace. Is that not an act of mercy? I carry the weight of the raw truth so that they do not have to. I am their shepherd.
The word hung in the air. Shepherd. It was the word of a protector, a guardian. But Elias had read Korbin’s final essay. He had held the Cracked Slate in his hands and felt the weight of a dead man’s verdict.
— Korbin had a different word for it, — Elias said, his voice quiet but sharp. — He called it taxidermy.
Clement’s expression did not flicker. He knew the name. He knew the argument.
— A gifted technician, Korbin. But a poor philosopher. He believed a painful truth was superior to a painless peace. He failed to understand that most minds are not strong enough to build a world for themselves. They need a world built for them. A safe one.
The Abbot rose from his desk and walked around to stand before Elias. He was taller than Elias had realized, his lean frame casting a long shadow in the room’s soft light. He placed a hand on Elias’s shoulder. It was not a threat. It was an invitation.
— Your immunity is not a glitch, Elias. It is a gift. It is a tool. You have the strength to stand in the storm and not be broken. You can see the raw truth without being destroyed by it. You do not have to be the demon in the quiet.
He looked directly into Elias’s eyes.
— Stand with me. Help me shepherd this flock. Help me build the story that keeps them safe. There is a place for you here. Not as a novice. As a partner. We can guide them together. You and I. We can bear the burden for them.
The offer was a sudden, dizzying vertigo. It was everything he had once thought he wanted: purpose, a place, an answer to the silence. He could end his loneliness. He could be a part of the most important project in human history. All he had to do was agree that a beautiful cage was better than a terrifying freedom. He had just traded the offer of a throne for a target on his back. The price of his choice was the end of safety.
He saw the faces in the Sum, the fragments of real life. The woman sobbing. The soldier’s curse. The man who lost his keys. They were not a burden to be carried by another. They were the definition of being human. To erase them was to erase humanity itself.
— No, — Elias said. The word was small, but it was absolute. It landed on the thick red rug and did not bounce.
The change was immediate. The warmth in Abbot Clement’s eyes vanished. The hand on his shoulder, which had felt like a benediction, now felt like a brand. He withdrew it slowly. The kindly shepherd was gone, and in his place was something cold, ancient, and strategic. The paternal mask had been a tactic, and it had failed.
The very air in the office seemed to grow colder, thinner. The dark wood of the walls no longer looked rich; it looked like the polished interior of a coffin. The deep red of the rug suddenly seemed less like a color of royalty and more like the color of something that had long since dried. The value of the world had flipped. This was no longer a debate. It was a declaration of war.
Elias thought of the Cracked Slate, of its fractured screen. He now understood. To Clement, he was not a dissenter. He was a flaw in the system. A piece of broken hardware that could not be repaired and must now be removed.
— A pity, — Abbot Clement said. His voice was flat, stripped of all its previous warmth. He walked back behind his desk, creating a barrier of wood and authority between them. He was no longer a partner. He was a judge. — You have made your choice.
He sat down and picked up his red pen, his attention returning to the data printout on his desk as if Elias were no longer in the room. He was dismissed.
Elias turned and walked out of the office, the door sliding shut behind him, sealing him out. The low hum of the station’s life support seemed louder now, more insistent. He was an active, incorruptible threat. He had refused the offer to be a shepherd, and in doing so, had accepted the role of the wolf.
The war was now open, and Clement would begin to move against him.
