The Synod Chamber was a perfect circle. It was a room designed to have no corners where doubt could hide. The walls were a seamless, non-reflective grey composite, and they swallowed sound. Fourteen seats of the same grey material were arranged in a ring around a low, central dais. There were no windows. There was only the geometry of consensus.
Deacon Marcus stood at the dais. He was not a tall man, but the anechoic quiet of the chamber gave his presence weight. He looked at the thirteen other members of the Synod Assembly. Their faces, scrubbed clean of worry or dissent by the small ceramic discs at the base of their skulls, were turned toward him. They were ready to receive the word. They were always ready.
He placed his hands on the cool, dark surface of the console embedded in the dais. The audit of the technical department had failed. Lena Petrova had been too quick, her digital tracks covered with a skill that bordered on heretical. The heresy itself, the anomaly named Elias Vance, was contained in his cell, but the idea of him was not. An idea was a crack in the foundation. Marcus was here to plaster over it.
— Brothers, — he said, his voice clear and without echo in the dead air. — We have faced a period of instability. A spiritual turbulence caused by a signal anomaly.
He let the lie settle. It was not a signal anomaly. It was a person. But it was easier to treat a sickness than to condemn a soul. Sickness could be cured.
— This turbulence has manifested as anxiety. As questions. As a deviation from the serene focus required for our great work. It is a form of psychic infection, and like any infection, it must be treated before it spreads.
He paused, letting the medical metaphor do its work. He was not proposing punishment. He was proposing therapy. He was not a jailer. He was a physician. The thirteen faces watched him, their expressions unchanged. They were not men who needed convincing. They were men who needed a procedure to authorize.
— I propose a station-wide recalibration of the Cognitive Anchor network, — Marcus said. His voice was gentle, the voice of a man suggesting a necessary but minor adjustment. — A modest increase in gain. Not to silence the self, but to tune it. To help it find the proper, peaceful frequency. To protect the flock from the noise of its own fear.
He was proposing a mass psychological dampening. He was proposing to turn up the volume on the quiet, and he was calling it protection. It was a beautiful, elegant solution. It did not require guards or trials or messy interrogations. It required only a single, station-wide command. It was mercy, delivered at the speed of light.
He saw the understanding in their placid eyes. They saw the efficiency. They saw the compassion in it. The heresy of Elias Vance was a question. The answer was to make it impossible for anyone to hear it.
— We will frame it as a measure of spiritual hygiene, — Marcus continued. — A way to guard against the very pressures that create the Oracles. We do this not to control, but to care.
He looked from face to face. He saw no resistance. He saw only the smooth, untroubled surface of faith. He had pathologized their problem. He had offered a cure. Now, he needed their assent.
— All in favor of the recalibration protocol?
Fourteen hands went up. Not in a wave, but in a single, synchronized motion. It was the gesture of a single organism, a body of fourteen men with one will. The vote was, as always, unanimous. There was no dissent. The final tally was a perfect 100%. The system was working.
Deacon Marcus gave a small, paternal nod. The matter was settled. The crack would be filled.
— The Orison Call will announce the update, — he said. — Effective immediately.
The calm, genderless voice of the station’s automated system filled every corridor, every workshop, every cell. It spoke with the serene dispassion of a machine announcing the time.
— Attention. A mandatory recalibration of the Cognitive Anchor network will now commence. This is a standard update to ensure continued spiritual hygiene. Please remain calm. There is no cause for alarm.
A wave of placid calm, subtle and deep, rolled through the Penrose Oratory. In the mess hall, two technicians who had been in a heated argument over a power schematic suddenly fell silent. One of them smiled, the anger gone from his face. He patted the other’s shoulder. The disagreement no longer seemed important.
In the Scriptorium, a young Canonist Monk who had been frowning at a complex data stream felt the knot of frustration in his brow dissolve. The data was still complex, but it no longer troubled him. He felt a sense of profound peace. The station’s collective morale, if measured, would have registered at a near-perfect 95%. The potential for dissent, for the kind of psychic friction that led to questions, dropped to a negligible 5%. It was a 40% reduction in the possibility of independent thought. It was a triumph of management.
In his cell, the small white box designated 4B, Elias Vance felt it.
He was lying on his sleeping pallet, staring at the seamless white ceiling. The anger from his confrontation with Clement, the hollow ache from Leo’s betrayal, the frantic worry for Lena—it was all still there. But it was different now. The sharp edges were gone.
It was as if his own mind had been wrapped in a thick, soft cloth. The feelings were distant, muffled. He could still identify them, but he could not feel their sting. The Cognitive Anchor at the base of his skull, usually a cool, forgotten presence, was now a source of a dull, pervasive warmth. It was humming a lullaby to his rage.
He sat up. He tried to summon the anger again, to feel the sharp point of his resolve. It was like trying to grasp smoke. The emotion was there, a ghost in the machine of his own head, but it had no weight. No power. He felt a placid sense of acceptance settling over him. It was a comfortable feeling. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced.
The recalibration was working. He was being pacified. He was being made safe from himself.
The thought of the Cracked Slate, the one Clement had shattered, came to him. He remembered its sharp, fractured lines. Now, his own thoughts felt smooth, seamless. All the cracks were being filled in.
He looked at the door of his cell. He was a prisoner. The thought should have filled him with panic. Instead, it felt like a simple statement of fact, as neutral as the nutrient paste he ate for breakfast. This was the true nature of the cage. It was not the walls of his cell. It was the walls being built inside his own mind.
The station was quiet. The hum of the life support was the only sound.
In that engineered silence, the last sources of raw, inconvenient truth on the Penrose Oratory were being moved.
Down a service corridor, far from the main thoroughfares, a medical orderly pushed a gurney. On it lay Brother Simon, his eyes open and unfocused, his lips still whispering the fragmented memories of the dead. He and the other seven Oracles were being taken from the Infirmary. They were being taken to a place where no one would think to look for them. They were being tidied.
The last living archives were being erased from the public record.
And in the new, placid quiet of the station, no one was left to even ask where they had gone.
