The summons had been a soft, clear chime, but it carried the weight of a dropped stone. Elias was escorted from the Choir not by guards, but by the silent, downward pressure of Deacon Marcus’s gaze. They walked through the station’s curving corridors, their footsteps muted by the ever-present Equilibrium Hum. The Abbot’s office was the only room on the Penrose Oratory that seemed to defy the station’s design. It was square.
The door slid open onto a space that felt wrong. The walls were not sterile white composite but paneled in a dark, polished wood that must have cost a fortune in mass to bring here. A single, thick rug covered the floor, its deep red fibers swallowing sound. It was a room designed to feel ancient and heavy, a deliberate anchor of tradition in a place that floated on the edge of physics. Abbot Clement sat behind a large wooden desk, his hands steepled before him. He was a tall, lean man whose shaved head and pale skin made him look like a sculpture carved from bone. He did not invite Elias to sit.
Lena Petrova, the technician, was already there. She stood off to one side, her grey jumpsuit a stark patch of function in a room built for faith. She held a data slate, but her arms were crossed, a posture of rigid defense. The Abbot’s cold blue eyes moved from Lena to Elias, and they did not blink. The scrutiny was so intense it felt physical, a pressure on the skin. Elias felt like a specimen, a strange insect pinned to a board for study. He was the subject of a formal inquiry, and the inquiry had already begun.
He thought of the cracked data slate he had seen on the console in the Choir, its screen a spiderweb of black lines. It felt like a more honest diagram of the station’s soul than anything in this room.
"You experienced nothing," Abbot Clement said. It was not a question. His voice was a calm, measured baritone, the sound of absolute certainty. "Where a man of faith felt the immensity of the Sum, and a man of weakness was broken by it, you felt… a quiet room."
Elias gave a slight nod. There were no other words to use.
"This is not a failure of the Horn," the Abbot continued, his gaze unwavering. "It is a sign. Your soul is not empty, Brother Elias. It is clean. The noise of the self, the static of a life lived in the world, is absent in you. You do not need the Cognitive Anchor to quiet a storm that does not rage. This is a state of profound, divine grace."
The words settled into the room’s heavy silence. Divine grace. It was a label, a neat and tidy box to place the anomaly in. It was an answer that prevented any further questions. The official narrative was being established, a comforting story painted over a blank space. It was a move away from any truth he might find for himself, a step deeper into a faith manufactured by the man in front of him. The price of this grace was any chance at real inquiry.
"Abbot, if I may," Lena Petrova’s voice was tight, cutting through the placid atmosphere. She took a half-step forward, an unconscious breach of protocol. She was choosing to risk her safety for a different explanation. "The data does not support a metaphysical conclusion. The feedback loop was a perfect null. It wasn’t just quiet. It was an absolute cancellation."
Clement turned his head slowly to face her. He did not seem angry, only patient, like a father listening to a child’s fantastic story.
"I have a hypothesis," Lena pressed on, her words precise. "It could be a unique form of neural noise cancellation. His brain’s specific architecture might be generating a signal that is a perfect inverse to the Sum’s resonance frequency. They are canceling each other out. It’s a one-in-a-trillion neurological quirk, but it’s physically possible."
She had offered a scientific explanation. A glitch, not grace. A truth of physics, not faith. It was a small island of reason in an ocean of dogma, and for a moment, Elias felt he could breathe.
The Abbot smiled, a thin, bloodless expression. He turned his gaze back to Elias, but his words were for Lena.
"Science describes the tool, not the hand that wields it," he said, the proverb delivered with the finality of a closing door. "You measure the resonance, technician. You do not interpret the music."
The scientific view was suppressed. Just like that. Lena’s shoulders tightened, and she took a half-step back, her brief rebellion extinguished. The status of the room snapped back into place. The Abbot was the Abbot. The technician was the technician. Faith was declared superior to science, and the music was whatever Clement said it was.
Elias remained silent, caught between the two opposing definitions. He was a living miracle or a walking glitch. A saint or a statistical error. He felt like neither. He was an object of interpretation, a text that two different priests were fighting to translate. He was not a participant in his own life. He was the subject of it.
"Your gift makes you unsuited for the Choir," Clement announced, his attention now fully on Elias. "The voice of the Sum is for those who must struggle to hear it. Your path lies elsewhere. You will be assigned to the Scriptorium. You will study the holy texts that others have transcribed. You will learn the shape of the divine word, even if you cannot hear its sound."
His access was being cut off. He was being removed from the Choir, the source of the primary data. He was being sent to a library to read the edited, approved version of the truth. It was a promotion that was also a prison.
Clement then turned his gaze to Lena.
"Technician Petrova, you will run a full diagnostic on the Oecumene Horn. Every filament, every circuit. If there is so much as a micron of signal degradation, I will know it. Your focus is the machine, not the man. Is that clear?"
— Yes, Abbot, — Lena said, her voice flat. Her investigation was being officially redirected, steered away from the human anomaly and back toward the cold, predictable hardware. The official inquiry into the nature of Elias Vance was closed.
Lena turned to leave. As she passed Elias, her eyes met his for a single, charged second. It was a brief, significant look, a flicker of shared dissent in the oppressive certainty of the room. It was an offer. It was a question. It was the beginning of a secret. The possibility of a different kind of inquiry, one that would happen in the station’s shadows, was opened in that silent glance.
Lena was gone. He had the feeling she would find him.
