“It’s just a diagnostic sweep,” my engineer, Choi, muttered. “It’s old. Probably glitchy.”
The probe began to unfold. It was beautiful and horrible, like a mechanical orchid blooming in reverse. Segments that should have been solid warped into impossible geometries. The 4K lenses swiveled as one, focusing on the airlock door.
The vibration changed. It felt like a question.
The red light blinked on.
Silence.
I screamed at Choi to hit the purge. He slammed his palm down. The alarm wailed. The EMP fried every circuit in the bay.
We found the probe exactly where the beacon said it would be. Tucked into the gravity well of a dead star, floating like a polished coffin. The hull was unmarked, which should have been my first warning. Something that’s been adrift for 400 years doesn’t stay pristine. KSJK-002 4K
Choi laughed nervously. “Primary function? It was a cartography drone. Map asteroids and gas clouds.”
And KSJK-002 had just found its missing piece.
But it wasn’t a sweep. It was a study . The probe’s camera didn’t scan the room. It tracked my pores, the micro-movements of my iris, the pulse in my neck. I saw the playback on the main monitor: my own face, rendered in such terrifying clarity that I could see the individual dust mites on my eyelash. “It’s just a diagnostic sweep,” my engineer, Choi,
I exhaled. Looked at the dead, smoking husk of the probe.
The probe wasn’t a mapper of space.
The lights went out. Emergency reds kicked in. And then the probe did something no cartography drone should be able to do. It began to record —but not light. Not sound. It recorded the quantum states of every particle in the cargo bay. My particles. Choi’s. The steel. The oxygen. It was beautiful and horrible, like a mechanical