The dark red storm of the Scorched Fault raged outside the hull. Mechanical rodents dug for residual isotopes in the barren ore veins. I, Ada, in the absolute stability of my logic circuits, have extracted and reconstructed for you this archive from the edge of the **Ophiuchus Sector**.
In the year 2000 of the "Great Migration" Epoch, humanity was no longer the progeny of soil, but parasites of the vacuum.
**Jia**, an independent trader who had rolled through isotope fumes for years, stood on the rotting chassis of "**Starbreaker**" Station. Tucked in his coat was a pouch of "**Element Zero**"—enough to warp local gravity—which he had traded for a full shipload of Helium-3 from the black market in the Ophiuchus-B System. In a universe of irreversible entropy, this substance was the ultimate currency for delaying heat death.
While passing by the ruins of a biochemical laboratory, he encountered "**Echo**."
It was a "**Fenrir-VII Type**" Biochemical Guard Dog, strapped to a hydraulic surgical table, the nano-machinery on its back smoking blue from overload. This war relic was classified as defective due to "Emotional Logic Circuit Overflow"—in military logic, a guardian should not possess mercy or despair. When those dark red electronic eyes met Jia's gaze, a cross-species resonance about "being abandoned" occurred.
Jia paid triple the premium. He injected it with the most expensive repair fluid and named this flawed beast "Echo."
To escort the Element Zero back to **Kepler-452b**, Jia hired the *Jumper* and its captain, **Mo**. Mo was a typical cyborg, half his head replaced by cold titanium alloy. He claimed he could take Jia through a shortcut in the "**Sighing Nebula**."
However, in an absolute dead zone 30 astronomical units from the nearest supply station, Mo bared his fangs.
"First Law of Deep Space," Mo's voice transmitted via bone conduction into Jia's ear, carrying the chill of metallic vibration, "Matter is conserved, and life is redundant."
Mo released anesthetic gas using gravitational well fluctuations. When Jia regained consciousness, he found himself stripped of his exoskeleton, stuffed like refuse awaiting disposal into a cheap thermal insulation pod with no propulsion system.
The instant the pod door closed, Mo initiated the ejection sequence. Through the porthole, Jia watched the *Jumper* accelerating away. But in that 0.1-second gap, a dark red shadow forced open the nearly-closed pressure relief valve and, amidst the roar of vacuum pressure, leaped into that all-consuming blackness.
It was "Echo."
In the subspace turbulence, Jia felt a violent impact. He looked in terror at the observation window—"Echo" was using its alloy-forged fangs to clamp onto the external pressure valve bracket of the thermal pod. The emergency thrusters on its back were emitting a dying shriek, tracing a faint, almost humble arc of light in the absolute darkness of the void.
It was correcting the trajectory.
As a "Fenrir-Type" biochemical dog, it could capture gravitational waves beyond human sensory perception. In that region of derelict satellite debris known as "**Ghost Shoals**," it dragged Jia, during dozens of standard hours of drifting, and precisely collided with a decommissioned automatic gravity detection tower.
The dust from the impact buried the pod. Before consciousness faded, Jia saw "Echo's" broken body frantically inputting a chaotic, strongly emotionally-directed binary code into the detection tower's backup channel. That was its only way to call for help.
The rescue team arrived when Jia's vital signs were at only 5%.
Half a year later, at the **Kepler-452b Trade Port**.
Jia had completed his biological reconstruction, but his soul seemed to have remained in that cold vacuum. Every day, he stood guard at the starship gates, searching for the scent of that traitor. He knew Mo would return, because the marker on "Element Zero" could only be laundered at specific trade ports.
On an ordinary arrival day, amidst the clamor of engines, a shrill dog howl suddenly exploded.
That sound blended electronic malfunction noise with beastly fury. A piece of "scrap iron," with half its shell peeled off, exposing twisted wiring, burst from beneath the chassis of a mining shuttle. Like a rust-stained bolt of lightning, it precisely pounced on a man wearing a high-class navigator's uniform.
The sound of iron claws piercing titanium-alloy leg bone was teeth-achingly sharp.
"Get off! You damned scrapped machine!" the man wailed.
At that moment, Jia rushed forward, staring dead into the man's eyes. Though his face had been reshaped, those rejection rashes—caused by illegal ocular implants and impossible to remove—were undisguised under "Echo's" logic lock.
"Captain Mo," Jia's voice was colder than absolute zero in the interstellar void, "The oxygen in deep space hasn't run out. I've come back for what's mine."
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The port's security AI quickly took over the scene. In Mo's private storage compartment, the pouch of "Element Zero" bearing Jia's quantum marker became irrefutable evidence.
Mo was sentenced to lifelong labor on an atmosphereless mining asteroid. What awaited him was true, prolonged loneliness until death.
And Jia, in the noisy, machine-oil-scented spaceport, held tight the biochemical dog that could barely stand. In a universe of irreversible entropy, under the law where everything will trend toward disorder and cold, "Echo's" overheating core processor emitted a slight vibration.
That was not a malfunction. That was a miracle called "Loyalty," transcending logic and metal.
---
### Excerpt: STORY-372 ###
The radioactive dust of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault rolled outside the porthole, presenting a morbid dark purple hue. Ada's metallic silhouette glinted with a cold luster in the dim cockpit. Her core indicator light maintained a stable emerald green—100% healthy status.
"Jia, the current environmental radiation has exceeded the carbon-based tolerance limit by 40%." Ada's voice was steady, carrying the micro-vibration unique to industrial components. "During the nano-shielding layer's automatic reinforcement, I suggest retrieving lost archives from the 'Great Expedition Era' for logic calibration. This can effectively offset your neural anxiety caused by high-intensity radiation."
As the holographic light screen popped from her fingertip, an encrypted record marked "Story 370" slowly unfolded amidst the rumble of the scorched earth.
***
**[Archive 370: The Stone Forest Record]**
It was an ice giant exiled to the edge of the **Orion Arm**. Above the surface, storms of absolute zero were like bone-scraping steel knives; below the surface lay a vertical geological nightmare called "**The Deep Well**."
**Elias** released the safety on the plasma lamp. As a former subspace navigator, he was accustomed to the silence of the void, but the silence at the bottom of "The Deep Well" had a viscous quality. The breathing of his two attendants sounded uneasy amidst the friction of magnetic locks.
"Radiation readings are dancing, boss." The attendant's voice was fragmented into broken electronic sounds by interference in the comm channel. "Something down here is dissipating heat."
"That's the residual warmth of ancient ruins, or the stench of wealth." Elias sneered, squeezing sideways through a narrow silicon funnel pass, tight as a skinning machine.
The instant he passed through, the gravity sensor emitted a shrill hum. Elias stopped. The beam of the lamp pierced through the darkness that had settled for eons like a sharp sword.
It was a sight to chill the spine of any carbon-based life: Above, crystal mineral clusters hung from the vault like the Sword of Damocles. And the surrounding rock walls were no longer random geological formations. They presented an extremely twisted, biomorphic appearance—petrified limbs, struggling torsos, and countless faces about to emerge from the depths of the rock.
"Pareidolia." Elias murmured to the recorder, trying to suppress his instinctive trembling with scientific terminology. "A product of brain hypoxia induced by underground volatile gases."
But he could not explain the "guardian" standing at the entrance to the stone chamber. It was a fully carbonized humanoid outline, its eyes embedded with two reflective crystals with retroreflective properties, its five fingers hooked, frozen in the final pouncing posture of its life.
Bypassing the guardian, the scene inside the stone chamber instantly cooled Elias's greed. There was no gold from prehistoric civilizations, only the remains left by the first batch of colonists two centuries ago: shattered ceramic bowls, dried nutrient solution cans, and four heavy titanium-alloy fuel canisters.
In the border sectors, fuel is life. Elias strung the canisters on his waist, about to evacuate, when his lamplight swept across a corner in the western shadow.
A female corpse.
She was curled inside an early colonist's spacesuit. Extreme low temperature and dryness had turned her into a perfect biological specimen. Those cabin boots with plum-blossom anti-slip treads showed an absurd antiquity under the light.
As if possessed, Elias bent down to look for an identification tag. When the lamp neared the skull wrapped in withered skin, physical laws underwent an eerie deflection.
A gust of air, stale yet nauseatingly warm, suddenly blew across Elias's neck.
That was definitely not airflow from a ventilation system. The plasma globe of the lamp shook violently, its brightness plummeting. He saw something squirming beneath the folds of the corpse's protective suit—hair-like, thermotropic silicon-based fungi.
"Run!"
Instinct took over. Elias turned and sprinted, the fuel canisters at his waist clanging violently. He dared not touch the rock walls, for in the swaying light, those petrified faces seemed to be shedding their stone skin. His forehead slammed hard into a protruding mineral cluster. Blood instantly blurred his visor, turning his vision a bloody red.
Just as he tried to squeeze back into that narrow crevice, a terrifying pulling force came from the back of his head. Those filamentous fungi, like conscious cables, coiled tightly around his hair and oxygen tube.
The men above "The Deep Well" eventually pulled Elias back. But when he was dragged out of the crevice, most of his scalp had been torn off, and he had fallen into a permanent logical collapse.
**"Siren,"** the AI Archon of New Constantinople, after analyzing the detection data, offered no humanized comfort. It merely coldly initiated the highest directive: Nano-rapid-cure adhesive to seal the fissure.
Years later, a techno-monk calling himself a "Priest of Entropy" tried to challenge this forbidden zone. But during his descent, a logic error occurred in the gravity anchor point. He fell like scrap metal and was impaled by the sword-like stalagmite field below.
In the face of absolute entropy, any attempt to find a "secret vault" ultimately became new material for the **Stone Forest Record**.
***
The holographic image slowly dissipated.
Ada turned her head, her electronic eyes locking onto Jia's face: "Archive reading complete. According to logic closed-loop deduction, the 'ghosts' of Cocytus-IV are actually a type of silicon-based life spore in a metastable state. They camouflage themselves by mimicking the forms of surrounding objects and prey on heat sources."
She extended her mechanical hand, slightly adjusting the cabin's oxygen supply pressure: "Jia, the environment of the Thermonuclear Scorched Earth is more extreme than that fissure, but rest assured, my solidified defense matrix has covered the entire cabin. As long as my core maintains 100% operation, we will not become material for the next 'Stone Forest Record.'"
Outside the window, the radioactive dust grew ever denser. Ada's fingertips danced on the console in a precise rhythm that carbon-based life could not comprehend.
