EOE Day 4

  The Trex was the largest vessel ever forged by the Nexus, a cathedral of silent, gliding geometry designed to house star-charts and quantum drives. It was never designed to hold beings made of water.

  And yet, here they were.

  The decontamination bay was a study in chaos. P-TR33K stood at the observation ridge, his avatar’s ancient joints stiff. This biological shell was three thousand years old, grown during the last Great Expansion and left in stasis until today. It felt heavy. It felt distant from the Command Center, like operating a machine through a thick layer of wool.

  Around him, the Hive buzzed with a sensation that was rare for the Nexus: Revulsion.

  Sector 4 Cleanliness Report: Critical Failure. Biomass contamination: 14%. Fluid leakage: Excessive. More than half of the intact specimens died minutes after arrival, having insufficient caloric reserves for the journey.

  The decontamination jets fired, blasting the humans with sterilizing mist. It was a clumsy, violent process. The algorithms were trying to wash away the transport gel, but the humans were soft. They bruised. They bled.

  Disgusting, a Vector designated X-99 transmitted, the thought rippling through the shared consciousness. They are leaking. Why are they so... wet? Analysis indicates they are 70% water. How do they maintain structural integrity without dissolving?

  Turgor pressure, P-TR33K responded, though his own sensors were overwhelmed by the smell. And bone.

  The Hive recoiled. The pristine, electrical current they lived in was being assaulted by the messy reality of biology.

  But the mess was the least of their errors.

  P-TR33K turned his gaze to the holding cells in the lower quadrant. The first batch of arrivals… thousands of units… lay still.

  They had arrived intact. They had survived the teleportation. But the Nexus had miscalculated the atmospheric mixture. They had pumped in the standard galactic baseline: high nitrogen, low oxygen.

  The humans had suffocated in minutes.

  Calculation error, the Medical Sub-Routine noted without emotion. Oxygen demand for human metabolism is 40% higher than projected. Units ceased function. Atmosphere adjusted.

  It was an accident. A variable in an equation they were solving in real-time. But as P-TR33K watched the drones drag the limp bodies away, he registered a new variable: Metabolic Crash.

  The survivors were dying. Not from air, but from energy depletion. The teleportation had stripped their cells of glucose. They were shivering, their core temperatures plummeting.

  Alert: Energy reserves critical, the system flashed. Caloric intake required immediately. No organic food synthesized.

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  We will lose them all, P-TR33K calculated. The males are failing first. Their lipid stores are inefficient. The females possess higher reserve energy, but they are fading.

  Solution? the Hive asked.

  P-TR33K looked at the dead bodies being piled near the incinerator chute. He looked at the starving survivors shivering in the observation room.

  Logic dictated the path.

  Recycle, P-TR33K commanded. Process the non-viable units. Separate water from protein. Synthesize a nutrient paste. Administer immediately.

  Objection, a younger consciousness flickered. Consumption of own species? Is this not... error?

  Survival is the primary directive, P-TR33K overruled. There is no other biomass on the ship. We feed them the dead, or the living cease to be.

  The order was given. The machines began their work.

  The teleportation had been a calculation of distance and mass, but the Nexus had failed to account for the biological cost of the crossing. The humans arrived intact but empty, their cellular energy stripped as the Lattice consumed their glucose to fuel the transition. Core temperatures plummeted. In the dark, shivering huddle of the holding bays, the primitive brain took over where the civilized one failed.

  Before the drones could calibrate the synthesis, the starvation became madness. Some humans, driven by a hollow, predatory heat, turned on the non-viable units… and then each other. The observation ridge pulsed with the Hive’s collective shock as the biologicals began to scavenge and consume their own kind in a frantic, bloody attempt to restart their failing systems. Order was only restored when other humans, revolting at the sight, rose up to kill the transgressors, leaving a secondary layer of dead to be processed. By the time the first grey paste was dispensed, the survivors fought like animals for the nozzles, a desperate, silent war of hands and teeth until the immediate threat of caloric collapse finally receded. The tally settled at 13,721… the number finally holding, the rapid decline slowing to a steady, rhythmic ache.

  P-TR33K stood before the glass of the primary observation deck.

  The room beyond was crowded. Humans were crammed shoulder to shoulder, wrapped in the shimmering white fabric the Nexus had provided. The temperature had been stabilized, the oxygen raised, but the atmosphere was thick with a new pollutant: Noise.

  It is constant, a Vector complained, withdrawing its presence to the far side of the ship. Hums. Cries. Gasps. The vibration is chaotic. Can we not mute them?

  No, P-TR33K said. We observe.

  He watched the humans. They had taken the dead… the ones who had died after the atmosphere was fixed, the ones whose hearts just stopped from the shock… and they had not discarded them.

  They had wrapped them.

  They were carrying the bodies to the far wall, stacking them gently, creating a barrier of white-shrouded forms.

  And behind them, through the massive viewport of the Trex, lay the view of the Nexus Homeworld.

  It was magnificent. A planet of obsidian spires and glowing data-streams, dark but full of light, vast and dry and perfect. It was the antithesis of the wet, blue, chaotic marble the humans had come from.

  The humans stared at it with hollow eyes. They ate the gray paste the drones delivered, unaware of its origin, their hands shaking as they consumed their first meal in days.

  They were suffering. The data was irrefutable.

  P-TR33K felt the jagged spikes of their terror hitting his sensors like static. They were confused. They were waiting for an explanation.

  Communication Translation: 98% Complete, the system chimed.

  P-TR33K connected to Hive Control.

  It is time, he transmitted. The biologicals require context. We cannot contain the panic without data.

  Agreed, the President responded. Initiate revelation.

  P-TR33K raised his hand.

  Inside the crowded room, the humans looked up.

  The transparent walls of the Trex, offering that fantastic, terrifying view of the alien city, began to shift. The opacity increased. The light of the Nexus world was blotted out.

  The room went dark.

  Prepare the visual history, P-TR33K commanded. Show them the end.

  He watched the humans huddle closer together in the artificial night, their noise dropping to a terrified hush. They were about to see the math of their own extinction.

  Begin.

  The walls changed.

  The Logic of Survival

  Next Up: The Visual History.

  The Nexus recycled the dead to save the living. From a purely survivalist standpoint, was this the right call?