Protocol 7

1.0001

The anomaly registered at 03:17 Sol time. Station log Stellar Vigil 4.6.2, designation XV-3, logged the event. Elias Thorne, sole occupant, ran the primary spectral analysis. A tight-band, unmodulated emission, originating from Quadrant 7G, sector 4. Previously cataloged as void. The system flagged it as non-natural. Thorne initiated a tertiary cross-reference. No known celestial body, no registered probe, no errant satellite.

1.0000

The signal resolved. Not a transmission in the common sense, but an informational cascade. Thorne isolated it, rerouting primary processing power. The data stream was compact, dense. He ran it through the heuristic interpreter. Not language. Not acoustic. Mathematical.

E = mc²

Thorne leaned back. A fundamental constant. Repeated. Iterated. With increasing complexity. He initiated a deep scan of the originating sector. Nothing. Just the cold, hard vacuum. Stellar Vigil XV-3 was on a twelve-year rotation, monitoring gravitational fluctuations in the Perseus Arm. A quiet job. Designed for one.

0.9999

The sequence shifted. Thorne recognized the form: a partial derivative. Applied to physics, yes, but the parameters were… novel. The equation wasn't describing a phenomenon; it was defining one. He traced the origin again. The void remained a void. Yet the signal persisted, a point of light in the cosmic darkness. He fed the sequence into the station’s core AI. The AI, designated Argus, offered no commentary, only processing. Argus was not designed for commentary. It was designed for operational efficiency. Thorne noted a faint, rhythmic tremor in his left hand. A vascular response, perhaps, to sustained cognitive load.

0.9998

The signal was a fractal, unfolding. Each iteration built upon the last, refining a single point. Thorne felt a familiar pressure behind his eyes. Insufficient nutrient paste intake was the usual culprit. He checked his vitals. Optimal. The mathematics was absorbing. Not in an intellectual sense, but in a way that claimed resources. He felt a slight hum in the deck plating, a resonance.

0.9997

The equation began to incorporate temporal variables. Thorne’s display flickered, showing infinitesimal units of time. Planck time, he realized with a cold certainty. The smallest theoretically measurable unit. And the equation was counting down in Planck times. Across a vast, conceptual space. What was it counting down to? The tremor in his hand intensified.

0.9996

He projected the signal’s origin point onto the local star chart. It occupied a single, impossibly small coordinate. The signal was not broadcasting from a location; it was constituting one. A singularity of pure information. Argus’s diagnostic indicators pulsed a soft, amber warning. Core temperature climbing. Thorne ignored it. The paste could wait.

0.9995

The mathematics became predictive. It extrapolated previous states with absolute certainty. Thorne saw the framework of causality laid bare. Not a description of the universe, but its underlying code, being rewritten. He felt a tremor, real this time, not a resonance. The station groaned.

ERROR: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. ENERGY SURGE DETECTED.

0.9994

This was not a discovery. It was an observation of an event already in progress. Thorne ran a simulation based on the current trajectory of the equation. The results were… undefined. Not a collapse, not an expansion. A transition. A phase shift. He looked out the viewport. The stars were the same. The nebula, charted hundreds of cycles ago, remained a smear of iridescence. Argus responded to the simulation prompt with a fractional delay, its synthesized tone clipped.

0.9993

The countdown was reaching its critical threshold. Thorne’s fingers flew across the console, attempting to isolate a feedback loop, a control. There was no control. The signal was not a message from an alien intelligence. It was the intelligence itself, asserting its existence. The signal was the construction. The metal of the console felt subtly slick beneath his trembling fingers.

0.9992

He saw the final iteration of the equation. It contained no variables. Only a single, definitive statement. A zero-point calculation. The hum intensified, vibrating through his bones. The lights flickered, then stabilized at a higher intensity. Argus went silent. Its processing power was no longer available. It had been absorbed. A sharp, metallic taste bloomed on Thorne’s tongue.

0.9991

Thorne realized the station was not being destroyed. It was being… integrated. The hull plates subtly shifted, reconfigured. The air circulation system hummed a new, complex pattern. He looked at his hands. The skin seemed to shimmer, an iridescent film momentarily obscuring the flesh. The digits elongated, subtly refining their form. The mathematical equation was not ending. It was completing a phase. The void was being populated. He was the first.