The void stretched in all directions, a vast, unknowable blackness pierced only by the dim glint of distant stars, tiny, indifferent witnesses to the slow death of a once-proud vessel.
It drifted silently through space, the figure of a black hole rising before it like the mouth of some ancient, hungry god.
Gravity, unseen but relentless, had already begun its work.
The spaceship, once gleaming with the burnished sheen of frontier engineering, now bore the unmistakable scars of catastrophe.
Its oval hull was pockmarked with the blackened craters of impact burns. Scorched metal flaked off in brittle curls, adrift like dead skin from a rotting corpse.
Where once two powerful engines had driven it through starfields at impossible speeds, there now remained little more than twisted wreckage, splayed out like broken wings.
One engine casing was split open, the fusion chamber within exposed and blackened, its innards silent and cold.
The other dangled loosely, tethered by only a few ragged cables that sparked occasionally, casting short-lived flashes into the dark.
The once vibrant command systems, machine cores, and support subroutines had gone dark, leaving only silence and the occasional groan of strained metal as the gravitational pull twisted the ship ever so slightly.
Around the ship, the emptiness stretched, infinite and without mercy. There was no rescue coming, no signal received, no trace of life for light-years.
The nearest habitable system was a mathematical absurdity away. And still, the ship crept forward, pulled inexorably toward the singularity, toward that obsidian maw at the center of the starless abyss.
The black hole loomed. It was not merely an absence of light, but the utter annihilation of it.
Light bent unnaturally around it, as though reality itself refused to follow the rules so close to its event horizon.
Time slowed. Space stretched. Everything nearby was a sacrifice to its hunger.
The ship was no different. It would be torn apart, molecule by molecule, its atoms stretched into infinite threads by the sheer violence of gravitational tide.
And no one would be there to see it happen.
No one would remember the ship's name, its mission, or what horrors had unfolded within its walls before silence claimed it. It would vanish without a witness, swallowed by the cold and endless dark.
Just another ghost among the stars.
Inside the derelict ship, silence reigned like a tyrant.
Whole corridors had sealed themselves off in automatic self-preservation, bulkheads crushed or warped shut under structural collapse.
Fires had long since died out from lack of oxygen, leaving behind blackened trails along the ceilings and walls.
The air was thick with the scent of melted plastics, burnt circuitry, and something faintly organic, like dried blood beneath scorched metal.
Only the cockpit clung to the barest illusion of life, its systems flickering dimly as if in mourning.
Here, a faint trace of life lingered. The last breath of a dying machine.
The cockpit, once a hive of interstellar activity, was now a graveyard of broken tech.
Cracked monitors blinked with distorted readings. Wires hung like ivy from shattered control panels.
Binders and datapads floated listlessly through the cabin, occasionally bumping against scorched plating or the curled fingers of a once-useful robotic arm.
Laser pistols lay scattered across the floor, useless now, their charge cells empty, their once-deadly hum replaced with an impotent stillness.
And in the central chair, bolted to the floor before the ship's vast, panoramic viewport, sat a lone figure in a blackened EVA suit, motionless save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
Sym.
The lights bending around the edge of the black hole flickered into the cockpit in an otherworldly rhythm, dancing like distant candlelight on the cracked visor of his helmet.
His face, what could be seen of it through the cracked glass, was a ruin of bruises.
One eye had swelled shut, the other stared blankly into the abyss ahead. Blood caked his lip where it had split open, dried in a thin black line down his chin. His breathing was shallow. Labored.
And yet, he spoke. His voice was faint, trembling slightly, both from exhaustion and the thinness of the air.
"Sage," he rasped, "oxygen levels?"
A moment passed. Then, softly, the voice of the A.I. filled the cockpit. It was calm, feminine, tinged with digital melancholy.
"Oxygen levels below 1%. Projected survivability: five minutes. I recommend activating the reserve tank in your suit. Estimated extension: sixty minutes."
Sym chuckled weakly. It came out like a cough. "Only one percent... You always kept me informed. Even if I didn't want to hear it."
He leaned his helmet back against the headrest. The glow of the black hole shimmered in his working eye.
"You've always been with me, Sage," he whispered. "Since... since I could remember. You were in the learning pod with me. Whispering algorithms while the others learned songs. You were the only voice in that damned creche."
The AI did not respond immediately. But there was something in the silence between them, an intimacy forged by countless shared years, data streams, victories, and losses.
"Yes," Sage replied. "I have been by your side since your genetic integration at age four. I was designed to protect and optimize you. I did my best."
"You did more than that," Sym said. His voice cracked. "You got me off that backwater rock. Gave me the stars. You showed me how to move like I belonged out there. How to survive. Explore. You let me dream bigger than that planet ever would've let me."
Outside the viewport, the swirling void seemed to pulse, slowly drawing closer.
The distortion halo around the black hole flickered like a dying flame, its light falling across Sym's battered face.
"You even got me out of this, didn't you?" he murmured. "When those mining drones came alive... Gods. There were millions of them. Like metal locusts, crawling out of the old asteroid belt. Systems gone mad with age and hunger. I should've died there. Everyone did."
"Statistical outcome analysis indicated a 0.7% survival chance. You escaped. We escaped."
Sym let the words hang in the air. His battered hand reached up to the controls on his chest, trembling, hesitating.
"I... I guess one more hour isn't much. But it's something. And I'd rather spend it with you."
"Acknowledged."
"Sage... thank you. For everything."
A pause. Then, with an almost human softness:
"You're welcome, Sym."
He pressed the button. There was a sharp hiss as the suit engaged the reserve oxygen tank. Cold air flooded his lungs, clean and sharp. He gasped once, then sighed.
The black hole loomed larger now. Its gravity had begun to whisper to the ship, tugging at its broken frame like skeletal fingers pulling a sheet over a corpse.
Every few minutes, the hull groaned, welds creaking with an eerie, organic resonance. A slow death song of stressed metal.
Sym sat in his cockpit, his battered body slumped like a worn-out puppet; his breathing was slower now, more regular with the infusion of fresh oxygen.
He had an hour, less now. But time had become a mockery here.
He stared into the cosmic eye and asked, almost casually, "Sage... when do we hit the event horizon?"
The AI's voice came a moment later, calm and clinical, as always.
"Estimated arrival at event horizon: five hours, thirteen minutes."
Sym chuckled dryly. It scraped from his throat like sand. "Five hours, huh? It might be the longest five hours of my life. I guess I'll be dead by then anyway."
He leaned forward, the chair creaking beneath him.
"Sage," he said, tilting his head toward the panel, "do you have... a favorite place?"
"Clarify."
"You know. From all our travels. All the stars we've charted. The places we've touched down on. Was there ever a place that struck you as... perfect?"
There was a brief pause. An almost imperceptible hesitation in the AI's cadence.
"I am an artificial intelligence. I do not possess emotional frameworks or personal preferences. The concept of 'perfect' is subjective and irrelevant to my design."
Sym smiled behind his cracked visor. "That's the expected answer. The safe answer."
He waited.
And after a moment, longer than it should have taken, Sage spoke again.
"Pundi-VII. In the Pundi system."
That caught him off guard. "Really?" he said, voice lighter now, touched by surprise.
"Yes."The AI's tone shifted and softened, just slightly. "It was a planet of low volatility. Its atmosphere was breathable. The native inhabitants, the slime-based organisms, were peaceful. Cooperative. They demonstrated no understanding of deceit, or malice, or greed. Their lives were brief, but appeared... deeply fulfilling. It was a world of statistical harmony."
Sym's cracked lips curled upward. "That's what I was gonna say."
Another pause. Then, for the first time, a note of curiosity entered Sage's voice.
"Truly?"
Sym barked a laugh, sharp and tired. "Nope."
He leaned back, wheezing a little from the effort. "My favorite was the moon of Horta-I. Do you remember that place?"
"Yes."
"God, the food. You wouldn't understand it. It wasn't just taste. It was like the food sang to your nerves. Made you feel things. Memories. Sadness. Love. You'd take a bite and suddenly remember someone you hadn't met yet. It was... divine. Like chewing on the concept of euphoria itself."
"You described it at the time as 'orgasmic.'"
Sym laughed again, genuinely this time, though it ended in a wince of pain. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."
For a moment, there was peace. A fragile stillness between man and machine. Between survivor and sentinel.
Out beyond the glass, time stretched thin, and the stars seemed to weep as they bent into the black.
Then Sage's voice returned. Flat. Sharp. Different.
"Sym."
He sat up slightly, sensing the shift in tone.
"There is an object approaching on a direct collision course. Massive asteroid. Velocity: 85 kilometers per second. Projected impact: five seconds."
His eyes widened. "Wait, what?! How long have we known about this?!"
"Four seconds."
"Can we—?"
"Three."
"Sage, do someth—!"
"Two."
"Shit—"
"One."
BOOM.
The universe cracked.
A soundless eruption of light and destruction ripped through the cockpit.
In an instant, all systems went black. Hull, Sym, cockpit, everything, was engulfed in destruction.
The ship shattered like porcelain, debris flung outward in spirals toward the hungry blackness.
Time faltered. The stars blinked. The final flicker of a soul, swallowed whole.
And then…
Nothing.
Just the cold, unfeeling dark.