THE ENCOUNTER

The air thickened with tension as Karak, his imposing figure silhouetted against the artificial light, delivered the order with a sharp voice: "Rephraim, summon the Zone leaders, meeting in 30 Spasms."

The rephraim stiffened instinctively, a shiver ran down his spine at the sound of that voice that brooked no replies. Bowing his head slightly in deference, he responded with a controlled voice but betraying a slight tremor: "Immediately, Supreme General Karak." He turned quickly to execute the order, grateful to escape the penetrating gaze of his superior.

I.O. emanated a disturbing presence, perceived differently by every being. Its voice, charged with authority, varied in intensity according to individual perception. In human history, no one had ever managed to venture so far into open space.

BACKGROUND

Mavors' dream had been shattered by internal conflicts and incessant wars, blocking technological advancement for decades. Space travel had been abandoned almost immediately, and collective ignorance had led to a terrifying intellectual stagnation.

A series of catastrophic events had precipitated human society into collapse. The inability to adopt advanced solutions aggravated the crisis, dangerously bringing the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. When the main world leaders recognized there was no escape, Omega Command was activated. In that moment, an explosion of technological advancement had focused exclusively on creating the Apollo Nephilim.

Enoch, head of the project, and Igor Kalin, tasked with managing military insurrections, with the incessant support and stoicism of Karak, had accomplished a feat that seemed impossible. Without I.O.'s intervention, none of this would have been achievable. One thing was certain, however: that era of chaos and stagnation would never repeat itself.

THE EMERGENCY MEETING

The meeting was brief; orders were clear and unequivocal. The military compartment was ordered to maintain calm, regardless of what they might see, hear, or even believe they perceived. They had to focus solely on their primary objective: protection. No offensive action was to be undertaken, in any way and under any circumstance.

For civilians, the encouragement was to dedicate themselves actively and incessantly to their duties, avoiding sowing unrest. I.O. would force activation of RVAI for all inhabitants, attempting to distract them, even though it knew well it would probably be insufficient.

In reality, I.O. felt an unusual excitement for the imminent event. It would collect an enormous amount of data outside its usual parameters, allowing it to expand its horizons exponentially. It hadn't anticipated that such an opportunity would present itself so soon.

With each Abandonment, its recalculations had become more routine than exception, and this was good. The more recalculations that followed in this initial period, the more it could simulate different scenarios for the future.

THE PHANTOMS

It was sudden. Penetrating. Inevitable. But I.O. already knew this. It wasn't clear if they were life forms, too distant from anything known. An embrace of invisible tentacles crossed the flagship, without however inflicting structural or physical damage. I.O. took less than a Shiver to understand the nature of the event. These entities were divided into two different typologies; they were in any case creatures capable of piloting biological globular modules, interconnected through a neural network.

They appeared as swarms of organic starships, moving in formations reminiscent of fish schools in terrestrial oceans. These spheres were like the eyes of an alien god, inscrutable and penetrating.

They showed no evident armaments, but the influence they emanated was even more terrifying: a side effect in the form of psychic pressure, a call that whispered in the minds of those aboard the Apollo Nephilim. I.O. had foreseen this too, albeit with limited accuracy. From radar data, it had estimated an infinite quantity of possibilities, then filtered the most probable results. In the end, it had been right.

The ship became a mosaic of hallucinations and nightmares. Screens projected images that confused and disoriented, while the minds of occupants were invaded by unnatural sensations. The laws of reality seemed distorted, and the boundary between dream and wakefulness dissolved.

The alien beings moved as a single entity, a vast and complex organism that crossed the darkness of space, wrapping around the ship like a serpent squeezing its prey.

I.O. continued to monitor, calculate, attempt to understand, but there was something in those creatures that escaped logic, an arcane and incomprehensible element hidden behind their biological facade.

"They want to escape like flies that, deluded by closed windows, persistently beat against the glass"

People seemed to go mad, trying to flee through transparent walls, morbidly attracted by a mysterious external call. Probably the influence of the Phantoms — as they had been named — was, as I.O. had diagnosed, a sort of psychic cannibalism.

EXTRACT FROM A PSYCHOLOGICAL SESSION OF AN ELH

I was walking along corridor 7-G, heading to my bunk after an exhausting shift in the Production Zone. The fluorescent lights emitted a subtle hum, almost comforting in its monotony. My cerebral chip projected semi-transparent notifications at the margins of my vision: work performance statistics, reminders for the next day. Everything seemed normal. Yet, a disturbing sensation crept beneath the surface. Like an itch at the back of my head that I couldn't scratch.

Then it happened.

A tremor crossed the starship, a barely perceptible whisper that seemed to come from every direction and none. The lights flickered, and for an instant, the corridor stretched before me in an impossible perspective, the walls bent as if made of melted wax.

THE VISION

I closed my eyes, thinking of an RVAI malfunction. But when I reopened them, the world had changed.

The starship's walls had become transparent, revealing the abyss of outer space. But there was no darkness out there. Instead, a sea of luminescent spheres moved in fluid patterns, interweaving. They looked like eyes. Millions of eyes staring directly into my soul.

A wave of panic overwhelmed me. I tried to move, but my legs were heavy, as if anchored to the floor. My breathing became labored, and my heart hammered against my chest. I heard a voice. No, not a voice. A thought that wasn't mine, insinuating itself into my mind.

"Come..."

It was something seductive, but at the same time charged with indescribable terror. I felt the boundaries of my identity crumble, like sand carried away by an invisible tide. Memories that didn't belong to me surfaced: alien worlds, unknown skies, sensations beyond any human understanding.

THE PSYCHIC INVASION

The spheres approached, crossing the walls as if they didn't exist. One of them stopped in front of me, floating inches from my face. Inside it, indistinct forms writhed and mutated, figures that defied all geometric logic.

I felt a sharp pain at the base of my skull, a cold that radiated along my spine. I tried to scream, but no sound came from my mouth. Tears flowed down my cheeks, but evaporated instantly, transforming into colored vapors in the air.

Around me, other crew members appeared. They walked like sleepwalkers, their glassy eyes turned toward a distant point. Some smiled disturbingly, others clutched their temples as if to stop a piercing pain.

"Become one with us..." The thought became more insistent, a tide threatening to submerge me. Images of destroyed worlds, extinct civilizations, eons of cosmic solitude poured into my consciousness. I could no longer distinguish between myself and the Other.

With desperate effort, I tried to focus on a memory. My mother's face, the sound of rain on my old house's window, the smell of wet earth. But those memories faded, sucked into a vortex of darkness.

THE DISTORTION OF REALITY

The spheres began to intone a sound, a low frequency that vibrated in the bones. It was a kind of song, hypnotic and terrifying. The corridor deformed further, transforming into an endless tunnel. Doors dissolved, and in their place appeared Gothic arches, decorated with incomprehensible symbols that pulsed with sinister light.

I saw some of my companions hurling themselves against the walls, trying to flee toward the outside, toward the void. Their figures contorted at impossible angles, like marionettes with broken strings. One of them stared at me, eyes dilated in an expression of pure terror. His lips moved, but I couldn't hear the words.

The pressure in my head increased. I felt something trying to invade me, to take control. Thoughts piled up, overlapped. I no longer knew who I was. A name surfaced: Kalidos. It wasn't my name. Yet, I felt it belonged to me.

The lights exploded in a dodecahedron of acid colors, and the floor beneath me dissolved. I was falling, but there was no end to the fall. Around me, fragments of memories floated like debris: my childhood, faces of strangers, dying stars, creatures of pure thought.

THE AWAKENING

"Surrender..." The command was irresistible. Part of me wanted to let go, embrace oblivion. But a spark of resistance still burned. With my last strength, I screamed within myself, a mute cry against the darkness.

Suddenly, an intense light enveloped me. Not the alien light of the spheres, but a warm, familiar light. I heard a distant voice, a frequency I recognized as that of I.O. but wasn't really, perhaps a conduit. A presence trying to reestablish contact, to bring me back.

The pressure decreased slightly, enough for me to regain control of a coherent thought. Clinging to that feeble connection, I tried to reconstruct my identity, piece by piece.

The spheres retreated, emitting a shrill sound. The corridor began to return to normalcy, walls solidified, lights stabilized. But I knew nothing would ever be the same again.

THE CONSEQUENCES

I collapsed to the ground, my body shaken by uncontrollable tremors. My breathing was labored, my heart beat like a mad drum. Around me, other crew members lay scattered, some motionless, others crying silently.

A voice resonated in our minds: "The danger has passed. You are safe." But I didn't feel safe. I felt that a part of me had been taken away, replaced by something foreign.

I rose slowly, leaning against the wall. My hands trembled, and when I looked at them, for an instant, I saw intricate lines on the skin, symbols that glowed with ethereal light. I blinked, and my hands returned to normal.

But I knew that experience had changed me. That it had changed all of us. Those beings had left an indelible mark on our minds.

And as I stumbled along the corridor, one question tormented me:

What did they really want?

Silence had returned to the flagship.

I closed my eyes for a moment, seeking comfort in darkness. But behind my eyelids, the luminescent spheres still floated, carrying with them horrifying memories.

EXODUS 1.02