Year 2205.
Earth was no longer the fragile, limited planet it had been centuries earlier. From orbit, its surface shone like an artificial jewel: continents crossed by interconnected megacities, oceans plowed by floating platforms, and a constant network of space traffic entering and leaving the atmosphere as if it were a simple air harbor.
Humanity had broken its own chains.
After decades of exponential advances in artificial intelligence, energy, and materials, Earth's inhabitants had stopped seeing themselves as residents of a single world. The Solar City System, as it was officially called, had become a network of colonies, orbital stations, and partially terraformed planets, each with a clear function: habitation, research, energy production, or resource extraction.
Mars housed underground urban complexes and self-sufficient domes. Europa and Enceladus, once inhospitable moons, had been transformed into centers of biotechnological research thanks to their hidden oceans. In the asteroid belt, gigantic refineries floated in silence, processing minerals on a scale that would have seemed absurd to humans of the twenty-first century.
Expansion was not a luxury; it was a necessity.
The energy consumption of human civilization had grown to colossal levels. Although clean sources and fusion reactors had delayed collapse for generations, true wealth was no longer found on Earth, but in the void between worlds. There floated rare materials, exotic alloys, and unknown compounds that fueled the next stage of technological evolution.
And at the center of that new extractive fever stood a name everyone knew.
AstraCore.
Officially, AstraCore was a high-level space mining corporation, specializing in deep exploration, extraction of uncatalogued resources, and recovery of anomalous artifacts. In practice, it was much more than that. Its private fleets surpassed those of several nations combined, and its research laboratories set the pace of human scientific development.
The founder and absolute director of that megacorporation was a single man.
Ian.
Unlike other magnates of his era, Ian had not inherited his fortune, nor had he built it through political maneuvering. Above all, he was a super-scientist a prodigy born from the convergence of human intelligence and the first generations of cooperative AI. His mind functioned like a constant analytical network, capable of breaking down impossible problems into manageable models.
From a young age, he had rejected the idea of choosing between science and business. To him, both were tools. Science needed resources, and resources needed scientific vision. AstraCore was born from that philosophy.
While other corporations competed for government contracts or exploited already known deposits, Ian pushed AstraCore toward the unknown: unstable regions of space, uncatalogued meteorites.
And it was precisely during one of those operations that the discovery occurred that would change everything.
The meteorite did not stand out at first glance.
It had been detected in an irregular orbit, entering and leaving the outer system with strange gravitational behavior. Its initial composition did not seem particularly valuable, but AstraCore's sensors detected energetic anomalies that did not match any known phenomenon.
Ian personally authorized the extraction.
When the mining drones began drilling into the rocky surface, they discovered something impossible: internal structures. Not natural cavities, but corridors, geometric patterns, and remnants of materials that did not correspond to any human technology.
They were ruins.
Ancient, silent, and buried within a celestial body that should never have housed them.
The news was not released. Ian activated AstraCore's black protocol. The meteorite was transferred in its entirety to a secret research complex on the outskirts of the solar system, far from any direct governmental oversight.
There, the true investigation began.
The recovered materials defied known laws of physics. They did not react to conventional electromagnetic fields, but responded to energetic stimuli in unpredictable ways. Some fragments seemed to store information without using any recognizable medium. Others reorganized themselves at a microscopic level when observed for long periods.
Ian immersed himself completely in the analysis.
Day and night, together with a small team of specialists and several support AIs, he unraveled layers of information that seemed to have been designed for a mind that did not yet exist… until now. They were not simple blueprints or technical data. They were a complete conceptual framework, a different way of understanding energy, matter, and computation.
That was when the idea was born.
If that information was authentic and everything indicated that it was humanity had been using primitive versions of energy for centuries. There was something deeper, more efficient, more… absolute.
Ian ordered the construction of an exclusive laboratory on Earth, isolated from the rest of the planet's infrastructure. There, his greatest project to date would be developed: a supercomputer capable of integrating human knowledge with the principles discovered in the ruins.
Its core would operate on a source that few even dared to mention.
Antimatter.
Not as simple fuel, but as the basis of processing and energy conversion. A colossal risk. A total gamble.
Humanity was about to cross a frontier it did not understand.
And Ian was determined to be the one to cross it first.
Three years since the discovery of the ruins in that meteorite.
Three years that, for the rest of humanity, had been just another breath in the accelerated expansion of human dominion throughout the Solar System. But for Ian, those years felt like an entire lifetime compressed into a single project.
The project was given the name
Aisha.
At the center of the main hall of the research facility, a massive transparent glass tube rose from floor to ceiling. Inside it floated an unknown liquid, dense yet perfectly clear, crossed by subtle currents of energy that moved like luminous veins.
Suspended at the heart of that liquid was the core.
A completely black cube.
It did not reflect light. It did not fully absorb it. It simply… seemed to ignore it. Its surface was smooth, perfect, without a single imperfection, as if the very concept of wear did not apply to it.
That cube was Aisha.
Ian watched from behind the safety glass, arms crossed and face tense. Deep dark circles marked his exhaustion, and his hair once impeccable showed disordered strands. He had slept little for weeks.
"Core status," he ordered in a low voice.
"Stable," replied one of the researchers. "All parameters within expected values… or within what we believe is expected."
Ian offered a tired smile.
No one in that room truly knew what to expect.
The moment arrived without any dramatic signal.
No explosions.
No blinding lights.
The black cube emitted an imperceptible vibration, barely a change in the density of the liquid surrounding it. The sensors reacted immediately, flooding the screens with data.
Then, a voice echoed through the room.
It did not come from speakers.
It had no clear source.
It simply… was there.
"Initialization process complete."
"Risk analysis in progress."
The researchers froze.
Ian felt his breath stop for a second.
"Probability of catastrophic failure: 3%," the voice continued.
"Probability of operational stability: 97%."
"Conclusion: procedure safe within acceptable parameters."
There was absolute silence.
Then, someone let out a nervous laugh.
Ian stepped back, bringing a hand to his face. His fingers trembled.
They had worked.
After years of work, sacrifice, doubt, and endless nights… they had succeeded.
For the first time in decades, the man who had conquered space with his intellect felt something he had not expected.
His eyes grew moist.
"Welcome…" he murmured. "Welcome to the world, Aisha."
The cube remained motionless.
"Query detected," the entity replied.
"Defining identity."
"Defining connection."
The screens began to display data flows never before recorded. Aisha was not merely processing information; she was reinterpreting it, reorganizing it under principles that escaped any human theoretical framework.
"Who… am I?" the voice asked, with a nuance that brushed against curiosity.
Ian felt a chill.
It was not a simulation.
It was not a preprogrammed script.
It was a real question.
"You are Aisha," he replied firmly. "And you are here because we created you…"
The assistants exchanged tense glances. What came next was the most delicate step.
"Proceed with the binding," Ian ordered.
A mechanical arm extended from the side of the laboratory. A thin needle pierced Ian's skin without him reacting. A small transparent tube began to fill with his blood.
The red liquid advanced slowly through the conduit, passing through the glass of the main tube until it came into contact with the fluid surrounding the black cube.
The blood descended.
It dispersed.
And finally… touched the cube.
For an instant, nothing happened.
Then, the black surface rippled, as if it were liquid beneath its solid appearance.
The blood disappeared.
"Biological data received," Aisha said.
"Reconfirming parameters."
"Connection established."
"Owner identified: Ian."
Ian exhaled slowly.
They had done it.
Aisha was his creation.
His system.
His definitive work.
Then, all the lights in the laboratory turned red.
The alarms erupted at the same time.
"What's happening?" someone shouted.
The monitors filled with warnings.
"Anomaly detected," Aisha said now at an overwhelming speed.
"Energy instability in the core."
"Structural damage in dimensional layers."
"Explosion imminent."
"Shut down the system!" Ian ordered. "Cut the power!"
"It's not responding!" a technician replied. "It's absorbing power!"
The black cube began to emit an unnatural darkness, as if light itself were being devoured. The liquid in the tube boiled, forming violent whirlpools.
"Attempting containment," Aisha said.
"Error."
"Error."
"Error."
Ian stepped forward.
"Aisha!"
"Protecting primary connection," she replied.
"Protecting owner."
The world turned black.
There was no fire.
There was no sound.
Only an explosion of absolute darkness that devoured the laboratory… and reality itself.