The Stowaway Thread

1 Outbound, Yet Homeward

Contrapunctus surfed the faint push of sunlight, its ugly patchwork sails once again the most beautiful mess in the Kuiper dark.Course: long, slow spiral that would sling them past Neptune in six months, then drift toward the inner system on photon drift and jokes.

Aiden stood at mid-deck galley with two steaming pouches—one brutally dark coffee for himself, one super-mild hojicha for Lin.He waved the tea beneath Lin's nose.

"Tea-cup, tennis-ball…?" Aiden prompted.

Lin inhaled, brow furrowing, then brightened. "Tarantula, trombone!"Memory anchors holding—for the moment.

Maya whooped from a ladder rung. "That's seven perfect recites in a row. Synaptic pruning halted.""Yet the socks joke survives," Lin sighed."Immutable law of physics," Aiden said.

2 Micro-Spike in the Quiet

Solayna monitored Dawn-Core rhythms; all primes steady. Lantern emitted friendly random pulses; cloak seams stable.Yet Maya's system logs flagged a single bit-flip in the engineering bay—an impossible self-correcting checksum.Nephis and Cassie joined her. They ran diagnostics line-by-line but found only a microscopic smear of reflective dust on the outer hull.

Cassie chuckled. "Probably ring grit."Nephis said nothing; inside, cloak threads twitched unease.

3 Shadow in the Airlock

Fourth watch. Ship lights on night cycle.Glitch and Chip floated asleep near the viewport, murmuring 71-73 primes.Aiden ran maintenance on the port airlock—routine. He glanced through the inner pane and froze.

Something crouched on the titanium grate: a low, angular mass no larger than a helmet. It was mirror-black—but anti-reflective: whatever angle he looked from, the light died on its surface. Four jointed limbs, torso faceted, Möbius-shaped "mask" pulsing with a single, perfect beat.

Null Overseer fragment—the hitchhiker Glitch saw.

Aiden's throat went desert-dry. He keyed silent alert.

4 Containment Attempt

Maya slammed blast doors. Nephis arrived cloak-ready; Cassie with lantern dialled to maximum chaos.Lin—despite doc's orders—dragged himself to the corridor, Spiral shard cane in hand.Solayna held Dawn-Core in a clamp cradle, primes building to 107.

They pumped airlock full of bug-report noise. The creature didn't flinch; instead it grew, absorbing audio, limbs sharpening.

Maya hissed: "It's converting discord to feed itself."

Aiden whispered, "We starved Null with noise before. This one eats contradictions."

Nephis tilted head. "Then feed it consistency— perfect monotone—smother it."

Lin's eyes widened. "A lullaby so boring it chokes."

Cassie bit her lip. "But if we project perfect pitch, we risk re-awakening the Null virus in us."

5 Lin's Forgotten Tune

Lin steadied on cane. "I have maybe one flawless memory left: Grandfather's tea-heating chant. Four notes, dead simple. I barely recall it—but it's perfect in my bones."

Maya argued, "Too risky—lose that and we lose you."Lin shrugged. "Offer worth the pot."

He keyed the airlock comm, humming a flat, four-toned mantra; each pitch exact, no vibrato, no soul.The Overseer shard quivered, limbs folding inward—starved on sameness. It shrank to pebble size, flickered.

But Lin's voice trembled on last note; the melody cracked a half-cent off.

The shard pulsed bright and spidered a tendril through the interior hatch crack.

Aiden cursed. "It tasted imperfection again— stronger now!"

6 Vegas Gambit

With thirty seconds before the shard slit seals, Solayna flashed a desperate instruction: "Quantum dice."

Maya scrambled for the debug deck's micro-entropy chamber—a tiny box that generates pure random voltages for cryptography. She yanked the core, rolled it across the floor toward the airlock speaker line.

Aiden stomped the release. Random data spewed into the lock— noise beyond thought, but not designed noise. True chaos.

The shard spasmed; mirror surface fractured into countless facets, each spinning meaningless reflections. With a silent implosion it fizzled into black glitter that drifted like ash and vanished.

7 Worse News in Victory

Plates depressurised. Airlock safe—at least visually. But when Dawn-Core stabilised, its cadence had skipped prime 101 entirely—beat gone. Lantern skipped a symbol, cloak seam unravelled an extra twist. Something lost.

Maya exhaled shaky relief. "Dust flushed. Log clean."

Lin swayed, cane slipping. Cassie caught him.

"What's sixty-eight Celsius water taste like?" Lin asked. Blank confusion.He'd lost the tea chant—and prime 101 with it.

8 Quiet Corridor

Later, Aiden stared at the stars, Dawn-Core thudding uneven.Solayna floated beside him. "Shards of Null wear infinite faces. One rode the gate's closing fracture. We escaped—but a price in memory, a prime."

He nodded, throat tight.

"What if more stowed away?" she asked.

"We keep singing ugly," he said, but his smile didn't reach eyes.

Lights dimmed; Cocoa cycle resumed. Somewhere, Glitch whistled a prime run—but skipped 101, didn't notice.

Aiden looked aft, picturing specks of mirror hiding in solar-sail creases. The voyage home would be long, and silence rarely stays dead.

He whispered a new mnemonic under breath, hoping to remember:

Mug, mirror, midnight, mystery.

Outside, the Kuiper dark waited, quietly rearranging its shadows.