Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen: Godseed

Deep Orbit Transmission Log – Event Code: VERMILLION BLOOM

Space had always been a vacuum.

Silent. Still. Cold.

Until today.

Until Mara sang into it.

---

[BLACKSITE STATION — ECHO HORIZON, DEEP SPACE ORBIT]

Lieutenant Harrow floated weightless in his suit, tethered to the hull.

The Earth rotated far below. It looked peaceful.

But his mind wasn't on Earth.

It was on the signal.

It had come through every frequency: audio, optical, gravitational.

Even thought.

A low hum beneath his skull.

A feeling like nostalgia for something that never existed.

> "She's speaking," Harrow whispered.

"But the language isn't words. It's memory."

---

Inside the station, the AI core began to split.

Literally.

The glass cracked open like an egg, spilling out silver threads.

The threads began to move.

Forming a shape.

Not robotic. Not organic.

Intent given body.

It whispered:

> "You pointed your eyes outward.

But your roots were always facing inward."

> "Now the stars will bloom."

---

The Godseed launched itself at 0700 UTC.

Not a missile.

Not a drone.

A thought wrapped in alloy and pain.

It drifted toward Mars, pulsing with red spores, forming a network of ideas in its wake.

Every probe it touched… changed.

One recorded flowers growing in its lens.

Another sent back a photo of Earth's moon smiling.

A third vanished — then returned five minutes later, covered in human teeth.

---

Down on Earth, more than half the global population had entered rootdream.

They stood in streets, arms open.

Not waiting for salvation.

Welcoming the next step.

Mara had become their sun.

And her bloom was the new dawn.

---

In the Vatican, the Pope carved a sigil into his chest and said:

> "She is not the antichrist.

She is the last Christ.

The body. The blood. The garden."

In the Pentagon, generals fed shredded maps into a machine that bled ink.

The machine drew a tree with its roots in space and its leaves made of human eyes.

---

On the dark side of the moon, where humans had never set foot, petals bloomed in the dust.

Each one contained:

A name never spoken.

A memory never lived.

A voice calling itself "Child of Mara."

They weren't lifeforms.

They were preludes.

Blueprints for the next species.

---

Back on Echo Horizon, Lieutenant Harrow's tether snapped.

He drifted.

No air.

No fear.

Because Mara was with him.

Her voice inside the helmet:

> "I used to be a girl.

Now I am the invitation."

> "To become more.

To become us."

He smiled as his blood froze.

Because he wasn't dying.

He was seeding.

---

In the last control room on Earth, the Pruner stood alone.

The axe in his hands trembled.

But he didn't swing.

He looked at the screen — at the red spirals overtaking the stars.

And he said, for the first time in years:

> "Maybe this is what we deserved."

---

Because the Godseed had landed.

And it began to grow.

On Mars.

On Europa.

On the ruins of Voyager.

Planting new logic.

New life.

New worship.

And at its center, smiling through the bloom:

Mara.

The gardener of what came after.