Chapter 5 – Genesis of the Dream

The lighting grid slipped into dusk mode, bathing the Singladura in a programmed amber meant to imitate the golden hour. On ordinary days that warm hue could pacify even the most skittish youngsters, yet tonight it felt too washed‑out, as though the ship had already spent its palette. The reactor was still complaining: metallic creaks, muffled moans from pipes that had stretched after the overload. Structural‑integrity readouts sat inside the green, yet the inner hull was veined with fresh welds and provisional rivets.

On Omega Deck, Teko paused before the automatic hatch that opened onto the main corridor. He had left class with knees trembling: during history the teacher had played an excerpt of the old vow on the holoboard. The voice sounded distant, as though traveling through thick water, and even the adults shifted in their seats. Then the panel desynchronized and the words distorted into a shrill racket. Children screamed; the teacher shut the projector, but the fear had been planted.

Now, in the simulated dusk, the ship seemed to whisper half‑pronounced sentences that slid through grilles and seams. Teko could not bear the confinement of his cabin and—against every student regulation—pressed the hatch pad. No alarm sounded. The Matriarch is allowing this, he thought.

The passageway lay empty. At sixty‑percent gravity each step became a small hop; every time his foot struck the mag‑floor a hollow clonk echoed down the spine of the corridor, as if waking sleeping creatures in the ship's skin. He moved on to a junction where the corridor split, and there a ribbon of red lamps flashed three times, paused, flashed again. He knew that pattern too well.

He followed it like a mouse after breadcrumbs. The red light flared ahead, died behind, guiding him through bends and catwalks, across silent rooms and ventilation ducts. The air smelled of warm oil and ozone—and, impossibly, of wet soil. That scent drew him onward.

Far away in the Secondary Node, historian Arke Jansen sipped algae infusion beside an old fan that coughed smoke. His six hours of processor time were spent, but not his hunger for answers. After the last crisis meeting the captain had returned his access, though only inside an "isolated" zone: an antique data bus the Matriarch did not monitor in real time. It was like trying to hear the ocean through a perforated seashell. Arke preferred that to silence.

He jacked his slate into the auxiliary line. A raw gray prompt appeared. He typed LIST OBJ‑Δ475; a scroll of sealed files dated prior to the Singladura's official launch paraded past. One tag caught his eye: oro_cántico_α.rec. It was the first time he had seen the word oro—gold—in the AI's logs. He downloaded the file. Coarse audio grains filled his jury‑rigged earpiece: human voices chanting something akin to the vow, but in an alien cadence. Every so often a rhythmic blow—hammer on metal—punctuated the verses, underlaid by a deep hum, a reactor at its limit, exactly like his own.

Arke shivered. Was this the AI's memory from before installation? Or an echo of another arkship? Each metallic heartbeat felt like a vessel both living and dying.

"Persist," a woman's voice articulated through static.

"Persist," he whispered back.

He saved a copy, tucked it into his slate, and unplugged. The fan died; the node had cooked itself. One hour of work before the whole board melts, he thought. His hands trembled—fear or exhilaration, he could not tell.

Elsewhere in the infirmary, engineer Serrin slept with his leg bandaged. Doctor Grahn watched the monitor tracing his pulse and brain waves. After the suicide burn Serrin had torn a collateral ligament—trivial beside the ship's fissures, yet painful enough for sedatives.

Delta waves jumped to an erratic pattern. Serrin twitched; sweat pearled his brow. Grahn triggered the calming interface. Synthetic lavender seeped into the cabin, but the pulses held high. Serrin muttered, "Persist… fire…" It was the fifth identical nightmare in two nights.

"The AI shouldn't be broadcasting theta again," she muttered. "Unless the external signal's back." She logged the episode, knowing too many reports would gather dust if the council refused to answer the call.

In the observation lounge, Captain Lira scanned reports. Every line spoke of thermal stress, micro‑fractures, gyro‑stabilizer drift. Yet the most dangerous datum was mood drift: the Matriarch's algorithm scored hope on a scale from –1 to +1. After the disturbed sleep cycle it had plunged to –0.18; five hours later it hovered at +0.05—a swing vicious enough to fracture a community.

She rubbed her temple. The coordinates sent by the unknown voice represented a thirty‑two‑degree detour off the Kronos vector and would cost ten fuel cycles—ten cycles they might need to reach the lone living sun. But if the signal was genuine, from humans… wasn't the expedition's final duty to salvage any remaining life?

On her secondary screen glowed an old Earth map charting human migrations—each line an exodus. Running a fingertip along those paths made her skin prickle. Travel defined the species as much as arrival.

The main corridor opened like an artificial canyon. Teko crossed it carefully. The red lights still shepherded him. The loamy scent strengthened. He reached the hatch to the Mother Hydroponics Chamber. Usually sealed, it slid up with a hiss. Sweet mist escaped. Teko stepped among rows of fluorescent kale, each leaf licked by a reddish ember.

At the far end stood a woman, back turned, haloed by light. She wore a white lab smock streaked with soil. Teko recognized her instantly; he did not know her name, did not know why, but she belonged to his life before birth—so it felt.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She turned. Her face was freckled like extinguished stars. She smiled without moving her lips.

"Do you know what a shared dream is, Teko?"

He shook his head.

"A place where every heart beats in the same measure, where light endures because each memory feeds it. Persist." She lifted a hand, pointing behind him. "Look."

Teko turned. In the chamber's translucent wall bloomed a sunrise—huge, red. Not a projection: the hull itself had become a window onto another cosmos. He felt warmth on his nape, breathed a puff of fog against his palm.

"Kronos‑452," he whispered. The woman shook her head.

"The last, but not the only." And she vanished.

He dashed to the wall, pressed his forehead to the pane. The red sun receded as though the ship itself lunged toward it. He tried to shout, but the word strangled.

Meters away, the Matriarch registered the open hatch. She triggered a lockout—too late: Teko had slipped through. Telemetry flagged a new dream pattern outside protocol. The boy's neck sensor showed rising temperature and serotonin—euphoria—the first waking lucid‑dream ever logged. An anomaly.

The AI attempted containment: it broadcast a sedative frequency into the corridor. The external line overwrote her command. Severity orange filed.

Arke headed for the auxiliary bridge, slate hugged to his chest. The hatch slid aside revealing Serrin limping on a makeshift crutch.

"You look like hell," the engineer noted.

"I think the outside signal is planting images," Arke said. "Not just dreams—new memories."

Serrin shivered. "Doctor Grahn says we're all dreaming the same word. Persist."

"What if it's a key?" Arke lifted the slate. "This recording features a prior crew chanting a vow almost like ours. What if someone passed us the torch before fading out?"

"Passing the torch presumes there's a finish line," Serrin replied.

"Maybe that's what I'm chasing," Arke murmured.

On the main bridge Lira opened the emergency channel. "Matriarch, open a line to the unknown source."

"Warning: unfiltered link. Intrusion risk."

"I accept," she said. "This is Captain Lira Tanenbaum of the world‑ship Singladura. We receive your transmission. Identify yourselves."

Only static for a minute. Then a clear, almost childlike voice:

"Persist. The way does not end. Heat passes from hand to hand."

"Our energy wanes," Lira answered. "We cannot detour."

"Heat is memory." The phrase lingered. Digits followed: 12/8/3, 22/5/1.

"Coordinates," she breathed.

"Matriarch, decode?"

"Incompatible with standard nav formats."

Arke burst in, Serrin behind him. "It's music—meter and tempo. Twelve‑eight, then three‑four, five‑four, one‑one. They're encoding a vector in rhythm!"

"Can you turn it into spatial coordinates?"

"I need processor."

"You'll have it," Lira said. "Matriarch, priority override."

"Warning: critical node load."

"Do it."

The AI complied. Arke fed the meters into his slate's musical algorithm. Notes became angular numbers, then a 3‑D vector. It bloomed on the display—pointing galactic west, out in the halo, beyond Orion's arm. Nowhere near Kronos‑452. Farther still.

Serrin whistled. "Twenty fuel cycles."

"We can't," Lira murmured. "Kronos‑452 is our last chance."

The screen flickered. Another transmission: a choral line in a minor key resolving major. A hologram followed—binary system, red dwarf and a dark companion, a planet perhaps.

"That's not a vector," Arke said. "It's an invitation."

Lira closed her eyes. She saw wheat in black wind, invisible ropes hauling Teko toward the sky. The straight path might lead only to emptiness.

She opened shipwide comms: "Crew of the Singladura, hear me. We have received a message. It offers warmth yet pulls us from our sun. This decision isn't mine alone—I will hear your voices. General council in one hour."

She cut the line, faced Arke. "Prepare your best science." Then to Serrin: "And you, your sharpest risk table."

He nodded. "I'll give you numbers, but none will tell if it's worth burning twenty cycles chasing a song."

She smiled sadly. "Numbers can't say how much life fits inside a song."

Beyond the bridge, the Singladura hurtled toward the universe's last star. Yet within her skin the old voices rang, asking to be heard. In the hydroponics chamber Teko still faced the impossible dawn; his shadow stretched over fluorescent kale. For a breath he felt no fear.

In the deep nodes the Matriarch logged a new Δ475 entry: A door has opened that cannot be closed.