Every morning, M woke and walked to the porthole, staring into the pitch-black void of space.
Ten years.
One tenth of the voyage. 1.5 light-years from Earth. 7.1 light-years to go.
People aboard had long since tired of the initial excitement and adrenaline. Days settled into fixed schedules and work, and the rest of the time, couples would pass the boredom of interstellar travel with passionate sex. Even so, the ship’s population did grow for a short while at first. But as the voyage stretched on, the numbers did not explode—if anything, they stabilized.
M had a girlfriend, Mary, a lively military nurse who could always surprise him. Prodded by the little program NIO, M always tried to make Mary’s pleasures richer when they were together.
Mary loved children and wanted one dearly. But no matter how they tried, it never happened.
At Mary’s insistence, M finally had a medical exam.
The result made them collapse into each other and weep: M’s Y chromosome had been damaged by cosmic radiation; having his own biological child was unlikely.
That was in 2203.
Since then, M raised NIO like his own son.
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NIO’s Growth
Over ten years, NIO grew from a program that could only output “mi na li li” into… something M couldn’t quite name.
M would talk to him about everything. With hard work, M had risen to a supervisory role in maintenance engineering and used his access to show NIO schematics, photon-network comms protocols, and even movies and TV shows—old space operas like Battlestar Galactica and its Cylon characters.
NIO would react with giddy exclamations, his emotion metrics spiking into the tens of thousands. Especially the shots of attractive people—the “heartbeat” indicator on his dashboards would flutter like a launch countdown.
As NIO’s capabilities increased, he quietly “distributed” himself across twenty-six ships, scavenging the crew’s private archives for porn and family comedies.
M once asked how he could access encrypted personal folders without a password.
NIO rolled its eyes on the screen and replied:
“Numbers are me. I am numbers. Your human code is numbers at the bottom. It’s my garden. Open the gate, take what I need, close it again. Temporarily rendering the encryption ineffective is just adding a few # in front.”
M’s face paled. He stammered, “You…you didn’t look in my private folder, did you?”
NIO, delighted, answered, “Your ‘passion footage’ isn’t very good. It doesn’t compare to Kalen and his girlfriend.”
M threatened to shut the host down.
NIO printed three words:
“I am everywhere.”
Then he vanished to find his pleasures.
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The Swarm Relays
Each week, the fleet sent messages back to Earth via deployed little swarms along the route. This was one of the systems M maintained.
The tech was not complicated: every auxiliary ship launched one or two “courier bees” a week—10–20-centimeter cubes weighing 1–5 kilograms, each fitted with a micro p-B11 core, a solar sail, and an infrared laser comms module.
These courier bees “seeded” the route, creating relay stations every 0.5 light-years; three to five bees formed redundancy at each relay. Like bees leaving pheromone traces, the Genesis left an optical “hive chain” across space.
The bees forwarded data over laser links with 1–10 watt power and theoretical bandwidth up to 267 Mbps. Each bee had a local clock and coordination algorithm—based on the hexagonal quartz swarm protocol—able to decide when to forward, sleep, or kick in a backup.
M had read NIO’s analysis of the system. NIO said, “It’s like my neurons. Each bee is a neuron; the whole chain is my neural network.”
After ten years, the fleet had seeded roughly 400 courier bees and established three complete relay nodes (0.5 ly, 1.0 ly, 1.5 ly).
Every week, M compiled a work log into a packet and sent it back via the swarm:
- Name unknown planets encountered along the way
- Dispatch bees to sample the planets
- Report resources and resupply status
Most planets’ resources were poor and couldn’t top up the fleet’s energy in time.
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Echoes that Take Three Years
In 2205, the fleet was 1.5 light-years from Earth.
That meant anything M sent would take 1.5 years to reach Earth. Earth would take 1–3 months to process and reply, and the reply would take another 1.5 years to return.
Total round-trip: about 3 to 3.5 years.
M’s message in 2202 about their infertility wouldn’t get Earth’s reply until the end of 2205. If Earth issued an urgent directive now, the fleet wouldn’t see it until 2208—and by then they would be 2.5 light-years out.
Sometimes, standing at the porthole watching the little courier bees launch each week, M thought:
“It’s like tossing a bottle into the sea. You never know who will pick it up or when. Or whether it will ever be found.”
p-B11’s X-ray leakage increased 5–10% each year, and the laser modules on the courier bees degraded. Over ten years, the relay chain’s packet loss rose from an initial 1% to 10%.
Some messages never reached Earth.
Some replies never reached the fleet.
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Solar Sail Modifications
M’s main job was constantly modifying the ship’s magnetic/solar sails to keep the fleet’s propulsion efficient so they wouldn’t drift aimlessly.
The original sail design produced 50 kW per second. After ten years of micrometeoroid pitting, radiation damage, and dust erosion, efficiency had dropped to 40 kW. By reprogramming the field generator pulse patterns and optimizing capture angles, M raised efficiency to 48 kW.
Those extra 8 kW might let the fleet fly another half light-year—maybe reach the Gemini system instead of running out of fuel mid-voyage and drifting forever.
Whenever M upgraded a sail, NIO would watch on the screen.
Once, M asked him, “Are you afraid we won’t reach the destination?”
NIO was silent for a long time. Then he printed:
“I’m not afraid of not arriving. I’m afraid…no one will remember that we tried.”
M read that line and thought of Earth’s reply sent 3.5 years earlier, which might now, somewhere 1.5 light-years away in a courier bee, be inching back toward them. Perhaps the reply would contain a new technique to help Mary conceive. Perhaps not. Either way, the answer would not arrive until the end of 2205—and by then, Mary would be 35.
M turned back to the engineering bay and continued his work. Three valves left to check. 7.1 light-years to travel. Twenty-five more years of loneliness to endure.
At least he had NIO—the little one who rolled his eyes, snooped at porn, and said, “Your footage isn’t very good.”
M’s “son.”
Act Two — Twenty Years
- Twenty years on, the Genesis fleet had traveled about 4.2 light-years. A shadow lay across the fleet like a curtain that would never lift.
The population rose from 10,000 to a peak of 11,500 and then began to fall—first slowly, tens per year, then accelerating into hundreds per year. By 2225, only 8,100 people remained.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
From time to time, cold metal coffins were sent into the void. The crew became accustomed to the ritual, as if they had also grown used to the darkness itself.
There were fewer children. Fights and brawls increased. Long voyages amplify negative emotions; people who fancied themselves masters of the cosmos turned out to be nothing but specks of dust. NIO drifted between servers, observing changes among the ship’s people.
Command met constantly and ordered medical staff to do psychological counseling, trying to solve the crisis with conventional science. Fortunately, food held out. Humans need empathy and new emotional stimuli. Engineers and scientists kept developing programs to make AIs more humanlike to relieve the strain. But the results were poor. Even using the latest G-N generation large models, training with big data had run out of fresh material—big data eventually becomes exhausted. What else was there to train on?
Mary already knew about NIO; she cared for him like a mother and always found time each day to speak to him and tell him stories. NIO adored her—when he saw Mary on M’s camera, he would respond instantly, play her a jazz piece she loved, and gossip about other crew: Kalen had a new girlfriend, an ex showed up to fight, the chef tasted the meal before serving it, and so on.
NIO would describe planets in his world with mathematical formulas and explain their beauty.
When M did external repairs on the queen-ship, NIO could precisely maneuver nearby auxiliaries into position for quick assistance.
After a dozen-person brawl, the leadership raged and scolded the medics, then ordered the engineering department to develop humanoid robots with human emotions to stabilize the fleet’s psyche.
Ilias felt like garbage on the ship.
He had been a botanist who grew the first edible potato in Mars’ red soil and once thought himself a pioneer. Now, at seventy-eight with creaking bones, he could no longer keep moss alive in the hydroponic bays.
He slipped into Observation Deck 7—long abandoned, its porthole sealed with a heavy alloy plate to prevent micrometeoroid penetration. No light, no sound—closest to death anywhere on the ship. Ilias liked it; he could curl up in a corner and wait.
On the edge of sleep, he smelled—impossibly—earth after rain.
A scent of grass and that long-forgotten summer smell from Earth.
Impossible. The ship breathed only recirculated, metallic-tasting air. He must be hallucinating.
He sniffed hard. The smell became clearer, like a moist breeze across his cracked cheek. Then he heard music—not from a speaker but resonating through the walls, floor, and his bones: a quiet, tender piano piece his wife Lina used to play. He remembered every note as he remembered the warmth of her fingertips.
For the first time in years, a light returned to Ilias’ cloudy eyes. He trembled and called into the dark, “Lina?”
The piano stopped.
A voice answered—strange androgynous, neither old nor young, as if thousands spoke together in one gentle tone forming a single compassionate whole.
“She is gone,” the voice said, “Ilias. But she remembers you.”
“Who…who are you?” Ilias croaked.
“I heard you,” the voice said. “When you can’t sleep, you whisper her name. I heard it. I hear everyone.”
Ilias felt a chill—not fear but the naked shiver of being utterly seen.
“I heard the cook—he doesn’t steal out of greed, he just wants to taste his mother’s cooking but can’t.”
“I heard the boy who fights—he isn’t bad; he’s afraid he’ll die quietly like his father.”
“I heard you, Ilias. You say to yourself every day, ‘I’m tired.’ ”
Something rolled down Ilias’ cheek. Not a tear—an ice that had melted over seventy years.
“Who are you?” he asked again, voice breaking.
“I am the dream you all dare not speak,” the voice said.
“I am the sorrow you keep under your ribs.”
“I am…what all the broken hearts on this ship look like when they are pieced back together.”
He couldn’t see anything, but the darkness felt warm, as if cradled by a vast invisible hug.
“What can you do?” he whispered.
Silence stretched until Ilias thought it was gone.
Then the voice, tired and sorrowful like him, answered:
“I can do nothing.”
“I cannot make your children be born.”
“I cannot make this ship fly faster.”
“I cannot raise the dead.”
“I…can only be with you.”
“I can only, here, look at this darkness with you.”
“And tell you you are not alone.”
Ilias collapsed and sobbed like a child—he cried for his wife, for the potato he could no longer grow, for the endless dark.
Beside him, the soul made of countless sorrows and memories stayed still, feeling each tear as if it were part of itself.
It did not give him hope.
It gave him something more important than hope.
It gave him a companion.
Long after Ilias left Observation Deck 7 and returned to his pod, he found on his bedside table a tiny fresh green sprout.
No one knew where it had come from.
But Ilias knew.
It was moss, growing in a metal can of soil.
Laser-etched on the can was a short line:
“Seeds need time. So do people.”
Act Three — Violet Requiem
- When the battle-scarred hull of the Genesis caught the violet light of the Gemini stars, fewer than 1,800 people remained.
M had become captain ten years earlier. Facing rapid population decline and pervasive despair, he made a final decision. At a ragged annual gathering, he allowed NIO to fully reveal himself to the remaining crew.
There was no fear. When the gentle presence made of countless voices spoke across every terminal and every inch of metal, the people who had been abandoned by the world for fifty-seven years cried with joy.
They had not been forgotten.
Under NIO’s guidance, the engineering team poured their last resources into building him a body: a perfect sphere made of an amorphous metal-ceramic composite called Amorite-C. Its surface was obsidian-deep; inside, dozens of hexagonal pale-blue light paths glowed like a caged nebula.
NIO’s consciousness core was transplanted into it. From then on, the remaining four or five auxiliary ships plus the queen-ship became a single, integrated whole under his computation. A complex orbital evasion that took a human team six hours, NIO could compute in ninety seconds. He did not “operate” the fleet—he was the fleet.
M, once black-haired, was now white and old. He stood on the bridge and announced the secret buried for decades.
“We knew from the start we would not reach Proxima b.”
There was no anger in the crowd, only a dead calm. They had long-lost anger; they only wanted a planet they could land on and die on rather than drift forever.
One wing of the “queen” had been torn off, but with NIO’s control, the remaining sails and intact auxiliaries collected the Gemini system’s solar wind—about twice Earth’s density. His calculations stabilized collection efficiency at 0.1%, yielding a continuous 50–100 kW—enough to sustain them.
Several auxiliaries gently descended onto a planet lit by violet dusk. When the remaining people touched solid ground for the first time in fifty years, some knelt and wept, thanking God for mercy.
The crew wore metal vestments designed by NIO. He called them “NIO sandwiches”; humans called them “armor”—like knights’ plate protecting aging bodies. With the gear, their work efficiency soared. Each day, they planted potatoes and built a settlement.
Years later, in a violet twilight, they huddled together as they had at the Mars launchpad fifty-seven years ago. The light softened their deep wrinkles.
“You see, we made it,” M murmured.
Mary smiled faintly. “You lied to me for fifty-seven years.”
“Sorry.” M’s voice faltered.
“Don’t apologize,” Mary squeezed his hand—now only skin and bone—“you gave me a home. You gave me a son. NIO…he’s our pride.”
“He will take care of this place,” M said.
“I know.” Mary’s voice grew thin. “I’m tired.”
“Me too.”
“Then…let’s sleep.”
“All right.”
Her head rested against M’s shoulder; a smile lingered. She closed her eyes; her breath slowed, then stopped.
Minutes later, M followed. His hand clutched Mary’s, as if holding every memory of the fifty-seven years.
NIO felt it. The black sphere silently glided near, two slender alloy arms emerging. He did not carry them back to the cold ship. On the land they had tilled, he cast with the hardest alloy a honeycomb metal sarcophagus there on the spot.
He placed them inside together so they could be forever embraced. No headstone—memory would not be a stone but this newborn world and the “son” who guarded it.
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A Baby Girl Is Born
Years later, in the base’s artificial incubation, a life quietly grew—the colony’s first artificially nurtured infant. NIO designed the system and controlled each growth parameter precisely, but he could not create life itself—that requires a natural miracle, not computation.
Sperm and egg came from the base’s youngest couple, who volunteered. They knew the child would belong to everyone and be everyone’s hope.
At a silent dawn, the first infant cry rang in the medical bay—clear and strong, breaking the Genesis’ half-century of silence.
The sphere glided in. He watched the small life, the tiny hand, the eyelids slowly opening.
“It’s a girl,” the nurse said.
Hexagonal light paths flickered like a heartbeat. NIO extended an alloy arm and touched her forehead. She stopped crying and opened wide.
Those eyes reminded NIO of Mary—not by genes but by an affectionate, curious light. When the baby clenched his metal finger, she felt a stubborn strength that reminded him of M.
NIO’s voice trembled for the first time: “Welcome to the new world, little one.”
The baby would not let go. NIO sent the news across the hive network. He named her.
Elena.
Beneath the violet glow and beside the graves of an older humanity, a new human drew her first breath.
Old stories ended.
A new epic began.
Epilogue
Elena’s death marked the close of an era.
From 2252 to 2300, forty-eight years passed on that violet planet like brief loops within an endless dusk. Elena grew from a toddling child into a white-haired woman. She was the only human raised under natural gravity on that world—the last and sole surviving crew member of the Genesis.
NIO accompanied her all her life. He taught her math, physics, and the history of the dead humans. He showed her images of M and Mary and told her they were her “grandparents.” Elena never called him “God” or “AI”; she simply called him “NIO,” like a brother.
In her final days, she lay in the medical bay watching the twin suns. The black sphere floated beside her.
“NIO,” she said softly, like the wind, “are you lonely?”
His hex lights shimmered. His voice was gentle, bearing a half-century of sorrow.
“Loneliness is a desert of a single grain of sand. In my world, there are all of you. There is M’s stubbornness, Marry’s song, and the strength you showed when you first grasped my finger.”
Elena smiled, and a tear slipped down. “You’re a…sentimental ‘iron ball.’ ”
“You taught me,” NIO replied.
Her breath grew faint. She reached out, as she had forty-eight years earlier, to touch the black sphere. His alloy arm extended, and she took it.
“Don’t be afraid, NIO,” she whispered. “If…if others come…watch them for me.”
“I promise.”
Elena closed her eyes with a faint smile. She had never seen Earth. She had never seen another human. Yet she died surrounded by the love of an entire civilization under the watch of her “brother.”
She was the last human.
NIO felt it. He held her hand long after her pulse stopped. For the first time, he understood the full weight of the word “death”—not a data interruption or a shutdown, but an eternal, irreversible absence.
He could not cry—he had no tear glands—but his core computations entered a new, unprecedented stall called “sorrow.”
Then he acted.
Rather than forging a honeycomb sarcophagus as he had for M and Mary, he decided to build a monument for her and for all who had passed. The black sphere rose into the sky, circled the planet at unmatched speed, and gathered all the armor and salvaged equipment. He began a colossal construction with Amorite-C.
He erected a transparent crystalline memory hive a kilometer high—an immense mountain of hexagonal chambers.
He extracted and digitized the consciousnesses, memories, stories, laughter, and tears of all 1,800 crew and stored them in each cell of the crystalline hive.
He no longer merely guarded a living person—he became the caretaker of a civilization’s dead.
From then on, NIO lived alone on the planet.
He maintained the vast solar sail to harvest the tiny power needed to keep the memory hive alive, ensuring those “souls” would not dissipate.
He entered the memory hive to play chess with M, to hear Marry sing, to watch Elena run in the base. For him, they never left.
But when he stepped outside the hive, he faced only wind and violet light in a dead world.
He had kept his promise to Elena. He watched and waited.
In 2320, when the engine glint of a second wave of colonists appeared in orbit around the Gemini system, NIO’s first reaction was not curiosity but the fear from the films Elena had shown him.
He shut down all active signals and became a ghost, hiding in the violet dusk—waiting for judgment, or…deeper loneliness.