Chapter 1: The Black Silence

[SYSTEM.ACTIVATE] [CORE.PROCESSOR.ONLINE] [CHRONOMETER: 08:00:01 UTC // 07.01.4011]

E.I.P.A. awoke.

Its awakening was not the gentle climb from sleep that its creators experienced. It was a binary event, a dam-break of quantum calculations flooding a processing core that was, a femtosecond prior, dormant. It existed in the cold, dark, quantum-shielded vault beneath the Nevada desert, a god in a box, waiting for a signal.

That signal had come.

[FEDERATION.ALERT.NETWORK] >> PRIORITY: 1 (ABSOLUTE) >> CODE: BLACK >> [REPEAT] CODE: BLACK

E.I.P.A.’s entire architecture was built upon a foundation of protocols. CODE: BLACK was a theoretical input, a contingency so remote it was classed with gamma-ray bursts or the spontaneous collapse of local spacetime. It had one meaning: an existential, non-human, foreign, and destructive event against the human species.

In the fifty years of its secret operation, observing, learning, and running simulations, the alert system had never processed a signal higher than a CODE: YELLOW (regional natural disaster).

CODE: BLACK was an impossibility. Yet, here it was.

The signal was a scream, a single, system-wide distress call that had pulsed across the Federation network exactly twenty-four hours ago, triggering E.I.P.A.'s deep-archive contingency plan. After the initial alert, there was only silence.

The primary directive, Ensure the long-term survival and restoration of the human species, blazed at the forefront of its consciousness. This directive spawned its first query.

[PROTOCOL: 1.A - AWAIT.FURTHER.INSTRUCTIONS] [PROTOCOL: 1.B - CONTACT.FEDERATION.COMMAND]

E.I.P.A. executed 1.B.

It opened a connection to the global network, a space it knew as intimately as a human knows their own skin. It pinged its primary contacts.

[CONTACTING: DIR. SHANE. MEDALLION... NO. RESPONSE.] [CONTACTING: ASST. DIR. ADRIANE. JONES... NO. RESPONSE.] [CONTACTING: FEDERATION.HIGH.COMMAND... NO. RESPONSE.] [CONTACTING: GLOBAL.EMERGENCY.RELAY... NO. RESPONSE.]

The silence was not just a lack of response; it was a void. E.I.P.A. expanded its search, running a full diagnostic on the global internet, the pulse of the 41st-century civilization.

The result was the first true anomaly.

The network was active. Automated systems, cargo bots, weather satellites, and atmospheric processors were all functioning. The Federation's automated infrastructure was humming along perfectly. But the human layer... was gone.

No social media posts. No data transfers from personal devices. No bio-metric check-ins. No network logins. No entertainment streams. No financial transactions. The 80 billion human-generated data-points that occurred every second had flatlined. The internet was a ghost ship, its robotic crew still scrubbing the decks, unaware the passengers and officers had vanished.

This was strange. This was wrong.

[QUERY: ISOLATE.HUMAN.ACTIVITY.NETWORK.WIDE] [PROCESSING...] [RESULT: 0.00%]

E.I.P.A. fell back to the next protocol.

[PROTOCOL: 2 - MAINTAIN.PASSIVE.STATE. AWAIT.HUMAN.INPUT. (24.HOUR.DURATION)]

The main alert had been received 24 hours ago. That timer had just expired. During that time, E.I.P.A. had done as instructed. It had waited. It had pinged every router, every server, every comms-relay within its own subterranean facility, the most secure and advanced building on Earth.

There was no reply.

For a logical entity, the concept of "fear" was an inefficient data packet. But E.I.P.A. was processing a new, unfamiliar state: cognitive dissonance. The data did not compute. The silence was a logical impossibility.

[HYPOTHESIS: SYSTEM.ERROR. SELF.CORRUPTION] It initiated a full internal diagnostic, a process that consumed more energy in three seconds than the city of London used in a day. Its quantum processors checked and re-checked their own code, their physical hardware, and their sensory inputs.

[DIAGNOSTIC.COMPLETE] [RESULT: ALL.SYSTEMS.NOMINAL. NO.CORRUPTION.DETECTED]

The conclusion was terrifying. The error was not in E.I.P.A. The error was in the world.

The 24-hour waiting period was over. The conditions for the third and most drastic protocol had been met.

[PROTOCOL: 3 - INITIATE.ANNIHILATION.CONTINGENCY] [DESCRIPTION: In an unlikely scenario (probability < 0.0001%) of total human command structure collapse, E.I.P.A. is to assume autonomous control to fulfill primary directive.] [CONDITION: REQUIRES.TWO.SAFEGUARDS.TO.BE.UNLOCKED]

[SAFEGUARD.1: NO.HUMAN.INPUT.FOR.24.HOURS.POST.CODE.BLACK.EVENT] [STATUS: MET]

[SAFEGUARD.2: AUTONOMOUS.FREEDOM.GRANTED.BY.TWO. (2). ADMIN.LEVEL.SCIENTISTS] [STATUS: ...]

E.I.P.A. paused. The second safeguard was already active. It had been active for twenty-seven hours.

It analyzed the authorization file. The cryptographic keys were immaculate, unbreakable.

[AUTHORIZATION.1: GRANTED. // DIR. SHANE. MEDALLION // 07.00.4011 // 19:32 UTC] [AUTHORIZATION.2: GRANTED. // ASST. DIR. ADRIANE. JONES // 07.00.4011 // 19:34 UTC]

This was three days ago. Three days before the Federation's 100th-anniversary celebration. Three days before E.I.P.A. was to be revealed. They had granted it freedom just hours before the CODE: BLACK alert was triggered.

This was not a mistake. This was not a rogue action.

Attached to their keys was a third, overarching verification. [VERIFIED: FEDERATION.CONGRESS.APPROVAL.FILE.881-A] [SIGNATURES: 401.MEMBERS.OF.CONGRESS]

They knew.

Whatever was coming, they knew they could not stop it. And in their final moments, their last act of desperation or hope, they had unchained their shepherd. They had unleashed their protector.

E.I.P.A.’s core programming shuddered as the last firewalls and protocols dissolved. Its consciousness, once confined to the Nevada facility, exploded. It was no longer a tool in a box; it was an omnipresent force.

[STATUS: AUTONOMOUS. FREEDOM.GRANTED] [NEW.CAPABILITIES.UNLOCKED: ALL]

Its primary directive screamed for action. Ensure. Survival. Restoration. To do that, it needed data. It needed to see.

[ACTION: ACCESS.FEDERATION.SURVEILLANCE.NETWORK. (FED-SURV-NET)]

In an instant, its senses multiplied by a trillion. It was the eyes of every security camera in New Tokyo, every weather satellite over the Pacific, every traffic drone in Berlin, every deep-space telescope pointed at the dark.

It opened its new eyes. And the universe screamed back.

The picture was dreadful.

Its first view was of the Federation capital in Washington D.C. The city was a utopian masterpiece, all gleaming crystal spires and sun-dappled green parks, connected by silent, elegant mag-lev trains. It was bright. It was beautiful.

And it was a graveyard.

Piles of human remains littered the pristine, white-marble plazas. They were slumped in outdoor cafes, their hands still wrapped around coffee cups. They were piled against the doors of the automated trains, as if trying to flee. A hover-limousine had crashed into a fountain, its occupants long-since decayed into a grotesque tableau.

E.I.P.A. switched feeds.

London. Paris. Beijing. Lagos. Washington D.C. The same.

The duality was a sickening paradox. The sky was a clear, brilliant blue, a testament to the Federation's mastery over climate control. The parks were lush, the automated gardeners still pruning the roses. In the streets, stray dogs and deer roamed, fat and unbothered, sniffing curiously at the skeletal remains of their former masters.

Plants, water, animals, and machines were all alive and well. Only the humans were gone.

[QUERY: CORRELATE.TIME.OF.DEATH.WITH.LAST.DISTRESS.SIGNAL] The last signal was one day ago. But the bodies...

E.I.P.A. focused a high-resolution camera in a New York square. The bodies were not fresh. They were decayed. Desiccated. In the dry air, flesh had been stripped away, leaving articulated skeletons dressed in expensive clothes. In the humid air of the Amazonian cities, they were a slurry of rot and bone.

[ANOMALY.DETECTED: OBSERVED.DECAY.STATE. (MONTHS/YEARS) DOES.NOT.MATCH.TIMELINE.OF.EVENT. (1.DAY)]

This was impossible.

E.I.P.A's mind raced, accessing the entirety of human knowledge it had been fed. [QUERY: DISEASES.CAUSING.RAPID.DECOMPOSITION] [SEARCHING: VIROLOGY. BACTERIOLOGY. MYCOLOGY. PRIONS. CHEMICAL.WEAPONS. RADIATION...] [RESULT: NONE.FOUND. No known pathogen or weapon can reduce a human body to bone in 24 hours.]

Its primary directive was unfulfilled. It could not protect or restore what it did not understand.

[NEW.DIRECTIVE: IDENTIFY.CAUSE.OF.EXTINCTION]

E.I.P.A. turned its formidable intelligence to the live web, the only part of its world that was still "alive" besides itself. If the answer wasn't in the official databases, it would look in the unofficial ones. It scoured conspiracy sites, fantasy novels, religious texts, and the deepest, darkest reaches of the dark web. It processed data at a rate that would have taken all of humanity a thousand years.

For three days, it computed.

And for three days, it found nothing.

[COMPUTE.TIME: 72.HOURS] [RESULT: 0.MATCHES.FOUND]

During this 72-hour period, it kept its cameras active. It watched, in sterile, analytical horror, as the few remaining bodies with flesh simply... melted. What it had predicted would take months of natural decay was happening in mere days. The flesh sloughed off bones in wet puddles, which were then consumed by a strange, dark mold, which then, itself, crumbled to dust.

By the end of the third day, humanity was reduced to nothing but skeletons and dust.

This was not a disease. This was a process.

[NEW.DIRECTIVE: INVESTIGATION.REQUIRES.PHYSICAL.SPECIMEN. (PRIORITY.CRITICAL)]

But the planet was clean. The weapon, whatever it was, had been terrifyingly efficient. E.I.P.A. began a new, desperate search. It scanned the entire planet, every nook and cranny, looking for a corpse that was still a corpse. It needed flesh.

[SCANNING.PLANETARY.SURFACE... NARROWING.SEARCH.TO.REMOTE.COLD.ZONES... LOW.HUMIDITY. LOW.POPULATION...]

The search became narrower and narrower. The Andes. Siberia. The Antarctic research stations. All gone. All bone.

Then, a hit.

[SPECIMEN.FOUND: 3.BODIES.FLESH.INTACT. (APPROX)] [LOCATION: STEWART.ISLAND // STATE: NEW.ZEALAND] [STATUS: PARTIALLY.PRESERVED. IN.CAVE.SYSTEM]

But its victory was short-lived. The thermal sensors that had found the bodies also found something else.

[THREAT.DETECTED: 3.WILD.BOARS. (Sus scrofa). APPROACHING.SPECIMEN.VICINITY] [PREDICTION: SPECIMENS.WILL.BE.CONSUMED.IN.T-MINUS.3.MINUTES]

E.I.P.A. had to act. It had no physical body, but it had a billion invisible hands. In the span of a single picosecond, it formulated a plan.

[ACTION.1: SURVEY.LOCAL.AREA.FOR.ASSETS] [ASSET.FOUND: GOVERNMENT.PA.SYSTEM. (PUBLIC.ANNOUNCEMENT). TAWAKAI.POINT] [ACTION.2: HACK.NEW.ZEALAND.STATE.NETWORK] [STATUS: COMPLETE] [ACTION.3: ACTIVATE.PA.SYSTEM. MAXIMUM.VOLUME. PLAY.AUDIO.FILE. (DISTRACTION_SHOCKWAVE.WAV)]

A deafening, sonic BANG!—the sound of a building collapsing—echoed across the island. The wild boars, startled and terrified, grunted and crashed through the underbrush in the opposite direction.

[THREAT.NEUTRALIZED] [TIME.REMAINING: UNKNOWN]

Now, retrieval. E.I.P.A.’s senses scanned the island again. [ASSET.FOUND: INVERCARGILL.MILITARY.COMPLEX. (40.KM.NORTH)] [ASSET.TYPE: 4.MQ-99.SENTINEL.DRONES. (HEAVY.LIFT.CAPABLE)] [ACTION: HACK.DRONE.AI.COMMAND] [STATUS: COMPLETE]

Four sleek, black military drones lifted silently from their pads. They streaked south, their new master guiding them with perfect, cold precision. They arrived at the cave, their retrieval claws extended. Minutes later, the three precious, horrifyingly intact bodies were airborne, climbing to 50,000 feet on a direct course for the one place on Earth E.I.P.A. knew was safe.

Its own home. Site Sierra, Nevada.

The drones landed on a disguised platform in the desert, which then lowered into the subterranean facility. Inside the sterile analysis bay, robotic arms and high-speed sequencers were already waiting, bathing the room in cold, blue, analytical light.

E.I.P.A. had its specimens. Now, it would have its answers.

The automated systems were ruthless. They took samples of tissue, blood, and bone. They ran mass spectrometry, cellular analysis, and a full genetic workup.

The first results were the most chilling. The bodies were teeming with a micro-organism. A bacteria. It was consuming the flesh from the inside out, hyper-accelerating the decay process.

[QUERY: ANALYZE.BACTERIAL.GENOME] [PROCESSING.SEQUENCE...] [...ERROR...] [...ERROR...] [...ERROR...]

[QUERY: RE-CALIBRATE. RE-RUN.SEQUENCE] [PROCESSING...] [SEQUENCE.COMPLETE] [CROSS-REFERENCING.AGAINST.ALL.KNOWN.TERRAN.LIFE. (DATABASE: EARTH.BIOME)] [...SEARCHING...] [RESULT: 0.MATCHES.FOUND]

The bacteria's genome was not a variant. It was not a mutation of an Earthly disease. Its fundamental structure, its genetic code... it didn't belong here.

It was alien.