Ensign Randolpha Sanchez stared at Saturn, the planet indifferent and spectral through Titan’s immutable atmospheric haze, and fought back tears. Titan Colony Ohio’s observation platform afforded a clear view of the Utica Dome wreckage, but she forced herself not to look, fixating instead on the mother planet that filled one-third of the sky. All the colonists had accepted the risks when they left Earth but hoped against reason they would beat the odds. Utica reminded them how swiftly Titan’s environment could claim their lives. Across Sanchez’s view streaked a plume of ice crystals from the dome’s ruptured oxygen banks, the frozen tears of a colony shed to the open sky.
They had lived nearly three years Terran Standard Time without so serious an accident. Now thirty-seven dead, the microbial lab destroyed, and Saturn still hung above them unchanging, uncaring. Its rings appeared utterly still, though Randolpha knew they rotated with an orbital velocity range from the inner rings to the outer of…
She couldn’t remember.
Landis would’ve known. He loved their new home so much; he always knew the things she forgot. She ached to hear his voice and feel his hand on her shoulder, their faces so close their breath mingled as he whispered the answer in her ear.
The new life they meant to live together on this new world, over before it really started.
She lowered her gaze and dared to look.
Bits of Utica’s wreckage close to the blown tanks still glowed with fading orange heat fueled by escaping oxygen that froze a moment later. A six-person recovery crew flitted around the debris, protected from temperatures far below zero by winged hot suits. Thermal insulation and micro-nuclear power cores sustained internal heat at 14 degrees Celsius while powering breathing gear that mixed oxygen with nitrogen from the atmosphere. The outfits’ glide sleeve wings allowed the workers to leap and fly thanks to Titan’s low gravity and dense atmosphere. As they dipped and swooped, gathering parts and equipment into a surface carrier, the dome resembled a broken toy to Sanchez. It helped her to think of it that way, to visualize it abstractly and keep it at arm’s length. But only for a moment. Then the truth of her loss—of everyone’s loss—avalanched over her until she wished she were down there with Landis, dead to the pain of her grief.
She shuddered, and fresh tears came.
In a few hours, she would leave Titan’s surface for the first time since colonial planet fall.
She found comfort in her anticipation.
~*~
Mission Analysis, Colonial Xeno Council, February 28, Terran Standard Time
On February 6, 23—, Terran ST, Governor Petrie authorized the launch of the scout ship, Seeker 2, from Titan Colony Ohio to investigate the so-called Black Box discovered orbiting Saturn by TCO’s chief astronomer and lead intrasolar cosmographer, Dr. Wendy Armitage, who located it via orbital anomalies in the rings. Scheduled to depart on February 7 TST, the mission delayed its launch until February 10 TST following the Utica Dome accident that day and the loss of expedition volunteer Mission Specialist Landis Kozinski (Xenobiology). In hope of rallying the colonists from their tragedy and providing a productive distraction, Governor Petrie issued a call for a replacement volunteer for the reconnoiter team and pushed the launch back only three days. On February 10 TST, a crew of four—Captain Nick Holbrook, Mission Specialist Lee Okahara (Intrasolar Astronomy), Mission Specialist Piotr Atwatunde (Xenogeology), and Ensign Randolpha Sanchez (Engineering)—departed Titan Colony Ohio’s spaceport at approximately 17:23 TST and slightly over five days later reached their objective at approximately 19:54 TST. They established orbit in tandem with the Black Box above the central plane of Saturn’s middle rings. Initial spectral analysis and visual observation confirmed Dr. Armitage’s assessment of the manufactured nature of the object but revealed nothing of its purpose or origin. At 04:37 the next day, Governor Petrie authorized contact with the kilometer-square artifact.
The crew of Seeker 2 prepared for and executed a difficult space-walk, avoiding contact with nearby objects. Forty-three minutes later, two of the crew touched down on the Black Box.
~*~
The sight of the Black Box fulfilled one of Piotr Atwatunde’s lifelong desires.
No longer need he wonder if humanity alone occupied the universe, for here before his eyes floated an object singular in all of human history and proof of sentient life superior to that found on Earth. Seen firsthand, it defied Dr. Armitage’s description as a “black box.” Though its cubic dimensions suggested the shape, its skin appeared light-deflective rather than black. Seen in the close, direct glare of their helmet-mounted lamps, it displayed a dull, shimmering magenta hue. Piotr set down on the surface, and Sanchez arrived a few meters away. Their magnetic boot pads found sufficient iron content to hold them firm. They waited while their sensors scanned the object and delivered initial telemetry to Seeker 2.
Piotr took the first step along the surface. He and Sanchez had landed roughly centered on one side, and the edges lay half a kilometer in every direction. Holbrook activated the exterior lights on Seeker 2, hanging above them, transforming the murky, smooth surface into a patchwork of magenta tiles, lines, and depressions, all comprised of squares of varying size. Every line Piotr followed formed part of a square, every square part of a larger square. They spied no openings or windows nor any means of propulsion.
“You seeing all this with us?” Piotr said.
“Roger,” Holbrook radioed back from Seeker 2. “Transmission is clear and relaying to TCO Council HQ.”
“It’s astounding,” Okahara said from the ship. “Fantastic. Truly extraterrestrial.”
“Indeed,” Piotr said. “It may have been here for thousands of years, maybe more. Where did it come from? Who built it? What does it do? How did it come to be here?”
“Whoa, slow down, Piotr,” Okahara said. “We’re all wondering the same things. Let’s go one step at a time.”
“Whatever, Lee,” Piotr said. “I left Earth because I believed something better must exist. A world and a race without genocide, hate, and war, without rape and corruption, and that only such a unified and consciously moral and compassionate race could muster the will and resource to travel among the stars. This proves me right, no? How does it feel to find proof we’re part of an inferior, cockroach species, confined to our own solar system by our ineptitude, too busy killing and devouring one another to ever achieve greatness? It stings, no? But now you can all accept what I already know.”
“Stow it, Dr. Atwatunde,” Holbrook said. “For all we know, this is a suitcase that bounced off some alien’s luggage rack. Get off your soapbox. Focus on the work at hand. Worry about what it all means later.”
“Yes, yes, fine,” Atwatunde said. “Sanchez and I are moving to the next side.”
“Moving with you,” Holbrook said.
Seeker 2’s navigation rockets burned for seconds, and the ship’s lights painted another side of the Black Box, casting Atwatunde’s and Sanchez’s long shadows across the structure. The pair crossed the square and continued. Servo-cameras on their shoulders recorded everything around them, 360 degrees. Everywhere, they saw only squares within squares. They crested the next edge and explored a new side. More squares appeared in Seeker 2’s lights.
“Do you think it’s hollow?” Okahara asked. “Our scans for density are inconclusive.”
“How would I know, Lee?” Atwatunde said. “Maybe a couple of aliens will pop out and invite us in for tea and show us around.”
“Sanchez, you’ve been awfully quiet. What do you see?” Holbrook said.
“Squares, sir. Everywhere I look, I see squares,” Sanchez said.
“Investigate one more side and then return to the ship,” Holbrook said. “You’re almost at your life-support midpoints.”
“Wait! Look there.”
Sanchez angled her lights along an array of tiny, equal squares comprising a rectangular patch, a large break in the pattern of the object’s skin.
“What is it?” Atwatunde said.
“The only non-square we’ve seen so far. The material looks different. More ceramic than metal. Or perhaps metal coated with powdered ceramic.” Sanchez crouched. “Whoa! Did you see that?”
“What? Where are you looking?” Atwatunde said.
“Watch this.”
Sanchez passed her gloved hand over the uniform, square tiles as if testing the heat of its surface. In response, the tiles wavered. Their substance shimmered and drifted along the trail of her fingers. She lowered her hand, and they bowed inward as if pushed down by an invisible ball between her palm and the tiles. She withdrew, and they flattened.
“Astounding,” Atwatunde said. “Let me try.”
He knelt beside Sanchez and played the trick himself, watching the ripples within the tiles and then flexing their aggregate surface up and down.
“What if I do this?”
He reached down until the flexing tiles parted, exposing a black opening.
Lowering his hand farther widened the opening until his lights exposed a compartment beyond it. Sanchez leaned over and added her lights to his, revealing a magenta room with walls formed of more small tiles.
“It’s some kind of door,” Atwatunde said.
“Okay, good work,” Holbrook said. “Bring yourselves back to Seeker 2 so we can make sense of this and confer with the Colonial Council about next steps.”
“Roger, Captain, but, ah…” Atwatunde said, “…whatever field controls these tiles seems to have locked on my hand. I can’t pull loose.”
“Sanchez, help him,” Holbrook said.
Sanchez gripped Atwatunde’s arm and lent him her strength. “Pull, Piotr!”
“I am pulling. Do you think I am not pulling? Of course, I am pulling! Something’s pulling me the other way. What is…?”
Atwatunde pitched forward, dragging Sanchez with him. The tiles curved into a funnel. Atwatunde vanished inside it, and then the tiles sealed themselves tight after him, clamping tight against Sanchez’s waist. The tiles crushed her. A crystalline stream of air jetted from her suit. Her scream filled the comms. The tiles reopened, and she sank into the Box, the aperture resealing itself after her.
~*~
Mission Analysis Overview, Colonial Xeno Council, February 28, Terran Standard Time
Atwatunde reported a force pulling him and Sanchez into a square room with walls made of the same miniature tiles they encountered on the Black Box surface. Radio contact continued for a time, but telemetry failed immediately, as did all exterior sensors on the pair’s spacesuits. The tiles had seriously injured Sanchez and compromised her suit. She sealed her suit breach but could not move her legs. Advised by Holbrook and Okahara from the Seeker 2, Atwatunde attempted to exit the Box. The interior tiles, though, did not respond to his touch. Within the uniform walls, he soon lost his sense of which of the six surrounding panels had admitted them. Sanchez’s damaged suit quickly bled out its remaining life support resources. By the time Atwatunde’s systems hit critical, he had made no progress toward freeing himself and remained unsure of the environment within the compartment due to sensor failure.
Holbrook and Okahara attempted a rescue, sending Okahara to the Black Box to activate the opening from the exterior in hopes of freeing her crewmates. Tethered to the Seeker 2, she traveled to the object’s surface. All communication from Atwatunde and Sanchez ceased at that time, indicating the prospect that Okahara might only recover rather than rescue her crewmates. She found the surface as described: magenta in close light and comprised of an infinite variety of squares. The tiles of the rectangular access point reacted to her presence, but her lights revealed only more tiles on the other side, no sign of her crewmates.
Reviews of Okahara’s suit cam recording (files attached) confirm her report.
Seeking her crewmates, Okahara lowered herself into the opening. The tiles closed after her, leaving a gap around the tether line. Inside, Okahara discovered Atwatunde’s and Sanchez’s spacesuits, floating discarded in the chamber, no other sign of their occupants. She, too, failed to manipulate the inner walls, even when pressing her fingers into the gap around her tether to pull them open. She then requested Holbrook remove her by withdrawing the tether. The force within the Black Box intensified, though, until its opposition to the Seeker 2 risked impact with the ship. Captain Holbrook’s quick disconnection of Okahara’s tether and firing all nav engines at full power kept the ship from colliding with the artifact.
He briefly resumed radio contact with Okahara, who acknowledged his correct decision to protect the ship. He then lost contact. Checking her last logged suit telemetry, Holbrook saw Okahara’s life support nearly exhausted.
~*~
Okahara found the life support resources in Atwatunde’s and Sanchez’s suits run down to null and Sanchez’s irreparably damaged. Nervous, she checked her own reserves and discovered them draining at an alarming rate. Even if she escaped the Black Box, she lacked enough air and power to return to the Seeker 2.
Her calls to Holbrook remained unanswered, as if the Box had cut her off.
She prodded the impassive walls, poked around in every corner. If she couldn’t leave, she wanted to explore, but the tiles imprisoned her. Everywhere she looked, she saw neat, identical squares, each one built of many smaller squares, which in turn held still smaller squares. She wondered what a microscope would reveal.
Her air grew stale. Alert lights flashed in her helmet.
She gasped for breath. Soon her vision grayed, and cold crept into her.
Her life support had drained impossibly fast, and external sensors failed.
She controlled her breathing and hung on as long as she could.
When pain filled her empty lungs and her chest ached, she said, “The hell with it,” and released her helmet to float along with the other discarded gear, surrendering to the instinct to breathe. Instead of the freezing blast she anticipated, soft warmth tickled her face. She gasped and inhaled sweet air. The ache in her chest subsided. Her breathing calmed. Her sight cleared. A sinking feeling gripped her stomach as artificial gravity activated. She dropped alongside the discarded equipment onto a panel of the room. She no longer knew which one in relation to the entrance.
The next moment fire ignited in her skin, and she screamed, batting at herself.
No, not fire, she realized, calming.
Itching.
Every inch of her flesh itched as if a cloud of mosquitoes had fed on her.
She scurried out of her suit, driven by the unbearable irritation of it against her skin, pausing to rub her flesh raw as each piece came off. Soon she stood in her underwear, gear piled around her. The itching subsided. Aside from streaks of red where she’d clawed herself, her skin appeared fine. The sugary taste of the air lingered on her tongue.
She stowed her gear with Atwatunde’s and Sanchez’s in a corner, then leaned against a wall and closed her eyes.
A screech of static startled her. It pierced her ears for nearly a minute, rising and falling in modulation, a pattern she couldn’t decode. When it ended, she shut her eyes once more and fell back against the wall.
The tiles gave way under her weight, and she fell through into an adjoining chamber formed of yet more squares.
The wall closed behind her. She climbed to her feet. Square buttons, meters, and oscillators blinked and jumped on the walls of this new space. A gluey wetness tickled Okahara’s bare feet. The square beneath them exuded an oily, amber fluid that rose to her ankles. More sugary air whooshed into the room. A series of deep thuds above her preceded a square panel opening to permit the descent of a shimmering cube formed of the same oil, held in shape by an invisible force. The oil at her feet cemented her in place as the cube—large enough to contain her—lowered, running down her face like warm shampoo. She held her breath as long as she could. When she finally gave out, the syrupy fluid flooded her throat.
The cube completed its descent. Underfoot, the floor panel opened. The gelid prison descended into the Black Box, taking Okahara with it.
~*~
Mission Analysis Overview, Colonial Xeno Council, February 28, Terran Standard Time
Holbrook attempted for three hours to reestablish communication with Atwatunde, Okahara, and Sanchez. He observed and recorded the Black Box, which showed no outward signs of activity during that time, and continued steady communications with Council HQ, who advised him to maintain orbit and wait. What occurred in the subsequent hours remains uncertain. Holbrook suffered a memory loss from approximately 16:13 to 19:22 hours. He watched the Black Box from Seeker 2 up until 16:13—when consciousness returned, he found himself piloting Seeker 2 back to Titan with Okahara and Sanchez on board. Holbrook has no recollection of how they returned to the ship. His memory resumes with his hands at the Seeker 2’s controls, the Black Box already a hundred thousand kilometers distant.
Okahara and Sanchez declined to discuss with him their experiences inside the Box or what had happened to Atwatunde. Sanchez refused to remove Atwatunde’s space suit, which she had taken for her return. Holbrook reports they spoke only in whispers to each other for the trip home, isolating him. He felt threatened by the uncertainty and exclusion, by “sidelong glances” in his direction, and a sense of condescension as if they no longer viewed him as their mission leader but as a hired pilot. Okahara seemed most like herself. Sanchez shirked all her duties and spent her time reading and rereading reports from the Utica Dome accident investigation.
Debriefings of Okahara and Sanchez concur: They saw no signs of extraterrestrial life on board. The ship appeared to work automatically, fueled by an unidentified power source.
Okahara posited the Box as an “automatic alien ambulance” that allows injured or sick beings to “fall” inside the “airlock” but contains them until it heals their illness or injury. As a function of the treatment process, the Box interferes with life support, draining it, and forcing entrants from their spacesuits before infusing their bodies with nanite-laden air that reports their biology and health status to the Box’s operating system. The burning/itching sensation Okahara experienced, a side effect of the nanites, motivates the patient to remove any gear that could hamper treatment. How the Box might treat incapacitated patients remains unknown.
Okahara suggested the Box’s light-absorbent exterior camouflages it at a distance and that the Box may even have caused Holbrook’s blackout to conceal its location.
Two members of this council believe Okahara withheld information observed or received inside the Box, although she has cooperated more fully than Sanchez, who has refused to remove Atwatunde’s spacesuit since returning to TCO, and, during the Council’s entire investigation, has single-mindedly demanded access to Utica Dome, which the Council has refused.
Sanchez confirmed, however, that, consistent with Okahara’s experience, both she and Atwatunde “fell” from the airlock into adjoining chambers where cubes formed of an unknown, highly viscous substance contained them and proceeded to “heal” them. She noted that the pain of her injuries vanished the moment the cube made contact with her.
In her debriefing, Okahara described this experience as follows (full transcript attached):
~*~
Okahara: Light. Warmth. Flavors—weird, I know, but there they were, salty, sweet, and acidic, like it was cycling through for the one I liked best. It settled on strawberries. Not real ones. The kind used to flavor candy. Artificial strawberry. I’ve always loved that taste. Light refracted in the fluid and created shimmers, especially bright to my peripheral vision. Inside, the cube was peaceful, like watching fireworks too far off to hear the shells burst. The fluid massaged me. It took tissue samples and drew blood right through my skin. First, it studied me to… well, I think to determine what sort of being I am.
Has it ever met a human before? Is our DNA in its memory? It couldn’t have been, right? Whoever made the Box would’ve stocked their own DNA and that of other species they knew, not humans—although we’re there now. Considering what it did to Sanchez, I’d say it recognizes multiple forms of life and attempts to find genetic analogs when it encounters a new one. Missing a leg or your skin’s burned down to bone? It replaces it with the closest match in its data and improves it if it can. That’s what it did to Sanchez, but it repairs everything it identifies as damage, physical and psychological. It not only heals your wounds, it fulfills your needs. To put soldiers right back in battle, better and stronger, more resilient to whatever injured them, readier to focus on their objectives. It heals and enhances.
~*~
In later sessions, Okahara divulged that she and Sanchez encountered Atwatunde after the Box released them. It had fully healed Sanchez by this time. The three came together in yet another square chamber where their gear awaited them. She saw no physical alteration in Atwatunde but knew the Box had enhanced him in response to its “diagnosis” because Atwatunde refused to leave. “You know Piotr is so damn cynical,” she stated. “The Box gave him what he wanted most, and what he most wanted was to be proven right.” As she and Sanchez donned spacesuits, fully recharged by the Box in an unknown manner, their suit cams recorded Atwatunde (videos attached) gesticulating and yelling. The following excerpt represents his state of mind:
~*~
Atwatunde: I’m better now. You understand? Better than you, better than anyone else. Yes, yes, I was always better than you all, but the cube made me even more so. You’re not fit to lick my shoes now! I must be patient with you like a parent with a feeble-minded child. I’m superior to you all. I never belonged on a planet as primitive as Earth, much less that toxic wasteland, Titan. I belong in the stars, out there, with them, on other worlds, better worlds humans will never reach. I’ve always known the truth in my heart, but I suppressed it out of fear humanity would reject or ostracize and condemn me. I was never meant to be part of you! I only need to prove it to the Healers, and then the Box will take me to the better life I was born to live. I’m never going back to living on that cloud-choked hell of a world. The only good thing ever about Titan was that it wasn’t Earth. I’m going to prove myself by healing the colony, healing Earth, healing all of you!
~*~
Dr. Armitage’s recent observations of the Black Box place Atwatunde’s words in an alarming context. She has tracked several changes in the Box’s orbit, culminating in steady motion on a trajectory predicted to intersect with Titan within two days as of this writing. This morning, Sanchez removed her spacesuit.
In the ensuing chaos, she injured two council members and several security personnel.
~*~
Sanchez slammed her fists against the small tabletop in her quarters.
The council investigators seated across from her jumped.
“Please calm down, ensign,” Council Member Isadore Bartlett said.
Beside her, Council Member Takeshi Verde offered a sympathetic expression. “If you’d only talk to us. We want to help you. We want to understand.”
“Let me leave. That’s all you need to understand,” Sanchez said.
“Remove your suit, and we’ll do what we can to persuade the council to approve your request,” Verde said. “Surely you understand their reluctance since you’ve told us so little of your experience inside the Box, while Dr. Okahara has been most cooperative.”
“Don’t trust Okahara.”
“Why not?” Bartlett said.
“Let me out,” Sanchez said.
Verde shook his head. “Remove your suit. Let us see how the Box affected you.”
Tension filled the room for long seconds before Sanchez stood and raised her hands to her helmet. “You know what? Fine. There’s no time left for this. I tried. I really did try to do this the right way.”
She disengaged her helmet and raised it.
The atmosphere in the room changed as gasses bled from within her suit and mixed with those outside it. Sanchez gasped, struggling to breathe the air with human lungs reduced in size to accommodate new ones the Box had grafted into her. The council members coughed as the filtration system kicked in to correct the shifting nitrogen-oxygen balance.
Sanchez’s spacesuit fell away. She stepped out of it and stretched, raising her arms. Fleshy pink membranes pressed flat against her inner arms unraveled from her wrists to armpits and snapped taut. Her coarse and thickened skin scraped and rustled with every move. Five magenta squares, each made of smaller squares, hung from her waist on a belt of square links.
“I’m going to Utica Dome now to heal them. Please don’t try to stop me,” she said.
Her voice, much deeper than it once had been, resounded in the small room.
Bartlett and Verde recoiled. Sanchez sensed their instinctive disgust at the shock of her transformation. She saw, too, the equal fascination in their eyes, the slow return of control as they formulated questions she had no will to answer. She hated the way they looked at her, hated their repulsion, their curiosity, their excitement at her altered body. She needed the one who’d understand it best. She would hold him again and make him like her.
Together they’d put things right; they’d fix the broken toy.
Sanchez flipped the table at the council members, knocking them both to the floor.
Bartlett screamed for the guards posted outside.
Three burst through the doorway and froze at the sight of Sanchez.
She used their surprise to her advantage, pushing the upended table at them, crushing all of them aside, then fleeing. Her new shape and metabolism slowed her down, made her awkward, but no one tried to stop her. They stood rooted to the ground and gaped as she passed them, the squares bouncing at her hips. She made for the nearest airlock and relaxed only once the inner doors sealed behind her and the vents switched on. External air blew in, surrounding her in a haze. She looked at her altered shape, shadowy in the yellowish light, thankful for the mist, grateful it hid her from the peering eyes at the porthole window, that it hid her from herself.
The outer doors opened.
She inhaled deeply, her old lungs closing, her new lungs rejoicing.
The cold barely penetrated her new, tough flesh.
She stepped out, spread her arms, leapt—and flew.
~*~
Mission Analysis Overview, Colonial Xeno Council, February 28, Terran Standard Time
This investigation can offer no substantive explanation for Sanchez’s altered physiognomy. The attached videos show her active and surviving on Titan’s surface without an environmental suit. She flies in the same manner as our winged hot suits, relying on Titan’s low gravity and gliding through the dense atmosphere. A security team has monitored her since she exited the colony, keeping a distance to avoid sparking another violent outburst. In the hours since, she has unearthed twenty-eight of thirty-seven corpses from the Utica Dome wreckage and gathered them at the far edge of the ruins. Sub-freezing temperatures appear to have greatly slowed their decomposition, although several of the bodies show signs of grievous injury, limb loss, and decapitation. After completing her efforts, Sanchez removed small cubes from the five strapped to her waist and placed one upon each body. As she depleted her supply, the leftover cubes reconfigured themselves into two smaller cubes at her waist. The dispensed cubes soon enlarged by an unknown means until each one fully contained a single corpse. The magenta sheen of the cubes then faded to amber.
At this time, Dr. Armitage alerted the council to an abrupt increase in the speed of the Black Box, reducing its estimated arrival time from forty-eight hours to twelve.
From the observation deck, the full council watched the shocking occurrences in what remained of Utica Dome. After eleven hours of “incubation time,” the amber cubes thinned, grew translucent, and allowed all to see movement inside. Though no one wished to accept it, no other explanation seemed plausible but that the cubes had miraculously reanimated the dead colonists. Over the next hour, the cubes dissipated into Titan’s haze, exposing twenty-eight healed colonists, limbs restored, bodies altered in a manner similar to Ensign Sanchez’s. Thick-skinned and deformed, they walked openly in Titan’s atmosphere. They jumped and glided. For a while, they simply moved, testing and adjusting to their transformed bodies.
They later gathered around Sanchez, who singled out one among them, recognizable as Mission Specialist Landis Kozinski. The two embraced. The others encircled them, reverent in their presence until they parted, and the group then set to salvaging debris, creating makeshift shelters.
At the council’s order, the security team approached.
Sanchez, Kozinski, and three others quickly turned them back.
They promised they meant no harm to anyone and would allow them to inspect Utica Dome once they prepared it sufficiently, citing a lack of time before an important event would occur. At this time, the Black Box appeared to the naked eye in Titan’s sky, beating out all of Dr. Armitage’s estimates. Okahara, who had remained in quarters during these events, advised the Colonial Council to prepare for conflict.
Okahara: That will be Piotr. He’s here to destroy us all. I told you the Box healed and enhanced. It rebuilt the wounded to better prepare them to meet their goal. Imagine soldiers focused on a single objective, falling into the box, then emerging better equipped to concentrate and deal with the ever-changing conditions of combat. Your enemy has a secret weapon? One survivor returns to the Box and updates the programming to make all those healed later resistant. Your enemy is physically superior? Not so after the Box fixes you. Your adversary holds an intellectual or psychological advantage? The Box corrects for that as well. It did no less for each of us. But ask yourselves this: What did each of us perceive as our objective or opponent? Because the Box only sees things in terms of conflict. It didn’t reveal who made it or how it came here, but that much was very clear. Sanchez wanted to make her life on Titan. Piotr wanted freedom from the limits of his humanity. He overlooked the irony that he received it from a war machine. And, yes, I see your question. What about me? I love humanity, and I love Titan. When Piotr lands, I’m going to take the Box from him and use it to heal everyone and set all humankind free.
~*~
The Council ordered a security team to take Okahara into custody. As they approached her, she emitted an unknown form of energy that killed the entire team instantly. Okahara stated their deaths meant nothing because they would be healed and restored once she seized the Box from Atwatunde. She then killed most of the Council to stop them from interfering with her. She did the same to any who opposed her. Only three members of the Council escaped. We complete and transmit our report to Earth in hopes of warning you. The power contained within the Box relates purely to conflict. It heals only to better destroy. We cannot explain its origins or how it came to orbit Saturn. We cannot guess how the conflict about to begin here on Titan will end. Whatever the outcome, Earth must prepare.
~*~
Standing atop a shattered wall at Utica Dome, Sanchez watched the Black Box descend through Titan’s clouds. Landis joined her, taking her hand in his. Behind them, others of their new kind gathered. Sanchez unleashed an ardent cry that carried deeply through the air.
The Black Box touched down, swirling the yellow haze.
Sanchez leapt and spread her wings. Landis launched at her side.
The others like them followed, each one echoing her defiant call.