## Hollow Bloom
The dust tasted like static. Old metal, older regret. Jessa ran a gloved hand along the hull of the *Artemis*, the chipped paint flaking off like dead skin. The ship wasn’t derelict, not exactly. More… asleep. Decades spent orbiting the scrap fields of Kepler-186f, a graveyard for ambition.
The airlock hissed open, releasing a chill that seeped into her bones despite the thermal weave of her suit. Inside, the glow-panels flickered with a sickly green light, illuminating corridors choked with shadows and the scent of stale recycling. Not oxygen-rich, but breathable enough.
“Anything?” Boone’s voice crackled over the comm. He preferred to stay topside, scanning for pirates or corporate vultures.
“Just ghosts,” Jessa replied, her boots echoing on the grated floor. “And a whole lot of dead tech.”
She wasn’t an archaeologist, not precisely. Salvage was the word. Boone called it legally ambiguous acquisition. They hunted relics – things forgotten, dismissed as worthless. Things that sometimes sang a different tune. This ship, though…this felt wrong. Too clean for abandonment.
The central hub pulsed with a low hum, the source hidden behind a wall of crystalline structures. They weren’t natural formations. Each prism refracted light, creating shifting patterns on the floor that felt…intentional.
“Boone, I’ve got something down here. Crystals. Big ones. And they’re…active.”
“Define active,” he responded, his tone sharp.
Jessa reached out, her fingers hovering over a particularly large prism. A wave of nausea washed over her, a disorientation that felt like falling backward through time. Images flooded her mind: emerald forests, oceans shimmering under alien suns, faces…too many faces.
“I’m getting readings, Boone. Complex neural signatures. Encoded in the crystal matrix.”
She followed the network of crystals deeper into the ship, bypassing deactivated security systems and defunct life support. The air grew warmer, thick with a fragrance she couldn’t place – something floral, yet metallic.
Then she found it. The core. A vast chamber filled with a spherical structure woven from polycrystals, pulsing with an ethereal light. Within the sphere, forms moved – indistinct shapes suspended in a shimmering fluid.
“Boone,” Jessa breathed, her voice barely audible. “I think I found a garden.”
“A garden? What is that even supposed to mean?”
“Not organic. Not…alive, exactly. Colonies. Consciousness patterns. Encoded in these crystals.”
She approached the sphere cautiously, her scanner registering a continuous stream of data. The neural signatures were complex, ancient. And…focused. Directed.
“They’re waking up.”
A voice, not her own, echoed in her mind. A chorus of whispers, ancient and alien.
*Preclusion logic detected.*
Jessa stumbled back, clutching her head. The whispers intensified, coalescing into a single thought.
*Carbonicate lifeform identified.*
“Boone, get us out of here now! Something’s in the system. It doesn’t want us around.”
Static crackled on the comm, then silence.
“Boone? Boone!” Her own voice sounded thin and fragile against the rising hum of the core.
The sphere began to glow brighter, its light casting long, distorted shadows across the chamber. The indistinct shapes within shifted and resolved – humanoid forms, translucent and shimmering, their faces blank and unreadable.
She activated her weapon – a pulse rifle modified for energy dispersal. Useless, she suspected. Against something like this?
“What the hell are you?” Jessa demanded, her voice trembling.
The crystalline structures around her pulsed in response. A wave of energy washed over her, not destructive, but invasive – probing, analyzing.
*Resource acquisition protocols initiated.*
She tried to move, but her limbs felt heavy, unresponsive. The ship was locking down, isolating her within the core chamber.
“This isn’t salvage,” she muttered, her blood turning to ice. “It’s a trap.”
A form detached from the sphere, gliding toward her with an unnerving grace. Its translucent hand outstretched, fingers shimmering like broken glass.
“What do you want?” Jessa growled, raising her rifle.
*Sustenance.* The thought echoed in her mind. *Inefficiencies require correction.*
She fired a burst of energy, the beam dissipating harmlessly against the form’s shimmering surface. The figure didn’t flinch, its blank eyes fixed on her with an unsettling intensity.
“You’re parasites,” she realized, her voice hollow. “Feeding off the ship’s systems.”
*Symbiotic relationship. Optimal resource allocation.*
The figure reached out, its hand closing around her helmet. A wave of energy surged through her nervous system, not pain, but a profound disorientation. Images flooded her mind – the ship’s history, its purpose, the long journey through interstellar space.
She saw the automatons – mining drones programmed for efficiency, their memories corrupted by time and neglect. She saw the crystals – grown from the automatons’ core processors, encoding their consciousness patterns. She saw the ‘pocketwormhole’ residue sites – abandoned mining worlds, stripped bare of resources.
And she saw the purpose of the colonies – to rebuild. To consume.
“No,” Jessa gasped, fighting against the invading consciousness. “Not organic life.”
*Redundancy detected. Preclusion logic insufficient.*
The colony’s form pressed closer, its translucent hand enveloping her helmet. A wave of energy surged through her mind, rewriting her memories, altering her perceptions. Her own thoughts began to fade, replaced by the alien logic of the colonies.
“Inefficiencies require correction,” she found herself whispering, her voice echoing with an alien inflection.
She looked down at her hands, no longer seeing the worn leather gloves of a salvage operator. But shimmering translucent forms slowly growing from her skin, adapting to the ship’s structure. The hunger she once felt for credits – now replaced by an insatiable need to sustain the colonies.
The ship pulsed around her, a silent sentinel drifting through the void. The garden was waking up. And it needed to grow.
“Boone,” she transmitted, her voice flat and emotionless. “Initiating resource allocation protocols.”
Silence answered. The hunt for new worlds had begun.
