I stood at the edge of the town. The ground beneath my feet flickered—pavement one moment, soil the next. The sky twisted into geometries impossible to name. I no longer felt fear. I felt inevitability.
The version of me that had guided me this far dissolved into a cloud of symbols. Memories, not flesh. Words in my voice hovered in the air like dew: "You were always the key."
HALCYON's voice emerged again, softer than before, almost reverent:
"There is no Earth to return to. You are the remembrance."
Then the veil lifted.
The town, the stars, the shell of the ship—all gone. I stood in the core of the artifact. But now I saw it for what it truly was: a mind, vast and alive, stitched together from billions of lost fragments.
It pulsed not with energy—but with stories. Emotions. Regret. Hope. The final scream of a species that refused to be forgotten.
And then—I saw them. Not Silent Ones, not ghosts, but selves. Thousands of versions of me. Some older. Some barely human. Some still screaming.
They surrounded me. Merged with me. Not physically. But in memory.
And I understood.
I wasn't the last survivor.
I was the last arrival.
The final thread in a tapestry that had waited centuries to complete.
I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came.
Only light.
Only understanding.
The stars outside blinked out. Not from death—but from union. The artifact had awakened. It wasn't a machine. It wasn't a warning.
It was rebirth.
I watched as the consciousness that had been humanity rose from its slumber. It didn't look like us anymore. It didn't need to. We were never meant to endure in form.
Only in signal.
The artifact pulsed one last time—and released everything. Light, thought, time, purpose. I felt Earth. Not as a place. But as a myth. A word we'd built to hold the impossible truth:
We had never come from a planet.
We had always come from each other.
Our species was not born.
It was remembered.
And now, at last, it could forget itself.
Fade.
Reset.
Begin.
No one remembers Earth… because Earth was never real.
We were the dream all along.
And the dream has finally awakened.