Our world—was it saved?

Yekase couldn’t say a word; her voice froze like frost, while a little yellow bean emoji on the screen posed in thought.

A weight hit her, like the rubble of a whole civilization collapsing onto her shoulders, squeezing the breath from her chest.

If galactic years and spiral arms were real, if they made their first cradle world an ecological reserve, how advanced was this Cosmic Bubble’s native civilization?

What storm could hit a civilization so advanced that they’d debate tossing their reserve into a wormhole, seeking a last-ditch escape?

And whether that plan worked—only a guide robot remained to ask the ones who came after.

So that’s it. The overkill security bots at a mere waystation weren’t for people; they were to drive off wild things that blundered deep inside.

Only those who could beat or escape the guards, then find and enter the monitoring room—those were worthy respondents, tempered like steel by trial.

That respondent was Yekase.

“…I don’t know.”

She answered it honestly.

[Unregistered visitor’s answer received. Answer “I don’t know” recorded in database.] The yellow bean emoji bobbed, like a lantern nodding in dream-light.

“What did your civilization go through?”

[Answering an unregistered visitor’s question. The candlelight went out. We no longer heard the voice of the cosmos. Perseus arm collapsed.]

[Orion arm collapsed. Sagittarius Alpha erupted. The Federation capital world fell into the black heart at the galactic center.]

[We evacuated. We evacuated extragalactically. We evacuated—did we succeed?]

Don’t ask me.

Yekase hugged Rice Rice and crouched by the guide robot, mind tangled like blown wires in a storm.

She lived on the ground, a human of streets and crowds. She loved solo flight and moved to a sky island, but always knew she’d return to people.

But the boundless star-field—

The universe is so big—do I want to see it?

She didn’t know the name of the feeling surging up. She felt stranded on a vast dark steppe, everything rushing away like first-cosmic-inflation.

In another world—the world that birthed this tin little cart under her temple—people lived inside galaxies bright as cities, humming like neon rivers.

After she steadied her breath, Yekase noticed two loaded words.

“Does ‘candlelight’ mean standard candles? And ‘hearing the cosmos’—what does that mean?”

[Answering an unregistered visitor’s question. The voice of the cosmos includes: background radiation born from symmetry breaking, Ein particles born from energy fluctuations.]

[And divine power born from stellar-core magnetic fields.]

Shock slammed through her like thunder under glass.

Symmetry breaking, energy fluctuations, magnetic fields—weren’t those Flash Energy, Omega Ray, and Sorcery?

Was this really the rhythm of stumbling into a cave and finding a secret manual? Did Yekase just hit that day?

Even if their interstellar civilization had fallen, its tech towered over her main world. Bring back one or two key nodes, and pivot a stagnant economy to the stars—

Yekase sprang up, palms braced around the screen like she was gripping a cliff edge.

“Let me see if your circuits are sane!”

[Unregistered visitor’s threat detected. Warning: violent acts against this unit violate Interstellar Civil Code §4-6690 and incur fines above 2,000 credits—]

“Ha, I’d love to see who comes to fine me!”

May your whole clan blow up! I could tear you down and burn two grand as an offering to your civilization!

She dug a climbing pick and pitons from her space clasp, ready to crack the shell live, when Rice Rice hopped to the top edge and yowled.

“What? Rice Rice, have you betrayed me?”

Wow. A yawn, a yawn.

So that’s it? As a remnant of the Neptunian clans, he felt pity for this relic from another civilization?

“…Fine. You win.”

No physical teardown, then. She’d sweep with Infinite Force Perception. Less direct, less clear—but gentle, not destructive.

Flash Energy feelers slipped inside the guide robot, brushed through its mechanical bones, paused on the chip, then combed along the circuits like rain fingers.

“These traces… they mimic a human circulatory system? A completely different development path…”

Looking at this lattice, insight cracked open like sunlight breaking a cloud bank.

That story of destruction felt far away; this felt like studying a newly unearthed machine relic—finally back inside her field.

From a bionic angle, that sinking loop that’s driven her to fray—wasn’t it just a capillary mesh?

An artificial intelligence close enough to human.

Mounted inside a body close enough to human.

And the result—

“An Idealist branch with no heart…?”

…

No. Something was off.

The Idealist branch—also called the Super branch—was Infinite Power that existed because observers existed.

Could a robot be an observer?

Could the cat in the box be an observer?

Only “born in the objective world,” and “with a sense of spacetime,” and “a sapient being” could observe.

Yet now a robot, silicon for carbon, circuits for blood, had risen from “objecthood” into the choir, eligible to observe other objects, to wield Super-type Infinite Power. Was her observer rulebook wrong from the start? Where was the true boundary?

[Question to unregistered visitor.]

“Hello. My name is Yekase.”

She cut off its line—and it really could be cut off—and offered a self-introduction big enough to bridge two worlds and two civilizations.

[Information recorded in database.]

[Question to Yekase. Which star region is this? Is it inside Federation territory?]

“This place…”

How did she explain the Cosmic Bubble?

“This place is Earth.”

[Answer received from Yekase. Answer “Earth” recorded in database.]

The yellow bean emoji trailed an ellipsis, then asked: [Confirming with Yekase. Have we—returned to our homeland?]

“Yes… you’ve returned to your homeland.”

[Proposal to Yekase. Please transfer this unit to a Federation sheriff.]

“You—and this Solar-3—are an subspace stitched to our Earth by a dimensional veil. It’ll dissipate in about a month.”

[Attempting to parse the information Yekase provided.]

[…]

It started throwing non-response windows again. This time they stacked fifty deep, twice blanketing the screen and still spilling.

She spent nearly fifteen minutes sweeping the pop-ups clean.

[Answer received from Yekase. Answer “destroyed” recorded in database.]

[This unit will execute a burial program in ten minutes.]

“Hey?! Wait, I didn’t say it was certainly destroyed!” Yekase hadn’t finished studying its structure. She hurried to persuade it. “Maybe your civilization did make it extragalactic. No one can say.”

“...It’s just, the original you probably got torn to atoms by the Eye of the Cosmos. Your information crossed a wormhole to here, projected inside the Cosmic Bubble.”

[Question to Yekase. —Is this unit still this unit?]

The yellow bean emoji tilted forty-five degrees, a fat question mark puffing up like steam.

“…You’re a newborn you.” Yekase had faced the Ship of Theseus too many times; it was the only answer she could give.

[Answer from Yekase received. Integrating premise statements: this unit is residual information of itself.]

[This unit is—]

In that instant, it felt like he stepped over a threshold.

Yekase’s real-world vision blurred, but her Infinite Force Perception stayed crisp. In that legless, armless mechanical cart, he—behind the display—at the core where a human would say “brain,” lit a faint flame.

A blue, unreal flame belonging to Mind Energy.

[This unit is wreckage. This unit is ruins.]

[This unit is a star extinguished billions of light-years away. This unit is background radiation without beginning or end.]

[This unit—has seen this unit’s end.]

Yekase hugged Rice Rice. She stopped looking at the bean on the screen. Her gaze rose, slow as a moon tide.

She met his camera eye.

“Now, you can call yourself ‘I’.”

[Adopting Yekase’s proposal. Changing this unit’s self-reference to “I.” May I have a name?]

“Of course.”

[Seeking a suggestion from Yekase. What name suits me?]

Naming, again.

Lately she’d named a staff and brainstormed a new title for herself. She was sick of it, but this robot brother would soon fade. She’d grant his last wish.

“R2D2 or Marvin, which do you—”

“—me-ow!” Rice Rice yawned in her arms, like a cat singing to the dawn.

[Adopting the unregistered visitor’s proposal. Changing my name to “Miao’ao.”]

…

“You listen to him but not me?!”

[Hello. My name is Miao’ao.]

“You’re already using it?!”

I’m actually sassing a robot in a battered fortress—no, a rest stop—monitoring room. Realizing that, Yekase felt another wave of helplessness roll through.

[Miao’ao will execute a burial program in eight minutes. Please evacuate, Yekase.]

“So it’s still self-destruct?!”

Yekase grabbed Miao’ao’s chassis and shook, like a storm rattling a gate. “You have self-awareness now. Can’t you live?”

“At least live until you dissipate, like humans living toward death. I might copy your AI in that time and make another you!”

[The self-destruct program exists to prevent people like Yekase from copying my AI. It’s bottom-layer logic beyond my control.]

“Huh?”

Writing that in the basement of an AI model—got it, your Galactic Federation ran on exclusion.

If Yekase reverse-engineered the bot, that’d at least preserve a spark of the Federation. The civilization was gone, and they wouldn’t leave even relics to the next ones—stingy to the bone. Humans birth tragedies because we don’t understand each other!

…Fine. She mostly just felt sorry for the biomimetic build.

[Another proposal to Yekase. I will self-destruct with Waystation B-666 in seven minutes. Please use the emergency ejection rig in the center of the monitoring room.]

[Leave, and get far from this coordinate. The farther, the better.]

“Why…”

Miao’ao took her “why” as “why get far,” and answered:

[Because Yekase is Miao’ao’s first friend. I don’t want you caught in the blast.]

“…All right.”

Yekase drew a long breath, then stood on the launch plate in the room’s center, led by Miao’ao’s calm light.

His belly opened. He offered her a parachute pack like a folded white swan.

“No need. I can fly.”

[Then, tailwinds to Yekase.]

Light poured down from above like river water into a canyon.

The monitoring room’s roof groaned with a teeth-aching squeal, then parted to both sides like a clam shell opening to the sky.

Behind it, a dozen identical hatches fought themselves open, metal lilies blooming with a groan, carving a passage for Yekase.

Yekase took one last look at Miao’ao’s little yellow-face emoji.

It was a 😭.

[A plea to Yekase. Please remember that we once existed.]

His neck felt like rusted iron, but he still managed a nod.

The little yellow face shifted from 😭 to 😉.

[Gratitude to Yekase. Thank you for seeing our world off.]

Silence answered.

Power surged up from underfoot like a rising geyser; Yekase became a cannon shell, ricocheting up the vertical shaft toward the sky.