We caught the mechanical dinosaurs; the next step was obviously to tame them, like roping storm-broncos of steel.

Yekase oversaw their neutralization surgery, hands steady as moonlit water.

First, she clipped every sharp claw—three on the forefeet, four on the hind—steel talons snipped like icicles.

Then she used Flash Energy to wreck their fire-control cores so they couldn’t self-detonate, a lightning thread through a spiderweb.

Anyone else would need to crack the skull and hunt the chip; that act itself would trigger self-destruct, a dead loop set like a trapdoor under thin snow.

But Flash Energy cut through like a ghost passing paper screens.

With the surgery done, all that remained was the taming attempt, arena dust swirling like autumn leaves.

You worked it like riding a mechanical bull, metal hides bucking in iron waves.

That burly surveyor volunteered again—Yekase still didn’t know his name—he stepped up like a mountain shadow.

He lasted only a few seconds before being thrown, a reed tossed by a gust.

Xiaoyuan blended into the crowd and signed up, easygoing, her smile warm as hearth embers.

She boasted the dino would be hers; steel lost to seasoned flesh, muscle braided like rope.

She sat it into two pieces on the spot, the chassis snapping like a dry twig.

“How did it break?” Xiaoyuan asked, brows pinched like crane wings.

Everyone stared at her legs speared deep into the ground, silence pooling like rainwater—yeah, how did it break?

Sandryon disliked such coarse games and urged Yekase to try, voice cool as frost.

Yekase refused, her mind folding shut like a fan.

She had studied the raptor’s structure inside out while disabling fire-control, blueprints unfurling like winter vines.

These two-meter mechanical creatures held no secrets for her; taming them felt useless, curiosity cooling like tea.

More importantly, there was nowhere to keep them, no stable in this sky and dust.

And… they were just ugly, faces only rust could love.

“Mechanical life” meant two aesthetics, gear and flesh crossing like streams.

From the mechanical angle, Yekase loved sleek modern lines and raw primal heft, curves like riverlight and beams like cliff-bone.

She hated half-baked biomimicry, neither fish nor fowl.

From the biological angle, while boys loved the trinity of dinosaurs, excavators, and cars, nursery dreams puffed like cotton clouds.

Yekase happened to be in the small group that never cared for dinosaurs, interest flat as a calm lake.

Two aesthetic minefields satisfied at once, a double thunderhead meeting over plains.

Back at command, she heard the report about mechanical dinosaurs and felt nothing, emotion blank as white sand.

She checked circuits out of a mechanic’s duty, patience like a kite on a short tether.

Now she didn’t want to look at them again, shutters closing over her eyes.

She walked to Aurora, who stood on a side podium watching surveyors line up to challenge the dinos, the queue snaking like a river.

She asked, “What’s the boundary of the Cosmic Bubble like?” voice steady as a plumb line.

Aurora glanced at her and said, “A natural barricade woven from warped latitudes, bright colored waves that rise and fall without end,” words rolling like tides.

“What happens if you hit it?” she asked, the question tapping like a pebble.

“You might get randomly teleported, you might be torn apart, or you might just hit a wall,” fates dealt like dice.

“…Then I won’t try,” prudence folding like an umbrella.

“Wise,” Aurora said, a nod crisp as bamboo.

But since the latitude barrier was visible and vividly colored, like festival silk, if you didn’t stick a bare hand in, poking it with a rod or tossing a fireball should be safe, right?

Yekase’s curiosity beat her caution, her heart a moth toward flame.

She rose on tiptoe and whispered a line of Celestial Speech, casting a Levitation Spell, syllables chiming like small bells.

A question had just struck her, thought blooming like a spark.

The contents of the Cosmic Bubble—this Gaia planet’s residual info projection—include the atmosphere, a thin glass laid over blue seas.

It supports breathing and surface activity like it’s natural, air cradling lungs like silk.

Like the main world’s atmosphere, you barely notice it, presence light as mist.

Asking why Earth has atmosphere in the main world is foolish, a fish asking why water.

If it didn’t exist, no one would be born on the third planet to ask, questions crumbling like dry leaves.

But why does the Cosmic Bubble also have an atmosphere, the mystery coiling like smoke?

That means when they fell into the Eye of the Cosmos, it already existed, a dome waiting like a lantern.

Those gases covering the surface were recorded as part of Solar-3’s info, a film wrapping the world like glass.

Then—what’s outside the atmosphere, edges glittering like frost?

What’s the invisible light that shines on them, a sunless brightness like snow?

What drives day and night, gears turning behind a curtain?

Like a civilization’s first step into the vast cosmos, Yekase asked herself a string of questions, stones thrown into a deep well.

Over there, the Eye of the Cosmos; over here, the Cosmic Bubble, two mirrors facing across the void.

How do they define a planet’s range so cleanly, borders trimmed like paper-cuts?

Beyond this Earth-like atmosphere, the sky peeling like lacquer…

“What if—there’s more?” hope flared like a match.

Yekase strapped on a streamlined fairing made from Helen Disks, disks nested like lotus petals.

She kept accelerating herself, force piling like stacked waves.

Her eyes locked on the path, staring at a bright sky with no sun, a white vault like washed bone.

She counted flight time and converted it to altitude by feel, numbers clicking like beads.

Ten thousand meters—no anomaly, wind thin as gauze.

Twenty thousand—no anomaly, quiet ringing like cold iron.

Twenty-five thousand—

…She saw it, revelation blooming like dawn.

“Heh…” A stiff laugh broke like ice.

Yekase drew a slow breath of thin air, lungs sipping like parched moss.

At this height, with complex refraction stripped away, she saw the Thing draped beyond the atmosphere, a veil lifting like morning fog.

It wrapped all of Solar-3 along its orbital path, a shell cupping the world like a hand.

Its inner surface simulated day and night, light and shadow sliding like tides.

A giant spherical shell construct, a planet-sized pearl of engineered metal.

A sky-vault, a petri dish, a nature preserve, labels falling like leaves.

The megastructure didn’t know the civilization was dead, a lighthouse still turning in empty seas.

It didn’t know it was a remnant, a ghost wearing its old uniform.

It kept working, gears patient as winter.

Its surface was dense with crystal panels, tiles glittering like frost scales.

They provided light and radiation fit for life, warmth poured like honey.

At night they switched to dim “moonlight” via secondary refraction, silver glaze waxing and waning like tides, cycling until the end.

Each crystal panel was about fifty thousand square kilometers, fields vast as small countries.

There weren’t just one or two, but billions encircling Solar-3, a halo of facets like a starry cloak.

At cosmic scale, numbers feel like a joke to humans, digits ballooning like storm clouds.

Yekase steadied herself and accelerated toward the megastructure, resolve set like granite.

Her eyes searched for a way in, gaze combing like a rake.

She wanted to climb aboard and see the wisdom left by strangers, curiosity pawing like a cat.

Weirdly, wherever she looked, the inner surface repeated into endless crystal panels, an inverted skyline stretched to the horizon.

She saw no hint of a node, seamless as carved jade.

Even a closed petri dish must have a port for samples, right, a lid needing a notch like a shell?

Would she have to check the whole sky to find it, a needle in a sea of blue cloth?

Please no… fatigue loomed like dusk.

She loved the megastructure, but if she had to comb it sleeplessly, the Cosmic Bubble would dissipate by then, time draining like sand.

No choice—use the Phase Shifter, a key sliding like a blade.

It took half a second to smuggle into the waystation; she had power to spare, battery steady as a heartbeat.

She just needed to slip through the inner crystal panel and light generator, a swimmer threading reeds.

Reach the space behind and take a look, peeking behind the curtain.

There was no air patrol in the Cosmic Bubble to ticket her, sky-law asleep like old gods.

At her not-yet-capped top speed, two seconds might do, time a flicker of fireflies.

Worst case, overlapped entities would bounce her back, walls springy like drumheads.

She went for it, decision sharp as a knife.

She topped up the Helen Disk’s durability, a lacquered coat over stressed wood.

She applied Levitation Spell vectors across her body in sync, arrows of force like invisible reeds.

That would keep relative speed from tearing her apart, flesh held like cloth on a loom.

Within a thousand meters, she hit her limit, speed howling like wolves.

The sound barrier fell far behind, a glass bell shattered in the wind.

She stacked more Levitation Spells, pouring power into the well to the brim, a cistern overflowing in stormwater.

She meant to slam into the crystal panel at unprecedented velocity, a comet arrowing at a mirror.

—And then Yekase vanished, a candle snuffed by an unseen draft.

Wind roared through the fairing, and she thought she’d build a sealed cabin next time, gusts clawing like cats.

She still had distance to the megastructure when a strange ripple rolled overhead, a pond ring on the sky.

A mysterious force grabbed her and pulled her through a portal, a hook tugging in the current.

Yekase felt herself drop into… some kind of force field, a silk cocoon catching a moth.

It felt like the spin-boost she did in Cloudlong City using the Coffee Moon, centripetal hush like a whirl.

But the effect ran opposite, a tide turned by a new moon.

Her body stopped, a moment frozen like a dragonfly in amber.

Through the portal, the field caught her, hands of magnetism cradling her.

In two seconds she went from supersonic to still, speed draining like wine from a cup.

“Are my organs still here?” Yekase touched her belly, fingers light as sparrows.

Seemed so, relief spreading like warm tea.

She looked around, eyes sweeping like lantern light.

Beyond the rounded mechanical frame holding her lay a wide room, smooth as a pearl’s interior.

She saw… circles upon circles, geometry blooming like ripples.

Round columns, round indoor windows, round tables, round chandeliers, round… a chorus of moons.

Round plasmids, loops like bracelets.

“Huh?… Eh?”

A huge plasmid floated outside the frame, a crown of beads in slow orbit.

Plasmids are DNA molecules outside chromosomes in bacteria and such, rings of code like ivy.

Biology class taught that, chalk dust lingering like snow.

Yekase tilted her head at it, curiosity perched like a robin.

Ivory-white molecular sand gathered into hundreds of fist-sized spheres, grains fusing like wax.

The spheres strung like beads into two chains, necklaces draped in air.

They crossed and twined into the double helix everyone knows, a ladder spiraling like smoke.

The ends joined and formed a ring, a snake biting its tail.

A plasmid, a giant teaching model of a plasmid, a classroom diagram turned planet.

…Uh, why, the question hung like a paper lantern.

Before the dazed Yekase, the plasmid’s hundreds of bases vibrated in a strange rhythm, drums hidden in pearls.

Then it spoke in a slightly hoarse voice, sound rasping like sand on glass.

“Hello, registered visitor ‘Yekase’.”

“This individual has abandoned a recognition name,” identity shed like a husk. “To improve communication, you may use my duty,” titles worn like badges.

“You may call me—”

“Eden Warden.”

Yekase followed the Eden Warden into a spherical room where even Hounds of Tindalos could find no angle, a pearl with no corners.

She sat in a floating round chair, buoyant as a bubble.

The Warden didn’t need chairs; he printed this one ten minutes ago, a chair born like frost.

He used a white spherical printer by the wall, a snowball that spins out furniture.

“So you’ve been inside this megastructure, watching our… surveying?” eyes in orbit like circling hawks.

Yekase felt a bit embarrassed, cheeks warm as dawn.

They barged in—chopped trees, bathed, caught dinosaurs—like RPG heroes ransacking a village.

He sat in near-Earth orbit and watched quietly, calm as a lake under stars.

The people of the Galactic Federation—this world’s people—looked strange, forms alien as coral.

They were beyond Yekase’s imagination, visions stretched like taffy.

But no one ever said two worlds’ humans had to look alike, similarity a whimsy like clouds.

So she let it go, acceptance settling like dust.

“Yes,” the word fell like a pebble.

Thankfully his tone was gentle, not accusing, voice smooth as rain on stone.

“I saw you enter the waystation,” the Warden said, ring-body turning, a halo spinning like a prayer wheel.

“You were ejected, which proves the guide accepted you,” approval stamped like a seal.

“Instruments show a psychic reaction inside,” a spark blooming behind doors.

“Was that you?” the question soft as cotton.

“Not me,” denial clear as a bell. “It was Meow… the guide awakened Mind Energy, which should be what you call psychic power,” a candle lit in a machine.

The Eden Warden’s rotation stopped, stillness falling like snow.

“Our mechanical guide… awakened psychic power? Our artificial intelligence…” shock flared like lightning.

He seemed lost, thoughts scattering like flocking birds.

The spheres making his body trembled and spun erratically, beads rattling like hail.

“—a technological singularity? The voice of the cosmos… our lost golden age… why, why—” lament rising like smoke.

Yekase reached out a hand, palm offered like a leaf.

She lit the Nightlight Torch, a cold red flame like frozen garnets.

“Is this what you’re looking for?” words rang like a bell on ice.

The milky ring edged close, careful, a moth circling a star.

It dared not touch the scarlet, icy fire, fear shivering like reeds.

Yekase couldn’t find his eyes on the ring, facelessness smooth as porcelain.

Yet she felt a gaze, hot and devout, attention kneeling like a pilgrim.

“Ah, ahh… this is…”

“This is Flash Energy. On your side, you call it ‘background radiance,’ right?” a name trailing like an old song.