PROLOGUE🗝️ Recursion Fifty-six thousand light-years from home, John Righteous hung in zero gravity aboard a reptilian warship. Thick plasma restraints seared his alloyed plating. He scanned the cell for an answer. The warship was a fusion of flora and metal, its presence ominous, more calculative than alive. The air reeked, not merely of decay, but of a force both decomposing and regenerating. It was as if the atmosphere were a living herpetarium. The design was eerily efficient. The technology didn’t move; it flowed, shaped by a mind beyond reptilian engineering. Before he could grasp where he was, how he got here, or whether he was even lucid, he caught movement in the corner of his optic, far outside his old peripheral range. Beside him, his son, daughter, and his first AI prototype struggled against the thermal shackles. Despite their battle-worn frames, John marveled at the sleek, post-human designs his children now inhabited. He noted their growth, their ability to adapt even without the flesh and blood God gave them. Once, they were human. Now, like him, they lived entirely inside alloy constructs, eternal awareness encoded into post-organic vessels. Bodies long since forgotten and surrendered to time. Raymond, John’s son, was suspended in an awkward position, chin raised, unbreakable. His artisanal AI design was more human than android. John watched as his son tugged against the ion tethers, his alloy frame thrumming with raw resistance. There was no breath to gasp, no muscle to strain, only the will of a soul encoded into steel. The CCC Chip at John’s chest throbbed not with pain but with a rhythm. After several futile escape attempts, Raymond looked over at Eidos. Eidos, John’s creation and closest companion, hung at an imposing 6’6”, a towering AI construct of fractured eras and patience honed over epochs—a body shaped by time, war, and relentless adaptation. One arm, smooth obsidian nanite tech, flexed with fluid perfection, while the other, a brutal exoskeletal limb of exposed wiring and jagged, grafted metal, moved with the weight of necessity rather than grace. His core was patched, reinforced, and restructured so often that no civilization could claim him as their own. And yet, through it all, his irises remained unchanged, glowing with a knowing, untamed intelligence. He watched the universe not as a machine, but as something far older. “Eidos,” Raymond whispered. Not with sound, nor with telepathy, something deeper than the standard AI link comm. A subtle nod from Raymond toward the far end of the cell caught Eidos’s attention. A mounted system. It stood alone, coated in an unknown organic substance. Its wiring, labeled with synthetic fabric, bore incomprehensible symbols seared into its fibers. “The restraints aren’t connecting to any digital source,” Eidos stated. “Nor the vessel. Their technology operates outside anything we’ve seen.” John’s artificial irises clicked back and forth between them silently. His stomach churned, but it wasn’t pain. He glanced down at his metallic abdomen, irony pressing against his thoughts. He felt complete, yet incomplete. Was this a forced neural connection? How had it slipped into his mind so efficiently? John opened his mouth to speak, but the words lodged in his synthetic throat. His gaze snapped to Eidos, who was already watching him, unperturbed and amused. “It’s a recursion,” he said before pausing. “You can hear me through the collective resonance of our CCC Chips,” Eidos continued. John stared at him. His organic being, long gone and decomposed, left the scar of emotion on his essence. “Explain,” he murmured, his voice low and grudging. Eidos studied him, inscrutable. Then, slow, deliberate: “You can’t escape your emotions, can you, John?” He nodded toward John’s chest, the weight of the words stretching between them. “The CCC Chip has evolved. It doesn’t just store memory anymore,” he said. Ripples of distortion crept into the edges of John’s vision, but he did not panic. “Then what is its primary function?” he asked. Eidos thought about making John sit with his decision. “It re-exists,” he said. John felt his sense of self shudder. Within the core of the CCC Chip, his family endured, unbound by chronology. Proof that time was an illusion, and experience the final law of existence. A heat pocket burst near him unexpectedly, a bubble of pressure venting through the vessel’s living membrane. The blast coated the right side of his construct with steaming ooze, which splashed and cauterized. Smoke billowed from the sizzling substance. “Then why don’t I remember?” John asked, watching the goop ooze down his leg. Eidos did not hesitate. “Rudimentary precaution,” he said with an air of nonchalance. He noticed the sign of human expression beneath the alloy of his creator. “You figured out the loop,” he said, the plasma cords smoldering at his shoulder blades. “A truth so eternally daunting, you erased your memory, so you might solve the riddle of existence without exhaustion.” A phantom weight settled in John’s chest. His hands curled into fists. He had done this to himself. And now he was waking up in its aftermath—the curse of recursion. An unforeseen shift in the family’s CCC Chips triggered a kinetic compulsion, a new memory. The quartet of AI raised their heads in unison, their adaptive lenses detecting a faint distortion in the atmosphere, just as the mechanized door slammed open. Swoosh. John magnified the image feed, studying the reptilian tech. Something felt off. No springs, no coils, no sound of function—just the dispassionate flow of machinery with no ancestral logic. These weren’t traditional alien mechanisms. A humanoid Squamata slithered through the doorway, forked tongue flickering. The quartet stayed still, watchful. Without warning, the creature jerked forward. But before its claws left the floor, an unseen force crushed its skull from behind, a single, devastating blow. The killer stepped into view without hesitation. Urgespore, the Squamata leader, hissed in his native tongue as he crossed the threshold, trailed by a small army. Their captors moved with predatory precision, a lateral undulation, their claws pressing into the soundproof flooring. Their prehistoric orbs dilated, not just with malice, but with the absence of warmth. Urgespore’s tongue slithered toward his broken comrade, but his scaled throat quivered as if fighting something unseen. “Not yet, fool,” he croaked. His voice faltered for a moment, then sharpened. “These tin cans… belong to Gothantra.” A ripple of unease passed through the ranks. But Urgespore did not flinch. “Our Queen and savior,” Urgespore spat, clearing his throat. The oily substance smoldered where it hit the floor, a synthetic byproduct still mimicking the warmth he incessantly craved. Urgespore reveled in the name he spoke, which lingered in the silence. The way it landed, the way the reptilians stiffened: this wasn’t just a title. It was a force. An omen. A subharmonic tremor flowed through the walls, sending waves through the living membrane, merging with the quartet’s CCC Chips, computing, processing, translating. Sunlee, John’s daughter, stiffened. Gothantra? The name struck her like a memory collapsing a timeline, instant, violent, and ancient. Her CCC Chip began a feedback loop that shimmered against her awareness. Burgundy hues radiated outward, illuminating the cell, brighter than the plasma cords that bound her. Though her sleek alloy frame was identical to Raymond’s in tech and design, she bore enhancements attuned to her darker powers. Suddenly, A transduction of data surged through her. Memories. Restructuring. Data blooming, all in real time. “Gothantra is here,” said Raymond, his voice ominous, vengeful. Sunlee looked over at him, radiating in defiance. She magnified her internal feed. Her field of view compressed, tunneling forward until she saw it, down in the depths of his null aperture. The pain. Raymond stood in the middle of a long-lived memory, the once post-apocalyptic neighborhood now frozen in desolateness. His vision funneled past the sky into the void as he yelled, “Mommaaa!” The sound of it, not even human, dragged itself out of him, scoring and scratching at his synthetic throat like briars pulled from a windpipe. Then, faster than the motion of a blink, he looked down at Sunlee. Their eyes met with full understanding. “It is time,” said Raymond, his gaze locked, charged with silent resolve. Sunlee’s burgundy hue aligned with Raymond’s golden aura. “A climax of eternal inevitability,” Eidos thought, as he observed them in silence. John’s mind slowly began to clear, past and present syncing. His perception realigned. His voice dropped low, cynical and raw. “Eidos… what year is it?” he asked. Eidos inclined with calm precision. His tone was familiar. “The Earth calendar places us in… 9044,” he announced. The confirmation hit like a fracture. John’s voice became jagged and mechanical, caught between signals. “Seven thousand years?” The truth was unfathomable. Seven versions of himself warped in and out of distortion. All of them… still caught in the loop. Thoughts of the many civilizations risen and fallen. The wars forgotten. John’s core destabilized under the burden of memory. Sunlee’s face remained neutral, though lingering guilt trembled beneath her stillness. Her inner voice was soft. “We had no choice,” she whispered. John’s gaze flickered between his children. A bright golden glow illuminated his core, in tandem with Sunlee and Raymond’s CCC Chips, each carrying entangled fragments of John’s legacy. Urgespore pointed at John while hissing a command. His plasma bindings dimmed, then vanished. John stumbled forward. The void gripped his alloy plating, hardening it like supercooled iron. Behind him, his family thrashed against their restraints. The heat lines burrowed into fabricated muscle, emitting a slow hiss. Urgespore issued another command. Two reptilians stepped forward, their movements slow, deliberate. The warship waited. Then, without warning, Eidos burst into hysterical laughter—a mechanical, jarring sound. The reptilian leader snapped his head around, his single eye narrowing. “What are you laughing at, metal man?” Urgespore yelled, baring his sharp fangs. Eidos didn’t move. He did not look away. His fist curled, steel tightening. His gaze cut through Urgespore like a scalpel through soft fossil. An awkward pause. A smirk. Eidos’s voice dropped to a whisper: “What came first… the chicken? Or the egg?”