Insertion – Prime Lull D-0:04
Contrapunctus drift-spun so her mis-patched sails faced the starless blot of Umbra-Nine. Within the bridge's dusk lighting the crew stood in a rough semicircle around the open lock.Glitch and Chip hovered just inside the hatch, each wrapped in miniature cloak-capes; lantern shards shimmered across their facets like freckles.
Cassie crouched to eye level. "Rule one—stay noisy. Rule two—grab our hands the second you feel… anything."Glitch chimed 11-23-5—enthusiastic disorder. Chip added a squeaky 19, then hiccupped; imperfection achieved.
Lin keyed the countdown into calm voice: "Prime lull in ninety-three seconds."Aiden slapped the side of the lock for morale. "Best family road-trip photo op ever."
Maya shoved a relay bug the size of a lentil behind his ear. "Talk fast down there; bugs melt after twenty-eight seconds."Nephis adjusted his over-sleeved cloak, the lower hem already fizzing with contained static. "I will cut you free if the shell tries to eat memories.""Appreciate the haircut," Aiden muttered, earning a rare grin.
Solayna drifted forward, Dawn-Core floating between her palms. Twin primes strobed across the walls—43-47—syncing hearts. "Begin."
Zero-G Swandive
The outer hatch irised. Nothing but a mouthful of black waited.Aiden pushed first, tether line spooling. Cassie followed, Lantern dimmed to messy flickers that made the void twitch like a startled cat.Glitch zipped ahead until tether yanked; Chip bobbed behind Cassie, cloak-cape flapping.
At three meters the universe vanished.HUDs blanked; audio reduced to heartbeat. Aiden felt Dawn-Core drag, as though someone pressed a hand over its song.He whistled the kettle tune; it emerged only as broken syllables in his head but the children echoed it—echo strong. A pinprick of stars burst open: the cavity they'd mapped.
Interior of the Perfect Heart
The space inside made no Euclidean sense: sky curving both up and down, silver pyramid suspended over a mirror lake that reflected nothing.Lin's whisper—thin, static-laced—reached Aiden's ear bug: "Twenty seconds comm."
"Copy," Aiden breathed. "We see the pyramid."Cassie squeezed his wrist, pointing. Around the pyramid's base hundreds of silver ribbons writhed—Null-Weave tendrils feeding on invisible dreams.
Glitch darted forward, slamming into sticky air. The child jittered between haze and crystal. Chip followed, cloak-cape sparking charcoal.Dawn-Core pulsed once—loud inside the hush—and the air cracked, dropping both kids onto an unseen floor. A pathway of flickering imperfections extended straight to the pyramid.
Cassie exhaled. "Breadcrumbs. They're making the flaws we need."
The Run
They sprinted—if floating hops count as sprinting—along the newborn path.Every step, Cassie brayed a wrong-note guitar chord; Aiden belted half of an embarrassing college cheer Lin once wrote.Glitch punched prime beats into the air; Chip answered with off-prime numbers, each exchange tearing a fresh tear in the flawless ambience.
Ten metres.Eight.Seven—Dawn-Core flickered; pyramid shimmered, ejecting a wave of perfect silence.
Aiden's comm clicked—Lin out. No sound but footfalls on an imaginary floor. He felt memories slip; for a terrifying micro-second he couldn't recall Lin's face.Cassie saw him wobble, smacked his helmet. "Barbarian coffee!"Memory snapped back; he barked a laugh—fear punctured.
They hit the base. Glitch and Chip head-butted the silver surface—spiderweb cracks radiated.Aiden slammed Dawn-Core into the fractures; Cassie drove lantern shards like nails.Silence screamed—then shattered.
Detonation
All colour inverted: lake turned white, sky black. The pyramid dissolved into an inward-folding storm of digits.Dawn-Core roared primes like a pipe organ; Lantern sprayed radiant typos.The Null-Weave tendrils burst into confetti of tiny Möbius scraps that melted before reaching the ground.
Glitch and Chip fused their capes, spinning a two-tone laugh that made the cavity shiver—and suddenly they, Cassie and Aiden sat in starlight again, outside the moonlet, tether drifting.Comms popped alive; Lin's relieved shout filled their heads: "Tea still on! Report!"
Aiden wheezed. "Shell cracked. Heart in crumbs. Bring the kettle."
Back on Contrapunctus
Recovery was a blur of high-five collisions, Lantern sweeps for lingering null-worms, Nephis shearing tethers with a flourish.Maya displayed hull sensors: Umbra-Nine's silhouette now a faint mist; starlight punched through.
Solayna hugged Glitch and Chip. Their surfaces glittered with charcoal constellations—imperfections proudly worn. "Contrast restored," she said.
Lin handed Aiden a steaming bulb. "Payment: proper hojicha for pyramid-smashers."Aiden sniffed, grimaced. "Still smells like socks.""Symmetry demands sacrifice," Lin replied, clinking bulbs.
Cassie intercepted both drinks, combined them, sipped. "Now it tastes like burnt cocoa—but we're still here. Cheers."
Outside, the hole in the stars was gone—replaced by messy, ordinary space.Contrapunctus turned its patched sails toward the dark beyond Jupiter, crew humming no tune in particular—and that, absolutely, was the point.