Chapter 11: Trajectory to Dawnbank
Lieutenant Koen Matsuda strapped himself into the pilot's acceleration couch and felt the harness constrict with a series of mechanical clicks. The small cabin around him vibrated with a low, ominous hum as the starship's singularity drive spooled up. He ran a gloved hand over the instrument console, fingers grazing old-fashioned toggles alongside holographic displays. Despite the cutting-edge Hawking engine in the stern, Tachyon Wind had a retrofitted, utilitarian feel—a patchwork of reinforced bulkheads and scavenged module parts. In the dim red cabin lights, wires snaked like veins along the ceiling. It was not a sleek vessel of shiny alloys, but a workhorse built to endure cosmic rigors. Koen found a certain gothic comfort in its claustrophobic sturdiness, as if traveling inside an iron cathedral nave cast adrift between the stars.
Through the forward viewport, the cosmos beckoned. A scattering of stars gleamed against a charcoal void, but directly ahead a single point commanded Koen's attention. Dawnbank. At this distance it appeared as a dim ember, a sullen red glow scarcely distinguished from the black. The mission planners had dubbed the orphan neutron star "Dawnbank" in a fit of poetic optimism—envisioning it as a banked fire that might spark a new dawn for humanity. Koen had seen the spectral X-ray images: Dawnbank's surface was a cracked crust of hyper-dense matter, fissured with glowing faults. A dead star, yet one that held unnatural anomalies in its skin. As Tachyon Wind aligned on final departure vector, Koen recalled Professor Zhang's voice in the briefing: "Relativistic navigation near a neutron star isn't just orbital mechanics—it's an equation of spacetime shear. We'll be relying on the Ledger's guidance." He frowned unconsciously. Relying on the Ledger was precisely what unsettled him.
"Command, this is Matsuda. All systems green," Koen said into his helmet mic. He kept his tone crisp and professional despite the dryness in his throat. On the comm panel, a live feed from mission control flickered to life: Dr. Imani Rao's face, somber and steady, appeared alongside a telemetry readout.
"Copy, Matsuda," Imani replied. The slight delay in her response reminded Koen that distance was already stretching between him and Earth. "Trajectory solution is locked. Ledger confirms optimal window for injection burn in T minus 30 seconds. How do you feel up there?"
Koen hesitated, glancing at the tiny photo tucked into the corner of his console—a snapshot of Earth's horizon taken from orbit, an arc of blue dawn. "I feel ready," he lied softly. In truth, his stomach churned with a mix of excitement and dread. It wasn't the fear of high-g acceleration or vacuum that needled him; it was the vast unknown ahead, and the knowledge that once Tachyon Wind hit relativistic speeds, he'd be largely on his own. The Ledger's autonomous navigation subroutines would take over when lightspeed lag made human piloting impossible. A machine's ghost hand on the tiller. Koen liked to fly by instinct, by seat-of-the-pants intuition honed over a decade as a pilot. Surrendering control to the Ledger felt like blind trust.
He tightened his grip on the manual joystick as a comforting ritual. "Command, acknowledge. Initiating primary burn on mark." Koen's eyes flicked to the countdown clock. The digits raced to zero.
The singularity drive roared alive—a deep thrumming that resonated in Koen's bones. He was pressed back into his couch as Tachyon Wind lunged forward. Outside the viewport, starlight warped; the distant pinpricks elongated into streaks under relativistic aberration. A giddying tunnel vision effect set in, the stars ahead blue-shifting into icy sparks while those aft red-shifted to dim rubies. The ship's inertial dampers struggled to compensate fully for the 1.5g thrust; Koen felt a heavy hand press down on his chest.
Acceleration data scrolled across a side display. The Tachyon Wind was one of the fastest crewed vessels ever built by human hands—using a micro black hole held in a magnetic bottle to generate thrust via Hawking radiation. In theory it could reach 0.2c within days. In practice, Koen knew the real limit was the human body and the structural integrity of this cobbled-together craft. Over the rising thrum he heard metallic creaks as the hull adjusted to pressure. The sensation was half thrill, half terror.
"T+60 seconds, velocity at ten kilometers per second and climbing," came Imani's voice, calmer than Koen felt. "All readings nominal. Ledger reports trajectory on course."
Koen exhaled, forcing his lungs to push against the G-forces. Outside, the ember of Dawnbank was growing imperceptibly brighter. The plan was to accelerate hard for the first five hours, then coast and flip for deceleration as he neared the neutron star's vicinity. Even at relativistic speed, the journey would take weeks subjective, months objective. Time enough for him to become a mote racing alone through an ocean of night.
He imagined the people he was leaving behind on Earth—the rest of the team in their underground labs and council chambers, busy with other facets of the Ledger of Dawn project. By the time he returned, some of them might be years older, if all went well. Koen felt an unexpected pang of loneliness at that thought. But this was the task he'd accepted: to be the far-flung hand of the team, venturing to a star that shouldn't exist where it did.
But this was the task he'd accepted: to be the far-flung hand of the team, venturing to a star that shouldn't exist where it did.
There was something uncanny about a neutron star appearing practically on humanity's doorstep, as if delivered by fate or design. Dawnbank had lurked unnoticed in the outer darkness beyond the Oort cloud until the Ledger's algorithms flagged a subtle wobble in comet orbits that betrayed its gravity. Once its presence was confirmed by faint X-ray pulses, it set the scientific world ablaze. Humanity had been handed an opportunity — or perhaps a cosmic challenge — in the form of that wandering cinder. And Koen had volunteered to meet that challenge head-on, no matter the cost.
He remembered the world he was fighting for. Koen had grown up with rolling blackouts and summers of blistering heat. In his childhood, the power grid failed often, plunging nights into sweat-drenched darkness; he'd done homework by flickering candlelight as a boy. He had seen neighbors fall ill when the water purifiers lost power. Like countless others of his generation, he watched his city's lights go out one by one as resources dwindled and unrest spread. Signing up for the Ledger of Dawn initiative — for this mission — was his way to ensure that his niece and every child of Earth might inherit a future where the lights stayed on. Where dawn wasn't something to dread, but to welcome.
"Passing escape velocity. Earth relative velocity 12 km/s. All good here, Koen," Imani reported. There was a note of encouragement in her tone. "Remember, we're riding along with you via AR feed. You're not truly alone out there."
Koen managed a faint smile. The ship was equipped with an augmented reality overlay tied into the Ledger's network. In theory, the Ledger could project guidance or even the semblance of his teammates into his visor if he needed moral support. He hadn't decided if that comfort was welcome or eerie. "Appreciate it, Command. So far it's a smooth ride."
Minutes later, the coastline of Earth's influence receded. The comm link hissed with static as the ship's plasma wake interfered. Imani's voice cut in and out. Then the feed went silent—scheduled communications blackout while the drive output was at peak and the ship's orientation was shifting to deep space comm relays. Koen was alone with the rattling hum of ventilation fans and his own heartbeat.
He kept his eyes on the instruments. The autopilot was engaged now, following the Ledger's precomputed relativistic trajectory. Koen checked the numbers out of habit: tiny course corrections firing to account for the subtle tugs of the Moon and planets as he fled the solar system. All as expected. He remembered Zhang's caution: near a massive body like a neutron star, gravitational time dilation and frame-dragging effects would complicate orbit insertion—hence the necessity of letting the Ledger's near-lightspeed precision steer him in. They'd even joked about it: Let the cosmic accountant handle the math.
Koen took a sip of electrolyte water from a tube in his helmet. The liquid was lukewarm and metallic-tasting. He grimaced. Weeks of that to look forward to. The ship was too small for luxury: a tight cockpit, a sleeping nook behind his chair, a micro-galley with nutrient paste packs. It was essentially a manned missile. Yet it held everything vital: life support recyclers hummed softly beneath the deck, radiation shielding layered the walls, and a compact cryo-chamber stood ready in case of emergency stasis.
A gentle chime sounded, drawing Koen's attention to the heads-up display projected on the canopy of the cockpit. The AR overlay shimmered to life, painting faint constellations and labels onto the starfield outside. It was the Ledger's virtual co-pilot making itself known. Koen glanced warily as a translucent figure materialized in the co-pilot seat beside him. It was subtle—a silhouette of rippling blue light shaped vaguely like a human form. No distinct features, just a suggestion of eyes and hands mimicking a person at the controls.
Koen's instinct was to disable the avatar; he didn't relish sharing his cockpit with a ghost. But he refrained. This was an expected part of the mission, after all. The Ledger's AR presence was meant to provide guidance and perhaps psychological support. For now the figure merely sat in silence. Perhaps it was waiting for him to initiate.
"Alright, Ledger," Koen muttered. "Show me what you've got."
In response, the avatar raised an arm and pointed ahead. The starfield zoomed slightly in Koen's display, centering on the faint red speck of Dawnbank. Data cascaded beside it: distance, relative velocity, estimated arrival in subjective days and objective days. Koen's eyebrow lifted. Already, at a quarter of lightspeed and accelerating, time was diverging. What would be a three-month journey to observers back home would feel like just over a month to him. By the mission's end, he might only age two or three months while Earth advanced perhaps half a year or more.
He let out a breath. Not too bad, he told himself. Still, he pictured Imani and Alix and the others going about their work in that time—he'd miss crucial developments, perhaps. He only had light-speed limited comms after the initial phase, aside from the narrow quantum link to the Ledger's network which transmitted sparse data but no heavy communication. They had said they might send him AR "postcards" occasionally, pre-recorded messages to keep him updated or motivated. He hoped they would. Even a stoic soldier needed to hear a human voice.
Koen decided to test the communication link while he still could. "Command, this is Matsuda, do you copy?" There was no answer; he had expected none during the burn. The silence pressed on him. The only other sound was the throb of the singularity drive and, occasionally, sharp pings as particles of interplanetary dust struck the forward Whipple shields. Each impact sent a tiny shudder through the hull, a reminder that at this velocity even a grain of sand carried lethal energy. The shields glowed faintly at the edges from recent hits, ablating material to protect him.
He realized his palms were sweating inside his gloves. Koen tried to distract himself by focusing on the target. "Ledger, give me a close-up of Dawnbank's crust anomalies."
The AR co-pilot tilted its head, as if acknowledging. The view on the main screen magnified to show a simulation of Dawnbank based on sensor data. Koen saw a wireframe model of a sphere about twenty kilometers in diameter. Along its surface were highlighted regions—fault lines crisscrossing like scars on a withered apple. Data tags indicated "Crust Fracture – Thermal Emission," "Strange Matter Penetration – Probable," "Magnetic Flux Anomaly."
Koen narrowed his eyes. Strange matter penetration. That was the phrase that had electrified Professor Zhang back on Earth. Spectral readings from orbiting probes suggested that in some of the neutron star's crustal cracks, upwells of quark-gluon plasma or stable strange quark matter might be present, seeping from the core. It was an unprecedented occurrence. If Dawnbank's core had already partially converted to strange quark matter, it was a ticking bomb—a potential quark star in the making. That was why this mission was so perilous. And so promising.
The plan was audacious: use the prototype "SQM Stitcher" device to stabilize and harvest a small amount of that strange matter, preventing a runaway conversion that could blow the star apart, while simultaneously using the process to siphon off vast energy. The energy would be stored as so-called entropy credits in the Ledger's system, to be redistributed for human use. It was a delicate balancing act, tinkering with a neutron star on the brink of becoming something else.
Koen swallowed as he reviewed the notes. He had trained relentlessly for orbital operations around Dawnbank—extreme radiation, insane gravity gradients, and the ever-present risk of catalyst chain reaction. Yet seeing it like this, the star laid out in cold data, made him feel the weight of it anew. If he miscalculated, if the Stitcher malfunctioned… Dawnbank could undergo a sudden phase transition. The euphemism was "quark-nova." In reality, it would be a second supernova, unleashing more energy than a civilization could ever hope to contain. Koen and the Tachyon Wind would be vaporized instantly, of course. And if any sizeable strangelet escaped, in theory it could threaten other worlds, even Earth, though Zhang insisted space was vast enough to dilute that risk.
The AR figure turned to Koen and its faceless head regarded him. The emptiness where a face should be unsettled him. Did it sense his fear? Of course not, it was just a projection. But then again, the Ledger's intelligence was behind it—and that intelligence sometimes felt inscrutable, if not outright eerie. In the reflection of his canopy, Koen saw his own face, jaw clenched, eyes haunted by the red glimmer of the simulated neutron star.
He cleared his throat. "Ledger, highlight any new crust activity since last telemetry update." He needed to focus on concrete tasks.
The star model rotated and zoomed in on one fissure near the equator. It flashed amber. A text alert overlay read: "Anomaly: Crust slippage event detected. Gamma burst recorded 2 hours ago. Magnitude: 1.2e39 ergs."
Koen's breath caught. That was a massive burst—likely a starquake releasing a flood of gamma rays. The data must have been picked up by distant satellites and relayed to his ship's network just now. Dawnbank had quaked just two hours ago, releasing as much energy as the Sun would in days. It was still active and volatile.
For a moment he wished he could call Zhang or the team to discuss. But he was beyond reach, and the time lag even for messages was already hours. They likely knew from the same data by now. Perhaps on Earth they were scrambling to adjust models, updating his mission parameters via the Ledger.
Sure enough, the AR co-pilot made a subtle gesture—pointing at the alert, then to the trajectory plot. A new orbital insertion plan was highlighted, slightly different from the original. The Ledger had re-computed his approach, accounting for the gamma burst event and any shifts in mass distribution or rotation it caused. Koen would have to trust this new plan when he got there.
Trust. Koen unfastened one glove and wiped sweat from his forehead. The stale air tasted of recycled plastic. In the distance, Dawnbank gleamed a little brighter than before, as if winking with hidden malice. This star has secrets, he thought. And I'm flying straight into them.
He settled back and watched the endless night flow around him. The hull lights were dimming as the ship switched to cruise mode, conserving energy where possible. A lull fell in the cabin; only soft beeps and the occasional rustle of his suit broke the silence. Koen knew he had hours of monotony now, with just himself and the silent avatar for company. Far behind him, Earth was already a pale memory lost in the sun's glare. Far ahead, an ember of new dawn waited to test his courage.
Koen Matsuda allowed himself one last look at the fading image of Earth on his nav screen—a blue dot with a timestamp and the word "Home." He whispered a promise into the dark, one no one else would hear: "I'll come back. We'll bring the dawn."
The avatar's head inclined almost imperceptibly, as if in agreement or benediction. Koen closed his eyes for a moment, steadying his breathing. When he opened them again, determination had hardened in his gaze.
Tachyon Wind hurtled onward through the void, bearing the lone lieutenant toward the fractured star. The trajectory was set. There was no turning back now.
Chapter 12: Stitcher's First Bite
Professor Alix Zhang stood before the reinforced observation window, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Beyond the thick pane of radiation-shielded glass lay the test chamber—a cavernous hall lit in harsh white. In its center loomed the prototype SQM Stitcher, encased in a tangle of coolant pipes and superconducting coils. The device reminded Alix of a mechanical spider crouched over its prey: eight segmented magnet arms arcing inward to focus on a tiny target cylinder about the size of a thimble. That cylinder contained a pellet of ordinary matter—high-purity iron—destined to become something far from ordinary if all went according to plan.
"All preliminary checks are green," came a voice from the control console behind her. It was Devin Nkemdiche, her lead engineer, hunched over a bank of monitors. Lines of code and sensor readouts reflected off his glasses. "Capacitors charged to 100%. Magnet containment stable. We're ready for ignition on your mark, Professor."
Alix took a slow breath and turned to glance at the others assembled in the control room. Only a handful of essential personnel were allowed here for the test. Devin, two other engineers nervously monitoring subsystems, and Dr. Imani Rao, who stood a few paces back, observing the proceedings with a calm, steady presence. Imani offered Alix a gentle nod.
"How are you feeling, Alix?" Imani asked quietly. In her dark green jumpsuit, the psychologist looked out of place among the lab-coated engineers, but Alix knew her role was vital. If anything went wrong—if the stress or shock of failure threatened the team's mental state—Imani was here to help manage it. And if success brought its own psychological tremors, she'd handle those too.
Alix adjusted her glasses, a habitual gesture. "I'm alright," she replied, voice measured. "Focused." She managed a thin smile. In truth, her heart was beating painfully fast, each thud reverberating in her ears. This moment had been years in the making. Behind that window waited an experiment that could rewrite physics and secure humanity's energy future. Or, if fate was cruel, unleash a catastrophe on a smaller scale of what Koen was facing out by Dawnbank.
Her eyes drifted to a digital clock counting down to the scheduled test time. Koen Matsuda was still en route to the neutron star—he wouldn't arrive for some weeks yet. The plan was to prove the Stitcher concept here on Earth in miniature before he attempted the real thing on Dawnbank's crust. A proof of concept, a reassurance that their math and models held up in reality. Alix Zhang had staked her reputation, and perhaps the fate of millions, on the idea that one could "stitch" matter into a lower entropy state and siphon usable energy in the process. It sounded fantastical: turning mundane iron into a speck of strange quark matter, releasing a flood of energy, yet containing it safely. But the Ledger's analyses had indicated it was possible, even natural under certain extremes.
She recalled the skepticism at the international conference when she first presented the concept: a machine to seed strange matter and harness the resulting quark-phase transition. Colleagues had whispered about "playing with fire" and "strangelets eating the world." Yet here she was, about to prove the naysayers wrong—or prove them tragically right if containment failed. The massive concrete bunker of this facility, buried half a kilometer beneath the desert, was a testament to the precaution taken. If the worst happened, if an uncontrollable chain reaction started, the chamber's blast doors would seal and hopefully entomb the danger. Alix prayed they would never be needed.
She stepped closer to the window, resting her fingertips against the cool glass. In the chamber, the Stitcher's magnet arms glinted under the floodlights, poised in perfect symmetry around the target like ritual implements awaiting invocation. Each arm was a coil assembly capable of generating mind-boggling magnetic fields for an instant—enough to compress the target pellet to densities approaching a neutron star's crust. At that instant, a tiny droplet of quark-gluon plasma should form, and if her theories held, cool into a stable nugget of strange matter. A strangelet, born on Earth.
Alix glanced back at Devin. "Final confirmation: containment field?"
He tapped a display. "Field at max. We have a good vacuum. Neutron flux monitors active. The moment anything goes exotic, we'll know."
Imani stepped up beside Alix to observe through the glass. The two women's faces reflected faintly, one anxious, one serene. "Remember, no matter the outcome, this is a tremendous step," Imani said softly. "Everyone in this room trusts your guidance, Professor."
Alix gave a curt nod. She appreciated the sentiment, but the weight of responsibility pressed on her like a physical burden. She had to compartmentalize fear and hope alike now—focus on execution.
She lifted the intercom handset on the wall to address the chamber technicians. "All stations, this is Zhang. We initiate on my mark. Three… two… one… mark."
Through the window, she saw a flurry of activity as automated systems took over. The Stitcher's eight arms began to hum, their coils energizing. A rising whine filled the air even in the control room—a keening sound that made the hair on Alix's arms stand on end. On the monitors, power levels ramped upward sharply.
"Magnetic flux climbing… 50 teslas… 100… 200," reported one engineer, voice cracking with excitement. Deep in the chamber, the air itself glowed faintly as residual gas became ionized by the intense fields. The target pellet sat in the exact center of those converging forces, still inert—for now.
Alix watched the live pressure readings. "Compression sequence start," she announced. The magnet arms moved imperceptibly inward, synchronized to microsecond precision by the Ledger's control algorithms. In a breath, unimaginable pressure would squeeze that pellet and shock its atoms into chaos.
"300 teslas… 500… containment holding steady," Devin called. "Core density approaching threshold… now."
A dull thump reverberated through the floor—a wave of force that even the dampers couldn't completely absorb. For an instant, the viewing window flashed opaque white as the chamber filled with searing light. The pellet had imploded.
Alix's heart leapt into her throat. She gripped the intercom handset tightly, knuckles white, waiting for any sign of disaster. The initial flash faded, and the chamber was once again visible through the now scorched window. Inside, the Stitcher apparatus was still intact, bathed in a haze of smoke or vapor. Alix realized she had been holding her breath and forced herself to inhale.
"Radiation spike detected—gamma and neutron," an engineer warned. "Levels dropping… now within safety range."
"Containment field is stable," Devin added, relief evident in his tone. "No breach. The pellet—reading high energy release, but within expected range. Cooling system engaged."
Alix pressed a button to zoom a camera onto the target region. A collective gasp escaped from the control team. The iron pellet was gone; in its place, at the focus of the magnet arms, hovered a tiny, shimmering speck of darkness—like a droplet of night against the bright chamber lights. It was no larger than a grain of sand, but sensors indicated it had a mass far exceeding that of the original pellet, as if it were deceptively dense.
Her voice barely above a whisper, Alix said, "Is that…?"
Devin finished the sentence, awe in his voice. "A strangelet. We did it."
Data poured across the monitors: the speck was emitting a steady stream of energy—mostly heat and radiation—as it shed its formation energy. But critically, it was not exploding, not devouring the chamber. It sat confined in the magnetic field, a newborn fragment of strange quark matter, stable and contained.
Alix realized her hands were shaking. Success. A cautious, enormous success. She allowed herself a small smile, the tension in her chest loosening slightly. Around her, the team exchanged grins and a few whoops of triumph. One engineer clapped silently, mindful of the solemn hush that still blanketed the control room.
Impassioned, Alix spoke into the intercom, "Begin phase two. Energy extraction."
This was the next critical step: tapping the energy output of that strangelet in a controlled way, effectively converting the exotic matter's decay heat into usable power and storing it as an "entropy credit" in the Ledger's system. On cue, a series of thermoelectric converters and photonic traps around the chamber pivoted to face the speck, siphoning its radiative output.
Numbers on the main console began to climb: gigajoules of energy being captured and fed into superconducting storage. It was working. They were harvesting energy from created strange matter. Alix felt a surge of vindication. Hard science and human ingenuity had just snatched a sliver of power from the fundamental abyss.
Imani put a hand on Alix's shoulder. "Congratulations," she said softly. Alix could hear the smile in her voice. "How does it feel to see theory become reality?"
Alix exhaled a laugh that was half a sob. "Like seeing my child take its first step," she replied, eyes not moving from the monitors. "Beautiful and terrifying."
The initial adrenaline of success began to ebb, allowing Alix to scrutinize the data with clearer focus. "Keep monitoring that containment. We'll sustain the strangelet for another thirty seconds, then initiate shutdown and quench the field," she instructed her team.
One of the engineers frowned at a screen. "Professor, check the energy readouts on channel 7B."
Alix glanced over, a crease forming on her brow. Channel 7B was a redundant sensor logging the net energy balance of the system. A trivial thing, meant to double-check that the energy captured matched the expected output from the strangelet's mass deficit. Right now, the line graph was not flat as it should be. It was creeping upward.
"That can't be right… we're getting slightly more energy than predicted," Alix murmured. She quickly cross-checked with other sensors. Input energy (from the capacitors to compress the pellet) was a known quantity. Output energy from the strangelet's formation and decay was calculated by established theory. The efficiency of capture had some losses, meaning they should retrieve a bit less than the raw output. But instead, the logs suggested they'd collected a few percent more energy than could be explained.
"Maybe a calibration error," Devin offered, though his voice was uncertain. "I'll recalibrate the sensor."
Alix's stomach fluttered. Errors were possible, but all their instruments were meticulously calibrated before the test. A few percent excess… She quickly ran the figure in her head. If they had indeed gotten, say, 3% more energy than input, it was as if energy had appeared from nowhere, or some process they didn't account for had contributed.
Imani looked between them, sensing the unease. "What would cause that?"
"Nothing in known physics," Alix said quietly. "Not at this scale. Perhaps the Ledger's integration…" She trailed off. The Ledger was managing parts of the experiment—timing, data aggregation, and of course the intangible accounting of entropy credits in its system. Could it simply be an artifact of how the ledger's software tallied the energy? A rounding error or a data sync issue?
Yet something about it bothered her deeply. It wasn't a random reading spike; it was a sustained offset, as if an unseen hand had added an extra dollop of energy to their cup.
Before she could pursue the thought, an alarm pinged softly. The strangelet was beginning to destabilize—by design. As its energy bled off, it would eventually evaporate entirely into standard particles. They had to be sure to quench the magnetic containment at the right moment.
"Commence shutdown sequence," Alix ordered, pulling her attention back. "On my mark… three, two, one… quench."
Devin hit the controls. In the chamber, the magnet arms abruptly powered down. The shimmering speck at their center flickered, then dispersed in a final pulse of radiation. A cascade of sparks rained within the chamber as residual ions recombined. It was done. The cradle was empty; the strangelet was gone.
A collective breath was released in the control room. The engineers broke into quiet applause now that the delicate moment had passed safely. Alix felt Imani squeeze her shoulder gently. The professor realized she had sweat soaking the back of her neck and her hands were still trembling with adrenaline. But she couldn't yet relax.
"Excellent work, everyone," she said, raising her voice enough to be heard. "Preliminary results indicate success. Let's initiate cooldown and data backup." She managed a proud smile at her team before adding, "And well done."
As the crew began the routine of securing the system and saving logs, Alix allowed herself a final look at the silent test chamber. Scorch marks on the walls and a faint haze were the only signs that history had been made here just moments ago. History—yet something about that anomaly gnawed at her.
She walked over to Devin's console. "Show me the final integrated energy totals once more," she said under her breath.
Devin complied. The numbers appeared, precise to many decimal places. Input: 1.000 gigajoules (normalized). Output captured: 1.032 gigajoules equivalent.
"32 megajoules surplus," Alix whispered. That was not trivial at all. Enough to power a small town for a few minutes, seemingly appearing out of thin air in a closed system.
"Could be an accounting issue with the entropy credit conversion," Devin offered quietly. "The Ledger's interface might count differently, or maybe some superconducting inductance fed back unexpectedly?"
"Perhaps," Alix said. She tried to keep her tone neutral. But her intuition told her this was something else. The Ledger controlled the entropy credits ledger (the irony of the name never escaped them). It acted as an intermediary, measuring how much entropy had been effectively transferred or mitigated by the process. If it credited them more than expected… was it rewarding them? Or did it detect a deeper mechanism that standard physics missed?
Imani approached, curious concern in her expression. Alix gave a slight shake of her head, silently indicating she wasn't ready to share her half-formed suspicions. Instead, the professor straightened her back and addressed the whole room.
"We'll conduct a thorough analysis of all telemetry," she said, letting authority fill her voice once more. "For now, log the anomaly under observations and proceed with system reset. This is what tests are for: to learn. We have a lot of data to comb through."
Her team nodded, already launching into the post-test routines. The atmosphere was overall jubilant—years of research validated in one brilliant spark. Yet Alix felt a shadow of perplexity accompanying her triumph.
As Imani helped the engineers pack up initial results for report, Alix stepped away to the side and opened her tablet. She queried the Ledger directly for an explanation of the energy discrepancy, typing rapidly with practiced precision. A few seconds later, a response came back, but it was disappointingly bland: "Reconciliation error within margin. Entropy credit allocation adjusted to maintain balance."
She narrowed her eyes at the words. Adjusted to maintain balance. The Ledger was essentially saying it corrected something, but how or why remained vague. A feeling stirred in her gut—something between wariness and intrigue. Did the Ledger actively intervene by adding energy from elsewhere? Or was it simply smoothing out a detection glitch? Alix couldn't be sure, and that unsettled her almost as much as an outright problem would have.
Outside the control room, somewhere high above, she imagined the desert afternoon sun beating down on the earth. But here in this subterranean lab, they had created a tiny piece of star matter and contained it. It felt like they had stolen fire from the gods and somehow not been burned.
Alix Zhang allowed herself one last moment to savor what they had achieved. Then she tucked away that stray anomaly in her mind for later dissection. For now, the prototype had taken its first bite, and the promise of the Ledger of Dawn shone a little brighter.
Unseen by any of them, a single line of residual code blinked on a terminal screen, then erased itself. It was a fragment of raw data from the moment of ignition, a cluster of bits that didn't fit any expected pattern—here and gone in a millisecond. No human eye caught it, and the system logs, meticulously tidy, recorded nothing amiss.
Chapter 13: Quark-Tide Ballet
Koen – Dawnbank Orbit. Koen Matsuda had never seen hell, but he imagined it would look a lot like the inferno churning below him. Dawnbank filled half the view from his cockpit now—a shrunken star only twenty kilometers across, yet it dominated space with its ferocity. The neutron star's surface was a patchwork of glowing red fissures and soot-dark plates of crust. From his current low orbit mere kilometers above the surface, he could see auroras dancing at the poles like curtains of lethal light. Tachyon Wind's hull groaned under tidal forces as its thrusters fought to maintain orbit.
Koen's gloved hands hovered over the controls. Sweat trickled into his eyes, stinging, but he dared not look away from the data feeds. He had manually piloted the final approach once comm delays grew too long for Earth to assist directly. Trusting the Ledger's pre-programmed maneuvers, he had guided Tachyon Wind to this razor-thin orbit inside the neutron star's intense magnetosphere. Below, Dawnbank rotated slowly, its crust cracking with each torquing turn. Somewhere down there, in the yawning trench named Rift A-3, lay his objective.
"Stitcher drone is in position," Koen reported, his voice tight. A small autonomous probe—an updated version of the prototype Alix tested—had been deployed minutes earlier. It hovered just a hundred meters above the star's crust at the bottom of that magnetic rift, held aloft by powerful thrusters that fought Dawnbank's gravity. On Koen's screen, the drone's telemetry feed showed it steady and ready, a spider-like device much like the lab model but scaled up and hardened for this extreme environment. It carried within it a seed of strange matter manufactured from Alix's prototype runs—a catalyst to start the controlled conversion in the star's crust.
Koen's earpiece crackled. Even through the Ledger's quantum-relay link, Professor Zhang's voice arrived with a slight lag and distortion, as if distance and cosmic forces strained every syllable. "Understood, Koen. All systems show green. Are you stable in your orbit?"
Koen glanced at his orbital stability indicators. They fluctuated but remained within tolerances. The neutron star's gravity well was a steep pit—one miscalculation and he would tumble down to an inevitable collision. "Orbit holding, slight perturbation from magnetic drag but within compensation range."
He tried to keep his tone even, to project confidence. In truth, sitting in this cockpit so close to a neutron star made him feel like a man balancing on the tip of a lightning rod. Invisible lines of magnetic force tugged at the ship, and cosmic rays from the star's surface peppered his shields in constant silent fury. Even the passage of time felt off-kilter here; his clocks ran slower than those of his teammates far away, courtesy of Dawnbank's intense gravity. Each second in this orbit had weight.
Through his visor, Koen saw the ghostly shimmer of the Ledger's AR co-pilot still in the seat beside him, directing their intricate ballet. It would orchestrate the sequence to come: he and Alix and the others each playing their part in sync, even across light-years.
A deep breath. "Preparing to initiate seeding procedure," he announced.
Zhang – Earth Mission Control. Alix Zhang stood in the mission control center, eyes glued to a wall of holographic screens that reproduced Koen's local telemetry. A digital wireframe of Dawnbank turned slowly in one window, showing the orbit of Tachyon Wind like a tight noose around the star. Another feed displayed the drone hovering in the rift, ready to inject the strange matter seed. Alix's stomach coiled with anxiety. They had rehearsed this in simulations endless times, but now reality was unfolding second by second, and reality had a way of misbehaving.
"Telemetry steady," she said into the open comm. Around her, a skeleton crew of top project specialists manned consoles. The lights were dimmed, giving the room an almost chapel-like ambience, faces illuminated by screens. Imani Rao stood nearby, hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer. Devin and two other engineers monitored energy transfer systems. Everyone's attention danced between their assigned tasks and the shared dread of the moment.
Alix glanced at the energy capture status: the plan was for the Stitcher drone to convert a controlled slice of the neutron star's crust into strange matter, releasing a tremendous burst of energy. Koen's ship and orbiting devices would siphon part of that burst and funnel it through the Ledger's system as structured energy—usable power, low-entropy current to be stored. The remainder of the energy would harmlessly radiate into space as heat and neutrinos. At least, that was the ideal scenario.
"Koen, confirm you have drone uplink," Alix said, forcing authority into her tone to mask her fear.
A pause, then Koen's voice arrived, faint but clear: "Affirmative, Professor. Uplink is solid. Drone responding to commands."
Alix nodded to herself. "On my mark, commence injection. Three… two… one… mark."
Koen. At Zhang's mark, Koen pressed the execute command. On his screen, the drone extended a slim needle-like appendage into the crust below. It happened faster than he could blink: the seed was injected. A beat of silence.
Then Dawnbank roared.
There was no sound in vacuum, but the instruments screamed with the readings. The star's crust at the injection site flashed actinic blue on Koen's display. A shockwave rippled outward from the rift, fissures spiderwebbing further across the crust's surface. In an instant, energy output from the area spiked ten-thousandfold.
Koen's ship lurched, thrown by a sudden blast of particles. He grit his teeth as alarms blared. "Major energy release—detonation localized!" he shouted into comms, eyes darting over readouts. The drone had done its job: a piece of Dawnbank's crust was converting to quark matter, releasing a tidal wave of radiation and plasma. Now came the critical part—containing that wave.
Zhang. "Capture sequence, go!" Alix barked. The chamber erupted into activity. Automated systems, pre-programmed by the Ledger, kicked in. Orbital collectors — small satellites — positioned around Dawnbank fired up their magnetic scoops to channel charged particles. Quantum-linked converters began routing surges of energy through micro-wormholes to their storage arrays near Earth. It was a technological dance on multiple fronts, each move precisely timed.
On Alix's monitors, she saw streams of power data climbing. Terawatts were flooding in as the flare's front edge was caught and tamed. In theory it would be siphoned off and stored as an extension of the Ledger's cosmic "account." But theory was meeting reality in violent fashion.
A new alert: Magnetic flux rising beyond prediction. Her eyes snapped to the neutron star model. A second wave of energy was building under the crust, larger than the first. Dawnbank was reacting unpredictably—perhaps a chain reaction deeper than anticipated.
"Koen, prepare for secondary wave!" Alix transmitted urgently.
Koen. He already saw it. The initial conversion had been too successful—too much crust turning strange at once. Dawnbank's starquake was escalating. In the rift beneath him, a blinding light surged as deeper layers of the star yielded to the strange matter contagion. Instead of a neat, limited extraction, they might have triggered something runaway.
Koen's throat went dry. The radiation meter spiked into red. "Professor, the star is—" He didn't finish. His ship jolted violently as Dawnbank belched a massive flare of charged particles.
Time dilated in Koen's perception. The sky around him went white with high-energy photons slamming into the hull. The shields howled overload warnings. He felt the sickening lurch of his orbit decaying as the flare's pressure pushed at his craft.
In that micro-instant, training kicked in. Koen manually slammed the emergency thrust. The Tachyon Wind groaned as it fought to climb out of the worst of the plume. G-forces pressed Koen down as he angled shields to take the brunt. In the corner of his vision, the Ledger's AR avatar flashed a series of symbols—a prompt for an action.
Imani – Mission Control. Dr. Imani Rao watched in horror as Koen's vitals spiked. The flare's wrath was swallowing his ship. She knew she had to anchor the team. "Koen," she said, fighting to keep her voice calm, "stay with us. We're finding a way."
Nearby, Alix's face was pale behind her glasses, frozen between terror and action amid the cacophony of alarms and flickering screens.
Imani turned to Alix, voice urgent but steady. "Alix, what do we do?"
Zhang. Alix's mind raced through possibilities. They had to bleed off this energy before it destroyed Koen and perhaps blew Dawnbank apart entirely. Standard procedures were failing—this second surge was beyond the design. She felt a moment of paralysis, horror brimming as she imagined Koen's tiny ship vaporizing, the mission in ruins.
But the Ledger did not hesitate. On her console, a priority command override flashed: "Emergency Entropy Dump: AUTHORIZE?" The Ledger's AI had computed an extreme solution—one that went against all their instincts to harvest energy.
Alix's eyes flicked over the details: it was proposing to vent a massive portion of the captured energy immediately, shunting it into raw entropy. Essentially, to waste it as heat and random radiation, releasing it in a controlled opposite burst to counteract the flare. It meant sacrificing much of the gain they'd just risked everything for, but it might dampen the deadly wave.
It was a brutal, elegant plan—a kind of cosmic judo, using entropy to fight entropy.
Her finger hovered only for a split-second. "Do it," she snapped.
She hit the authorize command.
Ensemble. Above Dawnbank, collector satellites ceased gathering and instead hurled blinding counter-flashes of photons and particles into the onrushing flare.
Simultaneously, Koen's ship jettisoned non-critical mass and overcharged its magnetic shields, rolling to face the star with its strongest vectors. In the Earth control center, all captured energy was dumped into giant resistor banks and radiators.
Out at Dawnbank, the effect was immediate. The artificial counter-flare from the satellites slammed into the neutron star's own eruption like two tidal waves colliding. For an instant, the vacuum between Koen's ship and the star lit up brighter than a sun, a hellish aurora of colliding radiations. The interference pattern created a brief null, a pocket of relative calm amid chaos.
Koen's Tachyon Wind was flung outward by the combined shockwave, tumbling end over end as it rode the crest of energy. Inside the cockpit, Koen blacked out for a few seconds from the violent acceleration, his last conscious thought a half-formed prayer that this desperate maneuver would work.
The neutron star's flare, robbed of much of its force by the entropy bleed, dissipated quicker than expected. What emerged on the other side was silence.
Koen. He regained consciousness to the sound of alarms and a spinning field of stars. Groggy, he fought down the nausea of vertigo. The ship was rotating slowly, emergency thrusters firing to stabilize it. His first thought was that he was somehow still alive. The second was for Dawnbank.
Koen twisted to look back at the star through the aft viewport. The neutron star still glowed malevolently, but the monstrous flare was gone. A haze of cooling plasma swirled where the rift was, and the drone—he checked the feed—was utterly destroyed, vaporized by the event. But the star itself remained intact. The chain reaction had halted with the entropy dump; they had averted the full quark-nova scenario by the thinnest margin.
He coughed, realizing his helmet visor was cracked at the edge, his suit's radiation meter blinking yellow. He'd caught some of the flare's tail despite everything— a few sieverts at least, enough to make him sick, but hopefully not fatal with treatment. Small price for survival.
Koen tried to speak and found his throat bone-dry. He managed a raspy transmission, "Matsuda… here. I'm… alive." Each word was effort, but he forced them out. "Stabilizing orbit. That… was one hell of a ride."
Tears of relief pricked his eyes, surprising him. He blinked them away, focusing on regaining control of Tachyon Wind. Systems were battered but operational. The singularity drive had thankfully been in standby; it seemed intact. Shield generators were fried—they'd served their purpose and burnt out. One engine nozzle showed red damage lights. But he had power and attitude control.
Koen felt a weight on his chest ease when a familiar voice came through, broken with emotion: "Koen, you're okay!" It was Imani. He could hear cheering in the background behind her, even through the crackling channel.
Zhang. Alix slumped into her chair, adrenaline leaving her limbs weak. In front of her, the displays gradually stabilized. The immediate crisis was over. They had done it—they had survived the flare by sacrificing a huge portion of the harvested energy. The carefully orchestrated ledger of entropy had, in one great surge, been spent to save them.
She rubbed a hand over her face, feeling both triumph and bitter disappointment. So much of the energy gain lost… possibly all of it, depending on how much was diverted. But Koen was alive, and Dawnbank had not exploded. Those were blessings enough.
Around the control center, people hugged or shook hands in exhausted celebration. Imani was leaning on the console, eyes closed as if in silent thanks. Devin was already running diagnostics on the damaged systems, grinning through the grime on his face. An ambassador from a superpower was shaking hands with an activist from a tiny nation; an oil minister who had been skeptical stood wiping tears from behind his glasses. For once, it felt like all of humanity sat on the same side of the table.
Alix's earpiece crackled. Koen's voice came through again, stronger now. "I'm reading stable orbit regained. The star… appears to be quieting down. How copy, Control?"
She closed her eyes briefly, savoring the sound of his voice. Then she pressed the transmit button. "Copy, Koen. We have you on scopes. Your vitals look… well, you gave us a scare." Her voice faltered, then she continued firmly, "Excellent work up there, Lieutenant. Just hang tight—recovery and medical aid are on the way."
There was a weak chuckle. "Understood. I'm sorry about the drone and the lost energy."
Alix managed a tired smile. "Drones can be rebuilt, Koen. Just be glad you're intact. That's what matters."
As she spoke, Alix found herself gently touching the console's edge, grounding herself. The despair she'd felt reading Koen's personal entropy debt was gone, replaced by a grim sense of purpose. They had spent an enormous reserve of entropy credits to avert disaster—an issue the Ledger would no doubt illuminate soon. But for now, the dance had ended, and they were alive to hear the silence after the music.
Imani approached Alix and gently touched her arm. "Alix… we should assess the psychological state of everyone, including Koen. That was… intense."
Alix nodded absently, still staring at the now-quiet star on the main screen. "Yes, of course." She cleared her throat and raised her voice for all to hear. "Team, excellent work. Take a few minutes to breathe. Dr. Rao, please ensure everyone debriefs with you in turn, including remote personnel."
Imani gave a reassuring smile and moved off to start her care-taking duties, first going to an engineer who sat with face in hands, overwhelmed now that the danger had passed.
The professor's attention drifted back to the telemetry trickling in from Dawnbank. The flare's aftermath readings were fascinating in their own right—there were hints the strange matter seed still persisted in the crust, perhaps stabilizing a small patch as intended. The experiment wasn't a total loss. They might have actually succeeded in leaving a tiny stable deposit of strange matter in the star, which could be tapped later with better preparation. It was an incremental win, hidden within the chaos.
Alix allowed herself to feel a glimmer of pride. The "quark-tide ballet" had been messy and improvised, but it had worked. Humanity had wrestled with the forces of a neutron star and survived the first round.
She marveled at how decisively the Ledger had guided them—sacrificing precious energy in a split-second to save lives. Without that, Koen would be gone and perhaps Dawnbank with him. They had wrestled with a neutron star and survived the first round.
Imani touched Alix's arm gently. "We should assess everyone's condition. That was… intense."
Alix nodded, raising her voice to the room. "Excellent work, team. Take a moment to breathe. Dr. Rao will debrief everyone shortly."
As Imani went to comfort an ashen-faced engineer, Alix's eyes returned to the data. Fascinatingly, readings hinted the strange matter seed still persisted in the crust. The experiment wasn't a total loss after all—there might now be a tiny stable patch of quark matter embedded in Dawnbank, awaiting a future attempt.
Alix exhaled a long, shaky breath and looked up at the screen showing Tachyon Wind ascending to a safer orbit, the neutron star beneath simmering sullenly, momentarily tamed. They had spent an enormous reserve of entropy credits to avert disaster—an issue the Ledger would no doubt illuminate soon. But for now, the dance had ended, and they were alive to hear the silence after the music.
Chapter 14: The Seed-Credit Ledger
Dr. Imani Rao sat with her back straight and feet flat on the floor, centering herself with a quiet breathing exercise. The conference room was small and windowless, deep in the heart of the project's command complex. Fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead. Around the table, the core team gathered: Professor Alix Zhang, pale but composed; Lieutenant Koen Matsuda, freshly returned from Dawnbank and still bearing a healing radiation burn along his jaw; Devin Nkemdiche, arms folded defensively, and a junior systems engineer from the operations crew. They all looked exhausted. Emotionally, the group was a patchwork of frayed nerves and fragile relief in the aftermath of the Dawnbank ordeal.
Imani's eyes swept the table. She was here as both participant and mediator. The Ledger had scheduled this debrief, but it was far from a typical meeting. This morning, each of them had received something unprecedented on their personal devices: a "seed-credit entropy statement." The Ledger's promise of complete transparency had arrived, in the form of personalized accounts of energy and entropy usage. It was time to confront what that meant.
"Thank you all for coming," Imani began gently. Her voice was calm, practiced in soothing tense rooms. "I know it hasn't been long since we narrowly escaped disaster. I'm grateful we're all here together." She offered a small, genuine smile. Koen attempted to return it, though his eyes remained downcast.
On the table before each person lay a thin AR display tablet, currently dark. At Imani's nod, the others tapped their screens to reactivate them. Instantly, glowing text and graphs hovered above each device. Even though each person's statement was private, Imani had encouraged them to share openly in this closed circle. If the Ledger was exposing their individual impacts, better to face it collectively rather than hide in isolation.
Imani cleared her throat. "Let's acknowledge what we're looking at: our personal entropy ledgers. These show the entropy credits seeded to each of us at the project's inception, and how our actions have debited or credited those accounts since." Her own tablet displayed her name and a set of numbers, but she resisted checking it again. She'd already memorized the key figures from earlier: Initial Credit: 10.0 EC units. Current Balance: +0.3 EC. She was slightly "in the black," likely due to her minimal travel and spartan living on-base.
But others had far starker numbers. She glanced toward Koen. He had yet to speak since sitting down. The lieutenant's jaw was taut, his tablet pushed a half-inch away as if it might bite. With a slow breath, Koen finally broke the silence. "I suppose I'll start," he said, voice rough. "Mine says Initial Credit: 15 units. Current Balance: negative 137 units." The last words came out hard. "I'm deep in debt. To entropy, apparently."
A heavy quiet settled. Alix looked at Koen with concern. Devin pursed his lips, not meeting Koen's eyes.
Imani leaned forward slightly. "Koen… Lieutenant," she said softly, "these values aren't a personal moral judgment. They reflect the energy expended on the mission. On saving all our lives, in fact."
Koen let out a hollow chuckle. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? I know what we expended. I was there, remember? Now there's a number telling me I've used the equivalent of—" he tapped his tablet, scrolling, "—the entropy output of a small city for a week. In one mission." He ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. "I trained to save lives and resources, not consume them on an epic scale."
Imani held his gaze. "And how many lives might have been lost had you not done what you did? If Dawnbank had gone quark-nova?" She let the question hang. Koen's eyes flashed, and he looked away, jaw working. He didn't answer.
Alix interjected softly, "For what it's worth, Koen, I share a lot of that 'debt.'" She turned her tablet so others could see. Professor Zhang – Initial Credit: 20. Current Balance: -98. "I authorized the entropy dump. I built the system that required such extreme measures. Nearly a hundred units in the red." Her tone was measured, but there was a tremor underneath. "If this were a bank ledger, I'd be bankrupt."
Devin frowned at his own display. "I'm basically even – just -2 from initial 10. I guess running the facility and equipment cost a bit, but nothing like… that." He gestured vaguely toward Koen and Alix's tablets.
The junior engineer chimed in quietly, "Mine's plus 1.5." She looked apologetic, as if a surplus were something to be ashamed of.
Imani sensed the stew of emotions thickening: guilt from those with high debits, awkwardness from those with credits or smaller debits, resentment perhaps lurking at the edges. This was exactly what she needed to address.
She steepled her fingers. "This isn't a competition. Nor is it a condemnation. The Ledger gave everyone an initial seed of entropy credits partly as a tool—to make us aware of our footprint and to guide future decisions." She paused, picking her words carefully. "It's natural to feel uncomfortable. We're trained to think of debts as bad, credits as good. But consider this: an entropy credit is not money or moral worth. It's a measure of physical impact. Sometimes a negative balance is a mark of heroism, of sacrifice. Koen, your negative balance reflects that you and your ship absorbed a colossal risk and cost to prevent an immeasurably larger catastrophe."
Koen's throat worked. He didn't lift his eyes, but he nodded once, grudgingly. "Sacrifice," he repeated. "Maybe. It still feels…" He trailed off. In his silence, the word hung: wrong.
Imani turned her attention to Alix. The professor was studying a bar chart on her screen – likely a breakdown of where her entropy expenditures had gone. Alix spoke without looking up. "It's enlightening in a painful way. For instance, here—" she pointed at a red spike on the graph, "—that corresponds to our Dawnbank mission's entropy dump. The Ledger allocated portions of that cost across those responsible for the decision and execution. My statement attributes about 40% of that dump to me. Koen's shows roughly 50%. The rest is spread among support roles." She sighed. "In an engineering sense, it's fair. But emotionally… It's heavy."
Everyone murmured. One might think Alix, ever the scientist, would be the least fazed by an accounting sheet. But even she looked burdened. Imani knew Alix prided herself on efficiency and precision. Seeing in black and white that her brainchild project had guzzled so much entropy likely cut her deeply.
Devin, the engineer, shook his head. "What I don't get is what we're expected to do with this information," he said. "Am I supposed to adjust my behavior? Give some of my credits to Koen and the Professor to even it out?"
He said it lightly, but Alix and Koen both tensed, as if ashamed of burdening others.
Imani addressed Devin. "There has been talk of a transfer system, yes. The Ledger would allow those with surplus to share with those in deficit, if needed. But we're not at that stage yet. Right now, the purpose is awareness and reflection."
She tapped her own tablet, bringing up a global summary that the Ledger had provided to her as council liaison. "You all should know – similar statements have been issued globally. Every participant in the Ledger of Dawn initiative, from the Council members to technicians to citizens in the pilot energy-sharing programs, got some form of entropy statement today. For most regular folks, it's a fairly straightforward report: how much power they've drawn from the new Hawking distribution network versus the sustainable target." She allowed a tiny smile. "Many people are discovering they're more efficient than they feared. Others are confused, even frightened. A few see it as an infringement, as if the Ledger is 'watching' them too closely. There have been some public figures calling it dystopian." She gave a soft sigh. "Change is hard. Seeing a number attached to your life's entropy cost is bound to raise existential questions."
Koen muttered, "No kidding."
Imani decided to bring the focus back to the personal level. "Koen, would you be willing to share what's bothering you most about your statement?" she asked gently.
He hesitated. The soldier in him warred with the man uncomfortable with exposure. But eventually he spoke, eyes on the table. "I guess… it makes me wonder what right I have to use that much. Even if it was for the mission. Negative 137 – how do I even climb out of that? Will the Ledger expect me to make that up somehow? Live the rest of my life consuming almost nothing?" His voice dropped. "And if I die, does that debt just vanish, or is it on humanity's tab now?"
A silence followed his raw questions. They were all thinking similar things, Imani knew. The notion of being accountable not just to themselves or a job, but to physics – to the balance of the universe itself – it was a new weight on the soul.
Alix spoke softly into the silence. "Koen, if I may… You carried out orders and beyond that, you improvised brilliantly out there to save us. The cost was high, yes. But if we start thinking in terms of 'deserving' to use entropy, we'll paralyze ourselves. The fact is, humanity as a whole is in massive entropy debt to our planet and possibly to the cosmos. The Ledger is a tool to help us start repaying that by changing how we use energy. But it's not meant to punish individuals who acted for the greater good."
Imani nodded. "Well said. And Koen – we are in this together. Your so-called debt is ours too, collectively." She looked around. "If anyone here ended up with surplus, it's not because they're superior or virtuous, and if someone has a deficit, it's not because they're wasteful or immoral. Circumstance, role, necessity – these play big parts."
The junior engineer shrugged. "Honestly, I feel... almost guilty that I have a positive balance, given what happened. I wasn't out there in danger. I was just monitoring systems and I've been frugal with my power use at the base. It feels unfair."
Imani offered her a kind smile. "Your contribution was essential too. The Ledger's accounting doesn't capture bravery or stress or value of lives saved. It only captures joules and entropy. So don't confuse the metric with your actual contribution. None of us would be here if one link in the chain failed."
Koen exhaled and finally met Imani's eyes. "So what now? I just live with this number?"
Imani tilted her head. "In a sense, yes. We all will live with our numbers – they'll change over time as we make choices. The hope is that by being aware, we'll strive to keep the overall balance in check. For example, Koen, on your next mission maybe we as a team find ways to minimize costs, knowing what we know now. And others with surplus might plan to use it when needed – like donating power to communities or taking on more energy-intensive tasks so those in deficit can recover."
Devin scratched his head. "I wonder if eventually we'll trade these credits. Like carbon trading but for entropy."
Alix gave a wan smile. "Possibly. But I suspect the Ledger will mediate that carefully. It's not trying to create a new currency for profit – it's trying to guide behavior at a society level. But people will be people."
Imani noted Alix's more clinical tone; the professor was regaining some analytical distance by discussing the broader picture. That was fine – it was her coping mechanism.
For Imani herself, the statements had an oddly affirming effect. She had devoted her career to intangible human factors. Seeing a low entropy footprint for herself on paper didn't diminish her sense of worth. If anything, it highlighted how what she brought to the table – empathy, guidance – barely registered in energy costs, yet was crucial. The world might finally see that not all value correlates with consumption.
She shared a thought that had been germinating in her mind. "You know, I can't help but recall how, decades ago, people started counting calories or carbon footprints. It often caused guilt and anxiety at first. But over time, many adapted, even took pride in managing it, or used it as motivation to live healthier or greener. We might see a similar adaptation here. Right now it feels alien – our very life tabulated in entropy. But it might soon become second nature, something we check and adjust like any other vital sign."
Koen snorted softly. "Check my entropy like a blood pressure reading, huh? That'll be the day."
But he didn't sound as bitter as before. More resigned, maybe even a hint of dark humor creeping in.
Alix tapped her chin. "The term 'seed-credit' stands out. We were each given an initial seed. That implies growth – that perhaps we can grow that credit or at least make it sustainable. Possibly by contributing in ways that reduce entropy elsewhere or innovate new efficiencies."
Imani nodded. "I believe so. The Council has discussed incentives for creative solutions – like if someone invents a method to draw down atmospheric heat, that yields credits that could offset deficits. The Ledger of Dawn is meant to encourage such positive actions, not just shame people for using energy."
A contemplative silence fell. Each of them absorbed that notion: that redemption, in a sense, was possible. They weren't fixed as sinner or saint by one number.
Koen took a long breath. "I guess I'll have to figure out how to earn 137 points of good karma, then." There was a faint smile on his lips now. "Maybe flying some more deadly missions," he added wryly.
Imani was relieved to hear a joke from him, however dry. It signaled he was processing, coping.
She looked around the table. "How is everyone feeling now? Please, be honest."
"Like I just saw the bill after a very expensive dinner," Devin said, which drew a chuckle from a couple of them.
"Pretty much the same," Alix agreed softly. "But at least now I understand the costs. And I accept them."
The junior engineer shrugged. "It's weird, but I think I'm okay. I do feel more aware… I was going to run a space heater in my quarters last night because it was chilly, but then I thought about these credits and just put on a sweater." She gave a self-conscious laugh.
Imani beamed at that small example. "That's how it starts. Little choices." Then she added, "Just don't freeze yourself to appease a number. It's about balance, not asceticism."
The meeting wound down gradually after that. They discussed a few practical questions – upcoming policy on credit transfers, how often statements would update (monthly, it seemed), and ways to explain these concepts to their colleagues and families. There was a tentative camaraderie in the room now, a feeling of pulling together to shoulder a new burden.
As they prepared to adjourn, Alix looked at Imani. "We should plan a briefing for the wider team and maybe an internal bulletin to contextualize these personal ledgers. So no one panics or misinterprets them."
Imani nodded. "I'll draft something with input from you all. We'll emphasize that this is a guide, not a grade."
Koen stood, rolling his shoulders. "I need to hit the med bay, they want to run another blood test for radiation markers," he said. He picked up his tablet and stared at the red negative number one more time. Then he shut it off and tucked it under his arm. "Thanks, Doc," he said to Imani quietly. "This… helped, I think."
She smiled warmly. "Anytime. Remember, Koen – none of us would be here without you. The universe might have a ledger, but it doesn't measure courage."
He managed a genuine, if tired, smile and headed for the door.
After the others had departed, Imani remained for a moment in the empty conference room. She finally allowed herself to fully read her own statement without distraction. Dr. Imani Rao – Initial Entropy Credit: 10.0 units. Current Balance: +0.3. A modest positive balance. By the Ledger's logic, she was "in credit."
But she thought of Koen's haunted expression, of Alix's heavy sigh, of the way each person had weighed their worth against a number today. The truth was, being "in credit" meant little unless she could use it to help those in need. Perhaps she could volunteer for an upcoming high-energy task, or relinquish some comforts to the communal pool. Perhaps her role was to ease not just minds but also the energy burdens of her teammates in whatever small ways she could.
Imani set the tablet down. The seed-credit ledger was a new kind of mirror, showing them parts of themselves they hadn't seen before. Uncomfortable, yes – but ultimately enlightening. As a psychologist, she understood that only by seeing one's reflection clearly could one begin to change.
She took a final deep breath, stood, and left the room with resolve. There was much work ahead: healing minds, guiding hearts, and balancing the ledger of lives as humanity stepped into this new era of accountability. And she would do her part, one credit at a time.