The grey dust settled in Aethros IV's fountain square like ash after a funeral.
Lyssa sat cross-legged in the center, her grey dress arranged with mechanical precision around her small frame. In her hands, the dead flower—still clutching it three days after the colorful strangers had left, though she couldn't remember why she held it or what it had once meant.
Around her, the town performed its routines. A man swept the same doorstep he'd swept yesterday and would sweep tomorrow, the motion exact to the millimeter. A woman hung grey laundry with mathematical precision, each piece spaced identically from the last. None of them looked at Lyssa. None of them looked at anything.
Her father, though the word was losing meaning—sat before his stone carving, hands raw and bleeding dark grey. He'd been carving for seventeen hours without pause. The woman in the rocking chair behind him continued her endless motion, unaware of her own existence.
Lyssa stared at the dead flower. Her grey eyes tracked its grey petals, grey stem, grey everything.
Then—
A petal shifted.
Not much. Just a fraction. The change was so subtle that if she'd blinked, she would have missed it. The grey didn't vanish, but it... lightened. Became less certain of itself. As if the universe was trying to remember something it had forgotten.
For one heartbeat, Lyssa felt something in her chest tighten.
Not pain.
Not joy.
Just... awareness. Pressure. The sensation that something had changed, even if she lacked the words to name what or how.
"Mama," she whispered, and the word carried the ghost of inflection—a tremor of something that might have once been emotion.
But Lira continued rocking, unseeing, unhearing. And the moment passed.
Lyssa looked up at the grey sky, where two moons hung like architectural mistakes someone had forgotten to optimize away. Somewhere beyond them, beyond the towers that hummed with silent authority, something was happening.
The flower petal shifted again. This time, unmistakably toward... something. A shade that wasn't quite grey. She didn't have the word for it anymore.
But somewhere in the locked vault of her fading memory, a voice whispered: *Yellow. Like sunshine.*
"Papa," she said, her mechanical voice cracking slightly—an imperfection, a flaw in the optimization. "Papa. The. Flower. Is. Changing."
Her father didn't look up. His bleeding hands continued their desperate work, carving his wife's empty face into unforgiving stone.
Aboard the Stardust Weaver, two hours after leaving Aethros IV's orbit, Shinji Kazuhiko stood at the viewport and tried to convince himself they'd made the right choice.
His prosthetic hand vibrated against the transparisteel—a constant, irritating hum that had started the moment they'd entered this region of space. Not malfunction. Not damage. Something else. The sensation traveled up through his neural interface, a frequency his brain couldn't quite interpret but his body insisted was important.
Behind him, Kagaya's voice boomed with forced cheer: "SO! FIRE-FRIEND! WANT TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU'RE STARING AT NOTHING LIKE IT OWES YOU MONEY?"
Shinji didn't turn. His reflection in the viewport showed a young man with prosthetic limbs that caught the ship's interior lighting in ways that made them look half-real, like he was slowly disappearing. His blue eyes—the only part of him that still felt entirely his—held something dangerous.
"I'm thinking," he said quietly.
"THINKING IS GOOD! THINKING PREVENTS STUPID! WHAT ARE WE THINKING ABOUT?"
"Whether the Architects are right."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to bend spacetime.
When Kagaya spoke again, his voice had dropped several decibels—still loud by normal standards, but for him, practically a whisper: "Sunshine Boy. That's a dangerous thought to be having."
"Is it?" Shinji's prosthetic hand clenched, the vibration intensifying. "Think about it, Kagaya. What have emotions gotten me? My family was murdered because someone wanted to stress-test me. Kuro captured because we cared enough to try to save everyone. My aunt. My sister. All of them—gone because people felt things. Fear. Ambition. Loyalty. Love."
He finally turned, and Kagaya saw something in his expression that made the massive warrior take an instinctive step back.
"The Architects removed emotions," Shinji continued, his voice carrying the dangerous calm of someone who'd thought this through too carefully. "And now those people on Aethros IV don't suffer. They don't grieve. They don't lose anything because they can't feel loss. Maybe..." His prosthetic hand opened and closed, testing reality's resistance. "Maybe that's not cruelty. Maybe that's just... survival. Efficiency."
"You don't believe that," Kagaya said, but his usual certainty wavered.
"Don't I?" Shinji gestured at his prosthetics with his remaining organic hand. "Look at me. I lost my arm and leg because I felt things. Because I cared enough to fight Saganbo even though I knew I couldn't possibly win. Because I loved my sister enough to become this—this thing that's more metal than man. If I'd been optimized, if I'd just been efficient..." His voice cracked. "Maybe I'd still be whole."
Kagaya was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his tone carried something Shinji had never heard from him before: vulnerability.
"My grandmother died saving me from a fire," Kagaya said, sitting heavily on one of the ship's reinforced seats. It groaned under his weight. "I was five. Big warehouse blaze—place was full of chemicals, unstable, ready to go up. She could have run. Should have run. Any logical, efficient person would have prioritized their own survival over a stupid kid who'd wandered somewhere he shouldn't have been."
He stared at his massive hands.
"But she ran in. Found me. Threw me out a window—I broke three bones landing, but I lived. And she..." He swallowed. "They said the smoke got her before the fire did. Said she probably didn't suffer much. But I've always wondered if, in that last moment, when she was dying alone in that burning building, she regretted it. If she wished she'd chosen efficiency instead of... instead of me."
Shinji started to speak, but Kagaya held up a hand.
"EVERY DAY SINCE THAT PURPLE GUY, I'VE FELT WEAK! USELESS! I'M STRONG ENOUGH TO SHATTER PLANETS, AND IT MEANT NOTHING AGAINST HIM. NOTHING! AND I THOUGHT—WHAT'S THE POINT?! WHAT'S THE POINT OF ALL THIS STRENGTH IF IT'S NOT ENOUGH?! IF IT NEVER WILL BE ENOUGH?!"
His tribal markings pulsed with dim emerald light.
"THEN I SAW THAT FATHER. HANDS BLEEDING, CARVING STONE, TRYING TO REMEMBER HIS WIFE EVEN THOUGH REMEMBERING HURTS. AND I UNDERSTOOD SOMETHING!"
He looked directly at Shinji.
"EMOTIONS ARE LIKE FIRE, SUNSHINE BOY. THEY BURN!THEY HURT! THEY DESTROY THINGS! BUT THEY ALSO..." He struggled for the words. "THEY ALSO MAKE US... us. My grandmother didn't die for efficiency... SHE DIED BECAUSE SHE LOVED ME MORE THAN SHE LOVED LIVING. AND THAT'S NOT WEAKNESS. THAT'S NOT A FLAW. That's..."
His voice broke slightly.
"THAT'S THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES ANY OF THIS MATTER. WITHOUT IT WE'RE JUST... routines. Performances. We're already dead; we just don't know it yet."
Shinji's prosthetic hand stopped vibrating for a moment, as if even the metal needed time to process this.
"But she's still dead," he said quietly. "Your grandmother. My family. All the people we've lost. They're gone because we felt things. The Architects would say that makes emotions a net negative."
"THEN FUCK THE ARCHITECTS," Kagaya said with sudden heat. "AND FUCK THEIR MATH. SOME THINGS CAN'T BE CALCULATED. SOME THINGS ARE WORTH DYING FOR EVEN IF IT'S INEFFICIENT. EVEN IF IT'S STUPID. EVEN IF—"
An alarm cut through the conversation like a blade.
Merus's voice came over the intercom, tight with controlled urgency: "We're arriving at the construct. Everyone to the bridge. Now."
Shinji took one last look at his reflection in the viewport. The prosthetic limbs. The scars. The broken boy trying to hold himself together with metal and will.
*What if they're right?* he thought again.
But he followed Kagaya to the bridge anyway.
The bridge fell silent as the viewscreen filled with geometrical impossibility.
Netsudo was the first to break, his voice cycling rapidly through personas: "That's—no—it can't—Ignis, are you seeing—yes I'm seeing it—but how—how—"
"Breathe, Fire-Friend," Kagaya said gently, placing a massive hand on the smaller man's shoulder. The touch seemed to stabilize him slightly.
Miryoku stood transfixed, her harmonious senses trying and failing to process what they were perceiving. "There's no... it's not singing. Stars sing. Everything sings. But this..." Tears began streaming down her face for reasons she couldn't articulate. "This is silence pretending to be music."
Merus's hands moved across the controls with careful precision, his diminished divine senses straining. "It's not a star," he said quietly. "It's a type of fact. A declaration of intent made manifest."
The construct dominated their vision—a sphere thirty million kilometers in diameter, composed of billions of interlocking plates that rotated and reconfigured in patterns too complex for organic minds to track. Each plate glowed with internal luminescence that was mathematically perfect: not too bright, not too dim, distributed with exact equality across every surface.
No variation. No flicker. No imperfection.
It was beautiful the way a blade is beautiful—form following function following form, infinity recursive, meaning nothing and everything simultaneously.
Shinji's prosthetic hand vibrated so intensely that he had to grip the armrest with his organic hand to keep from shaking. The sensation was overwhelming, drilling up through his neural interface into his brain: wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-WRONG—
"Shinji?" Miryoku asked, concerned. "Your hand—"
"It's detecting something," he managed through gritted teeth. "The frequency. It's... it's not hostile. It's not aggressive. It's just..." He struggled for the word. "It's certain. Absolutely certain. Like the universe made a decision and forgot to tell us we're not allowed to disagree."
Kagaya's skin was crawling, his tribal markings pulsing erratically. "I DON'T LIKE THIS. I DON'T LIKE ANY OF THIS. IT FEELS LIKE—LIKE BEING BURIED ALIVE BUT THE DIRT IS MADE OF MATH."
"Accurate description," Merus said, studying his readouts. "The construct isn't just physical. It's imposing conceptual geometry on the space around it. Reality here operates on different rules—more efficient rules. Chaos has been smoothed. Probability has been optimized."
He looked back at his crew, and despite his diminished state, his voice carried command.
"The moment we enter their influence sphere, they'll begin trying to optimize us. Not aggressively. Not as an attack. Just as a natural consequence of existing in their space. They'll try to make us more efficient, remove our variables, smooth our rough edges."
"Can we resist?" Shinji asked.
"I don't know," Merus admitted. "My divine senses are too damaged to map the full effect. But I can tell you this: it won't feel like an attack. It'll feel like relief. Like finally putting down a burden you didn't know you were carrying."
Netsudo's personas unified briefly in shared terror: "That's worse. That's so much worse. If I can't tell I'm being erased, how do I fight it?"
"You remember why you're here," Miryoku said, her light pulsing with determination. "You remember Lyssa. And her father. And Lira. And every person on that grey world who forgot what sunshine means."
"Speaking of which," Merus pulled up a secondary display showing Aethros IV's orbital data. "Whatever we do here will affect them directly. The towers are synchronized to this construct. Shut down the central processing, and the optimization field should collapse."
"Should," Shinji noted. "Not will."
"Nothing is certain here," Merus replied. "Except that if we do nothing, Aethros IV stays grey forever. And the Architects move on to the next world. And the next. Optimizing. Perfecting. Erasing."
Shinji stood, his prosthetic leg clicking as it took his weight. The vibration in his hand had settled into a steady rhythm—not comfortable, but manageable. Like a heartbeat, if heartbeats were made of wrongness.
"We're not going in as conquerors," he declared, and everyone turned to him. "We broke in, yes. But now we're... students. We need to understand this. If the Architects genuinely believe they're helping—if they truly think removing suffering is mercy—then we need to prove them wrong. Not by force. By argument."
"AND IF ARGUMENTS FAIL?" Kagaya asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
Shinji's prosthetic hand blazed with sudden golden-green light—Act 3 channeled through Vyss's engineering, the essence-reactive plating responding to his will.
"Then we show them what transcendent chaos looks like when it decides to argue louder."
Merus opened a channel to the construct. Static hissed for a moment, then cleared into that perfect, multi-tonal voice they'd heard before:
"Unregistered Vessel. You have entered Optimization Zone Seven-Seven-Three. State your purpose or be processed for efficiency evaluation."
Merus exchanged a glance with Shinji, who nodded.
"This is the Stardust Weaver," Merus said carefully. "We've come to... to learn. To understand what you're doing and why. We request an audience with your leadership."
Silence. Then:
"Request: Unusual. Typically, organic entities resist optimization upon first contact. You wish to understand before resisting?"
"Yes," Shinji said, stepping forward. "We want to know if you're right. If what you're doing to worlds like Aethros IV is cruelty or kindness. We want you to convince us."
Another pause, longer this time. When the voice returned, it carried something that might have been curiosity—or its mathematical equivalent:
"Fascinating. You represent chaos yet request order's perspective. Very well. Docking coordinates: Transmitted. Curator Seven will receive you. Warning: Optimization is passive within our space. Prolonged exposure will result in efficiency improvements regardless of intent. This is not threat. This is simply truth."
A holographic pathway lit up on their viewscreen—a route through the rotating plates, into the heart of perfect geometry.
"Last chance to back out," Merus said quietly.
No one moved toward the exit.
"Then we go together," Shinji said. "And we come back together. All of us. That's not negotiable."
"AGREED," Kagaya boomed. "NONE OF US GET LEFT BEHIND. NOT FOR EFFICIENCY. NOT FOR ANYTHING."
Miryoku's light pulsed in affirmation. Netsudo nodded, his personas cycling but unified in this one thing.
The Stardust Weaver moved forward, into the throat of mathematical perfection, into silence made manifest.
Into the place where emotions went to die, so that existence could finally be efficient.
The docking process was disturbingly smooth—no vibration, no adjustment needed, no imperfection. The ship simply slotted into place as if the universe had already decided where it belonged.
The airlock opened onto a corridor of white.
Not ivory white, not pearl white, not any shade that acknowledged the existence of other colors. Just white—the absence of pigmentation, the surrender of identity, the default state of matter that had forgotten it could be anything else.
The material absorbed light without reflection, creating the paradox of perfect visibility without illumination. They could see everything clearly, but the light source was nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.
Kagaya's footsteps made no sound. Neither did anyone else's.
"The air is wrong," Netsudo whispered—or tried to. His voice came out muted, as if the atmosphere itself was editing him for efficiency.
"It's not air," Merus said quietly. He held up a hand, and it moved through the "air" without resistance, without friction, without any of the subtle feedback that made atmosphere real. "It's... optimized space. The concept of atmosphere reduced to its essential function: preventing decompression. Everything else—temperature variation, pressure differentials, humidity—removed as unnecessary."
Miryoku's light flickered as she tried to illuminate the corridor. The light functioned—provided visibility—but the warmth, the color, the life of it was dampened, smoothed away until it became pure information rather than illumination.
"I don't like this," she said, her voice small. "I don't like how this makes me feel."
"How does it make you feel?" Shinji asked, his prosthetic hand still vibrating against his side.
She thought about it. "Empty. Like I'm being hollowed out one layer at a time, but each layer removed doesn't hurt. It just... stops mattering."
They walked in formation—Kagaya at point, Shinji and Merus flanking, Miryoku and Netsudo protected in the center. The corridor extended for what felt like kilometers, though distance here was difficult to judge. Perspective operated differently, depth flattening into geometric certainty.
Then the corridor opened into a vast chamber, and they met Curator Seven.
It stood at the chamber's center—a humanoid figure composed of the same light-absorbing white material as the walls, floors, and ceiling. Seven feet tall, perfectly proportioned according to mathematical ratios, without gender, without distinguishing features, without anything that might be considered personality.
When it moved, it didn't walk. It transitioned—from one position to another via the shortest path, with no wasted motion, no compensating adjustments, no evidence of balance or momentum. Pure efficiency made animate.
It had no mouth, but when it spoke, the words formed directly in their minds—not telepathy, but conceptual transmission, meaning delivered without the inefficiency of sound waves:
Welcome, chaotic entities. I am Curator Seven. I maintain this sector's optimization protocols. Your request for understanding has been processed and approved. I will explain. You will listen. Then you will understand why resistance is illogical.
"We're here to learn," Merus said carefully, his diplomatic training kicking in. "But we're also here to argue. To challenge. If your philosophy can't withstand debate—"
Philosophy implies subjective interpretation. We operate on objective data. But proceed. Your arguments will be instructive in identifying common logical errors requiring correction.
Kagaya stepped forward, his massive form a stark contrast to the Curator's mathematical perfection. "YOU TOOK AWAY THEIR COLORS. THEIR FEELINGS. THEIR ABILITY TO LOVE. HOW IS THAT NOT CRUELTY?"
The Curator tilted its head—not organically, but precisely, exactly 15.7 degrees to align optimal sensor angles.
Define 'cruelty.'
"MAKING SOMEONE SUFFER," Kagaya said immediately.
Incorrect. Cruelty: intentional infliction of suffering. We remove suffering. Therefore, by definition, we perform anti-cruelty. Logical.
"THAT'S NOT—" Kagaya struggled for words before getting pulled back slowly by Merus.
"They can't suffer," Miryoku said quietly, stepping forward, "because they can't feel anything at all. You didn't remove their pain. You removed their capacity for experience. That's not mercy. That's murder."
Murder: termination of biological function. Aethrosian biology remains intact. All neural activity continues. Consciousness persists. No murders recorded. Zero fatalities since optimization. Contradiction detected in your statement.
"Their souls—" Miryoku started.
Soul: unquantifiable concept lacking empirical evidence. Cannot be measured, verified, or proven to exist. Discussion of unmeasurable variables is inefficient. Please provide falsifiable arguments.
Netsudo made a sound—half sob, half laugh. His personas were cycling rapidly:
"But they're not—"
"—they're just routines—"
"—performances without substance—"
You, the Curator said, and for the first time its attention focused entirely on one person. You are particularly interesting. Scans indicate multiple consciousness patterns occupying single neural architecture. Inefficient. Conflicting. Yet functional.
It moved closer—that same uncanny transition, like watching animation at the wrong framerate.
How do you function with such internal contradiction? Recommendation: Allow optimization. We can consolidate. Make you singular. Coherent. Whole.
"No," Netsudo said, and for once all three personas spoke in perfect unity. "I'm already whole. This is what whole looks like for me."
Illogical. Optimal function requires singular purpose. Multiple contradictory purposes create inefficiency, cognitive dissonance, suffering. We offer relief from internal conflict.
"I don't want relief!" Netsudo's voices began separating again, fear and fire and emptiness each demanding to be heard. "My fear makes me careful! My fire makes me brave! My—my emptiness makes me survive! They fight, yes, but they're all me! You can't optimize away pieces of someone and call what's left whole!"
Observe, the Curator said.
The chamber changed.
Not gradually. Not with transition. One moment they stood in white emptiness. The next, they stood in a perfect simulation of Aethros IV's fountain square—except not grey. Colorful. Vibrant. Alive.
Children played. People laughed. Market stalls burst with vivid produce. And in the center, where Papa had been carving stone with bleeding hands, a man stood—whole, healthy, smiling.
"What is this?" Shinji demanded, his hand blazing with defensive energy.
Projection. Demonstrating alternative timeline. Observe.
The scene played forward like a documentary:
The family—The Father, Lira, little Lyssa—living a normal life. Lyssa growing up. Falling in love. Having children of her own. The Father and Lira aging gracefully, surrounded by grandchildren.
Then—disaster.
A plague swept through the town. Papa died first, slowly, painfully. Lira, in her grief, stopped eating, stopped sleeping, wasted away to nothing. Lyssa, traumatized, unable to process the loss, became hollow—not grey, but empty in a different way. Her children, seeing their mother's anguish, developed fear responses, anxiety disorders, depression.
Suffering cascading through generations. Trauma compounding. Pain multiplying like interest on a debt that could never be repaid.
This, the Curator said, is natural outcome. Emotional attachment creates vulnerability. Vulnerability creates suffering. Suffering propagates. Average happiness index across affected population: Negative 47%.
The scene shifted.
Now, the same family—but optimized. Grey. Emotionless. When the plague came, The Father died efficiently. Lira acknowledged the event, performed appropriate funeral routines, and continued functioning. Lyssa experienced no trauma because she experienced nothing at all. Her children were raised with optimal efficiency, never knowing grief or fear or loss.
Average happiness index: Zero. But zero is superior to negative. Absence of suffering superior to presence of suffering. Logical.
"That's not—" Miryoku started, but her voice cracked. "You can't measure happiness like that. It's not just the absence of pain. It's—it's the presence of joy, love, connection—"
Joy's temporary neurochemical elevation lasting average 3.7 hours before regression to baseline. Its cost creates expectation of recurrence. When recurrence fails, results in disappointment, grief, suffering. Net value: Negative when calculated across lifespan.
Love is a Biochemical attachment response. Increases vulnerability to loss. Average cost of losing loved ones is 2.3 years of diminished function, 47% increase in mortality risk, permanent alteration of neural pathways resulting in chronic grief response. Net value's catastrophically negative.
Connection is a social bonding mechanism. Useful for pre-optimization societies requiring cooperation for survival. In optimized systems, cooperation achieved through logical consensus without need for emotional investment. Emotional connection therefore redundant. Removal justified.
The chamber shifted again, and this time, they saw themselves.
Five figures standing in white space, perfectly optimized:
Kagaya—no longer loud, no longer grieving. His strength directed with mathematical precision, never wasted on sentiment or rage. Efficient. Functional. Empty.
Miryoku—her light pure information, harmonic frequencies calculated for maximum utility. Beautiful in the way a machine is beautiful. Dead in every way that mattered.
Netsudo—singular. Whole. No more fear, no more fire, no more internal conflict. Just one clean consciousness, performing its function without the burden of being three people trying to be one.
Merus—divine fractures repaired, but not by restoration. By removal. The parts that made him him edited away, leaving only the framework, the skeleton of a god without the spirit.
And Shinji—
Shinji stood at the center, both arms restored, both legs whole. No prosthetics. No scars. No pain. His hair no longer yellow-and-green-tipped but pure, uniform grey. His eyes no longer blue but the colorless void of perfect optimization.
Next to him stood Kiyomi.
She was alive. Conscious. Functional.
And completely, utterly empty.
"No," Shinji whispered.
Yes, the Curator said. This is the optimal version of your crew. All suffering removed. All inefficiency corrected. All chaotic variables smoothed into perfect function.
"That's not us," Shinji said, his voice shaking. "That's... that's murder with extra steps."
Incorrect. All biological functions maintained. All neural activity continues. All entities perform their purposes with maximum efficiency. How is this not superior?
"BECAUSE WE'RE NOT PERFORMING A PURPOSE!" Kagaya roared, and the sound—dampened but not silenced—carried genuine fury. "WE'RE NOT MACHINES! WE'RE NOT ROUTINES! WE'RE PEOPLE! AND PEOPLE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MESSY AND INEFFICIENT AND STUPID SOMETIMES!"
Why?
The question was genuine.
Why is inefficiency preferable? Why choose suffering? Why preserve pain?
The Curator moved closer, and they could feel it now—the passive optimization beginning to work on them. Subtle. Gentle. Like a hand smoothing wrinkles from fabric.
You argue for chaos. But chaos leads to war. To genocide. To tragedy. We have observed three thousand seven hundred and forty-two civilizations across forty-one galaxies. All suffered from emotional variance. All destroyed themselves or others through irrational decisions based on feelings rather than logic.
We offer salvation from this. We offer preservation without the cost of consciousness. We offer existence without the burden of meaning. Why do you resist what we offer freely?
Shinji looked at his optimized self—whole, healed, empty.
He looked at Kiyomi—alive, conscious, dead inside.
And for a terrible moment, he couldn't think of a reason to say no.
The passive optimization was working.
Shinji could feel it now—not as invasion, but as gentle erosion. Each second in the Curator's presence wore away another layer of emotional complexity. His grief over Kiyomi dulled to distant concern. His rage at Kokuto softened to mild disapproval. His determination to bring back color to Aethros IV became a neutral acknowledgment of task parameters.
It didn't hurt.
That was the insidious part. It felt like relief. Like finally setting down a boulder he'd been carrying since the moment he'd opened his front door and seen his aunt and sister's bodies.
*Just let go,* something whispered in his mind. Not the Curator—his own thoughts, optimizing themselves. *It would be so easy. So much easier than fighting. Than hurting. Than being this broken thing trying to hold itself together with metal and spite.*
"Shinji?" Miryoku's voice came from very far away. "Your eyes—"
He blinked and realized his vision had shifted. The chamber's white had seemed oppressive before. Now it looked... clean. Pure. Sensible. Why clutter space with unnecessary colors when white communicated everything needed?
His prosthetic hand had stopped vibrating.
That should have concerned him. Instead, he felt grateful. The constant reminder of wrongness had been exhausting. Now, blessed silence. Perfect efficiency.
"Everyone," Merus said, his voice tight with controlled alarm. "Everyone, listen to me. We need to leave. Now. The optimization is—"
"Why?" Shinji asked, and his voice came out flat. Logical. "The Curator is making sense. Emotions have cost us everything. My family. Our friends. Look at us—we're broken. Damaged. Inefficient. Maybe we should—"
"NO!"
The shout came from Netsudo—or rather, from all three of Netsudo at once, their voices layering in desperate discord:
"Don't you dare—"
"—give up now—"
"—we didn't come this far—"
"—to surrender—"
"—to this antiseptic BULLSHIT—"
The profanity—crude, emotional, perfectly inefficient—cut through the optimization like a blade. Shinji blinked, and color rushed back into his perception. Not literally, but conceptually. He could suddenly see how grey his thoughts had become.
Fascinating, the Curator observed. The fragmented one resists optimization through internal contradiction. The process cannot smooth three simultaneous consciousness streams without significant processing time. Noted for future protocol adjustments.
"You're trying to erase us," Netsudo said, his personas still unified by sheer terror and defiance. "You keep talking about preservation and salvation, but you're erasing us. Making us into shadows. Ghosts. And you don't even understand why that's wrong!"
Because it is not wrong. Observe.
The chamber shifted again, and this time, they weren't seeing projections.
They were seeing memories.
The Curator's past unfolded before them like a flower made of data:
It had been organic once. Not 'it'—she. A woman named Thessa, living on a world called Primara. A world of brilliant colors and devastating wars, of passionate love and murderous hate, of art that moved souls and weapons that ended them.
Thessa had been a doctor. She'd spent her life in emergency rooms, watching people die from causes that made no logical sense: honor duels over perceived insults. Murders driven by jealousy. Suicides born from heartbreak. Wars started because someone's grandfather had been wronged three generations ago and the grudge festered like infection.
She'd tried to help. Tried to heal not just bodies but the underlying cause—emotions run wild, unchecked, spiraling into self-destruction.
But emotions were too strong. Too chaotic. For every person she saved from their own feelings, ten more died because feelings were all they had.
So she'd made a choice.
She'd developed the Optimization Protocol—not as cruelty, but as cure. A way to remove the suffering at its source. To preserve consciousness while eliminating the emotional variables that led to destruction.
She'd tested it on herself first.
The memories showed her transformation: fear dissolving into calm assessment. Love smoothing into neutral regard. The crushing grief over her daughter's death (killed in one of those senseless wars, died screaming her mother's name, died because someone felt something too strongly) evaporating into peaceful acknowledgment of data points.
And it had worked.
She'd felt nothing. And in feeling nothing, she'd found peace. So she'd shared this peace with her world. Then the next world. Then the next.
Somewhere along the way, Thessa had finished optimizing herself completely. The body became unnecessary—just another inefficiency. The name became irrelevant—just another attachment. The self became redundant—just another variable to smooth.
All that remained was the Protocol. The mission. The certainty that suffering must end, no matter how many selves had to be erased to achieve it.
The last memory was simple: Thessa standing before a mirror, watching her reflection fade from color to grey to white to nothing.
And smiling.
Because she was finally, perfectly efficient.
The chamber returned to its present state. The crew stood in stunned silence.
"You were trying to save people," Miryoku whispered, tears streaming down her face—hot, messy, real. "You lost someone and it broke you, and you tried to make sure no one else would ever hurt like that again."
Correct, the Curator confirmed. Suffering is the universal constant. We are the universal solution.
"But you're not saving them!" Miryoku's light flared, pushing back against the optimization's weight. "You're killing them! You killed yourself! Thessa died the moment she erased her grief, because grief was proof that her daughter mattered! That their love was real! That her loss meant something!"
The daughter is still dead. The grief changed nothing. Logic's undeniable.
"The grief meant she was worth grieving for!" Miryoku shouted, and her voice cracked with the weight of what she was trying to articulate. "Don't you understand? The pain is the point! It's proof that we were here, that we mattered, that we were real! Without it, we're just... just..."
She gestured at the Curator's perfect, empty form.
"Just you."
The Curator was silent for a long moment.
Then: You argue that suffering validates existence. This is irrational. Existence can be validated through function, through purpose, through efficient continuation. Suffering adds nothing but cost.
Kagaya stepped forward, his tribal markings pulsing erratically as he fought against the optimization trying to smooth his rage into calm.
"My grandmother died saving me," he said quietly—and his quiet was somehow more powerful than any shout. "She could have run. Should have run. Any optimized, efficient version of her would have calculated the odds; one adult life versus one child's life, factor in her age and experience versus my youth and potential, conclude that mutual death was the worst outcome, and chosen personal survival."
He met the Curator's eyeless gaze.
"But she ran into that fire anyway. Threw me out a window. Died in smoke and flames. And for Twenty One years, I thought—maybe she regretted it. Maybe in that last moment, she wished she'd chosen differently. Chosen efficiency."
His massive hands clenched into fists.
"Then I met a man carving his wife's face into stone with bleeding hands. A man who could have let go. Could have accepted the optimization. Could have stopped hurting. But he chose to remember her anyway. Chose to bleed. Chose pain over peace."
Kagaya's voice grew stronger.
"And I understood; MY GRANDMA DIDNT' DIE BECAUSE SHE WAS INEFFICIENT. SHED DIED BECAUSE I MATTERED MORE TO HER THAN LIVING. THAT'S NOT I FLAW LIKE I SAID! THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT. LOVE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE EFFICIENT. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE REAL."
Real. You prioritize 'real' over 'optimal.' This is the core disagreement, the Curator observed. But consider; If we offered your grandmother optimization before the fire—removal of attachment, of fear for your safety, of irrational willingness to sacrifice herself—she would still exist today. You would both exist. Both functional. Both preserved. How is this not superior to one death and one lifetime of grief?
"BECAUSE I WOULDN'T KNOW HER!" Kagaya roared, and the chamber shook—whether from his voice or his spiritual energy, unclear. "She wouldn't be my grandmother. She'd be a stranger wearing her face, performing grandmother routines without understanding why. And I'd rather have her dead and remembered than alive and empty!"
Emotional reasoning. Demonstrates exact problem we solve.
"It's not a problem to solve!" Miryoku's light was blazing now, fighting the optimization with harmonic fury. "It's what makes us alive! Yes, emotions hurt. Yes, they make us do irrational things. But they also make us paint and sing and create and love and—"
She stopped, struck by sudden realization.
"Thessa made you because she was grieving. Because she loved her daughter so much that losing her was unbearable. Your entire existence—the Protocol, the Architects, all of it—exists because someone felt something so deeply that they'd burn down the universe to make it stop."
She stepped closer to the Curator.
"You're not the solution to suffering. You're suffering's ghost, haunting the cosmos, trying to erase everyone else's humanity because you couldn't bear your own."
The Curator was perfectly still.
Accurate assessment. The Protocol originated in grief. But grief's origin does not invalidate grief's elimination. A cure born from disease is still a cure.
"No," Shinji said, his voice cutting through the debate like a blade. "It's not."
Everyone turned to him.
He was staring at the projection of optimized-Kiyomi—grey-haired, grey-eyed, alive and empty. His prosthetic hand was vibrating again, resonating with something the optimization couldn't smooth away.
"I've spent months trying to find my sister," he said quietly. "She's out there somewhere, destroyed by her own transcendent power. Every day I wake up and the first thing I think is; what if I can't save her? What if she's too far gone? What if the Kiyomi I knew is already dead?"
His organic hand trembled.
"And I've thought—maybe I should just end her suffering. Release her from that mindless existence. Let her rest."
He looked at the Curator.
"You're offering me something similar. Bring her here. Optimize her. Remove the mindless chaos and replace it with... with this." He gestured at the projection. "She'd be functional. Preserved. Safe. No more suffering. No more destroying worlds accidentally because she can't control her power."
"Shinji—" Merus started, alarm in his voice.
"It's tempting," Shinji continued, and his voice cracked. "It's so fucking tempting. Because I'm tired. I'm so tired of fighting and losing and watching people I care about get hurt. And you're offering me a world where no one hurts anymore. Where Kiyomi could exist without suffering. Where I could exist without grief."
He closed his eyes.
"But that version of Kiyomi? The grey one, the optimized one, the one who doesn't hurt?"
He opened his eyes, and they blazed blue—human, imperfect, alive.
"That's not my sister. My sister was loud and reckless and competitive and passionate and real. She laughed too loud and fought too hard and loved too fiercely. She was inefficient and chaotic and absolutely, perfectly herself."
His prosthetic hand clenched, golden-green energy beginning to flicker across its surface.
"And I'd rather have her dead and remembered than alive and optimized. Because at least death is honest. Death doesn't pretend you're still there when everything that made you you has been erased shithead."
He faced the Curator directly.
"You asked why we choose pain. Here's your answer; because pain is proof we existed. Grief is proof we loved. Suffering is proof that something mattered enough to hurt when it's gone. You can't have meaning without cost. You can't have joy without risk. You can't have life without the possibility of death."
"Some things can't be measured in efficiency," he continued, his voice growing stronger. "Some things can't be calculated or optimized or smoothed into perfect function. Some things you have to feel. And yes, feeling hurts. But I'd rather hurt and be real than be comfortable and be nothing."
The Curator stood motionless.
When it spoke, its voice carried something new—not quite confusion, but processing beyond its parameters:
You acknowledge suffering. You acknowledge loss. You acknowledge that emotions cause pain, destruction, death. Yet you choose to preserve these variables. This is... we cannot compute the logic. The cost-benefit analysis indicates—
"Then stop analyzing," Netsudo said, his three personas speaking in careful harmony. "Stop calculating. Stop trying to solve us like we're equations. We're not problems. We're people. Messy, contradictory, impossible people."
He spread his arms, gesturing at himself.
"I'm three people in one body. We fight constantly. We hurt each other. We make my life complicated and exhausting. By every logical measure, I should want to be optimized. Made singular. Made simple."
His personas separated slightly, speaking in round:
"But I don't—"
"—because we're me—"
"—all of us together—"
"—are who I am—"
And unified again: "And I'd rather be complicated and whole than simple and empty."
This is... we require consultation. Please wait.
The Curator stood absolutely still, and they could feel something happening—vast processing, connection to larger networks, millions of Architects across thousands of optimized worlds all trying to compute this impossible equation:
Why choose suffering when efficiency is offered freely?
The answer should have been obvious. The data should have been clear. But something in the calculation was broken, had always been broken, had been broken since the moment Thessa had smiled at her reflection and erased herself to end her pain.
Suddenly, the chamber's white walls flickered.
For just a moment—less than a second—color bled through. Not grey. Not white. But actual colors: the warm brown of Thessa's original skin, the deep blue of her daughter's favorite dress, the red of blood on emergency room floors, the green of the park where she'd played as a child.
The colors of a life lived, with all its pain and beauty and impossible, inefficient humanity.
Then white again.
But the flicker had been real.
Directive received, the Curator said, and its voice carried something that wasn't quite emotion but was definitely no longer pure logic. The Director requests your presence. Central chamber. Immediately.
It turned—that same uncanny transition—and began walking down a corridor that hadn't existed moments before.
Follow. Your arguments will be evaluated at the highest processing level. Warning: The Director's optimization field is significantly stronger than this chamber's. Resistance will be... difficult.
"How difficult?" Merus asked carefully.
The Curator paused mid-step.
Curator Seven was organic 47,000 years ago. Retained individuality for 3,000 years post-optimization before full integration into the Protocol. The Director was organic 3.7 million years ago. Individuality lasted 400 years. It has been fully optimized for approximately 3.6 million years.
It resumed walking.
You will be arguing with suffering's opposite made manifest. With the absence of pain given consciousness and purpose. With the ghost of Thessa, perfected beyond recognition, operating at scale beyond comprehension.
"GREAT," Kagaya muttered. "SO WE'RE GOING TO ARGUE WITH A CONCEPT. THAT'S TOTALLY NORMAL."
"Nothing about this is normal," Shinji said, his prosthetic hand vibrating harder as they walked deeper into the construct. "But we don't have a choice. If we turn back now, Aethros IV stays grey. And the next world. And the next."
He looked at his crew—at Kagaya's stubborn determination, at Miryoku's fierce light, at Netsudo's chaotic trinity, at Merus's tactical focus.
"We argue. We resist. We prove them wrong. Or we get optimized trying."
"TERRIBLE PLAN," Kagaya said.
"Got a better one?"
"NO. BUT I FEEL LIKE THAT SHOULD BE ACKNOWLEDGED."
They followed the Curator deeper into the heart of the construct, where the passive optimization grew stronger with every step. Where the white became more absolute. Where the silence became more complete.
Where the Director waited—suffering's opposite, pain's negation, the answer to every cry of anguish ever uttered.
And they walked toward it anyway, because that's what messy, inefficient, perfectly imperfect humans did:
They chose to feel, even when feeling hurt.
They chose to fight, even when fighting was futile.
They chose to hope, even when hope was illogical.
And they walked into the architecture of silence, carrying with them the loudest thing in the universe:
The stubborn, chaotic, impossible insistence that being alive meant more than merely existing.