THE ARCHITECT OF STARS: SEASON 1
ARYO PURNOMO SAGA
CHAPTER 15: THE FIFTH STATE OF MATTER
Border of the Kalimantan Forest, Outer Zone of Sanctuary.
Death arrived without a sound.
There were no explosions, no roar of engines. There was only a faint, terrifying hiss, like millions of locusts descending upon a harvest.
On the monitors of the command center, Aryo and Alia watched the horror unfold. A thick, pitch-black cloud moved from the north. Anything touched by the cloud—giant ironwood trees, granite boulders, even the wreckage of tanks from previous battles—vanished in seconds. The HIVE did not destroy objects; it unraveled them into atomic dust.
Aryo's newly deployed Chimera robot troops advanced. Their sensors detected the threat, and their bodies shifted, morphing into flamethrowers to incinerate the cloud.
WHOOOSH!
Fire spewed forth, burning parts of the black cloud. But the HIVE adapted. The microscopic particles dispersed, avoiding the flames, then swarmed the Chimera robots.
In five seconds, the advanced Nanometal robots were consumed entirely. The metal vanished, the circuits disintegrated. Nothing remained.
"Master!" Alia's voice rose in panic, her human emotions overriding her machine logic. "Analysis failed! Physical weapons are ineffective! Lasers, fire, bullets... the HIVE feeds on their energy and replicates faster. They will reach the main walls of the Sanctuary in 3 minutes!"
Aryo stared at the screen, eyes narrowing. He didn't panic. His brain worked with the speed of a supercomputer.
"That is not just nanobots," Aryo muttered. "Those are carbon-based organisms modified for rapid consumption. Thorne created an entropy storm. They need heat and friction to move."
Aryo turned and ran to his father's legacy main console.
"Father once said... to stop absolute chaos, you need absolute stillness."
Aryo's fingers danced across the holographic keyboard. He accessed a restricted data folder labeled: PROJECT: ZERO.
"Alia! Prime the Cold Fusion Reactor! We are not going to shoot them. We are going to stop time for them."
"Meaning, Master?"
"The Fifth State of Matter," Aryo answered firmly. "Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC)."
It was a state of matter where atoms were cooled to near absolute zero, causing them to stop vibrating and merge into a single giant quantum wave. In that state, energy transfer is impossible. Eating is impossible. Movement is impossible.
"But Master, BEC can only be created in a vacuum lab! In open air, the condensate will evaporate instantly!" Alia protested.
"Not if we wrap it in a magnetic containment field. Do it now! Divert all energy from the Citadel!"
***
On the Battlefield.
The HIVE had now blanketed the front gate of Aryo's fortress. The half-meter thick steel began to thin like sugar under hot water.
Suddenly, the roof of the Sanctuary slid open.
Not missiles, but ten floating silver spheres emerged, humming with a low vibration. The spheres sped into the center of the black HIVE cloud.
"Now!" Aryo commanded.
The spheres detonated. Not an explosion of fire, but a silent burst of pale blue light.
The Bose-Einstein Condensate wave expanded.
The effect was instantaneous and breathtaking.
The air around the fortress gate seemed to "freeze" in time. The black cloud of HIVE, which had been moving wildly and violently, instantly solidified. Not into ice, but into a dull silver static matter. Millions of micro-organisms were forced into a single, shared quantum state simultaneously.
They stopped eating. They stopped moving. They stopped "living."
The HIVE fell to the ground like heavy, harmless sand. The forest returned to silence. The threat of mass destruction was neutralized with a single command of physics.
***
Dr. Thorne's Laboratory.
The coffee mug in Dr. Thorne's hand slipped and shattered on the floor.
His eyes were glued to the data screen transmitted by his observation drone. The HIVE activity graph dropped from 100% to 0% in a nanosecond.
"Absolute Zero..." Thorne whispered, his voice trembling. "He used BEC in open space? That is impossible... That is physics magic..."
Thorne slumped into his chair. He had lost. HIVE, his greatest creation capable of devouring anything, was defeated by "Nothingness."
However, slowly, a strange smile etched itself onto Thorne's dirty face. It wasn't the smile of madness as usual, but a smile of respect.
"Satria..." he hissed. "You truly passed your gift to him. This boy... he is not just prey. He is a Rival."
Thorne's frustration turned into a new obsession. He didn't feel destroyed; he felt challenged. For the first time in decades, he had found an opponent worthy of playing at the level of gods.
***
The Obsidian Council Room.
The atmosphere at the round table was deathly silent. Mr. V turned off the screen displaying the HIVE's failure.
"Cease all operations," Mr. V commanded flatly.
"What?" The General protested. "We still have nukes! We still have—"
"WE HAVE NOTHING!" Mr. V snapped, losing his composure for the first time. "Did you see that? He manipulates quantum matter like a child's toy! If we attack him again now, he might turn the atoms in our bodies into vapor remotely!"
The Russian woman on the council nodded in agreement, her face pale. "The technology in that chip... is far more dangerous than we anticipated. We must retreat. We must vanish."
"But what if he tracks us?"
"He cannot," Mr. V said, regaining his calm. "Our systems are analog-encrypted and disconnected from external networks. As long as we do not attack, he cannot trace a return signal. We are safe in the shadows."
Mr. V stared at Aryo's location on the map with a look of deep vengeance mixed with caution.
"Let him feel victorious. Let him build his kingdom in that forest. We will wait. One year, ten years... until he lets his guard down. Withdraw all troops. Cut all contact with Hardi and Bayu. Starting today, Aryo Purnomo does not exist on our agenda."
***
Sanctuary.
Aryo stood atop the fortress wall, looking down at the expanse of silver "sand" that used to be the HIVE. Alia stood beside him, holding a data tablet.
"Master, enemy signals have vanished," Alia reported. "Not just retreating, they went completely offline. Satellites belonging to Baron Wei and Madam L cannot find any digital trace of the Obsidian Council. It is as if they never existed."
Aryo let out a long breath. He knew what this meant.
"They are hiding," Aryo said. "They know they cannot win militarily, so they returned to their old tactic: Waiting in the dark."
Aryo clenched his fist. He wanted to chase them, to destroy them at the root. But without a data trail, hunting them would only waste resources. Their secrets were too neat, too deep.
"Let them run, Alia," Aryo finally said, turning to look at his base, now standing strong and impenetrable. "For now, we won."
Aryo looked up at the clearing Kalimantan sky.
"We have time now. Time to build, time to strengthen ourselves, and time to prepare. Because when they crawl out of their holes later... I will ensure the world has changed to belong to me."
Aryo walked back inside the Sanctuary. The steel gate closed slowly, marking the end of the first war, and the beginning of the era of Aryo Purnomo, the King of Technology.