There was nothing wrong with the equation.
At least, not at first.
Geacx Novair stared at the transparent display before him, his fingers still, his breathing steady, his heart rate stable. Every biological indicator showed a normal state. The non-Euclidean differential equation he had assembled obeyed every mathematical law known to humanity. There was no violation of logic. No rogue variables. No hidden singularities.
And that was precisely the problem.
"Repeat the fourteenth simulation," he said.
His voice was calm, flat, without the dramatic strain that usually appeared in recordings of scientists who would later fail. He had been standing for too long in the space between awe and suspicion to be surprised by anything.
The system responded without sound. Numbers moved. The visual space before him folded, not graphically, but conceptually. He did not see the folding. He understood it.
Geacx frowned.
"Still the same," he murmured.
Outside the observation module, the stars looked as they always had. No strange light. No radiation disturbances. No sign that reality was being humiliated by a single line of mathematics.
Yet the result remained consistent.
Space could not only be penetrated. It could be traversed without displacement.
That was impossible.
Or at least, it should have been impossible.
The Asterion-Lambda research station orbited far beyond the reach of Earth's political and religious influence. Administratively, the place was "neutral." Practically, it was a location where humans tried to think about things that should not be thought about for too long.
Geacx knew his reputation among his colleagues.
Too calm. Too precise. Too little prayer for someone who spent his life peering into the structure of the universe.
"Novair," a voice came from behind him. "You haven't slept for twenty-eight hours."
He turned. Dr. Kaelin Rhos, an experimental physicist, stood with his arms crossed. His tone was not accusatory, only factual, the characteristic manner of someone who had long since given up trying to manage other people's lives.
"I'm not tired," Geacx replied.
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
Kaelin stepped closer, glancing at the equation suspended in the air. His eyes narrowed.
"That's… still the same as yesterday?"
"The same version," Geacx said. "The same result."
Kaelin let out a short breath. "You realize the implications."
Geacx was silent for a moment.
"I realize what it cannot yet explain," he said finally. "And that troubles me more."
Kaelin gave a small laugh, without humor. "You've found a shortcut across dimensions, Geacx. That isn't 'troubling.' That's history."
"No," Geacx said quietly. "It's an anomaly."
He looked back at the display. "History has causes. This… does not."
The project had no official name yet. Internally, they called it Se Sixfeald Farung, the Sixfold Journey. At first it was only a working term, an academic joke about higher-dimensional space. No one had expected the term to last.
Let alone become reality.
The principle was simple, at least on paper. If space could be represented as a layered mathematical structure, then movement did not have to follow a trajectory, but an equivalence of position. Not moving through space, but rearranging the relationships of space itself.
The problem was that every simulation always stopped at one point.
The same point.
As if there were something outside their model that refused to be included.
"Geacx," Kaelin said more softly, "have you ever thought… that maybe there are limits that truly should not be crossed?"
The question was not scientific. And they both knew it.
Geacx did not answer immediately.
"I only work with what can be formulated," he said. "If there is a limit, it should be expressible."
"And if it isn't?"
"If it isn't," Geacx gave a slight shrug, "then that limit is not a law. Only a habit."
Kaelin looked at him for a long moment, as if wanting to say something, then held it back.
"The Council will request a limited trial," he said at last. "Unmanned."
Geacx nodded. "As it should be."
Yet inside him, there was something else, not a premonition, not fear. More like a non-emotional impatience. A kind of mathematical pull, as if the equation were waiting for something.
Or someone.
The first trial proceeded without incident. Sensors recorded minimal distortion. No loss of mass. No temporal anomalies.
And that was its first failure.
The second trial produced identical data.
The third trial was the same.
"This makes no sense," one of the technicians said. "There should be deviation."
Geacx stood behind them, silent.
He saw what they did not see.
Not in the data. But in the absence of error.
As if the system had been made to work, not discovered.
"Add one variable," he said suddenly.
Kaelin turned. "What variable?"
Geacx hesitated for a moment. For the first time since the project had begun.
"…the observer."
The room fell silent.
"You're joking," Kaelin said.
"No," Geacx replied. "All our models assume reality is independent of consciousness. But if that assumption is wrong, if the structure of space responds to who passes through it, then unmanned trials are always incomplete."
"That isn't physics," Kaelin objected.
"Perhaps," Geacx said. "Or perhaps physics has only ever been a consistent coincidence."
The decision was not made that day. Nor the day after.
But something had shifted.
That night, if the concept of night still applied in distant orbit, Geacx was alone in the observation module. He looked out at the universe without religious awe, without prayer, without metaphor.
Only facts.
The stars promised nothing. They simply existed.
"If there is a God," he murmured, almost without sound, "He must like structure."
There was no answer.
Yet, far beyond the reach of instruments, something recorded the equation.
Not as a threat. Not as an error.
But as a deviation that had finally occurred.
And somewhere that could not yet be called space, could not yet be called time, a trajectory opened, without permission, without sound, without a name.
The next chapter would not begin with a journey.
It would begin with the first mistake that could not be corrected.