Alan never believed in gods.
Not the old ones, not the new ones, not the recycled myths wrapped in modern logic. The universe was vast, indifferent, and governed by probability. Bad luck existed. Good luck existed. Neither required divine intent.
And yet, as the cockpit alarms screamed and the navigation display dissolved into static, Alan found himself wondering—briefly, bitterly—whether something out there was actively laughing at him.
"Of course," he muttered. "Of course this is happening."
The Nebula shuddered violently, its hull groaning as if the ship itself were protesting his life choices. Red warning icons bloomed across the console, cascading faster than his eyes could track.
NAVIGATION ERROR.
COURSE DEVIATION: CRITICAL.
MANUAL OVERRIDE FAILED.
Alan slammed his palm against the console, trying to stabilize the controls. Outside the forward viewport, space no longer looked like space. It had turned into a warped ocean of violet light—thick, luminous, and wrong.
The Purple Rainstorm.
Not rain. Never rain.
A resonance phenomenon. Aggressive radiation harmonics interacting with unknown particles. Military fleets marked it as a no-fly zone. Even armoured cruisers rerouted to avoid it.
And he was flying straight into it.
"No, no, no—" Alan pulled the emergency lever.
The Nebula lurched, inertial dampeners failing for half a heartbeat. His vision blurred. His harness cut into his shoulders.
The navigation system finally came back online—not with a solution, but with a single, merciless answer.
EMERGENCY LANDING REQUIRED.
NEAREST PLANET: DESIGNATION OR-219.
RISK LEVEL: ORANGE / CLASS II.
Alan didn't need the database to tell him what that meant.
Orange-Class planets were survivable—technically. Hostile environments. Unstable conditions. Long-term exposure discouraged. Short-term survival… uncertain.
The surface image resolved on the display.
A planet drowned in violet.
Purple clouds churned endlessly around its atmosphere, streaked with flashes of radiant energy. The entire world glowed like a bruised gemstone—beautiful in a way that triggered instinctive fear.
Alan exhaled slowly.
"So, this is how it ends," he said quietly. "Not pirates. Not debt collectors. Just bad coordinates."
The irony stung. The Nebula was supposed to be his safe bet—a modest exploration ship, unremarkable enough to avoid attention. He'd been heading to an uninhabited backwater for a small archaeological dig. Quiet. Profitable. Low risk.
The course deviation had saved him from a pirate ambush and a lethal crimson dust cloud.
And delivered him here instead.
If there were gods, they had a cruel sense of humour.
The ship punched into the upper atmosphere. Violet light clawed at the hull, producing a sound somewhere between static and screaming metal. The shields flared once—then collapsed.
Alan gritted his teeth and took manual control.
"Alright," he said, voice steady despite everything. "We'll do this the old-fashioned way."
The Nebula burned through its last reserves fighting gravity. He aimed for a relatively flat expanse between jagged rock formations, adjusting descent angles by instinct and experience rather than instruments that no longer trusted reality.
Impact came hard.
The ship slammed into the surface, skidding across crystalline terrain before coming to a violent halt. Alan's head snapped forward, the harness barely doing its job. Something cracked—either in the hull or in his ribs. He wasn't sure which.
Silence followed.
Then the alarms died, one by one, as if exhausted.
Alan stayed still for several seconds, breathing carefully.
"Status?" he asked the empty cockpit.
No response.
Eventually, he unbuckled himself and stood. Gravity felt… normal. That alone was a small miracle.
The viewport had fractured but not shattered. Through it, he saw the planet properly for the first time.
Purple.
Everything was purple.
The ground shimmered with crystalline dust. The sky churned in endless motion, sheets of radiant energy arcing through the clouds like slow lightning. It was terrifying.
And undeniably beautiful.
"Okay," Alan said, forcing a smile. "You're alive. The ship is… mostly in one piece. Could be worse."
He ran a quick diagnostic. The results were grim.
Propulsion: severely degraded.
Power core: unstable.
Take-off probability: low.
He sighed.
The only option was to assess the damage from outside.
Alan suited up quickly, grabbing his portable scanner and emergency supplies before sealing the airlock behind him. The moment he stepped onto the surface, the environment pressed in on him—not physically, but perceptually. The radiation sang at the edge of his senses, a low, dissonant hum.
The Purple Rainstorm wasn't liquid. It was resonance—waves of energy interacting violently with matter.
Staying too long would be fatal.
He deployed the micro-lander from the ship's belly, climbing into the compact vehicle. With careful throttle control, he began exploring the immediate area, mapping terrain and scanning for shelter—or anything that might help him escape.
That was when the scanner chirped.
Alan frowned.
Metal.
Deep underground.
He brought the micro-lander to a halt and recalibrated the scan. The signal persisted irregular, corroded, but unmistakably artificial.
"Please tell me that's not another wreck," he murmured.
Curiosity outweighed caution. It always did.
He began digging.
Hours later—sweating, exhausted, radiation alarms blinking at the edge of acceptable limits—Alan uncovered a massive, rusted structure.
A ship.
Or what remained of one.
Only a section was visible: a tail wing, half-buried, eaten away by time and the relentless storm. The metal was ancient, its design unfamiliar.
Alan's heart began to race.
"No way…"
He ran a full scan, fingers trembling.
The readings made no sense.
The materials were outdated. Primitive by modern standards. The structural patterns matched no known civilian or military registry.
He swallowed hard.
"Age estimate," he whispered.
The scanner calculated for several seconds before displaying the result.
MINIMUM AGE: 1,000 YEARS.
PROBABLE AGE: SIGNIFICANTLY OLDER.
Alan stared.
That alone would have been priceless.
But when he accessed the internal data core—miraculously intact—his breath caught.
Fragmented navigation logs flickered onto his display.
Dates.
Coordinates.
Historical markers.
Alan felt the colour drain from his face.
"Crime Star Era," he said softly. "This is… eight thousand years old."
The period when humanity left its origin world.
The era when the Doctrine of Original Sin first emerged.
An artifact like this could rewrite accepted history.
Hands shaking, Alan forced his way into the ship's interior.
Inside, time had done its work. Corridors collapsed. Systems fused into unrecognizable masses. But deep within, he found a sealed chamber—an experimental compartment by the look of it.
Something lay at its centre.
A wrist-mounted device.
Alan hesitated only a moment before disconnecting it from the decayed machinery.
The device twitched.
Then activated.
A burst of static filled the chamber, followed by a voice—broken, layered, distorted beyond easy recognition.
"—Initialization… incomplete… Voice modulation error… Identity coherence failure…"
Alan nearly dropped it.
"I—uh," he said carefully. "Hello?"
The device hummed.
"…External interaction detected. Biological operator confirmed. Threat assessment: negative."
The voice shifted mid-sentence, tone and pitch warping.
"Thank you," it said. "For retrieving me."
Alan blinked.
"You're… an AI?"
"Affirmative," the device replied. "Although my operational integrity is… compromised. My designation has been lost."
"Well," Alan said dryly, "your voice is terrible."
"…Noted," the AI replied. "I apologize."
He stared at the ancient machine in his hand.
"Can you help me fix my ship?" he asked. "And get me off this planet?"
The device paused.
"Current spatial coordinates confirmed," it said. "Temporal coordinates… missing."
Alan frowned. "It's the year 2887."
Silence.
Then—
"…Data synchronized," the AI said softly. "Elapsed time discrepancy acknowledged."
A strange sensation passed through the chamber, as if something ancient had just awakened fully.
"I will assist you," the AI continued. "Your vessel's propulsion system is critically degraded. Launch in its current state carries a high probability of catastrophic disintegration."
Alan winced.
"However," the AI added, "repairs are possible. Optimization is also feasible."
He laughed weakly.
"You're eight thousand years out of date," he said. "And you think you can improve my ship?"
"…Yes."
Alan looked at the storm outside. At the broken remains of history around him. At the device in his hand—honest, damaged, and somehow earnest.
"Well," he said, exhaling. "I guess I'm trusting an ancient AI today."
If there were gods, they had stopped laughing.
The real story was just beginning.