The humidity in Akure didn't care about the high-performance cooling fans hummed inside Hallel's home office. Outside, the evening sun was a bruised purple, hanging low over the skyline of Ondo State, but inside the small room, the world was composed of glowing lines of code and the frantic rhythmic tapping of mechanical keys.
Hallel leaned back, his face illuminated by the harsh blue light of three monitors. On his main screen, a complex string of Python scripts was running a recursive diagnostic on a quantum-link simulation. On the side monitor, a WhatsApp video call was active.
"Bayo, if you rub your eyes any harder, you're going to pop a blood vessel," Hallel said, his voice carrying the warm, rhythmic cadence of home.
On the screen, Bayo sat in a starkly different environment. He was surrounded by the sleek, sterile architecture of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. His NASA flight suit was unzipped to the waist, revealing a sweat-stained undershirt. Behind him, massive telemetry walls displayed the cold, black void of space, dotted with the telemetry markers of a dozen deep-space probes.
"I'll pop more than a blood vessel if I don't get this tracking data to stabilize," Bayo replied, his voice raspy. He adjusted his glasses, which were sliding down the bridge of his nose. "The Object is three astronomical units past the Kuiper Belt, and it just dropped another five percent in velocity. Hallel, rocks don't decelerate. Not like this. This isn't gravity-assisted breaking. This is... intent."
Hallel frowned, leaning closer to his monitor. "Intent is a heavy word for a scientist, Bayo. You're talking about propulsion. You're talking about an engine the size of a small moon."
"I'm talking about a nightmare," Bayo snapped, though there was no heat in it, only exhaustion. "The media is calling it the 'Christmas Star' because of the red glow, but it's not a star. It's a mountain of iron and silicate, and it's coming straight for the ecliptic plane. If my math is right—and I'm praying it isn't—it's going to arrive in five years. Exactly."
Hallel began typing, his fingers flying across the keys with the precision of a concert pianist. "I'm sending you that optimization script I finished this morning. It's a custom-built Lambda-field heuristic. If that thing is emitting a signature, this will find it. It's based on that theoretical 'Dark Energy resonance' paper we discussed last month."
"The one that everyone called 'Cybergeek mysticism'?" Bayo managed a weak grin. "NASA's senior board almost laughed me out of the room when I mentioned it."
"Let them laugh," Hallel said, his eyes fixed on the data stream. "The world is built on things people used to call magic. Science is just the language we use to explain it so we don't get scared. Check your terminal. The packet is arriving... now."
Bayo turned to his console, his hands flying over the JPL interface. "Got it. Integrating the script into the Deep Space Network array now. If this works, Hallel, I owe you a crate of the coldest Star lager in Lagos."
"I'll hold you to that. When you come home for the holidays, we—wait." Hallel's voice trailed off.
On his screen in Akure, the code wasn't just running. It was... reacting. The green lines of text began to shimmer, turning a vibrant, electric cerulean. The characters didn't just scroll; they began to rotate, forming a complex, geometric circle that pulsed with a rhythmic light.
"Bayo, are you seeing this?" Hallel asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. "The script is self-modifying. It's pulling resources from my GPU that shouldn't even exist. My power draw is spiking... 500%, 800%... Bayo, get out of there!"
In Pasadena, the alarms finally began to scream. The sterile white lights of the lab turned into a strobe of emergency reds. Bayo stood up, his chair clattering to the floor. The telemetry wall behind him didn't show space anymore. It was showing the same glowing, geometric circle—a ring of light that looked like a blueprint for the universe.
"The gravity!" Bayo yelled, his voice barely audible over the sudden roar of rushing air. "Hallel, the sensors are reading a localized singularity in the middle of the room! It's pulling me in!"
"Bayo! Disconnect the array! Pull the—!"
Hallel watched in horror as the video feed from California didn't just cut out—it folded. The image of the lab compressed into a single, blinding point of light. A surge of energy back-fed through the connection, blowing out Hallel's monitors in a shower of glass and sparks.
In the sudden, ringing silence of his Akure office, Hallel sat in the dark, the smell of ozone and burnt silicon filling the air. On the floor, his motherboard was still glowing with a faint, dying purple light.
Bayo was gone.
The first thing Bayo felt was the weight.
It wasn't just the weight of his body; it was the weight of his very soul. Every cell in his lungs felt like it was being squeezed by a giant's fist. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird, struggling to push blood against a crushing, invisible force.
1.5g, his mind whispered, the engineer in him clinging to logic to keep from drowning in panic. Surface gravity has increased by approximately fifty percent. My mass is the same, but my weight... I'm two hundred and seventy pounds of lead.
He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were heavy shutters. When he finally forced them open, he wasn't met with the sterile LED glow of NASA.
He was lying on a circular dais of white stone, etched with grooves that shimmered with a fading blue light. High above him, a vaulted ceiling stretched into the gloom, supported by pillars that were a strange hybrid of Gothic stonework and exposed, rusted circuitry. Thick cables, wrapped in what looked like silver silk, snaked up the walls like the veins of a dead god.
"The prophecy..." a voice whispered. It was melodic, echoing through the vast hall, but it carried a strange, metallic resonance.
Bayo gasped, his chest heaving as he fought to draw air. He rolled onto his side, his arm shaking violently under the increased gravity. He looked up and froze.
Standing at the edge of the dais were figures pulled from a fever dream. In the center was a woman with skin the color of polished marble and ears that tapered into sharp, elegant points. She wore robes of deep violet, but around her waist was a belt of tactical pouches, and strapped to her back was a staff tipped with a glowing vacuum tube.
To her left stood a creature that made Bayo's breath catch. It was a man, but his head was that of a lion, covered in a thick, golden mane. His golden eyes were wide with a mix of awe and predatory hunger. He was dressed in leather armor reinforced with plates of what looked like recycled aerospace titanium.
"NASA..." the woman whispered, her eyes glowing with a faint, internal light. She was looking at the patch on Bayo's shoulder—the blue circle he had worn with pride just minutes ago.
"Where..." Bayo coughed, the sound echoing hollowly. "Where am I? What year...?"
The woman stepped forward, her movements graceful despite the crushing gravity. She knelt beside him, and for a moment, Bayo saw something in her eyes that he recognized from the halls of JPL. It wasn't worship. It was the desperate, wide-eyed look of an engineer staring at a problem they couldn't solve.
"You are in the High Temple of Nexus, Prophet," she said. Her voice was steady, but her hand trembled as she reached out to touch the fabric of his flight suit. "By the reckoning of the Founders, it is the year 4000. By our reckoning, it is the Year of the Final Five."
"Four thousand?" Bayo choked out. The number felt like a physical blow. "I was just... I was just in Pasadena. Hallel was on the screen..."
"The Founders' names have long faded into prayer," the lion-man rumbled, his voice a low vibration that Bayo felt in his teeth. "But the prophecy remained. It said that when the sky bled red, the Great Administrator would send a Prophet from the Star-City. One who could read the Binary."
The woman produced a book. It wasn't made of paper. Its pages were thin sheets of translucent polymer, bound in a casing of brushed aluminum. On the cover, etched in the familiar font of a 21st-century technical manual, were the words: EMERGENCY RECOVERY PROTOCOL: OMEGA.
"We have guarded this Scripture for eleven centuries," she said, opening the book.
Bayo looked at the pages. His vision blurred, then snapped into focus. These weren't prayers. They weren't parables.
if (Planet.Atmosphere.Toxicity > 0.05) { activate(Sub_Surface_Life_Support); }
while (Object.Distance > Roche_Limit) { Calculate(Orbital_Deflection_Vector); }
"It's code," Bayo whispered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his throat. "You've been worshipping a disaster recovery plan."
The woman looked at him, her expression one of profound solemnity. "The Scripture says that only the Prophet can 'Execute the Command.' Only the Prophet can stop the Red Star from claiming what is left of us."
Bayo looked up, past the vaulted ceiling, toward a high, narrow window. Through the toxic, shimmering auroras of the upper atmosphere, a single red point of light hung in the sky. It was larger now. More defined.
The Object.
He had seen it at NASA as a distant threat, a data point on a screen five years away. But here, in this strange, heavy world of 4000 AD, it was the Sword of Damocles.
He tried to stand, his muscles screaming in protest against the 1.5g pull. He felt a sudden, sharp heat in his gut—a sensation like a sparking wire. He remembered Hallel's words: Science is just the language we use to explain it so we don't get scared.
He reached out, his fingers brushing the air. To his shock, the air didn't feel like empty space. It felt thick. It felt... reactive. A holographic flicker appeared before his eyes, a familiar blue command prompt hovering in the dusty air of the temple.
[USER_ID: BAYO_NASA_01]
[STATUS: CONNECTED]
[LAMBDA_FIELD_RESONANCE: STABLE]
"Hallel," Bayo whispered, tears stinging his eyes as he looked at the floating text. "You brilliant bastard. You left me the keys."
He looked at the Elven priestess and the Lion-man. The world was heavy, the air was strange, and he was 2,000 years past his expiration date.
"I'm not a prophet," Bayo said, his voice hardening into the tone he used when a launch window was closing. "I'm an engineer. And we have five years to fix this planet before it gets erased."