Deep Sea Embers

After receiving the captain’s directives, Alice started pondering with great intent – then she gazed deeply into Duncan’s eyes, seeking understanding. “What is an escape pod?” she inquired with genuine curiosity.

Duncan was not taken aback by her question. In fact, he often thought he would only truly worry if this doll ceased to exhibit her characteristic confusion. Despite several mishaps, he had ascertained that although Alice often appeared bewildered, the sophisticated space navigation system, “Navigator Two,” was invariably operational within her instinctive knowledge.

At this moment, the task was straightforward: Alice needed to recognize that a segment of the mansion was absent, at least theoretically.

“That’s a part that’s missing from the ‘Alice’s Mansion,’ but you don’t need to understand exactly what it is,” Duncan explained nonchalantly, observing her still fixated on him with wide, innocent eyes. “Do you remember what I told you about the Frost Queen?”

Alice paused to reflect. “Which one? There are many, but I don’t remember all…”

“Ray Nora has taken a room from your ‘Mansion.’ That room is what I referred to as the escape pod. She now ‘rides’ it to the ash-covered edge of the world. I need to locate her position,” Duncan elaborated with patience. “It’s okay if you don’t grasp it all right now; I’ll help you understand this in time.”

Alice seemed to follow, yet her comprehension was unclear. Nevertheless, after Duncan finished, she quickly nodded. “Oh, what should I do now?”

“Remain here, continue sitting under this ‘tree,’ just as you did when analyzing the flight paths of the external barriers. Keep connected with the mansion,” Duncan instructed, lifting his right hand to reveal a tuft of pale green flame soaked in starlight. He handed the flame to her, “Take this; it will create an additional ‘bridge’ between you and me. I’m now heading to the ‘missing’ part of the mansion to place a marker. If my predictions hold, I should be able to ‘interfere’ with Navigator Two and transfer data to your ‘system core’ through this external bridge.”

Alice simply responded with an “Oh,” and nodded eagerly. “Okay!”

As she spoke, she grasped the tuft of flame from Duncan without hesitation – a peculiar warmth spread through her palm, the ethereal flame turning palpably gentle, subtly swaying in her hand.

Holding the small flame carefully in one hand and her “drawing board” in the other, Alice turned and made her way back to the “Data Tree,” a structure woven from innumerable cables and pipes. She sat down on the platform, looking up with a beaming smile and declared, “I’m ready!”

Duncan smiled and nodded, then turned to exit the hall. He walked through the ornate door that linked the garden to the deeper parts of the mansion, moving along a lengthy corridor lined with locked rooms and filled with the hum of servers. He passed various stairways and halls, quickly reaching the deepest part of the second floor’s corridor—the “fracture point” where the escape pod detached from the main body of the ship.

The corridor’s end looked just as he remembered; the floor, ceiling, and walls appeared violently torn apart by some colossal, invisible force. Beyond the fracture point, the endlessly deep darkness of space loomed, so profound it seemed one glance could pull someone into its void.

Duncan ignored the daunting abyss, focusing instead on a particular section of the wall near the corridor’s end. There, he swiftly found what he was seeking close to the fracture.

Embedded in the wall was a display still cycling through warnings about the unauthorized release of the escape pod. Duncan approached the display, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes halfway, murmuring, “…It’s time to verify my guess… Let me ‘see’… the true appearance here.”

A faint starlight peeked through the slits of his half-closed eyes as he carefully controlled his increasingly restless “essence.” He was tapping into his power, trying to open his “other pair of eyes” without fully unleashing the singularity within him.

Gradually, Duncan opened his eyes, and a bright starburst erupted from them, resembling ancient stars relearning their orbits. Amid the expanding starlight, he beheld the other side of Alice’s Mansion.

He saw the enormous ark spaceship floating in the boundless dark chaos of space. The torn starship retained only about a third of its original structure. Standing at the end of a connecting corridor in the ship’s midsection, Duncan observed the silver-gray and silver-white alloy structures that replaced the dark-toned floors and walls of the mansion’s original corridor. Various warning lights flickered in the distance, and before him lay the scorched, molten support frame of the escape pod where it was blown open.

Duncan glanced at the broken pipes, supports, and the blasted hull of the spaceship at the end, his lips twitching slightly as he mused, “…Ray Nora definitely didn’t leave as ‘quietly’ as she claimed. How did she manage to blow this place up without having any idea what it was?”

Of course, there was no one in the deserted spaceship corridor to answer his rhetorical question, as the only “owner” and “victim” of this place had no clue what an escape pod was. Duncan sighed and shook his head, then refocused his attention on the flickering display.

Now, he could see the full extent of this device—it was part of the external release system for the escape pod, fixed on a curved support that was severely twisted and damaged, with internal pipes exposed. Despite its battered state, it still appeared functional.

Placing his hand on the device, Duncan prepared to “read” the data with his own flame and transfer it to Alice. His plan was simple and direct.

Alice, in her current state, was oblivious to the deeper workings of her own mansion and consequently unable to detect the system malfunctions occurring within it. Although the instincts of the “Navigator Two” system remained intact, Alice’s inability to interpret these signals meant there was no response. Therefore, Duncan’s task was to establish a direct connection between Alice and the malfunctioning point of the mansion using a temporary fix—a technique he compared to using a jumper wire.

He admitted to himself that he didn’t fully understand the mechanics of the spaceship—akin to how many who repair phones might not know the detailed architecture inside the chips. The important thing was that attaching the wire effectively resolved the issue.

As he initiated this makeshift repair, the flame from his tool began to merge with the escape pod’s release system.

At that moment, Duncan’s peripheral vision caught sight of an anomaly.

A mass with a dark gray metallic sheen, resembling mud that flowed and shifted continuously, had emerged from the nearby equipment grilles and pipes without him noticing.

This eerie, mud-like substance gathered on the floor, slowly creeping towards him with a deeply unsettling low rumble. Duncan tensed, ready to react, but just as he prepared himself for action, the substance halted a short distance away as if it was observing or assessing him.

In a flash of realization, Duncan recognized it—the “Cleaners” from Alice’s Mansion, a peculiar entity designed to expel “intruding foreign bodies.”

He wondered if this entity was part of the New Hope’s maintenance system, possibly a form of “damage control” or a swarm of nanomachines.

While maintaining his interaction with the escape pod system, Duncan’s mind raced with possibilities. Just then, he observed the “nanomud” inch slightly closer without showing any signs of hostility.

Under his watchful eye, the nanomachines formed what appeared to be a tentacle-like limb, which gently tapped the curved support of the release system, seemingly attempting to show Duncan something. It then pulled a damaged cable from the support.

Duncan looked perplexed and asked, “…You mean, connect from here?”

The mud formed another limb, gesturing up and down in the air.

With slight hesitation, Duncan allowed his flame to extend to the indicated damaged cable.

The mud appeared content, vibrating its limbs before collapsing back into a liquid form and making a gurgling sound as it slowly moved towards a crack in the nearby wall.

Duncan was left speechless, “…”

He was stunned by the realization that this entity could not only communicate but also think.

As he grappled with this revelation, the mud had completely disappeared. Then, through their psychic link, Alice’s voice excitedly broke through: “Captain! The drawing board lit up! The drawing board lit up! I think I figured out where the ‘escape pod’ is!”

…

Helena guided Vanna and Lucretia across the central bridge of the residential sector, updating them as they moved. “There are now one hundred seventy-six people here—all ‘awakened’ are here,” she informed. The area they traversed was originally part of the broiler system. As the number of awakened individuals grew, those who initially regained consciousness in better condition naturally congregated here, transforming the location into a makeshift camp.

Vanna paused on the bridge, leaning on the railing to gaze down at the living quarters hastily arranged using the existing infrastructure of the broiler system.

After a brief pause, Helena continued, “We will soon expand into a better-conditioned living area—the dormitory next to it. It’s currently occupied by our ‘bewildered brethren.’ We can’t forcibly evict them; we must avoid conflicts as much as possible. However, as more and more awakened people begin to dominate that area, once the awakened are in the majority, we can extend our main activity area there.”

Lucretia broke the silence that followed, her voice reflecting her disbelief, “…Hard to imagine, the world has actually become this…”

“Adapt as soon as possible,” Helena advised softly. The Pope, in her avatar form, turned to face Vanna and Lucretia with a somber look. “The current city-states are just this place magnified a thousand times,” she explained. Then, shifting the conversation, she prompted, “As for now… it’s your turn, tell me about the world’s end.”