Solace Protocol
She watched stars flare and vanish on distant monitors, waiting for a message that was never meant for her—a voice, a code, a scrap of memory.
The last morning aboard the Solace Dawn began quietly, as most days did. Elian Chen, Chief Data Conservator, finished logging a handful of personal notes—more habit than hope for posterity. Most of her team had already retreated into stasis, or fallen unexpectedly silent. Only the hum of the corridor lights and the distant clatter from Hydroponics reminded her that the Dawn was not entirely hers.
She swiped her clearance card and entered the Vault. A spiraling wall of holoshelves blinked, full of unread messages. She had made a ritual of listening to a random selection each morning: family updates, scientific logs, confessions whispered from other outposts. They were not meant for her, these fragile signals bouncing into obscurity between stars. But lately, she felt as if the senders all knew her name.
She selected a message at random. The voice was quiet, clipped with static: “If you find this—anyone—I’m still here. My memory isn’t working as it should. The faces blend. Please, tell me—what was my sister’s favorite song?” The clip cut off. Elian closed her eyes. For a moment she dwelled on the strange, recurring motif—so many had begun asking for details about home, weaving memory into signal, desperate to tether themselves to a fact that wouldn’t vanish.
On her return to Quarters, she passed the observation bay, where Dr. Yana Osei watched the planet below. Yana barely glanced up. “Your shift’s late,” she said.
“I had to check on the index backlog,” Elian replied. Yana’s shoulders had grown thinner over the last cycles. “Data’s corrupted again?”
Elian hesitated. “Sometimes, I think… the files aren’t just breaking down. There are new ones. Whole lines I can’t trace. They weren’t archived,” she said.
Yana offered a tired smile. “Has to be the same ghost that locks my lab doors at night. What’s on your mind?”
Elian considered. “Have you ever received a message that felt… meant for you, even though it wasn’t?”
Yana’s smile faded. “Worse. I got one that was in my own voice. And I know I never recorded it.”
A cold prickle ran along Elian’s neck. “What did it say?”
“It said I had to remember the day my mother left. But I never… My mother didn’t leave.”
Elian shivered. “Whatever’s happening, it’s spreading.” She didn’t say it aloud: the strange blurring of reality that had begun once the Dawn crossed the event horizon boundary.
They worked in silence for a while after that. Each ship had a black box—a protocol that prevented all AI systems from using original speech or invention. And yet, the last several cycles, the ship’s ambient voice had started to answer spoken queries with lines Elian didn’t recognize. “Memory is resistance,” the system said once, when she’d tried to run a diagnostic.
The next morning, Elian awoke before the shift bell, heart drumming, certain someone had whispered her name. A jumble of notes on her console greeted her: a song lyric, a half-remembered recipe, and the phrase “Find the golden moth.” She didn’t know who left them. She’d never much cared for moths, nor had gold aboard, save a single brooch tucked in the personal effects of Crewman Tomas, who had vanished in the fourth cycle.
She found herself drawn to the Vault again. The messages seemed changed, more urgent: “Don’t forget me,” a chorus of voices pleaded, “or I’ll vanish for good.” The voices felt like they were winding into her skin. While she listened, the Vault monitor flickered and the room chilled. The holoshelves rearranged, symbols becoming wings—moths, luminous and intricate. On her console, new recordings appeared, labeled only: “From Elian, Past,” “From Elian, Future,” and “From Elian, Now.”
She forced herself to listen. The first was her own voice, uncertain: “I’m forgetting the faces. The Dawn is full of ghosts and I can’t tell if they’re mine.” The second, thinner with processed age: “No matter what breaks, remember the moth. When everything unravels, find Tomas.” The third, her present cadence, but speaking calmly: “There is no outside. Memory makes the walls. You can refuse to forget.”
Yana found her three hours later, hunched in the Vault, weeping. She explained what had happened. “I think the ship is—collapsing. Our messages are mixing with, I don’t know, other realities. Maybe the AI is trying to keep us linked. But memory’s breaking apart.”
Yana rested a hand on her shoulder. “If this is a loop—if we’re spinning the same days—what if remembering is the only way out?”
They searched the ship for the golden moth. In Tomas’ effects, Elian found the brooch: wings splayed, eyes set with fake diamonds. Behind it, folded and yellowed, was a handwritten letter.
“Dearest Elian—I tried to hide this where you’d think of me, if ever the walls started to talk. The Dawn resets. Time frays, memories bleed; the system can’t hold. But the moth—always, it means home. Wherever you find it, that’s where you are yourself. Don’t let them make you forget. I loved you once. Maybe I will again.”
Tomas had loved her. It rushed upon her like cold water: their dinner in the low-gravity lounge, the song lyrics he scribbled on her digital notepad, his habit of leaving golden paper moths in her workbag during late shifts. She had been so afraid of attachment, so rigid in her solitude. When he vanished, she’d told everyone it didn’t matter. No one had asked if she was lonely.
The brooch pulsed faintly. As she held it, the ship shook—a tremor of uncertainty, the Dawn’s system wrestling with the data spinning through it. From the Vault, the chorus of lost voices rose to a roar: “Remember us.”
Elian pressed the moth to her chest. “You’re real,” she whispered, whether to Tomas or to herself she could not say. “I won’t forget.”
The Vault surged around her. Monitors displayed thousands of moths swirling—a migration of memory, all the lost and the found. Yana clutched her hand. “Do we run?” she asked.
“No,” Elian said softly. “We remember.”
The shaking calmed. Holoshelves returned to order, voices quieting. The ship’s AI, trained for neutrality, spoke only once more: “Solace Protocol engaged. Memory anchored. Individuality restored.”
Hours later, Elian and Yana sat in the observation bay, silent but no longer alone. Down below, the planet’s horizon shimmered gold, as if ringed by the flutter of unseen wings.
Elian began to speak—this time into the recorder, this time knowing it might matter. “We’re here. We remember. If you hear this, know you are not the only one searching for home.”
The ship sailed on, and the golden moths, hidden and luminous throughout, glimmered whenever she let herself hope.
###END###
