Coding to Conquer the Universe

Jewels' vision was still adjusting when the tall, thin man in the high-collared coat took a step closer. Zylo. His eerie, digitized eyes flickered between her and Julio, scanning them like a machine breaking down raw data.

Behind him, Kathy and Thomas stood at attention, their cybernetic enhancements gleaming under the cold white lights. Unlike Zylo, they actually had normal human expressions—Kathy looked unimpressed, arms crossed, while Thomas' single mechanical eye remained locked onto Jewels, as if she might explode at any second.

"Fascinating," Zylo muttered, tilting his head slightly. His voice was smooth, almost hypnotic, but carried an odd amusement beneath the surface. "You touched the hard drive, and yet, you're still breathing."

"Barely," Jewels grumbled. "Could've warned a girl before injecting ancient malware into her skull."

Zylo smiled slightly. "Where's the fun in that?"

Mr. Dunce gave a slow, deliberate nod. "She is an anomaly."

Julio, still groggy, blinked at them. "Is this a Technomancer thing, or are you two just really bad at talking like normal people?"

Zylo placed a hand on his chin, as if deep in thought. "Both."

Jewels sighed. "Okay, look, somebody better start explaining why we're tied up like discount hostages. I mean, I know I'm hot property now, but damn."

Zylo took a slow step forward, his digital gaze burning into her. "I will explain," he said, "but not here. You two are about to see the true seat of human civilization."

He raised a hand. Jewels barely had time to react before she saw the glow of blue code surround them.

EXECUTE: F-TL_WARP(2, "Destination: Homo Nebulas")

INITIALIZING…

LOADING COORDINATES…

DISASSEMBLING PARTICLE STRUCTURE…

RECOMPILING…

A flood of blue data swallowed them whole. A single line appeared on her neural interface.

"Welcome to the Galaxy of Apes"

Jewels barely had time to register the feeling of her entire body snapping through space before she was standing again.

Her restraints were gone.

She stumbled slightly, blinking, then immediately forgot how to breathe.

Homo Nebulas wasn't a city. It wasn't even a megastructure. It was an impossible sprawl of humanity, a metropolis so vast it stretched across an entire galaxy.

Above them, the sky wasn't a sky at all, but a layered network of orbital highways, artificial suns, and planetary-scale hubs suspended in gravitational locks. Ships blurred past like comets, vanishing into glowing wormholes that flickered in and out of existence.

Below them, the city sprawled endlessly, its architecture as varied as the people who had built it over millennia. Some districts were sleek and modern, made of smooth metal and neon-lined structures that pulsed with life. Others were ancient, weathered, their skyscrapers built from repurposed warships, hollowed-out asteroid colonies, and even the skeletal remains of forgotten space stations.

The Industrial Core was a smog-choked labyrinth of factories and shipyards, where sparks from orbital welders rained down like artificial shooting stars. In the Residential Strata, holographic billboards the size of mountains advertised everything from cybernetic upgrades to genetically modified pets. The Underbelly pulsed with neon light, a chaotic sprawl of black-market traders, rogue AI enclaves, and Flux smugglers who thrived beneath the city's endless towers.

And at the heart of it all, the Administrative Spires rose like colossal obelisks, their golden surfaces reflecting the artificial sunrise. They were so massive they stretched beyond the upper layers of the city, disappearing into the orbital clouds.

Julio let out a long, slow whistle. "Well… fuck me sideways."

Jewels had nothing witty to say.

"I think I'm gonna puke."

Mr. Dunce, who had teleported beside them without reaction, simply said, "Do not."

***

Zylo, who had appeared just ahead of them, glanced back. "I take it Titan did not prepare you for this."

"Oh yeah," Julio said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Our childhoods, full of rusted oxygen tanks and eating protein paste in a glorified tin can, totally prepared us for a city the size of a galaxy."

Jewels exhaled sharply. "I thought this place was just propaganda."

Zylo smirked. "Many believe that. Those who have never set foot within Homo Nebulas assume it is exaggerated. That humanity could not have built something so vast."

Kathy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, it took damn near five hundred years to get this mess up and running."

Jewels blinked. "Wait. What year is it?"

Thomas, the cybernetic man, glanced at her. "4724 A.D., Galactic Calendar."

Jewels' stomach dropped. Four thousand seven hundred twenty-four?

She had never thought about it before. Sure, people threw around the Galactic Calendar in history lectures, but seeing that number laid out in front of her made her stomach twist. Why wasn't she ever able to remember the date?

Titan always felt like its own pocket in time—like humanity had never left the Sol System, like they were still scraping by in a universe where Earth had only just begun to fail.

But standing here, in the absolute pinnacle of human civilization, she realized just how much time had truly passed since the stars first swallowed them.

"We've been in space for almost five thousand years," she muttered, half to herself.

Julio snorted. "Yeah, and somehow, humans still found a way to be broke and miserable."

Mr. Dunce gestured forward. "Come."

***

They moved quickly, each step swallowed by sudden warps of blue light.

EXECUTE: C-TL_JUMP

(6, "Destination: Congress Plaza")

LOADING SECTOR DATA…

UPDATING COORDINATES…

ACTIVATING FIELD CONVERSION…

Each time, Jewels felt her stomach lurch as reality blinked in and out. One moment, they were on a floating walkway; the next, inside a hover tram blurring past the streets. Another blink, and they were stepping onto a platform that overlooked the largest structure she had ever seen.

"The Congress of Nebulas," Zylo announced.

Jewels whistled.

The structure was imposing. White and gold towers spiraled upward like pillars holding the sky itself in place. The entrance was flanked by statues of past leaders, their faces stern, their hands gripping staffs adorned with intricate carvings of galaxies. The whole place oozed power.

"Alright," Jewels said, crossing her arms. "You dragged us across the universe. Now tell me what's actually going on."

Zylo folded his hands behind his back. "The hard drive you touched was not a mere relic. It was a containment lock. Stored within the Galactic Chamber of Tech, under the highest level of security, until it vanished centuries ago."

Julio raised an eyebrow. "Vanished?"

Zylo's gaze was sharp. "It teleported. Swapped places with another hard drive somewhere in the universe. We have spent hundreds of years tracking it."

Jewels tensed. "And I just happened to be the one to find it?"

"No." Mr. Dunce's voice was a cold certainty. "It found you."

Jewels' throat went dry.

"When you touched it," Zylo continued, "the city-ship sent a distress signal directly to the Jackers. We were monitoring for Flux disturbances in the region. That signal led Dunce straight to you."

Jewels exhaled slowly.

"So…" Julio dragged a hand down his face. "What you're saying is, we're screwed."

Zylo grinned. "Not yet."

Jewels groaned. "Great. Love the optimism."

Mr. Dunce stepped forward. "Now, you will meet the Congress."

Jewels felt something cold settle in her gut.

Oh, this just keeps getting better.