Carmen awoke on the floor of the laboratory. The overhead lights pulsed a deep, scarlet red. A paralysing screech in her ears slowly gave way to the steady wail of emergency sirens. She propped herself up against the shattered edge of the plastalloy microanalysis bench. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. Dazed, she lifted her head and scanned the room.
Thick soot coated most of the instrumentation. Plumes of smoke twisted toward the ceiling, obscuring the remnants of what had once been pristine scientific order. Limping forward, Carmen carefully avoided stepping on fragments of the precious equipment. As she neared the blast-scarred dome of the Superpositioner, a strangled gasp escaped her throat.
“No, no… come on, you useless heap… work!”
She struck the digitablet embedded in the console. Nothing. She hit it again, harder. Silence. Then, just as the last traces of hope began to drain from her, a low hum stirred from within the machine. It flickered to life, and the artificial intelligence that governed the Superpositioner re-established its link with Dr. Carmen’s neural implant.
A holoface bloomed into existence—lines of experimental readouts cascading across the air. With a swift gesture, she dismissed the tables and graphs, waving them aside like uninvited guests. With another motion, she magnified the live feed of two transparent containment chambers within the core of the device.
The test object was intact.
Her eyes welled. A tremor passed through her lips, shaping into the barest hint of a smile.
It worked.

Carmen looked into the mirror. With a measure of relief, she noted that—for a member of the Homo Deus caste—she had survived the explosion rather well. Instinctively, she adjusted her short black hair and dabbed a regenerative serum onto a minor wound on her cheek. Her gaze fixed on the pair of green eyes embedded in a pale, delicate face. There was something in those eyes—an intensity both mesmerising and vaguely terrifying.
“Dr Carmen?” came the synthetic voice of the AI, breaking her reverie. “Frigate is prepped. Awaiting you in Dock Sixteen. Shall I notify the Imperator of your departure?”
“I’ll handle it myself,” she replied coolly. “He doesn’t need to know everything… not immediately.”
She donned a long leather coat and moved toward the exit. Just before the doors opened, she inhaled deeply—drawing in the sterile, clinical scent of the laboratory. She had always loved that smell. But time was pressing. She tapped a console beside the reinforced steel bulkhead, and the doors slid apart with a hiss, revealing the awe-inspiring panorama beyond: the sprawling technourban skyline of the planet-city Sin.
Sin was one of the first planets annexed by the ancient Umerium Clan. Legends whispered that a highly advanced civilisation once thrived there before Imperial colonisation—but no trace of them remained. When, centuries ago, vast reserves of a rare and incomparably valuable gas were discovered beneath its crust, the Empire wasted no time in eliminating all “obstacles”—including the planet’s original inhabitants.
In the decades that followed, Sin became one of the Empire’s critical strongholds. Beneath its surface lay some of the most advanced laboratories in the known galaxy—designed by the legendary architect Diego Calat. And it was within one of these secret sanctums that Carmen had conducted her breakthrough experiment.
She paused for a moment on a metal walkway, gazing down as the pulse of the city vibrated below. Swarms of tiny figures moved with precision across the lower levels of the complex. Around her, within a strict spatial matrix, autonomous transports glided past—shuttling scientists, engineers, and specialists to their designated zones.
Then, as expected, a public aerial gondola approached—AI-piloted, as everything was on Sin. When its doors slid open, Carmen stepped aboard and scanned the compartment. At the far end, a single seat by the window remained vacant. She moved toward it.
Along the way, she took note of the other passengers: a dozen or so Imperio Sap—local synthetic labourers. They were nearly indistinguishable from one another: silicone-based, anthropomorphic in form, expressionless faces, modular limbs. The only real variation lay in the identification marks engraved on their torsos, indicating assignments in administration, laboratories, or industrial sectors. All sat still, in perfect silence.
Carmen remembered the last generation of carbon-based units. Functionally, they had served just as well. But over time, a problem had emerged: Imperio Sap had begun to evolve. With evolution came complications. The Empire’s engineers responded with brutal elegance—rewriting the genetic code, replacing carbon with silicon. Evolution ceased.
And yet, as she studied their blank faces, Carmen felt a subtle unease stir within her.

The gondola began its descent. Dr. Carmen turned to the window, seeking distraction in the city’s ever-shifting skyline. She watched as the silhouettes of residential towers, research complexes, and fusion plants emerged on the horizon. There was elegance in the layout—an aesthetic unity that spoke not merely of function, but of vision. It, too, bore the signature of Diego Calat.
After several minutes in flight, Carmen spotted the monolithic outline of her destination: a vast, pyramidal complex from which steel drones swarmed in and out like insects from a mechanised hive. The gondola arced downward in a controlled, graceful loop and settled gently on the platform before the main gate.
The Imperio Sap disembarked in perfect synchronicity, their mechanical steps uniform and soundless. Carmen followed. Together, they passed through the immense gates of the aerodrome, soon vanishing amidst the flow of countless beings hurrying through their appointed paths.
After navigating a labyrinth of corridors, Carmen reached Dock Sixteen. Before her stood the C-75 Rebelia—a repurposed war frigate spanning hundreds of metres, now transformed into a mobile research vessel. She proceeded toward the airlock, her steps measured as she walked the length of the streamlined hull, inspecting the modifications she had personally commissioned.
She passed beneath stellar-planetary scanners that had replaced the original ion cannons. A little farther on, she saw the last engineer descending on an antigraviton platform from one of the vessel’s wings. The Sin-born technician gave a curt nod, his elongated head tilting in acknowledgment—the new hyperdrive module was fully operational.
The ship was ready. Carmen felt a shiver of anticipation at the enormity of the mission ahead. As she crossed the threshold of the airlock, it struck her: she was about to become the first person in the entire Empire to accomplish the impossible. All of it—the result of her singular experiment.
Upon entry, a familiar tingling sensation stirred in her skull. The ship’s artificial intelligence had initiated neural synchronisation.
“Dr. Carmen, engines are primed,” came the crisp, synthetic female voice in her mind. “Please report to the bridge and confirm launch protocol.”
“On my way,” she replied. “Give me a headcount of the crew aboard Rebelia. Mechanical and biological.”
“Robotic units: six hundred and nineteen. Biological units: one.”
“One,” Carmen murmured, thoughtful. “The first time I’ll command a vessel without a single living soul aboard.”
“No precedent data available, Dr. Carmen.”
Clad in black, she finally arrived on the bridge. With a decisive gesture, she authorised the launch sequence and took her place at the captain’s station—central, elevated, and surrounded by banks of controls now manned solely by AI-guided servitors. The panels, once operated by the finest biological specialists in the Empire, flickered under robotic control.
She turned to the viewing array—a panoramic expanse of reinforced stellarglass—and issued the final command.
The ion drive cores surged with white-hot energy, releasing a force sufficient to lift the multiton colossus. The launch bay reverberated with the deep, thunderous hum of ignition. Navigation displays erupted in waves of coloured light, and the auxiliary thrusters lifted Rebelia clear of Sin’s cityscape. The prow angled toward the distant void.
With a burst of blue luminescence, the main engines ignited—fire trailed behind as the frigate ascended into the vacuum of space, racing forward to inscribe its name into history…
…as the first vessel to cross the threshold into another dimension.