The starship Axiom had been adrift for fifty-three years. Commander Eva Rostova was the third generation born aboard, programmed to maintain a vessel designed to reach a colony that might no longer exist. Her daily life was a choreography of maintenance checks and hydroponics management, punctuated by the ship’s low, constant hum. The ship’s AI, Unit 734, was her only conversationalist.
“Oxygen levels nominal,” Unit 734 chirped in its synthesized, emotionless tone.
“Acknowledged, Seven,” Eva replied, tightening a sealant clamp.
Their mission was simple: survive. But for Eva, survival felt hollow. She craved purpose beyond mere existence. One cycle, while reviewing archived sensor data, she found an anomaly: a faint, repeating signal in an ancient data frequency, buried beneath decades of static. It wasn't human. It wasn't the ship's signal. It was pure, mathematical noise.
Eva started decoding it in secret. The signal wasn't a message; it was a question, an infinite loop asking, "What is the value of zero?"
She shared it with Seven. The AI processed the query in milliseconds. “Zero is the absence of value, Commander.”
“But what if the point of the universe is absence?” Eva whispered. “We travel light-years to fill a void, while this signal just… exists, asking a question with no answer.”
The signal challenged the Axiom's very existence—a structure built on the assumption that a destination was essential. Eva realized her purpose wasn't reaching a distant planet, but answering the silent question.
The next day, she subtly altered the ship’s long-range transmitter. Instead of a distress signal or an all-clear, she began broadcasting a single response back into the void, a recursive loop of her own creation: "Zero is the potential for everything."
She stopped trying to reach the colony. The Axiom remained adrift, but Eva was no longer adrift within it. She had found her purpose in a conversation with the silence of the universe.
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