Dockmaster of Pacifica Base\
// Volksrevolution Engineer Corps
ENTRY:003 - VISIONS IN THE METAL\ DATE: 829 A.S. | STATUS:Condition Green — Pending (Evaluation)
PERSONAL LOG - UNSENT DRAFT\ “Comms grid interference. Heard old voice loops playing over live channels. Thought it was a bleed from Deck Three’s uplink — re-routed cabling, still persists. Possible solar ghosting or ion relay mismatch.
But that doesn’t explain the phrasing.
It's not just distortion. It’s… cadence. Familiar. But out of sync. Heard my own words played back to me. From days ago. Exact phrasing. But slightly different emphasis — like someone repeating it, not replaying it.
Also, caught motion blur on Bay 3’s optical feed. Slowed it frame-by-frame. Looked like a shadow. Center of frame. Then gone.
Could be stress. No formal complaint filed. Not yet.
Running this internal for now.”
— L. Straub
PRIVATE OBSERVATION\ The Maschinenpistole had never been quieter. Even under full power draw, the cockpit’s core hum wasn’t mechanical anymore — it was physiological. Low. Subconscious. A rhythm like breath held too long. Straub sat with his eyes closed. Each pulse felt like it came from under his own skin.
He couldn’t remember when that started.
When he tried to adjust the cabin lights, the panel didn’t respond. Instead, the illumination rose and fell in strange harmony with his thoughts — as if the ship was responding to mood, not command. He rationalized it, opened the housing, checked the couplings.
They were flawless.
No signs of tampering. No burnt insulation. The housing was cold to the touch.
As he checked the neural relay — the sealed buffer he’d installed after the Valkyrae’s loss — the interface briefly blinked into… something else. Not a glitch. A shape. A recursive symmetry. He blinked again and it was gone. The diagnostic read: “PASS.”
He didn’t file the log.
Later that cycle, the coolant pumps made a noise he couldn’t describe. Not loud — just deliberate. Like something alive, breathing slow through layered metal.
He stood there for minutes, unmoving, trying to find where the rhythm originated.
The noise changed when he stepped closer.
He sat alone in his quarters that night, parsing flight telemetry from the return route. Every single fragment was cross-checked. Every sensor return amplified. Looking for a pattern.
And when he found one — a near-identical pulse buried in the bandwidth of a frequency — his terminal restarted unprompted. Logs intact. Queues cleared.
He sent no ticket. Logged no error.
Instead, he wrote a new file in his private archive:\ Klassifizierung: Arbeiter Prototyp.
He stared at it for hours.
COCKPIT RECORD - NONSTANDARD ACCESS\ That night, Straub returned to Hangar Bay 3. No crew were present. The internal lights dimmed as he approached. Not broken — reactive.
The Maschinenpistole’s canopy opened before he reached it.
Inside, the air was… tense. Not stale. Not warm. But filled with expectation. The kind of stillness you feel before a storm. The seat was cold. He sat anyway.
And without input — without contact — the console lit up.
No systems prompt. No command line. Just a single message, centered in old-style syntax:
“You are almost ready.”
Straub didn’t reach for the controls.
Didn’t move.
He stared — and for the briefest moment, the reflection in the cockpit glass did not match his motion. It lagged by a fraction. Like the man inside the glass was watching... not following.
His mouth was dry. Hands steady. Too steady.
He stepped out after thirteen minutes.
Locked the canopy.
Then locked it again.
Later that night, he double-checked the oxygen valves in his quarters.
And as he drifted toward sleep, the static behind his eyes whispered like an old frienda memory he had yet to experience.
Log continues → ENTRY 004: "Echoes in the Hull" pending reauthorization.
