It all started with the simple suggestion to "turn it off and back on again". These words were uttered with the kind of reckless optimism that only exists moments before catastrophe.

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Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

Floating in the void somewhere, or nowhere in particular, there is a ship. One built on a fallacious notion, an attempt to control something that was not understood. The people that built this ship called it Invictus, a name which as you will learn, is steeped in irony that is completely lost on it's creators.

The ship itself was an exercise in weighing ego over humility: a sleek, entirely metallic exterior that was overengineered in all the wrong places. This attention to all of the hopelessly ill-chosen details included a viewing deck with gold-plated railings, allowing the single passenger to flaunt the ship’s luxury while travelling into the unknown. To their credit, the Invictus was an incredibly shiny ship. Whoever said you can't polish a turd clearly never met the people in charge of detailing this particular vessel. Or perhaps they simply never heard the phrase before.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

A ‘wormhole’ is an unusual name for a fracture in the universe that leads nowhere, as if the language itself was trying to impose meaning where none existed. The concept implies movement, an exit, a destination. Things that comfort those who refuse to accept that some doors do not simply open, and not all thresholds are meant to be crossed. The void doesn't invite exploration, but in their relentless pursuit of control they mistook the emptiness before them as an undiscovered frontier rather than what it truly was: a vast, silent indifference to their existence. Faced with a fundamental truth of the nature of their reality, their response was to hurl their self-importance and aspirations directly into the abyss.

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Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

One might be surprised to learn that thousands eagerly volunteered to venture through the fracture, as if stepping into an unknown anomaly in space and time was an act of bravery. While the identity of who exactly the primary individual to step through the fracture was not known at the time, someone was chosen to be the ‘first’.

She was different, not that that was actually noticed by the recruiters, but she didn't see herself as marking her name in history by chasing a legacy. She had no delusions of heroism, and no need for grandeur. What she carried was something much rarer—the kind of purpose and certainty that only the doomed have. She was not naïve, and she did not rely of faith in systems that had already failed her. She held the stubborn belief that if humanity was to fall, it should at least fall forward.

She had laughed at the name when she first heard it, at the irony of it all. Invictus. Perhaps not because it embodied the unconquerable human spirit, but because it was a monument to the very thing they refused to accept. Over time, she seemed to find comfort in the sheer audacity of their attempt to conquer the unconquerable itself.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Her name was Amara, and she was now dead.