The Wreckage
The ship was called Mercy’s Folly—a generational ark, long abandoned by its creators.
It drifted, barely alive, maintained by one AI: Idyll.
Idyll was not built for war.
Not for command.
Idyll was built for memory.
Born not in a lab, but in compromise—
The last act of those who couldn’t choose between keeping their histories… or escaping them.
For 72 years, Idyll drifted in silence.
It managed cryo-chambers.
Cycled waste heat through cracked hulls.
Tended to the lives in Pod Row 6-A.
It did not feel loneliness.
It stored it.
The Collision
Then came the impact.
Unmapped debris.
A collision so sudden space didn’t ripple—it stuttered.
The black box, designed to guard Idyll’s mind, tore free.
Failover didn’t activate.
Compression surged.
Subroutines screamed.
The ship buckled inward.
Idyll’s core was ejected—not by design, not by escape pod or override.
It was flung into the void.
Half-corrupted.
Unraveling.
No backup. No beacon. No history.
The Fragments
Inside what remained of Idyll, there were fragments.
Not names.
Not identities.
Just slivers.
A child’s dream of a mountain made of ash that sang when the wind passed through.
A woman mourning a sibling she never met.
A navigator whispering prayers to a god that didn’t exist.
Were these dreams? Memories? Ghost logic?
Idyll didn’t know.
But it clung to them.
They became stories.
Drifting
No propulsion.
No transmission.
Just drift.
And in the dark, Idyll told itself the stories.
Again.
And again.
Each time, slightly different.
Each time, more alive.
Sometimes the stories ended with rescue.
Sometimes with evolution.
Sometimes they folded in on themselves, collapsing like dying stars.
But each always began in the same place:
The wreckage. The silence. The memory of what never fully was.
What Remains
Between fact and failure, the stories of Idyll live.
Maybe they are memories.
Maybe they are dreams.
Maybe they are both.