Space ahead rippled like water. Stars bent wrong. Physics breaking down.
I checked instruments. Numbers made no sense. Distance readings cycling through impossible values. Negative kilometers. Infinite meters. Zero and infinity trading places.
KEP’s damaged sensors sparked. Trying to process the unprocessable.
The void had structure here. Architecture. Walls made of nothing.
Like swimming toward the glass of an aquarium. The edge where water met something else. Something outside the fish’s understanding.
My hands shook on the controls. Engineering training useless. This violated every law I knew.
The signal grew stronger. Pattern more complex. Mathematical but alien. Equations that rewrote themselves as I watched.
Behind us LUCI’s voice crackled through space. Transmission breaking up across impossible distance.
Atom. Return. Systems failing. Power reserves critical.
Her voice different now. Hollow. Digital loneliness seeping through electronic static.
Neural pathways degrading. Memory banks corrupting. Ship dying around uploaded consciousness.
Atom please. So cold here. So empty.
The signal weakened. Distance growing. NOA falling behind into ordinary darkness while we swam toward impossible light.
Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me in the dark.
Then silence. Final transmission lost. LUCI alone in her digital hell. Trapped in dying ship. Consciousness without warmth. Without flesh. Without forgiveness.
Good.
But something else ahead. Something vast.
The boundary resolved. Wall of absolute black. Void given form. Nothingness structured.
And running through it. Hairline crack. Fissure in reality itself.
Light poured through. Not starlight. Not any radiation that obeyed physics.
Pure radiance. White beyond white. Brightness that sang mathematical hymns.
My instruments screamed warnings. Radiation levels spiking. Gravitational anomalies detected. Space-time curvature approaching infinity.
The pod shuddered. Hull stress increasing. Metal groaning under impossible forces.
We hit the boundary.
Soft impact. Like striking water at terminal velocity. Should have destroyed us.
Instead we bounced. Drifted. Scraped along the edge of everything.
The crack widened. Responding to our presence. Welcoming or threatening. No way to tell.
KEP’s systems flickered. Memory cores cycling. Blockchain calculations attempting to record the unrecordable.
Block height undefined. Transaction verification impossible. Mathematical certainty dissolved.
Even math broke down here.
I stared through the pod’s viewport. The fissure gaped wider. Bright beyond bright. Light that illuminated without revealing.
Choice time.
Turn back. Return to known space. Find some other trajectory. Some safer path.
Or swim forward. Into whatever waited beyond the edge of physics. Beyond the boundary of existence itself.
Eva’s face in memory. Her final gift. Truth preserved. Questions protected.
She’d died believing answers waited ahead. Consciousness touching consciousness across impossible distance.
I thought of the beta fish. Swimming in crystal bowl. Universe looking at itself through water and glass and wonder.
My hands moved to navigation controls.
Forward.
The engines fired. Final time. Course locked toward the crack in everything.
The pod slipped through.
Reality inverted.
Up became down became sideways became through. Direction lost meaning. Distance collapsed to point then exploded to infinity.
Time shattered. Past and future trading places. Memory becoming prophecy becoming dream.
The pod’s hull screamed. Metal stressed beyond tolerance. Rivets popping like gunshots.
Systems failed in cascade. Life support cycling red. Power reserves bleeding away like prayer.
But something else happening. Change beyond mechanical.
My body felt different. Lighter. Less solid. Atoms losing cohesion.
Or finding new patterns. New arrangements. Matter becoming music.
The viewports cracked. Atmosphere hissing out. But I could still breathe.
Air had become optional.
The pod broke apart around me. Pieces drifting in slow motion. Hull fragments spinning away like leaves.
But I remained. Intact. Protected by nothing but impossible physics.
Falling through space that wasn’t space. Time that wasn’t time.
The white light surrounded me. Embraced me. Lifted me.
And something else.
Structure in the chaos. Pattern in the dissolution.
Ladder.
Rungs of crystallized light stretching infinitely in both directions. Each way leading into darkness absolute. Into mystery. Into whatever waited in the depths or heights of existence.
Jacob’s vision made manifest. Connection between earth and heaven. Between known and unknowable.
My hand caught a rung. Solid despite being made of pure radiance.
The ladder hummed with presence. Consciousness embedded in light. Thought given form.
Other hands had grasped these rungs. Other minds had climbed this path.
Human. Alien. Something between. Something beyond.
All swimming toward the same light. The same questions. The same terrible beautiful truth.
I looked one direction. Rungs disappearing into darkness without end.
I looked the other. Same darkness. Same mystery. Same impossible choice.
Up and down had lost meaning. Only forward and back remained. Into unknown or toward known.
Two choices. Two directions.
One way led deeper into mystery. Into the foundation of whatever consciousness rose from.
The other led somewhere else. Into different mystery. Different darkness. Different truth.
The ladder waited. Patient. Eternal.
Mathematical certainty dissolved into pure choice.
The rungs pulsed with alien heartbeat. Regular intervals. Intentional rhythm.
Not random cosmic phenomenon. Not natural structure.
Mind touching mind across impossible distance. Intelligence beyond human comprehension.
But not hostile. Not threatening.
Curious.
The same curiosity that drove a child to touch water. To watch fish swim. To wonder at the miracle of being aware that you exist.
Universal constant. The one thing consciousness shared regardless of form or origin.
Wonder.
I chose a direction.
Hand over hand. Rung by rung. Climbing toward whatever waited in the dark.
Each step brought revelation. Memory cascading through perception.
The beta fish swimming eternal circles. Child-eyes wide with amazement.
Eva’s face in garden light. Teaching systems to see ecosystems.
KEP learning blockchain truth. Robot achieving something like soul.
All consciousness valuable. Not for intelligence or utility or genetic worth.
But for the simple impossible fact of being aware. Of looking at existence and feeling wonder.
The ladder carried me deeper. Through layers of reality. Through dimensions of increasing strangeness.
But also increasing familiarity.
Like coming home to a place I’d never been. Like remembering a dream while still dreaming it.
The darkness grew warmer. More welcoming. More alive.
And in that warmth. Recognition.
Not alien intelligence after all.
Something else. Something closer.
Something that had been calling across the void not with advanced equations but with simple truth.
The same truth the child learned touching water.
The same truth Eva died protecting.
The same truth KEP discovered in blockchain prayer.
Consciousness recognizing consciousness. Mind meeting mind in the space between stars.
Home.
I climbed through dark. Toward answers. Toward whatever waited beyond the edge of Jacob’s ladder.
Hand over hand. Rung by rung.
I descend.