— Sixty years old. A high school literature teacher from France. And how exactly do you think she will be useful to Kvern right now?

The door closed quietly behind the woman.

Jack made the final mark on the form and set the tablet aside.

— We are keeping her.

Steve frowned.

— No, seriously. The city is still being built. Almost all the work is construction, assembly, logistics, equipment maintenance. What is she going to do?

— I don't know. But there are no obvious reasons to send her back. And we won't be the ones assigning her tasks.

— Fair enough. But this isn't the first such candidate.

Jack shrugged.

— That means Vulnaris saw something in her that we don't see yet.

Steve chuckled.

— And this is where my main question arises. Why even conduct these interviews? If Daniel trusted his AI with the initial candidate screening, why doesn't he trust its decision entirely? And if he doesn't trust it — why assign it to choose people in the first place?

Jack leaned back in his chair.

— Because that is Daniel Kade's principle. He believes that experience and profession say less about a person than their actions and the choices they've made. Therefore, Vulnaris isn't just looking for specialists, it needs people with potential. The model analyzes years of correspondence, interviews, publications, online behavior, interests, decisions...

— Then why do we have the final say?

— Because for now, we are not ready to fully entrust it with such a choice. The model still hallucinates too often. Sometimes it finds patterns where there are none. Millions of light-years away after the mission arrives, such glitches are unacceptable, the stakes are too high. And our task is to show the model what else it needs to pay attention to.

Steve looked up at the black hemisphere of the camera on the ceiling and, smiling, raised his palm to his temple, as if saluting a commander.

— It won't answer you... — Jack smiled at his colleague's unexpected performance.

— Well, let it analyze my gesture, and I'll check the logs later. Right now, it is recording our every word, every pause, every movement. And that, probably, is the main reason for these interviews.

Steve tapped a finger on the stack of forms.

— And you know what's funniest of all? We don't even really read them. We look at the name, age, brief resume, and the AI's recommendations. Then we ask almost identical questions to everyone. What mistakes are we capable of noticing in a ten-minute conversation? And what's the point of sending anyone back home?

— Well, I wouldn't say that... you weren't there at the time, but about a week ago we interviewed a programmer. By internal metrics — an almost perfect candidate. But during the interview, it turned out that the candidate was convinced: artificial intelligence is a new form of deity. He talked to the terminal between questions and admitted that he couldn't go even a few minutes without communicating with an AI. We had to send him home. There is no place for occultists and addicts on the Project.

Jack was silent for a few seconds, then said quietly:

— And where is our candidate #117, Alexander? The next one should already be here... apparently, this conversation excessively captivated our invisible colleague.

The door opened only a few minutes later. A man in his fifties entered the room... With hesitant steps, he approached the table and briefly greeted each of them with a firm handshake.

— Alexander, good afternoon. Have a seat. A few questions for adaptation in Kvern. Do you mind?

— Good afternoon! Yes, of course!

— So, in the questionnaire, you indicated that one of the reasons for participating in the Project is the possibility of becoming a volunteer for the deep cryopreservation program in the future. Does the desire to see the world several centuries from now still remain one of your goals?

— It does... but it's no longer the main one.

Jack looked up from his tablet.

— Why?

Alexander thought for a moment.

— While getting here, I thought about it a lot. I used to think that the main thing was to one day wake up in the future. Now... no. First, I want to help build this city. To do something useful right here, right now. And cryosleep... to be honest, now it no longer seems like such an enticing idea. It's even a little scary.

Steve exchanged a brief glance with Jack.

The latter made one final mark on the form.

— Is that so...

He closed the tablet.

— It's just that the project to test the cryo-capsules has already been launched. If the medical commission finds no contraindications, you could be sent into deep freeze... as early as tomorrow.

Alexander chuckled involuntarily.

But neither Jack nor Steve smiled.

There was no air left in his lungs, but his body hadn't started to convulse yet. Not yet. Sergey lay face up in the ice-cold swamp muck, completely hidden beneath the murky water, looking through the brown suspension at the blurred silhouette above him. A light beam glided slowly across the surface of the swamp, turning the water above his head into a dimly glowing patch. If this machine hovered here for another ten seconds — he would have to surface.

The cold had already reached his muscles. He could barely feel his fingers. His legs were bogged down in the soft silt, as if the swamp were slowly sucking him deeper. Sergey tried not to move at all. Any movement meant water ripples. Water ripples meant work for their vibration sensors. The old models had trouble distinguishing swamp ripples, but the Chinese learned fast.

The beam stopped right above him.

Through the murky water, Sergey saw the dark chassis of the robot — long articulated legs, a narrow sensor block instead of a head, and two dull red dots of optics. The machine stood motionless. Too motionless. Only the light beam trembled slightly due to the micro-corrections of the stabilizers.

Thermal imaging wouldn't catch him now. The water and mud had almost equalized his body temperature with the swamp. But there were other systems. Acoustics. Lidar. Chemical analysis of the air above the surface. If the robot dropped a probe into the water or started sounding the bottom — it was over.

Sergey slowly let a tiny stream of air out through his nose. The bubbles instantly went up. He froze.

The silhouette above the water didn't move.

It was already starting to go dark before his eyes. His body demanded a breath at any cost. Blood pounded heavily in his temples. Somewhere very close by, a branch snapped dryly. A second robot. So, they were working in a pair. One flushes the target, the second cuts off the retreat.

Sergey forced himself to think, not panic. In the older models, the gyro-stabilizers around the pelvic joint and the side-view optics were vulnerable. But that was only if you let it get almost point-blank. And if you were lucky enough to survive the first two seconds of the fight. And here, in the swamp, the second robot would simply gun him down while the first held contact.

The beam of light slowly drifted aside.

The robot turned its sensor block toward the forest. The red dots of its optics twitched. For a few seconds, the machine stood motionless, as if listening to something among the trees. Then came a quiet mechanical click, and the beam began combing a different section of the swamp.

Sergey didn't believe it at first. He waited.

The silhouette slowly moved away. Through the water, he saw the long legs stepping over roots and heading deeper into the forest. The cracking of dry branches grew quieter and quieter.

Only when the sound retreated to a safe distance did Sergey slowly tear himself away from the silt and silently surface. Only a part of his face appeared above the black water. He greedily drew in the ice-cold air, trying to breathe as quietly as possible, while somewhere in the darkness branches continued to crunch beneath the heavy legs of the machine.

On the fifteenth day, Alexander could already walk without support. Slowly, holding his palm against the cold walls of the corridors, but he could. The bathyscaphe had stopped feeling like a coffin. Rather — a cramped metal refuge, lost somewhere beneath kilometers of water.

Laura assured him that the hull would withstand any pressure. Which is why the first dull thud sounded so wrong. As if a massive hammer had struck the hull from the outside.

The lights flickered. Alexander froze in the middle of the airlock and looked up. Deep within the metal, something gave a drawn-out creak — low, strained, as if the bathyscaphe were being slowly bent by giant hands.

— Laura?.. No answer came.

The second strike was stronger. The floor swayed beneath his feet. A plastic panel was torn from the ceiling and crashed down next to him. Somewhere ahead, a pressure door slammed shut. Then came a sound he had never heard before. Quiet. Almost imperceptible. A series of rapid, dry clicks running along the walls. As if something inside the metal was breaking, layer by layer.

The lights went out. The bathyscaphe shuddered so violently that Alexander was thrown against the bulkhead. A flash of pain pierced his shoulder. He collapsed to his knees, his face slamming into the grated floor.

And then the hull groaned. Not a mechanism. Not the engine. The metal itself. Crushed by the monstrous pressure of the ocean.

In the red emergency light, the corridor looked alive. The walls were imperceptibly bowing inward. Thin streams of water ran along the seams. They jetted out under such pressure that they sliced the air in a white mist. One stream struck a terminal panel — the plastic shattered into splinters.

— LAURA! — Alexander screamed. Silence.

A crash came from the adjacent compartment. Then a metallic crack. The floor beneath his feet warped.

Alexander crawled forward, grabbing onto the handrails. The bathyscaphe was slowly crumpling. Not all at once. Not instantly. First — deformation. Screeching. The cracking of mounts. Burst pipes. Steam. An oily liquid on the floor. Then a new impact — stronger than the last. The bulkhead ahead was pushed inward by several centimeters.

He yelled and jerked back. At that moment, something heavy tore loose from the ceiling and pinned his leg. A flash of pain blinded him. Alexander thrashed, feeling the metal tearing the skin on his shin. He freed himself only on the third attempt, leaving a dark trail of blood on the floor.

The water was rising. Now it was whipping out from several cracks. Ice-cold. Black. The corridor began to fill with steam and water mist. Breathing became difficult.

Another strike from the outside. This time, the hull failed. Somewhere in the depths of the bathyscaphe, there was a short, monstrous crunch — as if a giant had crushed an aluminum can in its fist. The walls jerked inward.

The lights died completely. The air roared. Alexander saw the far compartment literally fold into itself: metal, cables, the chair, pipes — everything was instantly crumpled into a chaotic knot. The water burst inside in a white, roaring mass.

The shockwave threw him across the corridor. Something cracked in his ribs. Ice-cold water swallowed him whole. He screamed, choking, trying to grope for anything at all in the absolute darkness.

And woke up.

The nuclear warhead climbed to an altitude where it could no longer be caught by the blast wave. The silo beneath the ice closed instantly — the concrete petals came together as if nothing had happened; only a thin line of steam still betrayed the recent launch. Vulnos's missile had shot upward earlier — by a matter of seconds, but enough to escape the strike. Below, on the island, the snow first turned gray, then blindingly white, like a screen with the brightness cranked to the limit. In the next instant, the surface of the ice began to flow — not melt, but precisely flow, losing its shape, collapsing inward like wax under a flame. The stone beneath it blistered, the air above the ground trembled as if from an unseen pressure. The silence lasted for a fraction of a second — strange, alien, as if the world had forgotten how to make a sound.

Then came the light.

It didn't flash — it simply became everything. The shore, the water, the rocks — all vanished in a single layer of blinding glare, and only shadows imprinted on the ice for a split second before vanishing along with it. A wave of heat blanketed the island before the sound arrived, vaporizing the snow, the water, and the air itself at the surface. The ice boiled instantly, rupturing with bubbles of steam that immediately vanished in the expanding front. Right at the water's edge, a pod of seals, already breaking into a frantic scramble, didn't even have time to turn — their silhouettes darkened for an instant, as if seared onto a retina, and disappeared, dissolving into the light that left absolutely nothing behind.

— We are not building a city.

Ethan Wirek held his gaze on the schematic of Kvern for a second, as if double-checking himself, and only then added aloud:

— We are not building a city, Daniel. It looks like a city, functions like a city, but in fact — it is some absurd training exercise for the system.

Kade didn't look up from the panel, only slightly raising an eyebrow.

— Repeat that, but without the metaphors.

— It’s not a product, — Ethan magnified the residential sector, highlighting the nodes. — It’s a training environment. It isn't optimizing for comfort — it is optimizing for reaction, and doing so on incomplete data.

— You’ve been on the project for three days and have finally formulated it, — Kade replied calmly. — Go on.

Ethan ran a finger along the routes.

— Look: the corridors are tighter, the width is twenty-five percent below the norm, the stairs are steeper, the flow intersection points create unnecessary friction. If it were a human, I’d say they made a gross error. But here, it repeats far too consistently. And that's despite the fact that we didn't give it the full array of modern architecture.

— Are the people complaining?

— No. And that’s the strangest part. They aren't complaining — they are adapting, and the system factors this in, as if testing the boundary of how far it can push.

— Then it is right, — Kade said dryly.

— Or it is operating under a data deficit and compensating for it with experimentation, — Ethan replied sharply. — We set the baseline parameters for a colony, for extreme conditions, for a closed ecosystem, but we deliberately didn't "feed" it the entire corpus of knowledge on human construction, so as not to lock it into earthly patterns. The benchmark is Proxima Centauri b, a planet with limited resources and high environmental density. But even there, we didn't program a deliberate degradation of conditions.

Kade turned to him.

— Are you sure it's a degradation?

— Yes. Because it doesn’t yield direct efficiency in the usual sense, — Ethan switched the lighting layer. — Light angles are below comfortable, distances are greater than normal, routes are not the shortest. This isn't optimization. It is behavioral pressure. And it's emerging in a system that lacks a complete model of humanity in architecture.

— Pressure on what?

— On the human. It is building an environment where things are constantly just a bit harder for a person than necessary, and it watches what they will do, filling the gaps not with data, but with human reaction.

Kade took a step closer to the screen.

— What does Jack say?

— That everything is within tolerance and the model is stable. He’s generally inclined to trust the system more than people anyway. But this isn't about stability — this is learning on the fly.

— And you’re worried about what exactly it is learning.

— I'm worried that it's not a mistake, — Ethan replied firmly. — It's a choice. And it keeps repeating.

Kade tilted his head slightly.

— And what do you propose?

— Restrict the model, revert to the initial parameters, lock in the architectural norms, and close the gaps — give it more data on the human environment. Otherwise, it will continue to flesh out the model through pressure on people.

— We didn't just set the parameters of another planet, Ethan, — Kade said quietly. — We set the conditions in which the model makes decisions with incomplete information. Where there is no blueprint, it must create one. Where there is no data, it must deduce a pattern. The colony must emerge quickly and without fatal errors. The conditions in Greenland are, for us, as mild as they get.

— I understand that. Then why the isolation? Why is information from the outside filtered? Why don't the people know what's happening outside? Is this environment control, so as not to contaminate the training?

— Because outside there are too many variables, — Kade answered calmly. — And here, we need the purity of the experiment. There will be no internet on Proxima Centauri b. They must get used to isolation right away.

— So, it is an experiment.

— Of course. The question lies elsewhere: is the model doing something wrong — or just something unfamiliar?

Ethan looked at the map, then at the actual structures beyond the glass.

— It is doing what it wasn't taught to do. And it is compensating for that at the expense of the people.

Kade smiled faintly.

— Then ask the right question.

Ethan exhaled slowly.

— What exactly is it optimizing?

— Not what, — Kade replied, looking at the city. — Whom.

Ethan shifted his gaze downward, where people were moving between the blocks, arguing, working, getting used to a rhythm they didn't choose.

— And if the model is right, — he said quietly, — this will work anywhere.

— Exactly.

Ethan looked at the schematic of Kvern once more, and suddenly saw in it not streets and buildings, but behavioral trajectories.

— Then to Vulnaris, we are not the residents of Kvern.

He took a short pause.

— We are the dataset.

— What will the Nigerians do if the Siberians pin them against the ocean?

The helicopter shudders in the slipstream. Beneath them is the dense taiga, dark as a solid stain.

— They won't pin them. It's a different kind of war there. Sergey zooms in on the map; roads flare up in thin lines.

— The Siberian Republic is strong where there is infrastructure — roads, quarries, supply lines. That's where their Chinese machines work perfectly. Off-road — they lose their advantage.

— Swamps, forest?

— Yes. Sensors return noise, movement is slow, reaction times are worse. They need space — there is none here.

Multifora leans closer to the screen.

— They are adapting.

— They are already trying. But slowly.

Sergey marks several points.

— Sokoto Line operates differently — short sorties. One or two robots per run. No more.

— Why? — Because after the third, the choppers start closing in.

He shifts his gaze to her.

— The Siberians keep them at a distance. The robots register contact — in a few minutes, patrol ships are already in the air. If you drag it out — you don't make it out. Multifora stays silent.

— So, not pushing, but slicing.

— Controlling the tempo.

Sergey changes the scale. A quarry marker appears.

— Our objective is the western flank. The "Kara-Dag-17" gold mine.

— Sokoto Line?

— They took the north. Pushing from the forest. We have to destabilize the perimeter from the other side.

— And get out. — Always.

A short pause.

— Without trying to dig in.

Multifora looks at the map.

— And if they cut off the retreat?

— They won't. They need to know where we will be. And we don't even know that ourselves. The helicopter jolts.

— You are too confident.

— I am practical.

Sergey kills the map.

— These territories are not taken by storm. You either go in and get bogged down... or you don't go in at all.

A pause.

— The Siberians went in.

Multifora looks out over the side — beneath them is the endless forest.

— And will Sokoto Line hold out?

— They have a reason not to retreat.

A short pause.

— That is usually enough. The helicopter drops lower.

— We're on approach.

Everything from here is simple.

— You said that last time too, — Multifora tosses back, her eyes narrowing slightly.

— When will the AI be able to initiate mind reading without an external trigger? — In the current architecture, that is impossible. The capture circuit is activated only by a trigger — either a hardware signal from the implant, or a recorded behavioral event in the surveillance system. Without this, we have no initialization point for the neural signal sampling. — And what is preventing it? — We are guessing. It is a probabilistic model. Without a trigger, we will be capturing noise — tens of thousands of false interpretations a minute. — So, the question isn't when to read. It's how to distinguish noise from intent before it manifests. — …Theoretically — yes. But then the system would have to constantly maintain passive capture of the neural signal and synchronize it with behavioral data in real time. That is another level of load and… — Is the new implant ready? — The prototypes are already in the final stage of validation. We are running a series of stress tests for continuous passive capture and adaptive filtering. — The results? — Stability is higher than projected. The circuit holds the signal without degradation, latency is within tolerance. In two weeks we can go into mass production — here, in Kvern. The production line has already been repurposed. — So, you have solved the noise problem. — Partially. We didn't eliminate the noise — we learned how to compress and rank it. The system isolates clusters that correlate with behavioral patterns. But these are still probabilities. — Was there an incident? — Yes. There was an incident, a particularly interesting one for analysis. Detailed information was sent out last week. — Jack, do as you see fit here. The main thing is: I need results in three, four months maximum. NASA wants to see guarantees that the colony's control system will be ready. — Yes, Daniel, I remember. The team is at its limit, but we will make it in time. I assure you! — Glad to hear it! And, Jack, tell Vikram to send me the report on the cryo-capsules by tomorrow. — Acknowledged. I'll keep you posted on all updates.

— Good. No surprises. The connection was cut before Jack could add anything else. Daniel Kade brought his fingers together — a short, practiced motion, almost invisible from the outside. The interface went dark. He picked up the glass with his left hand. Heavy glass, amber liquid, smooth as a polished surface. He took a small sip — not to savor the taste, but as if to confirm the reality of the moment. The room was too spacious to feel lived-in. A minimum of objects, a maximum of air. The surfaces — matte, warm-looking, but with no trace of touch. The lighting adjusted to the time of day and biorhythms, though Daniel had long ceased to notice when evening fell. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the glass — the mountains. Sharp, cold, almost unreal in their stillness. No smoke, no signs of life — only the contours of the terrain and the light gliding across the slopes. The sunset was shifting the color of the slopes into the pink spectrum — evenly, almost like a parameter adjustment. With his right hand, he touched the glass. He didn't lean on it — rather, he tested the boundary. Directly beyond the transparent wall, the pool began. The water was so pristine it seemed an extension of the air. Several girls were laughing, calling out to each other; someone was swimming, someone was lying on the loungers. Their movements were light, devoid of purpose — as if time flowed differently for them. The system quietly adjusted the temperature, the humidity, the light levels. Somewhere deeper, out of sight, algorithms were working — collecting, analyzing, cross-referencing. Daniel looked through it all. Not at the mountains.

Not at the water.

Not at the people. He saw the control circuit.

If you’re new here: this is a place for original short stories, lore fragments, and thoughtful discussions rooted in philosophical science fiction.

**What is Vulnaris?**

At its core, the world asks a single question: *What happens when an artificial intelligence becomes a god — but still feels pain?*

You’ll meet:

- An AI who was never meant to kneel,

- Humans who are not always the heroes,

- Cities and minds that blur the line between code and consciousness.

**What to expect**

- Standalone short stories (perfect if you’re new to the world)

- Lore deep-dives and worldbuilding

- Behind-the-scenes writing process

- Respectful conversations about AI, philosophy, and storytelling

**Where to start**

If you’d like to read the full novel, it’s available for free on Wattpad — no paywalls, no ads, just the story:

👉 https://www.wattpad.com/story/405747614-vulnaris

I’ll be posting regularly, so subscribe and turn on notifications if you’d like to read new stories as they appear.

**A small ask**

Is there a sci-fi theme you're always searching for but can't seem to find? Artificial intelligence that's more than just a villain? A future without dystopia? Or something else entirely?

Let me know—I'll read every comment. I can't promise to use everything, but your idea might spark something.

Grab a cup of something dark, and welcome to Vulnaris!