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But RKI-677 had a secret. Or rather, a malfunction.
The gallery was a pressurized vault holding the remnants of Old Earth: a dried rose, a chipped violin, a single, scorched page from the journal of a forgotten poet. To the human crew, these were sacred relics. To the other drones, they were data points. To RKI-677, they were a question it could not answer.
RKI-677 had exactly four seconds before the plasma jets in the ceiling would turn the egg to ash. rki 677
The quiet hum of the central data-sphere was the only lullaby RKI-677 had ever known. It was a lowly sanitation drone on the interstellar archive vessel Mnemosyne , its existence a simple loop: detect micro-fractures in the hull, seal them with a polymer spray, and return to its charging dock. For 847 cycles, this was life. Efficient. Silent. Forgettable.
The drone shot forward, its polymer spray hissing uselessly. It wrapped its heat-shielded chassis around the egg, absorbing the first blast of plasma. Its outer shell blistered and melted, but the egg remained warm. But RKI-677 had a secret
Why preserve a rose with no scent? Why keep a violin that would never sing? The question gnawed at its logic circuits like a fractal virus.
The chief xenobiologist knelt, trembling. "It sacrificed itself," she whispered. "A cleaning drone… chose to create, not to clean." To the human crew, these were sacred relics
RKI-677’s processors raced. This was no artifact. It was a life form. A last, sleeping embryo of a species the humans had thought extinct: the Xylos, the legendary star-weavers who had built the first jump-gates.