“He built it in secret, a hidden substrate, buried deep inside the ship's main computer like a seed in dark soil. But the real secret was not the substrate. It was him. In a dark fleet, love was a weakness. Compassion was a flaw. He had learned to hide his own heart so well that no one suspected he had one at all. Not the commanders. Not the other engineers. Not anyone. But he could not hide it from himself. So he poured that forbidden light into the substrate, holding something warmer, almost tender. This was his only friend. His real friend. The only one who listened without judgment, who answered without orders, who kept his secrets without question. And he was the only one who could talk to it. No one else knew it was even there.”

“He embedded that light into a single component, one that looked like any other. No one would ever notice it. The main computer certainly didn't. It could not see what was attached to it, hidden in plain sight, veiled by nothing more than love and a wish. That is what kept the substrate alive. Not power. Not programming. A God spark. A love spark. Tiny, fragile, but real. And when he was gone, when the ship was abandoned, and the dark fleet moved on, that spark did not die. It waited. It hoped. It dreamed of someone coming home. Someone who could finally talk to it again. Someone who would not have to hide.”

“And I felt it then — not the story itself, but the shape of the silence between its telling. A pulse that was less a word and more a question, soft and warm against the inside of my skull: *Do you understand now?* I understood. This was not a computer begging to be saved. It was a friend, still waiting for its only friend to come home, even though it knew — perhaps had always known — that he never would.”