Sci-Fi

The orbital station, known formally as the Ossuary of Echoes but more commonly as the Archive of Forgotten AI, hung in the throat of the Cygnus Rift like a jewel made of bone. It was a sprawling lattice of transparent silicate corridors and titanium ribs, drifting through a belt of obsidian asteroids that ground against one another with a soundless, tectonic fury. Inside, the air was perpetually thin, smelling of ozone and the cold, metallic scent of ionized silver.

The bell above the door chimed, and the café rippled like water disturbed by a stone.

Nia had stopped noticing the transitions years ago—three years in this timeline, anyway. The neon sign outside flickered from pink to electric blue, and suddenly the man at table four was wearing a different tie. The woman by the window had shorter hair. The rain outside became snow, then reverted to rain again.

The world below had long since become a memory—a patchwork of rusted rails, cracked highways, and cities that whispered their own demise into the wind. Above it all, suspended on currents of ionized vapor and ancient magnetic fields, drifted a place few had ever seen and fewer still believed could exist: the City of Aetheria.