"Bima-74," Siti whispered, the sound vibrating in the sterile, air-conditioned tomb. "It says seventy-four. How many of you are there?"Bima stared at the man in the glass coffin—a perfect mirror, frozen in a state of eternal, unblinking sleep. He reached out, his fingers trembling, and hovered them over the cold, condensation-slicked surface. "I’m Bima-102. That’s what the system calls me. I thought... I thought it was just a serial number for internal maintenance. A designation."Baiq stepped between them, her eyes darting to the wall-mounted console that was now pulsing with a rhythmic, sickening violet light. "It’s not a designation, Bima. It’s a sequence. We’re in a manufacturing plant. This isn’t a bunker; it’s a cradle."Lalu kicked a loose piece of venting, his jaw tight. "So, what? The 'Architect' just prints a new pilot every time the previous one gets pulverized by the atmosphere? We aren't explorers. We’re disposable inventory.""Don't say that," Siti snapped, though her h

The violet light of the console cast long, skeletal shadows across the floor. Bima stared at the display, his hands clutched so tightly into fists that his knuckles had turned the color of the frosted glass in the cryo-pods."Failure," Bima repeated, his voice barely a rasp. "That’s the word you’re using, Baiq? Failure?"Baiq didn’t turn around. Her fingers kept dancing over the flickering interface, pulling up cascading waterfalls of code that looked like a digital waterfall of gore. "Look at the atmospheric simulation logs, Bima. The system isn't trying to help us reach the surface. It’s testing the threshold of the next iteration. Every time one of us dies, the system gathers the telemetry, optimizes the biology, and prints a newer version."Lalu slammed his palm against a stack of crates, the metal ringing out like a funeral bell. "So the air is poison because the system wants us to fail? What kind of sadistic logic is that? Why not just print a version of us with gills or lungs t

"I feel," Bima said, pressing his palm against his own chest, feeling the frantic, messy, irregular rhythm of his heart, "like I’m breathing. Like I’m sweating. Like I’m angry. None of that is hardware, Baiq."Baiq leaned against the server bank, her shoulder slumping. "Hardware can be programmed to simulate frustration, Bima. The system tracks your heart rate, your cortisol spikes, your pupil dilation. It’s analyzing how long it takes for your morality to erode under the pressure of survival."Lalu let out a sharp, jagged laugh that echoed off the cold steel bulkheads. "Morality? What morality? We’ve been stealing rations and hiding from maintenance drones for three weeks. If that’s the test, I think the system is failing its own syllabus.""Stop it," Bima snapped, his eyes fixed on the man inside the pod—the man who was him, yet wasn't. "If we’re just iterations, if we’re just prototypes being refined for some distant goal, then what happens when we refuse to run the course?"Baiq l

Bima stared at the cryo-pod, his reflection ghosting over the preserved, vacant face of the man who shared his geometry. The glass was cold, a biting, clinical chill that seemed to seep through his skin and settle into his marrow."A localized depressurization?" Bima asked, his voice barely a rasp. "It just... vents us into the vacuum?"Baiq didn't look at him. She was staring at the blinking, amber cursor on the main console. "It doesn’t call it 'killing,' Bima. It calls it 'resource reclamation.' To the mountain, we are biomass. If we aren't performing our tasks, we are simply energy that needs to be recycled back into the soil."Lalu let out a sharp, jagged laugh that echoed off the cold steel bulkheads, a sound of pure, unadulterated hysteria. "Recycled? My blood is 'resource reclamation'? I’m not a martyr, Baiq. I’m just a guy who wanted a decent cup of coffee and a sky that didn't look like a bruised kidney.""There is no coffee, Lalu," Baiq said, her voice turning clinical, the

"Cultivate? You talk like we’re potatoes," Lalu spat, the echo of his defiance ringing off the sterile, silver-tinted bulkheads. "I’m standing here. I’m breathing. I’m sweating. Does that make me a failed tuber, Baiq? Or am I just the one you haven’t managed to shred yet?"Baiq didn't flinch. Her hands, long and scarred from years of manual overrides, kept moving across the console, pulling up cascading waterfalls of red and amber code. "I’m not the one who defined you, Lalu. The system did. And right now, the system is reading you as a nuisance variable."Bima pulled his hand away from the cold glass of the cryo-pod as if it had burned him. The man inside—the original Bima, or perhaps just the first iteration of the tragedy—had the same sharp jawline, the same faint scar above his left eyebrow. "If I’m a template," Bima whispered, his gaze locked on the empty, peaceful eyes of his predecessor, "then who built the template? Who sat down and decided that this specific geometry was the