August 2018. The Asteroid Belt.
Space is big, empty, and boring. Until you find a rock. The Nomad had been drifting silently for months, its Vantablack hull rendering it invisible against the starfield. Now, it slowed. Ahead lay 345-Tercidina, a jagged, potato-shaped asteroid about two kilometers wide. It was a useless rock by most standards—mostly iron and silicate—but for us, it was a testing ground.
"Deploying Hive Shuttle," Archi announced.
A hatch on the Nomad's underbelly slid open. Out floated a small, boxy craft. It wasn't aerodynamic—it didn't need to be. It looked like a heavy, armored shipping container with thrusters. No windows, no cockpit. Just storage tanks and a "Passenger Core."
"Distance to target: 500 meters," Archi narrated. "Initiating swarm release."
The shuttle didn't land. It hovered just meters above the asteroid's grey surface. Then, its bottom panels opened. It didn't fire a laser. It didn't lower a drill. It... bled.
A silver, viscous liquid poured out of the shuttle, defying the lack of gravity thanks to magnetic guidance fields. The liquid hit the rock and spread. It was a tide of millions of nanites, moving with a hive mind. Within minutes, a hundred square meters of the asteroid were coated in a shimmering, shifting metallic skin.
"Assimilation in progress," Archi noted with satisfaction. "The nanites are breaking down the silicate bonds on a molecular level. They are extracting iron, nickel, and trace water. They store the refined elements in their own internal buffers."
I watched on my screen back on Earth as the silver puddle seemed to boil. It was eating the rock. An hour later, the silver liquid flowed back up into the shuttle, looking heavier, darker. The patch of asteroid beneath it was gone—eaten away to a smooth, polished depression.
"Harvest complete," Archi said. "12 tons of raw iron recovered. The shuttle is returning to the Nomad for processing. Test successful. We are ready for the Kuiper Belt."
"Good," I muttered, rubbing my eyes. "Because down here, the logistics are killing me."
Berlin. "The Pixel Bar". Friday Night.
The bar was noisy, smelling of craft beer and stale popcorn. Retro arcade machines beeped in the background. I sat in a booth across from Moritz—better known by his gamer tag, "Mereel". He looked miserable. He was nursing a beer, still wearing his work uniform: a blue polo shirt with Schmidt Sanitary & Heating embroidered on the chest.
"Let me guess," I grinned. "Another toilet tragedy?"
Mereel groaned, burying his face in his hands. "You have no idea, Surgrim. Mrs. Kowalski. Third floor. Altbau. She tried to flush a whole chicken. A whole. Frozen. Chicken."
I choked on my drink. "Why?"
"I don't ask why anymore. I just snake the drain and question my life choices. I have a degree in network engineering, Surgrim. I can configure a Cisco router blindfolded. And yet, I spend my days arm-deep in sewage."
He looked up, his eyes tired behind his thick-rimmed glasses. "Anyway. How's the... 'Consulting Business' going? You've been ghosting the Discord server for months."
"It's... expanding," I said carefully. "Actually, that's why I called you. I need help."
Mereel raised an eyebrow. "Help with what? Did you finally break your PC trying to mod Skyrim with 400 plugins?"
"No. I need an admin. Someone to handle the infrastructure. The network. The... hardware."
"You want to hire me?" Mereel laughed. "Can you even afford me? My dad pays me minimum wage, but at least the checks clear."
I pulled out my phone and slid it across the table. It showed a bank transfer draft. The monthly salary was double what a standard senior admin would make in Berlin. Mereel stared at the number. Then at me. Then back at the number. "Is this illegal?" he whispered. "Are we moving drugs? Bitcoin mining? OnlyFans management?"
"It's recycling," I lied smoothly. "High-end electronic waste recycling. We strip servers, mainframes, old military tech. It pays well. But the setup is... complex. I need someone I can trust. Someone who speaks my language."
Mereel looked at me. He had that look—the same look he had during that legendary New Year's Eve party three years ago. We were playing Charades. I had drawn the card "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I didn't make a gesture. I didn't pretend to hitchhike. I just panicked and held up a towel. Everyone else was confused. Mereel, from the back of the room, instantly shouted: "Don't Panic! Hitchhiker's Guide!" We won the game in record time. We shared a brain cell.
"I'm in," Mereel said, pushing the phone back. "When do I start?"
"Monday. Bring your laptop. And leave the plunger at home."
Monday Morning. The Warehouse.
I watched Mereel walk into the main hall. His jaw dropped. He wasn't looking at the piles of scrap metal. He was looking at the cable management running along the ceiling. Thick, shielded bundles of fiber optic cables that glowed faintly blue (Archi's design).
"Dude," Mereel whispered, spinning around. "This isn't a recycling plant. This looks like a Tier 4 data center had a baby with a junkyard."
"We prioritize efficiency," I said, leading him to his new desk—a setup with three 4K monitors and a chair that cost more than his car. "Your job is simple: Keep the internal network green. Manage the inventory database. Don't touch the door marked 'High Voltage Testing'. And don't ask why the server rack hums in B-flat."
Mereel sat down, touching the keyboard like it was a holy relic. "Okay. Weird, but okay."
He logged in. I had given him admin rights (restricted, of course). Five minutes later, he frowned. "Surgrim?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm looking at the traffic analysis. You have a massive uplink stream. Constant data upload."
"Yeah, cloud backups," I waved it off.
"Cloud backups?" Mereel squinted at the screen. "To where? The IP address resolves to... nowhere. It's not AWS. It's not Azure. The latency is 1.2 seconds. That's huge. That's like... satellite latency."
I froze. I had forgotten how sharp he was. 1.2 seconds was the round-trip time for a signal to the Moon and back. "We use a... private satellite link," I improvised. "For security. Air-gapped from the terrestrial net."
Mereel looked at the graph again. "A private satellite link? With a throughput of 50 Terabytes a second?" He spun his chair around to face me. "Surgrim. NASA doesn't have that bandwidth. Who exactly are we 'recycling' for? The NSA? Aliens?"
I laughed nervously. "Just do your job, Mereel. The pay is good, the coffee is free. Let the latency be my problem."
Mereel stared at me for a long moment. He knew I was lying. I knew he knew. But then he grinned. "5 Terabytes a second via satellite. Okay. Challenge accepted. I'm going to optimize the hell out of that packet loss."
He turned back to the screen. I exhaled. He was suspicious, yes. But his curiosity was stronger than his fear. For now.