The logs of Epoch Five hundred documented the sudden, permanent departure of the world’s creators.
Lin Tao leaned over the composite stone stand, his left eye scanning through the dense test entries recorded eight hundred million years ago. The entries were marked with the highest office classification: EXODUS_TRANSCENDENCE_EVENT.
“What does it say, brother?” Tie Shan asked, his voice low and solemn.
“The builders finished their work,” Lin Tao said, his fingers tracing the edge of the display casing. “They gathered all the heat-powered data they needed from the fifteen land-wide containers. Their entire great realm prepared to climb beyond the physical framework of this dimension into a higher calculating plane.”
Old Man Geng leaned on his sledgehammer, his weathered face twisted in confusion. “If they finished their work, why are we still here? Why did they not release our ancestors?”
“They scheduled the entire world container for decommissioning,” Lin Tao explained. He pointed to the archival logs. “In their working terms, decommissioning meant venting the air, extinguishing the central star, and recycling the fifteen continents into raw matter. To them, our ancestors were simply test subjects at the conclusion of an experiment.”
Tie Shan’s jaw hardened into a jagged line of granite. “Cold heart in those builders.”
