No one noticed the moment.
There was no shock.
There was no flash of light.
There was no sound.
Simply, at some point, the last communication channel vanished.
The system didn’t try to restore it.
For the first time in the station’s entire history, it had nothing to synchronize with.
The astronomers worked in the observation dome for a few more hours.
Then they turned off the screens.
There was no longer any point.
Beyond the windows, the stars no longer drifted.
Light no longer traveled.
It seemed the whole universe had stopped, leaving the station alone, at an unreachable distance from everything that had ever been called “beyond.”
If anyone on Earth could still have seen it, it would have looked as though it had frozen forever at the black boundary.
Like a final sentence that no one would ever finish.
Inside, nothing changed.
The corridors stayed the same.
The doors kept opening.
The ventilation hummed quietly.
People passed each other.
Only the system, more and more often, could no longer find the most fitting answer.
The messages grew shorter.
One morning, the compatibility percentages disappeared.
The next, the emotional forecasts.
A week later, the avatar library vanished too.
No one had switched it off.
It simply stopped opening.
The first conversations were strange.
People would stop mid-sentence.
Search for words.
Sometimes say something other than what they meant.
Sometimes misunderstand each other.
One evening, in the mess hall, two men argued over something trivial.
A few minutes later, one stood up and left.
Before, the system would have suggested a different phrasing.
Now no one suggested anything.
The next day, they sat at the same table again.
They were silent for a long time.
Then one said:
“I was wrong yesterday.”
The other answered:
“So was I.”
Neither added anything more.
That was enough.
Arenas sometimes saw the woman who had once been Lina.
Or perhaps had only just become her.
They passed each other in the corridors.
Sometimes they nodded.
Sometimes not.
Once, they both stopped by the same window.
They stood side by side for a long time.
Neither started a conversation.
It wasn’t clear whether they were shy.
Or had nothing to say.
Or were simply learning how to be two people without a third.
A long time passed.
Or perhaps very little.
Beyond the event horizon, such distinctions lose their meaning.
There was no longer a single person on the station who could swear they knew another.
Nor was there anyone who doubted it completely.
Sometimes laughter drifted out from some room.
Sometimes a raised voice.
Sometimes a long silence.
No one knew what it meant.
There was no longer a system to translate one person for another.
For the last time, Arenas looked out the window.
The darkness no longer seemed threatening.
It was simply a place where light no longer returned.
For a moment he remembered an old message.
Predicted compatibility: 3.02%.
It struck him as strange.
Maybe the system had been wrong.
Or maybe, for the first time, it had told the truth.
Because beyond the event horizon, there was no longer either three percent or ninety-nine.
Only people remained.
And their sentences.
Shorter.
Imprecise.
Sometimes wrong.
Sometimes painful.
Sometimes beautiful.
For the first time, they no longer seemed perfect.
And that was exactly why, for the first time, it was possible to believe that they had been spoken by someone who couldn’t be replaced by anyone else.