The hum in the laboratory shifted into an ultrasonic whistle that made Liam and William’s ears pop. The KBIGM was no longer just scanning—it was biting into the structure of the "Shard," tearing out coordinates that shouldn't have existed in our dimension.
?"Nova, lock on Zero!" Marcus commanded, his voice straining over the roar of the cooling systems. "We need visual contact to calibrate the grid!"
?The AI’s voice cut through the absolute silence of the tense anticipation:
?"Countdown of all cycles complete. Input parameter processing finished. Multidimensional analysis of trajectories, mass/energy balance, and Hyper-resolution data decoding executed. Cosmos Grid formed. Protocol 7 initiated: identification and technical approach to the nearest stellar object in the scanning zone. Displaying final data structure on the main screen."
?A pale glow emerged on the black field, rapidly coalescing into a perfect sphere. The starting point began to grow at a frantic pace, filling meters of the plasma panel, becoming denser and brighter. A colossal vision of an unknown star loomed before them, rendered in such incredible resolution that its surface looked almost tactile—like a coarse, heavy roll of fabric unfurled right before their eyes. The star lashed out massive prominences into the cosmic void. These fiery plasma arcs were so immense they seemed to pierce through the screen glass, violating the very geometry of the laboratory.
?"Nova, activate the damping protocol immediately!" Marcus barked, noticing the temperature sensors on the monitor panel crawling into the red zone. "Overlay absorption filters on the Zero radiation! We cannot allow thermal warping of the screen. Reduce the energy pressure on the matrix, or the photon flux will deform the panel's structure!"
?"Confirmed. Applying adaptive thermal protection. Flux filtration at eighty-five percent. Stabilizing surface temperature gradient," Nova replied with cold precision.
?The brightness on the monitor dimmed, shifting from a blinding glare to a deep amber hue, though the level of detail remained unchanged. Following the primary image, cascades of data began to unfurl on the periphery of the screen. The system instantly calculated the architecture of the entire star system. Beside the burning giant, a graphical schematic appeared: eighteen thin orbits encircling "Zero." Nova displayed brief summaries for each satellite—from tiny ice boulders on the outskirts to massive gas giants whose specific mass made the numbers on the monitor flicker a warning yellow.
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?Dr. Marcus slowly shook his head, unable to tear his eyes away from this dance of plasma and celestial bodies. His face betrayed an extreme degree of scientific bewilderment.
?"But this is... fundamentally impossible," he mused, his voice, usually firm and confident, now barely a whisper. "We are seeing a level of detail that contradicts every known law of optics. To get a signal like this, we’d need a lens the size of this star system itself."
?He pointed to the incessantly updating data stream.
?"We don’t even know what region of space we’re in. Nova can't find a match in any of our stellar catalogs. We are looking at a sun that, according to our science, officially does not exist."
?Nicholas stepped closer to the console, his eyes gleaming feverishly in the light of the amber star.
?"You don't understand, Marcus," he interrupted his colleague quietly. "The KBIGM isn't 'looking' at stars through a telescope. We have just bypassed the limit of physics itself. The visualization speed of this Shard exceeds the speed of light by quadrillions of times. We aren't receiving a signal from the outside; we are literally unfolding the Cosmos from within the system itself."
?Nicholas froze, his silhouette standing out sharply against the pulsating disk. He slowly lowered his hands, as if the weight of the revealed truth was physically pressing down on his shoulders.
?"You know, Marcus..." the professor’s voice wavered with a mixture of awe and almost childlike wonder. "When we designed the KBIGM, I dreamt small. I thought we’d spend decades fumbling with dry numbers, studying the structure of moon dust or the isotopic composition of Martian crust. I prepared myself for tedious desk work on the outskirts of the Solar System."
?He turned to his colleague, the infinite fiery vortices of an alien sun reflected in his eyes.
?"I never in my life could have imagined that we’d create not just an analyzer, but a window. That instead of fragments of dead rock, the Universe would unfold before us in its full bloom. We aren't just traveling to the stars, Marcus... We are holding the pulse of creation in our hands."
