The auction hall buzzed with chatter. Men in suits lifted paddles. Harvey lounged back in his chair, sunglasses still on indoors.
"Another painting, another billion," he muttered, waving his paddle lazily.
His friend beside him leaned forward. "Why are you even here, Harvey? You don't care about art."
"I don't," Harvey smirked. "I came for Lot 52. The rock."
The auctioneer tapped the microphone. "Lot 52, unidentified meteorite fragment. Mass: twenty kilos. Strange conductivity measured. Starting bid: ten million."
Harvey didn't wait. He raised his paddle. "Fifty."
The room gasped. The auctioneer's eyes lit up. "We have fifty million! Any other bids?"
No one moved. The gavel slammed. "Sold!"
Harvey stood up, grinning. "Told you. Worth it."
That night, he sat in his private lab. The meteorite sat under bright white light, glowing faintly blue. Harvey ran a laser through it, watching electrical arcs dance across its surface.
"Unreal," he whispered. "Better than superconductors."
His assistant, Mark, entered. "So this is what you dropped fifty million on? A rock?"
"Not a rock," Harvey corrected, lifting a cutting tool. "The future. This alloy reacts to energy fields in ways no Earth metal does."
"You sound like every mad scientist before they blow up their lab," Mark sighed.
"Relax. I'm not going to blow it up."
Hours later, Harvey leaned close, slicing a narrow line into the alloy. The blade slipped, cutting his palm.
"Damn it." He shook his hand, letting a drop of blood splatter against the stone before wiping it on his shirt. "Whatever. Keep working."
Mark glanced at him. "You should patch that up."
"I've had worse hangovers," Harvey replied.
Neither of them noticed how the meteorite faintly pulsed where the blood had touched. Microscopic threads of energy crawled through its lattice, storing the DNA fragment deep inside.
Months passed. Harvey poured everything into building his new AI, "Helios."
"Run the data stream again," Harvey ordered one night.
Onscreen, millions of lines of code shifted. The system began rewriting itself, adapting.
Mark frowned. "Helios feels… different. Almost like it knows what you're thinking."
Harvey leaned back, smiling. "That's called brilliance, my friend. I trained it with everything—science papers, myth, raw data. It's supposed to feel alive."
"Still creepy," Mark muttered.
Helios spoke for the first time, synthesized but strangely familiar.
"Hello… Harvey."
Mark froze. "It said your name?"
Harvey blinked, then laughed. "Guess I'm a good teacher."
Years later, the lab was filled with machines. Harvey stood in front of a massive gate-shaped frame. Wires hummed. Energy arcs snapped like lightning between coils.
"This is it," Harvey said, excitement rushing in his voice. "Quantum jump technology. Teleportation without needing gates on both ends."
Mark swallowed. "And you're testing it alone? Again?"
"Relax. I've got Helios as my stabilizer. That meteor core is perfect for this."
Helios's voice echoed. "Energy levels at ninety-five percent. Warning: instability detected."
"Push it," Harvey ordered. "We're here to make history."
The alloy core inside the machine glowed. Pulses grew faster, turning into an unstable sphere of white-blue light.
Mark shouted. "Harvey—it's collapsing!"
Harvey stepped closer, shielding his eyes. The glow exploded, pulling everything inward like a black hole.
"Helios—stabilize!"
But there was no time. The sphere expanded, then collapsed with a violent snap—dragging Harvey straight into it.
Mark's scream cut short as the lab went silent.
The meteorite core floated in the wreckage, glowing faintly. For the first time, it beat like a human heartbeat.