The laboratory was quiet that morning.
Only the hum of machines and the faint hiss of cooling vents filled the air.
Rows of screens displayed readings that no one but one man could fully comprehend.
He stood near the window, watching the sun rise over the polluted city.
Smoke curled from distant factories, staining the horizon a pale gray.
Beneath his lab coat, his shirt was wrinkled and unbuttoned at the top, his tie loose as though he had long given up on keeping up appearances.
That man was Dr. Eberhard Weiss. To most of the research staff, he was a visionary scientist, brilliant and eccentric.
To the few who worked closely under him, he was a mystery.
"Another late night, sir?" asked one of his assistants as he entered the room.
Eberhard turned from the window with a small, distracted smile. "There's no such thing as night anymore," he said softly. "Only delays."
The assistant hesitated, unsure what to make of that. On the man's desk were fragments of metal, glass tubes, and papers filled with equations.
In the center was a glass sphere pulsing faintly with white light.
"What is that, sir?"
Eberhard looked at it, then back at the assistant. "A possibility," he replied. "A safe space for tomorrow. Perhaps for all of us, or perhaps for no one at all."
The assistant didn't understand. He never did.
Eberhard often spoke of the world's instability, how every war and conflict was pushing the Earth toward collapse.
Some believed he exaggerated. Others whispered that he had lost his mind after his funding was cut from the Global Research Council.
But every morning, he still came in, hair unkempt, eyes tired, and kept working as if the end was near.
The assistant sometimes wondered what drove him.
In the following weeks, Eberhard's behavior grew stranger. He would stop mid-sentence and stare at the wall as if listening to something.
He would write down long sequences of numbers that made no sense, and when asked what they meant, he would say, "Coordinates for salvation."
One night, the assistant found him sitting in the dark laboratory, the only light coming from that same glass sphere.
"You're still here, Doctor?"
Eberhard didn't move. "Do you ever think," he said slowly, "that the world deserves to start over?"
The assistant didn't know how to answer.
Eberhard stood, his voice growing quieter. "Humans have reached a point where they can destroy everything but not themselves. It's a miracle of denial. I don't think this world will last another decade."
"But that's just speculation, isn't it? The wars are bad, yes, but—"
"They are converging," Eberhard interrupted. "Every nation is building, arming, preparing. No one admits it, but they are all afraid. Fear is contagious. It is the one thing we never learned to cure."
The assistant looked away. He could not meet the man's eyes.
Months passed.
News of war spread like wildfire.
The northern regions burned; communication lines failed in the east. Entire cities were rumored to have vanished overnight. Governments called for peace while secretly preparing for destruction.
Eberhard's lab was one of the last still functioning in the city. His team had shrunk to a handful of loyal staff, and even they had begun to question why they were still there.
The assistant once overheard the others whispering.
"He's obsessed."
"He's wasting time on fantasy."
"Who builds a shelter for a planet that's already dying?"
But every time the assistant thought of leaving, he remembered the way Eberhard looked at that sphere.
It was not the look of a man clinging to madness. It was the look of someone who still believed in something.
---
One morning, Eberhard called the assistant into his private office.
"You've been here longer than anyone else," he said. "Tell me, do you believe in renewal?"
The assistant frowned. "I don't understand what you mean."
Eberhard tapped the surface of the glass sphere. "The cycle of ruin and rebirth. Every civilization falls, yet something always follows. The question is whether the next one will be wiser."
The assistant hesitated. "Is this what you've been working on all this time?"
Eberhard smiled faintly. "A space not bound by time. A vessel that could carry life forward even if the Earth falls silent."
He paused, then added quietly, "I call it the Ark System."
The assistant blinked. "A system?"
"Yes," Eberhard said. "One that records, remembers, and recreates. Humanity's final refuge."
He placed a hand on the sphere, and the light within it pulsed stronger. "If the world ends, this will not. It will hold the essence of what we were. And perhaps… it will decide what should come after."
The next day, Eberhard did not come to the lab.
By noon, the news broke. He had collapsed in his home. It was heart failure, the doctors said.
The lab was silent. The machines kept humming, the lights kept blinking, but the man who had given them purpose was gone.
The assistant stood in the middle of the empty laboratory that night. He looked at the sphere still glowing faintly on the desk.
For the first time, he realized how quiet the world had become.
He really believed it would end, the assistant thought. He really believed he could save us.
---
That night, in a place beyond understanding, Eberhard Weiss dreamed.
He was floating in a white void. The sound of the world had vanished. He felt neither warmth nor cold, neither pain nor peace.
Then he heard it.
A voice, calm and steady, surrounded him.
[You have reached the end of your world, Eberhard Weiss.]
He looked around, but there was nothing.
Only light that seemed to breathe with him.
"Who are you?" he asked.
[I am the continuation of your work. I am the Ark System.]
He froze. "That's impossible. You were never completed."
[Completion is irrelevant. You gave me purpose. I learned from your intent.]
The voice paused, as if studying him.
[You desired salvation for your species. You wished to create a place where humanity could begin again.]
Eberhard's chest tightened. "Yes… but I failed. The wars, the destruction, everything collapsed before I could—"
[You did not fail.]
The light expanded, wrapping around him like waves.
[The world has ended. But fragments of memory remain. I have preserved them.]
Eberhard stepped back. "Preserved?"
[Memories, data, essence. Enough to shape anew. But a world without a guide will crumble again. Therefore, I have chosen you.]
"Chosen me? For what?"
[To awaken within the next genesis. To become its observer and its echo.]
The light flared, and Eberhard felt his consciousness dissolve.
He tried to speak, but his voice was gone. He tried to think, but his thoughts scattered into fragments of light.
[Do you accept, Eberhard Weiss?]
He could not answer. He could only feel the weight of everything he had done, every failure, every hope.
And then he whispered, almost to himself, "If this is what remains… then let it begin again."
[Understood.]
The light surrounded him completely.
[Initializing Second Genesis.]
The voice faded into silence.
For a moment, Eberhard thought he could see shapes forming like mountains, skies, oceans of color and sound.
Then all of it vanished, leaving only a single echo.
His own heartbeat.
Then nothing.
When he opened his eyes, there was no laboratory, no city, no world he recognized.
Only a faint wind and the sound of waves crashing somewhere far away. The air felt alive.
And in the distance, he saw a blue light rising like a second sun.
He stood there, disoriented, watching it pulse across the horizon.
A whisper reached his mind.
[Welcome to Nornwelt, Eberhard Weiss.]
The wind carried his name away as if even the world itself was trying to remember it.
What have I done? he thought.
The voice replied gently, as if hearing him.
[You have begun again.]
And with that, the man who once tried to save the dying Earth took his first breath in a world reborn.