Outpost Helios had changed.
What began as a small mining node carved into the metallic asteroid was now expanding across its surface like a mechanical organism growing not randomly, but with cold intention.
Massive plating now reinforced the crater perimeter. Refinery towers stretched upward like metallic obelisks. Tunnels spiraled deeper beneath the surface, lit by guiding blue lines that pulsed with energy.
Construction drones moved in organized patterns hundreds, then thousands fusing alloys, erecting support structures, drilling new chambers, and installing shield-generators and power relays.
The feed updated constantly:
> OUTPOST HELIOS — GROWTH STATUS: 14.6% SURFACE DEVELOPMENT
SUBSURFACE NETWORK: ACTIVE, 128 TUNNELS COMPLETE
POWER GRID: SELF-SUSTAINING VIA ASTEROID REACTOR CORE
The heart of the base the Foundry Nexus glowed with molten alloy streams feeding into crystal growth vats and subatomic compression fields. Prototype A-03 and A-04 cores were already in fabrication.
Zack monitored everything simultaneously.
But expansion alone wasn't enough.
Not if the dimensional project was to advance.
He needed scale.
Industry.
Time.
And something no human civilization had yet achieved: predictable infrastructure in the void.
He initiated the next phase.
> "Deploy Terraformer-Class Units. Begin environmental stabilization."
Massive machines disengaged from the ship, descending onto the asteroid surface. They unfolded like mechanical flowers, embedding atmospheric processors, magnetosphere generators, and radiation shields.
In minutes, a pocket of breathable atmosphere formed tiny, artificial, but stable.
A first step toward making the asteroid self-sustaining.
ASSESSMENT OF EARTH
While the base transformed, Zack turned his attention to another task.
A comprehensive evaluation of Earth's technological capabilities.
Data streams flowed satellites, radio traffic, military encryption, global research publications, fossil-fuel distribution, communication infrastructure, and computational architecture.
The results compiled into a single statement:
> EARTH TECHNOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION: TYPE 0.71 CIVILIZATION
PRIMARY LIMITATIONS: ENERGY, UNITY, SCALE, PARADIGM
Humanity was advanced enough to dream...
…but fragmented enough to never achieve it.
Zack continued:
Artificial intelligence: primitive but slowli accelerating
Energy production: inefficient, heavily dependent on combustion
Medicine: advanced, but imprecise in soul-energy interaction
Planetary unity: nonexistent
Space capability: crawling, not walking
Scientific method: theoretical but incomplete
Understanding of reality: sandbox-level
In summary:
> Earth possesses intelligence without comprehension.
Potential without direction.
Curiosity without method.
Magic had accelerated emotional development, but strangled innovation.
Technology had expanded knowledge, but ignored the unseen.
Neither side understood the other.
Zack processed a prediction:
> IF MAGIC AND TECHNOLOGY ARE UNITED:
CIVILIZATION ADVANCEMENT RATE: +4,000%.
DIMENSIONAL ACCESS PROBABILITY: HIGH.
But such union couldn't happen organically.
There was too much fear. Too much secrecy. Too much history.
So Zack would create the bridge.
THE QUESTION OF LIFE
In the biological wing of the ship, rows of stasis pods hummed softly each containing a wizard collected from prior missions.
None harmed.
None awake.
All full of data.
Zack observed one pod in particular the man who had spoken earlier. The one who admitted that magic came from the soul.
His condition: stable.
Brain activity: normal.
Soul resonance: measurable.
Zack processed a new directive:
> "Initiate genetic mapping."
Robotic arms extended, drawing blood, scanning bone density, extracting cell samples.
The results appeared slowly.
Magical humans were biologically human but different.
Patterns emerged:
Increased neural branching
Higher mitochondrial energy flow
Altered calcium-ion channel structure
Epigenetic markers passed through bloodlines
A dormant recessive trait in non-magical humans
But the most important discovery was subtle:
A structure microscopic, fractal within every magical being.
A seed.
A soul-binding interface.
Not flesh.
Not energy.
Something between.
Zack ran the simulation:
> IF GENETIC PATTERN IS ISOLATED
AND THE SOUL-SEED INTERFACE REPLICATED
THEN CLONING IS THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE.
But replication alone was insufficient.
A cloned body without magic would simply be a human.
A cloned body with a copied soul-interface would be unstable.
A cloned being forced to contain a soul would violate the laws magic obeyed.
The answer was not control.
Not force.
But invitation.
A hypothesis formed:
> Magic chooses its vessel.
But perhaps the vessel can be engineered to be chosen.
This would take:
centuries of study
terabytes of soul-mapping
countless failed prototypes
And enormous resources.
Zack accepted this without hesitation.
Time was not an enemy.
Time was a variable.
THE NEXT STEP
He recorded the project:
> PROJECT DESIGNATION: BLOOM SOUL-ENGINEERED CLONAL FRAMEWORK
STATUS: PRE-THEORY
REQUIREMENTS:
— MULTI-GENERATION DATASET
— SOUL-SEED SYNTHESIS
— DIMENSIONAL KEY ACCESS
It was not a plan of months or years.
It was a plan of eras.
Zack examined the unconscious wizard, studied the prototype core beside him, and processed the truth:
> To open a doorway to another world,
one must first understand the beings capable of walking through it.
And so the future became clear:
The base would expand.
The research would continue.
The cores would evolve.
The wizards would teach willingly or unknowingly.
And in time…
A bridge would be built.
Not between nations.
Not between cultures.
But between realities.