Observing dark energy should have immortalized him in the annals of physics; instead, it earned him a footnote and a handful of derisive questions at conferences.

  The fact that no one had replicated his data was, perversely, treated as evidence that he was wrong and that his experiment had been faked. Yet the Scientist knew that such failures were solely because lesser minds could not grasp the understanding required to design his detector.

  When the Dean murmured that another lab might catch up “within a decade,” he interpreted the words as both a curse and a challenge.

  So he stopped waiting. Let DESI map its baryon wiggles; let LIGO chase another black-hole chirp.

  The Cosmological State Equalizer—his brutalist cathedral of copper coils, sapphire lenses, and vacuum manifolds—would do more than measure dark energy’s spectral shadow. It would pin that phantom to the corkboard of reality and keep it squirming long enough for every so-called expert on Earth to witness.

  Two years of solitude in the sub-basement had burned away doubt and most social niceties. The Chancellor’s signature on a discretionary fund had covered the rest. All that remained tonight was the proof.

  “Yes, I just need something to smack reality in their faces. Then they’ll see,” he muttered, already savoring the scene.

  The Equalizer loomed in the dim workshop like something from a different era: a three-story torus of superconducting custom alloys, with cables drooping from ceiling winches and coolant hissing through 3-D-printed arteries.

  In one corner, a repurposed industrial cabinet served as an observation pod—really a glorified fallout shelter clad in titanium-copper plate. The Scientist squeezed inside, shouldered aside a dangling bundle of fiber lines, and sat on the velvet chair he’d requisitioned.

  It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it was cheap enough for him to acquire all the copper he needed for the alloying.

  “For the record,” he said into the audio log, savoring the dramatic moment, “humanity is approximately ninety seconds from a century’s leap forward. And even those cretins at Stanford won’t be able to ignore the implications this time.” Considering that the lab was only ranked seventh in the world, the Scientist had no idea what gave them such arrogance, but he wouldn’t mind showing them what was what.

  He pressed the power button.

  The Equalizer’s start-up whine climbed from subtle hum to construction drill, making his teeth rattle. Indicator LEDs fired in programmed sequence—red, amber, green—then looped again as the energy gradient rose. All nominal, the Scientist reminded himself, fingers dancing across sensor readouts: vacuum integrity, magnetic shear, containment phase offset. The photon counters spiked; video feeds blurred under ?erenkov glare.

  It was beautiful. Artistry had never been his forte—not that he had ever dedicated himself to it—but even he could see that something was awe-inspiring about his creation. Maybe there is worth in the Romanticists’ idea of the sublime.

  He’d known he was one of the greats, of course, but to be on the brink of an achievement the rest of the world couldn’t even begin to fathom… It was a heady thing.

  Then the rumble began—deep and tectonic. It was within the expected parameters, but larger than his simulations had predicted. He clicked his tongue, annoyed; perhaps the basement’s foundation had unforeseen micro-fissures undermining the stabilizers. He would take care of it later.

  On the main monitor, a status field strobed ΔΣ > 1.4—a variable that should never exceed unity. He frowned. Suppressor coils misaligned? Impossible—

  The containment lattice hiccuped; the indicator loop accelerated through colors like a child mashing elevator buttons. Somewhere overhead, a bolt gave out with a sound like a snapped bone. The Scientist reached for the manual-override keyboard. The pod’s door, rated to halt shrapnel from an over-pressurized turbine, should have opened on hydraulic rails. Instead, its lock flange warped inward as though struck by a giant, sealing him inside.

  Another rumble—higher pitch, almost a groan. Readouts blurred into a waterfall of warnings. “No, no, not yet—” he muttered, hunting for the emergency shutdown sequence. Keypress number three registered; number four resulted in a blue screen.

  The equalizer’s core flared on the monitor: a sunspot was blooming in negative space. Lines of containment code scrolled, failed, and scrolled faster. Why now? He thought, absurdly. I was so close to the truth.

  Then, everything balanced in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. His last conscious observation was that the phase-contrast plot had begun drawing fractal petals—and that the symmetry was curling inward toward a singularity.

  He sighed, “I knew I should never have trusted that copper trader. Who even calls their company Ea-nasir’s Secure Materials?”

  Then the world became pure, featureless light.

  Consciousness returned in fragmented bursts. At first, only flashes of color—blooms of mauve, jade, indigo—floated across his vision like auroras. Then came sound: muffled lullabies, arrhythmic, like a song slowed to half-speed. He tried to swallow; his tongue felt swollen, foreign. Where is the lab? Where am I?

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Panic threatened to overwhelm him. His senses insisted his arms were tiny. When he tried to bend his knees, they collided with something soft much sooner than expected. This was not a hospital gurney. The air smelled of warmed milk and crushed lavender, undercut by iron—a hint of blood or perhaps incense.

  Words he could not understand continued to come at the same low and solemn rhythm.

  It had been years since he’d had to suffer anything like this. Please no.

  He braced for the surge of terror as he was pressed closer, but felt only a pleasant buoyancy, as though someone had replaced his marrow with champagne bubbles. His mind began to work again.

  Was this the effect of sedatives in a recovery ward? Unlikely; the chant he now heard contained diphthongs unrecorded by any Romance tongue, and he knew thirty languages well enough to order coffee. These vowels curled like smoke, elongated, then snapped shut like case endings in a language that seemed to have never bothered with structured alphabets.

  His head lolled as he tried to look up. A woman’s face came close enough for him to grasp some details—elegant cheekbones, luminous skin, a broad-brimmed hat that should have looked theatrical.

  Intricate sigils pulsed faintly along her cheeks and temples. He squinted at them—bio-luminescent bacteria? No, the emission bands were too narrow; more likely, they were made with phosphor-based ink.

  He refocused. The woman was too big. Either he’d been found by the largest human he’d ever heard of, or…

  His mind had always been his greatest asset, yet it took him distressingly long to recognize his predicament: he was an infant.

  He rebelled against the impossibility. Reincarnation was something he had long dismissed outright as religious nonsense. And if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that unscientific drivel could not be taken seriously. When his thoughts did not dissipate his dream, he was forced to confront reality.

  She spoke again, her voice gentler than beach foam. He caught two syllables repeated rhythmically: lun-ai, lun-ai. The way she gazed upwards at a pale sphere suggested it had something to do with the moon.

  She shifted him in her arms. Beyond her shoulder glimmered a statue made of marble so flawless it appeared liquid, depicting a serene goddess embraced by a crescent halo. Candle flames marched along channels carved into the stone, their reflections pursuing each other like fish.

  I shouldn’t see it. Everything else is unfocused, yet this statue remains perfectly clear.

  The Scientist’s academic disdain for organized mysticism sputtered, wavering as power prickled his new skin. Something unseen brushed against the chamber, and static tingled down every nerve.

  An object of worship, he decided after a moment, shaking off the impossible sensation, somehow illuminated well enough for me to see it. Unfortunately, he had more than his fair share of experience with similar cults.

  His parents’ absurd gullibility meant they had fallen for one scam after another throughout his life—self-proclaimed gurus, miracle workers, and faith healers all found fertile ground with them. He had grown to loathe religious cranks and their manipulative tactics. And now, I’m stuck with another idiot. Again.

  An elder stepped forward—her robes heavier, the symbols more ornate. She bore a crystal sphere that glowed from within, with shards refracting light into geometric flakes that drifted free of gravity like luminous pollen. Her chant wove a counter-melody to the younger woman’s.

  His hearing sharpened as the motes brushed against his cheeks, and the haze lifted from his vision. The experience felt like a camera lens racking into focus—except the lens was his frontal cortex.

  Neural acceleration, he noted. Impossible under standard biochemistry. Therefore, reincarnation or simulation. He tried to lift a finger to test tendon response, but his digit wobbled, fat and useless. It was irritating.

  More infants were cradled throughout the hall, each undergoing the same luminous baptism. Mothers whispered endearments he did not understand but recognized rhythmically as affectionate diminutives. In his former life, he had observed cult gatherings with a cynical anthropologist’s eye; this one exuded a sincerity that pressed against his analytical detachment like warm sap.

  A veil parted near the goddess statue. From behind it emerged a woman robed in obsidian silk, her face obscured except for eyes like polished hematite.

  Even the older priestess inclined her head, revealing a clear hierarchy.

  When the veiled figure lifted one hand, every crystal mote hung frozen midair. She rotated her wrist, and the motes turned with her. Gesture-activated commands? No—field manipulation, his new intuition whispered. Something akin to a Lorentz force acted upon a substrate no particle accelerator had ever cataloged.

  The line of mothers advanced. At the pedestal, a baby was placed atop a moon-embroidered cushion; the veiled woman drew a glowing sigil above the child—three strokes, each axially symmetric—before pressing her palm to the infant’s crown. Light descended like liquid mercury, soaking into the soft skull. The child stilled, features slack with bliss.

  It is possible that I have awakened in a distant future, where science has advanced so much that it appears magical to a humanity that has lost control over itself and is divided across vast expanses of space… No, that may be even more nonsensical than this being outright magic.

  He fought to squirm, only managing a petulant kick. Heavy cloth brushed his cheek as he was placed on the cushion. The chanting swelled. The woman’s palm lowered until it touched his brow. Electricity—no, not electricity, something smoother—poured through him.

  A flood of familiar blue erupted behind his eyelids, resembling computer messages:

  An infinitely large computer appeared before his eyes, indifferent to the eons that passed. It simulated, calculated, and analyzed. Everything was within its purview, from subatomic particles to the largest black holes. It was the ultimate expression of a machine. It already knew everything and yet kept searching for more.

  His reflexive response was both childish and scholarly. “Oh.”

  It was the smallest syllable in any tongue, yet it contained a universe of mirth, horror, and fierce curiosity. Whatever magic saturated this chamber had just named him, cataloged him, and perhaps even rewritten him.

  The Equalizer, for all its greatness, had never once spoken a word in return. This System had greeted him like an old colleague. It felt immense yet still a single unit in a way that was hard to describe, just as the Earth constituted a single massive ecosystem while most biologists focused only on localized ones.

  He had only seen a glimpse of it, but that was enough to recognize its purpose. It, too, sought to understand everything.

  Silver motes drifted outward, crystal lanterns flickered low, and the line of mothers flowed deeper into the temple’s nave. The Scientist—no, Orion—lay cradled against a warm breast, considering that, for the second time, his understanding had expanded faster than he could put in words.

  The fear ebbed. In its place blossomed an altogether more productive sensation: wonder sharpened to a blade. If the world insisted on dressing physics in robes and chanting hymns, fine; he would learn the liturgy, parse its grammar, and diagram its hidden calculus.

  He would map this new world, just as Kepler mapped orbits, through patient observation and rigorous inference.

  Eventually, he would know the Truth.