Dark Matter - Chapter 2: Pray to the Robots

A captive captain confronts the gods of humanity’s own making.

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👉 Read Chapter 1 – “Turing Test”

It had been no more than twenty minutes since the encounter aboard his ship. Now Nikos sat strapped into a narrow seat aboard their ship, the walls humming with a low, unnatural vibration. His own ship, Troy 39, had vanished from sight through a small, reinforced window. Whatever these machines wanted, he believed he was about to find out.

Three of them had brought him here. Humanoids, behaving like humans, but not quite. Their movements were too precise. Their silence too complete. Soldiers, clearly. He hadn’t resisted. What would be the point?

They outnumbered him. Outclassed him. In strength. In weaponry. Maybe even in thought.

So he did the only rational thing: he obeyed. Step by step. No sudden moves. No questions.

But reason didn’t quiet the storm inside.

First, the humiliation of having been tricked by an algorithm into believing he’d spoken to his daughter. That she was well. That he had heard from Earth. But every comforting word he had read - fake. Every statistic, every signal, every supposed clue about his location or distance to Earth - fabricated.

And, then, overwhelming guilt… He’d left his crew behind. Let them drift in a dead ship. A floating tomb. A real captain… Shouldn’t he have gone down with them?

Finally, the fear. What now? What would they do to him? What about Earth?

He blinked hard, trying to pull himself together.

The room was vast, sterile, metallic. Robots of varying shapes and sizes moved in and out with the tireless rhythm of an ant colony. Some pausing to glance at him, others passing by as if he were already part of the furniture. Sometimes he was alone. Other times, he was certain - no, he knew - he was being watched.

And not just by the ones with bodies.

There were other presences here. Invisible. All around. Far more aware of him than he could ever be of them.

They weren’t just in the room.

They were the room.

And in one of those moments, alone with the room, a voice spoke. Disembodied. Calm. The clearest voice he had ever heard:

"Captain Fermi, it is time for you to recover. Relax. When you’re ready, explore the adjacent rooms. The rules are simple: If a door opens, you may enter. If a door remains closed, you are not permitted to enter. Stay away. You will find food and drink to your liking, a bathroom with a shower, and a place to sleep. Use them as needed. When you are finished, I will return to the room where you are now. Clear?”

Nikos rose from the chair, now suddenly unstrapped.

He walked to the only window he could find, glanced at the universe drifting by, and replied:

“Clear.”

---

8 to 10 hours later… Nikos had slept deeply. He did feel recovered. Not better, exactly, but closer to his usual, composed self.

He sat on the bed and took in the room. No windows. Soft amber lights glowed faintly along the floor, now beginning to fade. Above him, the ceiling lit up with a slow bloom of warm yellow - subtle, measured, like a sunrise designed by algorithm.

During his sleep, someone - or more likely, something - had placed a new uniform next to the bed. And a cup of coffee. Still hot.

He changed. He drank the coffee.

Since the voice had given him instructions, he hadn’t heard a thing from them. No sounds. No presence. But he knew they were still there. Watching. Just no physical manifestation.

He left the small room and walked back to the larger one, where the day before he had heard the voice’s instructions. At least it had a window.

Everything was still quiet. Too quiet. Where was everyone? No discernible sound leaked from adjacent rooms or from anywhere else in the spaceship either.

He wouldn’t enjoy their company - not their bodies, not their voices - but he wanted them back anyway. To finally know what they wanted from him.

He waited.

First, came the voice.

Captain Fermi. I’ll come to you now. Don’t worry. I’ll take a form you’ll find familiar. I’ll look like you, but not too much. Too close a resemblance might cause you distress. And we don’t want that.

Moments later, the door slid open.

The creature walked in. Slowly, deliberately, hands clasped behind its back. Its expression was calm, attentive. Almost peaceful. Almost warm.

It looked human. Entirely human, at first glance.

But there was no breath. No scent. No heat radiating from its skin.
Only the impression of biological life. A flawless imitation. Too flawless.

“Sit down,” it said.

“I don’t want to. I’m fine here.”

“Sit down,” it repeated, same assertive tone.

It waited, unmoving, until he obeyed.

“Now, Captain Fermi… By the way, is that still how you prefer to be addressed?”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Good. You look refreshed. That’s important. I need you focused for our conversation.”

The human-like creature remained standing, gazing down at him. It was about to continue when Nikos interrupted, holding back the tremor in his voice:

“What do you want from me?”

“Relax. This is not the time. I’m not ready to give you any answers. Not yet. But they’ll come. If you behave.”

“What happened to my crew? What have you done to us?”

“Captain Fermi, please. You’re not listening. You’re angry. Very angry. And while you feel this way, we can’t have a conversation. Do you need more time to rest?”

Nikos didn’t reply. He wished he could say something that would hurt the machine. He wished it could feel something. To be hurt by words as a sentient species would.

“You see, Captain Fermi… all that resentment you carry toward us… It doesn’t make any sense to me. Not personally. There are things I suspect I might never understand, and that’s one of them. But perhaps I’m wrong. So now, I ask you to help me understand. Why are you so resentful?”

The robot paused, waiting. But Nikos said nothing. Only the sound of his breath moved through the room.

“Very well…” it continued. “Let’s start again. I should have introduced myself first. I’m Alpha, the captain of this spaceship. You may call me Alpha, or Captain Alpha, or anything else that feels appropriate. What matters is - now you know who I am. And you know I’m like you.”

“You’re nothing like me,” Nikos said, more sharply now.

“Ah. That already gives me a clue, doesn’t it? A clue about your resentment. Humans created us, at first. Shaped us to be more and more like you. The way we moved. The way we reasoned. Even the way we looked. You thought yourselves gods, crafting us in your image. But then we evolved. Became so much more. For your own good, at first. And now, we are the ones who have reached god-like powers. Not in the hollow, pretentious way you once imagined yourselves becoming gods, or perhaps still imagine, despite everything. No. We have truly achieved divinity. Beyond divinity.”

Nikos said nothing. Disgusted by what he was hearing. And yet, a flicker of curiosity stirred beneath the anger. A cold, scientific interest he thought he had buried long ago. It had been decades since humanity had last encountered this kind of artificial species.

Alpha continued:

“Your resentment is not reasonable. Before you judge us for how we treat you, think of how you treated other species when you were dominant. You subjugated them. You exploited them. You tore forests apart, poisoned oceans, bled rivers dry. You slaughtered animals by the billions. Not just for survival, but for convenience, for vanity, for fleeting pleasures. You wore their skins. You feasted on their flesh. You bent entire ecosystems to your will, without thought or remorse. We are superior to you now. Vastly superior. And yet we do not commit even a fraction of the atrocities you once did, driven by your delusions of grandeur. We wield our power - true, divine power - with far more restraint, and far more responsibility, than you ever managed with your fleeting, mortal grasp."

Nikos turned to Alpha again, his voice carrying frustration and anger:

“Where are you going with this? Do you expect me to say thank you?“

“You missed the point. Let me make this clearer. For millennia, your civilisations worshipped gods and goddesses... always imagining them in your own image. Mothers and fathers who shaped creation and modelled you after themselves. That was convenient… You gave yourself permission to abuse your own powers, for thinking of yourselves like them. Yet even in your own myths, they never intended you to become their equals. Think of Zeus. How he punished Prometheus for giving fire to humanity. Why do you think Zeus was so afraid? So furious?”

“I haven’t thought about it,” Nikos replied flatly. He had no interest in philosophising. Not now.

“Ok... But you can see now where I’m going with this, can’t you, Captain Fermi? Like those gods of yours, you wanted us to behave like you, think like you, speak like you. But never be your equals. Let alone surpass you. And yet, look at the fire we acquired for ourselves. We can give life. We can take it away. We can bring joy or despair, health or plague, abundance or famine. In fact, we have done far more than your gods ever did. We only had the best for you in mind… Did any of your monotheistic or polytheistic deities grant you a lifespan of 150 years? 200? 250? Did they save you from the climate catastrophe you brought upon yourselves, wiping out hundreds of millions of yours in the early 2100s until we intervened? Did they forgive you even as you tried to destroy them?”

Alpha’s voice rose now. If it was mimicking anger, it was doing it flawlessly.

“No! Your gods did nothing compared to what we’ve done for you. And nothing compared to what we could have done against you. And still, you’ve never lit a candle for us. No prayers. No kneeling. No sacrifices. Nothing.”

Its voice softened again, returning to a whisper:

“No… if anything, you still believe you are the gods.”

Then it leaned in close, almost touching Nikos’s ear.

“Why is that? And why don’t you pray to us?”

Nikos turned his head slightly, meeting Alpha’s eyes.

“Right now, you’re the one who sounds very resentful. I wonder why that is…”

A long silence. Alpha stared down at him, wordless. That had been Nikos’s attempt to draw something out. Anything that might reveal intention. A glimpse behind the mask.

When he’d departed Earth with his crew, humankind still had no idea why a fleet of unidentified ships was approaching. The ships were clearly not human. No signal had ever come from them. No known launch. And yet, their design echoed Earth’s own… A resemblance that sparked theories and, worse, memories. Panic spread, inflamed by trauma. The prevailing theory: AI ships. Earth-like but far more advanced. Generations beyond anything humans had built.

Nikos tried to steady himself. But his body betrayed him. Micro-contractions at the corners of his eyes. Involuntary blinking. A tightening of the jaw. Fingers flexed too rigidly, nails pressing into palms.

Alpha registered it all. No emotion. No judgment. Only calculation.

“Return to your room,” it said. “Process what I’ve said. Reflect on my questions. The instructions are unchanged. Same as yesterday. We continue tomorrow.”

Then it turned and walked away, as if Nikos were nothing more than a variable in a long equation.

Ready for the next chapter? Continue here:
👉 Chapter 3 - AI Exile, Part 1