Lumen’s quiet hum echoed within Vorian’s vessel as it descended toward the surface of a remote, uninhabited world in the outermost curve of a forgotten star system. Clouds of violet mist drifted lazily through the atmosphere, scattering refracted rays across the green-tinted skies. Vorian hadn’t spoken much during the descent. Lumen, attuned to the silence, chose not to interrupt.

  This wasn’t a place people visited without purpose. A single transmission had been routed to Vorian from a guild of independent wayfarers: a delivery to a reclusive entity known only as “Aramat,” located within a solitary research complex buried inside a vast bamboo-like forest. The task was mundane in execution but rare in nature. Vorian accepted out of curiosity.

  Touching down in a clearing of gently swaying stalks, Vorian stepped out with the small data capsule secured in his hand. The forest creaked and rustled in an oddly rhythmic harmony, and Lumen leapt from the ship’s threshold, bounding beside him in a silent, eager gait. The path was clear, unnaturally so, as if the forest knew to make way for its sole resident’s visitor.

  As he walked, Vorian was struck by a strange familiarity. These were the places where people came not to live, but to think. He’d read about figures in ancient human and alien history—ascetics, mystics, and philosophers—who disappeared into seclusion not to escape the world, but to understand it. They believed silence held truths the crowd drowned out. He wondered whether they all found answers, or merely refined their questions until they could live with them. Vorian sometimes dreamed to become one of them.

  The facility was carved of a dark, obsidian-like alloy, smooth and reflective, nestled among the stalks as though grown rather than built. Vorian stepped into its interior, where the temperature dropped and a faint harmonic resonance filled the air. There, standing with his back turned, was Aramat.

  He was humanoid in form, but shimmered faintly, as though held together by an ambient field rather than a biological frame. His body pulsed with a quiet bioluminescence. He didn’t turn to greet Vorian but instead raised a hand toward the far wall, activating an interface with a flicker of will.

  “You have something for me,” he said, his voice sounding both immediate and distant.

  Vorian stepped forward and handed over the capsule. “A transmission, encoded and secured by the guild.”

  Aramat took it without looking, then finally turned. His face was expressionless, features sharp but not unfriendly. There was a slowness to his movements—not due to frailty, but to consideration. Everything he did seemed to pass through several layers of thought before action.

  “You are not in a hurry to leave,” Aramat said after a moment, examining him.

  Vorian tilted his head slightly. “I have time. You strike me as… wise.”

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  Aramat gestured toward a long, low bench of the same obsidian alloy. “Then sit. Let us talk. Few do.”

  Time lost meaning inside that complex. Days, perhaps weeks, passed with no marking of sunrise or sunset. Vorian stayed, fascinated. Aramat’s mind was vast and ordered, filled with knowledge spanning millennia. They debated cosmology, history, the psychology of synthetic and organic minds, and the ethics of influence.

  Lumen often slept nearby, curled into a silent ball, her ears occasionally twitching at a philosophical impasse. Though she said little, she always watched Aramat with unease.

  “Companionship,” Aramat once mused, “is a chain. It tethers you to illusion. To know oneself fully, one must sever the urge to be seen.”

  Vorian considered it. “Isn’t that just a more complex illusion? That you can be anything without context?”

  Aramat smiled faintly. “Context is the trap. It convinces you that you matter in relation to others. I do not wish to matter. Only to understand.”

  The logic was sharp, crystalline, and yet…

  Something stirred in Vorian. It came not from the mind, but from somewhere lower—something emotional, half-buried. In a quiet moment between debates, he recalled a face he had not seen in a long time. The wife he had once loved and had grown apart from. The warmth they once shared had slowly cooled, and then slipped beneath the ice of routine.

  But in remembering her, he also remembered how he had once felt when she smiled at him. How her belief in him had made him feel worthy. He had let it go. And yet, in that moment, he realized something profound:

  “We’re made small by the universe,” Vorian said aloud, mid-conversation, “but love from others magnifies us. When someone sees good in you, you become bigger than yourself. And when you act kindly, when you do good things for others, your self-worth rises—not just because of them, but because you start to believe the version of you they see.”

  Aramat narrowed his gaze. “A fragile loop. What happens when they stop seeing good in you?”

  Vorian nodded slowly. “Then you have to decide whether their vision was flawed… or whether you’ve strayed. Either way, it gives you direction. A mirror may crack, but it still reflects.”

  There was a long silence.

  Aramat finally turned away. “You are sentimental. And still governed by the need to be affirmed. Your clarity is fogged by longing. You mistake praise for purpose.”

  Vorian exhaled through his nose. “Maybe. But I’ve lived both ways. And emptiness in solitude feels more honest than in company but... ." Vorian stumbled over his own words.

  This usually never happens to him, but he suddenly feels stuck.

  "Yes...?" Asked Aramat.

  Eventually, Aramat invited Vorian to stay indefinitely. “You could evolve here,” he said. “Become more than flesh or function. You are already partway detached.”

  Vorian stood silently, looking toward the faint glow outside the complex, where the bamboo forest shimmered in the alien moonlight. Lumen, sensing the decision before he voiced it, stood as well.

  “I’m not as detached as you think,” Vorian finally said. “And apparently, not as I thought I am.” Vorian lowered his gaze to the ground.

  Aramat blinked once. Slowly. “Then you will carry weight forever.”

  “Maybe,” Vorian replied. “But I’d rather carry it than become indifferent to everything it connects me to.”

  He left that night, the forest whispering as he passed. As his ship ascended, Lumen rested her head on his leg. She hadn’t spoken the entire stay, but now, her presence radiated relief.

  In the silence of the stars, Vorian pondered.

  Perhaps solitude was not the path to clarity—but the mask it wore when clarity had failed to take root.

  "Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you."

  —Carl Jung