The aurora domes of Vexis-4 flickered as Doctor Ryen adjusted his instruments. His work—harvesting neural patterns from extinct species—had brought him to the ruins of the Lumari, a civilization that vanished centuries ago. Tonight, he had one last data set to collect.
As he activated the uplink, a shimmering figure emerged from the ruins. A Lumari. It regarded him with sorrowful eyes before speaking—its voice a patchwork of lost echoes. “You steal what we were. Will you leave nothing untouched?”
Ryen hesitated. His research could reconstruct Lumari thought, but only as records. Would preserving them as data truly honor them? The figure stepped backward, merging into the wind. His hand hovered over the recorder, then—after a long breath—he shut it down.
As he walked away, the ruins whispered. Perhaps some things were meant to pass into memory, untouched by human hands.
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