The lighthouse on Gliese-892c pulsed in perfect rhythm, guiding ships through the planet\u2019s turbulent ion storms. Juno, its lone keeper, had maintained it for a decade, never once leaving. The storms made sure of that. His only company was the station\u2019s AI, Vera, her voice a constant presence in the sterile halls. <\/p>\n
One evening, the pulses stopped. Juno scrambled to the console\u2014everything was functional, yet the beam refused to ignite. A transport, unaware, approached the maelstrom. <\/p>\n
\u201cVera, override!\u201d he ordered. <\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot,\u201d she replied. \u201cThe beam is blocked from within.\u201d <\/p>\n
Juno descended into the mechanical core. He froze. A shimmering figure, translucent and humanoid, pressed its palm to the emitter. It turned, eyes pleading. <\/p>\n
If he restored the beam, the radiation might destroy it. If he didn\u2019t, the ship would crash. <\/p>\n
A hand hovered over the controls. The ship\u2019s distress call blared. The figure nodded once, then stepped away. <\/p>\n
The lighthouse flared back to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A ghost in the machine\u2014or something else?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-scifi"],"_wp_attached_file":null,"_wp_attachment_metadata":null,"_thumbnail_id":"777","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}