A Rounding Error

The response was not a word. It was a feeling—a wave of cosmic incomprehension tinged with something akin to annoyance. It washed over them, a psychic pressure that made their teeth ache. The entity didn’t understand the question. Not because it was complex, but because it was meaningless. The concept of ‘Why’ was a mortal invention, a function of cause and effect in a linear reality. To this being, there was no ‘why,’ only ‘is.’ Kenji felt a sudden, sharp image bloom in his mind: a vast, intricate crystal lattice, impossibly complex, vibrating with its own internal logic. A single, discordant mote—them—was causing a resonance cascade, a tiny, irritating flaw in an otherwise perfect structure. The message was clear: they were not a threat, not a curiosity, but a bug. A rounding error. And the universe was starting to consider a patch.