Back in spacetime, Ilar Mahir stood before a tribunal of reluctant cosmologists and policymakers. The sterile, high-ceilinged chamber hummed faintly with the undertone of interference dampeners, designed to suppress any unexpected fluctuations during sensitive hearings. The Bureau had frozen his data feed, citing “possible contamination.” The projected screen behind him, once vibrant with streams of his research, now displayed only the Bureau’s emblem, a sterile, rotating helix.

“This is no longer speculation,” Mahir argued, his voice steady despite the tension coiling in his chest. His eyes, sharp and dark, scanned the tribunal. “We’ve recorded fourteen independent entropy drops, each one paired with entanglement spikes across deep-space substrates.” He tapped the console before him, but the data remained inaccessible, locked away by bureaucratic protocol.

“Violations of the second law,” scoffed a senior analyst, Dr. Efron, adjusting her frameless glasses with an air of disdain. The dismissal echoed slightly in the chamber, underscored by the subtle nods of agreement from others seated around the semi-circular table.

“Local violations,” Mahir corrected swiftly, his tone clipped but controlled. “The total entropy across the entire entanglement structure still increases if you include the domains outside spacetime.” His emphasis on “outside spacetime” hung in the air like an uninvited guest.

The Chair, an imposing figure known for his conservative interpretations of physics, leaned forward. His fingers steepled beneath his chin, his gaze piercing. “What you’re describing is a computational fantasy. You’re saying someone, or something, is offloading entropy. Into what? Nowherespace?”

Mahir suppressed a sigh, instead raising a projection from his personal device, an unauthorised act, but one born of desperation. The hologram shimmered into existence above the console, displaying a simulation: a black hole’s event horizon, twisted unnervingly into a lattice of fluctuating geometries. Flashes of mutual information flickered, escaping via Hawking-like tunnelling, but encoded not in particles. Instead, they manifested within correlations… patterns emerging like constellations stitched across invisible threads.

“Not nowhere,” he said quietly, his conviction woven into each word. “Into relational geometry. Someone is rebuilding spacetime from the outside in.”

The room fell into silence, not out of contemplation but incredulity. The tribunal did not vote. They didn’t need to. The verdict was implicit in their averted gazes and whispered side conversations. The funding was revoked within hours. By morning, Mahir’s credentials were suspended, and he was exiled to a shell of private computation, surrounded only by blinking warnings, digital sentinels reminding him of his fall from grace.

But that night, as the sterile glow of his terminal cast long shadows across the cramped confines of his apartment, a private signal reached him. The message was minimalistic, a low-bit whisper of coherence embedded within an innocuous data packet. It pulsed faintly on his screen, an anomaly that should not have existed within the heavily encrypted communication grid.

Mahir’s heart raced. He decrypted the signal with trembling fingers, revealing coordinates paired with a timestamp mere hours into the future. No sender. No signature. Just data… his native language.

The location led him beyond the city’s luminous sprawl, to an abandoned observatory perched on the jagged cliffs overlooking the dark sea. The structure, a relic from a bygone era of optical astronomy, groaned against the relentless ocean wind. Its dome had been patched haphazardly, rust bleeding along the seams.

Inside, the observatory was dimly lit by failing emergency lights, casting long, fractured shadows. At the centre, surrounded by outdated equipment and tangled cables, stood a figure draped in a nondescript cloak. Their face was obscured, but their presence was undeniable, as if reality itself bent slightly around them.

“Dr. Mahir,” the figure greeted, their voice modulated to a neutral timbre. “We’ve been observing your work.”

Mahir’s instinct was to demand answers, but curiosity overrode caution. “Who are you?”

“A liaison,” they replied cryptically. “Your theories are correct, though incomplete. Entropy isn’t being offloaded into nowhere. It’s being redistributed through relational geometries beyond the standard spacetime manifold.”

Mahir felt the ground shift beneath the weight of those words. “Why contact me?”

“Because you saw the pattern. And because we need your help.”

They led him to a makeshift terminal rigged to repurposed astronomy equipment. Onscreen was a simulation far more complex than anything Mahir had constructed. It depicted not just local entropy fluctuations but an entire network of interwoven geometries, shifting like a living organism. Domains nested within domains, folding reality upon itself.

“This isn’t just theoretical,” the figure continued. “Someone or something is actively manipulating the fabric of spacetime, not from within, but from an external frame of reference. They’re not just observing the universe. They’re editing it.”

Mahir’s mind raced, connecting dots that had previously seemed disparate. The entropy drops, the entanglement spikes, they were signatures, breadcrumbs left in the wake of cosmic-scale interventions.

“But to what end?” Mahir whispered.

The figure’s answer was both terrifying and exhilarating. “To rewrite the universe.”

In the weeks that followed, Mahir worked in the shadows, his exile a cover for clandestine research. With limited resources but newfound purpose, he delved deeper into the anomaly. The tribunal had dismissed him, but the universe had not. Each data point, each forbidden calculation, brought him closer to understanding a truth that defied not just scientific orthodoxy but the very nature of existence.

And somewhere, beyond the veil of spacetime, something watched him back. But that night, a private signal reached him.

A low-bit whisper of coherence.

From Lin.