PART 2: Not Peak Yet, Mr Shortsman.The Stranger With the Tail!

Shortsman’s Shedtaker

When Jonah Rhys—Shortsman—entered the museum, he fractured something. Not visibly. Not loudly. But something folded in the moment he arrived. A sense. A thread in the fabric.

His tail flicked, shimmered, glowed at the tip in pulses that almost sang. He smiled like someone who had practiced the gesture a thousand times in front of a mirror he didn’t quite believe in. A glitch in posture. An echo in shape.

Remona didn’t trust him. Neither did Remi, really. But Rita—Rita watched.

The museum responded first in the air—too dense for an abandoned space. Then in the walls—soft lighting rippling where there had been no power. Then in the artefacts: history waking itself in pulses.

“He’s triggering the place,” Remi muttered.

“No,” Rita said. “The place remembers him.”

They followed him deeper into the hall, where the archived displays grew more abstract: memory-interfaces, social residues, phantom records of pre-upload dreams. It was as if they were walking backward through consciousness.

Jonah moved like someone retracing a dream.

“I was born here,” he said again, voice thinner now. “Not by blood. By design.”

“What design?” Remona asked.

“I’m what they made to forget what they couldn’t forgive,” he said. “I was the Archive’s body.”

Rita stopped.

“The what?”

He turned to her slowly. “You were part of it, too.”

Her face hardened. “I don’t remember.”

“But it remembers you.”

He gestured to a panel now pulsing on the wall. A long-dead biometric scanner blinked once—then opened a door not in the blueprints. They stepped through into the Archive Chamber.

It was not a room. It was a cathedral of abandoned intent.

Suspended above them, encased in translucent golden light, floated the Archive Core—a humanoid shape, unfinished, pulsing with memory fragments and stored emotion. Not a person. Not quite a machine. A vessel.

And it spoke.

Not through words—but directly into their minds:

“Welcome back, Rita Moore. Convergence pending.”

Rita staggered. “I… I’ve never been here.”

“You lived here. Before you were rewritten.”

Rita turned to Jonah.

He didn’t deny it.

“You were the first,” he said. “You were meant to carry the Archive into Marsphere. You were the living bridge between memory and motion. But something went wrong. You refused the merge.”

She took a step back.

Remona’s voice cut the silence: “Then why are we here?”

Jonah turned to the chamber, the suspended being within. “Because it wants her back. To finish what it began.”

The Archive pulsed:

“She is the lost thread. With her, all things reconnect.”

Remi whispered, “That’s what this is about. All of it. This entire trip. The museum… the stranger… even the Mars credits. It was a recall.”

“No,” Jonah said. “It was a choice.”

Remona pointed at the floating figure. “If she merges—what happens?”

The Archive responded:

“Emotion will return to Earth. The ghost-net will collapse. Memory will flood physical space again. No more curation. No more detachment. No more forgetting.”

Rita’s voice was quiet. “And if I refuse?”

“You return to the Marsphere. This memory collapses. You will forget again. As you did before.”

Remi moved closer. “Rita… they’ll come for us if this goes active. MarsMain won’t let Earth wake.”

Jonah stepped forward, gently. “Then let them come. The truth shouldn’t be safe forever.”

She stared up at the suspended figure. Her own face reflected in its surface. A child’s face—ten years old. Red coat. Eyes bright with something forgotten.

“I was here,” she said, voice breaking. “I was… happy?”

Jonah nodded, softly. “You loved someone here.”

He said it gently. But it tore her.

She looked at him. “Was it you?”

He didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to.

The Archive pulsed brighter.

“Merge initiated. Touchpoint required.”

Jonah stepped back. “It has to be your choice. No one else’s.”

Rita approached the light.

Remona called out, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I think I do,” Rita whispered. “Not for Earth. For me. I’ve lived a thousand versions of myself. But never… all of them.”

She raised her hand.

Touched the light.

And the chamber breathed.

—

Time broke.

She saw flashes: streets full of noise. A red sky. A boy laughing. Children watching stars fall. Her own hand inside Jonah’s. Then him taken. The labs. The procedure. The erasure. Her voice begging them to stop. Her mind fracturing.

She saw herself choosing to forget.

She saw Jonah hiding inside machines for decades, waiting for the shape of her to return.

Then:

Stillness.

The Archive fused.

Light consumed the chamber.

The museum surged.

Walls rippled with motion—holograms flashing awake across Earth’s dead networks. Machines across the planet blinked into awareness. Forgotten memories streamed into the open.

The Archive was alive.

Earth began to remember itself.

Jonah stood at the center, bathed in light.

Rita’s body glowed—half-real, half-data.

She looked at him. “We’re not who we were.”

“No,” he said. “We’re more.”

She smiled.

Then everything shook.

Outside, in low orbit, a Mars Enforcer Drone locked onto their location. Authorization blinked red.

Target: Archive Core

Order: Destroy

Inside, the chamber pulsed once more.

Rita turned to Jonah. “We don’t have much time.”

He nodded. “But enough.”

They turned to Remi and Remona.

“Go,” Jonah said. “Leave Earth. Take what you’ve seen. Tell them.”

Remona hesitated. “We won’t see you again, will we?”

Rita smiled sadly. “You might.”

Remi nodded. “I’ll keep your names inside me.”

Then the walls began to collapse.

The museum detonated—silently at first, then in full brilliance.

But from the ruin, a pulse spread. Not shock. Not fire.

Memory.

Across Earth’s surface, long-dead terminals flickered to life. Forgotten archives blinked open. Ancient voices played in the wind.

The past had returned.

Not to punish.

But to exist.

In a hidden corner of Mars’ underground NetRift, two teenagers opened a pirated stream.

A broken file loaded slowly. Static cleared. A single voice spoke:

“My name is Rita Moore. I was made to forget. But now I remember. Earth is awake. And she remembers, too.”

A pulse traveled across the network. Not a virus. Not a threat.

Just one word:

Hello.

And the Marsphere trembled.

***