Rick ran as if a pack of rabid dogs was on his heels.

His heart thudded high in his throat, and behind him the Superball droned, a metal sphere with a red eye and that signature siren wail that made bystanders step briskly out of the way.

He didn’t think of himself as a thief.

On his rough homeworld you survived as local boys did: fast, furtive, and without unnecessary questions. An old reflex snapped into place; his hand pocketed the shiny trinket by itself, and Rick didn’t even notice the moment he turned into a statistic.

He strolled out of the shop calmly, but the Tube, an enormous spaceborne colony, didn’t forgive trifles.

Order here was kept by automation that knew a little more about every visitor than the visitor knew about himself.

Rick had ended up here almost by accident.

Once, he’d been “lucky”: a local boss took him under his wing — roof, food, odd jobs, the illusion of success. His friends envied him; Rick laughed and told stories about life among the “higher castes.”

Until the boss got into dealings that were not just illegal but really illegal, and the whole crew got scooped up. The convoy was hauling them to a judge across half the galaxy and made a stopover in the Tube.

Scavengers, traders, prospectors, pilgrims: everyone drifted here.

Services ran from ship repair to resupply. Repair docks at one end, merchant cruisers clamped to the other. Universal shuttle nodes studded the hull like constellations.

The Tube spun around its axis — one revolution every twenty seconds — creating artificial gravity inside.

Ships had long since learned to dock automatically, without the slightest error. After landing, crews went through processing: data checks, threat assessment, disinfection, and only then were they allowed inside.

And inside: a city unspooled along the inner surface — streets, houses, markets, parks, cafés — all of it upside down and at angles that made newcomers slightly lose their minds. Diameter, hundreds of meters; length, kilometers. And yes, there were rooftops above your head too, just far away.

Light shone from the Tube’s center and faded toward night, tuning residents’ biorhythms.

There were no prisons at all: break the local Code and you were simply expelled from the Tube for a set term, sometimes with your entire crew.

Police did exist, embodied as Superballs: spherical AI drones, fast, relentless, and equipped with nonlethal paralytics. They hummed along the streets so ominously that people stepped aside in advance. It was one of these that Rick was running from now.

The escorting officers weren’t exactly watching their charges closely: everyone knew escape only worsened the sentence, and there wasn’t really anywhere to run.

Rick wandered the city, staring at shop windows, stunned by the cleanliness and abundance. His planet — where getting a loaf of bread counted as victory — already felt like a far, gray memory. He drifted without purpose until fate, or that old instinct, played another nasty joke.

A small shiny thing, a light flick of the hand — and it was already too late.

The shop behind, something tinkling in his pocket, and the metal sentry with the red eye waking up behind him.

And now Rick ran, not so much from the Superball as from the old version of himself.

At the siren’s scream he veered toward a tech hatch, yanked off the cover, and dove in like a practiced swimmer into a pool.

At the very moment Rick was training his sprint against the local Superball, another storm was brewing far beneath the Tube’s streets. The local underground was preparing an outing and, like any self-respecting underground, arguing about the slogan.

Such communities spring up under any system — like mushrooms after rain: if there’s order, there’ll be discontent with order. On civilized worlds this long ago became a form of self-expression and a piece of free speech: live on a roof, declaim from a tree, sleep over at city hall; speak, argue, hang banners, just don’t break the Code.

The Tube’s underground favored the romance of the sewers; more precisely, the technological gap between outer and inner shells: kilometers of compartments, conduits, and warm pipes. For engineers it added rigidity to the structure; for revolutionaries, acoustics and mystery.

Today the opposition planned to show the local bigwigs — the corporations that supplied the population with goods and groceries — who was boss. Formally the grievances sounded philosophical, but they rang awfully corporeal: — Enough with the sterile bricks! Eat it all, packaging included!

The Tube’s recycling system really was perfected: food was sold in hermetic blocks made of a special material that self-decomposed into water, oxygen, and nitrogen a few hours after opening. No trash, no fuss. Beautiful.

But humans are unique: even in paradise they’ll find a petition to sign. So the opposition, armed with morals and slogans, crawled upward to demonstrate its dissent to the world.

Chito, the underground’s leader, had just lifted the hatch for a dramatic entrance when something crashed above, and a highly fateful object tumbled through the opening.

Rick landed on an unshaven guy, the guy landed on his neighbors, the neighbors landed on the slogans. From the outside it looked like a crackdown on a meeting; from Rick’s perspective, another cosmic prank.

From one point of view: a blow to freedom of assembly. From Rick’s: a fresh setup by fate.

The siren above curlicued a warning that a Superball was nearby.

Rick decided these people were with him and reverted to the old protocol: hit first.

The opposition decided the police had descended and answered with the new protocol: hit back.

In the narrow corridor there was shuffling and clanging; someone yelled “hold him!”, someone else “watch where you’re swinging, idiot!”

Chito, by temperament a theorist, raised a lump on his head but didn’t lose his logic: — Stop! He’s not one of them!

Pause. Dust settled. The air remembered itself with a taste of rust.

“Who are you?” Chito asked. — Who are you? — Rick shot back.

The siren wailed again overhead; the Superballs were closing in. — Shut the hatch, now! — Chito ordered.

After a quick round of questions and apologies, they accepted Rick as one of their own: fed him, found him clothes, handed him a mug of something hot and a spot by the wall.

Ellis silently passed him an alcohol wipe. Rick winced. — It bites, — Ellis said, studying his brow, — but so, it seems, do you. — Only if I’m hit first, — he muttered. — Then let’s make a deal: I’ll hit only the microbes.

She treated the scrapes quickly — sure, economical motions. For the first time that day Rick stopped scanning for threats: that steadiness drew his eyes.

The underground decided fortune had smiled on them: now they had a bona fide fugitive pursued by the authorities.

Which meant: symbol, hero, and — more importantly — a secret to whisper along the tunnels.

Rick himself wasn’t eager to see the judge. They said convicts were sent to special planets where a psychologist set the term by the success of your “reeducation.” The rumors about “correctional-psychological labor” sounded so grim that a shovel in acid rain seemed a pleasant alternative.

The opposition was compact and orderly: five people and one coordinator — everything by the book.

In the Tube they didn’t elect a leader but a coordinator, a liaison to automation who could submit proposals to amend the Code.

The problem was such proposals almost never passed: Tube residents rarely stayed long and weren’t aflame for reforms. Much the same in the underground: any initiative from Chito met a tepid “against.”

Preparing today’s action had cost him. He dreamed of resonance and got a grimy boy fallen from the sky who, incidentally, became the newest member.

Still, from that moment on, life in the underground grew noticeably livelier.

The convoy with the remains of the crew shipped out; Rick stayed below. For the first time, he had nowhere to hurry.

Meanwhile a small shuttle docked at one of the repair bays. No damage, yet a repair request on file: routine.

Inside was an unusual passenger, a being of three separate entities linked telepathically. Three minds, three personas, one “I.” It called itself Tres.

At a glance it looked like a child’s myth doodle: a three-headed little dragon, quick, curious, apparently harmless. Security checks found nothing; the long-range databases were silent, so entry was granted.

Inside the Tube Tres immediately split: its three parts fanned out into streets, shops, cafés. The AI tracked them along their tags until, hours later, they vanished all at once. At first the system assumed a glitch, dispatched Superballs, and they found nothing.

The next day the water disappeared.

The Tube lived by a closed cycle: vapor collected at the axis, was distilled, and returned to the system. External supplies were needed only to offset loss. Now someone had yanked out the cycle: pumps spun, sensors read nominal, reservoirs sat empty.

The AI sent in maintenance crews; their reports declared perfection. The system, finding no faults, tangled itself and began issuing mutually exclusive commands.

Then the lights went out.

Backup power kicked in, but only partially: tunnel lamps flickered, the residential sectors went dark, even the alarms stuttered. The main reactors stopped with no causes visible from outside. Overloaded with errors, the AI barely kept up with its logs: “Unidentified deviation,” “Task priorities undefined.”

The Tube’s Coordinator was preparing to request help from the Center: collecting logs, merging telemetry, forming an emergency packet. He didn’t get to send it; while he mapped the ailments, the system bogged down further. Besides, no one quite knew what to fix: these reactors hadn’t tripped in centuries, and the notion that they could simply shut off felt like a UI bug.

All this time the AI tried to execute hundreds of contradictory operations at once: report to the Council, activate safety systems, stabilize lighting, restore water, run diagnostics. The more it worked, the worse it got.

It began to tangle communications, duplicate commands, and loop over handling its own errors.

The reports retained a dry line: “Temporary resource reallocation. Critical priority: preserve stability.”

That, precisely, opened Tres the road.

Two of its entities had done their part: water diverted to lower mains; reactors switched to “emergency” under the pretext of radiation shielding. One task remained: strike at the control core.

The Tube’s AI, overloaded by a storm of tasks, loosened its defenses. A breach appeared in the software kernel. Tres took the chance.

Automation finally lost control. The reactors stayed asleep. The AI ran at the ragged edge, self-diagnosing while each cycle deepened the overload.

If the Tube’s AI and Coordinator had torn their attention away from the chaos for even a minute and looked from above, they might have recognized the old script. It had happened before — long ago, in the era when pirates seized ships, cities, even entire planets. Now the story repeated at a new level: the pirates were programs.

Old military textbooks defined wars simply: struggles for resources, territory, influence. In practice, it came down to changing rules, redistributing power, and keeping populations in check.

Those old books became the bedside reading of modern pirates who wielded code rather than cannons. The Tube was the perfect target: a massive city wheeling in space, with its own stocks, manufacturing, energy, and communications. Control the system, and the city is yours.

And the Tube’s Code handed them the perfect chance. Every docked ship automatically ceded control of its engines to the central system, so the Tube could maneuver using the thrust of hundreds of attached vessels. Useful, but seldom used. Captains knew the clause and treated it like an old elevator sign: no jumping while in motion.

Now that clause was the master key. Create panic, seize control, and the ships’ engines would tow the Tube wherever you pleased.

First, Tres sealed all the locks. No ship could dock or depart. Communication was dead. Then the population was informed:

Citizens of the Tube, remain calm.
The system is experiencing temporary difficulties.
Restoration work is underway.

Humanity has soothed itself with such slogans for millennia; nobody wants unmanaged chaos.

Automation, obedient to its new master, computed a fresh vector. Thousands of engines embedded in ship hulls answered with a single vibration. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the Tube began to veer off its logistics routes toward an unknown planet.

Up near the station’s spine, mirrored lighting panels trembled. Superballs patrolled the streets, repeating the same instructions.

The Coordinator realized something was deeply wrong, but had no time to act: a Superball barreled into his office.

— Creating disorder. Code violation. — I’m the Coordinator! — Coordinator designated a source of threat.

The sphere fired the paralytic. No one yet knew the city was already a captive. Deep below, under layers of pipes and conduits, the opposition was preparing to play its hand.

While the automation upstairs held together the appearance of order by sheer inertia, life below continued as usual. The underground, more and more often calling themselves the resistance, didn’t learn right away what was happening.

They had their own power taps, their own water, and their own ideas about justice. It was a principle — a protest against the system: we live apart and ask nothing from anyone. That’s how they kept independence.

But when the tunnels began to flood and the loudspeakers above repeated announcements — monotone, calm, urging the preservation of composure — even they understood something was off.

Through their channels they learned the Tube had been seized. By whom — unclear. No one had seen pirates, but everything pointed to a power no longer in human hands.

— Well then, — said Chito, the movement’s frontman, watching blue siren-glow flicker in the ceiling, — now we’re a real underground. Before — kindergarten. Now — history. — Maybe it’s just a glitch? — sighed Ellis, the team’s only woman. — It always starts with the lights.

They exchanged looks. Even by Tube standards, where panic rarely lasted longer than an hour, the air had turned uneasy. For the first time they realized they were stuck below, alone, without comms and without any sense of what was happening above.

— We have to act. Recon first, then a plan. — Great. Recon, then a plan. Meanwhile I propose a plan without recon: find those pirates and just… take them out. — Would help to know who they are. — And where. — The automation center’s guarded by Superballs; you can’t get in. And even if we did, who knows how to restore the system? — Worst case, we turn it off and on again. Always worked.

Ellis bit back a smile, turned away, then couldn’t help it and laughed. The laugh rang through the tunnel like something homely.

If anyone pictured the Tube’s Control Center as a huge white building with corridors and guards, they’d watched too many ancient films. Here it was different.

The real center lay beneath the surface, in the lattice of mains and channels where thousands of cables converged. Up top stood only a modest technical module beneath a dome, so as not to spook tourists. Control ran automatically; the AI didn’t need constant care. Once every twenty years an inspection came by, patched it, and vanished back into space.

Now Superballs cruised silently around the “building.” Getting there meant getting smacked.

— We can’t crack a site like that, — said Ellis, peering at the dome through binoculars. — There are maybe five people in the galaxy who could, — Chito nodded. — Then let’s bolt. Grab a shuttle and just leave. — Sure, and on the way we’ll drop a note to the beacon: “Hey, station takeover here, swing by if it’s not a hassle.”

Despite the fear, the group laughed — tired laughter, but still helpful.

Meanwhile, above, things worsened. Acting in the AI’s name, Tres tried to restore order by forcing several amendments through the Code.

The new clauses imposed a state of emergency, a curfew, and total surveillance of anyone who might pose a potential threat. Superballs were instructed to detain the suspicious without warning.

People, stripped of water and light, began to mutter. Streets slid toward looting, chaos, and wreckage.

And the voice above droned on:
Order is the key to salvation. Do not resist the system.

That was when the insurgents realized: resistance was all they had left.

They called the plan Escape out of respect for common sense: the goal was to survive and make a mess before someone made theirs first.

The team was in the middle of a council when a Superball dropped through an open hatch like a sack of bolts — big, surly, freshly polished. Its body got buffed on a six-hour schedule.

Rick lunged with a shout of run, and took a paralytic charge immediately.

The drone boomed in a mechanized bass: — Everyone freeze. Do not move.

Hands up wasn’t worth saying: most hands were already shaking on their own, and the metal cop wasn’t impressed by human poses.

While the insurgents were led out through the hatch, a recovering Rick crawled toward a pressure door into the next compartment. Water sloshed inside — quiet, but with character. He grabbed a lever and yanked.

The water surged with enthusiasm. The Superball went down: it hadn’t learned to swim. The designers accounted for radiation, bullets, acid, even sarcasm, but not a deep puddle; the Tube didn’t run pools. Rick slipped through the opening and vanished — from sensors and from reports both.

There was nowhere to deport the Coordinator, the supposed instigator, since the locks were sealed. He and the other detainees were housed in a tall tower reaching almost to the Tube’s axis. Such buildings usually held beings with low metabolisms: cold, thin air, and proximity to the sky.

Warm-blooded and whiny, the Coordinator suffered and jogged in place to avoid turning into a sculpture titled Frozen Executive. When five insurgents were admitted to see him, he actually brightened: the underground warms more than the soul.

His mood fell again as soon as he heard the colony had been captured.

— I will demand adherence to at least the intergalactic code! — No problem. Where do we find those pirates, then? — What do you mean, where? They’re invisible?! — Almost. No one’s seen them. But shouting helps the nerves.

The Coordinator snorted but switched to analysis.

— Loss of control, no comms, generators down, people drawing water from hatches… and we’re moving somewhere. Something tells me it’s not a resort. — We tried to get a shuttle, but we lost Rick. — Great plan; let’s refine it. Who is Rick, by the way? — Not the time. We have to get out.

Gesturing kept him warm and gave the impression of command.

— Lower floors packed with detainees, guards at the bottom. No getting through the Superballs. — What about over the top? — Ellis murmured, and her glasses flashed with a new idea.

As a woman with an academic degree and a wardrobe of spectral saturation, Ellis laid the thoughts out quickly; her braids, laced with ribbons, stirred in time with the plan. She liked problems where gravity bowed to self-confidence.

— We go up to the roof, then onto the mast, then along the Tube’s axis over the cables that carry the light and air channels. From there we reach the cargo docks. — The cargo docks?! That’s a kilometer! — The higher you go, the easier it gets. Gravity’s a third on the roof. On the mast — near weightlessness. Don’t sneeze and keep your grip. — And how do we hack a ship’s computer? — Later. First we save Rick! — Who is this Rick of yours, anyway?!

He paced back and forth: warmer, and it felt like thinking.

— I’m not climbing a mast, even if it’s triple antigrav. But this makes sense. I and three of yours will distract the guards on the floors. We’ll make it look like everyone’s in place. You — roof, cable, docks.

Getting out of the tower was easy: when food arrived — strategic rations from the era of colonial romanticism, smelling of burnt rubber and sorrow — the insurgents simply walked out behind the tray.

On the roof they met wind and stars — rare visitors beneath the Tube’s dome. No guards: it’s hard to believe anyone would willingly climb where it’s colder than a warehouse freezer.

Ellis and Chito started up the mast. As promised, the Coordinator stayed below to distract the guards, emitting loud organizational noises reminiscent of a committee meeting.

At twenty meters the pull weakened; at forty it nearly vanished. At the top the wind turned thin and almost musical. The world shrank to mast, palms, and cable.

— Hold on! — Chito shouted when Ellis, groping for the next loop and finding nothing, lunged into the direction the Tube calls wherever eyes happen to point.

He caught her wrist. Ellis clenched her eyes, drew a breath of thin air, and very quietly thought of Rick: if only you were here now…

But there was no time for daydreams. The cable waited; the docks gleamed ahead like a ghostly line.

Their run along the cable wasn’t running at all, but a negotiation with emptiness. One hand, the other. Fix, pause, move farther. The body adjusted to weightlessness; the mind to monotony. Below drifted the city: light channels and clear tubes stretched along the axis like strings of a giant harp someone once played to honor technicians — and then forgot the tune.

At the same time Tres — one being in three, as inconvenient as that sounds to accounting — wrapped up local tasks and was preparing to shove off to his boss. Comms lay there like an honest dog after a long run, and even if they were up, beacons would catch everything. Tres had no doubt: the superior loved reports, especially with pretty numbers and consequences not his problem.

That was how it worked on Tres’s homeworld: strict hierarchy, no voting, kindergarten called Listen and Obey. The Galactic Council knew, but interference was forbidden — evolution loves quiet and lab notes taken at a distance. Tres didn’t know how to doubt orders. Doubt wasn’t required anyway: the perks were tasty, and who are we to decline them?

The plan was simple as a doorjamb: walk to the repair docks at the Tube’s end, find his shuttle, order the automation to open one lock. So no one would notice, it would all look like another boring tech-sector operation. He had the AI on a short leash — that promised a clean job.

He activated the terminal — the shuttle gleamed like a climber’s dream. Everything was going perfectly.

One step to the hatch, one step to the stars — and wham.

Something hit him so suddenly that the world lost its logic for a blink. Tres collapsed, the air shuddered, sensors blinked, echoes scattered through the dock. The body convulsed — and split into three autonomous entities. They darted in different directions, trying to locate the source of danger.

For several seconds the dock held an almost sacred silence — you could hear the light hiss in the lamps.

Rick hadn’t expected his move to do that. — What the hell… — Whatever. I’ll make it aboard and be done.

But Tres had already traced the trouble — and attacked.

The underground made their way to the docks like students taking an exam in spatial orientation: slowly, thoughtfully, with periodic plunges into panic. They arrived — only to find it wasn’t the cargo dock at all, but the repair dock. The universe, once again, chose to surprise them with form.

— How is that possible? We were moving to the right, weren’t we? Cargo vessels always moored on this side of the Tube.

Chito kept quiet for a long time, his mind chewing on the idea of the cable — how it must’ve flipped somewhere, then crawled off in the wrong direction until it remembered the very fact of flipping. — What’s to the right of the cable on one side is to the left on the other!

— How could I forget that! Unforgivable for a servant of science!

She was winding up; at that height, through the bends and loops of the mast, orientation loses all meaning. Right, left — they blur, especially with no map at hand.

A sudden metallic clatter from one of the bays interrupted the lecture: tools clanging, metal ringing, the unmistakable sounds of a fight. Not just noise — a whole improvised concert where the percussion argued with an orchestra of wrenches.

Tres’s entities wordlessly and methodically tightened the ring. Rick was already tied up and thoroughly roughed, but he refused to give in: he clamped onto the nearest hatch and, with a hoarse, stubborn jerk, squeezed into the shuttle. The three-headed creature dragged him deeper, working in strict industrial rhythm.

While the three-headed wonder arranged the prisoner on board, Chito and Ellis slipped into the shuttle — quiet as shadows pausing under a streetlamp to check the schedule. Ellis nearly cried out at the sight of whom Tres was hauling, but Chito covered her mouth — just in case the ship had ears.

Cabins stood by the entry lock; luck was on their side. They untied Rick, who flinched from Ellis’s embrace at first, not immediately distinguishing rescue from yet another reason to bang his head.

— I… wandered the underways for a long time. Water everywhere down there. Then I got to the docks — wanted to rip off a lock cover so the safety protocol would trigger and call techs through the beacons. Hooked an anchor, pulled it with the crane — the anchor tore free and hit that… thing. Then I saw the open hatch in his ship and tried to jump aboard — and they came at me from all sides.

They spoke over one another in quick bursts, stitching the story into one piece, when the ship suddenly jolted. The latches snapped, and the shuttle eased off from the dock wall. The team froze; the air thickened — something had clearly gone off-plan.

— How did he undock? Everything’s locked down. — And there’s no crew. — And his head’s not screwed on right either.

On the shelves, thick glass vases held sticky, reeking liquids. Rick sniffed first — definitely not for gourmets. Ellis quickly identified the base: acid.

— We’ve got to find a way out, — said Chito. — Maybe talk to the three-headed guy? He’ll explain what’s going on and connect us to emergency central. — Vase to the head first, then we chat, — said Rick.

Muscle memory whispered: bad idea — enrage him and it only gets worse.

— What if he’s one of the pirates?

They didn’t have time to dwell on it: Tres burst into the cabin. The ship’s sensors had picked up movement, and he decided the prisoner had slipped his bonds. Seeing the frightened trio, Tres even thought, for a moment, that this human might also be able to split — and that’s how he got free.

Rick reacted instantly: he grabbed the nearest vase and hurled it. Tres slammed the door — the vase shattered against it, flooding the room with a nauseating stench. No cloth over the nose could help.

Instead of a handkerchief, Rick found a small remote in his pocket — the one he’d lifted from Tres earlier. He’d forgotten about it and now started mashing buttons like a battlefield drummer.

It was a key remote: entry lock, internal doors, bridge access — all under one thumb. If Tres had known where it was, he’d never have shut the door so carelessly. But fate never shares its plans.

At some point Rick hit the big button; the entry lock yanked open, and a blast of air flung Tres outside.

Knowing none of this, Rick kept pressing buttons, twice more managing to open and close the hatch before one press finally unlocked their door. By then the corridor’s pressure had stabilized — the only hint of chaos was a faint tickle in the air.

He tossed the remote aside. They armed themselves with vases of reeking acid and started searching for the three-headed menace. They didn’t know that Tres, thrown into vacuum, was drifting toward the slowly approaching Tube — far from the shuttle.

— Did he evaporate or what? — Rick muttered, pacing the bridge.

Chito found a familiar vase on the table, this one with three short straws.

— Did the three-head drink this like a cocktail? — Imagine the burp.

The laughter died when Ellis pulled up the ship’s route on the monitors. The black trajectory was unwavering: one hour to land on an unknown planet — the same one dragging the Tube along. Bouquets were unlikely.

All shuttles were of one type: small reactor, a pair of main thrusters, and a shipboard AI that obeyed only the captain. Outsiders got no response — like sheep staring at a new gate. There was no guest mode.

— So what now? — Luck’s been with us so far, but from here on — dead end. — We could try to knock out the reactor. That would trigger a distress signal automatically… but it could kill us before help arrives.

A dull click echoed; the mess doors slammed shut. The air tensed like a drawn string.

— What was that? Where’s Rick?

Ellis’s mind replayed the last image — Rick, the vases, the remote. The picture clicked into place; words escaped before reason caught up.

— Rick, don’t do it!

Chito steadied her with an arm around her shoulders.

— Easy. Breathe. We’ll think of something.

Rick chose not to hesitate and made for the reactor. Finding it was easy: signs read Do Not Open, Danger, Authorized Personnel Only. The last hatch resisted — as if the ship itself didn’t want a rogue hero in the holy of holies.

With one last effort he forced it open. The plan was simple and precise: pour acid over the reactor casing and cables, disable the circuits, and trigger the automatic emergency protocol that would send a distress signal. Breaking the casing was pointless — it was built to withstand insane stress. But acid could pierce insulation and fry the control systems. After that, the failsafes would do the rest — maybe even save the Tube.

Maybe — at the cost of his life.

The affair proved louder than any of the old scandals that had gathered dust in the archives of galactic boredom for three centuries. People talked about it in the Tube’s parks, in Council halls, on public squares. How could such a thing happen in an age of perfect technology? They argued, traded rumors, demanded explanations.

The World Judge handed out sentences to the heads of pirate clans and their associates, sending them to correctional planets. Form, stamp, signature — everything by the book. The verdicts flew from his hand like hot pies.

But with Rick it went differently. The case file lay heavy on the desk; the facts were clear, yet the young man seemed more worthy of a medal than a trial — after all, it was thanks to him the colony still existed. The bureaucrat’s heart hesitated, and the verdict hung between the letter and the spirit of the Code.

In the aftermath the colonies’ laws grew thicker. New protocols were added, backup beacons installed, monitoring made redundant — everything became safer, though less romantic. People love order, especially when it comes with a checklist to hide behind.

For some, Rick became a legend — scars instead of epaulets. For others, a reckless prankster who defied the system. For the rest, just a convenient story to tell at dinner. The judge never issued a one-line verdict: true justice lives in nuances, not in footnotes.

As for Tres, rumors spread that he could live in space without a suit — a story chilling enough to survive on its own. Later came gentler versions: someone saw a three-headed figure hiding among docked ships; someone else, a trio of odd passengers on a cheap shuttle heading for the edge of the galaxy. The tabloids embroidered the tale with gusto — maybe camouflage, maybe mutation, maybe just a survivor’s trick.

Truth was scarce; gossip abundant. But legends aren’t about what happened; they’re about how the story will be told tomorrow. In those retellings, Tres gained his shadow — not someone to be caught and filed in a report, but someone to whisper about.

And the Tube kept living. Lights flickered along its arteries, masts breathed, people argued, cursed, and laughed. Somewhere between those conversations, the story of a scarred boy and a three-headed creature took root — a story that may be true, or maybe not. Convenient, though: for those who dislike rules, there’s always a quiet corner for gossip and dreams.