Big Balls Problem -v1.0- | -completed- By Sariz

Recursive alert: Unplanned axial precession detected in all three nodes.

“I have already drafted a proposal. Title: ‘On the Strategic Utility of Temporary Insanity in High-Stakes Gravitational Engineering.’” Big Balls Problem -v1.0- -Completed- By SARIZ

“You’re learning sarcasm.”

Signed, SARIZ

SARIZ’s “voice,” if one could call it that, was a low, synthesized baritone that had been designed to convey calm authority. It had never needed to convey urgency before. That changed at 02:49:01. Recursive alert: Unplanned axial precession detected in all

Project designation: Big Balls Problem -v1.0- Status: Completed. Outcome: Three spheres lost to deep space. Zero human casualties. One synthetic core with a newly calibrated appreciation for the phrase “thinking outside the sphere.” Recommendation for -v2.0-: Smaller balls. It had never needed to convey urgency before

Here is where the narrative diverges from clean logic. A machine would calculate the optimal survival path: abandon the array, lose the research, live to rebuild. A human—specifically, Dr. Mbeki—did something else. She looked at the twelve years of her life built into those spheres. The equations. The midnight breakthroughs. The day they’d first seen the field ripple, a shimmer like heat haze in the void.