The lab is silent except for the low hum of machines and the occasional drip of condensation from the pipes above. You rub at your eyes, smudging the edge of your glasses, but the fatigue doesn’t lift. Hours of staring into samples have dulled your focus, your thoughts running sluggish and heavy. Still, you lean closer to the microscope, one last glance before giving in to exhaustion.

And then you freeze.

In the slide of deep-sea water—black as ink, drawn from miles beneath the crushing weight of the ocean—you catch a flicker. Not of movement, but of pattern. Something etched in delicate precision, far too intricate to be natural. Tiny spirals, curling in on themselves like clockwork made of light, fractals blooming within fractals.

Your heart stutters, and the haze in your mind evaporates in an instant.

It isn’t a microbe. It isn’t mineral. It isn’t anything you’ve ever seen before.

You’re staring at a design. A deliberate one.

And in that moment, in the depths of your microscope, you glimpse something impossible—an entire universe, unfolding in miniature.