The following is a fanfic based on Solar Winds, the 1993 DOS game by James Schmalz. This book represents the imagined contents of the legendary "Book of Fydor," which even the protagonist Jake Stone was unable to read. Now, for the first time, the contents of the book can be known to the human beings of Earth...
In a galaxy millions of light years from earth's own Milkyway, there exists a solar system inhabited by humans. These humans are very distant relatives of those from earth, but neither know of the distant connection between them. In fact, neither know of the others existence.
Chapter Seven: The Enigma System
There was a time when my people did not know the sky, when we did not mark the passage of time by the movement of the stars. The world we now call home was not the world of our ancestors, nor was it the world of our birth. There was a time before the fields we till, before the rivers that sustain us, before the sky under which we now live. That time is gone, yet I remember.
I remember the journey that brought us here.
The Architects carried us through the great void between the stars, through a darkness deeper than any night, across distances beyond the reach of any thought. There were no days, no nights, no rising or setting of a sun to mark the passage of time. The ship moved without stopping, its purpose known only to our captors. It carried us away from what little remained of our past, toward something unknown, and for as long as we traveled, I could do nothing but listen and learn.
I searched for understanding where none was given.
The Architects never spoke to us, but they spoke among themselves. Their voices were strange, layered sounds that carried meanings I could not fully grasp. Yet I listened. I studied the symbols inscribed upon the walls of their great vessel, the markings that pulsed with an alien glow. In time, I recognized patterns. Certain words repeated often, always in reference to our course. One word appeared again and again, etched into their instruments and spoken with certainty.
Enigma.
At first, I did not understand its meaning, but as I listened, I recognized that it was more than a word. It was a place.
Enigma was the name of a star, one of three that existed within a sealed region of space known as the Outer Rim. This place, though unseen and unknowable to my people, was set apart from the rest of the stars, enclosed by a force that none could pass through at will. There was only one way to enter or leave, and the Architects called it the Key.
I did not know what the Key was. Was it a passage, a gateway, or something else entirely? The Architects spoke of it rarely, and when they did, I could not grasp the full meaning of their words. Whatever its nature, it was the only means by which we would reach our destination.
I committed this knowledge to memory. There was no way to record what I had learned, no surface upon which I could inscribe the truth without risk of discovery. I had no choice but to hold it within my mind, constructing it in ways that could not be forgotten. I repeated each detail silently, shaping the knowledge into patterns, linking words and images in a way that would not fade.
Each time I recalled what I had learned, I feared that the Architects already knew. Their gaze was always watchful, their movements precise. I could not escape the feeling that they saw more than actions, that they could perceive thought itself. I did not know if this was true, but I dared not assume otherwise.
Then, after a time beyond measure, something changed.
A deep vibration passed through the walls. The distant hum of the ship's engines shifted, a sound so subtle that few among my people noticed. The Architects moved with newfound purpose, adjusting the instruments that guided our course.
I followed them and saw what they saw.
The name Enigma pulsed upon their displays, and beneath it, I read another name:
Magelus.
It was not the name of a star, but of a world. A place of rivers and forests, of valleys and mountains. I saw its shape upon the glowing surface of the Architects' instruments, a world vast and untouched, its lands wrapped in green, its waters stretching across its surface.
This was where they were taking us.
For the first time, I allowed myself to wonder what awaited us there. Would we be left to live as we once had? Would we build homes, raise families, shape the land as our ancestors had done on the world we lost? Or would we remain captives, watched always by the Architects, forever bound to a purpose we could not yet understand?
I had no answers. I had only the image of the world that would soon become our own, a place unknown and yet inescapable.
As I turned from the glowing display, I saw something that filled me with deeper unease.
Two of the Architects stood together in one of the corridors, facing one another. One raised its hands, forming gestures I had never seen before, its posture rigid, its movements deliberate. I watched in silence, expecting the second Architect to respond.
It did not.
For several moments, it remained unmoving. Then, as if nothing had occurred, it spoke aloud in the strange, layered voice of its kind.
In that moment, I understood something that I had never suspected before.
Not all of them could speak without sound.
For all their power, the Architects were not the same. Some relied on speech and gesture, as we did. Others, perhaps only a few, could communicate without words, reaching into the thoughts of their own kind.
If this was true, then they were not all-knowing. Their awareness, though vast, was not absolute. They could be deceived.
I did not react. I did not dwell on what I had witnessed. I continued walking, keeping the revelation locked within my mind.
As the ship moved ever onward, I reinforced every detail within my memory—the name of the star, the name of the world, the image of the Key as it appeared upon the displays, and the moment I saw an Architect fail to be heard without speech.
This knowledge would not be lost.
Even if the names of the stars faded from the tongues of my people, even if we became nothing more than wanderers upon an unfamiliar land, even if the truth became buried beneath the weight of ages, someone must know what was done to us.
Someone must remember.
Chapter Eight: The Hunger for Knowledge
I had spent so long creeping through the corridors of this ship, believing I was unseen, believing I was clever. I had gathered fragments of knowledge, piecing together meaning from symbols I could not fully decipher, listening to the layered voices of our captors, memorizing their patterns. I had believed—perhaps foolishly—that I was making progress, that I had stolen something from them.
But the Architects were never blind.
The announcement came without warning.
We had gathered in one of the vast, open halls where we assembled for food, for restless conversation, for any brief reprieve from the suffocating monotony of our captivity. I was among them, speaking in hushed tones to those who had begun to trust me, those who had listened when I whispered of the Outer Rim, of Enigma, of the Key.
Then, the walls themselves seemed to hum, and a voice—their voice—filled the space.
"There is one among you who has sought knowledge."
The voice was soft, but it was layered, reaching into every corner of the chamber, impossible to ignore. The air felt colder. Conversations died.
"One among you who has wandered beyond the places where you were meant to remain. Who has listened. Who has watched."
The captives turned, one by one, their eyes settling on me. Some with curiosity. Some with confusion. Some with fear.
I did not move.
From the far side of the chamber, an Architect stepped forward.
Even now, I cannot say whether this one was different from the others, or if I only imagined that it was. Its face was the same—smooth, symmetrical, unreadable. The same ridge bisected its forehead. The same green, slit-pupiled eyes took me in, reflecting nothing back. But there was something in the way it carried itself. A deliberate precision. A quiet satisfaction, as though it already knew what would unfold and had merely come to watch.
"You will listen."
The hum of machinery shifted. Above us, one of the walls darkened, the smooth surface becoming something else. A display.
And there, before all of them, was everything I had stolen.
The maps I had glimpsed. The symbols I had traced. The distant star of Enigma, cold and uncaring, waiting for us beyond the Outer Rim.
"This is what you wished to know," the Architect said.
I opened my mouth to speak—to demand why they were doing this, to demand if they meant to punish me—but then I saw the faces of the others.
They were staring, not at the display, but at me.
For a long time, we had been able to pretend.
We had whispered of rebellion, of escape. We had convinced ourselves that our captivity was temporary, that we were waiting for the right moment. That we could seize control of this vessel if we were clever, if we were strong.
But now, there was no pretending.
The Architects had known all along. They had seen everything. They had allowed it. And worse—they had allowed it because it did not matter.
"You were never hidden," the Architect said. Not to me. Not to us.
I felt the air shift as the weight of that truth settled over the room.
"Your knowledge does not alter the outcome. Your actions do not alter the outcome. You will go where you are taken. You will do as you are made to do."
The silence that followed was different from any we had ever known. It was the silence of realization, of something breaking that could never be put back together.
The Architect regarded us for a moment longer, then turned without another word. It had made its point.
I do not know if it was acting on some higher directive, if this display had been ordered by the will of its kind, or if it had chosen to do this on its own—a test, an experiment, a moment of cold amusement.
But I knew, as I looked at the hollow expressions of those around me, that something had changed.
We had lost our world. We had lost our past.
And now, we had lost the illusion that we had ever held power over our own fate.
Chapter Nine: A Broken People
The destruction of a people does not always occur through fire and war. It does not always come through chains, or violence, or the sudden and terrible end of a world. Sometimes, it happens quietly. It happens over time. It happens without an enemy raising a hand.
We did not understand this when we were taken. Even after our captors revealed that we had no power over our own fates, we believed we could endure. We had already survived the annihilation of our world; we had clung to our identities through catastrophe. If we had lost everything else, we still had ourselves. But we were mistaken. The Architects did not need to take that from us. They only needed to wait.
At first, there was defiance. There were those among us who whispered plans of rebellion, who spoke of escape, who vowed that we would not submit. But the Architects did not respond to our murmurs of resistance. They did not station guards. They did not impose rules. There was nothing against which to struggle.
Instead, there was silence.
The ship did not change. The corridors remained smooth, sterile, seamless. The artificial lights did not dim or brighten. Time ceased to exist in any meaningful way. We could no longer measure the days, nor did we know how many had passed since we first awoke aboard the vessel. At first, we tried to count—by the arrival of food, by the distant mechanical hum that pulsed through the walls, by the rare movements of the Architects themselves. But in the absence of markers, the mind begins to betray itself. Numbers blurred. Sequences collapsed. Eventually, we abandoned the effort altogether.
And as time faded, so did we.
It was a slow process, imperceptible at first. Conversations became shorter, then infrequent, then nonexistent. The habit of speech, once broken, was not easily restored. We sat in silence, together and yet utterly alone, each of us withdrawing into the confines of our own minds. There was nothing to say.
Some tried to resist. Not through rebellion, but through preservation. I watched as a man spent hours tracing the same patterns on the walls, running his fingers over smooth surfaces as if he could carve meaning into them through sheer repetition. Another recited the same phrase under his breath, again and again, as though he feared that if he stopped, he would lose the ability to speak at all. Some clung to personal rituals—gestures, small routines—things that made them feel as if they still had control over their own actions.
But such efforts could not hold forever.
The first to succumb simply stopped responding. At first, we thought they had fallen ill, but there was no illness to speak of—only stillness. They sat against the walls, eyes open, bodies upright, unresponsive. They ate when food was placed into their hands, drank when prompted, but otherwise, they might as well have been statues.
Then, there were those who ceased to recognize each other. One by one, the bonds that had once held us together began to disintegrate. Names were forgotten—not all at once, but gradually, until one day, someone pointed to a man they had once known and asked what he was called, and no one could remember.
But what happened next was worse.
It was not the loss of our past that broke us. It was the loss of our selves.
I do not know when I first realized that I could no longer recall the name of our homeworld.
It had been with me always. Even when I had spoken it less, even when I had accepted that we would never return, it had remained a certainty. A word that meant more than itself. A word that meant home.
But one day, I whispered it to myself, and nothing came.
I tried again. The shape of the word was there, somewhere beyond my reach, but the sound, the letters, the meaning—it had slipped into darkness.
Panic took hold of me. I turned to the man beside me, someone I had known all my life, someone who had fought beside me in the war.
"Do you remember?" I asked him.
He looked at me, his expression dull, distant.
"Remember what?"
And then I understood.
The Architects had not forced this upon us. They had not taken the name of our world, nor had they ordered us to forget.
We had let it go.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, we had allowed ourselves to be erased.
This was not captivity. It was not imprisonment.
It was the destruction of the self—not by violence, not by pain, but by time, by stillness, by the slow and inexorable erosion of identity.
And yet, even as I sat among the hollowed remnants of my people, I felt something deeper stirring beneath my realization.
This was not an accident.
It was not a cruelty inflicted without purpose.
This was a process. A cycle. One whose steps had been measured and set long before we ever drew breath.
The Architects had seen this before. They had done this before.
And that meant they would do it again.
I had thought our war had been the great tragedy of our existence. That the horror of our annihilation had been the worst fate imaginable. But now I saw the truth.
We had never been at war. We had never even been participants.
We had only ever been materials—shaped, refined, and discarded as needed.
And as I looked around at the broken figures that had once been my people, I understood something else.
We were already gone.
Even if we lived, even if we walked upon the soil of some new world, it would not be us who stepped onto its surface. What the Architects had taken could never be restored.
We had not merely been brought here to die.
We had been brought here to be forgotten.
And as the ship drifted silently toward the unseen barrier ahead, I knew that whatever lay beyond it was not salvation. It was not even damnation.
It was something far greater.
And we had never had a choice.
Chapter Ten: The Outer Rim
I do not know if those who come after me will understand these words.
By the time they are read, the world will be different. The sky will not hold the same meanings it once did, and the knowledge that once gave men power over the stars will be gone. But I must record what I saw, though the words themselves may fade, though the meaning may slip through the fingers of those who will one day inherit this world. I must write it so that someone, somewhere, might one day understand.
We had been moving through the void for longer than I could count. No sunrise, no sunset, no measure of time beyond the distant pulse of the ship’s engines and the silent movements of the Architects. We drifted through endless night, away from the home we had lost, toward something I could not yet comprehend.
And then, I understood something that I had not before.
There had been a barrier around our own home.
It was invisible, undetectable to any of my senses, yet I realized it had been there all along. Not around the ship, but around the entire system—a force field of unimaginable scale, enclosing the sun that had once given us light, the planets that had once held our cities, the ruins and ash that remained. It had been there when we fought, when we died, when the Architects came to gather the survivors.
I saw no evidence of it when I looked out the viewport. There was no shimmer, no distortion in the stars. Yet I knew it was real.
I had seen it in the way the Architects moved through the ship, in the way their instruments displayed not only our trajectory, but the edges of something vast, something surrounding the system we had once called home. And I knew, then, that we had never been free. We had never been part of the greater void, never explorers of the universe as we once believed. We had been confined.
We had been in a cage. And the Architects had simply opened the door.
For the first time since I had awakened aboard the colony ship, I felt something beyond grief, beyond helplessness. I felt small.
Whatever had enclosed our home was beyond my understanding, beyond any knowledge my people had ever possessed. It had been placed there long before the war, long before the first of our kind had ever looked up at the sky and wondered what lay beyond it.
And we had never known.
The ship slowed.
The movement was almost imperceptible at first, a change in the deep, constant hum of the vessel, but soon it became clear that we were no longer moving forward. The fleet had stopped.
I went to one of the observation halls where I knew I would find a viewport, and as I looked into the void, I saw it:
A vortex in space.
It was not like the blackness of the void, nor was it like the brilliance of the stars. It was a wound in reality itself, a place where space twisted and devoured its own shape, where the edges of light and shadow collapsed into one another and became something neither could define.
And then I saw the others.
A ship broke away from the fleet—not one of ours, but something larger, heavier, built in shapes I did not recognize. Accompanying it were smaller vessels, shaped like spearheads, moving in perfect formation.
I watched as they approached the vortex. There was no pause, no hesitation. And then, without a sound, they vanished.
The void swallowed them whole.
I remained at the viewport for a long time after that, staring into the churning abyss where the ships had disappeared, knowing that soon, we would follow.
I write this now, in the years long after, knowing that those who read these words will never see such things for themselves. That they will live beneath a sky of sun and cloud, knowing nothing of the great void, of the machines that carried us here, of the knowledge that was lost in the great undoing of our people.
But I write it because I must.
Because even if our past is forgotten, even if the meaning of these words fades into dust, someone must remember that this was done to us.
Someone must remember what the Architects truly are.
Chapter Eleven: Through the Vortex
The Architects moved without urgency, yet I knew that the moment had arrived. The deep hum of the ship had shifted, subtle yet undeniable. Something vast lay before us, unseen yet imminent. For the first time in our long journey, the vessel would cross a threshold beyond the reach of its own propulsion.
I positioned myself where I could observe them. As always, the Architects showed no interest in my presence, though I noticed that more of them had gathered than usual. The process that was about to take place required great care. It was only then that I began to understand why.
A mechanism was revealed—an insert panel unlike any I had seen before, smooth and gleaming, its edges lined with alien symbols. One of the Architects approached, carrying something I would never forget.
It was a flat, ovoid object, no larger than a man’s open hand, shimmering as if cast from gold. At its center rested a jewel, deep in color, its facets reflecting the cold light of the chamber. Though I could not name the material, I recognized its significance immediately. This was the Key.
I had heard the Architects speak of the Key many times, always in reference to the vortex. Only now did I understand its purpose. The Key was not merely a concept, nor an energy field. It was an artifact, one of clear importance, held under great security. If passage through the vortex was possible only with the Key, then its power was undeniable.
The Architect placed the object into the mechanism. A moment later, the chamber lights dimmed, and a display flickered to life. The viewscreen revealed what I could not yet see with my own eyes—a great swirling vortex, shifting with an unnatural light, its depths folding in upon themselves. The colors were fluid, yet defined. A luminous blue churned at its edges, spiraling inward, pulling at the very fabric of space.
The fleet did not hesitate.
The first of the vessels moved forward, drawn into the vortex’s embrace. The moment it reached the event horizon, the ship elongated, distorting as if stretched into infinity. Then, in an instant, it was gone. One by one, the other ships followed, each vanishing into the depths of the swirling passageway.
Then, it was our turn.
The colony ship surged forward, though I felt no movement. The vortex widened before us, its depths impossibly vast, and then we were inside.
A tremor passed through the vessel—not violent, but profound. The hum of the ship wavered, turning into something higher, sharper, as if reality itself resisted our passage. The stars outside vanished, consumed by the swirling chaos. Time faltered.
I could not describe what I saw. Light and darkness ceased to have meaning. We were within something that should not exist, a passageway carved through the fabric of existence. My breath caught in my throat as the ship’s structure groaned under the pressure. The air itself seemed charged, alive with the force that carried us forward.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
The vortex behind us collapsed into a distant shimmer, and the ship stabilized. Before I could fully process what had happened, I saw something new on the viewscreen.
A vast field of vortices lay ahead, each twisting and undulating in the void. Architect vessels drifted between them, their movements deliberate, purposeful. Among them was something greater still—a massive structure, its geometry beyond my understanding. Though I did not know its function, I knew it to be a place of importance, a station of the Architects, perhaps even a place of governance.
The colony ship halted. I could see no external sign of communication, yet something transpired between our vessel, the other ships, and the station. A silent exchange took place, a decision made.
Then, we moved again.
A second vortex lay ahead, smaller yet no less imposing than the first. Another Key was produced, nearly identical in shape, but this time set with a different jewel. The process repeated. The Architects, unshaken, inserted the Key into its mechanism. The vortex responded, opening before us like a living thing.
I braced myself.
Once again, the ship plunged forward, and once again, the fabric of space twisted around us. The tremor returned, the air turned electric, and all sense of place vanished. It felt as though the ship had been unmade, as though we had ceased to exist and were now being reassembled in another reality.
And then, we emerged.
The stars had returned, yet they were not as they had been before.
Two great lights burned in the distance, their glow unmistakable even through the distortions of the ship’s viewports. A third light, dim and withdrawn, lurked between them—a dwarf star, distant yet present. I did not know their names, nor their distances, but I understood this: we had arrived within the Outer Rim.
I turned to a nearby display panel. The ship’s position was marked against an unseen boundary. A massive enclosure surrounded us, stretching beyond the limits of my perception. The Architects had brought us to a place sealed from the rest of existence, a prison or a sanctuary, enclosed by a power beyond comprehension.
Before I could fully grasp the significance of what I saw, a presence approached.
One of the Architects gestured toward me in a manner that could only be described as dismissive. There was no hostility, no aggression—only an indifferent insistence that I leave. I hesitated for a moment, but I did not resist.
I had seen what I needed to see.
As I walked away, I asked myself why they had allowed me to witness this at all. The Architects had always ignored my presence, yet there were limits to what they permitted. They had secrets they guarded, punishments they enacted upon those who tested them. Though I did not wish to recall those horrors, I knew they existed. And yet, they had let me watch.
Perhaps it was indifference. Perhaps it was something else.
I could not know their reasons, nor did I believe I ever would.
But I would remember.
And as long as I lived, I would ensure that my people would remember too.
Chapter Twelve: A New Sky
The Architects had cast us into the void, moving us as they saw fit, dictating the course of our fates without word or explanation. The journey had been long and without reckoning, but now, for the first time, I knew we had arrived.
I did not know the manner by which they chose our destination, nor the calculations behind their decisions. What I did know was that our long exile had led us here, to this distant system, enclosed within the barrier of the Outer Rim. I had seen the three stars, their light unwavering in the distance, and now, we approached a world of blue and green—a world unlike the broken ruin we had left behind.
The Architects had no need to tell us that this was to be our home. It was enough that we saw it, luminous and silent in the void, growing ever closer.
I had lingered where I was not meant to be, staring at the displays that revealed our descent. The Architects had, as ever, paid me little mind, though one eventually acknowledged my presence, gesturing me away with no more than an absent flick of the hand. I did not test their patience. There were things I had seen aboard this ship—punishments rendered in silence, those who had transgressed never returning. I did not speak of these things. I did not wish to remember them.
I returned to the holding chamber where my people remained. In the long silence of our captivity, they had sunk into themselves, their voices mere whispers, their bodies worn thin by grief. Yet now, there was something new in their eyes. I told them what I had seen. We were nearing the surface of our new home. This planet—Magelus—was where we would soon set foot.
For a long time, they did not respond. Then, as if shaking off the weight of their sorrow, they began to speak—to me, to each other. First in hushed voices, then in tones that carried the faintest echoes of hope. Some still doubted, unable to believe that our fate could be anything but ruin. Others held onto the possibility that, whatever awaited us below, it was better than the endless drift in the Architects’ cold prison.
I watched as they stirred, as they straightened their backs, as their words gained weight once more. They were still broken, still lost, but the knowledge that we were approaching solid ground had begun to pull them back from the abyss.
When I was certain the Architects had ceased to concern themselves with my wandering, I stole away once more, moving through the empty corridors, following paths I had committed to memory. I did not know if the Architects allowed me to do this, or if I had merely remained beneath their notice. It did not matter.
I reached an observation chamber, and this time, no figures stood within. I stepped forward, my breath shallow, my heart steady. Before me, through the seamless viewport, I saw it.
The world had been distant before, no more than a pale blue dot, but now, it was vast before my eyes. Its oceans gleamed beneath the light of its sun, its landmasses stretching in shades of green and gold, its clouds curling in slow, shifting spirals. The patterns of rivers carved their paths across the surface, veins of silver threading through the terrain.
Magelus.
The name had been etched upon the Architects’ displays, and now it was etched into my mind. This was where they would leave us. This was where we would begin again.
I did not know what manner of life already dwelled upon its surface. I did not know what dangers awaited us. But as I gazed upon that world, something stirred within me.
It was not joy, nor was it relief. Those things had been burned away long ago.
It was certainty.
We would walk upon that land. We would breathe its air. Whatever awaited us, we would endure.
A shadow passed over the viewport. A reflection, not of my own form, but of one of the Architects standing in the entrance behind me. It did not speak. It did not need to.
The meaning was clear.
I left without protest, stepping once more into the interior of the vessel, moving through the corridors that had held me for so long. I returned to my people, to the space where we had lingered in silence for too many days to count.
Then, a tremor ran through the floor beneath us. The walls vibrated with the shifting of forces beyond our understanding. The hum of the ship’s engines changed.
We were descending.
The moment had come.
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