Inside, he found no treasure, no weapon. Just a single hard drive and a solar-powered screen. When he booted it up, his mother’s face appeared, younger and fiercer than he remembered.

He pulled out his datapad and began to write.

Kaelen lived in Sector 7, a sprawl of climate-controlled hab-domes where children learned from flat, sanitized maps. Rivers were blue lines. Borders were solid, permanent, and never argued. “Geography is settled,” the AI-teacher droned. “Humanity has optimized every inch of Earth.”