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Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 33: The First Place You Don’t Have to Hide
Prologue: Earth Tries to Name It Earth didn’t react to ARK-1 all at once.
It reacted in fragments—clipped footage without context, slowed frames passed between athletes and analysts who didn’t yet have language for what they were seeing. Human bodies hanging too long. Momentum redirected instead of absorbed. Falls that should have broken something—ending in motion instead.
They called it everything except what it was.
Moonball.
GravSport.
Lunar Parkour.
Someone tried Zero-G Football before being laughed off air.
A retired basketball player replayed a jump three times and shook his head. “That’s not vertical,” he said. “That’s space.”
A striker watched a mid-air redirection and exhaled sharply. “You couldn’t do that here.”
A fighter leaned closer to the screen. “You’d have to relearn your body.”
By the time commentators started arguing over ownership and regulation, ARK-1 issued a single clarification—unbroadcast, unembellished.
For accuracy: The activity circulating in planetary feeds is not a competitive program.
It is a physical literacy practice developed aboard ARK-1.
Participants call it Arcfall.
No explanation followed.
Only more footage.
They didn’t call it a base.
That word carried too much weight.
Too much history.
The idea came together the way most dangerous ideas did on ARK-1—quietly, in pieces, spoken aloud only after everyone in the room had already been circling it on their own.
Darius stood at the center table, hands resting on nothing, eyes unfocused as projections bloomed and faded without being selected.
“We can’t stay abstract,” he said at last. “Not after this.”
No one asked what this meant. They all knew.
Aisha broke the silence first. “If we move wrong, Earth militarizes the moment. If we don’t move at all, they’ll decide for us.”
Maya nodded. “And hiding reinforces the narrative that we’re temporary. Or worse—afraid.”
Amina had been quiet, watching currents trace across a holographic Earth. She finally spoke.
“We need a place that doesn’t argue,” she said. “A place that simply exists.”
Eli leaned forward, fingers sketching shapes in the air that the system interpreted instinctively. “If it’s Earthside, it can’t belong to anyone. No continental shelf. No treaty loopholes.”
“Outside jurisdiction,” Aisha agreed. “International waters won’t cut it. Someone will still claim precedent.”
“Then we don’t anchor it to the map,” Darius said. “We anchor it to reality.”
The projection shifted.
Ocean.
Deep blue, uninterrupted.
Eli smiled faintly. “A constructed island. Self-supporting. Modular. Latus-grown, but constrained.”
“Constrained how?” Maya asked.
“Purpose,” Amina said immediately.
All eyes turned to her.
“It isn’t a fortress,” she continued. “It isn’t a capital. It isn’t a threat. It’s a way station.”
Darius nodded. “With capability.”
“With visibility,” Aisha added.
“With restraint,” Marcus said quietly from the edge of the room.
The room stilled.
They all felt it click.
The shape came next.
Not rectangular. Not vertical.
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