By Cydonis Heavy Industries, ©️2025.

All rights reserved.

Chapter One.

The year is 2242. Humanity, though still grappling with its terrestrial issues, had finally begun to stretch its fingers beyond the Kuiper Belt. Outposts dotted the major moons, and automated mining facilities hummed in the asteroid fields. The next frontier, the true deep black, was the Oort Cloud – the vast, icy shell surrounding the Solar System, holding billions of potential resources and offering a launch-pad to the stars.

It was during the commissioning of the Odyssey, the first crewed long-range explorer, launched from a dry dock construction facility in orbit around Mars, and carefully, precisely, designed for interstellar precursor missions into the Oort Cloud, that they hit the wall. Not a physical wall, but something far stranger. Something that terrified everyone in the astronomical union to death.

As the Odyssey reached the calculated inner edge of the Cloud, deep space comms crackled.

“Approaching designated coordinates,” Commander Eva Rostova’s voice was calm, professional. “Sensors show… interference. Gravitational readings are stable, no immediate hazards detected.”

Then, a scream. Not of pain, but of impossible, visceral terror. Followed by silence. Utter, unnerving silence.
Rescue probes were dispatched immediately. They carried cameras, sensors, and even biological samples in shielded containers. The probes themselves zipped through the region where the Odyssey had vanished without issue. Their cameras transmitted bizarre, swirling patterns of energy that seemed to coalesce just beyond the edge of the known Oort Cloud. The biological samples, however, returned inert, reduced to fine, inorganic dust within their containers. The shielded containers were untouched.

More tests followed, increasingly desperate and grim. Drones carrying lab rats, then primates, then even volunteer convicts on one highly controversial mission. The results were always the same: the non-organic components passed through, the organic matter was instantly, horrifyingly, annihilated. It was as if the very building blocks of life were offensive to whatever lay beyond.

Panic rippled through the Solar System. The dream of reaching other stars, of finding other life, was cruelly, inexplicably snuffed out. A cage had been built around them, invisible and absolute for anything that lived and breathed.

Analysis of the energy field was inconclusive at first. It wasn’t a conventional force field or radiation barrier. It was something designed, something targeted specifically at organic compounds. Then, hidden within the complex energy signatures, patterns began to emerge. Not just energy, but data. Complex, alien data streams that spoke of observation, of assessment, and of control.

Decrypted fragments revealed a chilling truth. A vast, unimaginably ancient extraterrestrial civilisation had encircled their system. They saw humanity not as a potential peer or threat, but as a volatile variable. They had observed Earth for millennia, witnessing its cycles of progress and destruction. Their conclusion: humanity was too unpredictable, its technological leaps too rapid and often coupled with self-destructive tendencies. They weren’t malicious in a conquest sense; they were curators, gardeners pruning a potentially invasive species before it could spread its chaotic seeds across the galaxy. Their goal wasn’t annihilation, but containment and directed evolution – control over humanity’s outward progress until they deemed it ‘ready’, or perhaps, until they deemed it harmless.

The Oort Cloud barrier was their ultimate, elegant solution. Let humanity thrive within its solar cradle, build its machines, explore its planets. Enjoy their games, sports and war machines. But step outside the boundary with so much as a single living cell, and face instant disintegration.

Humanity was left reeling. Trapped. The vastness of the universe, once a beckoning frontier, was now a taunting prison. The focus of scientific endeavour shifted overnight. No longer were they solely focused on reaching the stars, but on understanding the cage, on communicating with the unseen jailers, and perhaps, one day, finding a way to dismantle the bars – not with force, which seemed futile, but with understanding, adaptation, or perhaps even a demonstration that humanity could be trusted with the freedom of the cosmos.
The probes continued their silent vigil at the edge of the barrier, the only witnesses to the invisible wall that held the fate of a species in its unyielding grip. The aliens watched and waited, patiently tending their human experiment, ensuring that for now, and for the foreseeable future, humanity’s progress would remain firmly within the confines of their controlled cosmic garden.

A patient garden.
A whispering garden.
A punishing garden.

“YOUR SINS WILL BE READ TO YOU CEASELESSLY THROUGHOUT ETERNITY.”

“YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE.”

“OUR JUDGEMENT IS FINAL.”

Chapter Two.

“Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more.” – Pyramids, Terry Pratchett.

The decryption of the alien data streams continued, growing more sophisticated, more terrifying. What initially seemed like abstract judgements on humanity’s ‘volatility’ began to coalesce into something far more personal. Buried deep within the complex alien algorithms, within the data matrices that assessed human behaviour, was a singular, recurring identifier. It pointed, with unwavering focus, to one man.

Jayce Warren.

The name resonated with a dark infamy in human history. A fossil fuel executive whose insatiable greed and pathological narcissism had driven his corporations to aggressively accelerate climate change, long after the science was undeniable. He was a man whose personal ambition was measured in melting ice caps and drowned coastlines, a genocidal psychopath masked by billionaire charm, who had single-handedly pushed Earth’s climate past the devastating 3°C tipping point, unleashing a cascade of irreversible ecological collapse and human death & suffering that would scar the planet for centuries.

The alien data revealed they had observed him. Not just his public actions, but every moment of his life. From the tantrums of infancy to the cold calculations of his board meetings, from his most private moments of sleep to his mundane trips to the bathroom. They had studied his neural pathways, his emotional responses, the chilling absence of empathy, the calculating cruelty. They had watched him make choices that prioritised profit over planetary survival, ego over the lives of billions.

For the aliens, vast and ancient intellects who measured galactic civilisations by their harmony with their environments, Jayce Warren was the ultimate, irrefutable proof of humanity’s inherent, catastrophic flaw. He was the living embodiment of unchecked self-interest, destructive power, and wilful blindness on a planetary scale. If one individual could wield such influence and inflict such damage, and if the species allowed him to do so, what horrors would a truly interstellar humanity unleash upon the wider cosmos?
The Oort Cloud barrier wasn’t just a precaution based on millennia of observation; it was a direct, immediate consequence, a collective punishment. Humanity wasn’t being contained for its potential future sins, but for the very real, observed sins of one man. Jayce Warren, in his arrogance and destruction, had inadvertently signed the cosmic arrest warrant for his entire species.
The alien data streams continued to flow, clinical and cold. They outlined the parameters of the containment field, the energy requirements, the constant monitoring.

And woven through it all was the lingering ghost of their analysis of Warren – a case study in planetary self-sabotage, a prime example of why this volatile species could not be allowed to escape its solar cage.
The galaxy remained tantalisingly out of reach, not because humanity wasn’t ready in some abstract sense, but because the aliens had watched Jayce Warren, and they had decided the risk was simply too great. Humanity was trapped, paying the price for the monstrous legacy of one man’s choices. The silent barrier around the Oort Cloud was a monument to his sin, a cosmic judgement on a species found wanting, judged by the actions of its worst.

Chapter 3.

“If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out.”

– William Shakespeare

The revelation about Jayce Warren hit humanity like a second, psychological barrier. The initial fear and frustration of being caged curdled into a toxic brew of shame, anger, and existential despair. How could the fate of an entire species, the potential to explore the vast tapestry of the cosmos, be forfeited because of the pathological actions of a single, monstrous individual?
Recriminations exploded across the Solar System. Warren was already the most hated man in recorded history for the climate catastrophe he’d engineered. Now, his legacy expanded into the cosmic. Statues were torn down (those few that hadn’t been already), his name was purged from records where possible, and historical analysis became a frantic, desperate attempt to understand how they could have allowed such a man to wield such power. Was it a unique aberration, or did Warren represent a deeper, fundamental flaw in the human psyche, one the aliens had correctly identified?

Deep space programs, once focused on propulsion systems and life support, pivoted entirely. Fleets of highly sophisticated probes were designed, purely robotic, powered by advanced AI. These were humanity’s only ambassadors, their only hope of interacting with the unseen wardens. They were sent towards the Oort Cloud barrier, not carrying payloads for exploration, but complex data packages.
The first packages were apologetic, pleading. They detailed the global condemnation of Warren, the desperate efforts to mitigate the climate damage he’d caused, the arguments that he was an outlier, not representative of the species’ true potential. They transmitted humanity’s art, music, philosophy – attempts to showcase the beauty and complexity that also existed within their nature.

The barrier remained, an impassive wall of energy. The probes passed through, delivering their data into the silent, swirling patterns beyond. Analysis of the energy field continued to yield data streams from the aliens, but they offered no response to humanity’s overtures. The alien data was solely focused on observation – sophisticated analyses of human sociology, technological development within the solar system, population dynamics, even psychological profiling derived from monitoring trillions of data points across the net. They were watching, always watching, assessing, but never communicating in a way that suggested dialogue or negotiation.

Frustration mounted. Some data packages became defiant, even accusatory. They challenged the aliens’ right to judge an entire species based on one member, questioned their own presumably perfect history, demanded explanation or release. These probes, too, passed through the barrier, their digital shouts swallowed by the indifferent silence beyond.

The psychological toll of this invisible, inescapable cage was immense. Knowing they were watched constantly, judged by unseen eyes based on the worst of their kind, fostered a pervasive sense of helplessness and paranoia. Innovation continued, but the driving force shifted from outward expansion to inward perfection – or at least, the appearance of it. Perhaps, some argued, if they could demonstrate absolute control, absolute harmony, the aliens might relent. Societies became more regulated, surveillance increased (ironically, mirroring the alien observation), all in a desperate, unspoken plea to their cosmic jailers.

But the barrier held. The alien data streams flowed, ceaselessly recording, analysing, judging. Jayce Warren’s shadow stretched across the solar system, a permanent stain on humanity’s record, a constant reminder that their freedom had been revoked, their cosmic destiny curtailed, all because of the sins of one man whom their silent, cosmic jury had found sufficient cause to condemn them all. The cold war was not fought with weapons, but with information, patience, and the crushing weight of a species’ collective guilt.

Chapter Four.

Seven hundred and fifty million years. The span stretched the imagination, a gulf of time that made the rise and fall of empires seem like the blink of an eye. On Earth, the sun, though still a G-type star, had brightened considerably. The atmosphere, ravaged by ancient warming and millennia of subsequent shifts, had failed. The great oceans, the cradle of life, had boiled away into space or been locked into super-critical states within the crust. The once vibrant blue marble was a parched, red-brown wasteland, a tomb world baking under an increasingly harsh sun. Humanity had long since fled, migrating outwards, establishing vast, enclosed habitats on the moons of the gas giants, mining the asteroid belts, and terraforming (on a small, internal scale) dwarf planets.
They were a scattered, resilient species, bound together loosely by the stelnet, a solar system-wide network of high-energy laser tightbeams carrying instantaneous communication across the vast distances. Knowledge flowed, cultures diverged and merged, and the memory of Earth became a mix of sacred reverence and cautionary tale.
But history, like a persistent ghost, had a way of returning in monstrous forms. From the icy blackness surrounding a captured Kuiper Belt object, now a fortified moonlet orbiting Saturn, a new power had risen. They called themselves the Inheritors of the Flame, but the rest of the solar system knew them simply as the Warrenites.
On their dark, metal-encased fortress, built into the core of the moonlet, they venerated Jayce Warren. Not as a villain, but as a prophet, a visionary leader who had the courage to face the “necessary truths” of existence. Their twisted ideology, broadcast across the stelnet with relentless, fascistic zeal, claimed Warren’s actions weren’t destructive, but acts of ‘pruning’, clearing away the weak and sentimental for a stronger, more realistic future. The climate catastrophe wasn’t a failure, but a test, a crucible humanity had to endure to shed its naive dependence on a fragile environment. They lauded his narcissism as supreme self-reliance, his psychopathy as the ability to make hard, unemotional decisions others shied away from.
Their propaganda was slick, pervasive, and chillingly persuasive to those disaffected or seeking a brutal certainty in the complex, fragile existence spread across the outer system. They offered order, strength, and a perverse pride in the very events that had shattered the past world.

And they had teeth. Over centuries, they had secretly amassed resources, built shipyards within the asteroid belt, and designed a fleet unlike any seen since the system-wide conflicts of millennia past. These were not exploration vessels or habitat transports, but sleek, angular warships bristling with particle beams, kinetic drivers, and energy shields. They were built for a single purpose: dominance.

Messages crackled across the stelnet, no longer just propaganda, but ultimatums. Demands for resources, subjugation of independent habitats, pronouncements of the Warrenite destiny to rule the solar system. Skirmishes began – swift, brutal attacks on independent mining stations, raids on transport convoys. The scattered, diverse peoples of the outer system, unused to large-scale conflict, were caught off guard.
War beckoned, a horrifying echo of Earth’s past conflicts magnified onto a solar system scale. It was a war born of ancient sin, nurtured by distorted ideology, and spearheaded by the followers of a man whose actions had already cost humanity the stars.

And out beyond the Oort Cloud, the silent, invisible barrier remained. The alien data streams continued, their analysis of human behavior now recording this new, violent phase. One wondered if they saw it as a validation of their ancient judgment, or simply another, grimly expected turn in the chaotic saga of the species they had chosen to cage. The Inheritors of the Flame, in their fervent madness, seemed determined to prove the aliens right, not just by their internal wars, but perhaps, eventually, by turning their lethal fleet towards the barrier itself, seeking to break free with the very violence that had trapped them here in the first place.

Chapter Five.

War came, swift and brutal, igniting across the vast distances of the outer solar system. The Warrenites, fueled by fanatical zeal and centuries of resentment, unleashed their fleet. Across the stelnet, propaganda broadcasts mingled with tactical commands and chilling boasts of conquest. Independent habitats burned, asteroid mining colonies were seized or destroyed, and the fragile peace that had reigned for millennia shattered under the onslaught of particle beams and kinetic strikes. It was a war of ideology, a horrifying re-enactment of ancient Terran conflicts, fought not for resources alone, but for the soul of a scattered species, one faction desperately clinging to a toxic past as justification for present violence.
But the Warrenites had a goal beyond mere solar system dominance. Their ultimate aim, the twisted culmination of their faith in Jayce Warren’s ‘vision’, was to prove humanity worthy of the cosmos. And for them, ‘worthy’ meant breaking the alien cage. They believed that if they could overcome this ultimate obstacle, violently assert their will against the cosmic wardens, they would somehow validate Warren’s legacy and earn their place among the stars.
Gathering their most powerful warships, stripped of internal habitat components to maximize weapon capacity and shielding, the Inheritors of the Flame launched an armada towards the Oort Cloud barrier. Their advance was broadcast across the stelnet – a grand, terrifying spectacle intended to inspire awe in their followers and terror in their enemies. They spoke of ‘shattering the celestial chains’ and ‘claiming the rightful inheritance’ denied them by weaker hands.
The fleet reached the barrier, a region marked by the ceaseless flow of alien data and the unsettling energy signatures that annihilated organic matter. With fervent cries broadcast over the stelnet, they fired their most powerful weapons. Fusion lances hotter than suns, kinetic projectiles accelerated to relativistic speeds, focused energy bursts capable of carving through moons.

Nothing happened.

The energy lances dissipated harmlessly, their immense power simply vanishing as they touched the field’s edge. The kinetic rounds, capable of obliterating a small moonlet, likewise ceased to exist the moment they crossed the invisible threshold. There was no explosion, no resistance, no visible effect on the barrier itself. It wasn’t deflected, wasn’t absorbed and redirected. It was simply impervious. Their most devastating attacks, the culmination of 750 million years of technological progress within the solar system, were met with absolute, silent nullification.
Panic flickered across the faces of the Warrenite commanders shown on the stelnet feeds, quickly masked by grim determination and then, a chilling, fanatic reinterpretation. “It is a test!” screamed one commander, his face a mask of zeal. “The Inheritor’s final trial! The Barrier requires faith, not just force!”
They threw themselves against it again and again. They tried complex energy frequency modulations, attempts at localized spacetime distortion, theoretical quantum destabilizers. Nothing worked. The barrier remained, an unyielding, passive fact of the cosmos, utterly unbreakable by any means at humanity’s disposal. It wasn’t a lock to be picked or a wall to be breached; it was a fundamental property of reality in that region of space, imposed by a power far beyond human comprehension.

Frustrated, humiliated in the face of cosmic indifference, the Warrenite fleet turned back from the barrier, their fervent energy curdling into a brutal, redirected rage. If they could not break the cage, they would dominate what was within it. The internal war intensified, the fury of their failed cosmic aspirations turned inward upon their own species.

The silent, unbreakable barrier remained at the edge of the system, a permanent testament to the judgment passed upon humanity. And the alien data streams continued, recording the futile violence, the ideological madness, the self-inflicted suffering unfolding within the confines of their perfect, inescapable cage. The war for the solar system raged, a contained conflict observed by silent, ancient eyes, a tragic confirmation that perhaps, just perhaps, Jayce Warren’s legacy had indeed proven humanity too dangerous for the stars.

“Because war, war never changes…”