Chapter 3 : Codex Obsidian

"Who owns the past, when truth is fog? What lingers in the audit log(s)? 

The echoes hum, the old returns, 

And in the frame, a question burns." 

Not all ghosts wear rags nor moans,

Some whisper soft through lines and koans.

Forgotten names in vanished threads,

A thousand lives, long marked as "dead."

Is memory a gift or chain?

Can you revive what time has slain?

The ghost code calls, it knows no end,

Just stories seeking shape again.

ΚΩΔΙΞ ΟΨΙΔΙΑΝΟΣ

3.1 From Father to Son...

2090 Dec. Lindenhof, Zürich: Each December Alex would pay a visit to his birth town. The Flight from NeoLand took some five hours. A direct flight would have been a mere 50 minutes, but with connections flights... Alex as everyone else, were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new international door to door taxi service.

Fifteen hundred fifty 15:50 Alex sat in his father’s study, surrounded by the ghosts of his past. The room was a museum of a brilliant, unfinished life: old books, maps with cryptic markings, and the original tablets his father had found. He had spent countless weeks in quiet desperation, trying to decipher his father’s last notes, but he had hit a wall...

"He was so close..." Alex said, his voice a low whisper that hung in the silent room. "He knew there was a something, and yet..."

Alex's comm started buzzing - a call from Roi...

Alex: "Yes Roi, what's up?"

Roi: "Hey man, you have a minute...?" 

Alex: "Yeah, yeah go ahead..."

Roi: "Remember the tracker systems, I installed on your guys' systems... It keeps picking up an anomalous signal around your location" he said, his voice a low hum. "It's not a ghost code, not in the way we've seen before. It's an encrypted sequence, pulsing on the fringes of your network. It's some repeating pattern, but the encryption is unlike anything I have seen."

"It’s not trying to get in," Roi continued. "It's just… orbiting. I've tried to trace it, but nothing... It looks like a message from nowhere."

A low chime broke the tense moment. A notification appeared on Alex's comms-panel. "Secure parcel delivery. Destination: NeoLand Sector Alpha Romeo - 74:2300"

"Roi, I got a notification of a parcel delivery. I'm in Zürich right now. Can you check on it..." Alex spoke with a clear exclamation...

Roi: "Give me a minute..."

Alex could hear the rapid key strokes through the comm.

Roi : "Yes one parcel delivered. No sender ID. No common carrier mark. It has come  through an unregistered drone... It's path has been erased..."

Roi: "Let me check the logs..."

A full minute of silence...

Roi: "Oracle has logged a security alert. It has then dismissed it as a minor anomaly..."

"What do you think is going on?" was the only logical question Alex could think of...

Roi: ".........🤔"

 3.2: The Unsolicited Fragments

NeoLand Alpha Romeo: The humid air of Alex’s study usually carried the scent of ancient earth. But today, it held a faint, unfamiliar tang of salt and something else… Something metallic, something old. His Oracle, ever watchful but unobtrusive, had already filtered the delivery from the commune’s automated logistics. A small, unassuming package rested on his desk.

He ran his hand over the parcel. It felt like rough, organic cloth, woven tightly and impregnated with some kind of preservative. He unsealed it carefully, the bio-luminescent thread he used as a tamper-evident seal glowing faintly as it parted. Inside, nestled in a bed of desiccated plant matter, were not one, but five small, obsidian-black tablets. They were unlike anything he had ever cataloged.

The material wasn't cuneiform-etched clay, nor crystalline slabs. These were raw, almost organic in their imperfection, yet impossibly dense. As his fingers traced their surface, the Oracle’s soft ambient hum intensified slightly.

“Oracle, initial material composition analysis,” Alex murmured, picking up the first tablet. It fit snugly in his palm. The surface was smooth, yet faintly abrasive, like polished volcanic rock.

“Scanning… Unique composite. Primarily silicates with trace elements consistent with deep-ocean volcanic extrusion. Surface molecular structure suggests… a synthesised  crystalline lattice. High data storage capacity. No known provenance in common archives.” The Oracle’s tone remained neutral, but the implications hung in the air...

Alex carefully placed the first tablet on the holographic spectrum analyser...

No automatic recognition. No data stream. It was stubbornly, silently inert. Yet, a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer began to emanate from its surface.

“Run a full spectrum energy signature scan. Look for any active or dormant protocols,” Alex ordered, leaning closer.

The Oracle responded instantly, bathing the tablet in a grid of green laser lines. The shimmer pulsed, then resolved itself into a complex, chaotic array of overlapping frequencies. It was data, but scrambled, fragmented, layered with noise he’d never encountered.

“Anomaly detected,” the Oracle stated, a slight shift in its pitch. “Embedded energy signature inconsistent with DyoLand standard protocols. Reading… encrypted fractal encryption layer. Estimated decryption time for standard algorithms: 25,000 years.”

Twenty five thousand years! A cold shiver went through Alex's body... It was a deliberate lock...

Alex picked up the second tablet... Same results...

Minutes passed... Lost in thoughts, gazing at the wall...

“Roi! Damien! The neural co-processor..!” Alex murmured in a moment of light bulb auto-responce. 

If anyone could crack this encryption, it would be them... Alex knew it's time to bring in the cavalry.

His Oracle, sensing the shift in his focus, subtly highlighted Damian and Roi’s current locations on his holographic map of the Commune. Both were immersed in their respective labs.

Alex chose Roi first. Roi was the bridge between the raw computational power Damian wielded and the subtle nuances of historical data that Alex loved. 

A quick message, stripped of anything but urgency, was dispatched. 

"Roi. Urgent. Anomaly. Bring your most robust analytical tools. My lab. Now."

Roi, didn't need any additional calls... He knew of the parcel...

Less than ten minutes later, Roi arrived, his usually serene face etched with a rare curiosity. He carried a compact, multi-spectral scanner that seemed to hum with contained power. His eyes, typically focused on distant algorithmic horizons, narrowed as he took in the obsidian tablet.

“This… isn’t standard,” Roi observed, his voice a low rumble. He deployed his scanner, a faint network of shimmering light enveloping the tablet. “The energy signature Alex mentioned… it’s unlike any modern encryption I’ve ever analyzed. It’s almost… organic in its complexity, yet perfectly structured.”

“Twenty five thousand years to decrypt with standard algorithms,” Alex supplied.

Roi whistled softly. “That’s a deliberate lock. Or a technology so far beyond us, it appears accidental.” He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. 

“And are you sure this is legit? ”

"Dr. Petrova!" murmured Alex...

“I have a colleague, Dr. Lena Petrova. She's in the Archaeo-Chronology Guild, and she does radiocarbon dating stuff. If this material is fake, she’ll know...”

Within the hour, Dr. Petrova, a woman with sharp, inquisitive eyes and perpetually flour-dusted hands (her hobby was baking...), arrived. Her portable radiocarbon unit, a sleek, humming device, got to work dating one of the tablets. The silence in the room deepened as the machine whirred to life, gathering infinitesimally small data points from the tablet's embedded organic impurities.

Beeep!

The results flashed on a small screen, crisp and unambiguous: "Estimated Age: 5025 +/- 50 years Before Present."

Alex's and Roi's eyes met. 3000 BCE!

The numbers resonated with Alex’s historical studies. The late Uruk period. The very era his "ziggurat-dust" text belonged to. Yet, the tablet’s sophisticated, engineered composition screamed something far more advanced than anything known from that time.

“It’s authentic, Alex”, Dr. Petrova confirmed, her voice hushed with awe. “Ancient. Beyond ancient, for something this… anomalous. The material itself is a puzzle. Let's check another one...”

A few anxious minutes...

Beeep!

"Estimated Age: 5045 +/- 50 years Before Present."

One could clearly see the awe and bewilderment in all three of them...

“So, this is legit,” Alex murmured, his gaze fixed on the enigmatic objects. “An authentic artifact from 3000 BCE! But with technology that shouldn't exist.”

Roi agreed, a rare grin spreading across his face. This was a challenge he relished. “A legitimate ancient object, with a message locked by impossible future tech...”

“Or, impossible past tech!” Alex interrupted..

He started scratching his fore-chin. “This isn't just about decryption anymore. It's about understanding who could have created something like this, and why.”

The Ghost Codes were no longer just a poetic concept; they were tangible, and they demanded to be read.

As Alex meticulously re-secured the tablets, his mind raced, connecting disparate threads. “Roi,” he said, his voice low, “whoever sent these to me... they knew...”

“They knew about my Uruk research, about the cuneiform, the 'ziggurat-dust' - all of it. I don't think this is a random drop.”

Roi paused, his fingers hovering over the tablets. “Then someone has been monitoring your work. And they have access to technology that can bypass DyoLand's logistics and security protocols.”

He looked at Alex, a glint of challenge in his eyes. “The plot thickens...” That was the second time a grin appeared on Roi's face. “Looks like we have a ghost, and it knows your location and probably much more...”

The sun had long since dipped below the curated horizon of NeoLand when Damian finally arrived, a compact processing unit cradled under one arm. 

He entered Alex's study, his usual jovial demeanor replaced by a focused intensity.  The obsidian tablets now secured in a lead-lined containment, shimmered faintly.

"So, what impossible riddle have you stumbled upon now, Alex?" Damian asked, his gaze settling on the tablets, then sweeping over the three grim faces.

Alex quickly laid out the situation: the anonymous delivery, the ancient date, the synthesised material, and the impossible fractal encryption. "My Oracle is useless here. It's too deeply integrated into the communal net. Any attempt to brute-force this encryption would flag a thousand alerts, and the source of this..."

Dr. Petrova, who had been quietly observing the exchange, stepped forward. "And the sender's anonymity," she added, her voice dropping to a near whisper, "that indicates risk. Significant risk. If this information is so carefully hidden, and someone went to such lengths to deliver it covertly, it's not a casual academic offering. We could be entering dark waters here..."

"That true." Alex nodded in agreement. "We don't even know what message it hides..."

Damian quietly agreed, his eyes gleaming with professional curiosity. "You're right. DyoLand's core AI, the Guardians, are designed to detect systemic anomalies that could compromise stability. A decryption effort of this magnitude, targeting unknown tech, would be a blaring siren."

In DyoLand, transparency was a core value. Anonymity, especially for something this profoundly unsettling, felt like a breach in the very fabric of their society. The implications of a sender unwilling to reveal themselves, operating outside the public eye, hinted at forces or truths that DyoLand's harmonious structure might not readily accommodate.

"Then not a word," Alex stated, his gaze sweeping over Roi, Damian and Dr. Petrova. "Not to anyone. Not to our families. Not to the communal AI. No one."

Roi nodded, his face grim. "Agreed. Until we have something concrete, something undeniable, this remains strictly between the four of us."

A shared understanding passed between the four of them.

Chapter 3.3: The Gamer's Gambit

The weight of their pact settled in the air. Now, the theoretical challenge of cracking the Ghost Codes morphed into a logistical one: how to build a computational fortress capable of housing Damian’s isolated AI without alerting the pervasive Guardian network or the curious eyes of a transparent society.

Roi : "I think I might have and idea... Could you guys give me a minute? I need to think it over..."

Alex : "Sure thing, take your time... I am starving right now... I've got some frozen food. Let's discuss it over diner then?"

Damien : "Dinner in the lab, perfect!"

Roi gives a thumbs up, as he slowly entered into deep thoughts...

A good 15 minutes later, the team reassembles over dinner.

Roi : "Ok guys, this is what well do..."

Roi leaned forward, a blueprint of his idea shimmering from his display. "I've been working on a new AI-driven game as a hobby project. It's a massively parallel, open-world simulation that requires unprecedented computational resources for rendering complex adaptive AI behaviors. The perfect cover. We build a high-spec gaming server, a project so ambitious it justifies a significant energy draw and unique algorithmic patterns."

"We'll need to acquire a license for it," Alex pointed out.

"Precisely," Roi confirmed. "A valid, approved license. This will legitimize our operation and give the Guardians a plausible explanation for our activity."

A brief, tense silence filled the room. Dr. Petrova, who had been listening intently from a quiet corner, looked from one face to the next. She was an archaeologist of time, a keeper of facts, and the idea of engaging in this elaborate deception visibly strained her.

Alex, sensing her hesitation, spoke up. "Lena," he said, using her first name, "we know the risks. We've all committed to this for the pursuit of truth, and nothing more. And we must also agree that if this truth, once revealed, poses a threat to humanity or well-being of DyoLand, we will rebury it. The information, the tablets, everything."

"Our conscience is our only guide," Damian added, his gaze resolute. "We do this to solve a mystery, not to cause harm. We will be accountable for our actions, and in the case of any eventuality, we should be able to defend our case."

"Agree... Me Alex and Damien will be the partners of this operation. We three will have to finance the hardware. Dr. Petrova will remain as an external entity. Her  involvement, might draw suspicion, as to why an Archeologist is involved in a Gaming Simulator."

"Me and Damien will acquire the Tera Bytes of training data from open sources. And Alex, you will provide me with your private collection on early cuneiform..." Roi continued his briefing...

Roi, Damien, Alex and Dr. Petrova all had their own unique roles: Damian, the architect of the AI, Roi, the public face and builder of the server, and Alex, the intellectual anchor providing the historical data. Dr. Petrova's role was to be their silent, steadfast conscience, a keeper of their pact and the truth of their intentions. The plan, now fully formed and morally codified, was set in motion.

The server, assembled in Roi’s basement, was registered as a legitimate experimental platform. For months, it ran its public-facing task, a convincing AI-driven game that passed every routine audit. The machine hummed with life, churning through terabytes of publicly available data-including thousands of ancient scripts and linguistic texts, all part of the game's "training."

Then, a few weeks later, came the test.

Among the tens of thousands of data sets, they discreetly uploaded the fragments from the obsidian tablets. The isolated AI core, fueled by Alex's personal archives, was tasked with identifying any recurring patterns within the larger data pool. It was a needle-in-a-haystack approach, with the tablets' data being the one, single, unique needle.

The results, when they came, were a mix of triumph and crushing disappointment.

The AI successfully identified the anomalous data and broke through the impossible encryption, but only in fragmented bursts. A core pattern had been identified, a recurring signature within the data that Roi’s AI had named §Ω_1_0_0_1§. As they celebrated this initial victory, the AI’s subsequent analysis revealed the truth of their incomplete quest.

It had found other, related signatures in the tablet's code: §Ω_1_0_0_3§, §Ω_1_0_0_5§, §Ω_1_0_0_7§ and §Ω_1_0_0_9§.

"It's a sequence..." Alex murmured, his face pale. "The gaps are not just encryption. The AI is showing us where the other tablets should be."

Alex’s gaze snapped to the tablets still resting in their containment, then to the glowing screen, where the AI had now rendered a schematic of the codex, with glaring empty spaces where §Ω_1_0_0_2§, §Ω_1_0_0_4§,  §Ω_1_0_0_6§, §Ω_1_0_0_8§, §Ω_1_0_0_10§  

should be.

"We only have half the code," Roi said, a note of grim finality in his voice. "The AI can't fully decode the message because it's missing half of the pieces."

Damian, his face a mask of logical skepticism, was the first to offer a counterpoint. "Hold on. That sequence... it could just be a numbering convention. It doesn't necessarily mean there are other physical tablets. It could be an internal data-indexing system within a single, larger codex."

The air went still. His point was valid. Decades of computational logic told him that a numbering sequence was simply that: a sequence.

But Alex, who had spent decades wrestling with the ghosts of lost languages, saw it differently. "No," he said, his voice quiet but firm. He brought up a holographic projection of one of his own cuneiform tablets, a text from the same period as the Ghost Codes. "In ancient texts, especially those documenting sagas, laws, or large transactions, numbering conventions like this were often used to denote chapters or pages. The location of these symbols - at the very beginning of the data set, almost like a header - is a signature, a signpost. It's telling us where this piece fits into a larger narrative."

He looked at Damian, then at Roi. "The encryption is a lock. And the numbers are the key to the sequence. The tablets we have are paragraphs, not a full story. The AI can't read the sentences because it's missing the words in between."

Roi nodded slowly, the implications setting in. "So the AI is not just identifying a pattern. It's showing us the holes in the story."

The initial thrill of a breakthrough was now replaced by the sobering reality of a grander, more perilous quest. They weren't just fighting a static cipher anymore; they were chasing a fragmented truth, scattered whom knows where... The question burning in the frame was no longer just what the message was, but where were the other tablets, and who else knew about them?

The tension is now a tangible reality.

Chapter 3.4 A Different Kind of Call

"It's a dead end," Roi said, running a hand through his hair. "I've tried every fractal reverse-cipher algorithm I can think of. The encryption is too layered. It’s not just strong, it's... elegant. It's designed to be unsolvable by brute force."

Alex sat back in his chair, the weight of his father's unfinished legacy heavy on his shoulders. "So what we have is half a message, that we can't read it."

"I'm getting the feeling, this-whom-ever it is, is a ghost looking for a partner..." Alex murmured, a slow smile spreading across his face. "He wants to be found, but on his own terms..."

"Or maybe he is testing you. This could have been an audition." Damien chipped in...

"Then we have to respond, let him know..." Roi said, his mind already working on the technical side. "But how...? We can't send a message directly. He's in the shadows for a reason."

"Lets use the medium..." Alex said, his voice filled with a new kind of resolve. "The public forum... He must have found me through my work. I'll write a new post on my blog. A ghost code of our own."

"A poem?" Petrova asked.

"A poem, why not?..." Alex said, his eyes filled with a new sense of purpose. "A poem. A message that only the ghost would understand. Something that says, 'We have your tablets. We've heard your whisper. And we are listening.' "

The team agreed. And the search for the ghost... It begins...

A Poet's Inquiry

Five black peat fragments, I found,

of a broken urn, on hallowed ground.

My lamp is lit, my search begins,

but how can I mend what time unspins?

The five fragments hold half a truth,

like a fractured vow from ancient youth.

I search for where the seconds sleeps,

while the ocean's silence secrets keeps.

The numbers skip, the story stalls,

a silent code on crumbling walls.

The dust of Uruk tells a tale,

that through these gaps cannot prevail.

A tapestry of fragmented sight,

awaits the threads to make it right.

And now we wait...

Chapter 3.5 The Waiting Game

With the poem posted on Alex’s public blog, the four budding detectives entered a new phase of their operation: the wait. 

The server in Roi's basement continued its nightly work, but their focus was now outward, into the vast, interconnected networks...

"We know the general region the parcel was posted from," Damian explained, a holographic map of Earth's logistical zones glowing in front of them. The delivery drone's erased trail wasn't perfect; it had left behind a faint, residual signature. They had triangulated its origin to a specific, sparsely populated sector of the Eurasian continent.

"My script is cross-referencing all blog views," Roi continued. "It's not just logging the hits. It's looking for an IP signature that matches the general region of the drone's origin, and then it's analyzing the access pattern. The drone was a ghost, but this might be a phantom with a predictable rhythm."

Their plan was elegant in its simplicity and daring in its scope. They were betting that the sender would check Alex's blog, and that they would do so from a location that is in the same general area the drone's point of origin.

The group continued their daily lives - Alex in his study, Damian in his neural simulations, Roi in his game development, and Dr. Petrova in her lab. But once every while, they would ping Roi...

The waiting had been a test of their resolve, a slow burn of nerves.

But on a quiet Sunday morning, as the curated sunlight of DyoLand filled the apartments, that slow burn turned into a white-hot jolt of adrenaline.

Roi, monitoring the logs in his basement lab, froze. The screen in front of him, usually a placid stream of gaming platform data, had flashed a different message, a single line of text in stark red against the black background.

RoiLand >>   ⚠️ 05:20 20/dec/2090: Candidate IP match detected

He clicked on the alert, and a new screen filled with data. It wasn't an IP from a standard terminal or a user console. It was an IPv6 address, a string of numbers and letters that possibly belonged to a single-board microcomputer, most likely a small Internet of Things device.

The signature of the device, like a whisper in a storm, was weak, but the trace route was undeniable. The final router was located in Dibiyakr, a city near the source of the Tigris, deep in the Eurasian continent - the very region they had triangulated from the drone's residual trail.

"Damian, get down here," Roi's voice was a low, urgent murmur into his personal comms. "There's something you need to see."

Within minutes, the team had assembled. The mood was electric, a mix of triumph and palpable fear. The ghost had responded. Not with a message, but with a digital handshake, a silent acknowledgment that their message had been received and understood. The game had just moved from the digital realm to the real world.

Chapter 3.6 The Unspoken Agenda

Alex arrived first, carrying a pack of nutri- packs, his usual contribution to their Sunday outings. Damian followed close behind, a rare look of focused intensity on his face. Their usual playful banter about who would dominate the paintball field was conspicuously absent. They both knew this wasn't going to be a casual Sunday.

Petrova arrived just as the trio were on the way to the basement. 

The familiar hum of the server filled the air, and the room was a sanctuary of secrets, a place where their public-facing lives gave way to a hidden reality. Roi’s gaming simulation, a vibrant, chaotic battle unfolding on the main display, was a masterful lie.

He brought up the logs, showing them the trace route, possibly a single-board microcomputer's IPv6. The last router being at Dibiyakr. He didn't need to explain the significance. They all understood. The ghost had responded.

"If the sender used an SBC..." Damian added, his eyes narrowed on the holographic map. "whomever it is, probably is a tech guy..."

"Or they might be setting a trap..." Alex countered, his hands unconsciously clenching into fists. "We don't know who this is, or what they want. The city Dibiyakr could be a dead end, a place to waste 

our time while they're doing something else."

The room was silent for a moment, the weight of the decision hanging heavy in the air. The team had a choice: risk everything to find a truth that might not exist, or abandon the quest and let the ghost codes remain a mystery.

The basement was no longer a place of frustration, but of tense, focused energy. The ghost had accessed the blog. "But it's not enough," Roi said, his voice laced with frustration. He was a man of action, and the ghost's slow, pace was maddening. "He connected for a moment. I ran every tracer, every network listener I have. Nothing. All I got, is that it's the same device. He has not deleted any of the internet cookies..."

Alex, felt a surge of both hope and despair. "He's telling us he's listening. But he's not giving us his location. He's still playing his game."

"What now?" Petrova said, her voice a low hum. She was the team's pragmatist, weighing the risks and rewards. "Do we push for more information? Do we try to force a connection? Or do we continue the conversation on his terms?"

"A more direct approach is too dangerous," Damian said. "The ghost is a master of his own game. If we try to force his hand, we risk loosing him completely. We need to win his trust."

"Let's write another poem," Alex said, his eyes filled with a new sense of purpose. "A second verse. Let's try to tell him that we are not a threat, but willing to get in touch."

A New Message to the Ghost

A Poet's Reply

The thread of dust, a whispered thing,

has led my thoughts to where tigers spring.

A city's name, on ancient ground,

where silent echoes can be found.

My broken urn, it feels the pull,

toward a river's current, and ancient mull.

The numbers speak of what I lack,

a path forward, not a turning back.

The tapestry longs for its grace,

I wish we have a common place.

The team's plan was simple: the ball was in the ghost's court. Now, the ghost had to respond with something... with anything...

To be continued...

Will the ghost respond...?

Will the team crack the code...?

Will they locate the ghost...?

Why is the ghost not coming forward...?

What secrets may lay hidden...?

⚜️

Δύο (Dyo)Land Dyostrum

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