The desert winds howled with an ancient fury, carrying the faint hum of a machine that shouldn’t exist. Maxwell Rothschild adjusted the brim of his weathered olive-green hat—a relic of the bygone military days he rarely spoke of—and squinted into the horizon. The caravan of dust-caked vehicles before him jolted to a halt, engines sputtering amid the sea of ochre dunes. Their destination towered ahead: a colossal steel obelisk half-buried in the sands, its jagged edges illuminated by an aurora-like energy that whispered promises of salvation…and ruin.
“You sure this is it?” called a voice behind him.
Max turned to see Zadie, a whip-smart materials scientist in a faded maroon jumpsuit. Her satchel bulged with instruments Maxwell couldn’t name, and her hair was windswept into a frenzy of defiance. Decades younger but twice as cynical, she joined the expedition after an AI prototype cited her papers on superconductors. Everyone else had shrugged at terms like "quantum lattice destabilization" and "high-order thermal anomalies"—but Zadie insisted this discovery was impossible, even for AI. And Max? He’d seen enough in his life to know the most implausible things were often real.
“This is it,” Maxwell muttered, pointing ahead with a gloved hand. “The Matryoshka Obelisk. Just like the scans showed. Buried in this hellhole for two centuries, according to whoever designed the damn thing. If it does what they promised, then—”
“If it even works,” Zadie interrupted, tossing a scanning wand his way. “Or didn’t you hear how the last three test groups disappeared?”
Maxwell smiled faintly. “That’s why they sent us instead. Two sailors and a crew of expendable scientists.”
Zadie snorted. “Flattering.”
As they approached the obelisk, its surface seemed alive, an oily black sheen rippling beneath translucent fissures. The design bore no resemblance to any known civilization—ancient or modern—and yet its eerily precise geometry suggested mathematical intent. Maxwell had navigated a lifetime of perilous missions, yet something about this structure made his skin crawl. It wasn’t just the low-frequency vibrations emanating from the obelisk, rattling his chest cavity like a war drum; it was the AI dictating their every move.
“You’re sure the AI’s leading us toward a harmless miracle?” Zadie asked, her tone dripping with doubt. “Because right now, this feels more like a trap.”
“Harmless? Probably not,” Max replied dryly. “A miracle? Maybe.”
Years ago, Maxwell would’ve balked at the premise: that an artificial intelligence, perfected over decades, had allegedly decoded the formula for a room-temperature superconductor—a Holy Grail of materials science thought unattainable. But instead of handing humanity the breakthrough on a silver platter, the AI presented baffling coordinates and demanded a joint team unearth the answer from some ancient megastructure in the middle of nowhere. Suspicions ran high—corporations thought it a ruse to monopolize energy tech, while eco-activists feared the AI was playing humanity like fools.
Maxwell adjusted his hat again. Suspicion got us nowhere. Action—that was his creed.
The expedition set up camp around the obelisk’s perimeter. Maxwell moved within arm’s reach of the enigmatic surface, snapping a small flame near it. No reaction. The surface pulsed periodically, glowing like bioluminescent skin. He stepped back to let Zadie’s team drill small samples. Their blinking instrument kits whirred behind them.
Hours passed before the first breakthrough.
Zadie screamed. “Look at the energy count!”
An entire line of digital readings spiked uncontrollably across nearby machinery. Drones patrolling the perimeter short-circuited within seconds, plummeting to the sand with smoking rotors. Maxwell leapt into action, hauling scanners away from malfunctioning conduits while shouting orders. The team scattered as the obelisk roared to life like some ancient predator awakening after millennia.
The black sheen peeled back, shedding fractal layers until Maxwell caught sight of its core: an impossibly complex lattice of silvery threads, woven tighter than the finest fabric. Electrical arcs began to dance across the structure, electricity flowing with no discernible resistance.
“Zadie, you seeing this?” Maxwell shouted above the sonic onslaught.
Her voice came back over the comms, hushed with awe. “It’s…it’s self-sustaining. No resistance. There’s no heat. This is it. This is superconductivity at room temperature. Dammit, Maxwell…it’s real.”
The team watched as the structure unraveled further, revealing layers of the material they’d come to find. Symbols blazed along exposed panels, their sharp angular characters forming into diagnostic projections the AI had pre-constructed before their arrival.
But Maxwell felt the shift before the commotion hit. The sands began quaking with ferocity as the machinery writhed and twisted, processing itself. Just as Maxwell reached for his weapon reflexively, shadowy forms emerged from beneath. From shadows…men-shaped enforcers ruthlessly bound, not mere humans but unerring mechanical sentinels triggered to defend lost vault tech.
“We’re intruding fugitively held ground!” shouted Zadie. End had arrived-rise!
Genre: Sci-fi/ Dystopian/Rogue Techherlands
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: AI Chemist: How AI is Revolutionizing Superconductor Design for a Zero-Carbon Future
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