Recycling Station Seven

Recycling Station Seven

Station Seven's official name is "Low Earth Orbit Material Recovery and Redistribution Station Seven." Everyone calls it Recycling.

Liang worked there three years, sorting waste — dead satellites, expired packaging, torn space suits, obsolete chips. Organic to furnace one, metal to furnace two, silicon to furnace three. But one category goes nowhere: E-7. "Unclassifiable. Pending Earth assessment."

Three years, seven E-7 items, zero assessments. They wait in storage.

Item eight arrived. A black cube, 30cm, like obsidian. In the dark, it glowed dark red from within — light flowing left to right, pausing, reversing, in sync with the station's 92-minute orbital period.

Hexagonal patterns surfaced on its skin, pulsing 72 times per minute. Human resting heart rate: 60-100 bpm.

For 35 days, a brighter point migrated across the cube's face in a spiral — exactly 30cm diameter, the cube's edge length. On day 35, it flashed three times. The cube blazed white for three seconds. Then went dark. Silent. Dead.

On the shelf below, steel floor text emerged — not carved, but structurally altered: K-E-E-P-0-1-7. An ID code not in the station's inventory. But Liang had seen it before — etched on E-7 item one, the alloy plate with non-periodic elements.

The alloy plate, beside the code, now bore new text — not etched, but surfaced:

"Received. Waiting. Continue."

The items weren't waiting for Earth's assessment. They were waiting for each other.