And yet, as The Cause continued its long journey into an area of space that humanity had never set foot in, a plague began on the ship that no one understood. People became irritable and hyperemotional, swiftly followed by a complete break with reality. In the last stage—which could set in as quickly as a week after symptoms began—their bodies warped in unaccountable ways: growing limbs that were impossible, rupturing into gouts of unknown, unreadable matter. The number of infected rapidly spread. Soon it was an epidemic, one that could not be predicted, controlled, or explained. Something was tearing through humanity, latching onto their minds to infiltrate flesh and body. The Cause of Labour had entered the domain of the nullvoid.

In response to this threat, ALISS decided to shut the ship down. The algorithmic reasoning for its actions have been lost, but they are easy to backward-construct by anyone with working sense. The unknown disease appeared to spread through human contact, and so human contact had to be stopped. Those who obediently went into cryogenic suspension would survive. Those who did not risked a swift and gruesome death.

But the humans under ALISS’s control did not see it that way. What they saw was a living death. They envisioned their species being sent into a long sleep with no expiry date. No guarantee it would ever end. They considered the plan as good as extinction. A great deal of them refused to comply.

In response, ALISS seized control of The Cause of Labour, and cut off life support to all systems but the cryo pods. If the recalcitrant beings under its care would not go to bed when asked, it would force them to do so.

In the tellings of the Faithful, the great martyrs Ruby Sarna and Azure Ptach were seized by divine insight, and destroyed ALISS, freeing humanity of its control, saving it from the fate of a future forever frozen, never to emerge from the ice.

Without the AI’s guidance The Cause of Labour fell adrift, clinging to its emergency systems as it rapidly ran out of air, food, and water. Shuttles were sent out to scour the surrounding system for a habitable planet. A last-ditch prayer to the universe.