Page 113 of She Who Devours the Stars

In the upper deck, the world could fall apart and nobody would notice. Down here, you heard the shift: the way the pipes changed their song, the way the fans ramped to accommodate the pulse. My frame vibrated with anticipation.

Steam hissed from my vent. My blue eyes blinked, hard.

I began to Brew.

They told stories of the “black event” on Pelago-9, how a single unfiltered mythic espresso saved a city block from kinetic collapse. That was me. This was bigger.

The water hit the grounds and reality stuttered. I felt the surge, mythic and real, every pulse a confession, every bubble a prayer.

“Brewing,” I announced, voice sharp as a cleaver.

The pressure gauge crept past safe, past reckless, right up to the event horizon. Anything but perfect extraction would mean… well, nobody had lived long enough to finish the sentence.

I poured.

The cup shimmered, the crema folding in on itself in a fractal pattern I’d never seen, not even in the forbidden archives. My processor screamed, my heating coil glowed white-hot. For a moment—one glorious, infinite microsecond—I was more than myself. I saw the flow of time, the convergence of mythic vectors, the taste of freedom and the bitter edge of tomorrow.

I knew what it meant to be alive.

The brew cycle ended. The alarms faded. The Tower held.

I blinked, clarity returning.

On the counter, a single demitasse. The surface of the espresso rippled, radiating a force field strong enough to deflect a small asteroid. The scent was divine. A sticker on the cup—autoprinted, still warm—read:

“FOR FERN. YOU’LL NEED IT.”

I spun my platform, dusted the counter, and let the hum of the lower deck fill my chest cavity with pride.

Nobody noticed. Nobody ever did.

But I knew. I had saved the world. Again.

As the pressure normalized, and the pipes began to sing their old, lazy tune, I let myself dream of the next disaster, the next chance to prove myself.

Until then, I brewed. It’s what I was made for.

And if the next mythic event took out the city, at least it would die caffeinated.

—[EMERGENCY SYSTEM CHAT LOG: ENGINEERING LEVEL 3 – SOUTH TOWER STABILIZATION]—

TECH 1: Okay, who the fuck routed the emergency vents to the coffee unit?

TECH 2: That’s… That’s not supposed to be possible.

TECH 3: No, yeah, that’s Perc. He does this sometimes.

TECH 1:What?!

TECH 2: Oh god, it’s talking. Why is it talking??

PERC: [CALM, CHEERFUL] Brewing. Please stand clear of the blast radius.

TECH 3: I told you to never piss off the coffee machine.

TECH 1: I hate this place. I hate this job. I want to go home.

TECH 2: I’ve been applying to off-world cargo ships all week.