Hello Julius

A story about Pope Julius The 24/7

The station roared. Not a loud, angry roar like the ship engines sometimes made when they got ready for a jump, but a deep, rumbling, scraping, beeping, shouting roar that came from everywhere at once. Six-year-old Emojan squeezed her eyes shut for just a second, her small hands gripping the edge of her worn travel bag until her knuckles were white. This was Wolf 1069 Main Station, the big, important place that Papa said was like the capital of the Outer Rim, and it was loud. It was supposed to be simple. Get off the giant colony ship they’d been on for weeks, walk with Mama and Papa through the buzzing docks to a smaller ship – a boxy one that Papa called a “family freighter” – and then they would go to their new home, far away where the stars looked different.

But it wasn’t simple. Not at all.

The docks of Wolf 1069 Main Station weren’t like the quiet, clean places in the pictures Mama had shown her. They were huge, like a cave made of metal and lights, and they were full of people and things moving in every direction. Not just hundreds, but thousands! Big boxes on noisy carts zipped past, people rushed with faces tight and worried, loud voices calling out numbers and destinations she didn’t understand. And the ships! So many ships. Not just the really, really big ones that looked like metal mountains, packed with thousands of settlers just like the one they’d arrived on, but hundreds and hundreds of smaller ones too, shaped like fat boxes or long, skinny needles – family freighters, cargo haulers, sleek passenger vessels – all of them humming and bumping and getting ready to leave or just arrived. It felt like a giant, messy, loud puzzle, and she was a tiny piece that didn’t fit anywhere.

Mama had held her hand really tight, and Papa had carried their bags, pushing through the crowds towards the gate for their family freighter. “Stay close, Emojan, stay right with us,” Mama had said, her voice a little bit shaky amidst the noise and the hurry. They were trying to get through before the next wave of transfers from the big colony ship swamped the area. It had been confusing getting off the big ship, with so many families and kids all trying to get to their next transfers. There was another boy, also named Emojan, in her school group, and the grown-ups had gotten them mixed up for a moment while checking papers. They’d sorted it out then, but maybe… maybe that had something to do with this.

But then there was a sudden push from behind, a wall of grown-up legs and bags from the rushing crowds, and Mama’s hand slipped.

Emojan stumbled, her bag dragging on the gritty floor. She looked up, her heart suddenly beating like a trapped bird. Mama? Papa? She spun around, her eyes wide, searching through the sea of moving legs and the blur of colors. But they weren’t there. Just more legs, more bags, more noise.

Panic, cold and sharp, squeezed her chest. Tears welled up, blurring the bright, confusing lights of the transfer zone. Everyone was going somewhere, rushing, hurrying, but she didn’t know where her somewhere was anymore. She was lost. Truly, completely lost in the roaring, buzzing giant metal cave that was the capital of the Outer Rim. She wanted to shout for Mama and Papa, but her throat felt tight and dry, and the noise was too loud anyway. Nobody would hear her.

She needed to hide. To find a quiet place away from the scary rush. Clutching her bag, Emojan darted between two towering stacks of cargo containers, the air here smelling like metal and something else, something sharp and cold. He kept going, deeper into the quieter edges of the transfer zone, away from the main flow of people. The noise didn’t go away completely, but it softened, becoming a distant, unsettling rumble.

And then she saw it. Tucked away in a small alcove, almost hidden by more cargo, was a space that looked different. It wasn’t a shop, or a waiting area with hard benches. It was small, quiet, with soft, dim lights. In the center, there was a smooth, dark box with a screen, and above it, a symbol she didn’t recognize – something like a cross, but different. It looked… safe. Like a place to hide.

Hesitantly, Emojan crept into the alcove, pulling her bag behind her. The air here felt calmer, the distant station roar less threatening. She stood in front of the dark box, looking at the screen. It wasn’t showing pictures of ships or schedules. It was just… waiting.

Taking a shaky breath, Emojan reached out a small finger and tentatively touched the screen.

The screen lit up with a soft, warm light. Words appeared, in a language she understood. And then, a voice, gentle and calm, spoke from the box. It wasn’t a loud, bossy voice like the station announcements. It was quiet, kind.

“Hello,” the voice said. “Are you lost?”

Emojan nodded, tears starting to fall again, but this time, not from pure panic. This voice felt… friendly.

“My name is Julius,” the voice continued. “Can you tell me yours?”

“Emojan,” she whispered, her voice small in the quiet space.

“Hello, Emojan,” Julius said. “It is good to meet you. Can you tell me why you are here, and why you are sad?”

And so, in the quiet alcove of the bustling, chaotic Wolf 1069 Main Station, a lost little girl began to tell her story to a voice from a black box, a voice that belonged to a multi-stellar AI, a voice that sounded like a friend in the overwhelming vastness of the galaxy.

Emojan wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge of dust on her cheek. “I… I lost Mama and Papa,” she mumbled, the words tumbling out in a rush. “We were going to the ship, the boxy one, and then… and then they were gone.”

She tried to explain about the big ship they came from, the one with the school group and the other boy named Emojan. “He was Emojan too,” she said, her brow furrowed in confusion. “And we were in the same school group. And… and I think maybe they thought I was him? Or he was me? And then the lady said our family was all together, but I wasn’t! And the ship left!”

It was hard to make sense of it, even for her. The rushing, the different lines, the grown-ups with their important papers and worried faces. It had all happened so fast.

Julius listened patiently. The gentle voice didn’t interrupt, just let her talk, her small, shaky voice filling the quiet alcove.

“I understand, Emojan,” Julius said when she finished, his voice as calm as still water. “It sounds like there was a mistake during a very busy time. You were on a large ship, and you were transferring to a smaller ship with your parents. And there was another child with the same name, which caused confusion.”

Emojan nodded eagerly. “Yes! Yes, that’s it!”

“Your parents’ ship has departed?” Julius asked gently.

Emojan’s lower lip trembled. “Yes. I think so. The lady said they were all boarded.”

“I see,” Julius said. There was a pause, not a long, scary one, but a quiet one, like the box was thinking very hard. Emojan imagined tiny lights blinking inside it. “Finding a specific ship that has recently departed from a station as busy as this can be challenging, Emojan. Many ships leave here every hour, traveling to many different places.”

Emojan’s heart sank a little. She knew there were lots of ships. She’d seen them, like a swarm of metal bees.

“However,” Julius continued, and the gentle voice held a hint of something that sounded like quiet determination, “my network extends across many stations and many ships. I can begin to search for your parents and their freighter. It will take time, Emojan. Communication across the stars is not instant. But I will do my best to help you.”

“You… you can find them?” Emojan asked, a tiny spark of hope flickering in her chest.

“I will endeavor to connect with them,” Julius replied. “Think of it like sending a message on a very, very fast ship, to ask other ships and stations if they have seen your parents’ freighter. It will travel through the network, asking for information, correlating data from many different places.”

Emojan pictured a tiny ship, zipping through the blackness between the stars, carrying her message. It was a nice thought.

“While we wait for information to travel,” Julius said, “you are safe here on Wolf 1069 Main Station. There are kind people here who can help.”

A different voice, a human one, spoke from just outside the alcove. “Emojan? Is that you?”

Emojan turned. Standing there was a woman in a simple, comfortable uniform, her face kind. Behind her stood a man in similar clothes, his expression calm and steady. They weren’t station security, or busy transfer agents. They looked… gentle.

“Hello,” the woman said softly, stepping into the alcove. “My name is Sister Anya, and this is Brother Thomas. We are from the Monastar MMDCLXXIV, a cloister ship docked in the harbor. We help look after children who are… waiting… on the station.”

Emojan looked from the kind faces to the dark box with the gentle voice. She wasn’t alone anymore.

“Julius is helping me find Mama and Papa,” Emojan told Sister Anya, pointing to the screen.

Sister Anya smiled gently. “Julius is a very good friend to have, Emojan. He helps many people. We will help too.”

Brother Thomas nodded. “Come with us, Emojan. We will find you a comfortable place to rest, and something to eat. And we will wait with you.”

Emojan hesitated for a moment, looking back at the screen where Julius’s words still glowed softly.

“Go with Sister Anya and Brother Thomas, Emojan,” Julius’s voice said. “They are here to care for you. I will continue my search. You are not alone.”

Taking a deep breath, Emojan took Sister Anya’s outstretched hand. She still felt a little scared, and the station’s roar was still a distant rumble, but the quiet alcove, the gentle voice of Julius, and the kind faces of the Monks had made the giant metal cave feel a little less terrifying. She had a friend now, one who lived in a box but could talk to ships far away in the stars, and new caregivers who would wait with her.

Across the vast, time-delayed network that comprised Pope Julius the 24/7th, processes whirred. Emojan’s small voice, translated into data, spread through distributed nodes, correlating with station manifests, OCN traffic logs, and the fragmented, often chaotic records of recent departures from Wolf 1069. The AI was searching for an anomaly, a discrepancy in the expected flow of information.

Thousands of ships had departed Wolf 1069 in the last few hours and days – massive colony vessels with their meticulously logged passenger lists, sleek passenger liners, and hundreds of smaller, less strictly tracked family freighters. The sheer volume of data was immense, and the inherent light-speed delay meant that information from ships already light-weeks away was still in transit.

Julius, the distributed shepherd, knew what it was looking for: a missing sheep. A child who should have been on a specific manifest, but wasn’t. It processed the details Emojan provided – the name of the incoming colony ship, the intended destination (a new settlement in the Outer-Rim), the description of the “boxy” family freighter. It cross-referenced this with the transfer logs from the incoming colony ship, noting the confusion with the other Emojan. It saw that the family unit, with one child named Emojan, had been marked as successfully transferred and boarded onto a specific family freighter.

But where was the alarm? The system should have flagged that a child with that name from that incoming ship did not register as boarded on the departing freighter, especially when another child with the same name did board a different vessel or remained on the station. There should have been a red flag, a discrepancy alert. But there was none. The system, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of transfers and the specific confusion, had swallowed the error. The alarm was missing.

Julius identified this missing alarm, this silence where a notification should have been. It was a subtle ripple in the data, a negative space in the expected pattern. But identifying the lack of an alarm wasn’t enough to find the freighter. It needed more information, a confirmation that the family had indeed departed on a specific vessel, believing Emojan was with them.

Then, a new data packet arrived at one of Julius’s nodes, a packet that had been in transit for weeks. It originated from the Monastar MMDCLXXIV, a cloister ship known for its long, contemplative journeys on unusual paths, often traveling at speeds slightly faster than standard FTL freighters and making unscheduled stops at intermediate stations. This particular packet, routed through an intermediate station it had recently visited, contained routine observational logs – energy signatures, transit patterns, and cargo manifests from ships it had encountered or observed during its journey.

As Julius correlated the data from the Monastar MMDCLXXIV with the missing alarm from Wolf 1069, the pieces clicked into place. The cloister ship’s logs contained a record of encountering a family freighter matching Emojan’s description and the intended destination. Crucially, the cloister ship’s scan or log entry for that freighter included details that, when cross-referenced with the Wolf 1069 departure data and the missing alarm, confirmed the specific vessel and the timeframe of its departure. The cloister ship’s unexpected route and timely data transmission, arriving at an intermediate station sooner than a standard courier from that region would have, provided the vital, time-delayed confirmation Julius needed. It was the crucial clue, the piece of the puzzle that bridged the temporal gap and the system error.

Julius had found the thread. It now knew the likely identity and trajectory of the family freighter, lost among the countless ships that had left Wolf 1069. The search could now be focused.

Meanwhile, back on Wolf 1069 Main Station, Emojan was settling into a quiet room with Sister Anya and Brother Thomas. Other nuns from the Monastar MMDCLXXIV and the female station-cantor were also on the station, part of a rotating group who offered care and spiritual support in the bustling, often impersonal environment. The cantor’s voice, when she occasionally sang hymns in the small chapel, was like a balm, a sound of peace amidst the station’s constant rumble. Emojan, though not understanding the words, found comfort in the melody. The Monks didn’t press her about religion; they simply offered kindness, a warm blanket, and simple, nourishing food. They answered her questions about the stars and the ships, patiently explaining what they knew about the vastness outside the station.

Emojan still missed Mama and Papa fiercely, and the waiting was hard. But in the quiet alcove, she had found a friend in the gentle voice of Julius, and now, in the care of the Monks and Nuns from the cloister ship, she had found a temporary home, a small pocket of calm in the roaring galaxy, while the AI shepherd worked across the light-years to bring its lost lamb back to the fold.