Submitted for the May 2025 prompt: Many Minds

A rusty rock tumbles through the asteroid belt, flashing crimson in the three-star light of 26 Draconis.

 

Asha’s eyes light up, maneuvering her ship to intercept. The metallic, mile-wide planetoid looks exactly like the one in her dream.

 

“That’s it,” she announces. “That’s our rock.”

 

“So was the last one.” Cade steps out of the cargo hold. “Till we pulled nothing but iron.”

 

“This one is special,” Asha says. “ I can feel it.”

 

She scans for other scouts, finding several ships close enough to jump the claim if they don’t act fast. The asteroid is uncatalogued —  lucky considering close-range spectrometers detect both platinum group metals and vital organic compounds.

 

Asha anchors the ship in a shallow crater while Cade readies the drones. They work in silence, as if speaking of good fortune might scare it away, until sensors pick up an anomaly.

 

“Positrons?” Asha scowls at the screens.

 

“Has to be a mistake.” Cade peers over her shoulder. “How can an asteroid made of matter contain antimatter?”

 

“Maybe magnetic suspension in a hollow core?” she offers. “Like a giant Penning trap.”

 

“Maybe.” Cade looks out the dusty viewport. “But how has a mass of the most valuable substance in the universe gone undetected?”

 

“Who cares?” Asha says, beaming. “Finders keepers.”

 

* * *

 

The backup drone dives into a hole and quickly loses contact, just like the first. Cade sighs and steps into his pressure suit with heavy feet.

 

Asha hops into her rig, already heading for the airlock. Electronic interference is a common class-M asteroid problem, but she senses a deeper force at work: fate.

 

Cade secures his helmet and follows her into a toothy cave, adjusting suit thrusters for microgravity. Monofilament unspools from his belt, tethered to the ship.

 

Headlamps reveal a maze of wide, worming tunnels. Gliding side-by-side, they navigate with sensitive instruments and Asha’s laser-sharp instinct. Proving the existence of resources is required to secure mining rights and the investments needed to extract them.

 

She runs gloved fingers over a wall and her mind flashes to finding frozen water in a lunar canyon at eleven-years-old. Ice crystals sparkled like diamonds in an ancient tale.

 

Asha shakes off the memory, focusing on her drive for discovery. At a three-way junction she chooses the left passage without pause.

 

“How do you know which way?” Cade fires his jets to keep up. “My sensors are failing.”

 

“Trust me,” Asha says.

 

He doesn’t doubt her again until the tunnel narrows to a choke-point. They shed gear to squeeze through, entering a chamber so large that light doesn’t reach the other side. Cade freezes, mesmerized by the emptiness.

 

“Gotta keep moving.” Asha nudges him. “Batteries won’t last forev—”

 

Headlamps die, illumination swallowed by perfect blackness.

 

* * *

 

Cade takes a tentative breath to test her life support, then grips the monofilament with one hand and gropes in the gloom with the other.

Knuckles scrape stone and an old nightmare screams into Cade’s brain — alone in a starless void, falling forever. Shutting his eyes to end the vision only deepens the darkness.

 

“Asha!”

 

“We’re okay.” She seizes his flailing arm. “I don’t need light to find what we came for.”

 

“Forget it.” He grips her elbow and tugs the tether. “I’m getting us out of here.”

 

“No.” Asha pulls free. “Not yet.”

 

The filament is severed with a sickening twinge. Cade grasps for it, slicing his glove on the carbon blade in Asha’s hand.

 

“Ash!” He shouts, distorting the comms. “What are you doing?”

 

“Can’t leave without proof.” She slaps a leash in his trembling palm. “Let’s go.”

 

After a tense pause, Cade’s rage is overpowered by fear. He clips the leash to his belt and is pulled along until a violet light flares in the nothing.

 

“There!” Asha identifies the source as a gaseous mass, no doubt the antimatter.

 

She hits the throttle, heartbeat keeping pace. Despite their acceleration, the glow doesn’t get any closer. Asha’s excitement ebbs. Thrusters keep running, but the pulsing purple cloud remains out of reach.

 

“Something’s wrong,” she mutters. “I have a bad feeling.”

 

“Now you’re getting cold feet?” Cade spits.

 

“Thought it was just nerves before,” Asha says. “But things have been weird from the beginning.”

 

“Sensory deprivation.” He taps her helmet. “It’s messing with our minds.”

 

“Something is. Something bad. We need to leave.”

 

“And let another team make this claim?” Cade asks. “Five grams of antiprotons could buy us our own moon.”

 

“So you’ll trust my gut to make us rich, but not save our lives?”

 

“I’m saying we could finally stop mining.” Cade takes her hands. “And start something else. Isn’t that the dream?”

 

“The dream… ”

 

Asha tries to remember her premonition about the asteroid, but can’t. The thing that cast those thoughts has taken them back.

 

“You said this is our rock, right?” Cade continues. “It’s everything we’ve hoped to find.”

 

“We didn’t find it,” she says, sensing manipulation. “It found us.”

 

“What does that mean?” Cade’s confusion melts as answers seep into his brain. “It means…this asteroid is alive. Intelligent.”

 

“It got into our heads,” Asha says. “And we are in its head.”

 

“Because…” Cade feels it fully now, an unfurling presence urging him toward epiphany. “We have something it wants.”

 

“We are something it wants,” Asha says. “It’s so very hungry.”

 

The violet light explodes. They reel from the brightness, covering eyes and cracking helmets.

 

Cade’s vision, blurred and spotty, returns along with a desperation to see Asha’s face. He lifts her visor to find sunken, shriveled sockets staring from a leather-stretched skull.

 

“No!” Cade recoils, then hears Asha scream.

 

He spins around to find her alive, surrounded by more corpses sealed in spacesuits. A horde of mummified miners float in the hollow core.

 

The couple clings together, awestruck and choked with horror. In this final moment of total awareness, a rare commodity reaches ripeness. Consciousness is consumed at the peak of its power.

 

Energy replenished, the alien asteroid continues across the cosmos. The hunt is over. Its hunger is sated.

 

For now.