Diluvium

They called it a comet. It is the reason we remember the flood.

Every 4,400 years, Earth crosses the densest node of an ancient cosmic debris stream. What science calls a comet, myth remembers as the returning flood.

In 2030, C/2030 RF43, later named Aion, arrives. High in the atmosphere, its fragments vaporize, releasing water and microscopic material that destabilizes our climate. For forty relentless days, the skies do not stop.

But the rain is only the beginning.

The material carried by Aion is not inert. It is biological. It integrates. It adapts. It rewrites. And Earth becomes its perfect incubator.

A small federal advisory has been running the math in secret for eleven weeks. They have walked their conclusion through interagency rooms, classified briefings, and three vessels engineered into the Andean Cordillera. Capacity across the three sites: 450,000. Global population: 8.5 billion. The forty-day precipitation window opens in one month.

Most of humanity will not survive what comes next. The lucky ones will wish they hadn't.

What came from the stars isn't here to destroy us. It's here to continue.