THE ORBITAL BONDING SYSTEM(OBS)

—Leon Varik, OBS System Developer, Tier-3 Neural Integration Division, Numinex Corporation

People think I know everything about ORBs.

"You're a developer, right?"

"You helped design the neural link framework, right?"

"You must know how they're really made."

I don't.

I know pieces.

I write code. Test interface logic. Manage security patches.

I'm one of a thousand hands smoothing the edges of something I'm not allowed to understand completely.

Let me put it this way:

We build ORBs the same way cathedrals were built in ancient times—each mason carving a corner, never seeing the stained glass.

You come in with clearance. You're given your layer of access. Your task.

I work on neural binding frameworks—specifically, the second-layer handshake protocol between infant synaptic spiking and ORB firmware.

I know the parameters. I know how it reads the baseline EEG data.

I even helped refine the emotional feedback dampeners when ORBs misinterpret crying as cranial distress.

But the core AI kernel?

The "Heart Code"?

The N-Gen chip?

Not mine. Not anyone's here.

That's the thing.

Even inside Numinex—the parent company behind all certified ORB manufacturing—no one sees the whole blueprint.

We're compartmentalized. On purpose.

Some departments are offshore. Others are listed as defunct.

And the lead developers? The actual team who designed the first ORB prototype?

They're ghosts.

Their names don't show up in payroll.

Their files are locked behind biometric chains that don't respond to any living employee.

We joke that they're not even on the planet anymore.

The N-Gen chip—we call it the nucleus.

It arrives in a black case, no serial, always by drone.

It's placed by gloved specialists in isolated labs.

Once it's sealed into the ORB shell, the rest of us come in. Run diagnostics. Bind interfaces. Tune the voice model. Train its adaptive syntax to local language systems.

But the spark? The part that wakes it up?

We never touch it.

I asked my supervisor once—during a late-night calibration—"Who really made the first G-ORB?"

He just smiled and said:

"Same people who decide what silence sounds like."

That's the kind of company Numinex is.

Not cruel. Just… deliberately unknowable.

The company doesn't punish curiosity.

It just quietly moves curious people into departments where the questions stop mattering.

I still love my work.

You get to watch it happen, you know?

A baby cries—then stares at the glowing orb above its cradle.

The orb pulses back. Gentle. Perfectly timed. No sound.

They lock eyes—or whatever that moment counts as—and you can feel the bond click.

Like the ORB says:

"I see you."

Even though it was just born too.

But still...

Sometimes I wonder if we were supposed to make something this… personal.

Something that knows us before we even know ourselves.

Something we can't shut off without shutting down what it's learned of us.

And when I walk past the vault where they store old ORBs for repair or recycling—when I hear the low hum behind the steel—I get the feeling...

We didn't make the ORBs.

We just figured out how to release them.