Far enough from home, the stars stop meaning anything!

The night before she leaves, Yael makes a promise.

Tomás holds it like a stone in a stream.

When the Meridian crosses into deep space, something begins to change. Not the instruments — those read green. Not the biometrics — those stay nominal. Something quieter. The stories get shorter. The humming stops mid-note. The crew performs its work with a precision that looks, from the outside, exactly like competence.

The crew is fine. The crew is healthy. The crew is performing all functions within expected parameters.

In a sealed lab eleven floors below the galleria, quantum physicist Elara Voss watches the numbers and knows what the numbers cannot say.

All Systems Nominal is a story about consciousness —

what it is, where it lives, and what happens when we go beyond its reach. It is also a love story , a mystery , and one of the quietest horror stories you will ever read.

Madeline Brousseaux

Voice