CHATBOT: In the blackness of uncharted space, far beyond the frontiers of even the most fanatical human explorers, a world of unimaginable darkness loomed in the cold void. Ysgardia--they called it--the planet that defied logic, made a mockery of light, and tormented the dreams of those who grazed the edge of the cosmos. The first piloted ship to approach it--with a crew mad enough or curious enough to dare--bore the name Ithal. Two men trudged through the ship's cramped corridors like grave wanderers, readying themselves for a foolish experiment. Augustine and Nikolaus, their names; pioneers! explorers! celestial knights armored in arc-lit metallic hardsuits, shining like beacons in the abyss of interstellar space. Touching a universe never before touched by the dreams of men. "Can you believe we made it?" Augustine said, exhilaration infusing his voice. Nikolaus, older and wiser--or just plain cynical--could only return a wry "Hardly." As the vessel breached the invisible threshold about the hellish world, a sudden trembling convulsed throughout the ship. "Are we dying?" Augustine asked, eyes wide with horror as the wailing sirens punctuated his question. On the contrary, the trembling subsided, and Ithal floated onward through the unimaginable stillness. The instant they'd crossed the event horizon, Augustine and Nikolaus found themselves standing in a chilled darkness covering an alien surface--though they'd neither left their ship nor equipped their helmets. Leagues away from the relative safety of Ithal, they exchanged bewildered expressions--or at least tried to. For their faces, as if refracted through the lens of a madman, had resolved into one. Both Augustine and Nikolaus beheld the eerie, impossible sight of the other's visage--merged with his own--staring back at him through the eye-slits of his helmet. "We are one..." Nikolaus stammered, aghast, feeling Augustine's thoughts flit through the ether and merge with his own. To make things stranger still, they discovered that their forms were now connected, entwined in a grotesque pantomime of camaraderie. And as they peered into the cold abyss, half-formed hopes still fluttering in their faintly pulsing hearts, a deeper sickness settled into their collective soul. Where one body ended and the other began, neither could say, for they shared four sets of limbs; arms and legs bent at cruel angles, each individual hard suit now an amalgamation of the two. The quiet horror of their metamorphosis filled their ev...