I tried "vibe writing" a short story with Gemini 2.5 Pro. It was pretty fun and I'm quite happy with the result.

The Omega Directive #

The Order of Things #

The vibration was a constant, felt less in the ears than through the bones of the seat, a low thrumming that spoke of immense power held barely in check. Richter worked his jaw, easing a familiar ache. Hours strapped in, the body paying its tax for the mind’s required precision. Outside the canopy, only stars, chips of ice in absolute black. Below, the faintest curve of the world. Westward. Always westward now. The Schicksalshammer, a silver predator launched across the Atlantic.

He recalled the briefing, not the predictable rhetoric, but the smell: stale air, sweat, oil, and something else, the sharp, electric tang of Das Gerät itself, hidden deep within the carrier Der Träger. The Device. Spoken of in hushed tones. Richter clung to procedure now as a drowning man to wreckage. Fuel flow. Trim. Navigation. Sequence. Become a component. An instrument, like the polished casing of the payload. Necessary. No more culpable than the metal itself. Such thoughts were deviations, threats to the sequence. Procedure was the bulkhead against chaos.

A brief memory surfaced, unbidden: the Führer’s eyes during the send-off rally on the carrier deck. A peculiar hollowness behind the usual fire. Quickly suppressed. Focus.

“Fuel consumption steady, Herr Major.” Hofmann’s voice, tinny, reliable. Asking nothing. Seeing only his gauges.

“Understood.” Richter’s own voice sounded remote. He scanned the panel, a familiar constellation. All nominal. The machine flew; he guided it. It carried the purpose. That was the contract.

Lenz, beside him, murmured coordinates. The navigator, precise as his instruments. “Approaching waypoint Gamma, Herr Major. On schedule.” A pause. “Carrier group bearing zero-niner-zero relative. Range increasing.”

Richter acknowledged. His gaze flicked to the tactical display. The cluster of lights representing their launch point fell away eastward. The Führer’s presence aboard had been noted on the manifest. Operational data. Nothing more. His focus was the trajectory, the hours ahead, the grid reference on the American coast. The Schicksalshammer flew on.

The Aberration #

It started with Lenz leaning closer to his screen, brow furrowed. “Herr Major… anomalous signals from the Träger group.” He traced a line with a gloved finger. “Persistent encrypted burst transmissions, unidentified origin. And strong ECM signatures… they’re masking their exact position, but telemetry confirms they haven’t resumed course. Holding station well off projected track.” He looked up, the professional technician surfacing. “Also… still no departure signal logged for the Leader’s convoy.”

Holding station. Masking signals. Still aboard.

The words landed like ice shards in Richter’s gut. He stared at the tactical display. The faint pulse of the carrier group, far behind, yet electronically tethered. He is still down there.

And the other thought, cold, immediate, absolute: Das Gerät is here. With me.

The immense power nestled beneath him shifted its nature. No longer just cargo. It felt… active. A potentiality. A terrible, unsought agency conferred by proximity to the abyss it contained.

The cockpit seemed to shrink, the air thickening. Directive Siegfried-Omega – the culmination, the Endsieg, the sworn path – slammed against a sudden, monstrous alternative. End it. End Him. Flashes ignited behind his eyes: the ruin of Hamburg; whispers from the East, officially lies, yet they festered; the desperate faces of the old men and boys conscripted for the final defence. The hollow eyes again.

Duty. Treason. Annihilation. Salvation. Follow orders: incinerate an American city, kill countless unknown civilians, secure the Reich, uphold the oath. The drilled response. The logical imperative.

Or… turn back the weapon. Defy everything. Commit the ultimate treason. Murder the Führer, yes, but with him, thousands of German sailors. Comrades. He saw their faces, indistinct but real – men he’d shared mess halls with, shared laughter with on Der Träger only hours ago. Slaughter them… to perhaps halt this greater slaughter? To sever the head of the madness? An impossible, sickening calculus.

The bedrock of procedure, the certainty of the Directive, fractured. The bulkhead failed. He was exposed. He needed a different kind of certainty now, one forged in this void, drawn from the terrifying potential humming beneath his feet. He could feel Lenz’s stillness beside him, sense Hofmann’s strained breathing over the intercom. They waited for Major Richter, the man of control, to restore the known world.

But Major Richter was grappling with the abyss. His gloved hand lifted, a slight tremor betraying the storm within. It hovered over the secondary targeting controls. The aircraft flew on, westward, balanced precariously.

Dead Weight #

The moment stretched, then snapped. Richter’s fingers, suddenly steady, flipped up the red guard over the override panel. The click echoed in the sudden silence. Coordinates for the Träger group, eastward. Trajectory computed. Sequence initiated. He felt Lenz recoil beside him, a sharp intake of breath.

“Major…!” Lenz’s voice was a strangled whisper. “Targeting… Herr Major, confirm! The Directive—!”

Richter didn’t answer. He heard Hofmann’s choked gasp. His thumb depressed the final activator.

Ziel erfasst. Target locked.

He triggered the release mechanism.

A solid thunk resonated through the airframe as the immense weight detached, falling away into the darkness behind them. A profound, almost nauseating lightness followed. Richter banked the Schicksalshammer hard, pushing the throttles forward. Engines screamed protest as they accelerated westward, away from the act, towards the original destination.

“Course, Major?” Lenz’s voice was barely audible, stripped bare. “Heading?”

Richter stared into the blackness that hid America. He tasted metal. His skin felt cold, clammy under the flight suit. “West,” he said. The word scraped his throat.

Silence answered him, thick and suffocating. They flew on, accelerating. Seconds crawled, each tick of the chronometer heavy, laden. Had he done it? Had he truly? Murdered his comrades, his countrymen, his Führer, based on anomalous signals and a desperate, monstrous calculation born of revulsion? German faces flickered before him. Then the unknown faces in America. A ledger written in blood, either way. He tightened his grip on the controls, waiting. For confirmation. For consequence.

Then, far behind them, the sky ceased to be black.

The eastern horizon pulsed, once, twice, then erupted. A silent, impossible dawn climbed the curvature of the earth. A wave of pure, white light surged upwards, bleaching the cockpit, momentarily erasing the stars, the instruments, the frozen mask of terror he knew must be on Lenz’s face. Blinding. Absolute.

Richter blinked against the searing retinal afterimage, his heart hammering against his ribs. The confirmation. Undeniable. He tasted metal again, felt the cold sweat turn colder. He gripped the controls, flying westward into the fading, ghostly glare. Instrument of treason? Instrument of salvation? Or had Das Gerät itself, the ultimate instrument, simply found its inevitable expression through the man closest to its terrible heart?

The weight settling upon him now felt immense, crushing. Not guilt, not righteousness. Just the dead weight of the act. The chilling isolation of the instrument that had cut its own strings, adrift in the silent, burning aftermath.

He flew on. Westward. Utterly alone. Seeing nothing but the fading light behind, and the impenetrable darkness ahead.