By Abigail Rye
Earth Station 23
The temperature systems hummed.
I tapped my knuckles against my palm, trying to think, but getting nothing but tightness in my chest and throat.
Stinging in my eyes.
Therrus had told me once that tears, fascinatingly, were the universal expression of grief… Human, Civaran, Klibian…
That didn’t help right now.
The lieutenant’s finger hovered over the comm button on his tablet, large eyes watching me for a reply and tail gently lashing with nervousness.
But what in the galaxy should I say?
I shook my head and swallowed. “Tell them… Tell them Dr. Therrus’s implant has gone… silent.”
Which means…
***
Civara. Scutum-Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way
“The cremation is tomorrow. But the tapes were recovered, and the staff is listening to them tonight.”
I nodded, not looking up from the visual data plate—“photograph”—lying on the glass table between us.
A burning shop—a human shop, something they called a “coffee house.” According to the report, the place where Therrus had died.
My heartbeat throbbed. “He cared far too much.”
The sub-director shrugged, making the fluorescent light ripple on the lime-green skin beneath her uniform’s slashed shoulders. “He did care—and what’s too much?” She sighed. “Your brother was a good scientist. He saw potential in them.”
In one corner of the photograph, some of the humans could be seen holding a device spraying water on the conflagration. Trying… failing… to save the people inside.
The wretched constriction began in my chest again.
“Like I said, in the main hall tonight.” Her footsteps moved toward the door, and it slid open.
“I’ll be there.”
***
His voice hurt to hear. Enthusiastic, cheerful… oblivious to what was coming in a few short days.
The entries started a week before the incident. The log before that had already been transferred to our databases, but he was always bad at turning in his journals, and these had yet to be heard by our staff. Thankfully, his implant not only transmitted his vitals to Station 23 but also backed up his vocal logs to a drive in his apartment, which had been retrieved when a team erased the undertaker’s memories and extracted the body.
Mostly, the tapes chronicled how he had forgotten to take an immunity pill and was sick from shellfish for days—classic Therrus. But there was also building frustration with humanity’s slow progress. He always had been excited for them to hurry up and figure out space travel, but really.
Even he should know better than to think they could master it in the next decade.
I was almost beginning to regret the last few hours when, on the fifth day, there was finally something worth risking publicly shedding tears over my brother’s enthusiastic comments on “fried chicken” for.
Something very worth it.
“Journal,” he started. “It’s a… little hard to explain what just happened. It’s fifth-day, Friday the fifty-eenth—or is it fifteenth? Anyway, a female from the future visited me.”
All the scientists in the room sat up in a collective rustle, and whispers bounced across the table.
I had eyes only for the audio projector.
“I don’t know what to think, but—it started like this. The strangest feeling has been on my mind. Sort of like—like I-I’m running out of time.”
I could’ve sworn the temperature system was malfunctioning. A chill raced down my arms and into the tips of all twelve fingers.
“I’ve been so frustrated with how slow the humans are being about interstellar travel, and I had the idea to try to rig the portal hopper and pop forward a few years to see if they’d figured it out yet. I know it’s risky, but in principle, it ought to work.”
I could spare enough emotion to roll my eyes at the comment, but the tape didn’t pause for me.
“Before I could,” he rambled on, “an old woman walked through my apartment door—not opening it and coming in, but walking straight through the wood.”
“Phasing technology,” the sub-director gasped under her breath.
“Her name was Emmaline. She looked a little green—for a human—and wouldn’t tell me if they still celebrate Arbor Day in the future—so I wonder if time travel is hard on elderly humans? But she said I need to stay here and now. She said history records that I’m about to do something critical to humanity’s quest for interstellar travel. So… that’s that, I suppose.”
The tape went abruptly silent, switching to the next day’s log.
The sixth day.
The day of the fire.
There was a low murmur throughout the room, and my insides twisted.
A woman from when time travel has been mastered. A… human? But with so little time, how could Therrus—
His voice cut back on. There was screaming on the background track. The sub-director flinched beside me.
“I… this may be my last entry. I’m not supposed to do this, but my Civaran skin will protect me longer than a human’s, and there are many humans trapped in the fire. The Earthen Initiative will retrieve the backup tape. I’m sorry for the waste of resources… for breaking protocol. Please say goodbye to my family if I’m… not protected enough.”
Tears pushed out against my will. My hands formed fists.
“And—I’m very confused about what I was supposed to do to help humanity. But… goodbye.”
The tape clicked off, leaving the room in dead silence.
***
I scrolled. My eyes burned.
Yet another “article” on the disaster.
They were all the same: vague, most not even mentioning Therrus. Some weren’t longer than a few lines.
But we were missing something. I couldn’t believe he had died before completing whatever task the time traveler predicted. It was likely purely sentimental obsession, but… still…
“All races cry, you know.”
I swallowed. Hard.
And then, I stopped scrolling.
The next headline read: “Unknown Hero Dies Saving Twelve People from Fire, Including Recent Stanford Graduate, Aerospace Engineer Emmaline Jones.”
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I liked the time travel angle. Well done!