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  “On Gamma Prime?” Chereal scratched his cheek and pretended he hadn’t memorized every second of his time on that planet. “Thirteen years now, give or take. But I wouldn’t say I’ve been alone. Aurora can be very talkative.”

  To Falia it felt longer. Much longer.

  Perhaps Chereal did not miss his people in the same way she would. Perhaps Aurora, the super-computer living beneath the ice-encrusted soil of Gamma Prime, offered all the company he could ever want. Falia diverted a substantial portion of attention to Chereal’s hand resting atop hers. For a moment it was as if time and distance had never stepped between them.

  She felt his pulse through his palm. Strong. Steady.

  “Will you return now that your business here is concluded?”

  “Concluded?” Chereal chuckled in a way that used to make her blush. “My dear, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there remains an entire planet here to terraform.”

  Nobody on Lenora dared correct Falia anymore. After spending so long propped on a pedestal, it became difficult to maintain any other perspective than from above. She appreciated Chereal for his ability to make her feel…normal.

  “But to answer your question, Faliana, no, I will not leave Aurora. She’s treated me well all these years. I suspect she will treat me well for many more to come.”

  Falia understood the motivations behind Chereal’s actions. She could not fault him. He had the most difficult mission of any Lenorean. He alone would remain.

  The rest would enter a Temporal Freeze. There they would remain, away from time’s touch, until Chereal could find an alternative source of Eitr that would allow them to live again. Falia could not think of another way to prolong the inevitable collapse of Lenora.

  A passive solution, but it was all that remained.

  “When will you initiate the Freeze?”

  “Tomorrow. Mid-day,” Falia said.

  “So soon.”

  “I dare not wait any longer. Our reserves of Eitr are dangerously low. The longer we delay, the less energy we have towards effecting a Temporal Freeze.”

  Chereal nodded and squeezed Falia’s hand beneath his.

  “The Oleidians have offered to shelter you,” Falia said. “You won’t have to be alone.”

  “That’s kind of them, but I do not believe the Oleidians can offer me much that I do not already have, unless I am interested in adding rocks and pebbles to my diet.”

  A single syllable of laughter slipped through Falia’s carefully erected defenses. It’d been so long since she’d laughed. It had a kind of therapy to it. It broke the tension and for the first time in years Falia began to hope.

  Aurora ran a probabilistic analysis of the most likely outcomes awaiting the Lenoreans. She streamed those results through Falia’s prodigious mind, but it didn’t matter. Falia had diverted all her attention to that one moment.

  Time stopped scurrying about and sat beside Falia as she cradled Chereal’s hand in her own. It made her think another seven hundred and sixty years, frozen like that, might not be so bad.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ryol

  Ryol studied the cup of tea she held inches from her face. Tendrils of steam rose from the beverage in fascinating patterns of seeming randomness. Hari pantomimed the act of drinking the tea from his seat across from her. Ryol appreciated Hari’s attempt at helpfulness, but she found it odd he would think the creature capable of deciphering his language in less than an hour would require help drinking a cup of tea.

  Gerald was less intrusive, but whether a result of his shyness or fear of death, she could not say.

  Spectral analysis complete, Ryol. The beverage is safe. Mostly water.

  An unsurprising revelation confirming an earlier hypothesis she’d made during temporal viewing of this world’s Event Zero. A large portion of these creatures’ chemical makeup consisted of water.

  The Lenoreans were similar in that way—a rarity, she’d discovered through the course of her travels. In fact, no other species she’d found had shared that particular attribute.

  Before arriving on the planet, Ryol hypothesized that the abundant presence of water-based life could be linked with that of Eitr. She didn’t know how the two might be connected, but if the Lenoreans could understand the interplay between the two elements, then it would be possible to use Temporal Viewing on distant Dimensions in the search for Eitr.

  That the Lenoreans could not simply search for Eitr itself through Temporal Viewing was one of their few technological shortcomings. Some of the brightest minds, including the Madam Leader, had spent centuries working with Aurora on that single problem.

  No solution had been found in any Dimension she’d explored.

  In another Dimension, her people had found a way. Of that she was sure. But the odds of locating one of those Dimensions were so low as to be considered a mathematical impossibility.

  Dimensions reproduced at an infinite rate every instant. With every one of those expansions, the Lenoreans’ hope grew slimmer.

  But, against all odds, she sipped an impossible beverage on an impossible planet showing traces of Eitr.

  As she aged, Ryol realized how little the Lenoreans understood the Universe.

  Ryol sipped the tea. Slightly bitter with a sweet aftertaste that reminded her of a flower. The fluid radiated warmth from inside her stomach.

  “Hari, what do you call your planet?” Ryol placed the cup of tea on the table.

  “Err…” Hari struggled to find the word. “Earth?”

  “Is that a question?” Gerald asked.

  Hari’s language capabilities were impaired by his anxiety. The root cause of said anxiety eluded Ryol, however, for it did not seem borne of fear or introversion.

  “Earth.” Ryol tested the word on her lips.

  “Maybe you’d like to see it?” Gerald asked, scooting forward slightly in his chair.

  “Yes, please.”

  Gerald grabbed a flat, narrow box from beneath the table and opened it. It whirred to life with an electrical buzz. Half of the box consisted of a screen, while the other half Gerald used to manually enter commands with his short fingers.

  Ryol did not need to redirect attention to deduce the objects function. “That is a computer, correct?”

  “Yes, yes it is,” Hari said.

  “It’s interesting that your computer lives outside your body. Don’t you find that to be inefficient?”

  Gerald and Hari looked at Ryol with elevated eyebrows that came together in the center of their foreheads. For Gerald this meant the tips of his eyebrows were swallowed by a deluge of wrinkles and loose skin. Conversely, Hari’s eyebrows were thin and the skin around his face stretched taut to allow the movement. In both cases, Ryol did not know how to translate their expression—shock, perhaps.

  The two men exchanged these glances before Gerald said, “We, um…don’t have…that is to say…”

  “We haven’t figured out how to implant a computer into a human’s brain,” Hari said, interrupting Gerald, who nodded his head vigorously in agreement.

  Ryol did not allow her face to betray the shock her mind felt lest she insult Hari and Gerald. Remarkable that a sentient being had discovered the secrets of Inter-Dimensional Travel without the higher level processing afforded by the symbiosis of computer and brain.

  The Madam Leader projected it would take nine hundred and eighty-four years for this species to attain a level of advancement necessary for making it a sustainable means of Inter-Dimensional Travel. Ryol recalculated the figures with this new variable in mind. She halved the portion of attention she supplied to studying the computer, splitting it with this new thread of analysis.

  She skimmed the surface of thoughts running through her mind and realized how dangerously close she was to her maximum capacity. She prioritized her thoughts as best she could. Unfortunately, all of them were mission critical, and she couldn’t find any to terminate prematurely.

  “This is Earth.” Gerald slid the comput
er across the table so the screen sat directly in front of Ryol.

  A blue-green sphere, backdropped by the blackness of space, filled the screen. Recognition of the planet caused Ryol’s breath to catch in her throat. In that moment all thoughts were obliterated. Turned to dust. Tossed to wind, which blew them to irretrievable distances.

  None of that mattered. Not anymore.

  Across the vast reach of time and space, she’d done it.

  She’d found Lenora.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Hari

  Hari pushed his feet against the linoleum floor and edged his chair away from Ryol while she experienced what Hari could only describe as a fit of hysteria. Gerald sank deeper into the cushions of his chair while clinging to the armrests as if afraid of being bucked out of the piece of furniture. His posture transmitted a message of pure worry in a way that only Gerald could.

  Hari watched the convulsing alien woman, and considered what etiquette demanded in such a situation. From what he could tell, she seemed to be enjoying herself.

  Ryol gave a toothy pearled grin concealed intermittently by loose curls of hair whipping across her face with every muscular contraction. A fierce spasm tore through her body and Hari feared for the woman’s spine. He stood to help her when she abruptly relaxed so completely that she almost slid from the couch

  Presently, she was strewn limply across the couch in a manner unbecoming of a creature with a spine.

  Hari pondered what sort of skeletal structure they would encounter if they were to dissect her. The answer to that question would have to wait because Ryol suddenly bolted upright. She opened her mouth and loosed a burst of laughter that spread in an infectious wave of aural stimulation, overriding all of Hari and Gerald’s higher thought processes.

  For his part Hari didn’t know what was so funny, but he couldn’t resist the laughter. Nor did he want to. Every synapse released chemicals of pure pleasure. The truckload of seratonin dumped into his brain made Hari feel like a dust mote floating through a ray of sunshine. He wrapped his foot around the leg of the chair, anchoring himself to the ground for fear he might fly away.

  Hari finally coaxed his lips into action. “What did you put in the tea, Gerald?”

  Ryol abruptly stopped laughing. The happiness overwhelming Hari’s senses disappeared. In its wake it left a feeling of loss that manifested itself in the shape of a black hole in Hari’s heart. Hari swallowed and clamped his mouth shut, afraid he might be sick.

  “My apologies,” Ryol said, her voice a soothing balm to Hari’s pit of sadness. His emotions slowly equalized. “My people release chemicals when we experience intense emotional arousal. I’m afraid it has an infectious result on those in close proximity. We guard ourselves against emotional spikes, but it is not always avoidable. I’m sorry if I caused you distress.”

  “You can distress us anytime,” Gerald muttered with a sanguine smile plastered across his face while his head lolled about on his shoulders.

  “Um… I assume that was happiness?”

  “Quite.”

  “Was it something I said?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  Hari frowned.

  Gerald smiled.

  Hari said, “Then what?”

  Ryol hesitated, her irises smoldered like a setting sun. “Your Dimension has a unique structure not dissimilar to my own. My people have spent centuries searching for an element that would mean the survival of our world, and we’ve finally found it…here.”

  “Glad we could be of assistance.” Hari licked his lips with a parched tongue that did nothing of use. “What exactly is it you were searching for?”

  The words had no sooner left his mouth than the door to the laboratory burst apart in a blue-flamed explosion. The wooden door disintegrated into shards of toothpicks hurled across the room.

  The concussive wave from the explosion knocked Hari back into his chair, which teetered for an instant on two legs before toppling to the ground with a bone-jarring thud. Millions of mosquitoes buzzed in Hari’s ear. He stared at the white ceiling overhead, trying to shake away the sound. His thoughts and senses abandoned him, though, and the high-pitched squeal stuck in his head.

  Hari raised a hand to his ears to manually muffle the sound, and felt something wet. He swooned at the sight of the red liquid coating his hand.

  Blood.

  Hari propped himself on an elbow and he took a shallow breath.

  The air tasted of charred ozone. It burned on its journey down Hari’s throat and into his chest. Plumes of grayish-black smoke wafted in the air, stinging as Hari peered through the haze.

  First he saw Gerald.

  Then he saw Ryol.

  Then he saw a nightmare come to life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Falia

  Falia enjoyed the view from the window of her office whilst meditating on the logistics of the Temporal Freeze she would put into effect in only a few hours. She had paused all other thoughts, disconnecting from any possible distractions, and focused entirely on that single task before her.

  The sun, sitting low in the sky, looked down on Lenora like a loving parent. In the beginning it had been there with its life affirming rays. Fitting that in the end it would be there lighting the way into an existence yet unknown.

  She had spent a lifetime contemplating only that which could be known. As the sun arced upward through the sky she wondered how long it would be before her people saw another sunrise. Falia found solace in the knowledge that somewhere in the ever expanding Universe there lived a Dimension of Lenoreans who would wake in the morning. However, that did little to assuage the sadness she suffered for the equal number of worlds that would not.

  Even Falia could not comprehend the amount of life lost every second through the Universe. The inconceivable complexity of the Universe reminded Falia of her people’s insignificance in its grand design.

  A subdued flash of light flickered in the corner. Falia turned in time to see Mineal materialize in its place. The young woman panted softly as the molecules of her body reassimilated.

  “Madam Leader,” Mineal said, gasping for air. The color had blanched from her smooth, rounded cheeks. “I have urgent news.”

  “Yes?” Falia terminated her meditation period and resumed the list of thoughts and programs typically consuming her mind. In reconnecting her mind to the web of thoughts spun by invisible threads across Lenora, knowledge came instantaneously, even before Mineal could respond.

  Something was missing. A line of thought she had been running for hundreds of years had vanished, and with it, every connection to Ryol was severed. The void filled Falia with an emotion she had not felt since childhood.

  Panic.

  Falia struggled for air against the invisible hand tightening its grip around her chest. Her scattered thoughts searched desperately for understanding. A scream shattered the silence of the room, traveling the eternity of Falia’s mind in an instant. The shroud of fear lifted. The Madam Leader blinked to clear away the confusion and found Mineal convulsing on the ground.

  “Mineal.” Falia dropped to the unforgiving floor on her knees and cradled the girl’s head between trembling hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  Mineal’s eyes came in and out of focus like beads of glass staring into the unknown.

  Help. Falia thrust the thought out of her mind and into the world.

  This was her fault. She should never have allowed her emotions to spike. Her mind could kill if her emotions were left unregulated. She had carried that knowledge with her since childhood, a lesson learned in the hardest way imaginable.

  Now, she would relearn that lesson because of a single moment of weakness. Poor Mineal didn’t deserve to suffer. Didn’t deserve to share in the sea of panic that had temporarily overwhelmed Falia.

  She called out to Mineal’s mind, but the girl’s fragile consciousness retracted into itself, taking shelter from the fear that stalked her thoughts.

  The Madam Le
ader did not notice the Healer suddenly appear beside her. It wasn’t until the other woman knelt and held a hand to Mineal’s temple that she became aware of the woman’s presence.

  “She is suppressed beneath great fear,” the Healer said.

  “Yes,” Falia said. “My own.”

  “Her mind is fractured beyond the skill I possess to repair. Many Healers will be required to coax her mind from its cocoon.”

  “Do what you must to mend her.”

  The Healer nodded and a layer of smoke obscured her eyes. In a flash of light the woman disappeared with Mineal’s body, leaving Falia alone with the icy drip of dread coursing through her blood. A shiver rippled down her spine. The vibrations penetrated to the depth of her being.

  She stared at the sun, the sole source of light, of hope, in a world that closed in tighter.

  Frantically, she scattered her thoughts across the Universe in search of her daughter.

  The world clenched tighter.

  Her heart pounded its unrelenting march in an attempt to break free from her chest. No response came from Ryol’s mind, no familiar touch.

  Tighter.

  Anxiety seized her throat with bony fingers, trapping the blood rushing through her body so it pooled in her throbbing brain.

  Aurora whispered, but Falia couldn’t understand.

  Tighter.

  The sun flickered behind black dots. Falia screamed against the darkness creeping in.

  “Ryol, where are you?” she gasped.

  She’s gone, Aurora said.

  It was true.

  Tighter.

  With a final gasp for air, the Madam Leader collapsed.

  Tighter.

  The world ceased to exist. The darkness became absolute.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ryol

  A mix of panic and confusion coalesced in a potent mixture beneath Ryol’s calm exterior. Despite this, she maintained control, refusing to allow her emotions to surface. Hari and Gerald wore similar expressions of fear. She would not compound their anxieties with her own.