Chapter Text
From the starboard porthole I can see the wormhole blinking open and shut already, and for a moment it feels like dad's loving gaze, watching over me and after me still, no matter the distance. Perhaps it's the date. It will soon be twenty years since that first vision —the first time I heard the echo of my father's calls from wherever, whenever, whatever he is now— and, sailing back towards the Alpha quadrant, I can't help but think of fate.
Who is Odysseus in this story? Who wanders, who waits? I, the teller of tales and you, trapped between the living and the dead. Telemachus had the gods on his side. But not even gods can protect the people that they love. I'm coming back home, dad. Kasidy was meant to be at Deep Space 9 by the time I arrived, but I'll be touching port a few days early. Bex waits for us in Bajor. Will I be seeing you there?
But let me save the callbacks for my next novel. This entry was intended to log some scientific curiosities for Bex.
After leaving a corner of the Gamma quadrant that the locals call Sha-ha Ru'an —which very roughly translates to Our Sleeping Giant with a Smile on Her Face— whose twin suns made sailing rather troublesome, I enjoyed several days of smooth space, which were interrupted by a passing comet. The solar sails got caught on its tail but, rather than overloading and burning up, as I might have expected, something in the comet's chemical composition kept its combustion from overheating the material. According to my instruments, I was flung 126 light years forward in a matter of hours.
I was only able to collect a small and quickly decaying amount of residue from the sails once it was safe for me to exit the ship, but I hope this will be useful for my sister's research —the scans I was able to run with my limited equipment are attached to this log.
It's not often that I have a good excuse to do some spacewalking, and I got to see a magnetic storm brewing on a nearby planet's surface from the mast while I was outside. I'm thinking of writing a proper chronicle of the whole experience.
But I won't publish it just yet. Let Bex make some ground-breaking engineering advancement first, and I can pair my chronicle with an interview; make it a truly memorable piece.
I'll be at the wormhole in less than an hour. I see it opening again now. It's been too long since I was last home.