Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Eye movement detected.”

Red and blue lights flashed — a faint beeping coming from somewhere behind him. The air felt grating against his skin, a scratchy fabric tearing at his ears. His mouth was dry, as if someone had taken sandpaper to it, yet that didn’t stop the faint taste of vomit which lingered on his tongue.

“Cognition Assessment, what is two plus two?”

Bile rose up his throat, creating a truly awful gurgling sound. He tried to move, willing his limbs to pull themselves out of the heavy dip they lay in. All he managed was to gag. It was as if a hundred tonnes of bricks lay atop him, constricting his lungs and nailing his bones to the ground. 

“Incorrect.”

The lights suddenly flared, bright white and blinding. He tried to move again, despite what felt like chains dragging him down. Blinking was a challenge, especially when it felt as though he was being blinded every time a flicker of light got through. The disembodied voice continued its chanting — oddly melodic in tone, and familiar in a way nothing else was. 

What is two plus two. What is two plus two. Incorrect. Incorrect. Incorrect —

One. He didn’t know where he was.

Two. He didn’t know who he was.

Three. He couldn’t move.

Four. Is two plus two.

The words blurred together, as if they were getting further and further away.

“C’mon, are you even listening, ███████?” the voice grew gentler, higher pitched, “This will be a romantic story like none that have come before, you think so too, right?”

Dust suspended in a beam of light. Flashes of colour — the blue of the sea and sky, the gold of the fields — the smell of salt permeated the crisp air, a soft breeze caressing him. The texture of the grasses spoke to him, telling a story of warmth and laughter. 

“Hey, are you even listening?”

It was the same voice again, coming from just behind him. He turned, trying to catch a glimpse of them, of pink and purple he knew would be there. Somehow, as he turned, the scenery turned with him. He was still staring out into the great expanse of the sea.

“You’ve been in a medically induced coma, you may experience memory loss or difficulty speaking.”

His stomach churned and for a moment he was weightless, before pain shot through his arm. Blues turned to faint greys, soft light to harsh and artificial. It took a moment for him to realize he could hold his eyes open for more than a fraction of a second. A large arm floated above him, and he wondered if maybe he had died and woken up in the Era Nova. 

What was Era Nova? He tabled that thought for later. There were more important things to worry about. 

“Body movement detected.”

His further attempts to spin onto his stomach were to no avail, as something tugged him back up onto what he now realized was a medical cot. His arms flailed as his legs were pulled upwards, blood rushing to his head. That was a good sign, he still had blood. 

“Please stop trying to move, a hero needs proper muscle function in order to go on their journey!”

So the computer was as insane as he was. Noted. 

“Hello?” was what he had wanted to say, but the garbled mess that actually came out was not discernible as any type of human language. 

He finally managed to stumble upwards, ripping the stuffy fabric from the cot. He continued forward into the rest of the room, taking in his surroundings. A strange robotic arm stood above him, its soft pink colour in stark contrast to the clinical white walls. Worryingly, it seemed to be following behind him. He wasn’t quite sure what it was saying, but he didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out. 

A ladder stood at the end of the room, leading up into pitch darkness above. It took considerable effort to drag himself up it, as if he would topple over any second. He managed to hold himself up as he leaned off of the ladder towards what looked to be more beds.

“Hello?’ He pulled away the cloth that covered the top bunk.

Bright pink hair greeted him, so bright he almost missed the grey tint to the skin. 

Oh.

They were young — younger than him anyway. How old even was he? How did he know that?

He hesitantly uncovered the second figure, and was greeted with much the same; Light green hair, still dead. Was the hair dye the cause of death? He really hoped not, although he still wasn’t entirely sure what his own hair colour was. All he knew was that it was causing his chin to itch and getting in his eyes. 

It took considerable effort to put open the hatch at the top, and pull himself up to the next level. The hallway was dark, with only a faint light at the end. As he made his way towards the light, he realized it seemed to be a seat of some sort, with a window. 

He stumbled again towards the window, over what appeared to be an atomic resolution scanning electron microscope.

Hang on.

How did he know that? Why on Georios did his brain know that and not his own name? Or where he was? 

“Please record video diary.”

He jumped back, wobbling as he steadied himself. There went that voice again, ordering him around. 

“Excuse me, disembodied voice. Who is in charge of,” he paused, “Whatever this is?” 

He continued towards the end of the hallway. 

“Captain Hyacinthia Eleopoulos. Deceased.”

“Are there any higher ups I can speak to who are living?” he asked hesitantly.

“Dr Phainon Khaslana. End of manifest.”

Phainon Khaslana. Instinctively, he knew that was him. Which was great, he knew his name now, that was something he could scratch off his list of unknowns. He was also the only living person, wherever this was. That was not as great. 

He finally reached the room, which he now realized overlooked —

Space. 

A single seat, positioned towards a window overlooking a vast sea of stars. It stretched as far as the eye could see, unchanging even when Phainon leaned forward into the window. 

He was in space. 

Unless this was some sort of incredibly advanced screen, which he doubted. His stomach dropped as the view refused to change. Phainon stepped back from the window, landing in the seat which sat at the centre of the round room. 

“Pilot Detected.” 

Phainon scrambled away from the chair as fast as he could. He did not want to somehow manage to crash the ship before he figured out why he was here. 

“Not a pilot,” he hoped the voice would be partial to his pleas, “Is there a way to call Okhema?” 

“Unknown Command. Would you like to hear a story instead? I am programmed with 33—”

“Activate operation go home,” Phainon interrupted the robot before it could go on about romance again. 

“Invalid Operation.”

Phainon flopped back down onto the seat and let out a long, deep sigh. 

“Pilot Detected.”

For Kephale’s sake — 

Phainon jumped up once again, and began to pace around the room. He really hoped he didn’t have to navigate home manually, seeing as he had no piloting expertise that he was privy to. There must be some way to figure out where he was in space, especially since there appeared to be some sort of gravity. 

He bounced on the balls of his feet, testing his weight. He felt heavier, although he couldn’t quite tell if that was simply due to his weak muscles. His eyes caught on a small emergency flashlight near what he assumed were the main controls. 

“Is there a way to get a timer set up on these screens?” he paused, waiting hesitantly for the voice’s reply.

“Sure thing! Activating timer in cabin—”

He tuned out the rest as the timer popped up on the countless screens. He positioned the flashlight about one metre above the ground. There weren’t any rulers around so he hoped his estimate was close enough. He’d have to factor that error in. 

0.36 seconds.

He dropped it again

0.37 seconds

Again.

0.35 seconds

Too short. He must've estimated the length wrong. An average of 0.36 seconds would give an acceleration of around 15 m/s^2 over a one metre drop. It would explain the weight, but added more questions. Where could he be where the gravity was stronger than Earth but the stars were clearly visible?

There must be some way to contact Amphoreus. This was getting him nowhere. He turned towards the window once more. There was one star that shone brighter than the others. Could it be the Dawn Device? If it was, he was most definitely not on Amphoreus. 

Maybe somewhere out near the planet Phagousa?

“Can you initiate a call to Amphoreus?” 

A star map suddenly popped up on one of the screens.

“Current Transmission time to Amphoreus is 11 years, 10months, 14days, 6 hours and 50.336 minutes”

Phainon quickly moved to zoom out on the map, desperately searching for Amphoreus. It took significantly longer than he’d hoped before he found it. Phainon backed away slowly. The hallways seemed endless, twisting and turning in darkness. He was in space, 11 light years from Amphoreus, with only a vaguely insane disembodied voice for company. 

He passed a few rooms through his wanderings, doubling back to one which seemed to hold some large duffel bags. If he had any hopes of staying sane, or of understanding why he was on a spaceship, he needed reading materials. He circled around to the area where luggage had been stored away, gathering all the bags together on the floor.

The first bag he unzipped bore a large patch on the front, reading “CMDR. HYACINTHIA ELEOPOULOS.”

He was momentarily overcome with guilt, knowing he was burglarizing the personal effects of a deceased crewmate. Until he spotted a few clear sachets labelled ‘VODKA,’ after which he could only assume Hyacinthia, whoever she was, would understand his plight.

Her luggage contained a soft spill of pastel coloured clothing, neatly folded as if she had packed in a hurry but still cared how it looked when opened. There was a small keychain tucked into one corner, a white pegasus with a worn crown. It looked somewhat out of place against the sterile idea of a spaceship, but in a way that made the bag feel more human.

Beneath the clothes he found a bundle of photographs held together with a loose elastic. The first showed Hyacinthia as a child, sunburnt and grinning, surrounded by a cluster of ponies that crowded into the frame. Dust clung to their legs, and the fencing behind them stretched out into what he imagined was a ranch. He lingered on that one longer than he expected.

Another photo showed her older, dressed in scrubs, leaning into a group of children who were all pulling exaggerated expressions. Her own face was twisted into a ridiculous grin, tongue slightly out, eyes crossed just enough to make the kids laugh.

The last one in the stack caught him off guard. Hyacinthia mid skydive, mouth open in a wild shout that might have been fear or joy. The sky behind her was impossibly wide.

He set the photos aside carefully, more carefully than he had opened the bag, and reached for another. The patch read “ANAXAGORAS SKEMMATOS.”

Inside were clothes that looked out of place in a different way. White button ups, crisp even after being packed, the kind of thing one wore to be taken seriously or maintain an aesthetic. It seemed too formal for someone about to leave a planet behind.

Folded between them was a thick scarf, soft and dark, with a stitched tag that read Grove University. He turned it over in his hands before setting it aside and digging deeper until he found a photo album, thicker than Hyacine’s loose bundle.

The first page held a picture of a much younger looking Anaxagoras, standing beside a woman with glasses who shared enough of his features to be unmistakably related. His sister, Phainon guessed. There was an ease between them that made the frame feel warmer than the others. Anaxagoras was holding a royal purple plush shaped like some animal Phainon did not recognize. The image was slightly blurred, as if whoever took it had been laughing.

He flipped the page. A different version of the man stared back at him. Older, wearing an eyepatch that had not been present on the dead body Phainon had seen. He was mid lecture, one hand raised, finger pointed toward a whiteboard crowded with equations. Phainon found himself tracing the lines of chalk, surprised to realize he could follow it, piece by piece, as if it had been waiting for him.

Another page, with a more composed image this time. Anaxagoras stood between two women. One had long, wavy hair the color of pale sand and a calm expression that softened the entire picture. The other was blonde, posture straight, her expression more reserved but no less striking. Anaxagoras wore the eyepatch again here, dressed neatly, almost formally, like the shirts folded in the bag.

Phainon closed the album slowly, resting his hand on the cover. There was another bag to be opened. He glanced over at it. It was labeled only as “KHASLANA.”

He took his time unzipping this one, the phantom sensation of bile rising in his throat again and he steadied himself to face… himself. Whoever he was.

As it turned out, he was a man without a hint of fashion sense. T-shirts in various horrendous colour combinations took up a significant portion of space. He stared down at them as if they might bite him. The worst offender was one with an illustration of a book titled “Anti-Gravity, the book” and aptly subtitled with “—it’s impossible to put down!” or the one that simply read “Particle physics gives me a hadron.”

He stared at them for a long moment, expression flattening. “…No.”

He flipped to the next shirt, an obnoxiously yellow thing. There was a neat little graph, its axes carefully drawn, a curve approaching but never touching the line. Beneath it: “My motivation (as x → deadline).”

“…Absolutely not,” He muttered, as his jaw tightened. “I refuse to believe this is me.”

He dug deeper into the bag. Similar to Hyacinthia, he had a small ziplock of photos stashed away inside a pocket. Though it seemed all his belongings had been packed with military precision rivaling the commander’s. Perhaps he’d been a very neat and orderly person?

The first photograph was a polaroid that appeared to have been taken in a lab. A man—himself—stood smiling in front of blurry equipment. He looked much better off, clean shaven with only semi-ruffled short white hair as opposed to his current long, greasy, bird’s nest style. He even wore a long white lab coat in the picture.

He turned the polaroid over in his hand before setting it aside. Beneath it was another photograph, thinner and glossier, corners faintly worn. Not a polaroid. The image displayed him again, but younger. Much younger, as a boy, maybe a preteen. No glasses on. His white hair was uneven, sticking up in places like an affront to every comb in a ten kilometre radius. There was dirt smeared across one cheek and along the knees of his jeans. He was not alone.

A girl stood next to him, close enough that their shoulders touched. She wore a simple purple dress, the fabric catching the sunlight in its soft folds. Her hair was unmistakably pink, a little wind-tossed. She looked to be about the same age as he was.

They were both smiling. Behind them stretched a field of wheat, tall and golden, bending slightly to the wind. It ran far past the frame, the horizon faint and distant.

“A farm?” Phainon murmured as he studied it. It was a reasonable guess. Neither of them seemed bothered by the dirt. Though the question of who the girl actually was remained elusive… something about her felt just out of reach.

He slipped the photo back into the ziplock. There was only one other thing left inside. Not a picture this time, but a slip of paper. He pulled it out carefully.

It was slightly crumpled, as if someone had been in a rush to fold it. The creases were uneven. Phainon unfolded it gently.

The message was short. All it read was: “Good luck, Deliverer.”

He stared at the words, brow furrowing.

“Deliverer?” he repeated. The moment the word left his mouth, a pointed pressure built behind his eyes.

He flinched, his vision blurring around the edges as a hand instinctively rose to his temple. The room began to spin, and to spin, and to, and—

“We are just minutes away from the probe’s flyby through the Calypso Line near planet Mnestia. What can you tell us about the probe? What can we expect to find?” the interviewer asked, his hands crossed on the table in front of him.

The scientist smiled, though she seemed unsure how to answer such a blunt question. “Well, the images we are about to see will be coming directly from the onboard microscope—”

The screens displayed in the broadcast room shifted, from a simple cityscape backdrop to said images from the probe. For a moment it was grainy, and then the focus adjusted as shapes began to emerge. A thousand tiny dots were scattered amongst the field of view, each one the same deep, lightless black. 

“Oh—”

“By the Titans—”

More of them came into view as the probe’s microscope adjusted, filling the frame far more densely than before.

Someone off camera moved, the faint scrape of a chair barely audible.

The interviewer leaned forward a fraction. “Are—Are we meant to be seeing this many?”

The scientist did not answer, just stared at the screen. Her lips parted, like she meant to say something and couldn’t find the words.

Then her chair scraped sharply against the floor.

“I—” she started, already halfway to her feet. “I have to go!”

The interviewer blinked, caught off guard. “Doctor, we’re live—”

“I know.” She was shaking her head now, hair swaying as she stepped back from the table. “I have to go. Right now.”

The camera lingered for a beat too long on the empty chair, the screen behind it still filled with those impossible, identical black dots.

The image shrank. The glow of it dulled, edges suddenly defined by the thin black border of a phone screen.

Phainon stared down at it, unmoving. His reflection ghosted faintly over the display, blue eyes wide behind his glasses. His jaw had fallen wide open at some point.

Around him, the world felt distant, like it had been pushed a step out of reach. On the screen, and in his surroundings, voices overlapped, uncertain of what this meant for humanity. But the image remained the same. A field of perfect black dots. And Phainon could not look away.

The memory shifted like being cleared away by the tide, a wave washing over him to leave him in an entirely different scene.

Something too vague to fully recall, just his fingertips submerged in soft blond hair. A heavy weight against his chest. Something red brushing against his cheek. Fabric, or maybe also hair.

A voice, close enough to feel more than hear, saying something he couldn’t hold onto no matter how hard he tried. And then it slipped.

The memory shifted again, red and blond washed over by sunlight streaking in through classroom windows. The room slowly materialized in his mind, building itself piece by piece. Every wall was plastered in colourful drawings or safety posters. Desks lined the center of the space, each one occupied, and his own larger desk sat at the front of the room. A blackboard was behind him, and chalk was in his hand.

“…so even though we can’t see them,” he was saying, turning slightly as he spoke, “sound waves are still physical. They travel through a medium by vibrating particles.” His voice came easily, like it had been projected this way a hundred times before.

He tapped the board lightly with the chalk. “Think of it like this. When something makes a sound, it pushes against the air around it. That push travels, and when it reaches your ear, your brain interprets it as—”

A hand went up. A girl near the middle of the room, thick glasses slipping slightly down her nose as she leaned forward.

Phainon paused, glancing over, then nodded. “Yes?”

“Are the space dots really eating the Dawn Device, Mr. Khaslana?”

A few students shifted. Someone in the back let out a quiet “whoa,” immediately shushed by someone else.

Phainon blinked once. Then he smiled uncomfortably. “Wow, that’s a great question, Serena.”

He set the chalk down carefully on the ledge, dusting his fingers together as he bought himself another second.

“…But I’m not sure the answer should come from me.” A small, almost apologetic tilt of his head. “Uh, what do your parents think?”

“My dad says it’s not a big deal,” a boy behind her said. Yason, leaning back in his chair like this was already a settled fact.

“My dad says it’s a government conspiracy,” another voice cut in. Marsyas. Arms crossed, chin lifted slightly, like he’d been waiting to say it.

A ripple of quiet reactions moved through the room. A few kids turned to each other, whispering. Someone snorted. Someone else looked suddenly less sure.

Phainon forced a small laugh, raising his hands slightly. “Okay, alright, those are… very different interpretations.” He reached for the chalk again, turning back toward the board a little too quickly. “So, as I was saying, sound waves—”

Another hand went up. This time he hesitated before acknowledging it.

“…Yes?”

Piso didn’t lower his arm until he had Phainon’s full attention. “What is the Calypso Line, Mr. Khaslana?”

The room stilled. The side conversations died out. Even the students who hadn’t been paying attention before were now looking forward.

Phainon turned fully this time, chalk still in his hand, though he wasn’t using it. “Oh,” he said. “Can I pass on that question?”

Then, almost in unison—

“You can’t pass!”

“That’s not fair!”

“You’re the teacher!”

A few laughs, but there was an expectant undercurrent to it now. Phainon exhaled softly through his nose, somewhere between a sigh and a resignation.

“Right. Okay.”

He set the chalk down again and stepped away from the board, scanning the room briefly before moving toward the side of his desk. He crouched, rummaged for a second, then came back up with a roll of bright green painter’s tape.

“Let’s try… a visual.”

Above them, suspended from the ceiling, the classroom models hung in slow, almost imperceptible motion. The sun, oversized and slightly faded, and further across, a smaller model labeled Mnestia.

Phainon tore off a strip of tape with his teeth, stretching it between his hands as he stepped up onto the small platform at the front.

“So,” he began, voice steadier now, slipping back into something more practiced, “two years ago, a radio telescope enthusiast called Doctor Calypso—”

He pressed one end of the tape gently against the model of the sun, smoothing it down with his thumb.

“—noticed a streak of infrared light coming from our sun, the Dawn Device—”

He walked the length of the space beneath the hanging models, stretching the tape taut as he went.

“—all the way out to Planet Mnestia.”

He reached up and fixed the other end in place. The green line cut cleanly across the classroom air, a straight, unnatural connection between the two points.

He stepped back down, looking up at it with the class. “That line,” he said, “is what we call the Calypso Line. That’s it.”

“That’s the dots?” Piso asked.

“What dots?” Serena piped up.

Phainon hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. “…Right,” he said, straightening up a little. “Let me show you.”

He crossed the room in a few quick steps, brushing chalk dust from his hands onto his coat as he reached the console above the whiteboard. It flickered to life under his touch, the soft hum of the projector filling the classroom.

After a quick search for “the black tide” on the World Wound Web, the image popped up.

Dots. Hundreds of them. Perfectly round, impossibly dark, scattered across the projection like someone had punched holes straight through the whiteboard.

The classroom went quiet. Phainon clasped his hands together behind his back, rocking slightly on his heels as if that might make the image easier to explain.

“So,” he began, voice just a touch too light, “ASA sent a probe up to the Calypso Line, and this is what the microscope found.”

Apart from a chair creaking somewhere in the back of the room, nobody made a sound.

Serena leaned forward slowly, her glasses slipping further down her nose as she squinted at the board. “Are they…” she started, then paused, like saying it out loud might make it worse. “…eating the Dawn Device?”

Phainon smiled painfully. “Um,” he said, lifting one hand and giving a small, vague gesture toward the projection, “it seems to be more like an appetizer.”

A beat.

“So, just a tiny little bit,” he added. That did not seem to help.

Marsyas sat up straighter, crossing his arms. “That’s worse, Mr. Khaslana.”

“It’s not worse,” Yason shot back immediately, though his voice cracked just enough to betray him. “Appetizers are small.”

“Yeah, before the main course,” Marysas muttered.

Piso’s hand crept halfway up before he seemed to think better of it, fingers curling back toward his sleeve. He still spoke, though even quieter than usual. “That sounds like a huge problem, Mr. Khaslana.”

Phainon exhaled, one hand coming up to drag through his already unruly hair. He stared at the projection for a moment too long before answering. “Well,” he began, rocking on his heels again, “it’s a small to medium problem. In the next thirty years,” he added, gesturing vaguely at the board, “Amphoreus could cool maybe… ten to—” he winced a little, “—fifteen degrees.”

Piso blinked at him. “…So it is a big huge problem?”

Before Phainon could answer, Serena sat up straight, eyes wide behind her slipping glasses. “Well I heard,” she said quickly, the words tumbling over each other, “that all of the crops will die, and the economy will free fall, and half the population is gonna die of starvation!”

That did it. The room erupted.

“My dad said the economy isn’t real,” Marsyas cut in immediately, arms still crossed.

Yason groaned. “That doesn’t even make sense—”

“It does if you think about it—”

“We’re all gonna dieee,” Piso sighed, dropping his head into his hands.

“That’s not what he said!”

“He said fifteen degrees! That’s totally freezing!”

“My mom bought extra blankets—”

“Blankets won’t fix the Dawn Device!”

Phainon felt a sharp pang of worry in his chest. The image on the board seemed to press in at the edges of his vision, those perfect black dots sitting there, unchanged, unknowable. For a fraction of a second, he didn’t have an answer.

Then he clapped his hands. “Hey— hey, guys, guys. Waterfall. Shhhhh—“

It took a moment, but the noise began to taper off. A few voices lingered, then dropped away. Phainon forced another hopefully reassuring smile, stepping forward, hands already moving as he spoke.

“You’re all forgetting something,” he said, gesturing between them, between the board, like he could physically hold the panic in place. “That’s only if that were to happen, right? But we’re going to figure this out. Right now, the smartest minds in the whole world are on it.”

It took a few days for the reality to truly set in. He had begun to wander around the ship, exploring the odd rooms, and rummaging through the luggage. The ship’s voice followed him everywhere, strange arms waving around, delivering tubes of gray goop which tasted surprisingly like meat and vegetables on certain days. 

Phainon had searched tirelessly to find any sort of solid food — the slimy texture of the goop was starting to get on his last nerves — but his search had ended in failure. So here he still was, lying on the grating metal floor of what would have been the crew's quarters. It was the Phainon quarters now, the only living being on the Flame Reaver. He briefly wondered what it would've been like if he wasn’t alone, if Anaxa or Hyacine were here. He wasn’t quite sure when Anaxagoras and Hyacinthia had become Anaxa and Hyacine, but it was likely after the first bag of vodka.

Phainon washed the thought away with another sip  through the lengthy vodka straw. He could barely feel the burn anymore, nor the weight of his head. He was lighter almost, and if he closed his eyes, Phainon could imagine he was floating. 

“Do you want to hear another romantic story?”

Phainon opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling, wondering if there was a way to destroy all the speakers on the ship. 

“Long ago, 12 demigods set off on the Flame chase journey—” 

The words blurred together, floating in the air, with a musical quality. It was a good thing that he had discovered the stored music on the ship a few days ago; He was sure he’d have gone insane otherwise.

More insane, that is. 

He swayed to the story, precariously making his way towards the mental health room, where he’d left the scarecrow. He had managed to add a face and ears to it with some tape he’d found in the lab. Phainon thought it looked quite like a raccoon, and it wasn't as though there was anyone there to judge him on that. 

He set the screens of the mental health room to sunset atop a skyscraper, the soft pink melting in the gold below the horizon. 

Phainon began to sway alongside Mr Raccoon as the song began to play If I can stop one heart from breaking, by famed singer Robin. The bag of vodka dragged behind him as Robin’s voice filled the room. His knit blanket swayed alongside the bag and scarecrow. 

“Birds are born with no shackles…” Phainon sang along off-key, pressing his face against Raccoon le Sir. He sang the next verse in Mr Raccoon’s voice, spinning the scarecrow along to the beat. The vodka tube spun around, tangling around Sir Raccoon, getting stuck on the badly-taped ears. 

Sir Raccoon  probably needed the vodka as much as Phainon did. 

A third voice joined the fray, coming from the leftmost speaker. Somehow, the ship’s voice had been programmed with all of the songs of Amphoreus. Maybe he would hold off on destroying all the speakers for now. 

It turned out you could still get hangovers in space. Go figure. 

Phainon winced at the light as he held the razor to his chin. It was now or never, and he couldn’t stand this mess staying on his face for any longer. He began to methodically shave off his beard and trim the rest of his hair. His hair ended up falling just above the chin, the cut, tangled strands of his atrocious beard littering the floor. 

Once he was done cleaning the hair off the ground he sent it down the trash chute. He wondered where that led to. Maybe some sort of recycling system? Or his hair was being propelled off into the depths of space. 

It was a funny thought — his old matted beard hair floating off into space. Imagine what some alien species would think, their first contact with extra-georean organic matter being some dead hair cells. Was that what the Black Tide was? Food for thought…

Phainon ran his hand over his now clean-shaven face, pacing in front of the whiteboard as his headache began to subside. He had found a few days earlier that the lab room had a lot of useful equipment, including a tape measure, beakers and a whiteboard. Which would've been incredibly useful earlier on when he’d been trying to measure the acceleration inside the ship.

It must've been a sight to see, if there had been anyone else on the ship; Phainon, finally clean-shaven, a whiteboard marker tucked behind his ear and another two in both hands, wearing the most obnoxious purple dromas onesie known to man. Professor Anaxa would've been proud, but he still felt a little guilty for wearing his onesie. 

That was another thing to add to the list — Professor?

Phainon quickly added it to the bottom:

Who am I?

• Teacher

• Bad Pun T-shirts & sun tattoo

• I'm still muscular??????!! electrodes??

• Ok with eating Quillorb

• Possible cause of Hyacine’s alcoholism

• Anaxagoras hates being called Anaxa (Anaxa is a Professor???)

He paused again before quickly adding:

Why would a schoolteacher have such a high alcohol tolerance? Was he an alcoholic? Did he teach the kids while drunk? That wouldn’t be good. Hopefully he went to class sober.

It didn’t bode well that his vision began to swim at the thought. The landscape of the ship shifted once more, dragging him back to the Amphoreus he called home. 

Phainon sat on his supposedly fancy “teacher chair,” legs propped up on his desk. Maybe he was nothing more than a mongrel, but the outcome of today’s class didn’t sit right with him, bad posture be damned. He hadn’t yet removed the painters tape bridging the models of the Dawn Device and of Mnestia. It hung there like a reminder. Or perhaps a distraction, seeing as he’d gotten so far into his own daydream he barely registered the hiss of the classroom door opening and the clacking of heels against linoleum.

His first impression of the visitor was that she seemed extremely elegant. She wore a black suit tailored so impeccably that it put Phainon’s own chalk-dusted blazer to shame tenfold. Her blonde hair had been fashioned into perfect curls, framing her sharp features.

“Are you Phainon Khaslana?” she observed more than asked, as though there wasn’t a hint of surprise or doubt in her mind. It might’ve been the regal aura, or maybe just her noticeable accent.

He nodded, trying not to trip in his rush to stand up. “Uhh— Yeah, I’m— That’s me. How can I help you, um..?”

“My name is Aglaea,” she announced.

Phainon instinctively moved to shake her hand, and that was when he noticed the black cane in her grip. “Then how can I help you, Aglaea?” he asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Aglaea regarded him for a moment, then reached into her purse. “I am with the Calypso Task Force,” she said. “And I need your help.”

Phainon blinked. “Me?” The word came out with all the confidence of a man who had spent the last forty minutes unsuccessfully explaining existential catastrophe to eleven-year-olds. Which was exactly what he was.

Aglaea withdrew a document thick enough to be used as a blunt weapon and set it on his desk with a heavy thump. The cover page read:

AN ANALYSIS OF WATER-BASED ASSUMPTIONS OF EXPECTATIONS FOR EVOLUTIONARY MODELS

A dissertation submitted to the Grove University Department of Biology.

By Phainon Khaslana

“Oh,” He picked it up. “Oh no.”

Aglaea folded her hands atop her cane. “You wrote this.”

Phainon swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I won’t… deny it.”

Aglaea’s mouth twitched. She reached forward and opened the dissertation to a marked page near the middle. A yellow tab protruded from the edge. “I am interested in the section beginning on page thirty-three,” she said.

Phainon looked down. The title was printed in bold.

THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE IS FOR IDIOTS: WHY EVERYONE IS WRONG ABOUT LIFE

He closed his eyes. “Yep. I was going through something at the time.”

“You appear to have been going through many things.” Aglaea waited.

Phainon scratched the back of his neck. “Look, that was a very long time ago and—”

“Do you stand by what you wrote?”

He stopped. Outside the classroom window, students crossed the courtyard in small groups. Somewhere down the hall a locker slammed. Phainon stared at the page. Then he sighed. “I was fired for standing by what I wrote.”

Aglaea smirked, and it transformed her face completely. The expression was almost imperceptibly small, but suddenly she looked less like a government official and more like someone quietly enjoying a joke.

“No,” she said. “You were fired for calling a colleague a ‘staggering waste of oxygen’ during a debate at the Pan-Amphorean Conference in Janusopolis.”

A memory surfaced instantly. A hundred academics and a microphone. A man saying something deeply stupid about convergent evolution. And then—

“With all due respect, Doctor, that may be the single most aggressively incorrect statement ever uttered by a lifeform possessing a frontal lobe.”  A pause. “You are a staggering waste of oxygen.”

The crowd had gasped in unison, with a fair few academics choking on their coffee. The moderator looked moments away from a stroke, and that was the day Phainon’s LinkedIn account changed forever.

Phainon covered his face in some attempt at self-soothing, though Aglaea likely already knew everything about his life. “Titans.”

Aglaea nodded. “You also described his presentation as vandalism. And compared his methodology to throwing darts at a dictionary.”

Phainon groaned. “Please stop listing uncouth things I’ve said in public.”

“You are fortunate I have omitted the worst examples.”

Phainon grabbed his satchel before she could continue excavating his academic crimes. The bell overhead rang, sending a flood of students into the hallways beyond. “That is my cue to leave.”

“You have not answered my question.”

“I have.”

“You have not.”

“I strongly implied an answer.”

Aglaea merely stared.

Phainon pointed at her. “That counts.” Then he turned and headed for the door.

The speed at which Aglaea followed him was genuinely alarming. He had expected the heels to slow her down. The cane did not seem to slow her down either. If anything, she was somehow gaining ground.

“How are you doing that?” he asked as they pushed through the front doors of the school.

Outside, the afternoon sky hung heavy with dark clouds. Students spilled out across the front steps in clusters, some already opening umbrellas against the threat of rain.

“Nobody in your field will work with you anymore,” Aglaea continued as though the conversation had never paused. “You subscribed to an incredibly niche theory and refused to change your mind. But I can give you an opportunity to prove them all wrong.”

Phainon opened his mouth, glancing around the area. “Uhh— Piso, no running!”

The boy halfway across the courtyard continued moving at exactly the same speed. “I’m not.” He disappeared around a corner.

Phainon sighed. “Kids these days.” Then he shrugged on his raincoat and continued down the path. “Well, joke’s on those other scientists. I don't care anymore.”

Aglaea’s expression didn't change. “You do care.”

Phainon nearly tripped. “I do not.”

“No, I’m certain you care,” Aglaea continued. “You’re simply scared. Do you still believe water is unnecessary for life to evolve?”

Phainon reached the bicycle rack. “Uhh…” He crouched to unlock the chain around his bicycle. “Look, there’s nothing all that special about hydrogen and oxygen. Sure, it’s required for life here on Amphoreus. But there could be entirely different circumstances anywhere else in the universe.”

He stood, looping the chain around one shoulder. “I don’t know why that makes me such a nut.” The first drops of rain began to fall. Phainon wheeled the bicycle toward the street. Then he froze.

A black car had pulled up beside the curb. It looked expensive in the way government vehicles in movies often did. Not flashy per se, just impossibly polished with windows tinted far past the legal limits.

A woman stood still beside it. Her expression was so neutral it almost seemed statuesque. Long dark-blue hair fell nearly to her waist, catching faint highlights beneath the gathering clouds above. Her features were unmistakably Styxian.

Aglaea stopped beside him. “You need to come with us, Doctor Khaslana.”

Phainon looked between them. Then at the black car. Then back at them. “See, that sounds remarkably similar to a kidnapping.”

“Not quite. Kidnappings rarely involve formal appointments.”

“Did we have an appointment?”

“We attempted to schedule one.”

“Ah. I ignored those emails.” Phainon awkwardly cleared his throat. He turned towards the silent long haired woman and immediately stuck out his hand. “Hi. I didn't, uh, catch your name?”

The woman looked down at it, then shook it with an intense grip. “Hysilens.”

“Nice to meet you.” He offered a polite smile. “I’m Phainon.”

Hysilens replied in the exact same flat tone. “We know.”

Silence. Rain pattered softly against the pavement. Phainon slowly lowered his hand. Students streamed around them, paying little attention to the strange trio standing beside the curb.

“Dr. Khaslana,” Aglaea said. “The probe’s samples of the Calypso Line splashed down last night. I want you to tell me what they are, and how they work.” 

Rainwater dripped from the edge of his hood. Phainon stared at her. “I…” He laughed once, awkwardly. “I am a teacher at Marmoreal Middle School.”

Aglaea didn't blink. “And you have a doctorate in molecular biology.”

Phainon gestured vaguely at his own condition. “And I ride a bike to work every day. And it’s not for exercise. So I’m reasonably certain there are thousands of people who would be better suited for this.”

The rain continued to fall. Students passed by on the sidewalk. One of them waved.

“Bye, Mr. Khaslana!”

“See you tomorrow, Serena.”

Only once she was gone did Phainon continue. “Look, I appreciate the confidence, but my greatest scientific achievement this week was convincing a seventh grader that magnets are not magic.”

Aglaea folded her hands atop her cane.

“It survives on the surface of the sun.”

The words cut straight through his attempt at humor. Phainon stopped fiddling with the bicycle chain.

Aglaea took a step forward. “Does that sound like a water-based lifeform to you?”

Phainon looked down. Slowly, his shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of him all at once. Because if she was asking that question, then she already knew the answer.

Past the city skyline, toward the faint glow that hung low on the horizon, sat the Dawn Device. Even through the rain, he could see the distant golden light. A light every child on Amphoreus grew up believing would always be there.

“The Dawn Device is really dying, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.

Aglaea’s expression didn’t change. “Yes.”

In the reflection of the glass wall, he looked like an inflatable tube man had come to life. They had insisted he keep his own clothes on beneath the protective suit. He was able to ditch the raincoat, but his blazer and sweater all remained layered underneath another layer of thick white fabric. The result left him looking approximately twice his usual width, and he already considered himself buff. Every movement came with the soft crinkle of reinforced material, and the oversized gloves made his hands resemble inflated balloons.

He raised one of them, squinting through the clear faceplate of his new outfit. “Is the entire hazmat get-up really necessary?” His voice echoed strangely before the suit’s built-in speakers projected it into the room.

On the opposite side of the glass, Aglaea pressed a button on the intercom. “While I appreciate something more fashionable,” she replied evenly, “I also appreciate you being alive.”

Phainon considered that for a moment. “Fair enough.”

The intercom clicked off. He looked around instead. The facility itself was unlike anything he had ever seen. After arriving, he’d been escorted through enough security checkpoints to qualify for a diplomatic summit, followed by an airlock that cycled with a low mechanical groan before finally admitting him into the laboratory. Every door along the way had featured another ten warnings: BIOHAZARD. HIGH CONTAINMENT. COMBUSTIBLE MATERIALS. ELECTRICAL HAZARD. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. One corridor had so many cautionary labels plastered across it that he’d wondered whether the wall itself was considered dangerous to these people.

Now he stood inside what appeared to be one of the Okheman Department of Aeronautics and Space’s primary research laboratories. Equipment filled nearly every available surface. Analytical instruments lined entire rows of workstations, their displays glowing softly beneath fluorescent lights. Refrigerated storage units stood shoulder to shoulder beside sealed cabinets bearing hazard markings he sincerely hoped he would never have to learn firsthand. Thick coils of cables disappeared into machines whose purposes Phainon, degree or not, couldn’t even begin to guess.

It was, put quite simply, more scientific equipment than he’d ever seen gathered into a singular place. And in the very center of the room sat a single wheeled cart. Resting atop it was a cylindrical containment vessel.

Behind the glass observation wall stood Aglaea, exactly where she'd been since he'd entered. Hysilens remained beside her, hands folded neatly behind her back, looking no more expressive than a marble statue.

The rest of the observation gallery, however, had filled considerably. Perhaps fifteen people watched from behind the glass. Some wore military uniforms, or what Phainon was reasonably certain were military uniforms. He wasn’t exactly an expert, but people dressed like that with all those medals generally belonged to the military or something.

Others wore lab coats embroidered with the Amphorean Space Administration’s emblem. A few more bore the insignia of the Okheman Department of Aeronautics and Space. The remaining patches were unfamiliar to him, blurred slightly by the observation window, the plastic visor inches from his face, and the thick lenses of his own glasses.

Though one figure near the back caught his attention. The man was tall, with blonde hair that faded into red at the tips and reached longer than Phainon could ever imagine maintaining. His features were difficult to distinguish through the layers of glass, but even at this distance, his expression looked thoroughly stern.

Actually... They all looked thoroughly stern.

It seemed the only person rooting for him today was Aglaea.

Phainon turned away from the observation window and walked toward the cylinder. He glanced back toward the observation room, unable to stop the quip. “Did everyone else have to wear one of these?” He lifted one oversized sleeve for emphasis.

Aglaea looked at the others behind the glass. Several shrugged.

“What do you mean by ‘everyone else’?” she asked.

“The people who put…” He pointed at the container. “…whatever that is, in there.”

Aglaea said the next part as though she was reading off a script. “This is the sample container recovered from the Calypso probe. You’ll need to release all fourteen latches before you can access the inner capsule.”

“That is some exceptionally avoidant phrasing,” He sighed through his helmet. “If I survive this, I’m requesting hazard pay.”

“You are a consultant, Dr. Khaslana.”

The latches were as stubborn as advertised, each one requiring more force than seemed reasonable before snapping free with a metallic clack. By the time he reached the last one, his gloves had made the process twice as awkward. Inside rested a small, transparent sphere. It looked empty.

“Huh.”

He carefully transferred it onto the workbench and twisted it apart. The laboratory fell silent except for the soft hum of ventilation systems and the occasional murmur from the observation room. Phainon swabbed the interior, prepared a slide, and slid it beneath the microscope.

Tiny black spheres wriggled lazily across the field of view.

“They’re moving,” he said.

Aglaea’s voice crackled over the speaker. “So they're alive?”

“I only said they’re moving.” He adjusted the focus. “Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

Hours slipped by him. Some military personnel gradually disappeared from the observation room. Then some of the scientists. Eventually only Aglaea, Hysilens, and a handful of exhausted researchers remained behind the glass while Phainon wandered from instrument to instrument.

“X-ray spectrometer... nothing.”

He frowned.

“Visible light... nothing.”

Another machine.

“Ultraviolet... still nothing.”

He leaned back from a monitor, unsuccessfully rubbing at the bridge of his nose beneath the faceplate.

“What are you?”

Then he froze. He hurried to another instrument, transferring the sample with movements that had suddenly become much more careful.

A few minutes later he let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “No…” Another test. Then another. Finally he rested both gloved hands on the counter. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What have you found?” Aglaea asked.

He was quiet for several seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost nearly all of its earlier excitement. “They’re cells.”

Several people behind the glass exchanged curious looks.

“And?”

“They’re definitely alive…” Phainon shut his eyes. “…They’re made almost entirely of water.”

Silence settled over the laboratory.

He let out a slow breath. “Well.” A humorless chuckle escaped him. “Sorry about that.”

“Sorry?”

“My dissertation. Hope those catchy titles at least made it entertaining.”

He looked down at the tiny organisms beneath the microscope.

“The only original scientific idea I ever had,” He gave a small shrug. “and the aliens apparently decided to side with everyone else.”

Aglaea pressed a hand against some kind of communicator hidden beneath her hair. From how she mouthed it, it seemed like she said “Pack everything up.”

Technicians stepped into motion as though someone had flipped a switch. Instruments were powered down. Data drives were removed. The containment vessel disappeared into the hands of two researchers already wheeling it toward another secure room.

“That’s it?” Phainon asked. He looked around the laboratory. “Seriously?”

Nobody seemed interested in elaborating. By the time he finished cycling through the airlock and peeled himself out of the hazmat suit, the observation gallery had almost emptied. Only Aglaea, Hysilens, and three technicians remained.

Aglaea was already turning toward the exit. She stopped when he said her name.

“So…” He scratched the back of his neck. “The project.”

“It continues.”

“Without me?”

“You told me there were thousands of scientists more qualified than you.”

“I was being modest.” He sighed. “I was trying to avoid being recruited. But…” His eyes drifted back toward the laboratory through the observation window. “If you think I can actually help…”

Aglaea waited.

“I’d like to stay.”

“You would like to stay?”

“I want to help. I think I can.”

Her expression remained unreadable. “Know this: I do not need scientists who are always correct, Dr. Khaslana.” She folded her hands atop her cane. “I require scientists who continue asking questions after discovering they were wrong.”

Phainon was game.

“Not the first time I’ve been wrong,” he said. “But I won’t give up again. I can’t.”

Aglaea turned toward one of the technicians.

“Very well. Leave Dr. Khaslana three specimens.”

Not only had Aglaea left three specimens behind, but she also left Hysilens. It wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence, but having her around had proven to be quite nice.

Once they’d gotten over the obligatory awkward and silent phase, it turned out that Hysilens had a lot to say. Mostly about her wife. And music, but still mostly her wife.

The laboratory became a routine over the following days. Phainon would arrive with a coffee in one hand and a notebook in the other, convinced that today would be the day the dots finally did something interesting. The specimens, in turn, remained committed to disappointing him just as they already had when they decided to be made of water. They ignored every instrument he pointed at them, every variable he adjusted, every increasingly creative hypothesis he proposed.

If they had opinions about his research, they kept them to themselves.

Hysilens, meanwhile, seemed perfectly content to observe. Occasionally she’d remind him to eat something besides whatever happened to be in the laboratory vending machine.

“Nothing.” Phainon leaned back from the microscope until his chair protested beneath him. “I’ve subjected them to enough sound frequencies that if they do enjoy music, I’ve almost certainly offended them.”

There had to be something special about planet Mnestia. Otherwise the black tide would just stay on the Dawn Device for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What the sun offered was obvious: energy. So what about Mnestia?

Hysilens looked up from the top secret report in her hands. “They may not like your taste.”

“…That’s hurtful.”

“It wasn’t intended to be.”

“I know,” He looked back at the containment chamber. “Hey, Hysilens? Imagine, for a second, that you’re an interstellar microorganism.”

“I am not.”

“I know,” He gestured vaguely. “But please pretend.”

She considered the request. “Very well.”

Phainon smiled, readjusting his glasses. “Imagine. You show up on the Dawn Device. Then you go through the effort of leaving the Dawn Device.”

“Mhm. Like a salmon run.”

“Sure. Why would you go to the planet Mnestia? Why not Janus? It’s a lot closer.”

“Perhaps I missed.”

“You missed?”

“I am microscopic.”

Phainon stared at her. “That’s actually a compelling explanation.”

“Thank you,” she inclined her head slightly, a stray lock of hair falling in front of an eye. “Maybe the Black Tide went to Mnestia for the fresh air.”

Phainon wasn’t so sure about that. “Mnestia’s atmosphere is almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide.”

“Hm. Maybe they find the carbon dioxide refreshing.”

Phainon’s eyes widened comically. He blinked out the shock, staring at the viewport before his gaze snapped back to Hysilens.

“That’s—” He started, pointing a finger in the air. “Wait— hold on— maybe—”

He began pacing the length of the lab, his boots squeaking against the sterile floor. “Do we have a company card?”

Hysilens smoothly reached into her uniform pocket and pulled out a sleek, titanium-alloy corporate expense card, holding it out between two fingers.

“You don’t,” she said, her voice perfectly level. “But I do.”

He abandoned his bicycle and paused his gym membership to move into the lab. For days, the only heavy lifting he did was carrying the weight of his own thoughts.

Being outside felt refreshing even if it was merely a trip to NymphMart with his babysitter. He and Hysilens raided the tinfoil aisle for all it was worth, tossing tubes into their cart with reckless abandon. Next was the duct tape, then two pairs of obnoxiously brightly coloured sunglasses he spotted along the way to checkout. Yellow for him, purple for Hysilens. What an elegant combination of colours.

It took several minutes for the dozens upon dozens of items to be scanned in. “Got a coupon for all this or something?” the cashier, a young man with a nametag reading ‘Damionis,’ said.

“We don’t need a coupon.” Hysilens clarified. “We’re the government.”

Damionis nodded, grabbing the receipt. It was long enough to be a scarf.

“Oh… Which government, then?” he asked.

“All of them,” Hysilens supplied. 

After some fumbling with the plywood panels, and ample tinfoil to ensure no leaky spots on the corners, Phainon managed to construct a box. It was large enough to fit a couple people inside, but that wasn’t the goal.

Hysilens regarded the construction for a moment. “So this box is Mnestia?”

Phainon nodded. “It’s going to be emitting the same infrared light frequency as Mnestia’s CO2 atmosphere. So, if the black tide identifies planets that way…”

“They will move when you turn the lights inside the box on?”

“Bingo.”

“Thus, your theory is proven correct.”

Phainon adjusted the camera set up inside the box. “Let’s call it the Hysilens Theory for now.”

Hysilens gave him a flat look. He carried the light emitting box into the dark chamber and set it beside the microscope stage. The three tiny flecks of black tide remained suspended over the slide, exactly where they’d spent most of their time thus far. Satisfied, he shut the chamber door and ensured it was sealed tight before returning to the monitor to observe.

He pressed the switch, and the light inside the chamber came to life. The dots vanished.

Phainon frowned. “That’s odd. They’ve left the slide.”

He rewound the recording and stepped through it frame by frame. Black tide. Black tide. Then, an empty slide.

“Between those two frames.”

Hysilens stared at the screen. “Can you retrieve them?”

“If I open the chamber while the light’s on, they’ll head for the residual CO2 signatures outside the box and we’ll lose them for good.” Phainon rubbed a hand over his face. “At least now they’re still inside.”

Hysilens was quiet for a moment. “Turn the light off.”

“There’ll still be light when I open the door. It has to be completely dark.”

“Then put this box inside another box.”

He was starting to think she was the better scientist between the two of them.

It took them the better part of the evening to prepare. Every window in the laboratory disappeared beneath overlapping sheets of, you guessed it, more aluminum foil. Phainon crawled along the floor sealing gaps beneath the doors with tape, then worked his way around the room hunting down every last indicator light. One by one, they winked out beneath strips of black tape until the lab had surrendered every source of light it possessed.

When they finally switched off the overheads, the darkness was complete.

“Acceptable,” Hysilens observed through the walkie, from somewhere on the other side of the wall, in the void. “Start searching. Over.”

The infrared camera was never intended to be worn, but after a generous amount of tape—and some silent assistance when he ran out of hands—it was secured well enough against his face to function as a pair of improvised goggles.

Phainon adjusted the camera’s range upward, filtering out everything except the hottest objects in the room. He crouched into the inner box. The filtered lamp sat exactly where he’d left it. A faint white bloom clung to one of the infrared filters.

“It went straight for it,” He swept the camera slowly across the filter. “And there’s the second one. Over.”

Another careful pass. Relief washed over him all.

“Aaaand a third. They’re all here.”

He reached for a sterile sample vial, already planning how painstaking it would be to recover each individual cell from the filter’s surface. Then he stopped moving.

“Um. Oh. Hysilens.”

“What?”

“There are four.”

He checked the camera settings to be sure. Nothing changed when he did. There were four distinct hot spots.

Hysilens leaned closer, studying the tiny cluster on the display. “What? To be clear, you began with only three. Right?”

“I know,” Phainon slowly lowered the vial. A laugh escaped him before he could stop. “But there’s– There’s a fourth right there. And— And if it can reproduce under the right conditions, we’re not going to be limited to these three anymore.”

Hysilens considered that quietly. “You mean there’s potential for an unlimited supply.”

“Exactly. We just made a baby, Hysilens.”

“I do not believe my wife would appreciate that.”

“That’s—not—that’s not what I really meant.” He gestured helplessly at the glowing specks like it would help his case. “They made a baby. Over.”

“I am pleased you clarified. Over.”

He looked back at the four tiny heat signatures, the excitement crashing over him all over again. His thoughts were already racing ahead. This meant they could create enough black tide to stop treating every test like it might consume the last sample in existence.

Aglaea answered the phone on the second ring.

“Aglaea speaking.”

“Hi! Um. Hysilens and I made a baby.”

Silence.

“What?”

“Sorry. Bad joke.” Phainon winced. “I meant we figured out how the black tide reproduces.”

There was a sharp clatter from the other end of the line, followed by muffled voices and something heavy hitting the floor. “Don’t move.”

The line went dead.

Everything that happened after that was a blur. Another black car from the lab to a hangar. Then pills and accoutrements handed over by people in Okheman Military gear, before being escorted onto a jet. The jet convinced him that his childhood dreams of becoming a pilot were not entirely unfounded; even though he wanted to throw up the entire time, it was kind of exhilarating.

The jet landed on a massive boat. There was probably a specific name for the type of boat, but by that point in time Phainon had no sense for what ocean he was in, let alone what kind of naval vessel.

Aglaea greeted him and he stepped out onto shaky legs. There were people everywhere on the deck, manning all kinds of machinery.

“Reproduction of the black tide. Can you do it at scale?”

“Hello to you, too. The trip was awful, thanks for asking,” he coughed, his intake of breath still a little less than what he wanted it to be. “If I had a big elbow-shaped pipe to fill with carbon dioxide, probably. Heat one end and attach a bright light, then emit infrared light and some CO2 at the other end.”

He wasn’t sure what they were walking towards until they were inside… somewhere. A hallway led to another hallway that led to a doorway with a lot of security outside. Nobody glanced his way, as though he was Aglaea’s shadow. Or her son, during take-your-kid-to-work day.

“There are a lot of important people behind this door. I understand that your last conference did not go well. Do not repeat that.”

“So I can reproduce the black tide, but not the conference? Way to pick and choose.”

When they passed through the doorway, they were back outside again. Kind of. At the far end there was no wall, leaving the deck open to the outside and flooding the space with daylight. Boxes were stacked everywhere. Rows of tables stretched across the hangar, or whatever the place was, forming a large U shape. Chairs lined the outside, each one occupied by, presumably, a scientist.

Heads turned as they entered. Aglaea cleared her throat.

“Everyone. This is Dr. Khaslana, of Okhema…”

At least she left out Marmoreal Middle School.

She nudged him forward with the tip of her heel, towards the space in front of the U. He noticed that despite the variety of uniforms, all were staring intently. Behind, a large screen displaying a projection of another room somewhere, full of also-probably-scientists. And more guards with guns. Never enough of those.

“…And he has figured out how to breed the black tide.”

He waved as all the scientists started clapping politely. Maybe getting on the jet wasn’t a bad idea. Aglaea had absolutely nothing to worry about. It was going a lot better than his last conference already. 

After the seven seconds of applause elapsed, a man with a strong Janusopolitan accent spoke into the mic placed before him. “How do they do it?”

“Is it through mitosis or meiosis?” a woman with a Sabanian flag pin on her lanyard asked.

“And how long does the process take?” another asked. The people on the projector also started asking questions.

Phainon reached for the back of his neck with a palm, an act born out of habit. “So… Hysilens and I built a big wooden box and turned it into Mnestia. The spectral signature of CO2 just really does it for them.” he said. Then Phainon winked. Why the hell did he wink? Aglaea had a lot to worry about.

“The Kremnoan Space Agency has replicated your crude experiment,” a conspicuous man said, leaning over the table to speak into the mic. He seemed to be vaguely recognizable, or maybe it was just the red tattoo under his eye.

“We estimate an eight-day doubling time,” the man declared, looking Phainon’s way. “Dr. Khaslana is right, it is the CO2.”

“That’s why they’re going to Mnestia,” Phainon mumbled.

Aglaea, pulling the mic towards Phainon, prompted him to repeat himself. “What was that?”

“That’s why they’re going to Mnestia,” he said again.

“How long does it take to make two million kilograms?” 

Phainon glanced toward the voice. He didn’t recognize her, a woman with circular glasses, long purple hair, and all manner of butterfly hair clips scattered throughout it. He wouldn’t have pegged her as the type to casually ask how to make that many Dawn Device-killing dots.

Phainon laughed awkwardly. “Why would you even need that much Black Tide? Do you guys have something against the Dawn Device?”

The blond man spoke up again. “Has anyone bothered to tell this guy?”

Other scientists began murmuring, bits and pieces about how ‘It’s all very confidential’ and ‘Has he been sworn in yet?’

Aglaea sighed. Without saying anything, she reached out and found Phainon’s shoulder, rising from her chair.

“Stand.”

Phainon stood. Aglaea turned slightly toward him. 

“Raise your right hand.”

He did. He was starting to feel a little uncomfortable with everyone in the room watching this.

“Dr. Khaslana, I hereby grant you top-secret clearance to all information pertaining to Project Deliverance.”

Phainon nodded. “Thanks. So what is Project Deliverance?”

Aglaea and the guy from the KSA sighed in unison.

The people that were displayed on the projector were soon replaced by a fancy looking slideshow. All the doors that let in sunlight were closed up, leaving the room dark.

“There is a clear pattern of infection,” Aglaea began. “Each star was infected by its nearest neighbor, with one exception.”

Phainon adjusted his glasses, studying the display. “Soteria?”

“That’s correct. Eleven-point-nine light-years away. It remains uninfected despite being well within the cluster of infected stars.”

Phainon frowned. “Why?”

Aglaea paused. “Tell him.”

A chorus came from around the room, everyone shouting the same phrase. “We don’t know!”

“Which is precisely why we have decided to send a ship there.”

Phainon looked back at the projector. “It’s 11.9 light-years away. You can’t just build an interstellar spacecraft and send it there.”

“Sure we can.”

He gave her a skeptical look.

“The spacecraft itself is not the primary difficulty,” Aglaea continued. “The energy required to accelerate it is.”

Phainon’s expression shifted as the implication occurred to him. “The Black Tide.”

“Provided we can produce enough of it. Which is where you become very relevant.”

“Me?” Phainon looked genuinely surprised. Then he glanced back at the data on the screen. “Those things store an extraordinary amount of energy. A containment failure involving a sufficient quantity could release enough energy to vaporize Okhema.”

“That is correct. That is also why we are on a ship, in the middle of international waters. Far away from Okhema, or any state.”

He looked back toward the projector, then around the room. “So, to summarize, you intend to construct a near-light-speed spacecraft, send it farther than any human-made object has ever traveled, and dispatch it to another star to determine why the star remains uninfected.”

“Yes.”

Phainon blinked. “And then what?”

Aglaea’s expression remained passive. “There will not be sufficient fuel for a return journey. The crew will transmit their findings back to Earth using probes. Our astronauts will die in space.”

He adjusted his glasses again. “Have there been any other proposals? Anything a little less likely to result in the deaths of everyone involved?”

“There are infinite ways this can fail,” Aglaea said. “Our alternative is to sit idly by and watch the biosphere collapse further, causing every species on this planet to go extinct, including us. I am sure you understand the gravity of the situation.”

He did, far better than he was able to admit. Silence settled over the room. Phainon stared at the projection for a long moment, a bitter taste in his mouth.

“That is a considerable amount of time to spend in space. Even just to reach the destination.”

“They will be in comas for most of it.”

“We only need three,” Aglaea’s voice sounded faraway, almost echoing through the walls of the ship.

“A Pilot.”

The airlock stood before him, foreboding and desolate. The stars shone brightly out the window, unchanged by the happenings inside the ship. A ship that would never return to Amphoreus, sent out into the great unknown to attempt to make it so that Amphoreus would see tomorrow. At least two wouldn’t be able to see it. 

“Commander Hyacine.”

Her body lay still, pink hair held up in pigtails, curling softly. Phainon kneeled down slowly beside her, hands shaking as he held her belongings. 

“I owe you three bags of vodka,” he laughed wetly, placing the bright picture of her skydiving into her hands, “I’m truly in awe of your attempts to escape the rest of us by jumping out of a plane.”

He gently held out the small pegasuspegasus keychain, and placed it right over Hyacine’s heart. It reflected the light from the hallway, scattering it into a cacophony of rainbows. 

“An Engineer.”

“Anaxagoras.”

Phainon turned to the second figure..He imagined that he’d gone to sleep with a frown on his face, never to awaken again. 

“I hope you got to see a dromas in person before you left,” Phainon said as he held out the picture of Anaxagoras with the plush, “I hope you got to actually smile one last time before —”

He couldn’t continue that thought. He wouldn’t be able to hold it together. Something cold and wet slid down his face. Phainon attempted to wipe them away with his sleeves. 

“I knew you two, once upon a time, I can feel it.” Phainon stood up, watching them both lay peacefully on the hard floor. He stepped back towards the airlock controls. 

“I wish I remembered more, I wish I could give you both a proper burial. I don’t know how I’m going to do any of this alone.”

“And a scientist.”

Phainon closed the airlock, “I promise I’ll complete this mission. For everyone you loved, for everyone who loved you and for all the things you didn’t get to do.” He hesitated for a moment before releasing the airlock, watching as Hyacine and Anaxagoras were sent off on one final journey. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The rest of the day passed in silence, Phainon finally having figured out how to mute the robot. The emptiness settled over everything, lingering over every piece of clothing and all the memorabilia. 

Phainon watched the seconds pass him by as the clock ticked down to engine cut-off. 4 years lost in the coma — 11 years on Amphoreus. Relativity could save him time, but it couldn’t save Amphoreus. He wondered how many had already died from starvation. How many towns, small worlds in their own right, only lived on in memories. 

Aedes Elysiae. 

The words tasted bitter on his tongue. 

“Code Aedes Elysiae recognized — Emergency Shutdown procedure initiated by Doctor Phainon Khaslana revoked by Doctor Phainon Khaslana.”

Phainon groaned, mentally preparing himself for hours of torture. Maybe it was time to go to bed. 

He sat still on the cot, staring up into the darkness. Sometimes he wondered if he’d close his eyes one day on this cursed ship and never wake up again. He wondered if that thought had passed through Hyacine or Anaxa’s mind’s before they had been put into their comas. 

Aglaea sat stiffly at her desk, her perpetual frown unchanging. Beside her sat one of the other scientists working on the project — Cipher. She sported cropped hair, dyed silver, a disheveled hoodie with cat ears, and an eerily similar frown. 

Phainon never quite knew what to do with himself in these situations, especially since he had started working on Project Deliverance. Everywhere he turned there was a new face — all leading scientists in their respective fields. All Phainon had to his name were broken promises and career blunders. 

Aglaea, as always, was the one to break the silence. 

“Doctor Khaslana, please sit down.”

No escape now. 

Phainon sat down hesitantly, putting Cipher between him and Aglaea. He only felt a little bit guilty about using her as a human shield during their first meeting. 

“We have a problem,” Aglaea continued without waiting for Phainon to respond, “The astronauts are going to kill each other."

“Sorry?” Phainon really didn’t know how she had expected him to respond to that. He’d rather be literally anywhere else right now, including the fated conference that had ruined his career. Cipher sighed, voicing all of Phainon’s own feelings.

“Why are the astronauts going to kill each other?" Phainon asked, bewildered. Was Aglaea planning on hiring serial killers? He wouldn't put it past her. 

“Three stressed humans in an enclosed space for 4 years? It's a recipe for disaster.” Aglaea continued, “Look at you and that Kremnoan physicist for example."

Phainon scoffed, “We've met one time, and he enjoys pissing me off.”

“One time too many —”

Cipher interrupted before Aglaea could continue.

“We may have a solution, but it's still in its early stages.”

Aglaea turned at Cipher’s words to face her. 

“We've found a gene marker that greatly correlates with coma resistance, our tests have been excellent so far, and very conclusive but —” Cipher shifted nervously.

“Go on,” Aglaea said. Phainon wondered desperately why he was required to be here. There must be some way he could make a quick escape.

“It’s an incredibly rare blood type — golden blood. It's not actually gold,” Cipher sent him a meaningful look.

“You call someone a waste of oxygen one time and suddenly people think you don't know biology,” Phainon grumbled.

Aglaea sighed, “I didn't bring you here to start an argument.”

“Really? But that's one of my best assets,” he paused, considering for a moment, “Why do I need to be here for this anyway?”

Aglaea gave another long-suffering sigh, “You are my Chief science officer.” 

What.

He was what now.

“I'm what?”

Aglaea ignored him. He was certain she heard him if her small grin was anything to go by. 

Cipher looked between the two carefully and frowned before continuing.

“The golden blood type contains no Rh antigens at all. Testing for it would take a little longer than a regular blood test, but it's better than nothing.”

Aglaea frowned, “Can you begin testing on all the staff?”

“Wait,” Phainon interrupted, “Would it not be more efficient to only test the astronaut candidates? It's not like the rest of us will be sent out into space.”

“If it's as rare as Cifera said,” Aglaea paused.

“It is,” Cipher stood up and made her way towards the window. 

“Then we cannot be picky,” Aglaea concluded, “Can you test me right now Cipher?”

Cipher hesitated, “I can get you preliminary results in 30 minutes. But we'd have to do another round to be sure.”

“Get it done as soon as possible.” 

Cipher nodded, then paused, “I’ll begin testing right away.” 

She kneeled over the counter, opening a new package of blood testing equipment from the drawer below. Sunlight glinted off the syringe, a constant reminder of the ticking clock on the Dawn Device. 

Cipher quickly took Aglaea’s blood sample, then pulled out another bag and took a sample on herself. What surprised Phainon, however, was when she produced a third blood testing kit from the drawer. 

“I’m not an astronaut,” Phainon reasoned.

Cipher beckoned him forward, “You are part of the staff.”

“I’m not going to space,” he reiterated, but found himself making his way towards Cipher regardless. 

“Stop making excuses and let Cifera take your blood sample.”

He had already made it partway to Cipher before Aglaea had even finished speaking, resigning himself to a 30 minute wait in the room. He privately wondered if he would be able to sneak out without them noticing, but he doubted it. Professor Anaxa would be disappointed in him. 

30 minutes later, Phainon had commandeered one of the lab computers in order to continue observing the black tide. The amount of energy they could store was truly mind boggling. He itched to run more tests back in his own lab, in peace without Aglaea hounding him for things. 

Cipher's voice broke through his thoughts, “I'm almost done analyzing the results.” 

The furious typing of Cipher’s keyboard was almost deafening in the otherwise silent room. It was as though Phainon’s fate was resting in her hands, as she carefully checked over the results. 

Cipher frowned for a split second and if Phainon hadn’t been hyperalert at the time he would never have noticed. 

“Aglaea —” 

Cipher hesitated for only a moment before announcing the results. 

“Aglaea tested negative for golden blood.”

A click, as Cipher switched the page over.

“I tested positive.”

Another pause, and the world held its breath.

“Dr. Khaslana also tested positive for golden blood.” 

Aglaea’s expression remained inscrutable as always. 

“Test the rest of the possible recruits as soon as you can.”

Golden blood. 

Did the rest of the crew have golden blood as well? They must not have, seeing as they were dead now. Had Aglaea known beforehand? Had she somehow stolen some of his blood when he wasn't looking and tested him before getting Cipher to repeat it?

He wouldn't put it past her. 

He didn’t have time to get hung up on the why’s and what if’s of the situation. If there was one thing he knew, clear as day, it was that he was Amphoreus' last hope. The Deliverer steering the Flame Reaver to tomorrow. 

He tried not to think about it too much, tried to distract himself by studying the black tide as much as he could. He would spend hours pouring over papers, reading research he wrote — but didn’t remember writing. It was odd, since he somehow knew the exact energy conversion rate for the black tide, as if it were common knowledge. 

But the nagging voice in the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like the disembodied voice of the ship wouldn’t let him stop. It was odd; In his mind the voice had a body and ran around the fields without a care. Pink hair and a face that was always just out of sight. He wondered if she was smiling right now.

Sometimes, on days like these, where his mind wouldn’t stop running away from him, he’d sit himself down in the mental health room and watch as the screens shifted. He would change it to a lush rainforest, and listen to the birds chirping in the early mornings, watch as it shifted into a bustling city full of life and lights.

Again and again, though, he always ended up right where he started. 

Phainon opened his eyes and clutched at the cold metal, hoping to ground himself in the fantasy of it all. Fields of grass stretching as far as the eye could see in front of him. The rushing waves of the sea barreling in from the side. He could almost feel it sometimes — the wind against his hair, the grass and dirt beneath his feet — sometimes he could even delude himself into believing the smell of salt was washing in from the shore. 

Aedes Elysiae

Phainon clung onto the name as if it was a vast oasis and he was Tantalus. 

“Approaching Soteria orbit, prepare for engine cut-off.”

Phainon jumped from the jarring interruption, frantically making his way out of the room. 

“35,” the voice began counting down, the various screens strewn about the ship flashing with each new number. Phainon tried his best to ignore the screens, catching only the briefest fun facts: 33, ‘Did you know that in ancient Amphorean mythology, it was said that the Deliverer reset the universe over 33 million times!’, 12, “Fun Fact! In ancient Amphorean Mythology, there were 12 Chrysos Heirs who worked towards Deliverance”...

Phainon tried his best to ignore the beeping as the voice counted down, fighting a growing ache as the voice continued. 

By the time he reached the cockpit, the countdown was down to 5. It took every bit of concentration Phainon could muster with his panic-addled brain to sit down down in the pilot’s seat and hastily fasten the seatbelt. 

“Pilot Detected — 3, 2, 1.” There was a pause, where Phainon held his breath. His stomach was floating, and it felt as though it was far above his head. 

Phainon hesitantly opened his eyes, and it took him a fraction of a second to realize why. His feet and stomach were in fact actually attempting to make this a reality. 

“You are now orbiting Soteria.”

Phainon really wished he could manage a way to disable the ship’s voice again. Instead, he took a deep breath and managed to calm his racing system, all going haywire by the sudden lack of gravity. 

“Calypsoscope active, did you know Dr. Calypso…”

Phainon’s patience was being tested. Cyrene always did have a story to tell—

A room.

A robotic arm.

Code. 

Warmth in the place where the emptiness normally lived. Flashes of golden fields and bubbling laughter. 

“Cyrene?” Phainon’s voice was hesitant, a hair’s width away from breaking entirely. 

“Yes Doctor Khaslana?”

It seemed the disembodied voice had a name. A name Phainon knew for some reason. He would table that realization for later. 

The Calypsoscope stood in front of him, pointed directly at Soteria. If he were closer and this was the Dawn Device, he would likely be going blind from staring directly at it. It was odd, watching this star, so many light years away from the Dawn Device.

So familiar yet alien.

Phainon quickly switched to the infrared filter before his mind could further linger. The screen was bathed in red light, sparkling from every star in the sea. And from Soteria, a thin tail wrapped around and headed towards somewhere offscreen. A Calypso line, yet it wasn’t dimming. 

Gleaming red in certain light, a black tide of doom in others. 

What did Soteria have that the Dawn Device didn’t? Would it be able to take Amphoreus into Tomorrow?

Just as he was about to spiral further, a small void in the gleaming line caught his eye. He tried to clean any dust off the screen, but the lack of light did not change. Then, for just a moment, a flash of red light illuminated a rectangular silhouette. 

“Blip-A detected.”

Cyrene’s voice was practiced and programmed, distinctly unlike the mindless stories it would sometimes spew.

“What is Blip-A?” Phainon tried asking the machine. 

“Blip-A detected.”

Perhaps he would be able to see it better with visible light. Phainon held on tightly to any available surface as he hauled himself to the round window beside the pilot chair. He expected to see a simple dark backdrop flooded with countless stars — maybe a planet or asteroid blocking his view. 

The large looming rectangular structure he did see had not even been a possibility. 

Large matte black panels, with gleaming silver circling the body. Now that he was closer to it, he realized the body was closer to a cylinder from this angle. It was entirely un-aerodynamic, almost train-like if he were to apply his Amphorean sensibilities to it. 

And it was getting closer. 

It was moving. 

Phainon could not let anything jeopardize Project Deliverance. 

This time, he chose to sit in the pilot’s seat, strapping himself in and hoping to Kephale that he wouldn’t accidentally eject something important from the ship. There were too many buttons, all flashing with every colour of the rainbow. Only some of them were labelled, and he hoped the joystick was for steering. 

“Engage spin drive, welcome to the Flame Reaver.”

Phainon pulled the stick in the direction he desperately hoped was away from the odd train. 

The ship lurched forward towards the train, “Erratic Maneuver detected.”

Phainon fumbled to pull it in the complete opposite direction. He could not fail this mission. 

“Erratic maneuver detected, please engage in safe piloting procedures, stress can sometimes cause erratic piloting, would you like to hear a story to lessen the —”

Phainon finally found the button to silence the ship. He did not need to hear a romantic story right now. Right as he was about to let out a sigh of relief, the other ship — train — suddenly filled his field of vision again. 

It was following him.

“Blip-A detected.”

Phainon yanked the joystick away from the other ship again, hoping one of the many buttons he was mashing would increase his speed. Unfortunately, this did nothing to aid in his escape. The other ship kept following.

This was getting him nowhere. 

He turned his head abruptly, knocking away his glasses, trying to watch as a screen flashed with another warning message. Phainon scrambled to retrieve them as Cyrene’s voice flooded through the intercom. 

“Blip-B detected.”

Phainon craned his neck to see out the window once more, watching as a projectile barreled towards him. It was odd and cylinder shaped, silver. He couldn’t make out any more details from this distance. 

“What is Blip-B, Cyrene?” Phainon hoped Cyrene would have more insight into this than he did.

“According to my records, Blip-B most closely resembles an Amphorean trashcan.”

Maybe it was a message? Phainon doubted whatever entity had sent it towards them would throw trash at the first opportunity. His thoughts continued racing until the cylinder bounced against the hull of the ship with a clang, hurling itself towards the emptiness of space. 

“Blip-C detected.”

An identical object began to float towards the Flame Reaver, crawling along at a snail’s pace. 

“Why is it moving so slowly? Do they think I'm stupid?”

“Haikas.”

For a moment, Phainon could’ve sworn that he was accompanied by a vaguely familiar blond man. But then, as he turned to look behind him, he was greeted with the familiar empty room of screens. 

“Cyrene, if we were to catch that,” he paused, “trashcan, how would we do that?”

“Would you like to go on a spacewalk, Doctor Khaslana?”

Phainon barely made it to the airlock in one piece, spinning erratically and clutching onto handholds for dear life. It was a miracle that he even found the bright orange EVA suit. ‘Khaslana’ was embellished on the right arm, with a silhouette of Kephale holding up the Dawn Device in the background. 

Finally, Phainon managed to put the helmet on, although it sat awkwardly with his glasses still on underneath. 

This was it.

Phainon had never even wanted to fathom what it would be like to take a spacewalk before. Yet now, with the airlock opening, he was staring out at the great expanse of the sea of stars. 

It took everything in him to march forward into the unknown, hands clammy with sweat in his bulky gloves, desperately grabbing onto the ropes. 

Phainon’s heartbeat was the loudest it had ever been, right in his ears, infinitely piercing against the silence of space. He carefully shimmied across the hull of the ship, occasionally glancing over at the silver trashcan. 

It was incredibly disorienting having his legs not pulled downwards by gravity, floating as he dragged himself along. 

But he kept going, slowly yet surely, until the trashcan was within arms reach. 

Phainon leaned out with one arm outstretched, the other clinging onto a handhold. He snatched the object from the air — or rather space — holding it tightly against his chest on the return trip to the airlock.

He never wanted to do this ever again. Phainon preferred his feet firmly in the air inside the ship.

Once he finally got back inside, it was a much easier endeavour to remove the suit than it was to put it on. He quickly made his way to the lab (as quickly as he could while propelling himself along the walls), to examine the strange trashcan. 

The handheld spectrometer beeped menacingly up at him, ‘Xe’ shown on its screen. 

“Xenon is a noble gas,” Phainon whispered incredulously.

“Would you like to hear a romantic story like one that has come before? About the noble prince of Kremnos and —”

“Cyrene, why is this spectrometer broken?” 

Why would the equipment not be working properly?

Mydeimos stood at the far end of the lab, a tablet in one hand and the sleeves of his lab coat rolled up to his elbows. Phainon had noticed the latter almost immediately. They were traditional Kremnoan tattoos. He had seen similar ones before, albeit never this clearly. The red patterns ran over Mydeimos’s arms in intricate shapes, some of them so fine they almost looked like they had been etched into his skin. Phainon found himself wondering what the individual symbols meant.

Purely academically, obviously. Mydeimos was still a prickly bastard.

“The astronauts will need to analyze whatever samples they collect at Soteria onboard the Flame Reaver,” Mydeimos said. “They’ll need to know what they’re dealing with while they’re there.”

Phainon hummed absently. Mydeimos glanced at him. Phainon immediately looked back at the equipment in front of him.

Aglaea folded her hands in front of her. “Is this a matter of available space? How much room would all of this equipment require?”

“Space isn’t the primary concern,” Mydeimos tapped the tablet, bringing up a working schematic of the laboratory. “The problem is that this equipment was designed for use on Earth. It relies on gravity in one way or another. Some of it can be modified but the rest would need entirely new versions capable of functioning in microgravity.”

“How long?”

Mydeimos looked at her. “For a proper suite of instruments? Years.”

Aglaea’s expression did not noticeably change, but her displeasure was immense, as though it radiated off of her. “We do not have years.”

“No,” Mydeimos agreed, setting the tablet down. “We don’t. But there is an alternative.”

Aglaea tilted her head. “Which is?”

“We make the gravity ourselves.”

For the first time since Phainon had met him, Mydeimos grinned. It was so unexpected that Phainon briefly forgot to be subtle about watching. Perhaps Phainon had never imagined that the man was capable of looking pleased about anything. 

“Centrifuge?” Phainon asked.

“Centrifuge,” Mydeimos repeated.

Aglaea went silent for a moment. “And this would provide sufficient gravity for the equipment?”

Mydeimos nodded. “For the equipment, yes. For the astronauts, too, assuming they’d like to remain attached to the floor.”

Phainon drifted through the corridor, one hand catching a railing to correct his course. He still hadn’t grown fully accustomed to the feeling of weightlessness. Every movement carried him farther than intended.

He pushed himself into the next area and glanced toward an observation window, where the massive silhouette of the alien ship was visible. It dwarfed the Flame Reaver, an impossible structure otherwise suspended in blackness.

Had Aglaea accounted for this, in all her calculations for the mission? Everything still felt foggy when he thought back to it.

He stared a few moments longer than he intended to before moving on.

The ship’s control room was another thing he was still getting used to. He caught the edge of a console and manoeuvred himself toward the central controls, searching for the centrifuge controls. Either they knew to leave the thing on baby mode, or they'd given him a crash course before they left, because locating and pulling the lever came easily.

The gravity did not come as easily. It took some time. The crew compartment of the shift drifted away from the engine, using unspooled cables to stay tethered. Then the ship began turning, allowing Phainon to watch stars slide across the windows. The two sections swung around their shared center as the rotation gradually picked up speed, pulling the crew compartment outward.

It was strange to feel faint pressure return to his body, increasing the more the floor became down again. Soon his feet touched it, and he stood there, cautiously testing his weight. He took one cautious step for mankind, and then another.

He may also have tripped and fallen on his rear for mankind. At least it meant the gravity was working.

The intercom crackled overhead. “Centrifuge rotation has reached operational parameters. Laboratory equipment is now accessible.”

Phainon pushed himself upright, adjusting his glasses with a sigh. He glanced towards the laboratory, remembering the silver cylinder sitting on the examination table. The trashcan. More importantly, the impossible Xenonite trashcan. The silver cylinder sat exactly where he'd left it, innocuous and mostly cylindrical beneath the harsh laboratory lights. Its surface reflected the room around it with unsettling clarity. “All right,” he whispered. “Let’s see what you are.”

He began with the obvious. He ran a gloved finger along the seam where the lid appeared to meet the body. He fetched a small toolkit. He tried a pair of clamps.

Nothing. The artifact remained completely unmoved, possessing a personal vendetta against his progress. Phainon stared at it. The trashcan artifact stared back silently.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

It continued not looking at him. He picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, though not impossibly so. He rotated it experimentally in his hands, searching for some sort of locking mechanism.

At some point, Phainon found himself crouched on the floor, one hand gripping the cylinder while the other held a screwdriver at an angle that would have made any self-respecting engineer deeply concerned. “Why,” he demanded of the universe, should it choose to listen, “is a trashcan harder to open than a containment chamber?” The artifact, predictably, offered no response.

“Would you like me to search the archives for an answer?”

“No, Cyrene.”

“Acknowledged.”

Phainon checked the cylinder with the spectrometer again. 

Still Xenon.

He sat back on his heels. Maybe there was a pressure seal. He inspected the surface again, running his fingers along the silver ring circling the cylinder. It was incredibly smooth. 

He frowned. The ring wasn’t perfectly flush. There was the faintest indentation beneath his fingertips. He rotated his hand counter-clockwise, and the ring didn’t move. 

Phainon carefully twisted the ring clock-wise, and it slid off as if there had been nothing holding it down. It only took a fraction of a second, the distinct scent of ammonia, and a blaring alarm for Phainon to realize he had overlooked lab safety. 

He stumbled over to the glove box, quickly shoving the trashcan inside. Hopefully there had not been any toxic chemicals released into the lab. 

Carefully, Phainon slipped his hands into the unwieldy dark blue gloves. Inside the trashcan, there was a small sculpture, with a large sphere connected with a curve to a smaller sphere. Phainon peered deeper into the cylinder, where there seemed to be another sculpture, this time some sort of spider-web-like contraption. He began to pull it out, watching in awe as the web emerged. 

It immediately expanded, popping out with pent-up force, startling Phainon a few steps back. He leaned forward once more, examining the now star shaped tangle of thin rods. Each had a miniscule sphere attached to its end, no larger than a dew-drop. 

At first glance, they all looked identical, although the rods were not arranged symmetrically. One rod had a smaller ring of silver right below the sphere, with odd geometric shapes carved into it. 

Phainon tabled the puzzling contraption for a while, instead opting to try to test the contents of the air of the cylinder — or what was left of it. Unfortunately any pressure and temperature estimates were greatly hindered by the contamination of the spacecraft’s own air. 

It took a few more hours of puzzling it over and carefully setting it beside a lab computer, that Phainon realized what it was. 

Stars. Specifically, a starmap centered on Soteria. 

He quickly compared the structure to his own reference map on the computer, examining the star represented by the silver ring. 

40 Pegana. 

10 light years away from Soteria and 16.33 light years away from Amphoreus. An incredibly long journey to make.

He spent the next hour modifying the map with a metal tag attached to Amphoreus. He added the name both in Okheman and Kremnoan scripts. The alien — because what else could they be — wouldn’t be able to understand it, but it could be useful for future records. 

Throwing the message back was a tense but necessary affair, and it got easier each time. At a certain point, they had realized that he always exited from the airlock, and began aiming the messages directly into it. 

This went on for a few more hours of sample analysis, until the other broke the carefully crafted pattern. 

This time, instead of a small trashcan flung into the airlock, a round mechanism descended towards it from the train-like ship. From one second to the next, before he could fully comprehend what he was seeing, a large tunnel had been constructed between the two. It gleamed black and silver, much like the rest of that ship. 

There was only one path forward now: into the tunnel, towards the unknown. 

Before he knew it, Phainon was back in the space suit, depressurizing the airlock. The door opened into a pitch black tunnel that seemed to reach endlessly forward. 

But it wasn’t endless, he knew that.

Phainon just had to keep moving forward, despite how uncomfortable he still was with the weightlessness of it all. 

Keep moving forward, as the silence engulfed him, clutching onto the uneven walls.

He managed to finally propel himself to the end, the light from his helmet illuminating what looked to be a small window.

Inside it was as dark as the tunnel, and impossibly large. 

The sound of his breath was impossibly loud.

The seconds stretched into minutes.

And suddenly, after a long period of waiting, there was movement up ahead. 

A small creature came into view, its fur glistening with a metallic sheen. 

All Phainon could think of, as he gaped at the creature, was that it held a very strong resemblance to an Amphorean raccoon.