Titans
[32] ATARA

The Stelliferous Era [259:27]

Location: The Hermes Starship

I slide into the pilot’s chair and do a check of all vital systems. Attitude and articulation control. Telecommunications. Data handling. Propulsion subsystems. Navigation and guidance subsystems. Life support. Direst, remote and active sensing instruments.

It’s all green, all good-to-go. If what Cal told us is true, and if he can figure out what to do, we can go home.

Home. I don’t even know what the word means.

I’m about to give Cal a thumbs-up when my eyes pass over the fuel gage.

“How long until you’re ready for us to depart, Cal?” I sling a look at him over my shoulder.

He frowns, thinking. “I still have to sort through the rest of the files I found. There’s all sorts of things to read through – maps, safety precautions, flight paths. It could take days.”

I flick a switch, turning off autopilot. “Get the others. Make sure they’re seated. We need to land.”

Cal looks concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“The fuel is too low. We’ve wasted it keeping a stable orbit around this planet. If we continue at the rate we’re going, I doubt we’ll have enough to get back.”

He nods and hurries from the room. I look over the controls again and my nightmare returns, bursting into my mind like a supernova. Suddenly, the dash sparks and the ship swerves; everything blurs, becomes flashing red lights and loud beeping. I blink once and the illusion disappears.

I fist my hands in my lap, afraid to touch anything. Afraid to think anything.

Cal returns with the others. I wait for everyone to strap in before taking control of the steering.

“Where are we going to land? It’s all broken up, isn’t it?” Merc’s voice. It doesn’t sound quite like it usually does. The edges of his words are cleaner, sharper. The sound is too present, too aware. I suppose that’s what happens when reality slaps you in the face.

“Not all of it. There are some clear zones. We’ll have to be on constant alert though. Who knows when the planet could be hit by another wave.”

I start the descent. Everyone is quiet. Halfway in, Lilith says, “I feel strange.”

No one says anything. We know the feeling all too well: an itching at the back of the mind, like some other you is trying to get out. Ever since Cal dropped the curtains on our situation yesterday, nothing feels the same. Especially ourselves. I’m growing more and more convinced that something isn’t right with me – that some vital part of my being has been altered, changed, transmuted. On the surface, I feel ordinary. I feel like Atara, girl of fear, girl of secrets. Somehow I know this is how I’ve always been. Even before. But deep down, everything is impossibly alien, like my inner-workings are not home-grown but made of interstellar parts.

We dip further into the atmosphere. The ship shakes, grumbles. Steadily, steadily, I lower us down.

This is the truth: we are alone. Not separated from home by space or time, but by something more impossible than either – existence. The documents called it a topological change. Cal explained it as a tear in space-time, a break in the physics of the universe. He told us, “There was a supernova so great that it created a point of infinite density – so infinite, in fact, that it tore a hole in space-time.”

But really, what it came down to was a single word.

Portal.

We are not home.

We are in another universe altogether.