“Another day at work, huh? I’m off to sleep, Enforcer Malketh.”

  Sean nodded at the Gaian Knight standing guard on the walls of the Palace and took his place. There to detect people sneaking out as much as sneaking in. It had been a few decades of work, but he’d been promoted to a full Enforcer. So he had duties now to guard the walls on occasions like this and help the others if there was a criminal case that they were struggling to solve with the ‘rogue’ Immortals out there living their lives on Gaia.

  Sean wasn’t a Knight, and probably wouldn’t ever be. In order to join, you had to swear to a set of ideals and follow them unflinchingly without any room for leeway. Sean didn’t think he’d be able to live that way. It was a matter of honor, and people who broke their codes or vows were shunned and stripped of their Knighthood. And barred from ever becoming a Knight again.

  Most of the Enforcers who acted as government workers and a police force both for the Palace were Knights, but it wasn’t required. It was only so common because Knights were respected in general by the other Immortals and they were driven to help due to their sworn ideals.

  With such a small organization, Sean was rising the ranks quickly just by paying attention and putting some effort into his work. In a few short years he was sure he’d be high enough in the organization that Peter Rose would give him some further instructions.

  Sean stood and patrolled the outer walls of the Palace in the darkness of the wild countryside. Just like Immortus Station, it was isolated from the hustle and bustle of the mortals of the universe. This whole area was wooded forest and there was no one living here for miles except for the animals.

  “Hey. Malketh right?” A female voice suddenly said from next to him, “You’re the new Enforcer?”

  Sean turned and his eyes widened as he saw Emily standing there leaning casually against a nearby wall staring at him. She looked the same as she ever had physically. But somehow she was so different. Not as nervous, depressed. There was a faint hint of sadness in her eyes, but she otherwise looked fairly happy and content.

  “Yep. That’s me…” Sean said as his mind started racing.

  “I know, genemother, right?” Emily said as she gestured towards herself, “Never thought people would treat me this way. I’m a person just like anyone else, no need to be so tense. I’m not going to bite you.”

  Sean shook his head and nodded.

  “Huh,” Emily said slowly as he didn’t say anything in reply, “You’re different. All the others insisted that of course I deserve special treatment because of who I am. When I did to this for their first time, you know. No comment?”

  “No comment,” Sean said before opening and closing his mouth for a moment. Should he tell her about the future? About what might happen? That must be something that could change the future… But what if it didn’t work? Emily watched him curiously and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say.

  Sean decided to go for it. The worst case she just thought he was crazy.

  “I’m from the future,” he said in a rush, “I have so much to tell you about what happened then, the things you can change…”

  “Okay,” Emily said and she frowned slightly as she nodded at him.

  Sean explained to her everything he could remember about the future from the top to the bottom and she frowned and nodded as he spoke. Looking serious but focused.

  After Sean finished saying everything Emily stood there nodding for a few seconds even as Sean stopped talking. Her eyes glazed over for a moment before looking back at him.

  “That sounds pretty involved. Best of luck for your movie. Make sure to get me tickets when you figure it out.”

  “What? Movie? No, it’s really… I’m from the future and…”

  Emily started nodding again as he spoke as she focused and as soon as he cut himself off her eyes glazed over again.

  “Right,” she said, “You are different. Although I do enjoy a good Science fiction film, it’ll be interesting seeing one with me as the protagonist. Usually I get more of the savior and mentor roles swooping in to save the day at the last moment.”

  Sean tried again and again to explain that he was the future in as many ways as he could. But while Emily heard every word he said, she just couldn’t interpret it correctly or believe that he was talking about something real.

  It was supremely frustrating.

  “It’s been good talking with you, Malketh,” Emily said eventually after Sean had largely given up on convincing her, “Good for you being so passionate about making your movie. Maybe I’ll go see it when it’s done. See you around.”

  Emily turned and walked away into the darkness and Sean looked after long after she’d left.

  The next day, Sean discovered much to his confusion that the strange disbelief towards his words did not extend to anyone else but Emily. He told one of his acquaintances in the Palace all about it with deadly seriousness. And while they certainly thought that he was crazy and incorrect, they fully understood that Sean was serious about his claims and the exact content of what he’d told him.

  He actually was forced to take a short vacation after the person ratted out his strange behavior to the rest of the Enforcers. None of the Enforcers had any trouble remembering Sean’s claims either, although most seemed to shrug it off as stress of some sort making him act strange.

  For years afterwards the Enforcers joked about him as a ‘time traveler’ and asked him to predict small things that might happen to him. Something that Sean obviously was unable to do and humiliated him further.

  It got to the point that captain Entiru had stepped in and stopped it. Entiru had spoken to Sean a few times, but they didn’t interact too often even though Sean was in the Enforcers. Entiru was someone else from the future, but Sean hadn’t exactly grown too close to him. So while it was a bit strange to think about sometimes, Sean didn’t feel compelled to talk or become friends with the man or do anything out of his way from what he’d normally act regarding Entiru.

  “So you’ve met the genemother, have you?” one of the Enforcers joked as they were about to change shifts, “You should go to her museum. It’s quite the wonder of Gaia.”

  “A museum?” Sean asked in surprise, “What do you mean?”

  The Enforcer snorted and smirked slightly, “Man, you really don’t know anything do you Malketh. Someone really must have screwed up your education programs growing up. Yeah. The Museum of Renewal. It’s about a thirty minute flight from here. The genemother builds and operates the exhibits. Acts as a tour guide too sometimes, I’ve heard. There’s a worldwide lottery and scholarship that decides who can go since otherwise only the ultra wealthy would be able to get in. You can reserve a spot too. Might take a while, but you can go. It’s in its own isolated area away from the hubbub so it’s peaceful and you don’t have to deal with road noise or getting interrupted by anything like most other museums are. At least it isn’t flooded with mortals like most of the good places are these days…”

  Sean frowned, “Thanks. Maybe I’ll go,” he said.

  — — —

  Sean stood at the entrance to the Museum of Renewal. He hadn’t been sure what to expect initially before he’d arrived, but he was certainly impressed. The Museum of Renewal wasn’t just one thing, but a whole campus of buildings in its own space. Sean could see walkways with glass walls criss crossing between all the different buildings. The entrance formed an archway that was made of stone, but had been carved as if it was a series of looping and twisting braids swooping over the pair of open double doors. Various images of various animals and assortments objects were brightly painted and covered the outsides of the whole buildings like one massive canvas and covering every available surface. Sean could clearly see the chaos and multitude of different artists and styles that were used for each individual object as they were added to the larger buildings. Yet… All of it somehow still came together as one canvas, all the scattered objects and animals forming one cohesive whole.

  Sean went inside and saw the great hall around him. There were people milling around and chatting as they explored, but the place was empty enough that the noise wasn’t deafening or the place so busy that it was uncomfortable.

  The swooping ceilings went all up to the roof of the building ten floors above. Walkways lined the edges of the great hall and looked down onto the floor below. On the floor was a series of three foot by three foot stone tiles with markings on each of them. The markings were worn down and smoothed, likely from all the feet that had walked over them in these last few millennia. Sean squatted down and brushed his hands over the tile right by the entrance and inspected it.

  A series of five hand prints set lightly into the stone, and there near the bottom of the tile was a date. The numbers were worn, and Sean had to squint to try to read them as they were fuzzed and blurred from erosion.

  “337 A.R.”

  Sean looked up and saw a young man who couldn’t have been older than sixteen standing there. He was wearing the bright leaf green museum staff uniform and looking down to where Sean was brushing the tile beneath him lightly with his fingers.

  “That’s the date,” the boy continued, “The handprints are of the first generation of curators for the museum. A.R. After Renewal. Renewal of humanity as a species after the first human Luna Stenson was born from the very first incubation machine.”

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  Sean looked down at the worn barely visible handprints in the stone. They were small. Children’s handprints, “These are children’s handprints,” Sean asked as he stood to his feet, “Why?”

  “Many of us were raised here, this is our home,” the boy said, “The family business. I’m surprised you don’t know that already honestly. Our family is a bit famous… All of our handprints go into the great hall.”

  “Oh? What family is that?” Sean asked curiously, “To maintain it for so long, that’s quite something to keep going…”

  “We’re the Stensons,” the boy said proudly, “Direct children of the Genemother herself! Although she’s not one for titles. Mom has been running this museum ever since 300 A.R. Nearly fifteen hundred years now. Would you like to see my handprints? I had mine imprinted when I was nine. Every curator of the museum raised here has their hands put here on the floor of the main hall. The imprints and tiles from the long term curators not from our family covers the floors of the rest of this whole museum. But only the direct family gets to go in the great hall.”

  “Sure, show me your handprint. I had lost track of the time. Can’t believe it’s already passed 1800 A.R. already. Although don’t you have better things to do?” Sean asked skeptically, “On the job and all?”

  “Ah, I almost forgot,” the boy said and looked slightly embarrassed, “You’re Malketh Gaiason, the Immortal, right? I’ll be your personal tour guide for your visit. Or if you’d like you can wait a few hours for the larger tour group. We have about three or four a day and you’ve just missed the last one that left. Being your tour guide is my job right now.”

  “Oh, that’s me,” Sean said in surprise, “Nice to meet you…”

  “Michael,” the boy said, “Michael Stenson. Mom wasn’t feeling very creative when she named me.”

  “And by mom, you mean…”

  “The Genemother,” Michael finished, “She’s always raised a family ever since the beginning of Gaia. Even if it was only a single kid or many.”

  “And how many children does she have right now?”

  “Right now? Oh, there’s a lot of us right now,” Michael said as he started walking and Sean followed him, “Three that are around my age. Another two that are under five. Mom has plenty of nurses to help out with them, which is good. Eight more of my siblings are in their twenties or thirties and chose to stick around to help at the museum. And that’s not even counting the older ones or all the distant cousins or aunts and uncles from all the other Stensons over Gaian history.”

  “And your older siblings?” Sean asked as they kept walking across the great hall as the crowds milled around and moved through the museum, “What did they choose to do if not work here at the museum?”

  “All sorts of things,” Michael said, “Mom makes sure that we’re educated, and we did all grow up in a museum… It’s not like a rule or anything that we have to stay. But there’s plenty of different jobs here, we’re not all tour guides. So usually there’s a job for everyone that they would like.”

  They stopped in front of a tile next to the large stairway at the back of the hall leading up to the next floor of the museum.

  “This is my tile and handprint,” Michael said and pointed to the handprint farthest to the left.

  There were three handprints of various sizes at the top of the tile and at the bottom the date carved in large bold letters. 3792 A.R.

  “How does anyone remember which tile goes for who?” Sean asked after a moment.

  “Our records tell us. Each tile is made in batches of two. There’s a whole wing of the museum all about us with the second tile and a full explanation with names and information about the person who made it. Although before we die it’s pretty much only our names and a picture of us making the handprints during the ceremony…”

  “Interesting,” Sean said as he looked between Michael and the tile for a moment. He felt the weight of history for a moment as he glanced around the great hall and saw the worn handprints and carved dates covering the space, “That’s really quite something. So, Michael. What do you suggest I see first? I doubt I’d be able to see this whole place in a day.”

  Michael straightened up and became much more formal all of a sudden, “You’ve been given an unlimited pass for your visit for the next year, sir. Perks of being an Immortal. My sister will take my place and we’ll switch off guiding you while you’re here. Just ask for Reese if I’m not around.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow at the new information. Huh, that was convenient. He should really start reading the fine print on these things.

  “Great,” Sean said, “So, Michael. What do you think we should look at first? I’m coming in blind to this, thought I’d explore as I go. Any suggestions?”

  “Well, what interests you? This building is mostly history. The first two floors are for old Earth history, and the next three for general Gaian history. There’s another whole building for various Immortals and what they did, including Mom and the other nine Founders. That one also has the different fables and legends from early Gaia and that Mom told to the earliest people. We’ve got the science building with demonstrations and little exhibits you can play with to demonstrate some things with physics… There’s… Actually it would be easier to just show you the map. There’s over fifteen buildings, we can plan the route together. You can do them in any order.”

  Sean was handed a detailed map with all the various exhibits and themes. With at least five floors per building and such a large campus, there was a lot to consider as he looked it over. His eyes snagged at one particular label.

  “Living exhibits?” he asked curiously, “What is this?”

  “Oh, yes,” Michael said, “We’ve got animals and fish in there. It’s been mom’s pet project for the last thousand years or so. She’s been manipulating the genetics of Gaian animals to make them closer to their Earth counterparts. So turning the Ragtuls into wolves and the Inturuls into bats for example. Those are Earth animals. All those Earth creatures all look so strange, it’s really something to see. Zoos and aquariums all over the world fill their Earth exhibits from the Earth creatures that we make from our breeding programs. I’m studying there to be a caretaker in the future hopefully.”

  “Let’s go there first,” Sean said, intrigued. When he had been observing Emily on Earth in ghostly form, she’d only ever been to the zoo twice in her whole life during a family vacation. Otherwise, Emily had lived in a relatively urban zone that had minimal wildlife. Sean hadn’t been able to see a great selection of what a normal selection of Earth Life should be.

  Michael nodded and started leading Sean to walk outside and through some gravel paths to another building. The outside was painted an alternating green and blue wavy pattern and Sean could see that the animals painted on these buildings looked much different than the ones on the main one. They all followed the same theme and after a moment Sean vaguely recognized a few of them as Earth animals that he had seen watching over the younger Emily’s shoulder back on Earth.

  They went inside and Michael started leading Sean through from enclosure to enclosure containing all sorts of animals of all sorts. Each exhibit had large practically invisible shields that kept the animals inside while also providing an almost completely clear view inside.

  Wolves, bears, deer, fish of all kinds, sharks, something called a manta ray, every earth animal that Sean knew about and a few that he didn’t was in this place. The building was quite large, as the bear enclosure and several other much larger animals needed a lot of space to roam inside.

  There were little stands that had little paragraphs explaining what the animals were and some facts about them, as well as the A.R. date that Emily had finished creating their genomes and started breeding them.

  Michael was a well of information, seeming excited as he explained all about the animals and shared stories about them. A few of the animals even came up to the glass and stared at Michael specifically when he walked by. He fed them sometimes, Michael explained so they had learned to pay attention whenever he walked by.

  They spent a few hours wandering the floors of the living exhibit building until there was only one section left.

  “The insect exhibit?” Sean asked, “Why is the… ‘ant’ feeding chamber marked as on the opposite side of the floor as the main colony? And why are there so many of the feeding chambers?”

  “I won’t ruin the surprise,” Michael said knowingly, having relaxed after showing Sean around for so long even if Michael looked a bit tired by now, “You’ll see.”

  “Why do the insects get a whole floor to themselves?” Sean asked, “Aren’t the Earth ones rather small? I didn’t think there were any ones that got as large as that bear or wolf for example that they would need such a large enclosure…”

  Michael gave Sean a strange look, “Earth insect equivalents don’t get that big on Gaia either. Luckily. Imagine one getting as big as a wolf, haha. That’d be a horror show.”

  Sean thought to the endless hordes of the Endless Flesh. Giants standing over fully grown trees, mantids as tall as a man, so many bodies that they formed a literal wall after they were killed…

  “Yeah, a real horror show,” Sean agreed.

  “But to your question, mom’s created many many varieties of the insects over the years. Ones that she remembered that lived on Earth, or as close as she can get her creations to them. So while each of their exhibits doesn’t need much space, it has the most species within it by far compared to any of the other sections. That’s why it gets a whole floor to itself. The real centerpiece is the ant colony. We’ll be coming up to it soon.”

  The two of them finished walking up the stairs and there were a few other tourists standing around and inspected the little boxes in the walls containing each of the insects into their exhibits. They ranged in size, some were barely a square foot where they were slightly inset into the wall while others were much larger.

  Sean immediately noticed the network of clear tubes crossing the whole area. On the ceilings, snaking down a wall to plunge into a hole in the floor, joints, turns, and splits. There was a whole network of the clear tubes visible running down the whole set of exhibits. Inside were lines of little reddish insects carrying little chunks of leaf in their mouths.

  Sean moved closer and watched the line of what must be ants walking up the sloping clear pipe that sank into the floor about ten feet away from where he stood.

  He watched them move for a few moments back and forth.

  “Mom calls it a supercolony,” Michael said after a few moments, “All of the ants combined into one group and worked together. Millions of them. The nest is on one side and each of these tubes goes to its own feeding chamber filled with leaves and other things that they eat. They run back and forth bringing food from the feeding chambers back to the nest.”

  “Fascinating…” Sean said as he watched the ants move back and forth down the tubes. He started following the tube on the ceiling and ignoring the other smaller exhibits in the walls for now. Michael trailed behind as Sean led the way. Finally they reached the end and a large lit up box. It was filled with dirt about waist height. In the center was a large mound several feet high that the ants were continuously boiling in and out of the structure. Sean watched it for a moment in interest.

  “Look at this Malketh,” Michael said as he picked up and activated a device almost like a datapad attached to a heavy cable to the little stand that it had been sitting in.

  Michael tilted the screen to show Sean and passed it over to him. It was like all the dirt in the exhibit had disappeared all at once, only leaving the ants tunnels and little chambers behind.

  “Scans are updated every few weeks,” Michael said, “Just tap on the screen on any of the chambers. They are all specialized. Food storage, cultivating of fungus for food, nursing chambers for their young, chamber for the queen… You name it. Individually they’re incredibly dumb, but together they come together and it’s all so organized.”

  “Yes,” Sean said as he moved the datapad to inspect different parts of the structure. It almost acted like a scanner, letting him see through to the ant nest through the dirt. “Amazing how complicated what they built is…”

  — — —

  “Well thank you, Michael. Long day for you helping me out. Sorry I took so long. We’re right at the edge of closing time.”

  “No, not at all,” Michael said with what seemed a slightly sore throat, “Have a good day. Until next time, Malketh.”

  “Until next time,” Sean agreed, “Michael Stenson.”

  Sean took one last lingering look back at the main hall filled with imprints of hands. Imprints of all of Emily’s adopted children throughout the years. Then he turned back and left the museum for the night.