For three months, no Greathing alarms rang. The school kids were heads down in their classwork. Thousands of pages read, hundreds written. Lecture after lecture, lab after lab. The 3-4s practiced, studied, and were tested on every subject known to man. The first years had it easiest. Their work was the most general and least intensive, and still, Auberje thought, his brain hurt. Helos, not too far away in the same lab rubbed his temples while staring at the thick physics book open in front of him, like a tome of ancient magic, the boy looked like he might cry. Auberje felt the same way. They were learning how dampening fields worked, and the higher-level math involved was swimming on the page.

  “Enough self-study,” Professor Hungola said suddenly, “Riley please explain Margerie Albex’s 4th Law of Expanded Travel.”

  Riley stood, voice soft, and gave a passable explanation.

  “Close enough,” Dr. Hungola said nodding, “Helos, what did she miss?”

  Helos stood, glancing first at Riley then at Auberje, “Dr. Albex also postulated that dampening fields were a swerve in spacetime. That the field is actually a curving of space around the bend that would allow instantaneous travel. Imagine taking the paper and bending it in half and then twisting it into a spiral. The connection is no longer direct, one-to-one. This is what makes a dampening field work. The swerve, twist or spiral introduced.”

  “Correct, good work Helos. Does that mean you cannot jump out of a dampening field, Auberje?'' Dr. Hungola turned his dark blue eyes to Auberje. The kids said Hungola looked like a prophet of some ancient religion. At this moment, Auberje agreed readily.

  “No, you can theoretically still jump, but if your drive does not account correctly for the twist and swerve, you will be sent into… well we don’t exactly know but we consider it the interstitial space between here and there.”

  “Correct as well. What are the consequences of being sent to the interstitial space?” He asked the class at large.

  One of the 3-4s raised her hand, Emily Dancer, Auberje noted, “Dr. no one quite knows, but one consequence is the ships don’t return.”

  “And again, you are correct, class. We don’t truthfully know, as we have never received any data from that ‘space’ between here and there but we do know it doesn’t allow travel back to our plane of existence if you will,” he went on, but Auberje, and Helos, considered the problem. Their minds running through scenarios separately but in parallel. Like an engine's twin pistons, they did the same work but separately and without communication to one another. Neither of them made new ground, but both considered the issue worthy of continued thought.

  Later, in the first year’s history of humanity class, Lewis Nielsen, dressed in the uniform of millennia of history professors, a tweed jacket with leather elbow pads, and a rumpled pair of ink-stained pants, shocked the class with talk of aliens.

  “It was widely thought that humanity would find other intelligent species when we sailed out into the greater galaxy from our solar system. Now, even with near instantaneous, limitless travel, we still have yet to find life more advanced than eukaryotic organisms. This would have baffled our older civilizations but is now taken for granted by our current society. Yet, still, the impact of these unfound Others haunts our political, cultural, and historical understanding of man. Can you tell me how, Auberje?” He picked up on Auberje’s distraction. The boy was smiling coyly at Riley who was surreptitiously holding his hand under the table. Nielsen held back a sigh of exasperation. He was used to that type of behavior in the older years, where hormones ran rampant. Damn kids, he thought, they all are growing up faster than ever.

  “I believe it is because we still see parties like the NeoXenoists and the Defense League who build their bases of power around the ever-present threat of outside life,” Auberje answered without a pause.

  “Correct,” Nielsen's eyes narrowed at the boy. Boring into him, he asked a follow-up, “Why do you think we have never found another intelligent species, Auberje?”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  For a brief moment, Auberje thought of the events on the Den Mother. He shivered, “I am not sure, professor, perhaps because the universe is so large, and we have largely stopped our travel out into the far reaches of the Milky Way due to the incredible expenditure of energy required to do so and required to come back. Perhaps we are the first of the intelligent races. It is a perplexing idea. Maybe the ancient Christians had it right, sir.”

  Nielsen gave him a sharp look, “Expand.” That was his catchphrase.

  Auberje shrugged, “Maybe we are created in the image of the Creator and no other intelligent species exist because of that. Even with all our technological advances, we are no closer to understanding how we exist than our ancestors on Earth were,” his small shoulders went up and down again in exaggerated ignorance.

  “Thank you, Auberje, what an excellent conjecture,” Nielsen replied sardonically. He took a pipe out from his jacket pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed on it thoughtfully, replacing it momentarily in the front right flap of his fine wool jacket, “It’s more than just the cults, the so-called Defense League, and, as your esteemed colleague Auberje pointed out, a possible religi-philosophical issue. A lack of other life forms has ultimately shaped every aspect of human advancement across the stars. We inhabit ten thousand world,s more or less. At one point humans were thought to encompass 50,000. We have abandoned many of our far-flung homes. Here and there, on the edge of civilization, a small group owns a planet and lives largely free of other human interference. Yet, even that is largely discouraged ever since the Fringe Wars of 80 and 89. Humanity is concentrated in the Central Belt, our small corner of an incredibly vast and scarily empty galaxy. Consider the first paragraph on page 235 please.”

  And on and on and on it went until 91 days, 7 minutes after Auberje and Marcus returned from the last Greathing.

  “Attention all students, all students. You are to stop what you are doing and meet in the Convocation Theater immediately,” the headmistress’s voice cut sharply through the heart of the lecture Dr. Greene was giving on the cardio-vascular system.

  The headmistress reported her command, “Attention all students, all students. You are to stop what you are doing and meet in the Convocation Theater immediately.”

  Dr. Greene shut his book with one hand, motioning with the other for the class to exit. Filing out with the rest of the first years, Auberje exchanged concerned looks with Riley.

  Adam Klezer, a 3-4 came up beside them as they walked three abreast through the hallway toward the amphitheater, “any idea why we are all assembling Auberje?”

  “None, you?” Auberje replied, taking Riley’s small hand and squeezing it.

  “Not a clue. Hopefully, it's a Greathing!” The boy sounded excited at the prospect. Inwardly, Auberje agreed with Adam. Hopefully, it was a Greathing. He was getting tired of the constant schooling. It was nearly 5 months since he had first set foot here at the Academy. He, like many of the others, was getting stir-crazy.

  Auberje knew Marcus was even more tense. The older boy had come to Auberje a few days before confessing his need to get the 3-4s back in action. Auberje had agreed, asking if this gap in time between Greathings was standard.

  “Not at all, farthest thing from it, Auberje,” Marcus had replied, looking concerned. Auberje had queried the headmistress, but she hadn’t responded to his questions. Dodging them artfully at times, ignoring them outright at others.

  Auberje sighed expressively. Riley squeezed his hand, looking upward at him, their minute height difference playing to her advantage. “It’s probably nothing important,” Riley reassured the two boys, “maybe she’s giving us the week off? The older students say we are overdue a semester break.”

  Her slight voice tilted and careened off the metal walls of the Star Academy hallway. Auberje grunted as Adam presented ever more far-fetched explanations of what the assembly could be about. As they approached, even Auberje’s usually stoic mind swam with anxiety-ridden possibilities. He mentally thanked the other boy for stoking the flames of his mind’s anxious forges.

  Five minutes later, they sat in the last row of the theater. Plush seats, high-backed and mostly occupied, filled a massive auditorium deep inside the academy asteroid. Here and there, a teacher waved latecomers into open seats, filling in each row. The hall could seat 5000 or more, but it would still be relatively tightly packed if every student from every class and squadron were present.

  General Flitzsumon stood on the podium, tapping the air in front of her, testing the ambient acoustics. They were perfect, as they always were. The days of using actual microphones in front of the speaker's mouth were long gone. Now the thousands of tiny sensors throughout the room picked up what the speaker was saying and amplified them to a conversational level or higher to each listener.

  “Hello students, thank you for coming so swiftly. We have an announcement we felt must be made in person. Yes, yes, stragglers please sit down as you can. We will get started in just a moment,” the general, the professor in charge of Warcraft and Strategy was dressed in her stately blue and white uniform. No one was quite sure where she had served before Star Academy, but everyone who took her classes knew she was a badass. Or so Auberje had heard. His class on Warcraft was being taught by a rather unsophisticated AI of General Marsha Flitzsumon.

  He fidgeted, his feet bouncing up and down, mind racing still through myriad scenarios, each twisting and writhing more complicated and serpentine through the warrens of his mind. He shrugged mentally, then physically, rolling his shoulders and letting all the doubts go away. He was about to find out what the announcement contained. There was no reason to continue to be heightened by it. He saw a Riley nearby and smiled at her across a few students. She shifted so she could see him more clearly, dazzling him with a smile like a steady hand on his.

  Around them, 3-4s were seated, talking in furtive whispers or quietly awaiting the news. He saw his friends and family, as he thought of many of them, and felt again that all would be right.

  Then the news came, and he felt the shattering of thoughts and dreams. The weight of change.