In the moment, it all seemed quite straight forward what happened, it all seemed to make sense to me. Now though, suspended weightless in my sleeping pod, I’m not so sure what even did happen, much less how it happened. Usually, live overview of past decision trees is a pointless exercise, outside of general self-reflection it serves little other function. The problem before me now is that I can’t make sense of them. Normally, for every conscious action that I make, a static set of relevant current environmental parameters and past experiences are compiled, saved, and catalogued; separate from what I would more directly refer to as my memory, the direct sensory recollection of what I perceived to have happened. These two systems do not contradict each other, when I decide to act, I always perceive the action happening directly after. However, the decision trees during the entire proceedings after entering the orbit of the alien structure are not congruent with my decision-making processes. Typically, given the saved dataset, I can determine a probability field for the decisions I could have made. In these cases though, the final decisions reached have such a low probability of being reached that I am having trouble understanding why they were reached at all, which would imply that there was pertinent data that was not recorded, but I’m not sure how that could happen either.

  After quite a long while of reflection I conclude that there must have been outside interference from the alien structure, however unsettling that may be. For millennia, creatives have attributed some of their greatest ideas to outside forces, that the ideas simply sprang into existence of their own fruition, independent of their host. The Muse, as it is often referred to, seems to have paid me a visit. Whether this Muse is an emergent property of the alien structure or maybe the inspiration for the structure’s creation is up in the air.

  ‘I think I’m alright, I just needed a minute…’ I comm to the group. They’ve been surprisingly accommodating given the circumstances. ‘I don’t think that we have to worry about the corps chasing us anymore. The idea was that if they caught me, they’d stop chasing me and by extension, us,’ I finish.

  ‘We need to discuss our plans moving forward,’ Gabriel comms.

  This doesn’t come as a great surprise, a sort of regrouping was bound to happen after seeing something like that, especially after some newfound hope of freedom. I signal for the suspension field to turn off and the sleeping pod to open. I slowly drift towards the floor of the pod and feel the weight of my body fall upon my feet and the weight of the unknown on my shoulders, my thoughts still swirling around the strange events at the alien structure. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so untethered from myself before. Not just in the sense of what happened—splitting, doubling, whatever it was—but in how small I feel now compared to the… the thing I contacted.

  The others are waiting in the common area. I can already hear Gabriel’s voice, low and steady, as he talks to Juno and Liam. They’ve been restless since we left Eiso, which makes sense. I would be too if I’d just watched someone duplicate themselves. I doubt any of them got much sleep.

  As I walk down the staircase, they all turn to look up me. I don’t miss the mix of curiosity, suspicion, and exhaustion on their faces. I can’t blame them. I don’t look any different, but I know that to them, I must feel… wrong. Maybe I am.

  Gabriel cuts right to it, arms crossed as he leans against the edge of the table. “Alright, Evelyn. You’re not one for debriefs, but we need to figure out what’s next. I don’t know what happened at that structure, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to. But we can’t just keep stumbling into things blind. We need to talk.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I nod and take a seat, letting the weight of his words settle before I respond. “You’re right. We do need to talk. But I can’t promise I have all the answers.” I pause, looking at each of them in turn. “What happened back there… it’s hard to explain. I’m not even sure how much of it was real.”

  “That’s not exactly reassuring,” Cicero mutters, but his tone lacks its usual bite. He looks more curious than angry.

  “When I stepped onto that structure—when I touched it—I was pulled out of myself. Completely. And what I saw; what I felt…” I trail off, trying to find the right words. How do you explain something that transcends everything you’ve ever known? “I saw something beyond us. Beyond me. A higher… level of reality. I don’t know what else to call it. And I think it was aware of me.”

  Juno leans forward; her brows furrowed. “Aware of you? Like… it was alive?”

  I hesitate. “Not alive in the way we think of life. More like… a presence, or force of nature. Something vast. It felt like it could see through me, into everything I’ve ever been. And when I interacted with it, I saw things with a different perspective, I can’t exactly recall it now, but I was able to see things in a different way; I don’t know.”

  “And the double?” Gabriel asks, his tone sharp but measured. “It stayed behind. Why?”

  “That wasn’t entirely my decision,” I admit. “It showed me two paths forward, I could decide to stay, and I could decide to leave, it gave me a choice, and it let me choose both, or at least, it felt like a choice. To stay or to go. In the end, when I looked at her, the other me, I knew that it was myself, but she had made the decision to stay. I don’t know what that means yet, or how any of it is possible.

  Silence settles over the room as they process my words. Gabriel is the first to speak again. “So what now? We’ve been playing defense this entire time. Between Rossum, the corps, and whatever this is… we’re constantly reacting, never planning. We can’t keep doing this.”

  I nod again, appreciating his focus. “Agreed. Rossum shouldn’t be an issue anymore—at least for now, and hopefully with Sequel completing their mission of capturing me, they’ll be off our backs too—but you’re right. We need to decide where we’re going and what we’re trying to do. The alien structures, the relics, whatever it was that I felt… they’re all connected.

  “What’s the endgame here, though?” Liam chimes in, his voice calm but laced with skepticism. “What are we even trying to find? What’s the point?”

  I take a deep breath, the enormity of the question settling over me like a weight. “I don’t know,” I admit. “We don’t really have an obligation to do anything, we could just forget that any of this ever happened and try to start over somewhere, or we could try to figure out what just happened and maybe also try to figure out the motive behind Rossum’s interest in us. My guess is they’re interested in that right there,” I say gesturing to the sword relic on Gabriel’s hip.

  “That’d be one a hell of a gamble,” Liam says. “We just got clear of Rossum, if we start digging into things we might end up right back in their crosshairs.”

  “I think it may be wishful thinking that we’re totally free and clear of them, it might do us some good to be proactive in looking into them,” Gabriel says before I can respond. His tone is firm, resolute. “We’ve already crossed the point of no return. If we keep running without a plan or purpose, we’re just waiting for someone to catch us or worse. At least this way, we’re moving forward.”

  The others nod slowly, though I can see the doubt lingering in their expressions. They’re not fully on board yet, and I can’t blame them, it’s a risk for sure.

  “I’ll start working on a plan,” Gabriel continues. “If we’re going to do this, we need to figure out where we’re going next, and who we need to talk to when we get there.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, standing up. “I’ll try to figure out more about them on the digital side of the house, see what I can come up with.”

  Gabriel gives me a curt nod. “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  As the others disperse, I linger for a moment. For the first time in a while, we’re not being chased, and it feels like I’ve got some semblance of a purpose. I can’t shake the feeling that something is waiting for us out there. Something bigger than Rossum, bigger than the corps.

  And I don’t know if we’ll be ready for it.