Chapter 7: Supernova

Elan gives an indifferent grunt, shrugs and, having satisfied his curiosity, turns to leave.

Should he arrive outside unmolested, he will start the long walk back to the ship. At least the scenery is bucolic.

He responds to Samara's series of messages:

<< I M OK>>
<<It is not particularly interesting.>>
<<I scienced a little bit but I'm not sure that it counts because I didn't record the results.>>

One of Rena's favorite sayings had been, "Remember, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." She was much smarter than Elan, so he figured it must be true. He smiles at the memory.

It belatedly occurs to him that he could tell Samara the results, which would constitute recording them, which would then elevate his experiment from "screwing around" to "science."

<<I saw a strange energy field. It reminded me of the hole that Taelor and I climbed down earlier. I threw a pebble into the field to see if either the pebble or the field would react. Hypothesis: something would happen. Findings: nothing happen. Conclusion: hypothesis rejected. I'm headed back.>>

And with that he resumes his evening stroll through the countryside. He keeps an eye open for the drone that was puttering around earlier.

Elan walks back to the ship uninterrupted. The drone is nowhere to be seen and nothing disturbs the serene landscape.
After entering the ship, he starts giving the crew a summary of what he found, when suddenly everything flickers...

Taelor finds herself in the pilot seat. She is dizzy and disoriented. The ship is just powering down, as if it just landed.

Elan opens his eyes, everything is spinning. He's in the cockpit next to Taelor, who looks similarly confused.

Sam is suddenly back in her flight seat.

It is early afternoon, occasional clouds are scattered across the sky, the branches of the few trees that are scattered over the hills gently sway in a slight breeze. The temperature is comfortable and it is quiet outside. Some wildlife noises that the group cannot definitely place are the only sound, except for the rustle of leaves.

Sam notices with delight that the scene is just like in her vision.

"What the-" Elan groans. He his head with one hand and grabs the back of the pilot seat with his other hand so that he doesn't fall over. His head is spinning.

He looks around to see how the others are faring. "Did I just glitch? Or did everyone just glitch?"

A thought occurs to him. He looks down at his hands and then the rest of his body to see if there are any strange energy or radiation fields.

"Taelor, what does the ship's log say? What about the chronometer? If that glitched too, can we compare some star charts to see where we are versus where we should be?"

Another thought occurs to him. "Did we go forward or backward?" he asks.

Using his gecko anchors, Elan keeps one hand on the wall at all times just in case he loses his balance. "I'm going to check the storage hold," he says, slowly making his way to check on the ship's cargo.

Taelor's hands tighten on the controls as panic grips her chest. Then her brain catches up and she sees that they're on the ground, powering down. She relaxes slightly. She blinks, trying to clear the fog in her head. "What the fuck..."

Elan's questions finally start to register. "Hold on," she says. Groggily, she starts pulling up the ship's log. "Hold on!" she snaps as Elan starts cartwheeling into some wild theories again. Even if he'd been right the last time, it was still annoying. "Don't jump to conclusions!" she calls out to him. It feels weird, being the adult. Historically, she'd been the one rushing into things. Funny how things changed.

She turns her attention back to the computer and tries to get some damn answers.

"Who's jumping to conclusions??" Elan bellows across the ship. "I'm just asking questions!

"Look up the definition of 'conclusions' while you're checking things!"

Elan is usually cool and calm in stressful situations, but this out-of-body experience has him questioning his sense of reality.

"Rena!" he calls out, hoping against hope that the scientist has been a stowaway this entire time and might emerge from a cryopod somewhere to tell him what the heck is going on.

"Thermodynamic granddads!" Samara whispers in a kind of giddy awe, further misremembering the concepts that Elan had rattled off previously. She activates her pad's stopwatch function, reasoning that if the ship's logs did not register anything odd about the past while, it would be useful to manually track how long they had until then once again became now.

"This time, we should all go with Elan!" She says happily to Taelor. "I can pack snacks! Elan had suggested foraging in the other now, but that is only because I hadn't yet told him the story of the time I learned that I could undo poisonings... Still haven't actually. Unless there is a different now than either of those nows where I did." Somehow, (quite annoyingly one might say) the young Medic appears largely unphased by the recent happenings.

Taelor checks her computers. It is... Wait!? It is this afternoon. A few hours before now. Well, now is earlier than now. She closes her eyes and shakes her head and checks again. They seem to be "back" at the time of landing.

But she remembers everything between just now and ... now. How is that even possible?

Taelor glares at the chrono, as if it could be made to feel shame for its betrayal. "You fucker..." she mutters.

She sighs, resigned. "Yeah, we should all go," she tells Sam. "We'll need to put our heads together to get out of this bullshit."

Taelor pulls herself out of her seat and steps off the bridge. She heads down the corridor to the storage hold to find Elan. "Congrats, you're right. We're back a few hours ago. Think that ruin you saw will be gone like the underground lab? I suppose we should go check it out." She makes her way to the workshop and starts packing for the trip ahead.

Elan leans his weight against the crates in the hold. At least all their cargo is still there. If he's pleased to have been right, he doesn't look it.

"Of all the ways to make money..." he mutters to himself. He pounds his head lightly against the crates.

"We need a plan and a backup plan," he says, turning around to speak with Taelor.

"If there's another skip, I think we should just bail. I know we sunk all our cred into the cargo..." He pauses to think. "You set aside some money for weapons modifications, yeah? Is any of that left? Could that buy us a load of fuel to get off this rock if we just need to go?"

This, of course, presumes that a future time skip won't drag them back to the surface.

"I know Your Silent Ally told us that the Sisterhood is monitoring things in orbit closely, so attempting to flee the planet might not be the wisest move... But if it comes down to it, we can just outrun them, right?"

He drums his fist on the crate while he thinks.

"Okay, let's go see if anything's different," he says. "Maybe Lola can stay behind to watch over the ship."

He goes to gather Betsy and his things for another walk.

"If the skips are going to happen more than once, we should see what we can learn! We could find out where the Sisterhood is, or go exploring, or, um, some others things! And then do our favourite bits all over again!"

Samara packs the promised snacks with care, knowing that her crewmates will remember said snacks even if they end up becoming uneaten?

Taelor grimaces. "Ain't many favourites so far. I'm not sure there's any to be had on this rock."

She turns to Elan. "If it was just fighters, maybe, but we can't outrun missiles or lasers. We have no clue what the Sisters capabilities are. Chances are, we'd just get shot down again. The Undertow's a good ship, but she is just a freighter."

The pilot shoulders her backpack. "Ready." With that, she heads out the ship's airlock.

As they make their way towards the site that they were going to investigate, Samara occasionally skips ahead to look at various grasses and mushrooms, and sometimes because it was the kind of day that was perfect for skipping.

"What are we going to do with the 'strange energy field'? Throw pebbles like the last time? Or I guess, for the first time again!"

The stone formation and the meadow are the same as when Elan saw them the last time. Whether every leaf rustles the same way, there is no way to tell, but nothing unexpected (from Elans previous experience) happens and the crew arrives at the structure Elan encountered before.
Sam is delighted by the tranquility of the place, but the others feel unease of the unforeseeable time distortions.
The entrance to the structure is in the same state as the last time, just the glyphs on the entrance pulsate lightly in a subtle glow.

ᬑ ᬣ ᭄ ᭊ ᬒ ᬧ ᬞ ᭄ ᬳ ᬧ ᬧ ᬘ ᬂ ᭈ ᬱ ᬳ ᭄ ᭁ ᬧ ᬧ ᭀ ᬮ ᬭ ᬦ ᬤ ᬬ ᬭ ᬶ ᬧ ᬣ ᬬ ᬦ ᬬ ᬣ ᬬ ᬬ

The door is again slightly ajar, from the inside a quiet rustle can be heard.

Taelor can't help but shiver. This whole thing was giving her the heebie-jeebies. Weird aliens, murderous corps, crazy AIs... those things made sense. Time loops, however? That was the stuff of fiction. Until now.

When they approach the bunker, Taelor moves closer to the door and holds her hand out towards the glyphs, checking to see if there's heat radiating from them. She hears the rustling and freezes. Slowly, she turns to her crewmates and brings her finger to her lips, she points at her ear and then to the door.

She looks at Elan and jerks her head towards to the entrance.

Elan follows Taelor's suggestion. He glances at the glyphs, wondering if they're emitting any electromagnetic radiation. What would make them pulse? he wonders.

During his previous (or future) visit here he took some photos of writing on the walls. If those photos are still on his compad then he can compare them to the pulsating glyphs once he's done exploring.

But first things first: investigate the rustle. Elan doesn't remember hearing a rustle the last time he was here. Is he going to stumble upon whoever had disturbed the place shortly before he did? Or is he about to encounter his past/future self?

Keeping Betsy at the low ready, he tries to peek through the door that's ajar. If the space isn't large enough, he'll do his best to open the door quietly. (And, indeed, he does do his best.)

Moments later, Elan finds himself in the familiar twilight of the structure, barely aware of his own entrance. The hall looks the same as the last time, dust particles dancing in the light that falls into the small windows above.
But immediately Elan notices the difference to the previous iteration: a person is standing in front of the center shelf, packing a last item into a bag and then turning towards the far wall, intent to walk away.

Elan, hidden in the shadows, remains unnoticed.

Elan debates his options. He's not going to shoot the figure in the back. Not his style, for starters, but there's still a lingering doubt about whether this is the past or future version of someone he knows.

He's not going to tackle them, that's for sure. Elan has the physique of a cornstalk and would only embarrass himself.

No, probably the best approach is to see if he can be his charismatic self. Maybe he can learn a bit about what's going on.

"Let's talk," he says out loud. He raises his telekinetic shields and stays in the shadows, keeping Betsy at the low ready in case the figure decides to respond with force.

"I've got the door here, and I've got a crew outside, so let's talk this out."

Here's hoping that they speak Mandate, he belatedly thinks to himself.

The agent responds cryptically, maintaining his composure despite being caught in the act. He says, "You've got your door, and I've got my reasons. Let's just say our paths have crossed at an interesting juncture. Perhaps there's more to this encounter than meets the eye."

"Oh! Is it a riddle?" Samara's voice rings brightly from well behind Elan. "If so, could you give me a hint please? I am not good at riddles!" She laughs, remembering having once been told that if riddles required lateral thinking, her approach could only be described as perpendicular. Given that the condition of perpendicularity defined a relationship between two objects, one might forgive Samara for having considered this to be a favorable trait. However, it would seem that it did not lend itself to the solving of riddles.

She continues to speak without coming any closer, the unintentional antithesis of the idiomatic child who should be seen but not heard. "Why? What is interesting about this juncture? And do you mean here, or now? 'Though I guess it's both otherwise this juncture wouldn't be the juncture that we talking about." Samara stops herself before asking whether there were, would be, or might have already been other heres and/or nows to discuss.  She has found that people (i.e., Mother J) did not like it when she sought clarity about heres, whens, or various nows; and she especially hated digging into whys. Come to think of it, she never seemed to mind when she was the one doing the asking... Huh!

The agent, maintaining his calm demeanor, subtly shifts his position, edging towards the back of the room with a casual nonchalance. "Ah, but time is a fickle friend, and our discourse must pause—for now," he says smoothly, his gaze scanning the room. "As for the enigmas that dance upon the edge of understanding, perhaps they will reveal themselves in their own time. Until then, my dear interlocutor, let us part ways."

Taelor listens to the start of the conversation from the doorway, then takes off running when it becomes clear that the stranger is trying to slip away. She bolts around the structure, aiming to cut off the agent's escape route. She was going to get some answers, even if it meant taking them by force.

As Taelor charges around the structure, aiming to intercept the stranger's escape route, the stranger's eyes widen imperceptibly with a hint of surprise. Quickly assessing the situation, they realize that their attempt at a subtle exit has been foiled. With a calm demeanor, they adjust their stance, readying themselves for the confrontation ahead.

Their voice laced with a hint of amusement, the stranger offers a cryptic comment over their shoulder, "Persistence is a virtue, my dear. But remember, not all answers are meant to be found."

"Huh, an archeologist and a philosopher!" Elan says dryly. "What luck.

"As a fellow philosopher, why don't we have a cordial exchange of ideas? Professional discourse. Maybe we'll even find room to collaborate, hmm? Coauthor something for a peer-reviewed journal."

Elan's tone is jesting, but he's trying to defuse the situation and keep it non-confrontational. It's entirely possible that this operative can help them, or vice versa. He's trying to plant the seed to see if it bears fruit.

"I see we have some shared interests," Elan continues. "Let's talk about our paths crossing at this interesting juncture. We're interested in what's in the bag, same as you are. Shall we start there?"

Taelor takes up position in the stranger's intended exit. She hasn't drawn a weapon, but she's in a stance that makes it clear she's ready for a fight if it comes. "Me, I fucking hated philosophy class. Mysteries are only fun if they can be solved."

"Now, you gonna give my friend some answers?" The pilot closes her hands into fists and raises them into a boxer's stance. "Or is talking time over?"

Elan's dry remark elicits a faint smirk from the stranger, who seems momentarily caught off guard by the unexpected turn of events."An archeologist and a philosopher walk into an ancient structure," they muse, their tone tinged with a hint of amusement. "Indeed, what luck."

As Elan extends an invitation for professional discourse, the stranger's expression shifts subtly, their eyes narrowing in contemplation. "A cordial exchange of ideas, you say?" they echo, considering the proposition with measured interest. "Collaboration could indeed prove fruitful, given our intersecting paths."

Turning their attention to Taelor, the stranger's demeanor remains composed, though a flicker of wariness flashes across their features at her confrontational stance. "Ah, a pragmatist among philosophers," they remark, their tone light but tinged with caution. "Mysteries may be intriguing, but sometimes, direct action is the most effective solution."

With a subtle nod, the stranger acknowledges Taelor's readiness for action, though they make no move to escalate the situation further. Instead, they glance towards the bag at their feet, a silent reminder of the contents that have brought them all together. "Before we proceed," they inquire, "perhaps it's wise to clarify our intentions. What is it exactly that you seek?"

"Oh, sure," Elan says airily. "Let's just keep dancing around, circling each other in perpetuity."

Elan doesn't really want to show his cards first, but he's not sure if it matters. Either he can divulge some information and, in the spirit of cooperation, receive some in turn, or he could divulge some information and then shoot the guy. Either approach seems low-risk.

"I've been here before," Elan begins. "But not yet. It was later this afternoon, and - since you were already here - the center shelf was empty. Now I find myself not back where I started, but back before I started. I think you might know something about that, and that what's in the bag is relevant too.

"My approach as a philosopher is that the analysis of questions must precede - but then should also be followed by - the synthesis of answers. A philosophy without clear questions is futile, and without convincing answers it is useless. As such, I'm in the market for both."

The stranger listens intently to Elan's words, their expression unreadable as they absorb the implications of his revelation. As Elan lays out his philosophical perspective, the stranger's gaze flickers with a glimmer of intrigue, though they remain guarded, wary of revealing too much too soon.

"An interesting way to look at things," the stranger remarks, their tone thoughtful. "Questions and answers, the eternal quest for knowledge and understanding. It seems we're standing on the edge of a philosophical journey, with mysteries waiting to be uncovered."

Considering their next move, the stranger acknowledges Elan's insight about the time loop, and the bag's significance. However, they remain cautious, unwilling to disclose too much just yet.

"I've been down this road before," the stranger admits vaguely, their words carrying a weight of experience. "But as you said, understanding the questions is the first step. Maybe together, we can find the answers we seek."

With a nod towards the bag, the stranger silently acknowledges its importance. While open to collaboration, their true intentions remain hidden, hinting at deeper mysteries yet to be uncovered.

"Alright," Elan says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He shoulders Betsy, thinking it will signal a de-escalation of tensions. If the operative wants to get cute then Elan will rely upon his telekinetic tricks.

"If we're going dance all night, one of us is going to have to put their hand on the other person's ass.

"If we're starting with understanding the questions, then let's start with the basics, the ones with unambiguous answers. My name is Elan. What should we call you?

"We're here on our own. Are you here on behalf of someone other than yourself?

"Where are you off to after this?"

A smothered snort of laughter follows Elan's statement about hands on asses; sure that happens sometimes, but that is not generally how Samara thinks about dancing. No matter, at least the stranger seems interested in spending time with them.

"My name is Samara, and that's Taelor!" The former pipes in. "I'm glad that we will be trying to find answers together! You know what that means? It is time for a snack! Brains work best when well fed, you know. And you don't have to worry - I brought enough for everyone to share! Do you like mushrooms?" Not missing a beat, she turns to Elan to add, "Don't worry, it is not only mushrooms! Or even mainly mushrooms." Turning back to the stranger, she continues. "Though I do hope that you like mushrooms, because they are very versatile!" She proceeds to wax poetic on the practicality of the food stuff while looking around the space for a spot where they could set up to break figurative (and possibly even literal) bread.

Orion, momentarily taken aback by Samara's unexpected enthusiasm and talk of snacks, manages to maintain his composure, though a subtle flicker of surprise crosses his features. Clearing his throat, he responds with a measured tone.

"Ah, pleasure to make your acquaintance, Elan, Samara, and Taelor," he replies, offering a nod of acknowledgment to each in turn. "You may call me Orion."

As Samara enthusiastically discusses the merits of mushrooms, Orion listens attentively, though his mind seems elsewhere.

"Snacks sound delightful, Samara," Orion remarks with a polite smile, his gaze drifting towards the bag at his feet. "But alas, duty calls. I'm afraid I must depart soon."

However, before he can make a move to leave, Elan's inquiry about the bag prompts Orion to reconsider. With a subtle shift in demeanor, he reaches down and retrieves the bag, revealing its contents to the group.

"These," he begins, holding up one of the holographic discs, "are records of ancient knowledge. Research about time and its manipulation. They hopefully hold the key to unlocking our shared predicament."

With a careful gesture, Orion sets the bag down and activates one of the holographic discs, projecting a mesmerizing display of intricate patterns and symbols into the air.

"I believe you'll find these quite illuminating. " he ends.