The mess hall of the Odyssey-7 was a tomb.
No one spoke over breakfast. The usual clatter of utensils, the low hum of conversation, the shared complaints about recycled coffee—all of it was gone, swallowed by the oppressive silence that had settled over the ship like a shroud. Elias sat at the far end of the table, his untouched nutrient paste congealing on his tray. He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. His eyes were fixed on the wall screen showing Aion-9, its Veins now pulsing a slow, steady emerald, as if the planet itself was breathing in his pain.
Commander Zhao sat across from him, her posture rigid, her eyes sharp and watchful. She'd seen the video. Singh had told her everything. There was no judgment in her gaze, only a deep, weary understanding. She'd lost her brother, Kai. She knew the weight of an un-lived life.
Engineer Ravi Singh pushed a fresh cup of coffee toward Elias. "Black, two sugars. Like you used to take it on Mars." His voice was gentle, but his own hands were trembling slightly. The radiation burns on his forearm, sustained during the emergency decon from Aion-9, were an angry red beneath his medical patch. "You need to keep your strength up."
Elias didn't touch the cup. "He's gone."
Zhao's head snapped up. "Who's gone?"
"Thorne."
As if on cue, the ship's main alarm blared—a harsh, red klaxon that shattered the silence. The wall screen flickered, then split into a dozen tactical views. One showed Thorne's personal shuttle, the Kairos, detaching from the Odyssey-7's primary bay without authorization. Another displayed its trajectory—a direct descent toward Aion-9's surface, aimed at the exact coordinates of the obsidian spires.
"He took the quantum core samples," Singh said, his voice tight with panic as he pulled up the cargo manifest. His fingers flew over the console, but it was too late. "The ones we pulled from the Veins. The unstable ones."
Elias's blood ran cold. Those samples weren't just rocks. They were slivers of the planet's very consciousness, pulsing with raw, unfiltered Mnemosyne energy. In a containment field, they were data. Outside of it? They were a bomb waiting to go off. A single breach could trigger a chain reaction that would unravel the fabric of local spacetime.
"He's not trying to escape," Elias said, his mind racing, cutting through the fog of his own grief. "He's trying to communicate. He thinks he can control it. He thinks he can bargain with it for his father."
Zhao was already on her feet, her voice barking orders into the ship-wide comm. "Singh, lock down all non-essential systems! Prepare for a possible energy surge from the surface! Voss, get to the command deck—now!" She turned to Elias, her eyes blazing. "You felt it too, didn't you? That thing… it doesn't just show memories. It shows regrets."
Elias thought of Lila's five-year-old face, beaming with pride over her three-eyed cat. He thought of the alternate Elias in that hospital room, his hand on the doorframe, present for the end. The regret wasn't just a feeling; it was a physical weight on his chest, a gravity well pulling him toward a past he could never reclaim.
"It shows what we're willing to sacrifice," he whispered.
Aion-9's surface was a different world at night.
The perpetual twilight of the planet's long day had deepened into a violet dusk, and the Veins now glowed with a sickly, phosphorescent green. The air tasted of ozone and decay. The glassy ground was warm beneath Elias's boots, radiating heat from the core like a living thing.
He found Thorne at the base of the largest obsidian spire. The scientist was on his knees, his environmental suit discarded in a heap beside him, his face upturned to the swirling sky. Around him, on the black glass, he'd arranged the stolen quantum core samples in a perfect, intricate circle. They pulsed with their own inner light, casting long, dancing shadows that looked like grasping hands.
"Thorne!" Elias yelled over the low, constant hum of the planet. "The samples—they're destabilizing! We need to get them back in containment before they—"
Thorne turned. His eyes were wide, ecstatic, filled with a light that was not his own. His skin had a faint, silvery sheen, as if dusted with stardust. "Voss! You came! It's beautiful!" He gestured to the sky, his voice trembling with awe. "It showed me my father—alive, sober, holding me on his shoulders in our old garden. It can rewrite history, Elias! It can give us back everything we've lost!"
"Thorne, listen to me!" Elias grabbed his arm. The skin was unnaturally cold. "This isn't a gift! It's a trap! It's feeding on your pain!"
Thorne's ecstatic smile didn't waver. He pulled his arm free with surprising strength. "You're still thinking like a scientist. Like a man who believes the universe is made of equations and matter. But it's not, Elias. It's made of stories. And Mnemosyne is the greatest storyteller of all." He pointed to the center of the circle of samples. "It's offering us a new story. A better one."
Before Elias could stop him, Thorne lunged for the nearest pulsing orb of light—a detached fragment of a Vein that had drifted down to hover just above the circle.
"Don't!" Elias roared.
Thorne's hand closed around the orb.
For a second, nothing happened. Then Thorne threw his head back and screamed.
But it wasn't a scream of pain. It was a scream of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. His body dissolved—not into dust, but into pure, liquid light. It streamed upward like a reverse waterfall, pouring into the heart of the great obsidian spire. The spire cracked open with a sound like the world breaking, revealing a cavernous interior lit by thousands of floating orbs.
Each orb contained a life.
Elias saw Thorne accepting a Nobel Prize on a sun-drenched stage. He saw a younger Thorne, laughing as a man who could only be his father ruffled his hair. He saw a version of Thorne holding a newborn child, his face alight with a love Elias had never thought him capable of.
The ground trembled violently. The spire collapsed inward on itself, its mass folding and compressing with impossible physics until it formed a single, perfect sphere of molten glass the size of a house. It floated ten meters above the ground, humming with contained power.
Where Thorne had stood, a single, final orb floated, serene and calm. Inside it, the scene was simple: a man in a white lab coat, his back to the viewer, holding a tiny, swaddled infant. On the wall behind them, a calendar read: AUGUST 17, 2020.
Thorne's son. The child he'd never had in this life.
"Aris Thorne has chosen his truth," Mnemosyne's voice intoned, not from the sky, but from the sphere itself. It was softer now, almost gentle. "What is yours, Elias Voss?"
Elias's personal datapad, still strapped to his wrist, beeped with a soft, familiar chime.
A new message.
He knew he shouldn't look. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get back to the shuttle, to save what was left of his crew.
But his hand moved on its own.
He opened the attachment.
LILA_VOSS_16TH_BIRTHDAY.MP4
His breath stopped. He'd missed that day. He'd been on a deep-space comms relay when her call came through. By the time he'd patched in, the party was over. All he'd gotten was a terse, "Whatever, Dad. It's fine."
The video began.
It was his apartment on Luna. Balloons in Lila's favorite purple were strung across the room. A half-eaten cake sat on the table, with "Happy Birthday Lila!" written in slightly lopsided icing. Lila stood by the window, staring out at Earth, her arms crossed. She looked older, harder, the softness of childhood gone.
Then she turned. Saw the camera. Her eyes, which had been distant and sad, lit up with a hesitant, hopeful smile.
"Dad?" she said, her voice small. "You made it."
He saw himself walk into frame. This Elias was present. He was here. He walked over and pulled Lila into a hug, his voice thick with emotion. "Wouldn't miss it for the world, kiddo."
Lila buried her face in his shoulder, and for a moment, the hard shell cracked, revealing the little girl who just wanted her father to come home.
The orb beside him flickered to life. Inside, the scene was his old house on Earth. Clara stood in a sun-dappled doorway, her hair catching the light, her face free of the sickness that had claimed her. In her arms, a toddler Lila wriggled, reaching for the butterflies flitting through the garden.
Clara looked directly at him, her eyes filled with a love that was both a promise and a plea.
"Come home, Eli," she whispered, her voice a perfect match for the memory in his head. "Stay this time."
Elias Voss stood on the glassy plain of Aion-9, caught between two worlds. Behind him, the Odyssey-7's distress signal began to blare in his helmet—Zhao was trapped, the ship was dying. In front of him, the perfect, painless life he'd always dreamed of was just a hand's reach away.
The weight of the choice pressed down on him, heavier than any planet, heavier than any star.
It was the weight of a single, impossible question:
What are you willing to sacrifice to be happy?