Stories
The cold, metallic air smells of ozone and rust, a scent that has been the constant companion of my thirty years aboard the Argo. I call this vessel a ship, but it is just a drifting tomb now, a colossal, dying sphere of metal suspended in the void. My entire life is measured by the silence of its failing systems and the slow, agonizing count to this single, crucial moment.
Elara was a cartographer, but not of lands you could see. Her maps were woven from starlight and the whispers of ancient glaciers. One night, while charting the silence between constellations, she noticed a tear in the sky, a shimmering fissure that bled a faint, silver light. It was a route, a path to somewhere else entirely.
Maya had always been a light sleeper, but lately, she’d been waking at exactly 3:17 AM every night. Not 3:16, not 3:18—always 3:17. Tonight, instead of lying there staring at the ceiling, she decided to follow the strange pull she felt toward her window.