Chương 25: Chapter 24: Finding Home

"Think about it this way: we can construct someone's past memories by stringing together someone else's memories, memories similar to Tess's. It won't be perfect, but it should be close enough to let us see what's going on. Does that make sense?" All of us sat around Gav's whiteboard as he pointed to a few diagrams. The whiteboard had been filled with every idea and picture he could think of, save for a bit of extra space to write anything else coming to mind. Emily frowned.

A heavy hum made it pretty clear: she wasn't fully convinced.

"How would we find these 'close enough' pathways? There are literally billions of possibilities, and there's no guarantee that Tess will have a similar enough memory to make it match." She and Gav had been debating ideas for hours, but Emily always kept getting focused on this point.

"We'll cut it out!" Gav argued.

"If there's something missing, we just won't try to relay it. Sure, it'll leave some gaps, but if we string together what we do know, that should be enough to tell us a lot." He finished, circling another part of the whiteboard with a small diagram of the idea.

"I have a question." I said, curious to know what Gav thought.

"How are you planning on making this map of my thoughts?"

"Ah ha!" Pointing at me with the marker, Gav beamed.

"That's the question I was looking for! We're going to have to test it, but I think we can do something a little clever here." He reached for the eraser, starting to wipe away everything from the white board, save for the very corners. Now with room to draw, Gav began making a picture of my head on the right side of the board, then the same drawing with dotted lines on the left. With both pictures done, he drew a circle in the center of each head.

"Hey! My ears aren't that big!" I huffed, subconsciously pulling my ears down to try and hide them from view. Gav rolled his eyes, but he erased them, drawing them again, but smaller.

"Okay, here's the idea," as he wrote out a series of letters and numbers at the top of the whiteboard, Gav continued, "let's say this is one of the memories as it's saved in that little gizmo over there. So, we have a string here–" he said, putting a bracket around the first part, "–which seems to show a pathway. Then, there's this part here–" Gav put a second set of brackets around the end of the sequence, "which is the emotional response.

If we just cut the entire first part out and gave it no correlation to a pathway, Tess's brain should end up trying to find a pathway to that same emotional response." While he explained it all, Gav continued drawing lines between both drawings, showing how the memories would link.

"How do you know that will happen?" Oliver asked.

"Simple! It already did!" Gav beamed, rushing to his computer.

"See, I pulled down that memory from before, the one where Tess saw…uh…the, um, bad things. The emotional responses she had during that time were exactly the same as the ones being broadcast, but look!" Pausing in his explanation, Gav quickly pointed to another part of his screen, showing the text from the original memory playing.

"So, if we can reconstruct the old memory into one that matches Tess's neurological layout, we should be able to play it back to her! It'll have gaps, sure, but it's better than nothing!" With a sigh, Emily replied.

"We can give it a try, but remember, we're starting slow this time. No 'jumping in with everything at once' again. I don't want a repeat of–""–yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, we'll start slow. I actually know where we should begin." Turning, Gav began typing at his computer. As I slid back into the reclining chair, I addressed Gav.

"And where are we starting?"

"That last memory, the one that came from you." He answered.

"I chose that one, and thankfully it was only a few hundred gigabytes since it was a short memory. But…there was one thing completely different from everything else, and I want to know what that is." Pulling up the memory on his computer, the rest of us watched him set up the process as he talked.

"Basically," Gav continued, "it was an extremely simple input on the side of the computer's storage, but it gets referenced over and over during the playback. This pointer is different, though. If I can figure out what that is, I can isolate it and play it back to figure out what you see."

"But that's her own memory." Emily pointed out.

"How would this help us at all? Whatever that one is, she's already experienced it. How does it help us with the other memories?"

"Well, it means we're starting slow. That's what you wanted, right?" He reaffirmed, getting a nod from Emily.

"So, we start slow. Before we start doing everything else, I need to see that it's possible to isolate memories in the way I think we can. In order to keep as many variables as possible off the table, we should start with a memory that we know works. Now all I need to do is let the memory play back a bit, wait for that input, and isolate it."

"Okay." Nodding, I felt as ready as I could be.

"Let's give it a shot." Gav nodded back.

"Here we go." He said, turning on the flashlight. I squinted, surrounded by white in an infinite void. I blinked, looking around myself, knowing there was nothing there. Taking a deep breath, my muscles relaxed as I tried to prepare myself. Suddenly, the feelings of anxiety, anger and fear swelled inside of me. I threw the crystal to the ground, running through the living room. At any moment, I expected John's ghost to appear. I didn't mean to leave him there. I wished I could go back, but I knew I couldn't.

Speeding out of the front door, with nowhere else to go, my pace quickly slowed. As I wandered into the snow covered field, I laid down on the cold earth, wiping tears from my eyes. Internally, I hoped Oliver was okay. I hadn't meant to hurt him… he just startled me, and I was afraid. My hearts were racing as I looked into the sky, looking at all the beautiful stars. The ground below me felt as if it was disappearing, even if I couldn't see it.

The emotions I'd felt disappeared as I floated there, in space, surrounded by stars.

"Ah!" I gasped, expecting to be falling…only to realize I was actually floating, surrounded by the brilliant constellations in all directions.

"There it is." I heard Gav's voice in the distance, speaking extremely slowly.

"Gav? Hello? I can hear you!" I called.

"Tess? You can hear us?" It was Oliver's voice this time, also at a very slow pace.

"I can hear you! I don't know where I am, though. I'm surrounded by stars." It felt weird, just talking into a void.

"What?" I heard Oliver respond, then a long pause.

"Can you speak a little slower?" I looked in every direction, trying to locate the source of their voices. Just like every other time, the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere. I repeated to them, slower, "I don't know where I am. I'm surrounded by stars."

"A star map!" I heard Gav's slow voice.

"Tess! Look around! Do you see anything odd about it? Anything out of place from what you remember?" The slow pace was nothing short of agonizing, but once I got the message, I did my best to twist and turn, looking in every direction. After so many nights of stargazing on the way to Oliver's, I'd soon learned every position of each star. Everything looked to be in its proper place. I recognized the stars only visible during the sunrights and others only visible at sunset.

I could paint the mental picture perfectly, knowing which ones would be directly over me at the different times at night. Slowly spinning and rotating, I finally found one which didn't match my mental map. Since I had to speak at a sluggish pace–at least to me–it felt as if it took ages to respond.

"It mostly looks right, but there's one out of place." I turned directly toward the brightest star. It was far brighter than the rest, and one I didn't remember. This one was definitely out of place.

"There's a really bright one." I continued, doing my best to keep my speech as slow as needed.

"I don't recognize it."

"Gotcha, gotcha." I heard.

"And what about now?" Gav asked. The moment his question ended, the out of place star began to move. The glow grew brighter as the star changed position. I watched it, eyes widening as I soon realized: it wasn't getting brighter, it was getting closer. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Stop! Stop!" I yelled, unable to do anything except watch the light get closer. A moment later, it stopped in place. By then, however, it had gone from being a decently bright star to a painfully burning light, about five times the size of the moon. My eyes squeezed shut as I held up both hands, turning away from the star.

"Change it back! Whatever you did, change it back!" It took a few seconds, but even through my eyelids, I could feel the burning light retreating. My eyes carefully slid open as I watched it turn into a point of light once again. The stars faded away completely, and once again, I was back in Gav's basement–dazed, but recovering quickly.

"A star map!" Gav exclaimed, pulling up a picture of the night sky.

"It's a star map! It's doing something clever here: instead of trying to reconstruct the user's memory of the night sky, it has a saved version of what the night sky looks like, and then it broadcasts that!"

"So that's why the string looks so different?" Emily asked, looking intently at the screens.

"Exactly! This one isn't pointing to a memory inside Tess's mind. Instead, it recognized she was looking up at the sky, then used its own saved data as a reference point. That way, when she's experiencing that memory, she's seeing exactly what the sky should look like! If this one is here, there are probably tons of other reference points like that, too! We'll have to explore that–""–what about that bright one?" I asked, interrupting their studies.

"What was it, and how'd you get it to move like that?" Gav stopped, sliding his chair next to mine.

"So, the sky–the stars, specifically–you're familiar with them, right?" I nodded.

"I spent a lot of time looking at them. Yeah, I'd say I'm pretty familiar with them by now."

"And the one that was out of place, where was it? Where was it at first, before it moved?"

"I…well, I don't know the name of them, but I can point it out." I offered. Gav took his phone, poking around on it for a moment, then handing it to me. There was a sky map on the screen, showing all the stars and planets, each with little labels on them. I moved it around, trying to recognize where I was looking. Once I had my bearings, I zoomed in on the point where the bright star had been.

"Here." I said, pointing at it.

"And when it moved, where was it then?" Gav asked.

"Well, it kind of blinded me when it got closer, but it ended up being around…here." I answered, moving the viewpoint to the spot where it had ultimately stopped. Oliver looked at the location for a few moments.

"What do you think that is?" Already on the way to his whiteboard, Gav grabbed the eraser, wiping away everything on it.

"Tess said all the stars were in the same location they should be, except for one." Drawing a small circle on the board, Gav quickly turned back to us.

"If this star map was close to any other star, the stars in our immediate vicinity would be in different positions. However, they were all the same, except for one." With a pause, the marker gently tapped against the whiteboard as Gav reached his conclusion.

"The only star this could be…is our sun. No other possibilities make sense."

"So, how did you get it to move?" I asked.

"I didn't." The answer was as quick as the next bit of Gav's drawing. A dotted line quickly stretched from the sun to the outer portions of the whiteboard.

"Actually, the sun didn't move at all. You were moving toward it."

"Okay…" I stretched out the reply, "... but how, though?" Gav smiled.

"In that string–the one pointing to the skymap–there was a variable there that looked suspiciously like the timecode we'd seen in the files. All I did was increment it upward. When I changed the time," he said, motioning with the marker at the dotted line, "you started to move toward the star."

"Wait, wait, hold on…" Emily stopped him.

"... toward the star? You're sure?"

"One hundred percent." He nodded.

"Honestly…I'm as surprised as you are." Oliver blinked.

"But why is that surprising?"

"Well, think about it." Gav said, pointing at the whiteboard again.

"This little computer here is keeping track of time, right? It recorded the time of Tess's memory. According to the computer, the user should be at a certain point in space. If it's keeping track of star positions based on time, that means it must be expecting itself to be traveling. If not, the stars would have just been saved as fixed points. At the time of Tess recording that memory, this computer expects to be right here." Gav pointed to the end of the dotted line. Emily continued.

"And if moving time forward meant that Tess was getting closer to the sun, that means this computer didn't expect to get here yet."

"So…does that mean I arrived early?" I could feel myself squinting a bit, trying to follow the train of logic. Both Emily and Gav shook their heads.

"No, I don't think so," Gav responded, "you arrived a little over eighteen years ago. Even with all of those years, plus however long you were traveling, this all seems way too precise to have an error that large. If it was wrong by a day or two, maybe, but eighteen years? I doubt it."

"So what do you think happened?" Emily tapped the desk a few times, slowly giving her answer.

"I think it means you weren't left behind, you were sent ahead."

"Sent ahead? Why?" I asked, eyes still locked on the drawing.

"Maybe it was to see if Earth was viable." Gav reasoned.

"If the location and timestamp are both correct, I think they sent you ahead to see if this was a viable planet or not. Maybe there's supposed to be a signal or something to tell them that it's okay." Gav seemingly froze for a few seconds, deep in thought.

"Tess, I'm sorry, but…could we start this up again? There's something I think we need to see." I nodded as Gav moved to his computer and I hopped into the chair.

"What are we looking for?" I asked.

"Just tell me what you see." He replied, turning on the flashlight. The now familiar white void returned for a moment, and soon after, I was surrounded by the stars. This time, it was far different. Many of the stars were in the incorrect places. I couldn't even recognize any of the normal patterns except for the faint stars and the Milky Way Galaxy. Everything else? It all felt seemingly scattered. I could still see one very bright star, however.

"Everything is different here." I said aloud, remembering to speak slowly so they could understand me.

"Do you see a bright star, like before?" Gav asked.

"I do."

"Focus on it. Don't let it out of your sight." I heard him say. Rotating slightly, I kept my attention right on the brightest star. Seconds later, it started to move, rushing away from me. All of the stars around me began to do the same, making me feel as if I was flying through space at an incredible speed. Even so, my focus stayed on the same star. It was tough, but I was able to keep it in focus. Another ball of light came rocketing past me, then another.

The stars around my focus began slowly rotating around me, but every time one came close to me, I'd change direction. I refused to let the first star get away from me, even as it faded into the background with all the other stars. As the quick changes continued around me, I noticed everything beginning to settle into its appropriate place. Once again, I was next to the star I'd seen initially… our sun. Everything was now where it should be. The flashlight turned off again, Gav quickly motioning toward me.

"Point to where that star was, the one you saw at first. Where is it on this?" Gav pointed to the large screen, completely covered in a picture of the night sky. I indicated the spot where the star first was.

"Here." Nodding, Gav began searching for something on the internet.

"Why would they send a child, though?" Oliver asked.

"I was…yeah, I was thinking the same thing." Emily responded. Truthfully, I had wondered the same thing many times, too. Emily continued, "that's the concerning part. I don't think Tess was supposed to get here alone. Those people…the ones that are after her…maybe they captured others, and Tess just got lucky and slipped away from them."

"Why would they send someone directly, though?" Oliver posed.

"Isn't that dangerous? Why not just send a computer or something instead of actual people if they didn't know if their life could be sustained here or not?"

"I…don't know." Emily admitted.

"You guys are missing the point." Gav interjected.

"If she was sent ahead, and the timestamp shows them moving toward our sun, it means they're not here yet."

"... but…they will be…" My voice was barely above a whisper.

"I'm just saying, this sounds like a pretty risky way to explore for new planets." Oliver shrugged.

"These aren't explorers." Gav said, eyes on his computer screen.

"Gav, they're traveling the stars and finding new places. They sound like explorers to me."

"They're not explorers." Gav repeated the statement, far more authority in his voice. Moving a calculator window next to the timestamp, we turned to read the number on it. 42, 382.

"This is how many years ago this time stamp began. At their time of zero, we were somewhere around forty thousand BC." Blinking, Emily asked, "how'd you figure that out?" As he moved the star map back into focus, Gav responded, the seriousness still in his voice.

"The star Tess started at is this one here: Simeis 147. It's about three thousand lightyears away from here. When I turned the clock back to zero, that was where she was. When I bring her to the present day, she's nearly inside our solar system." My eyes widened a bit. Finally, I had at least one answer.

"These people have been traveling for tens of thousands of years. I think the reason they sent Tess, and potentially others, is because they don't want theories or possibilities. They want definitive results. They're not willing to risk a false positive. I mean, if you need to know if one of your kind could grow up here without issue, you'd have to send someone here who can grow up. I think that person was Tess."

"They put Tess's life, and other people's life, on the line for that? How is that ethical?" Oliver gave an unimpressed look.

"Ethics go out the window when you're desperate." He answered.

"So, this…Simeis 147…that's where I come from?" I leaned close to the screen, as if hoping just seeing it as best I could would let me know more.

"... I believe so, yes." Gav responded, slowly…very slowly for him. Oliver curiously eyed his brother.

"What's wrong?" Gav sighed and brought a new picture onto the screen.

"They're not doing this for fun. They're not here to make new discoveries or explore the cosmos. They're looking for a new home. Like I said, they're not explorers." He paused as we all looked at the image. It was a photo of a multicolored supernova.

"They're refugees."