Three Months Later
Ver

The night our antichronowave study is published, the stars dance, and so do we.

On the top floor of BioLabs, twenty stories high, we hover above most of Lucent City’s light pollution. Jaha arranged for our lab to relocate here, and her funding will more than pay for the ongoing renovations to adapt the space to our needs. It made no sense to return to work in the old lab, where we were all traumatized.

The quarter-sphere, floor-to-ceiling window reveals the wonders of the sky to anyone patient enough to stand here and watch. A trio of ice-covered blue comets, the Snow Sisters, is racing past G-Moon One tonight on its lasso of a path around Pangu. I imagine it zipping, whistling by. Leaving fragments of other worlds in its wake.

Tonight’s sky is so clear, I can see Sol. Burning yellow somewhere behind a brighter neighbor. Releasing photons that have traveled billions of kilometers to bless my eyes.

But the brightest, nearest lights come from approaching spaceships from Two and Three. Ships filled with people riding on a last hope.

Some people do not welcome them, but they do not understand history. Even before there were humans on these moons to build spaceships, chunks of G-Moons One, Two, and Three would break off and smash into the others. Those collisions built and shaped the magnificent landscapes on each moon. Exchange of material is inevitable in a planetary system due to the high velocities involved in a multitude of objects orbiting other objects.

Billions of years ago, all of these moons formed from the same material, spat out by a young Pangu. More recently, all the humans living on the Gui Moons originated from the same Earth. With that history in mind, I think as I watch the skies, anyone should be free to fly where they want.

Jaha’s new lab space is a work in progress, but I approve of these windows—and of the walls, painted in a celebration of the visible spectrum. One is hot pink, another lilac, yet another the soft blue of Lake Celestine. The nursery Jaha has made in a corner of her office is pale green, which seems to be Dimmi’s favorite color. Cal would have approved.

From my workstation, I can see G-Moon Three rising. Only one other station, Aryl’s, is occupied. Ford has been cleared to finish his apprenticeship thanks to the antichronowave detector he built. Strange to think I will be showing new apprentices around soon. Stranger still to imagine Ford jumping into politics. He will start as a local official in Celestine and work his way to the top, hoping to eventually take his mother’s place. And I hope—I know—that he will be fairer and kinder to the moons than she has been. Based on priors, Ford will do just fine.

“You’re done for today, Ver,” Aryl says, dancing up to my workstation. Swish, glide, whoosh. Her rehabilitation therapies have done her wonders. She has started stretching and turning again, with jumps to come.

I have been tracking the views and comments on our newly published article, in which we detailed how antichronowaves are densest near One and fade out at Three, how my body reacted to being on each of these moons, and how blasting cells with antichronowaves in a lab setting slows their aging and decay. Blasphemous claims, people are writing. Some of those people are investigators at the Institute, older and more highly regarded than we. The harshest critics even accuse us of fabricating the data, though it has passed rigorous review.

Journalists have picked up the story, speculating about a “medical migration” to One. But that is already happening, inspired by the evidence we submitted for Yuan’s trial. A meteor shower of passenger ships is falling to this moon. I have viewed multiple holograms of sick people testing out their legs on One’s soil. A pair of ten-year-old twins with RCD gazing up in wonder at Lucent City’s tallest buildings was the image that struck my heart the hardest.

“We’ve done all we can for now,” Aryl says—that soft rustle of her vocal cords, vibrating air molecules cajoling the hairs on my neck to stand at attention. “Will you dance with me?”

I twist around and slowly rise. Put my hand in Aryl’s. My body still aches when I wake up every morning, but thanks to the sub-cellular injections of actin, myosin, collagen, and other structural proteins the doctors gave me to heal my injuries, I am managing. The antichronowave barrage on G-Moon One helps too.

And so does the peace I am finally starting to feel.

I put on one of the new songs Charles played for me recently. It streams from the surround-sound audio system Ford built for the new lab. The music is simple: human voices ranging across different pitches, layering notes into different sonic colors. Melancholy, at times, but always resolving into sweetness.

Our movements constitute more of a slow shuffle than a dance. We sway from side to side and turn in circles, tracing an undefined shape over the open portion of the lab. Above us, more ships full of offworlders streak toward us, their taillights creating a blaze in the sky.

Tomorrow and after, we will find ways to help the people inside those ships, many of whom have come here based on our word.

Tomorrow, we will meet them. But tonight, it is enough to watch them shine.