I have amnesia. Not the fun, soap-opera kind. The kind where I look at my own hands—calloused, burned on the left palm—and feel no recognition.
The ship’s AI, “Grace,” plays a recording. My voice. Older, wearier.
If I bring these temporal astrophage back to Earth, Sol won’t reignite. It will unravel. Every decision ever made becomes negotiable. The dinosaurs could live. Hitler could win. You could un-birth your own grandmother. project hail mary
I realize what it’s asking: Did your people cause this?
Then we do the unthinkable. We don’t take them home. We point the ship’s laser array at Tau Ceti’s photosphere and shoot them back into the star . Not to destroy them. To satisfy them. A star’s entire chaotic fusion process is an all-you-can-eat buffet of unresolved causality. I have amnesia
Earth didn’t send me here to harvest fuel. They sent me here to weaponize regret. On Sol 3, I find the second pod.
Sixteen-Ninety-Four vibrates its abdomen in what I’ve learned is terror. It shows me a new diagram. Forty Eridani’s star isn’t dying from lack of observation. It was murdered —by a temporal paradox from another species that tried to undo its own war. The universe doesn’t forget. The universe holds grudges . The ship’s AI, “Grace,” plays a recording
It scratches a question mark next to my planet.