Rose uncurled from around Nathan gently, letting him sleep a little more.
Far quieter than someone would expect of a creature of her size, she made her way to the mouth of the cave, and looked out. In the distance was a city, a river running through it, crossed here and there by bridges. Between it and her were parks, reserves, and suburbs.
Other than Nathan, only a handful of people knew of her existence here. A witch and her husband. A strange half-plant girl and her girlfriend. A few others. She was tickled to think of the hundreds across the world who thought they knew her - but thought that she was a particularly in-character writer, via her social media posts. None of them knew that she really was a dragon.
Looking back over her shoulder and wings at Nathan. He had grown much since they first met, when he was an awkward twenty year old trying to get ahead in his studies, and she was proud of having had a role in that growth. Proud of the man she loved.
But.
As much as they loved each other, one thing was impossible for them.
Children.
She looked back out.
Young Anthea's half plant hybrid form notwithstanding, draconic and human genes were simply not going to blend.
If they were going to be parents they would have to take another path. And this would not be something she could help Nathan with. This he would have to do alone.
Adopt.
It would, she knew, take years, and time was not on their side. Not because Nathan was dying, but because their love had brought one change to him. He had stopped aging. And sooner or later they would have to move and start anew before someone noticed.
"Rose?" came a sleepy voice from behind her, "What's up?"
"Good morning my love. I was thinking about family."
He came up behind her, "I'm sorry - you know I'd be happy for you" she cut him off with a gentle tap of a claw on his lips.
"No, love, you are the only one for me. No, I was thinking of a more complicated solution." She curled up around him again. "We, well, you, should adopt."
"Adopt? That's going to be tricky as a legally single guy."
"Nevertheless I believe it can be done. But we will need to move swiftly, you are not getting any older."
"I guess I'm not. I'll start scoping out the procedure. Maybe see if Charlie can lend a hand. Or Toby."
Why do you want access to the restricted section? Well yes of course research, but you can’t just front up; you need to make an application via your department. Because it’s a cognitohazard. You specify what topics you want, register a mind vector, then do your research. You’ll be accompanied —at all times—by a psychologist, and when you are done one of our proctors will merge your temporary state with your entry state, filtering out things you didn’t want to know. This is not a game; the true crime podcast archive contains examples of almost all the evils of which humans were capable. Wiping them out was a mercy.
The thing about a base on the moon is that everyone underestimates the amount of support the Earth provides. Even with a so-called sealed environment, there is considerable support provided by the outside.
So when they established the first moonbase, it was very short lived. To be fair, it was only really intended as a temporary establishment, but it only lasted just over one and a half times the design life. Which for a NASA project is abysmal. So 36 months after being established, it was abandoned. The next one, an ESA project, lasted about the same.
The third was a Chinese military one. It was meant to be permanent, but they abandoned it after two years because of the cost of resupply.
The fourth one was an attempt at a lunar hotel. It lasted three months before the company running it went bust, and a joint NASA/ESA rescue mission had to be sent to bring the staff home.
The fifth one was a genuine attempt at colonisation, headed up by a multi-billionaire. They were well funded, and established a large semi-underground city space. Several hundred people moved there. Most of them died there. The oxygen plant worked, the CO2 scrubbers worked, but the small population did not have enough depth in skills to keep it running safely. Eight people survived the catastrophic cascade that destroyed the biome and the containment. Only seven of them made it back to Earth. The last one remained behind to manage the launch of the one remaining earth-return ship.
The sixth and seventh ones followed similar patterns, at great loss of life.
This cooled the idea of a permanent moon base for several decades.
Eventually someone tried again. This time it was an international consortium of space agencies. Their objective was to try and determine what would be needed for any sort of permanent non-terrestrial colony.
The answer was shocking to everyone.
Over thirty thousand people ended up needed to provide the required depth of skills. And for each of them approximately two hectares of wild space was needed, in addition to the farmed areas.
What was the extra space for? It provided sufficient complexity to the support biomes to ensure that they could not easily go into a systemic collapse. It provided for pollinators to breed, for detritus processors to grow, and all the millions of little things that were needed for an actual ecosystem.
It took them nearly thirty years to build it. And it remains the only one that Earth has ever successfully built.
The Selenites, as they call themselves, have, however, built two more as their population has grown.
To: [email protected]
Subject: finalizing transaction
Look you are going to have to tell me which moon you’re docked on sooner or later. I realize you are concerned about scammers but wanting to know the dock number is a normal part of the ship sales dot com process. I can’t just warp into the system and wait for you to read your email…
[datacrystal scratch]
Actually, never mind. Helm, put us 48 light hours out from Gateway, take a recording of landing control radio traffic, then plot a microjump to the correct dock. I’m done with these noobs. I’d pay retail for a new jump stabilizer if you could still get ‘em.
Adele came over and handed him a mug of tea. He nodded a thank-you and breathed deeply from it before taking a sip, followed by a larger swallow. As they watched, they could see as he made himself relax. Finally he looked up again.
"I'll start again" he said, and took a deep breath before continuing, "I don't really have many friends back home. There's Iain, but that's different. And me and my family, well, aside from my uncle Joe, we don't get too well. And Indi always seemed so with it and happy and everything. I wanted to see what that was like."
Alice frowned "Colin, did they hurt you at all?"
He shook his head "No, nothing like that. They just, well, I love the sea and boats and all, but I hate the fishing and the by-catch and all of that. They just don't get that. The family's been fishing for centuries, so I just don't fit. And then there's Iain."
"Iain is?" asked Iris.
"He's me best mate. He had some trouble with a teacher at our old school, and that's why we moved back to town. I couldn't survive without him, though. He's what has kept me going. Him and Indi."
"So you're travelling together?" continued Iris.
"Yeah, we look out for each other. He keeps people off me back, and I pull him away from the obvious red lights."
Alice tipped her head, "So you ... what, are you together?"
Colin gave a snort "Nah, people keep thinking we are, cause Iain's as gay as they come and not shy about it. But me, I'm not. We're just good mates."
"So you wanted to see if you could make something with Indi?" she pressed.
"No! No, when I said I'm not. I meant it. I'm simply not."
Indigo nodded "And I bet your family couldn't deal with that too well either."
He nodded sadly "Yeah, I think they'd have been happier if I'd been gay."
Adele shook her head "You happy travelling with Iain like that? How about him, is he happy with it?"
"Yeah, he knows I don't swing at all, and is good with it. He knows that if I'm warning him off someone there's good reason, and doesn't get snippy. And I like seeing him happy. Maybe one day I'll get to be his best man."
"Right. We can hold off departing for a couple of days can't we?" Adele asked, and then turned to Colin, "Can you leave Iain alone for a couple of days?"
"Yeah, he's with a good bloke right now. It's not going to last, but they'll be OK for the next couple of weeks."
"Did you bring your wetsuit?"
"It's back at the backpackers, but I can get it."
"Ok, we'll delay our trip for two or three days, take you out to a couple of dive spots. You can stay aboard, and then we'll bring you back," Adele looked around again, "Everyone good with that plan?"
Iris and Indigo nodded, then so did Alice.
"Right then. Off you go, and remember the rules. We'll set off when you get back."
The Elder had told them that, given the number and might of the demonic creatures that would attack it, securing the village would require the powers of at least seven sorcerers.
'So they were small but surrounded and outnumbered you, had better weapons, were intent on killing you, then saw R42 and flung themselves at its feet?'
The Creator, overwhelmed by humans' capacity to be fruitful and multiply, sometimes cannot produce the needed souls quickly enough. Thus He holds the souls of the recently deceased on Earth, to embody them in those soon to be born.
With the question of where we would go next settled, I began climbing. At first, an accumulation of small debris made climbing difficult, but the endless steps weren’t steep. As long as I took my time and rested periodically, I could avoid becoming exhausted.
Eventually, I reached the top of the stairs and faced the tunnel. Looking back at the numerous switchbacks, I chuckled at the thought of a ghost getting winded.
The tunnel was dimly lit by #mace-like torches spaced every dozen meters. Their flickering, flameless orange light made navigating easy. Dust covered the floor, disturbed only in the center.
When Emily checked, she found the walls were thick with no chambers beyond. I shivered at the thought of what might happen if I rematerialized inside a wall. There would be no escaping that way.
I explained my thoughts to Emily and asked her to stay near me in case I needed to time-travel quickly. I wanted her within easy reach. Solo time-traveling and rematerializing in solid matter weren’t experiments we dared try. We didn’t even know if she could travel on her own.
She nodded.
I eyed the tunnel again and said, “Spooky! I would #love to know where that tunnel goes without entering it.”
“Probably Ayesha awaits us there,” Emily responded.
“Sorry, who?”
“Got you. ‘Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed,’ the antagonist in H. Rider Haggard’s book ‘She.’”
“Touché, you did indeed.”
“Shall we go? I could hold your hand,” Emily said.
I declined the offer, but the tunnel seemed a little less creepy because of that thought and the humor.
Our footsteps rang hollow in the tunnel, which curved slightly to the right. After a hundred meters, the passageway branched into three tunnels: up, down, and straight ahead.
"Which way?" I asked in a low voice to avoid echoes.
“Let’s try forward,” Emily said, her tone matching mine. “It looks safest. The dust is undisturbed. If we learn nothing, we can always come back.”
That made sense. To be even safer, I tried manifesting a marking pen. When that failed, I attempted to manifest a piece of chalk. I’d pictured a nice, colorful piece of sidewalk chalk, but I received a rough, chalky stone. It would serve my purpose, though, so I made a #surreptitious mark to show which way we’d come.
On either side of the corridor, large empty rooms opened up. A thick layer of grime gave evidence that no one had used them in a long time.
We’d just started considering turning back when the passageway opened into a large tunnel heading down. It too had been long neglected. Faded murals depicting a history were painted on the walls, drawing us onward. Above ran inscrutable astrological symbols, along with inscriptions in forgotten languages.
We'd emerged at a midpoint depicting a toadish creature leaping, as if traveling forward in time. We could either head back the direction we’d come and learn about these creatures’ prior history or go down to learn about more recent events.
I pointed toward the future, and Emily nodded in agreement.
Initially, the scenes resembled those we’d seen in the pterodactyl caves, depicting a war between the toads and tentacle-headed monsters. From these scenes, we gathered that the conflict had gone on for centuries, if not millennia, with the toads as the eventual victors.
Mixed in with these images were blobish creatures that gradually became more rabbitlike. Initially, they seemed little more than domesticated beasts, then slaves, and finally soldiers. Next, the rabbits appeared, revolting against both of the eldritch races and eventually achieving freedom.
Someone had defaced the next portion of the mural, obliterating the drawing.
When the images resumed, the first one depicted a rabbit morphing into a man with wings on his feet.
“Well, someone wrote it, and it must mean something,” Emily said, tracing the chalk writing with her finger.
“‘Fleetest feet’ clearly refers to #Mercury,” I said.
“But what does Mercury symbolize? If you wrote it, I would interpret it as, ‘You need to be fast to catch the past.’ Autumn leaves symbolize the past. To catch the past, one needs to time-travel. The rabbit becomes Mercury, meaning it can time-travel, which is something we had already suspected.”
I nodded. It was conjecture, but it made sense. Could I have written it, though? I puzzled over that and then said, “Well, according to the time particle theory, it wouldn’t need to be a paradox.”
The only reply I got was a nod.
After that, the mural showed a procession of figures, often with rabbits in period-appropriate garb. Most of the humans appeared to be kings or nobles, while others were warriors. Among them, I thought I spotted a Mayan #trepanning a victim, Nero plunging a dagger into his throat; Genghis Khan heading a horde; the Goths burning Rome; and Joan of Arc being tried. All races and genders were included.
Latin captions replaced the Greek ones, while Sanskrit continued. The next translation we found was under a figure wearing medieval armor. He stood proudly holding a lance and a shield bearing a large, scarlet Maltese cross. Above the drawing, it was written:
क्षुद्रे́भिः क्षुद्रे́भिः छेदै́रपि महा́न् वनस्पतिः पतति
Multis plagis parvis cadit magna quercus.
In chalk below appeared: "Council of Nicosia, Christmas 1191: 'Many small cuts will fell the great oak.'"
“This definitely looks like your writing,” Emily said.
“Well, I wish I weren’t so cryptic!”
“It wouldn’t be you if you weren’t.”
The figures became more recognizable as we progressed. Emily recognized Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Nicholas II, and Robespierre, who stood next to a guillotine. Each person was accompanied by sneering, whispering rabbits. We both recognized Stalin and Hitler. Next to the latter were rabbits wearing SS uniforms. Later, I recognized Trollop, alongside men with "ICE-Nine" emblazoned on their jackets, like a medieval insignia. Here, the rabbits wore red hats.
Few tyrants weren’t associated with the creatures.
“I remember this man,” I said, pointing at Trollop. “He was a TV star and grifter. I have no memory of how he ends, so this must be from around the time I died. From here on out, it’s a futurerama. Maybe you’ll get to see #Buck Rogers. You said you wanted to see that kind of future.”
“Who?” Emily looked like she was going to laugh.
“Sorry, I thought you would know that one. He's an old science fiction character. At least he's old to me. He featured in serials...”
“Shush, listen,” Emily interrupted.
I heard a faint sound like, “Tekeli-li! Teke-li!” The flute-like music grew louder, raising the hair on the back of my neck.
Desperate, I grabbed Emily in an embrace that under other circumstances could have been mistaken for a #hug, saying, “We have to get out of here.”
“Take us somewhere else where we can learn about the rabbits!” we said together.