The rain clicked against Nana’s helmet on my head while I checked my line of sight. At a distance, three Walkers approached the river. I lowered my head without breaking eye contact and grabbed my trail pack.

My wristpad vibrated, marking fifty-four sleeps. Only six to go before the long night came. I had to be prepared.

I always wondered where the sun went when it finally slept. It must have been tired after watching us for so long. Now it waited on the horizon, under a pale blue sky brushed with gold, reminding us that darkness was coming.

A crackling sound echoed behind me. It felt close.

It could be another forest creature, or worse: more Walkers. Nana said Venus never stayed calm when packs passed through. No landers had come in her lifetime.

All my stuff was far behind me inside the tent. The ration flour was there, the dust Nana taught me to pat into golden yellow discs she called arepas.

For her, it was very important to flip them evenly on both sides.

“Where did I park the house, again?” I asked.

Keeping track was difficult. Nana had been the wayfinder. I had learned the path, not the way. “Look ahead and back,” she used to say.

“Right now, Nana, I have three Walkers ahead and one unknown behind me,” I said, keeping my voice low.

The tent wasn’t that far, close enough for me to hear its flapping against the wind. The rain slowly faded. If the wind started to sing, the tent would sing with it.

Knowing my house’s position was my advantage. They still had to find it.

I sprinted as fast as I could, paced my steps, and evaded the large trees. Eyes ahead, look back. That was the wayfinder rule.

A small beeping sound came through Nana’s helmet. I knew what it meant.

“Proximity detected.”

The run was taking a toll on my breathing. The tent was visible in the distance.

“Four, two, zero.” Inhale. Exhale.

I jumped over two stacked pieces of debris, slipped, and smashed through the window of a house buried under the forest. I fell into a dark cave, slamming against storage containers on the way down before hitting the floor hard.

I slowly opened my eyes. Flickering lights barely illuminated the darkness around me. “Did I break Nana’s helmet?” I asked, touching the visor to feel for cracks.

The floor was warm and gray, with a metallic texture. Sunlight came from above, but not enough to show me where I had landed.

I reached for my trail pack, but it was gone. I looked up to find my way out. Then I tried to move.

Something had caught me. Two hands wrapped around my ankle and pulled me away from the light, into the dark.

“Keep quiet,” a voice said.

“Oh, no. No!”

“Quiet. You already made quite a scandalous noise.”

A shape moved past me and closer to the sunlight coming through the ceiling. “I always wanted a skylight for my house. Thank you!”

“Are you a Walker?” I asked.

“I was. I no longer am.”

A large cloth covered most of his figure. A shiny helmet was the only visible feature.

“Don’t move. Stay there.”

“Can I leave?”

“You can. Just not through the brand new entrance.”

He picked up a large door from the side and covered the opening in the ceiling. Everything went dark. I clicked the lights in Nana’s helmet on and off, but they refused to stay on.

The three lights under my chin kept flickering, crackling softly in the dark.

“I can repair that. Don’t worry,” the voice echoed through the room, deep and heavy. I had no idea where it was coming from.

“I just want to go,” I said.

“You can go. Please take the only door I have left.” He pointed a flashlight toward my exit.

I stood up, dusted myself off, and walked toward the door.

“Look ahead and back,” the voice said behind me through the darkness. The phrase didn’t just stop my feet; it stopped my breath.

I couldn’t move. “What did you say?”

“Look ahead and back.” The words reverberated against my neck.

I touched Nana’s helmet softly, its flickering lights cutting through the dark. “Do you have a name?” I asked.

“I no longer have one.” Footsteps approached me, then the door.

I turned around to face the heavy steps coming toward me. “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just going to step out,” I said.

The shape beneath the cloth was finally close enough for me to see. He was a man with long hair, a half-shaved beard, and bright hazel eyes.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am me and you are you.”

“I don’t have time for riddles. Tell me,” I said.

“I do have a book copy of those somewhere around here. Unless you buried it during your indoor parachuting.”

“You should ask whoever put glass on your ceiling.”

“Debris and glass are all that remain,” he said.

“Okay. I will just step out and leave you with… all of whatever this is.”

“Tell me, child. Am I danger or change?” His voice was steady.

“I don’t know. That makes you a stranger. I should avoid strangers.”

“Yes, you should,” he said. “Your wayfinder taught you well.”

“Nana,” I said.

“Your Nana must be waiting for you. It’s time for you to go on.” He opened the door, and a blinding light streamed into the room.

The air was thick and warm. I closed my eyes and stepped outside.

The nearly black trees dripped water from the last rain, their abundant branches enough for me to hide. Behind me, the house smelled like old dust.

“She’s with the stars now,” I said.

“Still, she waits.”

He stood in the shadows, waiting for me to turn around so he could close the door.

“She told me the way.”

“She taught you how to find one,” he said.

I nodded and turned toward the dark forest, the door closing behind me softly. I paused for a breath, tempted to look back, then pushed forward.

The wind picked up speed and the tent sang with it. I knew where to go. I walked off-trail to keep a better line of sight without being spotted. Nana’s rules taught me how to survive danger. She had not taught me what to do with change.

The wind was blowing faster than ever before. The tent was no longer singing.

I stood still.

“Look ahead and back.”

I looked back. At a distance, the man from the house was walking off-trail and toward me.

“Are you following me?” I asked.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“Why, may I ask?”

“You forgot your trail pack.”

He set the pack on the ground and turned back toward his house.

“You are a very odd man,” I said.

“I guess that’s my new name.” He didn’t even turn.

I picked up the trail pack; it felt off balance. The strap had been ripped and stitched back together. Strong enough for me to move forward.

Nana used to say hands told more truth than mouths ever could.

“Hands can also lie,” I muttered to myself. “How can you tell when hands are building traps, Nana?”

I looked ahead. The tent was silent.

I looked back. Oddman was walking away.

One thing was missing. No proximity detected. I touched the chin guard, and the flickering amber lights drew my hand in a bright silhouette against the dark branches behind me.

“Nana’s helmet was barely working.”

All her teachings have kept me alive through many sleeps since she departed. I didn’t think going with a stranger was what Nana would have done.

I grabbed my trail pack, crossed its strap over my chest, and kept moving forward.

The terrain felt uneven in this part of the forest. Dark roots pushed through the ground, and the branches barely allowed me to pass.

The eye of the sun was halfway closed now, low on the horizon, and the wind was singing louder than before.

I finally got a visual of my tent from a clean line of sight, hidden enough that I couldn’t be spotted.

Walkers were all over it. I counted four.

The ones from the river, it seemed.

I lowered my head just like Nana told me, behind the roots, and watched them.

One Walker stood outside my tent while the others moved in and out. My chest wouldn’t stay quiet; my heart felt like a hammer knocking against my ribs from the inside. I kept wondering what Nana would do if she were standing right beside me.

“Nana, help me.”

No answer.

I waited for hours, but they refused to leave my tent. I considered confronting them, but that went against my teachings, and I would not dare break her heart.

My eyes gave up on me for what felt like an instant.

I snapped back into position and saw them carrying pieces of my house into the open.

I tried to keep myself still. I did.

But something inside me broke.

“I am looking ahead, Nana, and I see devastation.”

The moment they disappeared into the forest, I broke cover.

The air left my lungs. I ran to the tent and stepped inside. The solar charging unit, air filters, my blanket.

“I am not a wayfinder. How can I be? They stole everything from me.”

All of it. Gone.

I stepped outside the tent. The sleepy sun was still clinging to the horizon, but it was lower now.

Six sleeps left.

Six sleeps before the long night took the sky.

And they had taken the solar charging unit, the air filters, my blanket, and every arepa ration I had.

“Why? Just why?”

The hammer turned into a drill inside me.

Only one word could possibly push through the noise: “Walkers.”

I rushed down through the dark vines and deep roots. I felt like any obstacle was too small for me, so I jumped across the uneven side of the forest that took me hours before.

I found the trail to that house and ran to its door.

I opened it. A stream of light flooded the house with the same rage I carried.

Oddman was sitting in a large chair, reading a book.

“Your Walkers stole everything from me. Everything!”

“You insist on breaking into my house,” he said.

“Don’t give me that, you thief.”

“And you, trespasser. Labels are dangerous.”

“Dangerous? I didn’t take anything from you. They did. You did. You Walkers take everything you want.”

“Labels,” he said. “You are too quick to cast judgment.”

I pointed at him. “They stole all my stuff. Which part am I missing?”

“Have you ever considered that they waited for you to return?”

Oddman placed the book on his lap.

“Have you ever considered they were as hungry as you are now?”

“Yes, of course I did,” I said.

“Trespasser and liar. The labels keep mounting.”

“Don’t turn this on me. This is on you and your Walkers.”

“There are no Walkers in this house.”

“You were one. They left me with nothing.”

He closed the book slowly.

“Then they shouldn’t have, and their wayfinder should have known better.”

I took a deep breath and placed my trail pack on the floor.

Oddman looked toward the open door, where the forest behind me was surely watching.

“Anything I say in their favor would defend them. Anything I say against them would sentence them.”

That filled me with rage. Why was he making the world so complicated? Walkers stole, end of story.

“I ask again. Am I change or am I danger?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“And that’s the wayfinder rule. By learning what you don’t.”

“Not knowing? How can you find your way if you don’t know?” I said.

“I am a bus driver and you didn’t know that.”

“Bus driver? But you live here in this off-trail house,” I said.

“And all bus drivers live in one particular kind of house?”

I couldn’t piece it together. I was surely being misled.

“You need new supplies, I need a collector. Is that a job you could do?” he asked.

“Collector? To collect what?”

He stood up from the chair, moved slowly toward me, and reached above the door.

A few metal clicks rang together. A set of keys hung there.

“You ready?” he said.

He stepped outside and started walking toward the left side of the house. I stood still for a moment before following him. If he noticed my hesitation, he did not care.

Two gray metal doors stood on the side of the house, each marked with a large number turned upside down.

Zero Nine.

Bold blue letters, rusted corners, and clearly scrapped from some facility long ago.

“The collector’s job. Your task is to greet people and claim payment for the ride,” he said, his voice barely audible from the outside.

An engine ignited with a roar that vibrated through my entire body. Nana’s helmet caught the noise with a warning beep, muting the speakers before it could rip my ears.

Two headlights above me, then four more below, streaming light into the forest.

I stepped aside and let it pass.

For all its mechanical fury, the machine was compact, rectangular, and heavy. It sat low on six small tires, its metallic yellow doors sliding open right in front of me.

“Is this a bus?” I asked.

“A modified cargo rover,” Oddman said.

“How many people can it carry?”

“Ten, or eleven. Depending on the day.”

I stepped inside, and the doors closed behind me. It had a small corridor down the middle and seats on each side, making it feel like a bus.

“I take two large rounds, and we should be back here by the end of the day,” Oddman said.

“Aren’t you afraid of strangers?” I asked.

“Why would I be? They haven’t done anything. They are strangers.”

Oddman punched two buttons, grabbed the wheel, and we moved forward. I could barely feel any vibration; the trees passing through the windows were the only indication of our movement.

The bus slowly slipped into a dark cave. At a distance, a small flickering light waited for us.

I looked through the windshield. It was a beacon, mounted on the cave wall. Once we passed it, another light appeared farther ahead.

This one was brighter.

The bus kept a steady speed toward it, until the light grew too bright to be another beacon.

It was a tunnel exit.

“I don’t get you, you know?” I said.

“How would you? You don’t know me,” Oddman said.

“Are you a wayfinder?” I asked.

“I was. I no longer am.”

“So, you are a book reader, a bus driver, and a repairman.”

He glanced at the mirror hanging above his head, catching my eye as I stood in the little corridor. “Labels. You insist on placing them. Like that would define a person.”

I sat down and met his eyes in the mirror. “How else are you going to survive?”

“Do you think your Nana wanted you to be this judgmental?” Oddman asked.

“I live because of her. Following Nana’s rules has kept me alive. I won’t betray her.”

The bus made a slow turn toward a corridor of completely unexplored territory. Through the glass, I saw clusters of small houses elevated above the water on tall pillars.

“Look, our first passenger is here,” Oddman said.

The bus stopped slowly, and the yellow doors slid open with a sharp hiss. A woman stepped inside.

“Hello,” she said.

“Well, hi,” I said.

A lady held a handful of smooth, dark stones and attempted to hand them to Oddman.

“Thank you. Please give those to my collector,” he said, nodding toward me.

I grabbed the payment and nodded. “You didn’t tell me how much the ride costs.”

“It doesn’t have a price. If they don’t have enough to pay, don’t charge them,” Oddman said.

“Wouldn’t that make it so that you cannot afford to ride this bus?”

“I will just make my next trip shorter,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What about tomorrow, when people won’t have a bus to go anywhere?”

“Tomorrow is never guaranteed,” he said.

“If it comes, I’ll make a shorter trip. But I am here now.”

“You do know the night is coming in just a few sleeps,” I said. “We should be gathering filters and securing shelter, not riding a bus going nowhere.”

“What do you think we are doing?” Oddman said.

The lady stood from her seat and looked through the windshield, searching the distance for something.

“Wherever you can. Thank you,” she said.

Oddman slowly pulled the bus beside a small tree. She nodded and stepped out.

Outside, more people were waiting to get inside. They slowly hopped onboard, and I held out both hands to catch their dark stones.

We kept driving through a place I had never seen before. I wondered if Nana had even known it existed.

The houses hung just above the water, an endless row of small cubes held up by thin pillars. The pillars protected them from the floods that often came with dawn.

“Beautiful houses,” I said.

The woman sitting in front turned to look at me.

“Palafitos,” she said. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

Before I could answer, there was a screeching sound and people got thrown to the front of the bus.

Everything stopped.

The whole horizon at a distance turned to one side. The woman in front screamed and the dark stones I carried rolled across the floor under the seats.

“Is everyone okay?” Oddman asked.

A few murmurs came from the seats. “I’m okay,” someone said and then another.

I checked Nana’s helmet and looked for cracks. It was difficult for me to move. The murmurs slowly turned into groans.

People got hurt.

Through the windshield, I saw water rushing across our path. I lowered my head without breaking eye contact and grabbed one person’s hand.

I saw people running towards us and away from the water.

Walkers.

“No,” I said.

They kept running and went past us. I heard them talking outside, then noise from the back and steps coming from above.

“Great. Now they are going to steal some stones,” I whispered.

“Over here,” Oddman said.

“Does everyone have a functioning helmet?” they screamed from the outside.

“Everyone, please check your helmets,” Oddman said.

I grabbed the edge of my seat, planted one foot against the side, and pulled myself up with both hands on the bus to keep my balance.

“Helmets,” I said. “Check your helmets.”

One by one, the passengers lifted their hands. Thumbs up. Signal lights. Broken voices.

“Four, two, zero,” I counted.

“Confirmed?” Oddman asked from the front.

“Confirmed!” I said from the back.

They hammered that glass like there was no tomorrow. The water at the distance kept mounting slowly.

The glass shattered.

They took Oddman first.

“Leave him alone,” I yelled.

The Walkers breached the bus one by one. I didn’t have anywhere to run. Nana’s helmet emitted no light. I saw multiple lights rushing towards me.

Something had caught me. Two hands wrapped around my ankle and pulled me away from the dark, into the light.

“Are you okay?” they said.

“Take everyone,” Oddman said, groaning from pain. “The heat stones to the shelter too.”

“The flood came before dawn. It will freeze and bury us in the night,” a Walker said.

“Help me turn the bus around. I’ll pick up as many as I can,” Oddman said.

He nodded at me. “Go with them.”

I looked at the passengers sitting on the side of the road.

I looked at the bus and the dark stones under the seats.

Then I went back inside and grabbed as many as I could carry.

“Take heat stones,” I said.

Two Walkers looked at me.

“Please,” I added.

They nodded and moved away with the passengers slowly.

Three Walkers stayed behind with me and Oddman. He already had two hands on the ceiling of the bus. “Ready?” he said.

We all started to push the bus on its side. It barely moved. We kept pushing and it started to give and swing like a pendulum.

“This is like turning a big arepa,” I said.

“One more!” Oddman yelled.

The bus flipped and the six wheels landed on the ground hard, pushing smoke all around us.

The bus was back in position.

“I’ll bring the rest,” he said. “Get them to shelter.”

Oddman opened the two yellow doors and went back inside, his breathing slow and heavy.

The Walkers started moving. I looked past them. I couldn’t see the shelter, only countless helmet lights gathered in the distance, standing together against the rising water.

I followed the Walkers with both hands pressing the heat stones against my stomach.

By the time we arrived, most people had already gone underground. The shelter was not the big building I expected. It was a round hole in the earth, hidden between dark roots.

A green stair dropped straight down through the dirt and into a cabin. It was a clearly illuminated room in impeccable condition. Clean and smooth, nothing like the forest above. The walls were pristine carbon fiber, untouched by the rain, cold, roots, or time itself.

Nana had taught me about forests, rivers, tents, and trails. We never talked about underground doors. I wondered if she ever knew.

I took a deep breath, turned around, and placed both of my hands against the edges of the hole to drop down.

I spent time talking to people inside, helping prepare food, cleaning, and making everyone comfortable. I felt like I had to earn my keep.

We had food, heat, and shelter. For the first time, each other.

A large locker held all the supplies. Two chairs faced me. I walked toward them, reached the edge of one with both hands, and sat down, my trail pack still hanging on my chest. I dropped like the rain. I was out for good.

I slept for what felt like all the remaining sleeps, until the night came.

Oddman did not return.

“I finally understand Nana. Look ahead for change and look back for wisdom.”

I grabbed Nana’s helmet. I reached up and clicked the chin guard. The three flickering amber lights, the lights that had been my only guide, vanished. Total darkness.

“I am going after him.”

I walked through the corridor and into the cabin toward the exit. Two Walkers guarded the green stairs inside the cabin.

“Wait, wait. Where are you going?” one said.

I grabbed my trail pack, crossed its patched-together strap over my chest, and kept moving forward.

“You either come with me to find anyone needing shelter or you stay here,” I said.

“What should we do?” one of them asked.

“Look ahead and back.”

“Aren’t you scared?” the other said.

I looked up to the doorway, where the long night waited.

“I was. I no longer am.”

Cale’s Note

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You are an Outlier.

It took me a minute to find the clicker. The screen behind me was as big as a cinema, displaying my notes in massive letters. My next slide was important: a low-resolution video file of 2004 security footage. I needed time to explain this one step at a time.

“Ah, here it is,” I said, with one hand on the microphone and the other on the clicker.

On the screen, I could see myself walking down the street after a long day at the office, digging through my pockets just wanting to listen to some music. My fingers kept hitting different stuff: old receipts, a keychain, and a plastic wrapper. It felt like playing a claw game at an arcade, always dropping the prize right before getting it.

“Oye, espera!”

A voice in Spanish came from behind my left shoulder. It wasn’t a big shout, just a whisper, but it had some urgency.

I stopped. “If this is about the deployment log, we can look at that tomorrow.”

Behind me, nothing. Just an empty street where a colleague should have been. Nobody answered.

I turned back. A massive truck passed like a blade, centimeters away, blasting its horn at full volume.

Paralysis hit me. Breathing became completely impossible for a few seconds as a shock spiked through my system. My eyes shut and instinct took over, forcing two blind steps backward, away from the traffic.

“What the actual…” escaped into the quiet air, confusion mounting as my frantic mind ran through different scenarios. “That was it, and I skipped it.”

“It’s a day I always come back to whenever anxiety hits,” my voice echoed through the room speakers, the microphone giving a bit of feedback.

The big screen behind me flickered as the security footage ended. It was the only source of light, casting a cold blue glow over the silent rows of indistinguishable people sitting in front of me. I took a slow breath to keep my pulse steady.

“Pinpointing the exact cause of the voice you just heard remained difficult for a while. I spent the next ten years locked inside a lab studying the phenomenon. Which leads me to today.”

A Milky Way graphic appeared on the projection behind me. Facing the audience, the words “Mars Lander Personnel” were stamped in distinct blue letters across the carbon fiber of my podium.

“Enrico Fermi once asked, where is everyone?” Nods passed through the audience like a miniature fútbol wave, a silent gesture for a familiar question.

“It was a damn good question. There are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone. So, where is everyone?” I asked, extending both arms.

“Today, we have the answer.” I let the weight of the moment hang for a second or two.

“They have always been everywhere.” Each word dropped like a heavy stone into the silence of the room.

A few seconds passed before chaos broke loose as everyone shouted different questions at full volume. The silence instantly felt like a distant memory.

“One at a time, please. You, front row. Go.” I pointed toward the closest face.

“It’s simply not possible. We have looked at all frequencies, biosignatures, and megastructures. They are not there,” a silhouette in the front row said.

“How do you know that?” someone in the back asked.

“I don’t deal in a right or wrong binary, I deal in probabilities,” gesturing with my hands to wave the room back into their seats.

I waited for everyone to sit down and focus their attention again. The tension in the room was palpable. It was understandable, because these were all long-time scientists, and I was ripping their life’s script apart.

“So, let’s look at the board. Scenario A: We are completely alone in a hostile and sterile universe, making life on Earth the highest rarity in existence. There’s legendary, and then there’s Earth. Scenario B: Advanced civilizations exist, but they aren’t using telegrams transmitted by men on horses to communicate between towns. And right now, we’re staring at the sky looking for the horse tracks.”

“And Scenario C?” the silhouette in the front stood up, interrupting my flow. “Because unless those horses are invisible, Hubble didn’t see anything, nor did the Webb deep fields or any observable data.”

“Observable data. Interesting choice of words.” I looked at them, and took a moment. “And... Scenario C is the double-slit experiment.”

The projection behind me flickered for a moment as a new illustration appeared on the screen. “You all know the experiment. When we aren’t looking, matter behaves as a wave. But the moment we look, the wave function collapses into solid particles.”

I paused to let them connect the dots. I expected some confrontation, but I didn’t expect it to be quite this civil.

“What does this have to do with the Fermi Paradox?” someone shouted from the back of the room.

“Every time we pointed a telescope at the cosmos, our observation collapsed the wave function of the incoming light.”

I let the statement hang until the room fell completely silent.

“Simply put, we’ve been wiping their signatures from reality just by looking for them. Or, as the front row prefers to call it: observable data.”

“How do you measure something that changes the moment you see it?” someone in the corner asked.

Those ten years of isolation reduced to a single question. I tasted the recycled air, the reheated coffee, and the cold vending-machine sandwiches of that lab all at once.

“You don’t take a single snapshot. Instead, you take a billion out-of-focus, nanosecond exposures. A single data point tells you nothing, but when you compile those billions of exposures together, the noise resolves into a signal. And here it is,” I said, pointing at the projector.

A collective wave of whispers broke out across the room. Faces that had been locked onto me turned to one another, searching for answers.

“That is an incoming visitor ship.”

“And it will land on Martian soil in ten days.” My voice cut clean through the murmurs.

I didn’t expect another wave of questions. Every face in the room turned into the exact same expression. Paralysis hit, and instincts took over.

“Prior to this meeting you didn’t have security clearance, so this wasn’t a presentation. This was a security briefing, and you have all been officially briefed. I leave you with the data to process and report back to me. Good day.”

I gathered my badge and music player from the desk and walked out of the room.

A few members of my staff followed me out into the corridor as we made our way toward the main hub. All the planetary bases shared the same architectural layout: a massive kitchen and a round table dead center to encourage conversation through convergence. To get to any other section of the facility, you had to pass directly through this central circular space.

As we approached the area, Sullivan was waiting. Sully was a visitor I didn’t want to meet at the moment, especially since we both held the exact same title: Principal Director. We had very different views on how to interpret the data.

“You know we have to shut down all telescopes,” Sully said, opening the conversation in a sharp, cutting tone.

“If you mean stopping space exploration in general, then no,” trying to cut to the chase.

“Of course we have to. By your own discovery, every observation is causing irreparable damage out there.”

“Damage. That’s an interesting choice. What brings you to Mars, Sullivan? Other than the ambush?” I said.

“We are altering their state and collapsing their wave functions, making them vanish. I don’t know what else to tell you.” Sully stepped back, each word delivered like ammunition.

“I hear you. But how do you reconcile that view with leading the Europa mission?” I asked.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard my name coming from you in years, and it’s better for me to be close than far,” Sully said, looking back at me. “Así evito que te caigas.”

“Gracias. I have to go. Can we pick this up some other time?” I pivoted away from the heat to retreat into the safety of my schedule

“Sure. Tomorrow, or in ten days when they land?” Sully gathered some items from the table and turned away.

We had seen the world in very different ways. I didn’t think we would ever see a color and simply call it blue; it would always be cyan, navy blue, light blue, or everything in between. All things considered, Day 10 went better than I expected.

That “Oye, espera!” that saved my life has been in the back of my head all these years. The moment I turned, did they just vanish because I looked back? It was a question I might not want the answer to.

Day 9 started exactly as I expected, filled with the usual daily standups and synchronization meetings with different sections across the base. But as the hours progressed, something became very clear. Sully wasn’t alone. Followers were growing in number, and “stop looking” was quickly becoming their rallying cry.

I went to the nanodetector outpost on the far side of our facility to meet with staff. It had a direct line of sight to the Mars surface and the sky. Up here, the rust-colored dust stayed exactly where it was, indifferent to my existence. It was the only thing on this planet that didn’t change the moment I focused on it.

“Give me our latest transmission,” I said to the operator.

The operator kept looking at the console. “We’ve tried Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese. They respond in whatever language we use.”

“Any alteration in their tone based on the language?”

“No, they seem calm. Polite, even. However…”

“However?” I cut in.

“However, the last message was incomprehensible, Director,” he said, looking quite confused.

“Kaposki, I presume?” I read the badge hanging on the uniform.

“Yes, Mars Lander Outpost Operator Kaposki, Director.” He straightened his posture on the wide seat, clearing his throat.

“Lovely titles. Go on.”

“The feed said, Power is not needed. It’s entirely disjointed from our pings about their trajectory and orbital calculations,” Kaposki reported.

“Well, there’s no reason to drop protocol before we even meet,” I replied. “The hard questions should happen here, face to face. Or face to... something..”

That was the last day I had any sense of control. Before closing my eyes for the night, I checked the array status one last time. The data was still compiling, billion after billion frames that would soon come into sharp focus. Any deviations in their trajectory would trigger new protocols.

A question lingered in my mind: if I had taken a traditional observation with the Hubble or Webb telescopes, would the incoming visitors have vanished from existence?

I wish I had been better prepared for what came next. I wish for many things: not to undo my mistakes, but simply to evade what followed.

Day 8 did not care about what I expected. From inside my chamber, I could hear the loud voices of a crowd gathering outside very early in the morning. It was not casual chatter; it was a full strike.

I gathered my things and walked outside. Arriving at the circular hub felt like crashing a private event where I was the main topic of conversation.

“It’s time to shut it down,” Sully said, appearing from the tumultuous crowd.

“Mutiny, Sullivan. Really?” The crowd behind Sully formed a direct line, a wall of support. “Nothing has ever come from burying our heads in the ground. If you are into the dark age thing, you do you,” I said, giving myself time to form a strategy.

“Destruction is not science,” Sully said.

“And mutiny is not liberty,” I replied.

“We tried the hard way and now we take the easy way,” Sully turned to address the crowd behind.

“Stop looking! Stop looking!”

The room detonated with the sound of a coordinated choir. The sudden surge of volume kept a persistent ring in my ears.

“And you call yourselves scientists?” I raised my voice to cut through the chants, but Sully didn’t give the crowd time to lose momentum, stepping directly into my personal space.

“We need all the data, not just the security clearance files. That includes your 2004 walking down the street footage. I’d say sorry, but it’s not something you can say for the damage you have caused,” before I could push back, Sully snatched the badge straight off my chest.

“They will be here in eight days. We have questions that need answers,” A desperate attempt at negotiation.

“No, they won’t.” Sully held up my badge for everyone to see. “The complete shutdown of all observations will start tomorrow. They can arrive, but nobody will be here to meet them.”

I looked at the wave of faces and couldn’t recognize anyone. It was as if they had turned their backs while still staring at me.

“If your solution is to stop looking, we’ve already ceased to exist,” I said.

“Has it ever occurred to you that we have wiped out civilizations?” Sully stepped too close, breathing a quiet whisper against my ear. “Lo siento.”

I expected them to take me to a chamber and lock me up. Instead, they cleared the room like a marching band. Sully did not just steal my badge but actually crawled inside my head, transforming a phrase into a knife.

The base was no longer under my command. I stood alone in the center of the circular hub, looking around at the gray and blue carbon fiber infrastructure. Its sterile and pristine condition felt more alien than anything I had ever encountered on Mars.

I imagined the next step would be an immediate evacuation protocol. That was probably the reason they didn’t lock me up. Where was I going to go?

I have never liked to sit during the workday. I prefer to stand to keep myself from falling asleep at the wheel. Today was different. I sat at the massive circular table to gather my thoughts and organize my next steps.

My first instinct was to gather a loyal following to fight fire with fire, but the likely scenario would be the total annihilation of the base. Either way, Sully’s mutiny achieves the goal. I could reach out to Earth, but what can they do?

Mars was currently at its farthest orbital point from Earth, 401 million kilometers away. It would take over twenty minutes for a signal to reach them, and even if they replied immediately, that was a forty-minute round-trip communication. There was the lag, and then there was this.

I was a visitor in my own base by Day 7. Every crew member I saw either refused to look at me or followed Sully’s command. Part of me nodded at the flawless execution of their plan. The rest of me saw the probability of this scenario and chose to ignore it.

One thing Sully did not foresee was why the visitors chose Mars as the contact point, and more importantly, how communication actually ran. The nanodetector outpost had to be my move.

I stood up. “It’s a two-star review for this resort,” I said to the empty room, “And the service is only getting worse.”

Getting inside the outpost was the easy part. It took me around ten minutes to navigate the maintenance vents and drop down into the abandoned post. The difficult part was enabling communication with our upcoming visitors.

Sully had already initiated the lockdown from the central hub, turning my credentials into useless plastic. I snapped off the main console panel, manually bridging the hardware boot.

It didn’t work. I needed central power reestablished to run both the console and the external array, and I refused to take this sitting down.

“Maybe if I create a jumper between the... No, that wouldn’t work,” I said out loud. It was an off putting habit picked up during my early years at the lab. “Think two steps ahead, but map your current coordinates first.”

“The power is centralized and we are locked in this outpost,” my words echoing back at me.

Forcing an emergency protocol was a choice, but it risked turning the mutineers into pallbearers dancing with my casket on the way out. Without power, there was no baseline way to send a message. I stood there in the dark, waiting for a better variable to present itself.

“We bypass the power entirely,” I whispered to the blank screen, my own reflection staring back at me. I closed my eyes for a second, letting the jumper wires slip from my fingers to drop like spaghetti against the floor.

I leaned over the cold, unpowered microphone and spoke straight into the dark. “Power is not needed.”

“Hello again, Director,” a voice said from behind my left shoulder

There was no acoustic reverb against the carbon fiber walls. It was a perfectly dry, flat sound, as if someone was standing close enough to feel threatened.

“I have so many questions, but I need to explain that your reservation has changed,” I said, settling back into the wide chair to gain composure. “The base no longer has the hospitality you require.”

“How, what, and when are just as similar,” they said. The voice felt like a small choir singing the words. “Every choice you have ahead leaves you in this room.”

I looked down at the unpowered console. The horizon of the Martian landscape through the glass of the outpost remained frozen as my wallpaper. I looked at that image once more, then turned around to face the darkness.

“Are you saying I have no free will?”

“You are free to do as you will. You are also responsible for your will,” they responded.

“I need you to explain that to me like I’m five,” I said into the dark. “Because these riddles aren’t working for me, Bilbo.”

I spoke to the faceless darkness as if talking to an old friend. They felt like someone I had met a lifetime ago, someone who used to catch every single one of my odd references.

“You already know. We already know.”

The outpost doors slid open with a heavy, penetrating hiss, and a wall of blinding hazel light flooded the room, instantly erasing the dark.

“Bilbo?” I asked, squinting into the glare.

“Are you going on an adventure?” a familiar voice said, cutting through the blinding light.

“Sully?”

Standing there in the hazel glare, I forced the pieces into a logical shape, trying to map all possible scenarios. One: the visitors were using Sully as a local transmitter. Two: the lockdown wasn’t Sully’s design at all. Or three, and it was my least favorite: I could not trust my senses any longer.

“It’s time to go. Evac in ten minutes,” Sully said, stepping into view and extending both arms as if to welcome me to my exile.

I dragged my feet toward the hazel light, watching as the silhouette became clearer. “They said we already knew, Sully.”

“The path ahead is for us to preserve, not to destroy,” Sully said quietly. “I know you would do the exact same thing if you could do it all over again,” escorting me out of the room and into the corridor.

“Was it you, Sully? I need to know. Is this an experiment?”

“Shutting it all down? Yeah,” Sully said.

We walked together through the lonely base. It seemed like we were the last two remaining. I still could not piece it together. I did not know whether to trust Sully or not, whether to keep the data hidden for later, or to release it to someone who would interpret it completely differently than I did.

For once, I needed that second view. “They said we already knew, Sully,” I repeated, which was not something I did often.

“We knew what?” Sully asked.

“Only that we knew already.”

“You have to give me a bit more for me to work on,” Sully said, turning to face me and halting my walk.

“Power is not needed. They said that before I entered the outpost. How did they know?” I asked, expecting Sully to dismiss it.

“Needed for what?” Sully asked, sounding more interested than I anticipated. That sudden curiosity triggered my suspicion.

“Needed to communicate. I sent and received messages completely in the dark.” I took a few steps back. “They said how, what, and when are all the same. We are free to do as we will, and we are also responsible for that will.”

I studied Sully’s expression as we walked in the corridor. “But if you believe I talked to them, why don’t we go back and see for yourself?” I suggested, trying to break free from the experiment.

I turned to look around to see if anyone was watching us. Nobody was there. I looked over my right shoulder to keep monitoring Sully.

Two sudden detonations shook me to the ground. A third followed soon after, violent enough to turn a hidden layer of dust on the ceiling into a choking red fog. I hadn’t even known those invisible particles were sleeping on the base infrastructure.

The facility turned back into the ancient dark cave it once was, leaving nothing but carbon fiber debris scattered around.

“Sully?” I called out. “Drop the act. Quit playing.”

A slow, mounting sound began at a distance. A crowd of people was moving toward me as I approached the circular hub. “Well, the pallbearer dancers are here to take me,” I said to myself.

“Director, here are the findings from the security clearance briefing. There’s an interesting relationship between photons and regular matter,” a man dressed in pristine white and blue said.

I did not remember his face from the meeting days ago.

“Is this part of the experiment, or are the evac procedures in place?” I asked, expecting some clarity.

“Evac? Is there an issue, Director?” the man asked.

“Can you point me towards Principal Director Sullivan?” I asked quietly.

“Director Sullivan is in position leading the mission in Europa, Director,” the man answered, and looked at me genuinely puzzled.

“Photons, you said?” I asked, leaning towards the device he was carrying.

“Yes, you see. The choice to observe a photon in the present retroactively dictates its behavior in the past,” the man said, pointing at some data curves on his tablet.

“Wait, what?”

“It seems, retrocausality, Direc….”I took several steps backward. I tried to rerun the events up to this point, but nothing made sense. It felt like watching a video playing at twenty times its normal speed.

“When are they landing?” I asked, looking frantically around the hub for any familiar faces.

“It’s today, Director. Ten minutes from now,” the man replied, studying me as if I should have known that. “Thank you. Good day,” I took the tablet right out of his hands, and walked away into the crowd.

I rushed into the corridor and into the outpost. My security badge on my chest, and the sliding doors opened immediately. There were no signs of breaking in and no cables on the ground. Kaposki and another operator stood up from their chairs to greet me.

I raised the stolen tablet, scanning the screen for deployment logs. The only graphic it displayed was a single photon moving backward through time, its entire trajectory rewritten by an observation made in its own future.

The countdown in my head was closing in on zero.

“How, what, and when are indistinguishable,” I said. “The arrow of time doesn’t flow the way we thought.” The operators looked at each other, then back at me, completely lost for words.

“Send a message to Europa, Kaposki.” I dropped the tablet onto their console so they could use the reverse data path outlined in the log. “Use the patterns shown here.” I pointed toward the screen.

“Write this down: I’m sorry, Sully, destruction is not science.” I turned around, the doors slid open, and I stormed out.

My footsteps echoed down the corridor as I rushed back toward the circular hub. The countdown in my head was passing through its final seconds. I knew the doors were opening.

A slow, mounting sound began at a distance. A crowd of people was moving toward me as I approached the circular hub. “Well, the pallbearers,” I repeated to myself. But the crowd wasn’t a marching band. And they weren’t looking at me.

“Director, they are here,” the man from the briefing room said. I blinked, looking at the pristine tablet in the man’s hands. The exact model I stole in a life that no longer existed.

“What’s the latest message from our visitors?”

The man looked down at the screen, his face twisting like he couldn’t read it.

“What is it?”

“It... it doesn’t make sense, Director,” the man said, the glowing hue of the tablet illuminating his face.

It read, “Oye, espera!”

Cale’s Note

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Elevator doors slid open with a pressurized hiss. I walked across a corridor. A light at the end waited for me.

A green light blinked, like a small flashlight shining through the glass. I walked toward it. As I entered, two harnesses locked into place with a mechanical snap. A big display flickered to life, casting a soft blue glow across my visor.

The cabin smelled brand new, plastic and sterile, like catching that new toy smell. It barely fit one person, but considering I was going to be the only occupant for the next few years, I couldn’t really complain. I’ve slept in worse apartments during my college years. The ambient noise kept up a steady, low-frequency hum.

“The Flight Director is requesting to revise your final patch to the media feed, Pilot,” a voice came from the secondary console. It was crisp, perfectly modulated, and had this dry, slightly off feel to it. A voice I didn’t choose and I had to adapt to.

Like other encounters, I held my guard up with this new unknown. A blue marble Earthset hung above the screen, laced with a geometric grid of satellites. No sunrises or sunsets here. Just the cold, artificial geometry of my orbit.

“Tell them the signal is dropping and my focus is on telemetry,” I adjusted the wrist seals of my flight suit. It felt way too uncomfortable to wear quite suddenly. “I don’t have anything inspiring to say to the cameras. I am no content creator,” I whispered.

“Recording a telemetry error is technically a fabrication, Pilot.” A tiny green status light flickered on the screen as she spoke. “However, considering the public relations department has already written four variations of your historic final words for the clicks, I suppose accuracy is fluid. Cutting the feed now,” she said, her glow illuminating my hands.

Silence returned. It was glorious.

While the other candidates recited lines about legacy and national pride for the cameras, I learned early to feed the PR machine exactly what it wanted. It was easier. Fewer battles.

I spent my life moving. But this cabin? It felt different.

“Simetria. A vehicle to get somewhere else, but this space was entirely mine. I wished I had the luxury of national pride. It seemed comforting.”

So what’s the story?

Two entities who have spent their entire existences waiting to be replaced are about to discover that no one is ever coming.

Aboard the most advanced space exploration vehicle ever assembled, the Simetria, they serve as a live test for the first faster-than-light drive.

The pilot has always treated his life as a temporary assignment, something to tolerate until the real future begins. She was manufactured for a single purpose: to be present, but never to be seen.

The countdown goes to zero. The telemetry is gone. Positioning data is unreadable. Every signal home receives silence.

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Placeholder Cabin: Temporary Permanent (A Short Story)

by Cale Lares

Who’s writing?

Thank you for reading and being here.

I’m Cale Lares, and I write short stories about outliers at the limits of human experience. Born in the Caribbean, shaped by the Andes, and now writing science fiction from the subarctic north.

The cold, dark reality of the control room. I could smell the rust and the humidity. It felt like I’d catch an infection just by standing there for more than a minute.

The next eclipse is 4 months away. It will be our final blow. I have run this scenario in my head countless times and I cannot pin the fracture point. There was no time and I wish we had more.

Every time I closed my eyes, I wondered if there was anything I should have done.

A loud noise cut through the entire room like a terrible song on a phone speaker as someone behind me knocked on my chair. “She’s calling you,” he noted, sounding annoyed.

“Thanks for the push of confidence,” I whispered, without looking back.

My time was up. I stood up and walked to the front to face everyone, noticing the greenboard ahead was so old. It looked fused to the wall, buried under decades of beige and green paint.

I had absolutely nothing prepared for this session. I simply put this presentation aside like a raw vegetable during a barbecue, and now there was nothing I could do to escape it.

At her desk, the Mission Director was calmly scrolling through a tablet like she had been looking at it all day. “Ah, here you are. Solar Eclipse,” she said, not even looking around. She stood up and extended her arm like she was introducing me at an award ceremony.

“I don’t know if you all knew this, but the last time we had a full solar eclipse was 17 months ago.”

“18 months ago, Director,” I said.

I really don’t know how I knew that. Probably read it somewhere or watched a random clip, but there was an opening and I took it.

“Ah. Well. That’s true, yes.” The Director turned, her attention snapping completely onto me. “Let’s hear everything about the upcoming eclipse. Quiet, everyone.”

I had absolutely nothing. “I have to say, we’ve all heard a lot about the eclipse,” stretched my pronunciation like it was the oxygen I needed to survive.

“Nobody wants another broadcast. I mean, yes! We know that the big blue planet is going to cover the big sun, but even I can do that,” I pointed my thumb toward the window.

“And why is that?” the Director asked, a smile drawing across her entire face.

I immediately realized her crosshairs were locked on me. Nobody had put me there but me. She had all the ammunition needed for a public shaming show. I had cast myself as the main actor.

“Well, you see…” I tried to plug my wrist-pad into the big screen. The rambling bought me five seconds, and that’s when the first sensor went out.. A dot on the screen shifted from an amber blink to a permanent red light. Then another.

“Wait a minute, sensors 7, 5, and… 4 are gone?” I looked around at the blinking red glare.

“Everyone, evac!” the Director yelled.

“Wait, wait, Director.” I stammered, already moving backward, trying to argue my way out of a presentation I no longer had to give.

“To your position, now.”

So what’s the story?

After a catastrophic atmospheric breach on the moon’s surface, a technician is stranded on a lunar outpost with a half-charged suit and a failing grid. Staying put is a death sentence. Survival now depends on an unlikely partnership.

They have two choices: fade away or step into the void to chase the last of their resources. Together, they must learn that despair is not wisdom. As they venture deeper into the brutal gray desert, they realize the fractured base was only the beginning of their problems.

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Colony of Two: Breathing Through the Void (A Short Story)

by Cale Lares

Who’s writing?

Thank you for reading and being here.

I’m Cale Lares, and I write short stories about outliers at the limits of human experience. Born in the Caribbean, shaped by the Andes, and now writing science fiction from the subarctic north.