If I was looking for a sign, some kind of confirmation of what I’ve suspected all along, I’ve got it. I lean my head back against the glass and close my eyes. I can still hear it, the distress signal, eerie in its lucidity, like some kind of omen. “Stay away,” it seems to say. “Stay away, or you know how this all will end.”

I try to push the thoughts away, the memories, the visions, but the more I try to forget, the more I seem to remember.

Broken glass. Towering trees. A ship falling from the sky.

Funny, that. When I wanted to remember, it seemed almost impossible, but now I can’t seem to forget. It’s like the world’s been turned upside down, like I’m living inside the dream that used to live inside me.

I turn my head, letting my temple rest against the cool dark glass of the observation room and lift a hand in greeting to the man on the other side. He returns my greeting in kind.

How many times have I sat here before? I wonder. One? One hundred? How many times have I ended up in this exact same spot, asking myself the exact same questions?

I touch my fingers gently to the glass, staring into the face that looks back at me. The man in glass has changed. He looks different, like me. I wonder if he knows.

It’s a hard thing to accept—to know that you’re living a life you’ve already lived, that the reason everything feels so familiar is that you’ve done it all before, and for all you know, you’ll do it all again. I understand now that that’s what’s happening—that through some force or will or trick of the universe, I’m reliving past events, like a song playing on repeat, a hallway that doesn’t end but just goes on and on and on until you’re back where you’ve started with nowhere else to go.

It's an alarming realization, but I’m not afraid, I’m just—I don’t know what I am. I guess I just wish I’d realized in sooner. But would that really have changed anything? I was always going to end up on this ship. I know that. We were always going to end up on the run. And sooner or later…well, I’ll think about that when later comes.

What I really struggle with, what’s hardest for me to understand is why me? If we’re all living this again, why am I the only one who remembers? Why not Shae or Jahdra? Why do I feel like I know them so well, yet they still see me as a stranger? There must be some explanation for it, some reason. Right?

I haven’t mentioned the signal to anyone else, but I didn’t have to. C-CIL seems to have picked it up. Part of me wonders if it’s because of Remus, because of me, or if he somehow detected it on his own. I shake my head. I guess it doesn’t matter much either way. It’s still my fault.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Everyone knows about the signal now. And though it may still be C-CIL’s word against Chrys’s, I can already see the direction this is heading. Part of me wonders if I should come clean—tell them everything I know. Warn them. Stop them. But something tells me I’d quickly go from “stranger” to “enemy.” The last time I tried to help, it didn’t go so well. I can’t accept that I was wrong then—I did what I had to do to save the ship, to save us all. And it worked. We escaped with our lives and ship intact. But all I was rewarded with is Jahdra’s ire. And, I suppose, the chance to live through this all again.

I pick up the book lying on the sill and trace the shapes on the cover with my fingers. I’ve always loved the feel of a book in my hands. It’s the first thing I remember ever touching, holding. Like it’s the first thing that ever really existed in my world. I try to let my mind relax, to travel back in time—back through every iteration of the present, of the future, back through the darkness. I don’t know what I’m looking for there. The beginning, maybe?

Shattered glass. Broad green leaves. A labyrinth of hallways.

But the farther back I try to go, the more difficult it becomes. I remember being on the Chrysanthemum. Those are some my clearest memories. I remember Olympia Station, and meeting Shae. And I remember Ramy’s face emerging from the darkness, Lotus coming to my rescue. Where was that again?

I leaf through the pages of the book, turning to a different story this time, “Little Lost Robot.” “Robots” they call them. It’s strange to think of life being engineered in this way, manufactured, reproduced, dispatched and discarded, one almost indistinguishable from the next. Their purpose is chosen for them, programmed into them. How odd it would be, I reflect, to not be able to choose a purpose of your own.

I find myself lost in the pages, as I often do, and before I know it, I’ve reached the end of the book. I close it and set it down on the sill. An odd feeling nags at me. I pick the book back up and flip through the pages, savoring the feeling of each one brushing through my fingers. When I get to the back, I notice something. The writing—it’s not there. No notes, no scribbles. The inside of the covers, both front and back, are blank.

I turn the book over in my hands, wondering at how this could be. And then I realize—this isn’t the same book. The coffee rings on the cover have begun to fade, but they’re unmistakably present. This isn’t the book I brought with me on Remus, it’s the one that was lying in the canteen when we arrived on Chrysanthemum. How did I not realize it sooner? Even as I sat there tracing the shapes on the cover, it hadn’t occurred to me that it wasn’t the book, my book. I could swear for all the word that it was the same one.

But, the thought comes suddenly and unbidden, as if by the flick of a switch, what if it is the same book? There are two of it, sure, and if time is simply repeating itself, certainly only one should exist. But what if it’s been altered just enough to exist in two distinct iterations? I think, my heart beginning to race at this new line of inquiry. My mind goes to C-CIL, my shock at seeing him that first time on the docking pad at Olympia Station, my bewilderment, my refusal to accept his existence.

What if, I allow myself to wonder, what if this book, like me, has traveled through time and space, not knowing why or how, but determined to continue until it’s served it purpose? What if—

But my thoughts are interrupted by the sudden and unmistakable sensation that I’m no longer alone.