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The Rule of Quantum Certainty (or: i'll still be here if you blink)

Chapter 10: Connection (take your time)

Notes:

And we're back! Sorry for the delay, life happened.

This chapter, our two favourite nerds get to enjoy themselves and do nerd things. (And I out myself as a nerd as well, because I'm writing about it.) They've definitely earned this vacation!

Chapter Text

„Where are we headed today, buddy?”

Gabbro’s tone is casual, and so is their posture. You lean a bit closer anyway, because that doesn’t quite fool you anymore now – and hey, they don’t seem to mind the extra proximity either. This could almost be a hug, if you just extended your arm a bit more; you’re standing close enough that your shoulders are brushing, even though there’s nothing but empty dirt around you. Plenty of space, really. To an outside observer, you’d probably look kind of strange and awkward, huddled as you are in this open environment, but you don’t care. It feels right to you.

“I was actually gonna let you decide that, this loop.” You shrug, and a sheepish chuckle escapes you. “My last few picks didn’t exactly turn out as planned, so I thought you might have some better ideas.”

Gabbro tilts their head in thought, their helmet gently knocking into yours. “There’s a quantum frequency coming from Brittle Hollow, right?” they ask, and you nod. It makes your helmets bump again, and you hum, feeling a little silly and perhaps a bit affectionate. (But maybe that’s just residual nerves from last loop. You’re admittedly still a little frazzled.) This feels familiar by now, a gesture shared between just the two of you. It’s nice, in a way that chases away that persistent tightness in your chest.

“Yeah, there’s another shard there,” you confirm, and pull up its code on your signal scope for them to see. “And a lot of other really cool things, too. I feel like I’ve been all over the place, and I still never run out of new places to explore there. The city is just so big.”

Gabbro nods too, helmet-on-helmet, and shifts to copy the data into their own signal scope. They spent the long hours of last loop’s trip to Dark Bramble by syncing their devices to your ship’s computer, so they wouldn’t keep losing all their new information with every reset. They seem pretty keen on expanding their databases now that they’ll actually last.

(Both of you seem to have come to the silent agreement not to bring up last loop’s horrific end, which is good, because you’d really rather not dwell on it. You could both use a distraction, you think.)

“You do always seem pretty excited whenever you come back from there,” they say, and out of the corners of your eyes, you can see them smiling fondly. “I was only there once, and never below the surface. I think I’d like to see the Hanging City for myself, if it’s even half as amazing as you’ve made it sound in your stories.”

You grin, and start pulling them towards your ship. “Trust me,” you say, excitement brimming in your voice. “Words could never do it justice.”

 

-o0o-

 

A breathless “woah,” is all they seem capable of enunciating as your ship circles the shrine the Nomai had built for the local quantum shard. With all your usual blunt pragmatism, you had simply called it “the tower shard” in reference to the piece of architecture concealed below the planet’s crust, and then moved on with your life; you feel a little embarrassed now that you see that uninspired designation pop up on your ship’s radar.

Without a doubt, Gabbro could have come up with a better name. And in fact, you have every intention of letting them do just that – you’ll let them take the lead this time. And if that means spending several loops just investigating this one piece of rock, that’s fine by you.

You want them to enjoy themself.

Besides, it’s been way too long since you’ve had the opportunity to do any actual science. It might be fun.

Right now, Gabbro is leaning forward in their makeshift seat, something akin to awe dancing in their eyes as they study the scene below. With gentle precision, you set your ship down on the tall rocks surrounding the clearing. They obscure it from view pretty effectively if you don’t approach it from just the right angle, so you’re not surprised that no Hearthian has found this place before you. Brittle Hollow is a large planet, and there’s new marvels hiding around every corner, distracting in their grandeur.

Investigating all of them seems like an impossible enough task even with an infinite amount of time on your hands.

(But even then, a lot of them have become painfully familiar to you. You come to the Hanging City a lot, when you need a distraction. Some part of you still feels mortified at sharing something that has very much started to feel like your personal little secret – but a much bigger part of you is thrilled to show it to someone who will actually remember.)

You flick all systems into stand-by, turn off the boosters and listen to the familiar noise of the engine spooling down – and when you glance over, Gabbro still hasn’t moved. They’re simply staring out through the window and at the shard, utterly transfixed, and you allow yourself a small, private smile at seeing them so in their element.

“You ready to head out and greet it properly?” you ask, and they blink, as if they just remembered that they aren’t here alone. “Right, right,” they agree, still staring at the quantum rock. “I was just caught off-guard by how massive it is. I’ve never seen one this big!” They squint, and lean forward a bit more. “Did they build on top of it?”

They’re not looking at you, but you nod anyway. “Yeah, it’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? From what I’ve gathered, the structure up there is a small shrine; I think this place was really important to them. It might’ve been one of the final parts of that pilgrimage of theirs, I think?”

Even while they’re getting up and shouldering their backpack, Gabbro’s gaze is still unwaveringly fixed on the majestic formation of quantum rock. “Sounds pretty significant, yeah. Feels almost wrong to call it a quantum shard, doesn’t it? It’s really more of a monolith.”

You can’t argue with that. The little wandering fragment at the Observatory back home certainly pales in comparison.

You grab as much equipment as you can carry, and you head out.

As you thought, it does, in fact, take you several loops to study the tower shard to Gabbro’s satisfaction. The first thing they do after walking up to it is greet it like it’s an old friend, and then they promptly name it; Kyawthuite, of all things (“What? A special shard like this deserves a special name, buddy!”), and though you do shake your head at the extravagant choice, it doesn’t stop you from updating the shard’s designation in your computer files the moment Gabbro’s back is turned.

The next few hours, then, are a blur of scientific study; you take thorough measurements of Kyawthuite’s surface area and circumference, and Gabbro takes out their geology field kit and determines the shard’s hardness to be somewhere between quartz and diamond, which is apparently a perfect match for the other quantum rocks they’ve studied. Which you hadn’t known before, but hey, it does explain how these shards survived all of Hearthian history seemingly unscathed.

Geology is admittedly not your strong suit, but taking samples for chemical analysis is pretty exciting (not that there’s all that much you can actually analyse without a proper lab, but climbing around the ancient monolith and chipping off small pieces with a pickaxe is fun, if perhaps a little sacrilegious), though your hands unexpectedly start shaking when you pick up the small bottle of hydrochloric acid from the testing kit. There’s a sudden roaring in your ears and you smell the stench of bile and rot and gas and waste as a spike of phantom pain races up your leg-- and then Gabbro is there, and they gently pry the bottle from your trembling fingers, replace it with a tin of marshmallows and tell you to take a break.

(You nibble on the treat a little half-heartedly, but sitting next to a tree, breathing fresh oxygen and chasing the imaginary smell of rot out of your nostrils with the sweet scent of mallows does, admittedly, help.)

So you watch your buddy run the tests instead – and you have to watch carefully, because the samples keep disappearing when no one looks at them – and unsurprisingly, there’s no calcium carbonate in the rock chips, so the acid simply pools on their surfaces harmlessly, not causing a chemical reaction of any sort. (Some odd tension uncoils and loosens in your chest, and you breathe a little easier. Still, you decide to let Gabbro handle the acid bottles for any future tests.)

When it comes to science, even boring, expected results are worthwhile results, and in the comfort of your ship, you and Gabbro discuss at length what this might mean; you still don’t know what the quantum rocks are or how they initially formed, but if there’s no limescale in them, they probably aren’t a sedimentary deposit, and certainly not formed from ocean sediments. You suggest that they might be an igneous rock that was forced to cool too quickly, because of the visual similarities to obsidian and other glassy rocks; Gabbro snickers, and reminds you that glass is incredibly fragile due to its lack of crystalline structure, which would make the quantum shards’ high grade of hardness impossible.

You groan. Geology really isn’t your strong suit.

Ah well.

The two of you go on like that, throwing hypotheses back and forth. It’s a respectable scientific discussion at first (“Look at how it’s marbled. I think it might be a metamorphic rock!”), but soon enough, it devolves into silly theories (“Maybe Kyawthuite just wants to look fancy! We shouldn’t judge their fashion sense”) and from there into loose banter (“At least they have a fashion sense”), and as you watch Hollow’s Lantern pass by for the fifth time that day, hours later, you stop in the middle of a light-hearted joke to fight down a sleepy yawn.

Gabbro notices, because of course they do, and they look up from where they were inputting today’s findings into your computer. Their ears angle up in amusement as they watch you, free from the confines of their helmet, and you scowl at them in exaggerated annoyance. “Yeah yeah, you don’t have to say anything,” you grumble, though you feel your own traitorous ears twitch in good humour. Gabbro’s smile widens visibly, but they mercifully decide to leave your dignity intact and turn back around to finish up their data file.

You’re here to take a break and enjoy yourselves, you know that. There’s no need to push yourself, even though it goes against your instincts to stop working before the end of a loop. Still, there’s no denying the fact that sleeping felt good, last time. It might be nice to do that again.

It takes a few more minutes for your buddy to wrap things up, and by then, you’ve taken your ship to an area with promising surface integrity, below an overhang that should hopefully protect you from the worst of the Lantern’s tantrums.

Together, you lay out your sleeping bags on the floor of the little cabin, covering it almost completely; it’s funny how much smaller everything suddenly seems, now that there’s two of you. But it’s kind of cosy this way, too.

In the name of comfort, you take off your EVA suit and hang it up in its designated corner, and notice that Gabbro moves to follow your lead, only to wince and pause in the middle of unwinding their scarf.

“I… probably don’t smell too great underneath there, buddy,” they admit, and shrug apologetically. “I haven’t exactly been able to take the suit off very often, without my ship there for protection.”

A snort escapes you. “Oh, is that all?” Unbothered, you hand them a towel, and the fine-toothed comb that’s used to pry stubborn detritus out from between different layers of scale. As a general rule of thumb, Hearthians don’t really smell, but your scales do produce a thin coating of healthy, natural oils, which turn greasy and uncomfortable if left unattended for a while. And yeah, enclosed in an airtight space suit for several days, they might just get a little bit rank. But that’s nothing you haven’t already gotten overly familiar with during your training, so it’s fine.

Ideally, you’d rub yourself down with handfuls of sand to strip away the oils efficiently and comfortably, but here in space, a towel will have to do. You have a few spares in the back of your ship, for just this occasion.

Gabbro gives you a grateful little smile as you hand them the utensils, and you busy yourself with portioning out cold rations onto two plates while they clean themself up. You don’t have a fire to cook with, but you still try to create a somewhat decent meal, now that you actually have the time for that. The little fish taste good even straight from the tin, salted and preserved as they are, and you add some dried toma-berries and nuts for a bit of flavour variety. It’s a pretty good meal, as far as space rations go. And you can always have some mallows for dessert, even if Gabbro doesn’t really like them raw.

Speaking of, you hear some rustling as they put away their suit, and then they’re sitting down next to you, looking much more refreshed now that they’re clean and, much like yourself, dressed in the loose, plain clothing that the astronauts tend to wear underneath their suits.

Come to think of, it’s a little weird to see them wear normal clothes again, after so long of only seeing them in their spacesuit. The last time you’d seen them like this was when they’d brought your memory statue to Timber Hearth, which was weeks before the loops had even started. And since then, it must’ve been- what, weeks? Months? You’re unsure. The loops have started blurring into each other, and you stopped trying to keep track a while ago.

Anyway. It’s a little weird to see them without their suit, but mostly, it’s just nice. It reminds you of home.

Gabbro seems to share the sentiment, because after you’ve both eaten and put away the dishes, the two of you just sit in the cockpit together for a while and watch the red sun through the cracks in Brittle Hollow’s shell, leaning on each other a little more heavily than usual. (Neither of you has had any scale-on-scale contact with another person in far, far too long. You stay there, just basking in each other’s presence, for some time.)

In the end, you fall asleep to the sound of a familiar banjo playing softly over the speakers of your signal scope, comfortable and warm in your sleeping bag and with a full stomach for once, and you dream of nothing.

You wake up on Timber Hearth in a great mood, and you decide to steal some lab equipment from the Observatory before you leave.

Which, as it turns out, is easier said than done, but you’ve long since lost all concept of actions having consequences, so when Hornfels inevitably catches you red-handed, their confused enquiries as to why you would possibly need the geo-electric probes for your first launch are kind of funny. You’re well-aware that you’re not a great liar, so you decide to just tell them the truth, sort of: you’re going to Brittle Hollow, you say, and you want to study elements of its surface.

They seem extremely taken aback by your sudden interest in geology – which is fair, because you’re a xeno-linguist and not actually all that interested in geology at all – but Hornfels never says ‘no’ to new scientific insights, so they agree to let you take the devices with relatively little fuss. In the end, they even help you carry the stuff back to your ship, which is good, because it’s a lot heavier than it looks.

Great success, overall! You take off from Timber Hearth, feeling very satisfied with yourself.

It’s only after you pick up Gabbro and land on Brittle Hollow that you realise that both of you are terribly out of your depth. As it turns out, setting up intricate scientific equipment without any prior knowledge is easier said than done. And sure, both of you have dabbled a little in in this field, because you both practically grew up inside the Observatory and were surrounded by different sciences on all sides, but neither of you is an actual geologist.

As you click your way through different menus on the device’s screen, utterly clueless as to the function of any of them, you’re starting to realise that just watching Tuff do this from afar a few times might not, in fact, have been enough to get the gist of it.

Oh well, it was worth a try. Back to more traditional methods it is, then. At least Hornfels won’t have to know that they’re never getting that data you promised them.

Even just sticking with what your field kits have to offer, it still takes you several days to exhaust all possible angles of study. Granted, that’s probably less because there’s a vast quantity of options (because there isn’t), and more due to the fact that, by the end, you’re barely even working anymore. It’s turned into more of an easy-going camp-out next to Kyawthuite’s quantum grove.

Sure, you make some sketches of the shard, take a few more samples, and run a few more tests. But you also set up a fire to roast some marshmallows, and you banter and swap stories. You show Gabbro the broken bridge leading up to the Tower of Quantum Knowledge, right below your camping spot, and they in turn start teaching you how to play their flute. It’s easy enough to imitate their usual slow notes, but once they start guiding you through faster, more complex songs, your fingers stumble and the flute makes these awful, screeching whistles that you’ve never heard before. Gabbro laughs at you, but it’s good-natured, and you can’t help but join in.

It’s nice. Your heart feels light, and you can’t remember the last time you’ve had this much fun.

You’re really happy that they’re here with you.

You take turns monitoring the surface integrity of your little grove, well-aware of the planet falling apart around you, and whenever things get dicey, you move your camp to a safer spot. It’s a good system until it isn’t; you get distracted one loop, and you barely register the nearby explosion of lava and rock (you’ve learned to tune those out – what’s the worst that could happen? Death? Hah!), but then the ground shifts strangely beneath your feet. It’s like that feeling you get when you think you’ve reached the end of a stairwell, but instead there’s one more step, is what you dumbly think as you teeter in the split-second of vertigo.

And then you’re falling.

You’ve told Gabbro about the black hole warp, of course. It would’ve been cruel to bring them here and not tell them that the terrifying singularity right below their feet is actually quite safe, and you’ve been trying not to be unintentionally cruel anymore. You still regret the way that whole Feldspar reveal went.

Still. You remember your first plunge into the dark centre of this planet, and even though you’d known that the time loop would make any death inconsequential, the primal terror of coming face to face with entropy like that had shaken you to your core. Coming out of the experience so unexpectedly alive hadn’t really lessened the blow.

Even knowing that they’re safe, your buddy is probably not enjoying the plunge too much either.

You angle yourself to fall properly – there’s a technique to this, and Gossan had drilled it into you tirelessly – and look around wildly for your Time Buddy. Luckily, you spot them not too far from you, falling with the sort of tense, stiff posture that would’ve had Gossan shaking their head in exasperation.

They’re making primal terror look like it’s just a minor bother (you definitely remember screaming, the first time you fell), but that’s Gabbro for you. Being visibly affected at all is a pretty big tell, for them. It means this is shaking them deeply. They’re scared. (You know how to recognise that, now. Took you long enough to figure it out.)

You flick on your short-range radio and fire your jetpack, and then you’re spiralling through the air in their direction.

“Hey buddy,” you shout, hoping to distract them from the space-time anomaly you’re both plummeting towards. “Heads-up!”

You slam into them at full velocity.

Your goal was to distract them, so hey, mission accomplished! Trying to free yourself from a confusing tangle of limbs and spacesuit parts mid-air while falling is certainly distracting.

The downside, of course, is that your momentum sends the two of you spinning wildly out of control in a manoeuvre that would’ve probably had Gossan tugging at their ears in despair, had they seen it. And then the world goes dark and wide and tiny all at once, upside-down and backwards and inside-out, and by the time reality rights itself around you (Gabbro has gone very still in your arms, so you’re probably both trying very hard to not throw up), you’re still spinning wildly out of control, because the nature of the vacuum of space is that there’s generally nothing there that will stop your momentum.

Great.

Anyway, you’re still contemplating whether you should try to correct your trajectory with your jetpack at the risk of catching your buddy in the flames, or if you should just kind of angle yourself towards the White Hole Station and hope for the best, all the while tumbling ass-over-teakettle through the darkness, when you suddenly and painfully slam into a solid object.

Ow. Ow, okay.

Your suit beeps at you that your vitals are low, and yeah, no shit – you think you just broke your arm, probably, and the way that every slight movement sends the distant lights of space dancing and blurring in your vision definitely means that you have a concussion.

Thank the stars for shatter-proof visors.

At least you’ve stopped spinning, even if your head seems inclined to disregard that fact.

Gabbro must’ve heard you groan through the radio, because with a loud crackling that makes your poor concussed brain jolt, they click on their own side of the connection. “Ouch,” they say, very drily, and you can’t help it; your exhale turns into startled laughter, even if laughing hurts like hell.

Gabbro snorts too, and then you hear them breathe in, a bit too evenly, a bit too loudly. A bit too much like they’re actively regulating their breathing. They’re still trying to calm themself down, then. That’s fair.

“I take it the black hole doesn’t rank too highly on the official Gabbro relaxation scale?” you tease, trying not to slur your words. You’re glad that you’d already turned on your radio while you were falling. You don’t particularly want to move your arm right now. It really hurts.

“I give it a solid two out of ten,” they agree, sounding a little strained. “It gets a point for novelty, but the whole seeing-your-life-flash-before-your-eyes-and-hurtling-out-into-the-vacuum-of-open-space thing definitely detracts from the experience.”

You feel them shift a little closer, and wince when the movement jostles your hurt everything. “Are you okay though, buddy? I think you took the brunt of that collision.” There’s not a lot of light to see by, but you imagine that they’re looking you over with concern. That particular expression of theirs is familiar enough by now that you can picture it perfectly, just from the tone of their voice alone.

“I’ll live,” you wheeze, because you know what lethal wounds feel like by now, and these aren’t it. “Just try not to touch the left side of my body, please.”

Gabbro immediately withdraws their hand from where they’d been carefully examining your suit for any tears or defects. “Whoops. Sorry, buddy. Hope I didn’t make it any worse.”

You shake your head mutely, and then immediately regret it when the movement once again makes stars explode in your vision. Still, having that solid wall behind your back helps, even if it is what caused your pain in the first place. It makes you feel a bit more stable, a bit less adrift in the open emptiness of space.

“What did we crash into, anyway?” you murmur, because it doesn’t feel like any random piece of debris. You’ve seen the big chunks of Brittle Hollow’s crust that tend to gather in this place, but the wall behind you feels far too even for that, far too much like something that was artificially made.

Gabbro shifts again, and you instinctively squeeze your eyes shut at the sudden brightness of their flashlight as it illuminates the darkness around you. Through the radio, you hear their sharp intake of breath.

When they speak, the grin is audible in their voice. “Oh, you know,” they say, far too casually. “Just something that fell through with us.” Grudgingly, you squint your eyes open. The light hurts your brain, but you brace against the wall with your good arm and manage to turn yourself around – and there it is. Hanging in the empty space before you, beautiful and breath-taking and no longer bound by gravity, is the Tower of Quantum Knowledge.

Though its base and peak disappear into the darkness beyond, it’s unmistakable. You’ve stared at this circular tower with its winding staircase often enough that you’d recognise any part of it in your sleep, even with a concussion.

“Stars,” you groan, not feeling particularly amused. “Of course you can just waltz right in once it falls through the black hole. How did I miss that? I tried to climb the stupid thing!” You’d gotten rope-burns on your hands for your troubles, somehow. Through your gloves.

Gabbro, the traitor, laughs at you, but it’s not like they thought of this very obvious solution either. You’re both equally as dense, clearly. (Never mind the fact that you’ve had a lot more time than them to think this conundrum through. That doesn’t matter right now.)

Anyway, you may both be idiots, but you’re idiots with a job to do.

And as it turns out, it’s easier said than done to jetpack through the vacuum of space with a concussion, a broken arm and an amalgamation of other unknown injuries. By the time you reach the entrance and touch down on the remaining bit of gravity walkway, you have to concede defeat. Your breathing is ragged, and there’s spots dancing in your vision. You’ve only made it this far at all because Gabbro has been pulling you along, but the distant sun is growing concerningly red and swollen, and you know that your buddy would be able to move a lot quicker without your bulk to slow them down.

Besides, entering the tower with them would be pretty useless if you’re just going to pass out halfway up the spire.

Resignedly, you sigh, and plonk yourself down on the edge of the broken path. Yeah, as much as you really want to see the tower, you’re not gonna make yourself an obstacle in discovery.

At least you have gravity here. It helps with the nausea.

Gabbro floats down next to you, and stumbles a little as their feet make contact with the crystal-infused surface. They give you a questioning look. “Do you need a break, buddy?” Their voice sounds sympathetic, but in the faint glow of the walkway, you can see their eyes flicker towards the sun uncertainly. “We, uh, probably have time for a little break?”

You shake your head, and use your good hand to pry your translator tool off your belt. With a huff, you shove it into Gabbro’s arms.

“I’ll wait here,” you say, and damn it, you definitely slurred your words that time. Now that your hand is free, you bring it up to hold your head in the hopes of easing your migraine, only to remember that there’s a helmet in the way. Right. That probably looked incredibly stupid. Embarrassed, you end up just holding your helmet instead, because the added stability does help, just a little bit. Still, your head is pounding, and you’re glad that this loop will be over soon.

“Just talk me through the things you find in there. And hey, if there’s anything really important there, I can always come back and check it out some other loop.”

Gabbro eyes you for a moment, seemingly unsure, but then they nod and kick off the walkway, gliding through the entrance and into the building. Sound doesn’t carry in space, so you don’t actually hear their jetpack fire whenever they make adjustments to their course; all you hear is their quiet breathing through the radio, once again as even and steady as it usually is. It mingles with the sounds of your own inhales and exhales, a little more ragged than normal, and you tiredly close your eyes.

“See anything yet?” you murmur, focusing on the solid ground you’re sitting on. It’s easy, like this, to pretend that you’re not actually floating in the depths of space at all, and the darkness behind your eyelids eases your headache.

“Hold on,” you hear, the radio connection crackling faintly with the growing distance between you. There’s a faint huff of exertion from their end, and a few more seconds of silence.

“The walkway opens up into a circular chamber,” they report quietly. You’re not sure if they’re paying their respects to the long-forgotten place they’re exploring, or if they’re simply trying not to aggravate your migraine, but you appreciate the low, soothing lilt of their voice either way.

“There’s one of those projection pools here,” you hear them say, and then there’s some rustling from their suit as they presumably look around. “Can’t find the stone slab for it though. Maybe it’s still on Brittle Hollow?” Or maybe it’s drifting around in space somewhere, displaced by the jarring fall. You’d never find it, you suppose.

Your head is pounding a little less now, so you carefully blink open your eyes. Your vision remains mercifully stable, and you breathe a sigh of relief.

Silently, you watch as the Interloper, far beyond your reach, plunges into the fires of the red giant, its trail of ice and light melting away and dissipating like a shard of ghost matter in the water. You kick your legs, feeling restless.

“We have about twenty minutes left,” you say into the radio, automatically matching your buddy’s low volume as you speak. “The Interloper just burned away.”

Gabbro hums in confirmation from the other side. “Gotcha, buddy. It’s a big building, but I’ll try to hurry up.”

They keep talking to you quietly as they explore, keeping you updated about every little discovery they make and painting a vivid picture in your mind’s eye; the intricate tiles lining the walls, the dead trees still sleeping in their pots, the stark, barren shelves – Gabbro has always been a gifted storyteller, and with their detailed descriptions, you feel like you’re right there with them.

You hear them make a faint exclamation of surprise, and there’s more rustling sounds as they move. “Guess the shelves weren’t so empty after all!” they say, sounding delighted. “I found one of those text scrolls I used to bring back to the Observatory for you guys!”

You snort softly, feeling fond at the memories of the countless sleepless nights you and Hal had spent trying to coax the secrets out of these ancient alien data cells. “You’ll need a text wall to display the information that’s stored inside,” you tell them. “You’ll know it when you see it. With this many scroll shelves around, I have no doubt that there’s at least one suitable wall somewhere in there.”

“I’ll try going higher,” Gabbro agrees. “Maybe there’s some at the top.”

You keep a careful eye or four on the sun while your buddy moves deeper into the building. It doesn’t look quite as angry from this distance, but you’ve been close to it this late in the loop often enough to know that its surface must be boiling with deep, furious shades of red by now.

You don’t have much time left.

“Woah,” you hear Gabbro breathe, far enough away from you now that there’s a fair bit of static in their voice. “Zircon, buddy, this is- Wow. It’s beautiful. There’s all these glowing depictions of the planets here, and the symbol for the Quantum Moon. Let me just-“ There’s a brief pause, and then a puzzled silence. “Oh, of course! Can you close your eyes for a second? I just want to test something!”

Your eyes briefly find the Quantum Moon where it’s innocently hanging in Timber Hearth’s orbit. Right. You’re probably keeping it trapped by looking out across the solar system, aren’t you? You let your eyes slide shut, and a few moments later, you hear Gabbro again, a note of excitement in their voice. “I was right! Zircon, this is a tracker! It tracks the Quantum Moon’s location! It’s by Dark Bramble now, I think?”

You look, and yes, you can just barely make out the familiar grey shape, faintly illuminated by the eerie glow of the distant tangle of vines it’s orbiting. “Yep, it’s there,” you murmur into the radio receiver, and you can hear Gabbro’s delighted intake of breath.

“Good old Qua’Nem,” they say. “Guess your travels aren’t quite as mysterious as they used to be, now. Turns out the Nomai were watching you all along, old friend.” There’s some more shuffling on their end. “Anyway, I found one of those text walls! And there’s another one over there, too, already active. But let’s do this one first. Let me see-“

There’s a moment of silence as they presumably try to figure out how to work the translator without your help, and when they start reading, their voice is gentle and contemplative. “This was written by the same Nomai as the other inscriptions around the tower. Bells. They say, ‘if you’re here to make your first pilgrimage to the Quantum Moon, you are almost prepared to set out on this deeply significant journey. Before you do, pause, and remember your history.’ Wow. I think Riebeck would’ve loved to see this.”

You have to agree. Bell’s account of the Nomaian history is deeply personal and heartfelt, and Gabbro’s voice goes even softer and quieter as they continue reading. If even you are this moved by this dead Nomai’s plea, Riebeck would have no doubt found it incredibly touching.

“When you reach the Quantum Moon,” Gabbro finishes, the sad reverence in their voice audible even over the staticky connection, “recall these Nomai, and carry their curiosity onward with you.”

Both of you are quiet for a moment, unwilling to break the silence. Then, suddenly, you hear a faint beeping over the radio connection, and Gabbro’s startled intake of breath. “Uh, buddy? Your translator is making noise. I didn’t break it, I swear.”

Oh shit, you think. “Oh shit,” you say, intelligently. “That’s my countdown. I set one every time I start a new loop. So that means-“ You eye the sun, where it hangs huge and swollen between the dancing planets. “-we’re almost out of time. We’ve got a minute, tops. Maybe a bit more, since it’ll take the supernova a bit of time to reach us here? But you said there was another text wall, right?”

“Right.” The thoughtful tone is gone from Gabbro’s voice, and they’re all business now. Every astronaut is trained to keep a cool head under pressure, but your buddy is better at it than most.

You hum quietly to fill the silence. Not just any song, of course; singing the sun its lullaby is second nature to you by now. And you figure it’s earned it too, since you slept through the last few supernovae.

The low melody adds a strange urgency to Gabbro’s voice when they speak again. “It’s from Bells again. They’re addressing a Nomai called Solanum.”

Solanum. The name is vaguely familiar. You think you remember texts in the messy handwriting of a child, both on Ember Twin and in the school district on Brittle Hollow. Encountering that name again here fills you with a strange, bittersweet feeling that you can’t quite place. You wonder how long it had been between those scrolls, for Solanum. If you’d brushed past years of their life, just by picking a few dusty texts from an archive.

You watch as the sun slowly begins to shrink, eye-searing yellows bleeding into the deep reds. You hum, and Gabbro’s voice matches your tempo as they read. It’s almost like a song, even if these new lyrics are nothing like the quaint rhymes that originally accompanied the lullaby.

“But remember this final rule,” Gabbro reads, just as the sun collapses into a sphere of white, blindingly-bright light. “To explore the sixth location, the shrine must be on the moon’s north pole.”

Your song reaches its final note, and you let it hang in the vacuum of space as the light explodes outward.

Gabbro’s voice is barely louder than a whisper as they relay Bells’ final line to you. “Be curious on your journey.”

Curious. Yes, you’ve always been that, haven’t you? From the moment Feldspar had brought back that first piece of Nomai writing from the Attlerock, your heart had beat to the rhythm of this vast, planetary dance.

For a moment, you feel a deep, desperate connection to these long-lost Nomai, and though they have been dead for countless millennia, the grief of their loss strikes you in a way you have never quite felt before. Unexpectedly, and unbidden, your eyes sting with unshed tears.

The blinding light swallows you whole.