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Just as I am considering my next course of action, a silver cylinder falls from the sky and lands more or less at my feet, blinking gently with red and green lights.
As I pick it up, it speaks. “Vulcan, you idiot.”
The voice belongs to Tyank. My broodkin. I would never admit it, but hearing his voice brings an absolute cascade of relief running through me. I was on the verge of feeling true isolation rush in and overwhelm me, but he has saved me from the horror of being truly alone.
“Tyank! What’s happening?”
“You're being what Krave’s girl would call a huge dumbass," Tyank says.
“Massive dumbass!” A female human voice cuts in.
“Why do you have Krave’s female? Where is Krave?”
“Trying to get your dumbass out of there. I like the word dumbass,” Tyank says. “I think that should be your new name, dumbass.”
Ordinarily this level of disrespect would make me perform divine acts of violence upon my mouthy last-hatched broodkin, but I am so glad to hear him he could say anything he liked to me. As for the human, I hope Krave returns to her soon because she sounds as if she is getting out of hand, even at this great distance.
“Stop calling me names and tell me what’s happened. Where am I?”
“Oh, you’re never going to guess,” Tyank snorts.
“No, I’m not. That’s why I’m asking you to tell me.”
“Can you guess?”
“I don’t want to guess, Tyank,” I snarl. “Tell me. Now.”
“Don't tell him,” Seven chimes in. “Make him guess.”
I had very little to do with the human girl chattering away in the background when I was last with my brood, but it sounds as though she has become very comfortable among the scythkin. I didn’t think humans could get comfortable with our kind. An entire simulation was created to prevent them from having to mix with anything alien. Scythkin who used to visit Earth, when such a planet existed, wore special suits to stop them from being discovered. Last I saw the mouthy girl with Tyank, she was being shipped back down to the simulation in brain wiped shock having seen the true nature of a scythkin warrior in full battle mode.
“Tell. Me.” I snarl the words into the communicator, knowing how futile it is to try to give orders at this distance. Tyank has always been a brave warrior and a dangerous scythkin, but an utter little jerk when he wants to be. “Or get Krave on this line.”
“Krave’s really busy,” Tyank says. “You have no idea the mess you’re in. It is really incredible. I always thought I’d be the one to fuck up so badly I was beyond rescue, but it’s you!”
I fall silent.
“You still there?” Tyank chirps up.
“I’m still here. Waiting for you to tell me what’s going on.”
“You’re on Earth.”
I thought as much. It’s ludicrous, but obvious.
“You there?”
“I’m here, Tyank.”
“Good, because the calculations it takes to make this work are incredible. We’ve had to use the simulation’s data banks to get it working.”
“I’m on Earth, Tyank. How is that possible?” I have to get him back on topic. I wish Krave was the one communicating with me. Krave is first hatched. The leader of our brood. I hope that he is on the way. He will know what to do. It is humiliating to be hoping for rescue from a planet which I know very well does not exist anymore. Earth was finally destroyed by a scythkin council after being previously destroyed by Galactor’s poison. It is not possible for me to be on Earth.
“You managed to get yourself caught in a time warp,” he explains. “You're stuck on ancient Earth. We’re going to try to get a ship through the temporal field, but it’s not going to be easy. You could be there a while.”
That notion should probably concern me. I am marooned so far from the common timeline I might never be found.
“What does Krave say?”
“Krave’s orders are simple. Stay out of the way of any humans. Making contact with them could irrevocably change the timeline. The planet you're on is the same planet as the one that used to exist. It’s not a duplicate. You’ve gone back in time. If you change something now, you change the past, which could change the future as we know it. And we don’t want to blink out of existence. So find somewhere quiet and sit tight.”
Sit and do nothing. That’s what Krave told me to do in the first place, but I wanted to go into battle. I ignored his orders when he told me to return to the simulation. Instead, I insisted on going to battle Galactor’s forces, and now I’m alone on an ancient Earth reborn, somehow living in a world which should have ceased to exist with the passage of time.
“And keep this communicator close. We will contact you with updates as they come.”
