text: "If this is an uncomfortable topic, we can talk about something else," Tello says.
  
  "It's not that I'm uncomfortable," you say. "I just don't know how to answer your questions in a way that might satisfy you."
  
  "OK, then, tell me about the last time the three of you were together. Or something that might illustrate what your family means to you."
  
  You can't recall a time when Rufus Tello has ever been this chatty, let alone curious about your personal life, but then it might just be the underlying anxiety of the situation. After all, he effectively pledged to put his own life on the line to help you save the man you love; he deserves to know what's at stake for you.
  
  "The last time we were together? Let me see, that would've been when I went home the month before the attack."
  
  "When you had to sign the Tandrex contract?"
  
  "Yeah, but I had to spend so much time negotiating with their representatives that I wasn't home for more than a few hours."
  
  "That wasn't much time."
  
  "No, and it seems so pointless now, all that work to get a company that was probably wiped out of existence a few weeks later to buy a product we'll never produce."
  
  "Your son must have been happy to see you."
  
  "He was upset I couldn't stay. We were so busy trying to ramp up production at the mine I had been spending most of my time on Little Chodry."
  
  "The place would've run without you, you know."
  
  "That wasn't the way I was taught to run the business. The few times I worked out of the main office on Chaandria, it was like I could feel my father's disapproval from the Great Beyond."
  
  "So to honor the memory of the Old Man, you had to spend more time away from home."
  
  "Pretty much, yeah."
  
  You expect Tello to pursue this line of questioning, but instead he turns his attention to the radar device, fiddling with the controls as if seeking more information from the Iib Ch'iib. Maybe you have told him all that he needs to know about your peculiar motivations: this urgent need to return to Chaandria is due in no small part to guilt.
  
  "Hold on. Something's happening." There is a sudden shift in his tone that sends a chill down the back of your neck. He's no longer talking about Diden; the radar is telling him something.
  
  "What? What is it?"
  
  "It looks like three ships are moving out of formation. I'm not sure why."
  
  "Are they coming this way?"
  
  "Too early to tell. They're still about twelve thousand clicks away."
  
  The next few minutes are very tense as Tello continues to study the display, finding hidden meaning in the cryptic radar readings. You hold the flight controls tightly, expecting the need to make a sharp turn at any moment.
  
  "We've got trouble," he says finally.
  
  "They've spotted us?"
  
  "If they haven't yet, they will when they get here."
  
  "How soon?"
  
  "Soon enough." An uncharacteristically vague response for an engineering type.
  
  You're the pilot of this little craft, so it's up to you to figure out a way out of this predicament. There are a few options you can eliminate right away: staying to put up a fight (this cargo hauler isn't armed, and you're not a tactical pilot) and running into deep space (where would you go?) being high on that list. So far you've only covered about a quarter of the distance between Chhota Chandrama and Chaandria, meaning that you are still much closer to the little planet than you are to Big Chodry. Therefore those seem to be your best options. You could go back the way you came and seek refuge in one of those fissures that scar much of the little planet, or you could gun it, burning all of your fuel in a desperate bid to reach home. If you return to Little Chodry you may never have another opportunity to leave it. If you push on to Chaandria, the likelihood of actually making it there now seems like zero.
  
  "Three minutes," Tello says. "That's how much time I give us until they get here."
  
  Of course, you knew this was going to be a risky outing all along, but you never expected to run into trouble so soon.
  
  > accelerate toward Big Chodry.
  Your current cruising speed is rather slow for a pod like this, especially when no load is involved, but you had hoped that you would not draw attention to yourself and perhaps appear from a distance like a natural object of no particular consequence. Although not really designed for it, this pod is capable of traveling much faster. You could accelerate and cut the travel time to Chaandria significantly, but doing so would involve burning through a tremendous amount of quinterium and turn the pod into a conspicuous streak of light. But if the Iib Ch'iib have found you anyway, why be subtle?
  
  Tello says the incoming vessels are only minutes away, so there is no time to lose. Firing up the thrusters like this is not as simple as pushing a button, so you need to begin the procedure now. The first step is to adjust the fuel valves.
  
  Your companion catches your wrist. "No, wait."
  
  "What do you mean?" you say. "We need to get out of here."
  
  "I might have been wrong. Cut your engines. There's no time."
  
  It's the exact opposite action of what you were intending to do, but he seems adamant. Instead of opening the fuel valves, you shut them off. The thrusters grow dark and cold, and the pod continues powerless in its inertial direction.
  
  "All right, now tell me what's going on," you say.
  
  "I misread their course. They'll be passing close, but I don't think it's us they're after."
  
  "I hope you're right. It'll take ten minutes to restart the engines, so we're effectively sitting targets now."
  
  Tello doesn't respond. He simply regards the radar screen, perhaps contemplating the risks behind this hunch he has committed you to. The three alien ships are close enough now that the display readings are clear even to you. And he's right: they seem to be on a heading that will take them within twelve kilometers of you, rather than intercepting your position, and they are not slowing. In the context of the vastness of interplanetary space, twelve clicks is an incredibly thin margin, easily mistakable for a collision course. But these guys are set to fly right past you.
  
  "There they are right there."
  
  He's pointing not to the display, but out into space. The three ships are now in plain sight, accelerating on a course toward an unknown destination that decidedly is not you. Except they don't look like "ships" as you've always understood the word. They are not assemblages of metal, but accretions of mineral, as if someone hollowed out a trio of asteroids and fitted them with ion drives — or rather, somehow grew such rocks from scratch.
  
  "I've never seen anything like that," you say in fearful astonishment, curious about the bizarreness of the alien construction but terrified at the same time at the threat they represent.
  
  "Let's wait until they're completely gone before restarting the engines," Tello says, but you're ahead of him on that. The hive ships are passing at a distance in front of you, but still close enough that you fear a twitch of your little finger might attract their attention. Your navigator had made the right call when he had you shut off the pod's power; if they hadn't been intending to intercept you, the Iib Ch'iib might have changed their minds if you had streaked off in a blaze of burning quinterium just outside their viewports.
  
  Neither of you speak for several minutes, as you watch the three ships speed off into deep space. Only as the lights of their engines begin to diminish with distance do you begin to feel a sense of relief at having evaded what a moment ago seemed like certain death. Perhaps your choice in using the cargo pod — a craft so small that it is easily overlooked — is being justified after all, and perhaps you do have a legitimate shot of reaching Chaandria undetected.
  
  But then you catch yourself. If the Iib Ch'iib weren't after you, then what had caught their attention? It occurs to you that Kokkinopole is out there somewhere, along with the remainder of your mining crew. Kokkinopole had a long list of faults, and part of you feels relieved to be free of him forever. But what if he had done something with the transport shuttle to bring these three ships bearing down on him? Even he didn't deserve that fate.
  
  It is tempting to leave the engines off and just continue drifting toward your destination, but your next encounter may not be so lucky. When the three ships have passed well out of sight you begin the start-up procedure, preparing once again for powered spaceflight.
  
  "Are there any other surprises I need to know about?" you ask Tello.
  
  "Looks like we're good for the moment," he says.
  
  Which is good, because for the long ten minutes it takes for the thrusters to warm up you are effectively rudderless, unable to move off this inertial trajectory should trouble find you again.
  
  But your traverse from one planet to the next passes uneventfully, insofar that no other ships break away from the caravan that Tello is continuing to track on the radar. Chaandria remains in full view directly ahead of you, spinning on its rotational axis just as it always has, as if this were any other ordinary day. Clouds swirl over the greenish-brown continents, and a typhoon is growing over the Aandhee Ocean. It would be an ordinary summer day at home, alien invasions notwithstanding.
  
  The normalcy of the scene means the odds that Diden and Ihon have survived are that much better, right? The planet has not been annihilated; life has not been burned away in a catastrophic blast, nor has the atmosphere been clouded with ash and smoke. Chaandria is still green and blue and white, a beautiful marble rolling around its star, caught in its eternal dance with Little Chodry. This makes it easy to believe there are still people down there, that the pinpricks of light you observed by the dozen three months ago were misinterpreted, that communication was only lost because the transmissions were jammed. Cities were occupied, not gassed out of existence as some of the earliest reports indicated. People live in fear, but the important thing is they still live.
  
  Right?
  
  Tello has grown quiet ever since the three Iib Ch'iib ships passed so close. No longer is he questioning your motives, perhaps looking for an opportunity to talk you out of this undercooked scheme. You are both committed now, locked into this course of action. Even if the Iib Ch'iib can't be seen you know they are there, and any artificial corrections to the pod's course would inform them this is no natural piece of rock, destined to burn up harmlessly in the planet's atmosphere. This little cargo hauler would be nothing more than target practice should one of those rocky ships start shooting at you, nor could it outrun a faster-than-light hyperdrive system. These calculations should be plenty obvious. Both of you know there is no need to discuss them.
  
  "So I've been monitoring the orbital space above Chaandria," he says when you're about an hour away from the planet at your current speed, "and it looks like they've assembled quite the siege force."
  
  "What does that mean? Are you saying there's no way for us to get through?"
  
  "It just means we may need to get creative."
  
  Eventually you can see the fleet yourself, without the help of the radar. The ships are like fireflies, almost flying above the planet in the same erratic pattern. Rather than a simple circular orbit, each individual ship traces a swerving course that often crosses the path of its neighbors. The Iib Ch'iib were said to resemble insects, and indeed they steer their ships much like a mosquito might circle your head.
  
  "We need to start discussing options here," you say. "Is there any way through that fleet that you can see?"
  
  "Well, so far they aren't reacting to our approach. Maybe if we do nothing, we'll just pass right through undetected."
  
  "Like a minnow in a tuna net?"
  
  "Maybe, if I knew what any of those things were."
  
  "It might be more reassuring if there were some things we could do to help our own cause."
  
  "There is only so much a cargo pod can do. It's not like you can roll down the window and fire that plasma pistol you brought."
  
  And so you maintain a steady course, reducing the output of your thrusters without shutting them down entirely, letting the pod drift toward Big Chodry on the same course you set hours before. It makes you feel silly to sit with the control stick between your knees, waiting with a building sense of apprehension for that moment when you might need to use it — when one of those ships breaks formation and moves toward you. To pass the time you visualize that scenario, and the feints you would need to make to evade it. Maybe you are vastly outnumbered, and have no offensive capabilities of any kind. (Even if you did, would you know what to do with them?) Your greatest advantage is your puny size. If all goes well, you'll barely register as a speck on whatever technology the Iib Ch'iib use to monitor their surroundings. Hopefully they won't even recognize you as a powered spacecraft until one of them seems you speeding by outside a porthole. Perhaps you should wave?
  
  Now you are close enough to make out individual cities on the planet surface: Ummeed ka Shahar, Naya Pune. Both are trailing huge plumes of black smoke, clearly visible even at this altitude. Similar clouds farther way probably mask the location where other cities once stood. Your optimism dissolves deep within you, in the acidic fluids you feel sloshing around your stomach. The situation on Chaandria these last three months hasn't just been bad, it must have been horrific. When you find your young son and hold him once more, will he still remember who you are after all of the traumas he's experienced? Will Diden forgive you for sitting in relative safety all this time on Chhota Chandrama, while he struggled to survive?
  
  Ultimately the pod gets caught by the planet's gravity and you begin to accelerate. You watch the flittering ships for any deviations in their flight patterns, but either they don't see you or they don't care.
  
  "We're going to need to adjust our course!" you say.
  
  "Why?"
  
  "Because we're going to come down a thousand kilometers south of Ummeed ka Shahar."
  
  "By the looks of that smoke cloud, that might not be a bad thing."
  
  "But my house is in the outskirts of the city!"
  
  Tello looks at you fearfully, as if you are about to get the both of you killed.
  
  "Hey, the only reason we've made it this far is because the bugs think we're just a hunk of debris or something. If you touch that stick, they'll see we're a ship with powered flight and swat us out of the sky!"
  
  You know, but you've never been in anything like this situation before, where so much is at stake — and where the best (if not only) course of action is utter passivity. For someone who has needed to be in charge of an entire business for so many years, it is counterintuitive to simply sit here and leave everything to chance. There is nothing to do but watch the alien ships, which dart across Chaandria's exosphere like aimless water-skimming bugs.
  
  "I just want to say you've been a good friend, Rufus."
  
  "Thanks. We made a good team, I guess. Is this in the event we make a hard landing?"
  
  "It seems like a good moment to consider all possibilities."
  
  The cargo pod is speeding toward the Iib Ch'iib fleet, just minutes away from entering the atmosphere. It is abundantly clear the two of you are on your own; whereas the skies above Chaandria were once filled with the reassuring sight of Sanrakshak patrol ships, you have not seen a single one all day. Humanity has been swept aside to make room for the new masters of this world. You know that some must have survived, but it may take you longer to find them than you first thought.
  
  "This is it. Keep alert for any unexpected movements," you say.
  
  Tello says nothing more. Either you are about to fool the alien ships, or they are the ones who have set the traps for you. You will know one way or the other in about thirty seconds.
  
  > Next page.
  Chaandria, five months later.
  
  Spring is almost here. There hasn't been any new snow showers in over a week, and yesterday there had even been a pair of fur-geese perched on a rock beside the frozen pond that sits a short distance down the hill behind the cabin. The Chaandrian sun, which the Naya Gyaan once called Jeevan ka Sitaara, climbs higher in the sky every afternoon, its life-giving rays feeling more and more welcome on your skin. The kaee trees have been starting to attract brown-and-green tiddees again, and the ground around the cabin has become muddy as the snow and ice recede.
  
  On the other hand, it is still too chilly to be sitting around like this, but you needed a few minutes of fresh air. What you were really hoping to find was a sign that you were free to leave this place, that winter was in full retreat and you could finally continue the journey you began so long ago. However, from this elevated perspective you can clearly see that the forest is still clinging to its snow. It may be weeks yet before it is completely gone.
  
  When a cool wisp of a breeze rustles the hillside, the chill penetrates your bones. The best you can do is pull the woven kambal around you, because you are not ready to retreat back into the cabin yet. The fabric, dyed a hideous green and orange, still smells musty after all this time, but then so does almost everything you've found in this place. It is just one of a long list of reasons why you are eager to leave.
  
  "The road still isn't clear?"
  
  You don't need to turn to know that Rufus is speaking to you from the door of the cabin. It is tempting not to reply, to silently express your irritation at the question, but that wouldn't accomplish anything.
  
  "It's like the drifts from that big storm last month aren't even melting!"
  
  "Well, watching them is not going to make them melt any faster. Why don't you come inside and get something to eat?"
  
  No matter how tedious this place has become, the cabin is certainly warm. It was built well, its walls more than competent at beating back the winds all winter long, the windows sealed tightly against even the slightest drafts. Compared to that cottage you and Diden used to rent in the Nabee Hills, which seemed to merely filter the summer breezes rather than block them, this place is a fortress against the weather. You have no idea who built it or why, but without the cabin your flight five months ago from Chhota Chandria might've been for naught.
  
  "I hope you like phar murgee," Tello says, putting a plate in front of you at the table by the window. "It's my specialty."
  
  He's joking of course. Powdered phar murgee is practically the only food substance that exists in any quantity here.
  
  "Mmmm. I haven't had phar murgee in ages," you say, returning joke for joke. Both of you could spend another year here and still only reduce the stockpile you found by half. It would be more likely that the Reconstituter burned out first.
  
  "You're in for a surprise. This stuff is of the finest quality." That much isn't a joke: the brand name on every package of synthetic foodstuff is Behatareen Gunavatta, which literally means "finest quality" in Hindi. Product of Naya Pune, in this case.
  
  The phar murgee shtick has become a tired routine, but this is the kind of small talk that has kept both of you sane all these months. In the absence of new developments to talk about, many other people might have stopped conversing altogether. Tello pulls a plate out of the Reconstituter for himself and sits at the chair across from you. You watch as he takes a knife and fork and slices the imitation fur-hen meat, apparently unconcerned by how dull everything about this place has become.
  
  "You know, you look absolutely ridiculous in that beard," you say.
  
  "Good thing I don't have to look at it, then," he says dryly.
  
  "Doesn't it itch?"
  
  "You get used to it."
  
  "That's what annoys me about you."
  
  "My beard?"
  
  "No— well OK, besides the beard. You abide the things that should drive you crazy."
  
  "What good would that do? It's not like we can do anything about it here."
  
  "Just wait until the snow melts some more. Then I'll have some things I'll want to do."
  
  Tello drinks a bit of water from his glass and seems lost in contemplation for a moment, as if he were assessing the mouth-feel of a fine wine.
  
  "I take it Diden never grew a beard."
  
  "The Sanrakshak never would've allowed it. And neither would I."
  
  "The question is, did he ever want to?"
  
  "Not if he wanted me to come near him again."
  
  He laughs, setting the glass down.
  
  "What's so funny?"
  
  "What if, after all these months, you finally track him down. You fly all the way from the mine in a tiny little cargo pod; pass the Iib Ch'iib armada undetected, except for one trigger-happy bug that probably thought it was shooting down a satellite; survive a crash landing in these mountains, where you drag my sorry body to safety; wait all winter for spring to come; and then trek a thousand kilometers to the north to your old home. By the time you get there, it's been what, fourteen, sixteen months since the last time you've been together? But there he is, standing at the kitchen sink washing the dishes. You throw open the door, announce your undying love. He turns to greet you... and there is the gnarliest beard anyone has ever seen."
  
  "I'd divorce him on the spot."
  
  "How? All the courts have been destroyed."
  
  "Isn't there some old Earth custom where all you have to do is say the word 'divorce' three times, and it becomes legally binding?"
  
  "The Iib Ch'iib run this world now, and who knows what their law says."
  
  This aggravating sense of humor is a relatively new side of Rufus Tello, or at least new since you landed in these foothills of the Door Pahaad Mountains. But it's better than talking about phar murgee.
  
  "No, I do not consent to be governed by the Iib Ch'iib. That, too, I think is an Earth custom," you say.
  
  "Not to my knowledge."
  
  "But it doesn't matter. I know Diden, and he doesn't like beards any more than I do. Never did."
  
  Tello is about to respond, but at that moment the power cuts out and the light above the table goes dark. Sitting next to the window, you don't really need the artificial light. Nevertheless, your roommate gets up. If a mosquito lands on someone, the habitual response is to swat it; when something ceases to work properly, Rufus Tello wastes no time trying to find out why.
  
  "These battery contacts are corroding."
  
  You find him out behind the cabin, standing next to the large ion battery he salvaged from the cargo pod. He still can't walk very well because of the injury, but that's one thing you never talk about. The landing was the best you could make, under the circumstances; if it wasn't for the deep, early snow to cushion the impact, neither of you would have survived. From the beginning Tello tried to convince you the fracture in his femur wasn't major, but it clearly hasn't healed right, and it has been bothering him longer than it should have. Why nag him about it, though? Neither one of you are doctors.
  
  "Can they be repaired?"
  
  "I'll need a file. There's one in the second drawer to the left of the sink."
  
  You go back into the cabin to retrieve the requested item. You're not sure what file he is talking about, but sure enough that's exactly the object you find in the drawer to the left of the sink, just as he described. Being trapped in here all day every day, he must have the contents of every single drawer, cabinet, box, and tin can memorized by now.
  
  When you hand it to him, he holds the first of the two battery contacts and uses the file to grind off the corrosion.
  
  "I think this snow is melting faster than you think," he says.
  
  "I'm out here every day, and I can't see any difference."
  
  "You're just impatient."
  
  "Are you going to tell me you can see the snow melt?"
  
  "We get more sunny afternoons like this, then sure, it'll be mostly gone by next week."
  
  Truth be told, this has been your first experience with snow. Ummeed ka Shahar was located at sea level and much closer to the equator. It never snowed there.
  
  "I imagine you'll be leaving as soon as it does."
  
  Tello never looks up from his work as he says this. You know this is the other topic you've never discussed: you still yearn to find your husband and son, but Tello can barely walk. When you strike out for the north, you will be on your own.
  
  "I need to, of course," you say.
  
  "I know you do."
  
  Well shoot. It looks like now you might have to discuss arrangements. You had hoped you wouldn't have to; you had hoped that with the arrival of milder weather, his pain would recede and become a distant memory. But as the snow vanishes from the yard, his debility slowly seems to be getting worse.
  
  "It's not an easy position for me to be in," you say.
  
  "How so?"
  
  "Are you going to be all right here by yourself?"
  
  "I'm looking forward to getting some sleep. You snore. A lot."
  
  "Well, then. Maybe I should get going now."
  
  "Not now. It's too late in the day."
  
  That night you have a difficult time falling asleep. That much isn't new; ever since the initial attack almost eight months ago, your nocturnal thoughts have been tortured by the potential fates that might have befallen not only Diden and Ihon, but everybody else on Chaandria you used to know and love. The difference this time is that you are dreaming of Rufus. He is trailing behind as you set off down the snowy road through the forest, leaving behind drops of blood as he limps. No matter how many times you toss your body under the blankets, you can't shake that image. It's the same dream, all night long: you are compelled to leave the mountains, he is compelled to follow. Neither of you will listen to reason.
  
  In the morning you join each other at the table for your regular breakfast of synth-eggs. "You know, it's really not that bad here," Tello says.
  
  "How so?" you ask.
  
  "For one thing, there are no Iib Ch'iib here."
  
  "Not yet. Maybe they just haven't made it this far in their conquest of the planet."
  
  "You're forgetting they've already been here, and didn't find it to their liking."
  
  He's right, you had forgotten, but it was an intentional effort. It's almost just as surprising that he remembers, considering his physical condition at the time.
  
  "You're talking about Grasshopper Glacier," you say.
  
  "Yes. I think it proves their bodies aren't built for cold weather."
  
  You had heard stories once about swarms of grasshoppers on Old Earth getting swept from their prairie homes into the neighboring mountains, where they usually perished. Sometimes they'd get trapped in a permanent snowfield, which would preserve their puny bodies for many years. Such a graveyard exists near the pod's crash site, about a kilometer from here. The Iib Ch'iib were too big to get blown by a wind, but nevertheless there were the remains of what looked like an entire platoon partially buried in the snow. You were dragging Tello on a repurposed piece of hull plating at the time, looking for the cabin you had seen from the air. This was your first look at the enemy; even in death they were unsettling. You've made four trips back to the pod since then, always taking a longer route just to avoid "Grasshopper Glacier."
  
  "And if they come back in the summer?" you say.
  
  "I don't think they will. Whatever they want on this planet, it's not in the mountains."
  
  "They've told you this, have they?"
  
  "Not in so many words."
  
  "Then it's just a hypothesis."
  
  "I tolerate your fantasies, so the least you can do is tolerate mine."
  
  "Fair enough."
  
  The thought of him being left alone in this cabin is a difficult idea for you to accept, but you can't see any way around it.
  
  "You're not eating your eggs," he says.
  
  "They're just synth-eggs, and I'm not that hungry this morning."
  
  "You know, Theryl, you don't need to worry about me. I'll be fine here."
  
  "I doubt any human is 'fine' on Chodry anymore. Besides, 'fine' is a horrible, terrible word. People who say they're 'fine' never are; they just say it so people don't worry about them."
  
  "'Fine' is a perfectly good word."
  
  "No, it's awful," you say. "Please don't say it ever again."
  
  "Hmm," is all he says. He thinks you're playing a head game, but you're absolutely serious. Of all the things Rufus Tello will be when you leave this place, "fine" would be the least accurate adjective.
  
  He is right about the snow, however. After four consecutive sunny days, the fifth day brings periods of heavy rain. The remaining snowpack in the woods succumbs to this relentless onslaught, and by day six only a few skimpy patches remain. With it goes every excuse you have for remaining at the cabin with Tello.
  
  On what you decide will be your final afternoon here, you go out to sit on the rock in the middle of the clearing that has been your meditative perch all these weeks and months. It offers a view over the forested slope below you. Beyond the foothills lies the sprawling piedmont area that separates you from what had been the planet's settled area, back when this was a human world. The total population of Chaandria had only been twelve million, the equivalent of a mid-sized city back in the times when billions of people inhabited Earth. With such small numbers, the Naya Gyaan and their imported labor force had not yet had a chance to multiply across every inch of this world's land area; vast sections of Chaandria, including most of the piedmont, remained uninhabited. The nearest towns are a long way away, and it's anyone's guess whether it will be safe to walk the road to get there.
  
  "It seems odd to see Little Chodry in the sky."
  
  Startled, you turn and see that Tello has managed to sneak up behind you. With the snow and ice now completely gone from the slanted clearing, and with the mud now drying into hard earth, he has been venturing farther from the safety of the cabin. Still, you hadn't expected him here.
  
  "Up there, I felt like we were in a holding pattern during those first three months," you say. "Down here, it's been more of the same thing."
  
  "But if I'm reading Theryl Ureste correctly, that will be ending for her after today."
  
  "You are correct."
  
  Chaandria's diminutive twin planet does indeed occupy a prominent spot in the sky today, although that wasn't what you had been looking at, of course. Nor was it the place where your mind had been wandering.
  
  "I will come back," you say.
  
  "I know you think that."
  
  "You don't think I will?"
  
  "All right, let me put it this way," he says. "I know you intend to come back."
  
  "That's beside the point. You really don't think I'll come back, do you?"
  
  "It's just an honest assessment of the situation. I'm going to be in this place for a while; I need to consider all the contingencies."
  
  "Do you ever consider what might have happened if you had gotten in that transport shuttle with Kokkinopole and Hamaritus?" you ask.
  
  "No. Do you?"
  
  There is no answer. You've never really considered the past that much, and what might've played out differently had you made different choices. All you've been able to think about, ever since it occurred to you that you might not ever hold your child again, have been the future possibilities — and how so many of them ended with you alone, drowning in the guilt of having neglected your family for too long prior to the invasion. Thus you rush forward, only to get waylaid by one obstacle or another.
  
  But here you are, about to make another run for it, only to be tripped up by a newly minted guilt.
  
  "I know what we should do," you say. "Let's make a plan."
  
  "A plan for what?"
  
  "For when I come back."
  
  "With Diden and Ihon?"
  
  "Mmm." That's meant as an affirmative; actually saying the word "yes" might be like too much of a committal. If there is one thing you've learned, no outcomes are certain anymore.
  
  "Will the four of us be living here, or are we going to try and escape Chaandria altogether?"
  
  "We'll definitely be leaving," you say. You are starting to understand that this is just a game, and so if that's the case, why be limited by realistic outcomes?
  
  "That presumes you'll be returning in a ship," Tello says.
  
  "I don't see any other way. Even if you could repair the cargo pod, we wouldn't all fit anyway."
  
  "That's true. So how long do you think you'll be gone?"
  
  "I don't know. Depends on how cleverly Diden has hidden himself."
  
  "Hopefully he'll be looking for you, and you can meet each other halfway."
  
  Just then you realize that while you've been sitting on your rock, he has been standing uncomfortably beside you. "Would you like to sit? I can move over."
  
  "No, I'm fine," he says. There's that word again, but this time you let it slide. "I came out to say I'm putting together a pack for you to take with you. If I synthesize some food in the Reconstituter for you, what would you like?"
  
  "What are my options?"
  
  "Nothing but the best, of course. I can offer you an extensive selection: phar murgee, phar murgee, or phar murgee?"
  
  "Ooh, I can't decide. Maybe I'll go with the phar murgee!"
  
  "Excellent choice. I'll get right on it."
  
  Without another word, he limps back up toward the cabin, leaving you to your thoughts on the rock. There is no doubt now, you must leave, otherwise all of this will have been for nothing. What you don't want, though, is a prolonged good-bye.
  
  And so you spend your final evening with Rufus Tello talking about phar murgee, from the pathetic little creatures with the round bodies whose meat this synth-protein was intended to replicate, to the round eggs they lay that look and feel like ping pong balls. He says he's contemplating getting some fur-hens to keep in the yard; he'd like to watch them scratch out a den by the edge of the small pond behind the cabin, and then he might have a supply of fresh, honest-to-goodness phar murgee to sustain him through the coming seasons. Yet another little game, you realize, but you'd prefer to do anything but talk realistically about the future.
  
  Indeed, he has prepared a small backpack for you, which was already placed near the door and ready to go before you came back inside from your me-time on the rock. This makes it all the easier for you to get up out of bed just before dawn, slip on your boots and jacket, grab the pack, and slip out the door while Tello is still sleeping. Will you ever be back? It's a question that can't be answered. You softly close the door behind you and set off for the road leading to whatever remains of the Naya Gyaan civilization.