text | un: m.cabrera

[naloxone]

[ turns out? space doesn't give a single fuck about your circadian rhythm. or maybe insomnia is just that attached to her that even the absence of a sun dictating her internal clock doesn't faze it, like an old friend you wish would just forget you already.

one night (?) late into the early hours (???) marta finds herself drifting out of the room she's come to assume will be hers for the indefinite future, passing through stark white walls with all the sterility of a hospital, but none of its familiar chaos.

she's still getting used to the earpiece. still getting used to hearing other people's voices in her head. she doesn't mean to add another in the void, but one of her own thoughts blares out too vividly as she stares out into an actual void: ]

—but where are the stars?

Comments

[callada]

Type of fruit that gives people powers, or that's the short version anyway.

You from Earth? People from Earth keep bringing up things like cars and traffic. You guys must have a lot of them.

[naloxone]

Oh.
Do you have powers?

But, yes. Earth. No powers there that I know of.
Just lots of cars.

[callada]

I make things quiet.

Some people here have powers, and they're from Earth. But I'm getting the sense that like my world, it's a pretty big place with a lot of different countries and a lot of different people. No one person knows it all, do they?

[naloxone]

Like... noise cancelling?

But you might be right. My world is very, very small. I don't know much of what's going on beyond it. There could be all kinds of people, all kinds of secrets.

[callada]

Exactly. On people, things, you name it. It's not amazing, but I find uses for it.

I think you'll wind up learning a lot about Earth by being here instead of there. You get all sorts of perspectives here. Other worlds too, and other times. That part's still hard for me to get my head around.

[naloxone]

It sounds pretty amazing to me.

[ but then again, maybe that's patronizing coming from someone whose familiarity with fantastical powers only comes from fiction. ]

Other times? What do you mean?

[callada]

A man called the Doctor here says he regularly travels through time, enough where two instances of his same self are here. Another, Jim Kirk, speaks of an accident at home where time travel created an entire separate world of events.

A third, someone from my home is from over a decade in my future. Still trying to think that one through. I didn't expect to be told what the future will hold when I'm trying to alter it.

[naloxone]

[ that... is a lot to take in. somehow, even with the growing resignation that everything and anything can happen at this point, this is the thing that's the toughest for her to swallow.

especially that last part. ]

...What does that mean? Has it been altered?

Or. Or do you think there's no point?

[callada]

Well, if what Jim encountered holds for everywhere, then I guess it means every change has consequences. If the orbs let me make the change I want to make, then it's like a fork in a road. One version of my world still happens with a future that Yamato told me about. Another version, the version I create, has a different future.

It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. There's still a point if it means I can make a better life for people in a future that wouldn't exist otherwise.

I think. I hope, anyway.

[naloxone]

That makes sense... Something is better than nothing, even if a nothing still exists somewhere.

[ if she can save harlan in another timeline... even if she herself may never witness the results of it... ]

It's worth it. It has to be.