We are the echoes of the past — and the voices of the future.
Day 52
The cave’s walls shifted behind them, not collapsing—closing. Elena marked the time. One minute past the hour. But her watch showed a different time than Tariq’s, and Ravi’s wasn’t ticking at all. Instruments had stopped working. They weren’t just in a cave. They were somewhere else.
The path widened into a descending spiral. Red dust gave way to stone that shimmered oddly in the low light. When they touched it, the surface rippled—not physically, but visually, as if their minds couldn’t quite grasp its geometry.
Then it opened.
The walls pulled back without a sound, revealing a cavern of impossible scale. Above them, glowing moss-like organisms cast soft green light. Below, in a fertile valley surrounded by jagged basalt cliffs, two dark pyramids stood like sentinels. Between them, a Sphinx—not Egyptian, but Martian in its proportions—its feline body fused with humanoid elements that unsettled the eye.
There was a tent pitched before it.
Day 53
They wondered if they were dreaming. If they’d slipped into madness or hallucination. But all sensors still recorded. Heartbeats. Voices. Video. It was real—or at least, shared.
The figure outside the tent didn’t move.
Jin-Soo whispered, “Do you feel it? Like… we’re not walking. We’re being pulled.”
No one disagreed. The Sphinx loomed closer, but they hadn’t quickened their pace.
Day 54
They stopped fifty meters from the tent. The figure turned. Not abruptly, but like a puppet on strings. Inhumanly smooth. The tent flapped once—though there was no wind.
Ravi raised the comm. “Hello? This is Odyssey One. Do you need assistance?”
Silence.
Elena toggled the external speaker. “We’re not here to harm you. We just want to talk.”
The figure raised one hand and traced a circle in the air. The cave dimmed.
Jin-Soo gasped. “Elena… that’s you.”
The figure now wore a suit. Her suit. Same patch. Same symbol. Her face—older, hollow, somehow… knowing.
The Other Elena spoke. Voice fractured.
“You came too soon.”
Then she walked between the Sphinx’s front legs and vanished through a black doorway.
The tent collapsed behind her.
Day 55
They approached the door slowly. Its frame was carved with impossible symbols—some resembling human alphabets, others resembling neural diagrams. Brain folds. Circuits. Fractals.
Jin-Soo trembled. “It’s shaped like a Mandelbrot set.”
Inside the doorway: darkness. Not black, but hollow. Like something had subtracted light entirely.
Then came the whispers. First for Ravi:
“You are still falling.”
Then Jin-Soo:
“One of you has been here before.”
Tariq looked back at Elena. “What does it want?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it wants anything. I think it remembers.”
The cave wall behind them had changed. The message had deepened, warped by heat or time. And now it read:
“Some of you never left.”
“Some of you never arrived.”
“We remember you.”
Day 56
They entered the doorway.
The space inside was larger than the Sphinx’s structure should allow. Non-Euclidean. Rooms unfolded like petals. A spiral hallway with no origin. Symbols on the walls pulsed faintly—coordinates, names.
Jin-Soo touched one.
His voice went flat. “It’s me. My name. Birthdate. Medical file.”
Ravi shone his light on the opposite wall. More names. All of them.
Tariq stepped closer and found the names of astronauts from Apollo. From Vostok. From missions that never returned.
Elena found her own.
And then… a final chamber.
A pit in the floor. In its center, a thin silver line of liquid that reflected not light—but memory.
One by one, they saw glimpses.
Jin-Soo in childhood.
Ravi’s first spacecraft schematic.
Tariq’s family waving goodbye.
Elena—on Earth—but older. Alone.
A voice whispered in the room:
“You were chosen. Not to escape. To remember.”
Elena understood, she was to stay to say this message to the Future Elena.
Each saw what they wanted to see. They were in a mystical place of elevation of conscience, of all knowledge. The ancients called it the Hall of Records, but it was really an intersect of time and knowledge, history and the future. Where the future talked to the past—or the past could be viewed by its future.
They all learned their history and future—it was one.
Elena would stay and be part of the bridge to the future.
They each got their view of their future, their legacy, and what they had to know to fix the future.NEXT WEEK: Part VIII – The Return Signal
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