“You’re sure this isn’t breaking it?” Emily asked, looking at the box curiously.

  Gav had pulled one of the side panels free and connected the new entrance to a massive bundle of wires. He’d opened it the day after we arrived, but after our initial discoveries, we’d run into a standstill. A week later, and tired of the roadblock, Gav decided he needed to get a bit more hands on with the device.

  “For the millionth time, no! I have no idea, but I’m being careful! Look!” He said, pointing to one of the monitors. A large series of graphs were showing all the various electrical currents running through the box. “I’ve been going slow and it’s all still working fine. I think we’re getting close.”

  Emily crossed her arms, not entirely convinced. She’d voiced her concerns multiple times about the fear of breaking the box if it was opened. Every step along the way, she’d also been trying to put the brakes on Gav’s enthusiasm to tear it apart.

  “I’m not telling you to stop,” she said, a bit more frustration in her voice, “I’m just saying this thing has been sitting around for almost two decades! It’s not going anywhere and I think more caution could go a long way.”

  “It’s fine!” Gav reasoned. “It’s working fine!”

  Emily let out an annoyed ‘tsk’. “Okay, now it sounds like you want it to break. Is that what you’re doing here? Is that why you’re moving so fast with all of this?”

  I leaned in my chair, playing a few chords on my guitar, not really focused on anything in particular as the two continued bickering. Oliver sat next to me in the corner of the basement, listening to Gav and Emily arguing with each other. They’d been acting this way, every day, for the entire week. After the day was over, they’d then sit around the kitchen table, congratulating each other on how much progress they’d made and excitedly talking about new ideas they could try the next day.

  “Ugh! You made me lose my place again!” Gav threw his arms in the air. “Tess!”

  I rolled my eyes, hopping out of the chair and setting the guitar into it as I walked toward the two. I’d been looking at these symbols for so long, I’d had them all memorized. Looking at the diagram we’d put together, I scanned all the different sections of menus we’d discovered, with a number showing which each menu item was.

  “...three hundred ninety-three.” I said after a moment, pointing to the section of the chart matching the symbols I saw on the screen.

  Gav nodded and went back to work as Emily sat and watched, arms crossed, foot tapping on the floor. Each time Gav plugged a new wire into the giant series of breadboards he’d made, Emily flinched a bit. Undeterred, he continued trying to intercept the data being read from the device. Plopping back into my chair, I resumed my idle playing for a bit. Then a thought occurred to me.

  “The guitar.” I said quietly to Oliver, not wanting to interrupt Emily and Gav.

  “Hm?” Oliver asked.

  “My favorite instrument. You’d asked me what my favorite instrument was.”

  He blinked. “I thought it was the piano?”

  “It was,” I admitted, shrugging, “but I don’t know, I’m feeling more like it’s the guitar now. Y’know, it’s similar to the piano with how complex of a sound you can get, but a guitar can travel a lot more easily than a piano. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but lately…having that ability to travel is really helpful.”

  “Huh. That makes sense, yeah.” Nodding his head, Oliver agreed.

  “There! Look!” Gav yelled, rocketing to his feet and pointing at one of his monitors.

  Emily quickly did the same as Oliver and I headed toward the monitors to take a look as well.

  “What?!” Emily asked, eyes darting from screen to screen, trying to see whatever it was Gav was seeing.

  He pointed at the monitor again where the terminal style readout was littered with several numbers and letters, all plastered across the screen.

  “Right here!” He said, pointing at the beginning of the sequence. “This is the file. Well, a file. When I select one from the menus, it always starts with the same set of characters! It looks like a header or…some sort of formatting thing, but look!”

  He pressed the ‘back’ button on the machine. The readout went away. I knew Gav couldn’t see it himself, but he’d memorized the menus as well as I had by now. Watching him navigate a few steps back, then select a different folder and file, my gaze drifted to the box. The screen on it had changed to the familiar symbol again, but the screen Gav had mentioned soon spat out a similar set of numbers and letters, the beginning few lines looking identical to the previous ones.

  “What does that mean?” Emily asked, looking over everything on the monitor.

  “What…what does it mean?!” Gav asked, incredulous. “It means we can read the files! It’s…okay, you’ll have to give me a minute, I need to look at this–” He said, leaning close to the monitor.

  We all stayed completely silent as Gav continued looking at the screen. He gazed at it intensely for several minutes, moving back and forth between a few different files. Eventually, he took the mouse and highlighted a certain section of the screen. He then went to another file and highlighted a similar looking section with a different set of symbols. Then he went to a third, highlighting one there as well.

  “What are those?” I softly asked.

  Without looking from the screen, Gav pulled out a stool for me, placing it next to himself. I joined him, standing on the stool and leaning over the desk to see the same view as Gav. He poked at a highlighted section, seemingly a bunch of random numbers and letters.

  “I think this…is a timestamp.” He mumbled. “...but, it’s all wrong. I think. …hold on.”

  He copied the text to another program, hitting a few keyboard shortcuts. The text changed each time he tried a new combination, each looking as random as the next until one shortcut altered the text to a number.

  41405367524

  “Wait, what’s going on here?” I looked at the numbers, raising an eyebrow.

  Gav grabbed another set of the highlighted text, pasting it into the same program, hitting the same keyboard combination.

  41405470321

  He did the same with the third and final set, getting a third number.

  41405683220

  “Interesting…” Barely above a mumble, Gav studied the numbers for another moment.

  We all leaned closer, trying to figure out what he was thinking.

  “Well…what?!” Emily asked, sounding as perplexed as I was.

  “Oh! Sorry, sorry,” Gav answered, blinking a few times as he pulled himself away from the screen. “It looks like it’s formatted in Base 8, which isn’t what I’d expected. I assumed it would be in Base 14, so that’s what I’ve been working with this whole time.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  Gav gently grabbed my arm, lifting my hand and pressing into my palm. My fingers spread apart from each other.

  “Oh, right.” I said, looking at my seven fingers.

  “Right.” He agreed, nodding. “I figured their numbering system would have been similar to ours. Ours is only Base 10 because of this–” He said, holding up his own hand, “–so I figured yours would be formatted the same way. But Base 8? That’s interesting. Hold on.”

  Gav directed his attention to the other monitor, showing the raw data of whatever was being read from the crystal. He started changing a few settings, and a moment later, all the text became more normalized. It looked far less random and more like it was formatted in a readable way. Gav still had letters and numbers from English representing everything, so it still looked like nonsense, but it did appear to be properly formatted.

  “Yeah, so,” Gav continued, “this number looks like a timestamp. With each file, it increases a small bit, but mostly stays the same. This number might be referring to their equivalent of seconds. It’s got to be something like that because it’s mostly staying the same.”

  Emily took out her phone, typing something into it.

  “So what about the rest of the file?” Oliver asked his brother.

  “I don’t know. It’s big…like, really big. But all this data in here is…formatted in some sort of way. Look, now that it’s in Base 8, we can see a lot of similar blocks of text here, but my computer can’t seem to capture much of it. A lot of the data comes in slowly in the first block. That’s what all of this is.” He said, pointing at the screen. “After this, it goes fast, like, crazy fast. My poor little CPU can’t keep up with it, but whatever it is, it always seems to take the same amount of time to stream that file over. This one lasts about seven minutes. At the end of that, it just goes back to the menu.”

  “And how big is the whole thing?” I asked.

  Gav shook his head. “It goes by too fast for my computer to read it, but it’s gotta be in the terabytes. Possibly even more. I don’t know for sure, but these files are huge.”

  Looking from Gav to the screen, Oliver asked, “is that…for just the one file?”

  “Yeah.” Nodding, Gav glanced at the box. “There appear to be thousands of files like it on here. This glass storage thing is no joke.”

  I had to ask aloud. “What could possibly take up that much data?”

  “Honestly…your guess is as good as mine.” Gav responded, scratching his chin.

  “It would be at least ten thousand years.” Emily said, looking from her phone to us.

  We turned to look at her, all of us puzzled.

  “This number.” Emily continued, pointing to the number we’d studied. “If their seconds are similar to ours, and assuming they started at zero, this number would show that it’s been counting up for at least ten thousand years.”

  “How do you know how long their, uh…’seconds’ are?” Oliver asked her.

  “I don’t.” Emily said simply. “This could be anything. What I’m saying is, if it’s similar, these files were created about a day apart from each other…and their clock has been ticking for a really long time.”

  I sat on the stool, unmoving, just looking at the text in front of us.

  “So…where do we go from here?” I asked the group.

  Nobody responded. We all just sat in silence, looking at the screen. Everyone else seemed to be lost in thought, but honestly, I didn’t know what to think. There was so much to uncover, but it was hard to decide where to begin. We still had no clue what the files actually were, much less how to read them properly. We didn’t even know if all of this work would lead to any real answers. Gav and Emily seemed to know what they were doing so far, but I didn’t know where we’d go…or even what we might find.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  ***

  As we sat around the dinner table, Emily and Gav discussed ideas about how to proceed as Oliver and I sat next to each other, listening.

  “The other stuff in that file…that could be anything. But why so much information?” Gav asked, spinning his fork in the spaghetti on his plate.

  “Like you said,” Emily answered, her mouth half-full, “it could be anything.” She swallowed. “But, with the way it just sits there for a while before going back…do you think it’s trying to connect to something? Maybe this thing isn’t meant to be its own computer. Maybe it’s like…an add-on, or something trying to communicate with something else.”

  “Like the ship.” Gav nodded, agreeing to that one possible solution. “..but I think you’ve made it pretty clear that we’re not going back there.”

  “Definitely not.” She quickly responded as Gav took a bite of his own food. “Not for now, at least. Besides, I think there’s a lot more to figure out here…like what all that data is supposed to be.”

  “I told you,” he said, pointing his now empty fork at Emily, “I can read it if you just freaking let me!”

  “And I told you, I don’t want to start ripping part of it off and replacing them-”

  “I’m not ripping anything from anything!” Gav interjected, “I just want to solder my own clock on there so it will slow down enough to let me read that stuff from it. It’s not a huge deal! It’s using a quartz clock, just like what we use for…jeez, everything! It’s a super basic part and they seem to agree, since they’re using the same technology! If it works, it works!”

  “How can you be so sure?” Emily asked him.

  “Trust me, it’s simple. I promise. Heck, I even have the parts right there in the basement, ready to go!”

  “You mean that bin full of broken watches? Why do you even have that anyway?” Emily frowned, sounding annoyed at his persistence.

  “Because…every single time I throw something away, I end up needing it, like…a week later! It’s so frustrating, so whenever I get potential parts in, I keep ‘em. You should be thanking me for having such a robust and well-kept workshop, because without it, we wouldn’t have found out any of this stuff yet.”

  Emily raised an eyebrow, leaning back in her chair. “Well-kept?” She said, gesturing to the living room full of debris from his various projects.

  “Uh…relatively…admittedly, I could use a bigger house…but that’s beside the point. Just let me try it! If it doesn’t work, I can always put the old clock back in and it’ll be as good as new.” Gav promised.

  Emily bit her lip, thinking about it for a few moments before she answered. “...and you’re sure it won’t break it?”

  Taking that answer as permission, Gav stood, grabbing his plate and grinning. “Let’s go! Yes, let’s do it!” He exclaimed, rushing toward the basement door.

  Emily left her food where it was, chasing after him. “Hey! Don’t bring the food down, you’ll get it all gross!”

  A second later, the door to the basement slammed shut. The dinner table was suddenly a lot more quiet. I stood on my chair, looking at my food. I’d barely touched it. Oliver was nearly done with his own. I could feel him looking at me, wanting to ask me something.

  “What’s up, Oliver?” I asked, spinning my fork around some spaghetti.

  “Aren’t you gonna join them?” He asked.

  “I should…I dunno…I should finish my food first, maybe clean up a bit here.” I answered.

  He nodded. I could feel him wanting to ask something else, but I waited until he was ready. We sat in silence for a few seconds before Oliver cleared his throat.

  “Tess? I wanted to ask you about something…” He said quietly.

  I looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “I…couldn’t help but notice that you seem a bit, well…apprehensive about all of this stuff. Like, Emily and Gav are doing all these experiments and studies, but you’ve been staying mostly silent about it. I just…thought you’d be more excited than everyone else here.”

  I sighed, pushing my plate away, resting my head on the table.

  “I know. I thought I’d be more excited about everything too, but…I’m afraid.” I admitted.

  “Afraid of what?” Oliver asked, moving closer to me.

  “I’m…” I began, then stopped.

  I’d had a lot on my mind since we’d gotten to Gav’s house, but I never really had to articulate any of it. Eventually I looked at Oliver and sighed.

  “I’m afraid I might be putting all of you in danger just by being around you.”

  “In danger? We’re not in–”

  “Those people looking for me…what if they find me here? What if they find out? What would they do to all of you?” I asked.

  Oliver considered everything, then responded. “Well, I don’t know why they’re after you…but I know we’re all in this together with you. Heck, this is the most interesting thing I’ve…heh, probably ever done.”

  “Okay, but what if we hit a dead end here? What if this box thing we have doesn’t actually give us any answers…where do we go from there? Do I just sit around, hiding for the rest of my life? Constantly running, being afraid?” I asked, feeling my eyes stinging with tears.

  Reaching toward me, Oliver gently held my hand. “I want to know more about everything here too…and I’m sure we’ll figure all of this out. I want to help you, Tess. We all do.” He gave me a small smile. “We’ll figure this out.”

  I looked down at my hand for a moment, then back at him. “Thanks…I don’t know what I did to deserve you guys.”

  We both leaned close, giving each other a hug. I closed my eyes. Words couldn’t describe how much I appreciated Oliver being there with me.

  “Thanks…” I said again, gently pulling from the hug. “I…feel better now.”

  The basement door was flung open as a very excited Gav ran out. His eyes darted around the living room before landing on us.

  “Hey! You two! I need every hard drive, SD card, USB drive, or…whatever else you can find around here in a great big pile!”

  “Wh–” Before Oliver could ask, Gav answered.

  “It works! It’s slow, but it works! These files are huge! Go through everything you can find around here, I need everything!”

  ***

  “I found another one up here.” I called to Gav, carrying yet another old desktop computer from Gav’s attic.

  There was tons of junk in the attic, even more than I’d expected. The entire area was nearly filled to the brim with old projects Gav had either abandoned or discarded. Being the smallest in the group, I was assigned the task of climbing through everything to find whatever computer equipment I could find while Emily and Oliver searched the rest of the house. It was fun, but I could have done without the cobwebs covering me every time I had to squeeze my way through something.

  “Oh, good! Add it to the pile!” Gav exclaimed.

  He was sitting in the middle of the room, tools in hand as he gutted every last computer we could find. The hard drives were stacked in a pile next to him. We’d been searching his home for about an hour, and so far, we’d gathered about twenty-five hard drives. A good start, but we still had a ways to go.

  Carefully, I placed the desktop on top of his ‘not yet processed’ pile, brushing my fur as I stepped away from it.

  “I almost wanted to offer to clean up that attic,” I said, watching a small wave of dust and cobwebs float off of me with each swipe across my arms and body, “but there’s just so much. How do you even get anything from up there if you need it?”

  “Oh, when you’re not here, I just ask my talking squirrel friends from next door to come over and dig through it for me.” He responded, completely deadpan as he brushed off a cobweb from my face.

  I crossed my arms. “Very funny.”

  “Hey, when you’re up there again, could you find a lamp or flashlight…or something? It’s a bit dark in here. I could use the extra light.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I answered, turning and heading up the stairs and back into the attic.

  It was expectedly dark, but the dim overhead lights at least provided light for anything directly in front of me. Furniture, computer equipment, an old pool table and various other objects were littered everywhere. I had adjusted a few piles to either harvest anything with a hard drive or to provide a path to explore deeper. Luckily, larger objects made enough room for me to squeeze through things without having to move too many pieces of things.

  I climbed around and through all the junk once more, going down the familiar path sending me under and around large pieces of furniture. Spotting an area I had yet to explore, I took a deep breath, mentally preparing myself. With my eyes closed, I reached forward and pushed through the pile, trying to catch any cobwebs in the gap I’d created. As I moved through the crevice and clawed several feet, I found an opening with yet another pile of computer equipment.

  Two desktops and a laptop lazily rested abreast of each other. Given the size of the opening I’d created, I knew it would take a few trips to bring all of this equipment downstairs. I grabbed the laptop first, remembering Gav’s request on my way to the entrance. If my memory was right, I’d seen a desk lamp near the attic door. Once I was near the exit, I brushed off the cobwebs as best I could, grabbing the lamp. It appeared to still have a bulb inside of it, so hopefully it still worked.

  Walking down the stairs, I held the lamp up in victory. “I found one for you.” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it! I found this flashlight, so it should do just fine. For some reason, I can’t get it off the ‘blue’ setting…”

  It wasn’t until I reached the last step, and then I realized what he was talking about. Gav was holding the light Emily had taken from the man on Sheep Nose.

  “Wait! Gav, that’s not–” I started, but then he looked at me, pointing the light right in my direction.

  In an instant, I was no longer in the living room. My thoughts fell away from me as my world turned white. I blinked, looking around at my surroundings. Everything was white. I was standing in an empty void. There was no sound, only silence.

  I held my hand to my face, trying to inspect it, squinting my eyes to try and see something, anything. I could see myself, at least, but beyond my own body, there was nothing. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment, then opening them. Still, there was nothingness.

  For some reason, I couldn’t remember how I ended up here. My mind, my thoughts, they all felt fuzzy. With nothing else to do, I started walking, hoping to find something…anything. I tried my best to focus on anything I could understand about this place. Maybe it could give me a clue to where I was. I found nothing.

  It wasn’t warm here. It wasn’t cold here. There was no sky, no floor. It was all pure white. I kept my hand outstretched, fearing I might crash into something solid. Still, after what I guessed was a few minutes of walking, I figured there must be nothing here.

  I paused, taking in my surroundings again. How had I gotten here? Every time a thought started to form, it faded away from me. I could never catch my thoughts.

  “Tess?”

  I heard the voice from a distance. It was Gav’s voice. He spoke slowly, as though time was moving slower for him. I heard him speak again, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. My head tilted in every direction, trying to find the source of the sound, but it seemed as if it was from all around me.

  Gav sounded worried, but I didn’t know why he would be. In this place, I didn’t feel a whole lot of anything. I slowly slid onto my back, looking up at the endless void. It was pleasant, even if it was confusing. I soon lost track of time, only hearing more of Gav’s voice from a distance. Whatever his concern was, it would figure itself out. All he had to do was wait a bit.

  Time wasn’t moving anymore, but it didn’t seem to matter. I heard Gav again, out there, somewhere. He sounded afraid. I didn’t want him to be afraid. I closed my eyes, thinking about all the times I had sounded the same way…when I was afraid. There was a song I’d sing to myself, something to make myself feel better. I thought about it more, finding myself able to keep the thought in my mind and unwilling to let it escape.

  Don’t worry about a thing

  ‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright

  Singin’ don’t worry about a thing

  ‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright

  My eyes slid open. I wasn’t on the ground anymore. I was in my treehouse. There was a lightning storm crashing outside the window. Wind howled angrily and rain splattered hard against the windows. It was loud. The trees swayed, bringing me into motion with them. My keyboard was in front of me, hands playing along with the song.

  Rise up this morning, smile with the rising sun

  Three little birds pitch by my doorstep

  Singing sweet songs of melodies pure and true

  Saying, “This is my message to you-ou-ou”

  I recognized this moment, this scene. This setting was from many years ago. I was much younger and the treehouse was new. It was my first time inside of it during a storm, and I was afraid of the sights and sounds of everything out there. I continued with the song. The more I let myself be swept away by the music, the more real my surroundings felt.

  I could smell the rain, feel the chair underneath me. I could hear the sounds of the trees swaying and creaking. I felt all the fear holding onto me before I’d started singing…and I felt the relief wash over me as I played the song. I didn’t feel afraid any longer, I didn’t worry…because every little thing was going to be alright.

  My body slid farther back into the chair as I finished the song, smiling to myself and looking up at the ceiling. The sound of raindrops falling from the sky and onto the roof wasn’t scary anymore. It was soothing…pleasant. The world started to fade away from me. Instead of going white again, everything instead started to fade to black.

  I blinked. The piano was gone. The treehouse was gone. In front of me was…somebody. They were holding my shoulders, shaking me. I blinked again, giving them a confused look.

  “Tess? Are you okay? Tess?” Emily asked, sounding afraid, scared about something.

  I smiled, looking at her.

  “Oh, hey Emily, what brings you here?” I asked before I looked around us.

  The treehouse was completely gone. I was back in…Gav’s living room.

  “I…I need to lay down for a moment…” I spluttered out.

  Then I fell backward, vaguely hearing the sound of my body thudding to the floor as I passed out.