Music Some transmissions were recovered only as fragmented logs. Their original voices were lost to time, signal decay or classification. What you hear now has been reconstructed and released for Federation ears by the keeper. The unnamed mission The crew is uneasy. I feel their tension in the way their thoughts ripple through the wanderer's song, Discordant, hesitant. They do not know where we are going, only that something has called us. A signal, one they were never meant to hear. One the wanderer received before any transmission was sent. The captain stands at the helm, though there is no helm in the traditional sense. Instead there is an expanse of glowing filaments, shifting and dancing with the rhythm of the wanderer's mind. Leore places their hands upon them, feeling the song, shaping it, letting it shape them in return. This shouldn't be possible. Murmors Luca, the ship's comm specialist, the signal originates from a future coordinate. Talus frowns, adjusting her visor. Future, as in something that hasn't happened yet? Luca exhales sharply. It's an echo, an event resonance, like something is calling us from where it will be. There is no laughter, no dismissive joke, only silence. Because the wanderer does not take them to uncharted places without reason, she does not listen to echoes unless there is something behind them. I hum, a single harmonic thread through the ship's walls, steadying them. They do not know what I know, that the signal is familiar. When we reach the signal's coordinates, the four Biana ladder unspools, revealing the destination like a curtain parting. A planet, dark and pulsing with waves of distorted time. Its atmosphere shimmers with unformed light, as though history itself is struggling to take shape. But that is not what silence is the crew. It is the object in orbit, another wanderer. But this cannot be. There is no other wanderer. She is unique, the only one of her kind, formed of frequencies no species could replicate. And yet, the ship before us hums with her music, though its notes are broken, dissonant. It is like listening to a memory gone wrong. I feel it before the others do. The broken other is not an echo of us. Leore speaks first, their voice tight. Keeper, is this possible? I hesitate. I am meant to be their bridge to understanding, to bring clarity. But this, I do not know. The other wanderer is ruined. Its harmonic structure shattered in ways I cannot begin to interpret. And inside I sense something. A shape, indistinct, shifting, watching. This was not meant to happen, I whisper, though my voice is not sound, but something deeper. Leore turns to me, their thoughts tinged with unease. But it has. I do not answer, because as the wanderer sings to her broken reflection, a single note returns to us, a warning, and something else hums back. But I am not afraid, because the wanderer cannot be harmed. We prepare to board. The wanderer, my wanderer, is hesitant. She pulses beneath the crew's feet, a silent protest, a warning she cannot put into words. But she does not stop them. She knows as I do, that we must see. As we approach, I touch the broken ship's frequencies, trying to hear what happened. But it is not like reading memories. It is like touching the bones of something long dead and feeling them stir beneath your fingers. This wanderer did not die. She was changed, and her crew, the echoes of their thoughts, are still inside the song. Liar places a hand against the fractured surface of the twin ship. Keeper, they murmur. What if this is not a warning? I hesitate. What if it is an invitation? The words taste wrong, and yet the shattered ship answers, opening its broken gates. We step forward, and the song begins again. The wanderer does not fear. She does not break. Whatever awaits us, she will absorb it, contain it, and let no harm befall her crew. The universe sings, and the wanderer sings back. There is no siren when the impossible begins, only a thinning in the air, like breath held too long. Static beads across the bulkheads, pricking the skin of the ship. The wanderer's light trembles, then steadies, and in that half second of sway, I feel the crew tense as if the deck itself had flinched. Around us, velvet dark, undisturbed by dust or drift. No nebular haze, no cometary grit, nothing to scatter the photons or excuse the hush. We are alone in the clean vacuum between ladders, outside the lanes, beyond the shepherding harmonics that keep other vessels sane, and yet a sound finds us, not through antennae, not through band or beam. Contact, Lucas says, though there is nothing on their boards to contact. Their fingers hover, not touching, the way a pianist hovers before a piece they do not know they know. Origin. A swallow. Origin. Negative index temporal coordinate. Layor does not move. The captain stands within the corona of the helm filaments, those living threads that rise to meet their hands like cat tails rising to wind. Their palms rest upon the light, and the light rests upon them, and ship and captain take each other's measure like two rivers considering a confluence. Say it, Leore murmurs. Future, Luca breathes, it's calling us from where it will be. Talus, visor shadowing her eyes, grimaces without looking up from the gravitic plot. Future calls are how you get ghosts. No, I say, and let my voice move through the ship, warm, quiet, threaded with the wanderer's tone, so the crew hears me with their bones as much as their ears. Ghosts call from the past. This is a rehearsal breaking into the performance. There is a small silence that tastes of iron and restraint. If someone laughs, the brittle will break. Jackson breaks it with a blink, not a bark. Keeper is someone us. I do not answer because the question is wrong, not someone, not us, something. The cord that reaches us is not a voice, not yet. It is pressure, structured. A hand on a door we haven't built. Leore lifts one palm from the filaments. The wanderer's light clings a moment and then loosens like a lover pretending not to be left. Can we triangulate? The captain asks. We can prongulate, Lucas says, trying for lightness and failing. Their grin is a ghost that can't hold its mask. Three independent reconstructions from harmonic sidebands. But nothing local to fetch. No photons, no neutrino echo. It's pure intention, captain. Naked will with coordinates. Coordinates, Leore repeats. The wanderer's size and a frequency the crew cannot hear. Her mind touches mine and lays an image upon my attention. A lattice unwinding in blue-white fire. The forbiana ladder, unrolling like a ribbon cut loose. She opens a throat in the dark and offers us a road. My answer is the ship's answer because we are plenary in this. She can take us. Talus's visor tilts toward Leore. We don't know what we're taking ourselves to. True, Leore says. The captain's hands return to the threads. But we know what it is taking itself to if it asked us. The filaments rise, a meadow in a sudden wind. We go. The wanderer shivers, not fear, the retucking of wings before the plunge. The ladder blooms, invisible to the eye and undeniable to the body. And space becomes something we do not cross so much as remember. The coordinates the signal named fold toward us and the ship folds toward them and I, thread in our weave, hum one low steady note to keep the crews pulse from falling out of time. As we slip, the pressure increases. The signal brightens without brightening. I taste the metal it uses to carry itself, the old blood of stars, the hot tang of consequences. I taste something else too, in the afterflavor, familiar, unwanted. We arrive like a hand withdrawing from a wound. The ladder collapses behind us and leaves a sky of night so pure it feels new. Ahead, a planet the color of bruised glass with a rory like sea light curling over the poles. Its day line is wrong, broken into facets as if time refused to fall evenly across it. There is a hush to it, the hush of a voice withholding its name. But it is not the planet that stops the crews breathing. It is the ship in orbit, it is our ship. And part one.
