Chapter 1

A Journey Through Time and Space

James M. Rush Jr.

Science Fiction · Adventure · Fantasy · Mystery · Romance

100 chapters

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About This Book

Dr. Aris has seen how the universe ends: not in fire, but in silence. When a signal aimed

at him pulses from beyond the end of time, he leaves behind Evelyn, the woman he

loves, and sails into the cosmos aboard the Stardrift, a ship built from the same

equations that revealed the dark.

Out among the stars he meets Lyra, a being of living starlight, and The_Lucky_Alien, an

ancient guide who gives everything he has to help him mend the threads of time, only to

be brought back by Lyra, who cannot bear to be alone. Together they face the Echo, a

presence determined to compress every thread of existence into one final note. When

Aris is lost, it is The_Lucky_Alien who must carry the journey on.

Through glowing worlds and robot cities, desert giants and ancient dinosaurs,

The_Lucky_Alien and Lyra fall in love, raise a son named Elian, and carry living seeds

across the void to begin a new cycle. Across one hundred chapters of wonder, danger,

loss and love, The Last Starfall asks what we owe to the time we are given, and what it

costs to protect it.

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Contents

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The Last Light

The first thing Aris learned about the end of the universe was that it was quiet.

He had expected fire. Collapse. Some final violence worthy of everything that came

before. Instead, on the screen of the machine he had spent six years building in secret,

the stars simply went out, one at a time, like windows in a city falling asleep. The last

black holes thinned into nothing. And then there was only a cold, patient dark that went

on for longer than numbers could hold.

He sat in front of it for eleven hours.

When the screen finally went blank, his hands would not stop shaking. He did not

call it a vision. He called it data. Data could be checked, repeated, argued with.

He ran it again. Then again. Nine times in all.

The ending never changed.

• •* *

The knock came at dawn.

Aris did not answer. Locks meant nothing to Evelyn. She had known the

observatory’s codes since before she knew his, and she let herself in with the same quick,

certain steps he remembered from a dozen years of shared nights, shared coffee, and

shared silences that were almost conversations.

She stopped in the doorway of the dome.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“I haven’t slept.”

“I can see that.” Evelyn crossed the room and, without asking, switched off the

console. The amber glow died. In the sudden gray light he saw what the years had done

to her, the silver threading her dark hair, the tired lines at her eyes, and the stubborn set

of her mouth that had never once let him get away with anything. “Three weeks, Aris.

Three weeks of no calls, no answers, no you. I thought something had happened.”

“Something did.”

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He told her. He had meant to keep it back, but once the first words were out they

came in a rush: the machine, the years of work, the lights going dark. She listened

without interrupting, her arms folded, her face giving nothing away. When he finished,

she was quiet for a long time.

“Show me,” she said.

“Evelyn…”

“Show me.”

He showed her.

She watched the end of everything in silence, standing so close beside him that he

could feel the warmth of her shoulder against his arm. When the last star died, she did

not flinch. She reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were cold and her grip was

fierce.

“All right,” she said. “It’s real.”

“Yes.”

“And there’s nothing to be done.”

“No.” He swallowed. “Not about that.”

Her head turned. “What does that mean?”

He had not told her the rest. He had not told anyone. In the last seconds of every

run, before the dark closed in, there was a pulse. A single faint, rhythmic beat like a

heart, broadcast from somewhere beyond the end of time. It was never in the data the

same way twice. It was never random either. It was aimed.

Something out there was still awake. And it knew he was watching.

He told her that too.

Evelyn let go of his hand.

“No,” she said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You don’t have to.” Her voice cracked on it, and she hated that it did. “I know that

look, Aris. I watched you wear it for twelve years. It’s the look you get right before you

disappear into a problem and forget there’s anyone waiting for you to come back.”

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“If I can reach it…”

“You’ll go alone, and you won’t tell me, and I’ll find out when the university calls to

say you’ve missed three semesters.” She was crying now and furious about it, wiping her

cheeks with the back of her wrist. “I loved you. You know that. I loved you for years

while you looked at the stars as if I wasn’t standing right here.”

The words hung between them in the gray light.

“I know,” Aris said quietly.

“Then stay.”

It would have been the easiest thing in the world. He looked at her, at the one person

who had ever tried to hold him to the ground, and in that moment he almost said yes.

But the pulse was still beating somewhere at the back of his mind. It had been

waiting for him longer than he could imagine, and he understood, with a cold, quiet

certainty, that if he ignored it, the dark would come anyway. Just later, and for

everyone.

“I can’t,” he said.

Evelyn closed her eyes. When she opened them again, something in her face had

gone still and very far away.

“Then go,” she said. “But don’t ask me to wait.”

She left without looking back. The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.

• •* *

Aris built the ship in the months that followed.

He told himself it was only a prototype. A bubble of engineered space-time, nothing

more, a way to reach the signal and prove it was real. He worked through the autumn

nights while the leaves fell outside and the phone rang and rang and went to voicemail.

On the last night, he packed a single bag. A few changes of clothes. A notebook of

calculations that no one else could read. And a photograph he had kept for years without

admitting why: Evelyn, twenty-six years old, laughing on the observatory steps with the

sun in her hair.

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He stood at the open hatch of the finished vessel and listened to the cold wind carry

the scent of pine and woodsmoke across the dark field. Somewhere far above him, past

the clouds and the thin blue shell of the sky, something was waiting.

His phone lit up one last time. Evelyn, the screen said.

He let it ring.

Then he stepped inside, sealed the hatch, and did not look back.

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