Journey of a Thousand Miles

Previously

…He sank to his knees in the dusty observatory, surrounded by the instruments that had been tracking him all along. The stars wheeled silently overhead, in their wrong patterns, under their false sky. Somewhere, out there—beyond the curve of the horizon, beyond the containment field—someone was watching. Waiting. "Keep walking," he whispered to himself. It had worked before. It had worked for all the others, too, until it hadn't. Until their names got crossed out. He picked up the journal and tucked it into his pack. Then he walked out of the observatory, into the false twilight, and began the long climb toward the distant, impossible curve.