Nick jolted awake, his sweat-soaked clothes sticking to his body. The room was dark. He was not alone.

  “Easy now,” Simon said, his older brother gently pressing his palm against Nick’s chest. “Deep breaths. Slow it down.”

  Nick lowered to the bed, glad to find his brother waiting for him instead of Pagle. It had been two days since the incident with the Artifact, and he’d already had a handful of visits into Yensere. After the second time, he relented and told Simon more details about what he’d been experiencing, how tactile, how real, this world felt. Especially the killing.

  He brushed a bit of hair from his forehead and was surprised by just how wet it was. His body had the feeling of having just recently broken a fever.

  “I’m fine,” he said, and it was mostly true. There was no lingering pain from any of the “wounds” he’d received in the artificial world, but he did feel incredibly tired. His brother sat blocking his view of the clock, so he couldn’t guess the time, but he suspected it was the middle of the night cycle. The last time he woke up, it had been midday, and he’d been so hungry that he only had the strength to stuff himself full of rations before falling right back to sleep.

  “How can you be fine?” Simon asked. “Your heart rate keeps skyrocketing, and you’re caked in sweat. Your whole body acts like it’s in the middle of a race, yet so far as we can tell, you’re only sleeping.”

  Nick closed his eyes. “I’m telling you, don’t worry. It’s only bad when I’m dying, but I’m getting used to it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘getting used to it’?” Simon asked. The chair he sat in rattled. “Hey, no falling asleep on me; you just woke up. Talk a bit and alleviate your big brother’s nerves.”

  Nick exaggerated his groaning as he sat back up and rubbed a bit of sleep from his eyes.

  “All right, I’m here, I’m awake,” he said. “What do you want?”

  Simon looked honestly taken aback.

  “What do I want? Nick, you’re making contact with an alien artifact. The best we can tell, you’re interacting with the only remaining traces of a civilization that could be millennia old. This interaction is happening without any proper supervision, study, or understanding of how it is affecting your body. I am worried about you.”

  The honesty forced Nick out of his own thoughts and to acknowledge the status of his older brother. Deep circles rimmed his eyes. His hair, usually carefully trimmed short and kept stiff with a prohibitively expensive gel that came with every food shipment, was unkempt and sticking up on his left side. Likely caused by falling asleep in his chair, Nick assumed, his head resting on the pillow that had now dropped behind his lower back. The top button of his uniform was undone, and his name tag was missing. The light of the beeping heart monitor shone green upon him, giving him a slightly sickly look.

  “I can tell you’re worried,” Nick said, and grinned. “You look awful.”

  Simon punched him in the shoulder, all show and no force.

  “I see whatever the Artifact is doing to you hasn’t changed what a brat you are.”

  Nick clutched his shoulder anyway.

  “You wound me,” he said, and then shrugged. “But there’s not much to tell. I arrive there with some jagged mountains in the distance and a field of wheat around me. Up ahead is a village, full of sickly people. When they see me, they try to kill me. Succeed every time, too, but I’m getting better, especially as my level increases.”

  Simon looked torn between fascination and a desire to vomit.

  “Levels?” he said. “Like…in a game?”

  Nick shrugged. “Make all the faces you want, but yeah, a little like that.”

  Simon rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Forget it. I’ve been meaning to ask you something after going over notes of your first visit. You said you are in a field of wheat? You’re certain it’s wheat?”

  Nick didn’t immediately understand what his brother was getting at.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Yeah, it’s wheat. I know what wheat looks like.”

  Simon stood from his chair and immediately began pacing.

  “Are there other things equally familiar? Grass? Flowers? Trees? Insects?”

  “The flies look like flies,” Nick said. “As does the grass. And I saw flowers that I am pretty sure are buttercups. The people look like people, too, of course. I…I should probably have realized this was odd, wasn’t it?”

  “Odd?” Simon shook his head. “Try borderline impossible. For the Artifact to host remarkably similar evolutionary outcomes as Eden, as well as all our subsequent terraformed worlds…that’s not happenstance. That’s not coincidence.”

  The implications made Nick squirm in his bed. “What do you think it means?”

  Simon bit at his thumbnail as he looked away, a tic of concentration he’d tried hard to bury when taking on the role of station director.

  “There’s the possibility that what you see has been adapted to be familiar and accommodating,” he said at last. “A way to lessen the jarring culture shock, perhaps. And if the world is being made for you, tailored by information the Artifact is extracting from your mind, then there has to be a reason.” He crossed his arms, hands clenched into fists. It was how he forced himself not to bite his nails. “Are you certain you cannot discuss matters with the people you find within this world? Introduce yourself, perhaps, and see if they will explain what is happening?”

  Nick fought hard not to laugh at his older brother’s sincere request.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have tried.”

  “But have you recently? You were disoriented and confused during your first arrival. Perhaps now that you’re better adjusted, you can properly make contact.”

  “You want me to try to be friends after killing several of them?”

  Simon shrugged. “Yes?”

  It seemed there’d be no shaking him off this idea, so Nick relented.

  “Fine, I’ll try,” he said, laying his head down on his pillow and closing his eyes.

  “You can fall asleep that quickly?”

  The incredulousness in his brother’s voice would have been insulting if it weren’t so heavily tinged with jealousy.

  “Yeah,” Nick said, his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. “If I relax and let my mind go blank, I’ve found it’s gotten easier and easier. I can just…close my eyes and…”

  *

  Nick trudged toward Meadowtint, his sickle tucked into his ratty trouser leg. He lifted his hands above his head, the best sign of universal peace he could think of.

  “Hey,” he shouted, not wanting to sneak up on anyone. “Hey, it’s me, Nick Wright. I just want to talk. My brother thinks that’d be a good idea, for us to talk. So can we?”

  A door from one of the houses burst open, and two villagers wielding machetes approached, walking shoulder to shoulder. Their eyes were wide and fearful.

  “The demon,” one said.

  “No, not a demon, just a friend,” Nick said, smiling wide. “We can be friends, right?”

  Health: 0

  Visit terminated

  *

  Nick sat up in his bed, wiped a fresh layer of sweat off his forehead, and then grinned at his brother.

  “How long was that?” he asked.

  “Five minutes,” Simon answered. “Your heart rate only hit 160 that time.”

  “Nice. Died again, by the way. I feel very strongly that the people of Meadowtint are not interested in being friends.”

  Simon slumped in his chair and glanced aside, clearly deep in thought. His eyes flitted over the photo of their parents, now back in its proper position on the side table. The same photo was in Simon’s room as well. It was of their mother and father, arm in arm, celebrating their mother’s promotion to lead scientist. Both had been distinguished researchers, and it was a legacy that hung heavy over their sons.

  “Look, when it comes to the Artifact, I will always be completely open and honest with you,” Simon said, still staring at the photo. “We’ve been monitoring not just you, but the Artifact as well. It’s clearly activating when you’re sleeping, in ways we don’t yet understand. Our theory that it is connected to you seems to be sound. What we don’t know is why.”

  “Lucky me,” Nick muttered.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Simon said. “But I refuse to believe you were chosen just to play some strange game set in their far, far past. Nor do I think the inhabitants within, the flora and fauna, are being made to look familiar to you, not entirely. The theory most of us on the station are leaning toward is that you are in some sort of time capsule, a re-creation of an era set upon Majus. But if that is true, and their world is shockingly similar to ours, their own bodies and forms equally similar…”

  He scratched his neck.

  “Then we can’t rule out a connection between this Artifact world and our original evolution back on Eden. We may not have found an alien race, Nick. We might have found our ancestors.” He laughed, tired and bitter. “Our space-faring ancestors, who, according to you, are sickly-looking farmers wielding knives and pitchforks convinced you are a demon.”

  Nick pulled his blankets a little tighter around him.

  “Never meet your heroes and all that,” he said. “Maybe the same goes for our ancestors?”

  Simon laughed, all exhaustion and surrender.

  “Who knows,” he said. “But I trust you to get to the bottom of it, Nick. For whatever reason, perhaps because you were the youngest in the vicinity, perhaps pure dumb luck, but you’re it, the only one the Artifact is interfacing with. You’re our excavator. Our plucky young archaeologist.”

  “You make it sound like I’m exploring a dead land,” Nick said. “But Yensere…it feels very much alive, at least when I’m in there.”

  “Dead worlds,” Simon muttered, then shook his head. “Forget it. Do what you can, Nick, but please try to be careful. You may not be noticing it at the time, but these trips are stressful on your body, especially your repeated…deaths.”

  Nick lay back down on his bed, his older brother adjusting the lower blanket so it properly covered his feet.

  “No promises,” he said as the darkness took him.