The star brightens. The temporal field collapses.
The sequence translates to: “WE SEE YOUR PAST. STOP CHANGING IT.”
On Sol 5, Sixteen-Ninety-Four draws a diagram in the condensation on my viewport. It shows two stars: Tau Ceti and Sol. It shows the temporal astrophage bridging them like a worm. Then it draws a third object: Earth. project hail mary
If I bring these temporal astrophage back to Earth, Sol won’t reignite. It will unravel. Every decision ever made becomes negotiable. The dinosaurs could live. Hitler could win. You could un-birth your own grandmother.
We capture 1.7 million of them.
Well. Not time itself. Causality.
It scratches a question mark next to my planet. The star brightens
I find the lab notebook (my handwriting). Page one: “Cherenkov radiation without particle acceleration. Entropic decay reversed in a 3-meter radius. Tau Ceti’s astrophage creates localized temporal inversion. A single cell can undo 1.2 seconds of cause-and-effect per hour.” I stare at the wall for a long time.
Earth didn’t send me here to harvest fuel. They sent me here to weaponize regret. On Sol 3, I find the second pod. STOP CHANGING IT