“Warning warning, evacuate ship.” The alarm blared, flashes of red coating the sub-levels of the Artemis in five-second intervals.

  I knelt beside the commander, who was slowly bleeding out from the Kathorian torpedo shrapnel. The Kathorians lined their weaponry with ‘tachyon poison’ and Commander Kylon was now dying of a wound traveling backwards in time. She’d be feeling weeks of hemorrhaging happening right now.

  The commander desperately tugged at my collar, smearing blood on my uniform. “Captain Tylden,” she whispered, mouth red with foam, “you need to get to the teleporter, now.”

  “But commander…”

  “God dammit, James, will you listen to me for once!”

  “T-minus six minutes and twenty three seconds until impact,” the ship’s computer said between alarms, its calm voice masking the urgency of the situation.

  The commander pulled me closer, looking deep into my soul with those baby-blues, luscious yellow locks cascading over her perfect cheek bones. She reached into her bodice and pulled out a cube, glowing amethyst in the red light. “This is the Halorian Dreamrune. It’s what the Kathorians are looking for.”

  “Commander, I—“

  “SHUT UP AND LISTEN, JAMES. The Dreamrune contains the entire psychopendium of the Halorians—all the greatest legends, all the best stories from every star system that pre-dates the Mythopurge of 3679.”

  “Stories?” I said. “You mean the so-called ‘creative acts’ that we learned about at the academy? That the humans of old used to engage in?”

  “Yes. Humans used to be able to dream, to fantasize, to create. It’s what made them so dangerous in the eyes of the Kathorians.”

  “T-minus five minutes and seven seconds until impact…”

  The ship didn’t have much time left, and neither did Commander Kylon. Her face was pale, her life fading.

  I hesitated for moment, then took the glowing purple cube from her hands. The moment my fingertips brushed the surface, a strange energy surged through me, a wondrous feeling of possibility, of potential, of… creation. I could see worlds that never existed, full of men of magic, women who could fly and wore capes, strange beasts sitting on mountains of precious ore and gems of every color. I could—

  “JAMES!” The Commander slapped me, hard, and I snapped back to reality, my cheek as red as the lights blinking down the corridor. “Get to the teleporter, and enter these coordinates.” She grabbed my hand, the cybernetic implants within our palms hummed softly, vrrrrrpppp. I saw the data pop up in the corner of my vision.

  “Earth?” I asked. “Earth is a backwater on the edge of the Collapsing Zone.”

  “That’s why they’ll never suspect it. Look for Jo Rotham in the Scavenger’s Barrow, in the seventh quadrant. He’ll take you in, keep you safe while you work.”

  “T-minus four minutes and thirteen seconds until impact…”

  The commander grimaced in pain. “James, you have to indwell the Dreamrune. Concretize the visions. Write down the stories. Upload them to the meta-net.” She coughed, blood splattering onto the deck. “The human race must regain the mythopoetic power, we must learn how to dreamagain.”

  “I… I will,” I nodded.

  “Now go!”

  I gritted my teeth, my heart clenching as I watched her dying, then turned around, and began to run.

  “James…” she yelled, bringing me to a halt. I looked back. “I was wrong about you,” she smirked. “You’re a good man.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “Careful now,” I smiled back. “I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

  I winked. Then turned again, making sure she didn’t see my tears as I sprinted down the corridor.

  “T-minus two minutes and forty five seconds until impact…”

  Tap tap tap, my footfalls echoed down the red-lit corridor, bodies of the crew strewn amongst the debris. Through the cargo hold, down the maintenance shaft, all the way to sub-level 47.

  “God dammit, James Tylden, you are NOT dying on this ship, not today,” I shouted at myself, nervously tapping the purple cube in my pocket to make sure the thing was still there.

  I reached the Teleporter Room, luckily still with power, and the doors slid open with a fwwsshhh.

  “T-minus one minute and eleven seconds until impact…”

  I sprinted to the console and slammed my palm upon the cyberpad, which hummed as it tapped into my intention matrix.

  “C’mon… C’mon,” I whispered through my teeth.

  The coordinates for Earth flashed onto the screen, with a hologram of the blue planet projected above the console. I slapped the the cyberpad again, “Engage teleportation in ten seconds!”

  “T-minus forty three seconds until impact…”

  I darted to the telepad, anxiously tapping my foot as the gyron crystals began to hum and light up, below the floor and above the ceiling where I stood.

  “T-minus thirty eight seconds until impact…”

  A wave of relief washed over me, my fingers wrapped around the Dreamrune, knowing that I was going to make it, that I was going to—

  FRRRRPOOWW. Everything happened in an instant. The hull suddenly breached to my right, a Kathorian torpedo screaming into the Teleporter Room as the gyron crystals engaged, their light warping through my flesh, disassembling my physioenergy signal. The torpedo passed through my chest, through the Dreamrune, right as I phased out of that location, the torpedo’s tachyon poison mingling with the gyronian energy and the psychopendium dreamwave in a great implosion of purple light, stretching me apart as I leapt through both space and time.

  Waves. Light. Colors. I was pressed and pulled until I lost all sense of self, all sense of existence. I was traveling as pure energy, through the psychodimension of the universe, until suddenly…

  SSSPLAK. Life was thrust back into me and I heaved violently, choking on my breath, shocked at my return to spaceio-temporal existence.

  “COMMANDER KYLON NOOOOOO!” I screamed, long and languid, my voice echoing off distant unfamiliar walls.

  “Are you okay, mister?” a small voice asked.

  I paused, slowly regaining my senses.

  I was… alive. On the ground. Some strange type of grey stone, rough and cold.

  I gasped. The Halorian Dreamrune! I frantically patted myself all over, eventually finding the purple cube, still in my waist pocket. Phew, I signed. Still there.

  I raised my head up to look at the blurry silhouette who had just spoken to me. It congealed into a little girl with red pigtails. My eyes adjusted, recovering their focus. I was surrounded by people in strange outfits, grays and blues, some kind of crude cloth, straight and long, with creases down the legs. Their faces were full of bewilderment.

  “I… uh…” I tried to formulate the proper response. I sat up and looked at my surroundings. Buildings. Towering, made of strange materials, a kind of stone, just like the ground I lay upon, framed by metal. Primitive. The sun was low in the sky. The air seemed clean, no radiation, no one wore hazmat-gear. “I’m sorry, uh…” I tried to compose myself, “…where am I?”

  The little girl laughed. “New York City, silly. Did you hit your head or something?”

  New York City? I had read about the place in the history books, a city of Earth, a great center of creative activity, destroyed by the Kathorians in 2463. It made no sense. What the hell is going on? I thought.

  Suddenly, I wave of dread washed over me. The realization caught in my throat like a spiked zyborg. I crawled over to the girl, frantically, grabbed her by the shoulders, and shook her. “What year is it?” I screamed.

  She giggled. “Mister, it’s 2025.”

  Oh my god.

  I trembled, my eyes bulging with the weight of her words.

  She crooked her to the side and grinned. “Are you sure you’re okay, mister?”

  I paused to take in the madness of what had just transpired. The tachyons must have enveloped the gyronic energy clusters. Add the Dreamrune psychoinversion to the cocktail and, well… heh… you’ve got temporal dystropia. It was simple, really.

  I exhaled, closed my eyes, and found my strength.

  Commander Kylon gave me a mission, I told myself, to concretize the dreams of the entire Halorian psychocompendium, translate and document the best visions of the entire pre-mythopurgic universe into a collection of stories, and upload them to the net, in order to teach humans how to create, how to feel again, how to… believe… in order to save the entire universe from the Kathorian onslaught.

  I looked upwards, towards the stars, towards the heavens, where I knew Commander Kylon and her amazing bod were smiling down on me.

  I won’t let you down, Commander.

  I stopped shaking the little girl. “Young female earthling,” I said. “I need whatever primitive device passes for language processing in your time, I need a surface to place it on, and I need a reliable connection to your interweb.”

  A grin crept across my face.

  “I’ve got stories to write.”