Nine months had flowed—swift, unrelenting—since the lunar glass-ziggurat flared awake. Seasons cycled twice across Lake Geneva's slopes, and with each passing solstice the world grew a little brighter, a little stranger. Charlie, who had celebrated his thirteenth birthday in February beneath alpine snowflakes that sparkled with faint lattice motes, felt the squeeze of time every morning: shoulders angling broader, voice edging lower, responsibilities multiplying like stars at true midnight. He sometimes wondered whether the planet's own awakening hurried his cells along, urging him to keep pace with a history that refused to idle.
Now, in early June of the following year, dawn found him in the pressurized cleanroom that housed Aetheris, the deep-space vessel scheduled to leave Earth orbit in just fifty-three hours. Final integration tests hummed behind Plexiglas walls while technicians in silver coveralls fed status codes into tablets. Outside the tall bay windows, Texas marshland glimmered under pink humidity, and dragonflies skimmed water laced with faint geomagnetic shimmer—an atmospheric quirk noticed after Teotihuacan's node had stabilized.
Charlie checked the chronometer in his suit cuff: 06:04 CDT. His breath fogged slightly inside the sterilized cool. He turned toward the entry hatch where Leyla and Commander Elena Vega discussed oxygen-reclaimer redundancies; their words flowed in smooth, precise Spanish—no dropped articles, no caveman abruptness. Charlie silently promised himself to honor the same linguistic grace in future reports.
The Custodian Council had agreed that Aetheris I – Dragontooth Intercept would launch on 14 June, 21:19 UTC, an orbital window optimal for aerobraking at Mars eight months later. The core crew counted eight souls:
Commander Elena Vega – Mission lead.
Pilot Mikhail Petrov – Veteran Soyuz and Artemis XII flyer.
Engineer Aya Ishikawa – Structural and lattice interface systems.
Custodian Liaison Leyla Firdaus – Node-physics specialist.
Custodian Liaison Charlie Mutton – Eventborn conduit; age 13.
Field Scholar Dr. Cecilia Valdez – Glaciologist turned planetary geologist.
Security Officer Lautaro Ñamku – Mapuche guardian, obsidian sling now upgraded to compressed tungsten spheres.
Diplomatic Envoy Professor Jin Meiyu – Chosen for her calm, incisive negotiating talent.
Angus, Maeve, Kelan, Dr. Mbatha, and Jonas Greene formed a second wave on Aetheris II, scheduled to depart once ground telescopes confirmed Mars orbit insertion.
A media embargo blanketed the final phase: official press releases spoke vaguely of "multinational robotic precursors" and "expanded sample-return infrastructure," while citizen scientists on forums guessed at something grander—theories ranged from warp-field prototypes to an interstellar ark. Few imagined that children at the Open Lattice Academy practiced subtle telepathy to maintain a planet-wide meditation intended to support the crew's lattice link across interplanetary gulfs.
Sarah—now freshly twelve, braces glinting—headed that student effort. Nightly she coordinated time-zone-straddling video calls so her peers could synchronize heartbeats into slow, steady rhythms. "We're your ground chorus," she had told Charlie the previous evening. "If Mars rattles your bones, listen for our beat."
That afternoon, thick cumulonimbus towers massed inland. Lightning spidered across charcoal bellies, echoing the fractal cracks once glimpsed in Commander Tzeker's psion conduits. Weather teams debated slips, but Aya's lattice sensors hinted the storm swelled from an unnatural seed—residual reptilian climate probes, perhaps attempting disruption.
Angus convened a quick tactical huddle in the instrumentation bay. "We can't destroy the storm," he said, "but we can retune it." He handed Lautaro a pouch of powdered Ailbhe ice-quartz. "Scatter this into the updraft using the drone network; Maeve will broadcast a harmonic counterwave from the node stone."
Within hours, modified drones seeded the front; Maeve's chant, carried through an antenna array laced with Skellig crystal, coaxed supercells into shedding energy harmlessly out over the Gulf. The storm still rumbled but split like a curtain, leaving a corridor of peaceful sky directly above Pad 1. Local meteorologists called it a fifty-year anomaly; social-media wits dubbed it "Custodian's Alley."
Charlie tucked into his bunk at the on-site crew quarters. Through the small window he watched lightning flicker along the horizon, distant now. The medallion rested cool against his collarbone—five runes cerulean in the dark, not gold. Aya had explained that deep-space quiet damped Earth-node resonance, so engineers tuned the vessel's quartz spine to keep nodes "whisper-linked." Still, the glow felt like home speaking across an ever-growing gap.
Sleep teased but would not claim him. He slipped outside to the floodlit tarmac, where Aetheris gleamed beneath scaffolding like a silver needle. Texas air hung heavy with marsh perfume and ozone. Footsteps approached; Leyla, robe over flight coveralls, joined him.
"What's stealing your dreams tonight?" she asked.
"Time," he answered. "I blinked and I'm thirteen, boarding a starship. But there's no space in the story where I learned algebra quietly or played any normal sport."
Leyla chuckled softly. "You learned differential equations while dodging plasma fire. That's not normal, but it's still math homework." She grew serious. "Charlie, age is a measure of daylight, not of journeys. You have walked more dawns than most will in eighty years. But I promise—you still own childhood moments yet to come."
He pictured Sarah building sand pyramids on some quiet beach, and himself beside her, toes buried in warm grains unmarked by alien war. The image steadied him.
Then Leyla pointed upward. A stream of lanterns—driven by thermal drones—rose from the academy's coordinates thousands of kilometers away, each lamp a golden tear climbing night. They formed slow constellations: serpent broken, winged man, tilted crescent. Charlie smiled. The ground chorus was already singing.
June 14, 21:19 UTC arrived amid cicada trills and calm winds. In mission control, Angus gripped a mug etched with all six node symbols, though the sixth remained blank. He murmured, "Keep them under your breath, Earth."
On the pad, Commander Vega's voice recited the final poll:
"Flight Computers—Green.
Guidance—Green.
Lattice Interface—Gold."
Charlie's harness clicked secure; medallion tethered to suit feed. He whispered to nodes—not commands, only gratitude.
T-0. Engines ignited, throat-punch loud even behind insulation. The climb pressed him deep into the seat, but he focused on breath and connecting words: We are leaving the Earth, not abandoning it.
At 120 kilometers, fairing separated, unveiling Aetheris's quartz sails. Light from the full moon painted them pearl. Ion engines engaged with almost silent thrust. Aetheris spiraled onto its outbound trajectory like a dragonfly coaxed by lunar gravity.
Downlink showed schoolchildren cheering, lantern constellations dancing, storm clouds parted still.
Eight weeks later, midway to Mars, Aetheris glided on photon wings through the warm gusts of solar wind. Inside the cylindrical greenhouse module Charlie floated among sprouting red amaranth and basil vines that curled delightedly around quartz grow-rods. Aya had embedded micro-lattice resonators in the hydroponic solution; plants grew 15 percent faster, leaves tinted with faint bioluminescence when cabin lights dimmed. Petrov nicknamed them "Aurora salads."
Charlie logged data: leaf width, chlorophyll saturation, subtle empathic signals the vines emitted—tiny pulses of contentment matching student meditation beats. Life, he realized, was learning new languages overnight.
From the cupola Vega called, "Eventborn, bring your notebook." Outside the viewport, a faint blue arc wavered in the void. "Interplanetary shock front," she explained. "Solar flare last week; charged particles follow our path. Sensors register unknown harmonic components."
Leyla joined, scanning. Harmonics bore reptilian signature—perhaps remnants of psion debris drifting sunward. The wave could slice sails, scramble navigation.
Charlie pressed palm to glass. He listened, not with ears but with medallion. He caught discordant tones and inhaled Earth's fivefold rhythm, then exhaled into the window. Nodes pulsed; quartz sails shimmered, retuning their frequency. The arc parted around the ship, splitting like a river around a stone.
Pilot Petrov exhaled relief. "Kid's a living magnetic shield."
Charlie shook his head. "Everyone on Earth held that breath with me—even if they didn't know." Words connected, whole.
On day 239, Mars loomed—a rust disk swirled with white polecaps. Aetheris executed aerobrake, skimming upper atmosphere; plasma sheath turned orange then turquoise as lattice coils bled excess energy into bow shock. They settled into an elliptical orbit aligned with Valles Marineris.
Surface scans confirmed three psion beacons: two near Dragontooth vats, one near an old Soviet lander site. But something else pinged sonar—an array of crystalline pylons arranged in spiral, half-buried under dune layers, humming faintly in a frequency reminiscent of Tara's—but older, almost a prototype.
Professor Jin whispered, "Custodian footprints."
Commander Vega charted descent to Schiaparelli Basin. The lander Garrick detached, retro-thrusters firing. Dust devils danced below, swirling like copper ghosts.
As landing legs met regolith, a dull tremor rippled across sensors—distant but deliberate, as though Mars itself knocked politely. Charlie stepped onto red soil, age thirteen years and two months, gravity one-third Earth's, heartbeats steady. He knelt, pressed gloved fingertips to the ground.
He felt Dragontooth's vats—pulses thick as sluggish oil—but also a second heartbeat, gentle, buried deep: a dormant Martian node longing for song.
He looked at Leyla, at Vega, at the horizon where twin moons darted across twilight. "We're not just stopping a rebirth of serpents," he said softly. "We're midwives for a planet that once carried its own dreams."
Leyla's eyes shone. "Then let's learn the lullaby."
Above them, Aetheris's sails caught early starlight, casting a fragile glow on a world about to remember its own stories—and on a boy who now knew that time could stretch and deepen, but could never rob him of the wonder stitched into every connected word.