Tibre followed the map drawn on the cave wall and arrived at nothing. They’d visited almost all the circles now, but unless they made a mistake, nothing of note could be found at those locations. No food, no hidden cities, no magical objects.

His stomach growled. His naked body, covered by nothing but a thin animal skin, leaned exhausted and defeated against a large rock. The horizon held nothing but emptiness, only interrupted by rare trees or animals hopping in the mud.

Might they be reading the map upside-down? No, Jassia tried that too, and that had been equally useless. They would’ve liked to ask the artist behind the map, of course, but nobody knew who that was. It seemed unlikely that their planet contained unknown intelligent life, which had done nothing besides break into their cave and draw a mysterious map for them.

Tibre knew the day was young and he had to find food before nightfall. Their storages were depleted. Every day, the speed at which a small group of humans could eat surprised him. The only group of humans on this planet, as far as they knew. But the motivation to search for food again? That was surely nowhere to be found.

Afternoon had already passed when his stomach growled with such intensity that he nearly toppled over. He finally drew his gaze away from the cave map and walked on. Ignore the map; enter unexplored territory.

His naked feet scraped over pointy pebbles and sharp twigs, but they were immune to that now. In the distance he heard his children run and play. He lacked even the energy to tell them to stop and help gather food. Especially because they knew a happiness he couldn’t find himself anymore, and he wanted to enjoy every second of that.

With the sun firmly at his back, Tibre found a new cave. Untouched, or so he thought, until he stepped inside. He felt around his hips: his trusty Echobelt was there. If any danger arrived, he’d slam against the metal to make noise.

All sunlight disappeared within a few paces. He glanced at the heavens a final time and wished for one of those stars to light his way. Even at midnight, the skies around this planet were so bright that he couldn’t sleep. They sometimes joked that more stars spied on their planet than trees dared grow here.

He placed his rough hands on the cave walls to feel where he had to go.

And he felt a line. His nail scraped back and forth, up and down, until he was certain: this was a near perfect vertical line. It must have been scratched into the wall with intent.

His hand continued and felt another line. And another. A bundle of vertical lines graced the cave wall, then an empty space, then another bundle of lines.

Dripping sounds came from further into the cave. It echoed into his ears at a slow, consistent pace. Must remember—potential new water source.

His attention, though, stayed with the lines. He started counting them. Five. Ten. Fifteen. On, and on, and on it went.

He tripped over a heavy object on the floor. His head landed in a soft patch which he immediately recognized, by scent and touch, as the ashes of an extinguished fire. His fingers reached for the object, but it rolled down a slope, which revealed the cave also went deeper into the ground.

The further he came, the more chaotic the stripes. They stopped being straight. The bundles became smaller and sometimes even horizontal. Some scratches were so short and shallow that he wasn’t sure if they counted.

He counted them all and the result was 728.

Whatever that meant, he didn’t know.

By the time he left the cave thousands of those stars lit his way. And they seemed to reward him for his effort: their sharp beams lit up a large square filled with food.

Tibre looked around. Had someone left this behind? One of his own cavemen was too lazy to pull it further?

He saw nothing suspicious and stepped closer.

Multiple squares were made from a brown wood-like material, but much weaker and more flexible. He’d have to ask Jassia if this was a new version of that invention she called a box. Much of the squares’ sides were covered in holes or blackened by fire.

And inside those squares, barely held together, waited piles upon piles of food. Tibre licked his lips and impulsively grabbed a loaf of bread. He took a bite—then spit it out.

It was covered in something. Something transparent and thin. Certainly no animal skin or crushed wood, the only materials he knew.

Did this belong to someone else? Was he not allowed to touch this? He was too hungry to let it stop him. This gift could feed the dwellers for years! He wouldn’t have to search for food every day!

He ripped of the protective material and ate the entire loaf at once. Then he dragged as much food as possible back to his home cave.

The other dwellers instantly organized a feast. Some members refused to eat the “suspicious food” and were mad that Tibre took off the “clear protection”. Most, however, shrugged and ate heartily.

Custom dictated that Tibre tell a story. Whoever was the cause of celebration had to give a speech. His stomach already turned upside-down, his body annoyed at having to stand up and tell the same story again. He only knew a handful of stories anyway, thanks to his mother.

He did it anyway. He knew how much his children enjoyed it, and it was one of the few activities he enjoyed himself too.

He rattled his Echobelt to get attention. While straightening his animal skin, he stepped up to the fire. A fire that only exist to cook the food, for their stars were bright enough to chase away any dark.

“Look at the heavens,” he said, pointing upwards. “We call them stars, but of course that’s not true! No, no, they are light bulbs.”

The usual “ooohs” and “aaahs”. The children surrounded him and looked up with bright eyes.

“Legends say that gods left behind these light bulbs. As a gift for our beautiful planet. To always light our way and show the right path, for these magical machines don’t extinguish like fire, no, they will burn forever!”

“But how do we know that?” said Piponre suddenly, his eldest son.

“Mother always told me.”

“And how did grandmother know?”

“No idea,” said Tibre frankly. “Perhaps she was there when the gods made it?”

“They’re fairy tyles,” mumbled Piponre. “I’ve seen more than enough light bulbs shut down in my life.”

“But no!” said Tibre with a smile, as he pointed at the lights again. “Those were stars. They die, they leave. But these light bulbs—”

“How can something even burn forever?” asked Piponre.

“Batteries.”

“What are those?”

“No idea.”

Piponre sighed and stood. “But what is a lightbulb?”

“A magical object, didn’t I say? Something that emits light, anyway.”

“But how? How can a fire float?”

“Cooome oooon Piponre,” whined a girl. “Don’t ruin the story.”

“She is right,” said Jassia. She only just returned from researching that weird box with the food. She hook her head; she had no clue about its origin too. That number, 728, also didn’t mean anything to her.

Jassia was the only Dweller to have a pet. It followed her around everywhere and now sat on her lap, listening to the conversation and nodding as if it understood.

“It has been a beautiful day in which we found a lot of food,” she said. “Let Tibre tell his fairy tales.”

Tibre thought their life was absolutely nothing like a fairy tale, but continued anyway.

“The legend talks of two animals who were in love, so in love, that they wanted to give each other all the stars in the sky. And that they did! They were demigods, they could do anything. But this made space dark and empty, all planets cold forever, so the other demigods made magical light bulbs that would burn forever. And they brought most of them to this planet, because,” and this was the part Tibre mostly told himself, “this planet is the prettiest one in the universe.”

Several children started crying. Well, well, his story wasn’t that bad!

They jumped from their spot and ran away from the campfire in all directions. They all pointed up.

Tibre followed their finger. One of their brightest lights had extinguished. No, it had changed. It moved rapidly, hid behind a few other light bulbs, then grew.

Until everyone cried and ran away, because the yellow dot was falling down, and it came directly for their campfire.

Tibre jumped just in time and covered his head with his arms. A heartbeat later, the ground shook and his ears rang, as multiple sharp edges pricked into his back. Their campfire had turned to ash; but the light remained.

When he turned around, a lightbulb lay in the middle of their circle. The transparent cover had burst into a hundred fragments, which allowed them to see and touch the glowing wire within.

Jassia crept closer, mouth wide open.

Then the lightbulb went out.

Tibre held a lightbulb in his hands, and a battery, but still didn’t understand what they were. Jassia lightly tapped all components with her hammer—a stone attached to a stick—and then nodded or shook her head. In her enthusiasm, she’d picked up the lamp immediately and burned her hands. Dawn arrived before the lightbulb was cold enough to touch.

“I admit,” she said, “that they might not have been fairy tales. The better question is now: how did your mother know the stars were light bulbs?”

Tibre sighed. He placed his tired and wounded back against the cave wall. “I can barely remember mother’s face. I can’t see father’s face at all.”

“All of us, Tibre,” mumbled Jassia. “Sometimes … sometimes I think our memories are just wrong. That we invented some face to attach to our parent’s names.”

“How so?”

Her face turned sour. “Yesterday, I ran around all day until I nearly fainted. Why? Because you thought you remembered a river in the west, near circle six. The drops of water were exactly zero, let me tell you!”

Jassia’s hands played with the battery, a large black cube that grew wires like a beard. She tried pushing the battery in all the possible holes of the lightbulb.

Until she found the right one.

Tibre covered his eyes at the sudden blinding light. “Hmm. Mother was even right about that. They never run out.”

His children ran inside, excluding Piponre.

“Can we play with the lightbulb, dad? Please?”

“No!” he said, far more stern than he wanted to. “This is no toy. This might be our only way to make great progress and inventions! What if our fires never ceased, eh?”

The children’s eyes were bright again. “Oh! Oh! Maybe we can make food cook automatically!”

“Or Jassia,” said his youngest child, “that wooden cart of yours might even drive automatically!”

Tibre forced a smile. “Well, well, let’s not get too crazy. Go and help the other Dwellers, then you can play.”

They ran away. Jassia bit her lip and looked pained as she watched them go.

Tibre frowned. “What? You want to play too?”

“Huh? No, no, of course not. This lightbulb will keep me busy for months. It’s just …”

He had been working with Jassia for years now. She ran from here to there, researched everything, made inventions, and he had no clue where she found the energy or motivation. He mostly did the physical work, like lifting something heavy, and couldn’t be bothered to do anything else. Even that job seemed to be taken over by her pet bear now. After some extensive training by Jassia, the furry animal could carry tools and even understood how a lot of them worked.

It was all useless. You found food, you ate it, just to have enough energy to find food again the next day. Without Jassia, he’d have given up long ago—and he’d never seen her as tired and uncertain as she looked now.

“It is fine,” said Tibre, “to take a break now and then. Sleep with your husband tonight, instead of in a cave with a broken lightbulb. I think we’ve discovered all its secrets by—”

“No, no, there is far more going on here,” she said immediately. “It is … hard for us to bear children.”

“Because you don’t want to bring children onto our horrible, horrible planet?”

“Huh? No, our planet is beautiful. I … did your mother ever tell you anything about our other rules? Why do we marry each other? Why do we do that?”

Jassia was far younger than Tibre—a young adult—but had already married years ago. Like most. Like he expected Piponre to do soon. But why?

“We need each other to survive,” he said. “If you promise to stay together forever, and support each other in life and death, this becomes easier.”

Jassia put down her hammer and looked away. “And what if it was a mistake?”

Tibre frowned, but made sure his words were clear. “Then you find a way to make it work. It is unheard of to leave your married partner. You only have one tribe, and it is this one, so make it work.”

At least, that’s what he thought mother had told him once, in his memories.

Jassia resumed her work. She carefully took apart the lightbulb. “Yes, yes, of course. You’re right. Forget I said anything.”

“No, Jassia, I’m glad you speak up. We don’t have enough time on this planet, or energy, to spend it on lies.”

All those problems. All the mess. And why? Eventually, everyone dies, returned to the mud around their caves. Oh well. At least they had enough food now to take it easy the coming years.

Tibre stepped outside and nearly received a spear through his belly.

A spear he recognized instantly. It had been made of an unknown material that the owner called metal, which was given to him by his father.

“This is your fault,” said Zandir. “From the moment you took that food, a curse landed on the Dwellers!”

“It is just one lightbulb and we already turned it—”

Zandir stepped aside to show a second fallen lightbulb. His children already arrived to grab it and play with it. Tibre’s loud clanging against his Echobelt did not reach them.

He looked up. And panicked. Another lightbulb was coming down now. This one was nowhere near the caves and seemed to fall more slowly.

Jassia and him ran after it.

“This will be our demise!” cried Zandir at his back. “Your fault! Your gluttony!”

Demise? When had their barren planet ever not been falling apart?

They looked up once more. The light had changed. It changed from a yellow dot, to a different shape, and another, until it turned purple. Normally, the stars were hard to see during the day, but this one stuck out like the eye of an angry god watching them from above.

Faster and faster the object fell down. Jassia and him lost their breath. They entered a cave, ran through the dark for hundreds of paces, to resurface in a completely new area. They were below the falling object now, which cast a shadow over them.

The object was headed straight for that weird cave with the vertical lines and the food storages.

“No! No! Don’t land there!” he yelled, waving his arms. As if light bulbs responded to that.

“This is no bulb,” said Jassia, as she leaned against the Linecave and caught her breath. “This is … what is it?”

Tibre lost hope. They could never move all the food in time.

The object, which looked most like a purple shiny bird with frozen wings, crash landed mercilessly near the cave

Jassia already placed a comforting hand on Tibre’s shoulder. Then they hid inside the cave.

The ground shook and threw both of them to the floor. Bang after bang echoed through the cave and replaced their hearing with a dull static. The cave entrance flashed white, then bright red, then bright yellow, sometimes overshadowed by objects that flew past.

And then—silence. Deadly silence. A few birds sang as if nothing had happened.

They stepped out of the cave. All the food had been burned, squashed, ejected.

Tibre burst into tears and sunk to his knees.

“I give up,” he mumbled. “I give up. I’m done.”

Jassia didn’t seem to hear. “Where … where is the object itself?”

They only saw a wide empty space, covered in ashes and rubble, but only vague hints about what the object was. If they hadn’t followed it, they might have never known anything crashed here. They might have thought a large campfire had gotten out of hand here.

How could something so large just disappear? Without a trace?

Zandir had finally caught up. He thumped his spear deep into the layers of ash and leaned on it like a walking cane.

“That was no lightbulb, alright. Father always called that a spaceship.”

Jassia accepted the animal’s gifts with a smile. They stood, or floated, in a long queue before her, and took turns stepping forward. Then they placed a piece of food in her basket, or logs they collected, or their prettiest pebbles. And sometimes they looked at Jassia with guilt and pleading when they had not brought her a gift.

The humans had always found this ritual odd, but also funny. If the animals wanted to give them food, especially in times of need or destroyed food storages, then they were free to do so.

What creeped her out, though, were the statues that the animals made of the humans.

At the end of the ritual, as always, she stood eye to eye with herself. An entire herd of rabbits and beavers had cooperated to express Jassia’s likeness with wood and stone. And a few carrots.

“That, erm, thanks,” she said. She gave a rabbit a pat on the head, before she could stop herself. The others looked as if she’d blessed the animal with her godly touch. Some Dwellers claimed you used to be forced to keep a dog as a pet—another weird rule of which they’d forgotten the origin. But she didn’t know why she had the habit of petting other animals.

You didn’t pet your food, right? And still she did it time and time again.

On the other hand, your food usually also didn’t make statues of you.

The animals made their own sounds and left.

Finally. She could study the light bulbs again. Wonderful things! If only she could learn its mysteries, the Dwellers might soon be the most advanced society in the universe! Those ideas the children had weren’t “too crazy” at all. Carts that moved automatically? Fire that burns forever? Something to look forward to.

But like mother said: you won’t achieve anything by looking, go and invent!

And so, with a growling stomach, she dissembled the second lightbulb. Tibre had refused to leave his bed today, so she was alone.

She didn’t learn anything new. The light turned off once she’d removed too many components. And, well, that just gave her a dark room with a useless object. And a pet bear who juggled with the components.

She needed more components. Something to compare it to! As mother said: go and collect data. It took her entire youth to realize mother wasn’t talking about the plural of date, but about information. Since then she’d invented a lot more!

Soon after, she visited their largest cave. The one that held the Great Map on the wall. The Linecave wasn’t marked on the map, even though it seemed important. The places where the spaceship and light bulbs had fallen down also weren’t marked.

Well, let’s face it, when had this map ever been right? The circles were scratched into the wall with precision. Deep and perfect, even numbered, but—

Circles. Spaceships. Light bulbs. They fall from above.

She ran out of the cave and looked up. The map was burned into her brain from years of study and usage. How had she not seen this before?

No, the map didn’t fit the pattern of stars. There were far more light bulbs than circles in the sky, and they seemed to move over time.

But Piponre was right: everyone had seen a few of those stars extinguish before, or disappear, or dim their light. Between the blinding stars were other circles that represented something else.

Planets.

She shivered, frozen in the entrance. It fit almost perfectly. If she modified the map, and rotated it a bit, the circles matched precisely with the larger circles in the sky. Those that barely emitted light and were only sometimes visible.

“The Great Map is a map!” she yelled.

“Yeah, duh, obviously,” said the children near her.

“But not of our planet—of all the planets around us!”

The others assembled around her. One by one, with some effort, they saw what she saw. Parts of the Great Map were drawn in the sand with a stick, right where they stood. To make sure their memory wasn’t fooling them again.

But no, she was right. Their ancestors, she thought, had drawn a perfect map of their galaxy in the cave wall.

In fact, they were missing a few planets. They were on the map, but not visible in the sky today. Jassia fully believed those planets existed and were in the right place too. It also meant that the closest planet to them was very close, and looked like a small yellow dwarf. It was probably hard to see with the naked eye because of the yellow light bulbs interfering.

Oh, it had to be beautiful! If they could ever build those automatic machines, and then, yes, they might even float to a different planet. One where a thousand new discoveries awaited her. Would they have cute rabbits too? Or animal species she didn’t know? Maybe the light bulbs grew there, and they only fell down if the wind broke them loose. Anything was possible!

“I must return to the spaceship!” she said.

“Nothing left of that,” said Zandir. With his spear, he checked if the planets in the sky really matched the big circles of the Great Map.

“There must be some wreckage. There must be something. I feel it, I know it, our future is out there—in space.”

She ran to Tibre’s home cave, by habit, but he stayed inside and refused visitors. Piponre just left, his face thunderous. When he saw Jassia, he tried to clear up and smile, but still shook his head: no, his father wasn’t leaving the bed.

She was eager to ask if Piponre would join her then, but stopped herself. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe out of shame or fear of making Tibre feel even worse.

Eventually, she visited the Linecave alone, as night fell. She used the first lightbulb that had crashed, and was missing half of its glass case, as her light source.

Leaning against the cave wall, she found her first piece of wreckage. A bent plate. It seemed made of that same metal as Zandir’s spear. It contained symbols drawn with colorful paint, but she couldn’t read them.

She stepped inside the Linecave. It was unlikely, yes, but maybe some pieces had landed inside the cave. That’s what she told herself anyway. In reality, she just wanted to count the lines herself and research them. Collect data!

Tibre, though, had miraculously counted them perfectly. 728. What could it mean? Number of days in a year? Number of planets around them? And why would their ancestors, or another civilization before them, want to communicate that?

She took another step and tripped over a heavy object. Her head landed in ash; the lightbulb shattered even further. She reached for the object as it rolled further down the slope, but wasn’t able to catch—

Footprints. They dug deep into the ash and led back to the spot where the spaceship crashed.

Spaceship. Sailing through space. It sounded like a fairy tale, but what if it was real and then—focus, Jassia, focus.

The footprints were too large for her feet. She had to drag Tibre home last time, so he didn’t leave footprints then. And they were the wrong around? Hold on. That meant they started from the spaceship and then—

Her body shook. Piponre, Tibre, Zandir, she should have taken someone with her tonight. Stupid!

She threw the lightbulb away to run faster. Then she fled the footprints.

As she ran back home, she looked over her shoulder, again and again, but nothing and nobody followed her. Still she didn’t slow down, no, not until she was safely back inside her own cave.

She yelled: “I found footprints at—”

Tibre sat beside the lightbulb, fascinated by something on the inside.

For inside the lightbulb were drawings. Not just any drawings, no, moving drawings.

Jassia noticed the drawings resembled each other. As they were played in sequence, it looked like humans were walking around inside the lightbulb. As if they, like gods, were watching a tiny world within. But when she put her hand inside the lightbulb, she only felt empty space—they were moving drawings, but not real.

A voice called out to them. Jassia and Tibre looked around, searching for who was speaking, only to discover the lightbulb magically produced this voice.

“I can’t see another end,” said a young man in a lab coat. “I’ve simulated millions of years into the future. I’ve tried all options. But the science is clear.”

“Science doesn’t know everything,” said an older woman.

“We know science doesn’t know everything, otherwise it would stop existing.”

“Try again.”

The two figures walked around a cave that seemed excessively white. Everything inside that room had wires and lightbulbs.

The young scientist shook his head. “We think our world started with a huge explosion, the Big Bang. Anything that will ever exist, was pressed into a tiny marble. That obviously didn’t fit, so it exploded and gave us this vast universe. A universe that is still growing in size every second.”

“The start doesn’t interest me. I’m talking about the end of the universe.”

The scientist gestured for her to calm down. “It is likely that the universe will end by doing the same, but in the opposite way. We have grown so large, stretched so thin, that we snap back like an elastic, back into that marble. Nothing will survive.”

“And the other end?”

“Statue. We lose more and more energy, planets drift further and further apart, until the entire galaxy just … freezes. All warmth gone. All movement gone. Nothing can reach or see each other, and it will stay that way forever. Nothing survives—”

Tibre kicked the lightbulb through the room. The lamp turned on again; the drawn memory that was playing inside stopped abruptly.

“It’s all useless,” he mumbled repeatedly. “I give up.”

“Like you gave up yesterday, and stand next to me now?” asked Jassia with a smile.

He walked away.

Jassia carefully tried to replay that memory inside the lightbulb, again, and again, and again. What a wonderful world. What a magical people.

She hoped more lightbulbs with these memories crashed soon. And that she’d merely imagined the footprints from the spaceship.

Tibre didn’t want to give up. Of course not. The most important property of life is that it tries to keep living. Thus he dragged himself from his cave to play a game with his children—but he couldn’t find them anywhere.

Only Piponre paced back and forth between the caves.

“Hey puckle,” said Tibre. He grabbed his son for some playful wrestling, but Piponre only wrestled himself loose and kept walking. “In for a game of Rockball? Or maybe hide—”

“No, dad.”

“Where are your siblings? Then we’ll play together—”

“I have to find food. You know, ever since your amazing storage was destroyed by a spaceship. I’m dizzy from the hunger, dad.”

Tibre grabbed his wrist. “Do you have something against your own family?”

“No! Your children are with Jassia, listening to another dreamy story.”

“Then we go to her.”

“No! I—”

“What do you have against Jassia? She has always been nice to y—”

Piponre went red. Not of anger, but of … shame? He looked nervous and walked away.

“What’s going on with you, puckle?”

“I grew up,” mumbled Piponre, after which he fled through the trees.

Rain came down with a vengeance. Multiple cave entrances had already buckled under the weight, while they had to scoop away the water flooding the home cave. His son didn’t mind, seemingly, but Tibre himself shivered in the cold and wished for a thousand animal skins to cover him.

Tibre, indeed, found his offspring with Jassia. She spoke with an entrancing smile and wild gestures, stirring up the gullible children even more. He hadn’t seen her this happy in a while, and he hoped she’d figured things out with her husband.

“I went back to the Linecave with Piponre and carried the lightbulb back home. If you turn them off, and wait a bit, they start to play memories!”

She stepped away and showed the memory inside this lamp.

Not one spaceship, not two, but hundreds. They zipped past each other like dancing firebirds, followed by gray smoke and colored flashlights. Sometimes a flash of light hit another bird, and then the vehicle would crash. And all of that in a grim silence.

Tibre could pick out different ship designs. They were like animals: every species had roughly the same face, limbs, and fur. Or, in this case, the same ship design, wings, and colors. This fight wasn’t between two animal species, no, but between at least five.

The memory moved to the interior of a ship. One of the largest. It didn’t join the fight and had to be protected by the others. Families sat on the ground, cowering in corners, hiding behind pillars.

At least, that’s what Tibre thought. He wasn’t sure if they were families, for they weren’t humans. They resembled dog-like creatures that could also walk on two legs.

A flash of light hit the large window behind them. In one instant, less than the blink of an eye, all the families had died and the spaceship split in two. They hadn’t even had a warning or a period to save themselves.

The attacker flew over the rubble some time later. The shots came from a ship with the letters CAJARA engraved into its hull. It was steered by a human, clearly. She smiled at the destruction and screamed commands into a black device.

Until another flash of light shot that spaceship out from the stars too.

Fast forward. The memory showed emptiness. A large black hole that ate the rubble and the dead bodies. This space battle could not have had many survivors. The only beacon of hope, literally, was a lightbulb that floated through the dust. The memory showed someone placing the lamp and turning it on, but cut off before they could see who.

Well, that was a big disappointment. Humans were some sort of … virus that killed other animal species, happily destroyed them in space battles.

“So humans are everywhere in the galaxy!” yelled Jassia with enthusiasm. “And some are already space travelers! Oh, I really hope we invent whatever they invented. And then we’ll follow their lead!”

The ground shook once more. Several seconds later, someone entered the cave to say that another lightbulb had landed.

“Come come,” said Jassia to the children. “Go and find food, then come back tonight to study the memory inside that new lightbulb!”

They ran from the cave as they cheerfully discussed what the new memory could be.

Tibre and Jassia visited the new lightbulb.

They discovered a few more statues along the way. This one was the likeness of Zandir with his spear, in some heroic pose, surrounded by leaves and nuts. Five burning twigs created a campfire near it.

And around that campfire sat a dozen animals. Eyes closed, head down, they seemed to pray. The rabbit, whom Jassia had accidentally patted, stepped forward to lead the prayer by squeaking and grinding her teeth.

When they reached the new lightbulb, Tibre coughed loudly.

“Thanks, erm, for entertaining my children,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. I can do it myself, you know.”

“It helps them forget how hungry they are,” mumbled Jassia. She shot Tibre an accusatory stare. “And their father loudly saying how much he gives up.”

She threw the lightbulb in his arms.

“Here. Bring this one to my workplace. Take out the battery.”

“What … what are you going to do?”

“No, you have to keep doing stuff. And, erm, I have other plans tonight.”

“Don’t go out alone, eh?” said Tibre. “Those mysterious footprints …”

Jassia played with her hair. She straightened her animal skin, then pulled it loose again, then straight again.

“Don’t worry about that. You saw the memory: if it was a spaceship that landed here, and they intend to do us harm, well, well, then one flash of light would be enough! All that you can do is discover how to build such advanced inventions ourselves. And quickly.”

“And what then?” asked Tibre, as Jassia already left. “Take the skies with our advanced spaceship, only to be mowed down by CAJARA anyway? It’s all meaningless! Everything that you build will fade away! Everything we—”

She was already gone.

He took the lightbulb back, shaking his head all the way. He did as Jassia asked, and indeed, as soon as the light faded, they could look into the lightbulb and see the moving drawings again.

All his children wanted a look. He’d hoped Piponre would grow curious and be with thim, but no—that puckle stayed absent. He’d have to give him a lecture about that, once he returned.

The memory showed a magical city, or rather a piece of nature. Wherever you looked, flowers bloomed and the sun shone. Peaceful shrubs showed the way along cute cobblestone paths, which twisted around each other, sometimes went into the air, and sometimes even went underneath a tunnel of trees. The trees were strong, large, and even—was that a face on the tree? Was that tree talking?

His children shuffled closer, as his youngest daughter nervously pinched his hand.

It wasn’t just beautiful. It was also functional: animals of all species walked the paths. Chatting, kissing, arguing, trading. Many wooden stalls lined the roads, alternating with colorful caves dug into the side of hills.

The place beamed life, both through its plants and its animals. Tibre could see himself wander there all day, without a goal, and still be happy. The fresh air, the free nature, the beautiful plants and the pleasant company. The animals all looked like they had more than enough to eat and drink. His children, yes, he could see them play hide-and-seek or Rockball in that place too.

But it was a fairy tale, right? Animals couldn’t talk. Such a place never existed.

He tumbled back into reality. His eyes focused on the dark stones of their caves, and the wet dirt on which they slept.

But it was possible. Somewhere, on other planets, in other ways, beings could live in peace, while certain they had enough to eat. That was an advanced civilization. That was why you worked hard every day, right?

Suddenly Jassia entered into the cave.

“Did your … thing finish early?” asked Tibre.

“My thing was a mistake,” mumbled Jassia. She walked to her bedroom, deeper into the cave, where her husband already slept for hours. “I’m going to bed, good night.”

Tibre only saw the final piece of the memory. The beautiful place had turned into a barren wasteland, burned to a crisp and littered with skeletons. Spears, swords and cannon balls split the dirt. A sabre-tooth tiger stalked the place sadly. A different paw turned on another lightbulb and left it at that place. A place where nothing could live now.

How … how did he know this animal was called a tiger? His memories were the biggest mystery of all.

“I give up,” he mumbled again.

“Why do you say that, dad?” squeaked his youngest daughter. She snuggled up against his warm body, as he gave her two quick kisses on the cheek. “I don’t understand.”

“Hopefully you never have to understand.”

Piponre darkened the entrance. He held two dead rabbits in his hand and a pile of nuts. That was all? After a full day of hunting and gathering?

“It is not much,” his eldest son admitted. “But it’s all the food we have right now.”

“Give all of it to your siblings,” mumbled Tibre. “I never need to eat again.”

Jassia had just pulled herself onto a tall rock when the first raindrops fell. Hunger had driven her far from home. To another unexplored territory, even though she noticed the clouds were gray in the morning. Hunger and curiosity, for she noticed another lightbulb had fallen down here.

She cursed Tibre and his laziness, his giving up, his negativity, everything. He was the eldest and strongest of all Dwellers, after Zandir. He had to lead and be an example. Instead he refused to eat, which he wouldn’t surv—don’t think about, just don’t.

Zandir had, fortunately, joined. Just as Piponre and her pet bear, of course. They already stood on the increasingly slippery rocks as they pulled her upward.

This planet was nothing but mud and stone. The memories inside the lightbulbs, though, showed many places that were different. Jassia dreamed of building her spaceship and flying to those places.

Until then, they needed food, and a lot of it.

The clouds contracted, turning from light gray to black. Their animal skins were soaked and Jassia had to bind her long locks of hair to prevent going blind. Ugh, another one of those rules. Why did it have to be a rule that women had long hair and men did not? Surely something their ancestors invented, before they decided to disappear.

At the next step, she slipped on a deep puddle.

Piponre grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. She smiled awkwardly at him, as she felt his warm skin against hers. Their Echobelts clattered against each other and let the entire valley know where they were.

Thunder. Flash. A growing gale almost pulled Jassia’s clothes off her body.

“This is madness,” said Zandir. His spear pointed at the black sky. “We’ll die at the hands of thunderstrokes if we continue!”

“We can’t hide anywhere,” said Piponre immediately. “Returning home will take hours in this storm, and will guarantee we have no food. I say we continue.”

They looked at Jassia. She felt unsteady, but her strong bear kept her upright. No, not that, her bear tapped against her leg and wanted her attention.

Her pet pointed at a black dot in the distance.

“Wreckage!” yelled Jassia. Unbelievable. The explosion had hurtled the spaceship pieces over a massive distance! Maybe the rest of the spaceship was all the way on the other side of the planet.

They closed in. Her thoughts were confirmed: these looked like the other spaceship parts.

Jassia dove to the ground. She had to be quick. Rain washed away all the tracks, all the proof.

She dug into the earth and found what she expected: more footsteps. Certainly not a Dweller, no, because they weren’t human feet. And also not that weird shoe that her husband wore. Another gift from his parents, of course, who never explained it and then disappeared.

She studied the soaked faces of Zandir and Piponre.

“I am not insane, am I? Someone was inside that spaceship. And someone … someone has walked around our caves without revealing themselves.”

“Or, I don’t know, a deer happened to walk past,” grunted Zandir. “And we have finally found our food for the next week. Let’s follow the trail.”

Jassia knew it was stupid. To take on the extra weight, in such a storm, with a weakened body. But her curiosity could not leave it alone.

She and her bear ripped several components off of the wreckage and carried it the rest of the way. This had to reveal more information about what happened. Maybe new technology that taught her how to build spaceships herself!

Zandir gave his opinion by endlessly shaking his head. Though he appeared to be right: in the distance they noticed a dark silhouette, made fuzzy by the curtain of rain around it.

The rain wasn’t falling down anymore. Bursts of wind blew the droplets to the side. To her eyes, the entire world seemed to slant. She didn’t dare take another step, as the rocks now seemed diagonal and unstable too.

“Let’s circle back to—”

Thunder. A bang. A flash.

Jassia looked up and waved her arms.

“Zandir! Out of the way! Watch out!”

A gigant rock fell from the sky, in a cloak of dust and debris. Zandir’s body came alive, as he used his spear to launch himself away from his spot.

The rock was too large to escape.

Zandir was hit in his back, his legs broken by the impact. He lost his balance and fell off the rocky path.

Jassia and Piponre could only scream and watch as Zandir fell down—and died instantly when he hit the floor.

They fell to their knees. For a moment, a very brief moment, Jassia could only hear Tibre’s statements and how right they were. It’s all meaningless. It’s as if nature doesn’t want anything to survive. Everything always goes wrong, and people die, and—

Then she felt Piponre’s warm embrace, as he cried with her and their tears were lost in the rain. Then he helped her back up.

“We go down,” he spoke softly. “We go back.”

Jassia nodded and let herself be dragged along. Until she spotted something and froze, bumping against Piponre.

“This was no accident.”

Piponre placed a hand on a shoulder. “I understand that—”

“Look! Look!”

They climbed down more quickly. Her bear pointed at a light in the distance: the lightbulb that had crashed her. Piponre would have to carry that, as she had to investigate a murder first.

She said a short prayer, then pushed the boulder off of Zandir’s body. Piponre saw it too.

The backside of the rock had been cut off, or rather shot off, and replaced by a black burn mark.

She saw a flash of light—but heard no thunder.

Jassia shivered and whispered: “Some alien creature walks around here and they want us dead. And they have a lightflash weapon, I am sure, I am sure.”

Piponre opened his mouth, maybe to tell her she saw ghosts. Then he closed it and protectively stood before her.

The rain washed away any view of their environment. Was it day? Was it night? The dark clouds, glued together, kept out all the stars and lightbulbs around their planet.

Was that a shadow? Was that a moving silhouette, or a tree? She had to stay calm; she also had to stay wary of the danger.

Something poked her back. She turned around rapidly—it was just her bear. He had grabbed the lamp and gave them some vision. Sometimes her pet seemed more intelligent than many Dwellers.

Eager to view the memory, she pulled out the battery.

“What on Holed are you doing!?” hissed Piponre.

He grabbed his Echobelt, by instinct, and kept it in front of him like a weapon. Like most of the Dwellers did. Though they couldn’t remember why they’d use a musical instrument as a weapon. It wouldn’t help, in any case.

Complete darkness embraced them. The other creature probably hadn’t expected this. Jassia could just make out a faint light in the distance before it was quickly shut off.

She turned on the lamp again and threw it in Piponre’s arms.

“Run!”

The faint light of the lamp showed their path, jumping over logs and skidding over rocks. Jassia had to hope they picked the right direction to their home. Piponre kept glancing over his shoulder and pointing the light behind them, but they had no clue where their pursuer was.

Humans were made to run large distances on two legs. Bears were not.

She had to choose between carrying that second piece of wreckage, or her bear. She chose her bear without hesitation.

A flash. She instinctively closed her eyes and only saw the consequences: a tree in the distance caught fire. Did thunder return anyway? The clouds remained threatening, and this was a laughable miss if someone actually tried to shoot them.

They ran even faster. The lack of food of the past few days made her light in the head, dizzy until her legs moved of their own accord and she didn’t even know where she was. The soles of her feet were scratched and bloody. Her hair had broken loose and hit her nose and eyebrows with every step.

Don’t hesitate, ignore the pain, run.

After hours, or so it felt, the weather improved and they entered familiar territory. That Linecave with the weird entrance, shaped as if someone received a hammer and the command to be too creative with it. The forest that started with some tall gray trees, then continued with only green tiny trees.

Then, of course, the underground tunnel that made them resurface close to their home cave.

“Thank the Dweller Gods,” said Jassia. Her breathing sounded like a crashing spaceship. The cute bear in her arms relaxed and took his paws off the many sharp tools around his belt. “We are back—”

Piponre was nowhere to be found. Many steps behind her, she noticed the lightbulb discarded on the floor. Turned off and left behind like garbage. The boy himself had disappeared.

“Help!” she yelled.

She fainted against the first home cave.

Jassia tapped against the cave entrance. Tibre told her to go away. His voice was weak, his body protesting against the lack of food.

When Jassia entered anyway and looked white as a ghost, he already felt what she was about to say.

“Zandir has died,” she said softly. Then louder: “And Piponre, your son, has been abducted!”

You see? Nature was against him. Everything always went wrong, everyone died too soon, what did all of it matter? And now his son was gone because of a mysterious visitor. He would search for him for days now, find nothing, and, probably, return to hear his other children have also been kidnapped.

“Hello? Are you hearing me?” Jassia shook Tibre. She pushed his large, bulky body off the stone bed. Even hitting the ground face first did not make him react.

“Piponre made it very clear that he doesn’t care about his family anymore,” mumbled Tibre.

“Maybe you don’t care about anything. But I do care about him, a lot!”

“When … when did you two become friends? Thought you hated each other.”

Her cheeks turned red. “Erm, all the Dwellers, of course. We all care.”

“Well, then you can all search.”

Jassia kicked a rock through the cave. “Every second of delay is wasted time. You are the oldest and the strongest now, Tibre. I am not going to search for Piponre in the dark, nor with the aid of a few toddlers. I need you.”

“We all need things—”

Jassia crouched and put her shoulders underneath Tibre’s armpits. Then she straightened her back, grunting and puffing, until she could carry his heavy body. He let it happen, at first, but his feet scraping against the floor hurt too much, so he decided to walk. Excruciatingly slowly, but at least he walked.

When they reached her cave, Tibre seemed completely woken up. A good thing too. Jassia hadn’t eaten nearly enough for such exercise. She stumbled into her husband’s arms, who gave her a worried stare.

“Dear, dear, let Tibre and me do this. Or Borrick and me. Please, rest.”

He leaned forward for a kiss; she turned away.

“Gather everything that could be a weapon,” she said. Her bear quickly took all the collected pieces of wreckage off the shelves.

Jassia instantly noticed they were all different.

How had she missed that? It was dark, sure, she was in a panic, she hadn’t had time to properly study it. But one piece, which they found where the spaceship landed, had completely different colors, material, symbols, and wires. The other pieces seemed more primitive, as if someone had imitated a spaceship with lesser materials.

Had multiple spaceships crashed? Whenever they saw a dot in the distance, they now assumed it was another lightbulb. But what if that wasn’t the case?

She hit her Echobelt against the pieces and listened intently. Yes, the imitation pieces also sounded far more hollow than the others. They’d fall apart more quickly if she were to apply her hammer. Could these objects be weapons too? How did they make those flashes?

Tibre’s children ran into the cave.

“Dad! Did you stop giving up?” his youngest daughter asked.

“So … giving down?” his other son said with a frown.

He took them both in his muscular arms and kissed their cheeks. He couldn’t deny that these simple actions still gave him some joy and purpose, even though his mind didn’t want to hear it anymore.

Piponre remained his son. Family was everything. Helping his children and seeing them grow old … leaving behind a strong and kind being when you die … wasn’t that a useful purpose? He repeated it to himself until he found some energy. Some tension and excitement, and the desire to run to Piponre and save him.

“Hey, hey, puckles,” he told his children. “Go to the cave and stay inside until it’s safe. We’re going to save your brother.”

“Safe!? What is—”

“When you see flashes of light, hide,” said Jassia. She turned to her husband. “He’ll look after you, won’t you dear?”

Her husband sighed. “Yes, sure, whatever you want.”

They left the cave. They followed the path that Jassia had run yesterday, but in reverse.

The lightbulb hadn’t moved. It had been turned off long enough now to play the memory inside. They both stood still and watched.

The drawings showed a large room filled with lights. And more squares that seemed to play memories too! These memories, though, were interactive: the humans could push buttons, or say things, and the memories in the squares would change.

“We found the reason,” said a female face, which was displayed on the largest of the flat squares. “We’re beaten in every space battle because our opponents can travel with the speed of light.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed multiple scientists. They nearly dropped the books, papers and measurement devices they were carrying through the room.

“It’s possible. The calculations work out. Eye witnesses all confirm it. There is some particle or device, that much is unclear, that makes their spaceships fly a hundred times faster than ours. We’ll never defeat that.”

A man in a tight, shiny uniform paced through the room. “What do you propose?”

“Give up, commander,” said the woman curtly.

The man pulled a button off of his uniform. “Did I hear that right? No, I must have misheard. Nobody would betray their own army like that. What did you say?”

The woman rolled her eyes and left. The square shut itself down; only a dark grey emptiness stared back at them.

The man turned to the others in the room. They awaited his decision with baited breath.

“We will discover the reason behind their speed. And we’ll steal it for ourselves! We do not give up! CAJARA does not give up!”

The memory sped forward, to the next conversation between this commander and the sullen woman. Apparently, she was allowed to keep her job, though that did not make her happy.

“We found the source,” she said.

Her face only covered a part of the rectangle now. The other parts were filled with rotating, detailed drawings of an entire planet.

“The power to travel with the speed of light has its origin on this planet: Holed. The army is ready, commander,” she said reluctantly. “At your command, we attack Holed and conquer it.”

“We must be merciless,” he grunted. “If they have the secret to interstellar travel, they must have more advanced weapons. Everyone is deployed. Everyone fights a 120%.”

“We have traded and bartered for this information, commander,” said the woman. “With another intergalactic species. They might attack too, soon. What am I saying, we might be walking into a space battle with ten enemies if we’re not—”

“Fine,” said the commander without hesitation. “Humans have never lost a space battle before.”

The memory advanced a final time. The space battle was on its way and looked similar to the battle they saw in an earlier memory. But it wasn’t the same. The planets that formed the stage for this battle were different. Tibre didn’t understand: the Great Map in their cave proved that a galaxy stayed the same over time.

And then Holed was turned into a black wilderness.

The planet wasn’t that large to begin with. Now the fight had taken large bites out of the surface, and burned or crushed the other parts. If beings lived on Holed before, they had surely perished now. If the planet indeed contained the “secret” they wanted, somebody had stolen it now.

Until a voice over a radio spoke the feared message: “We couldn’t discover the secret power. As far as we can tell, nobody else found it, because all ships in this fight flew at normal speed. I conclude: it was not a power of the planet, but of the beings that lived here.”

The commander’s face darkened, as he smashed his control panel to pieces. “The same beings who are all dead now?”

“No. Some fled. We don’t know where, because they fly much faster than our radars can track.”

The memory stopped. Tibre and Jassia both trawled through their memories.

“No,” said Jassia. “Holed was not on the Great Map in our cave. Whoever drew that map called our own planet Marmir. And we aren’t even close to any of this!”

Great. Another memory that was useless to them. Things just got better and better, Tibre thought cynically.

Then they noticed two fresh footprints. One of them curved away from the lightbulb, with large steps and a consistent pace—the intruder. The other trail was one deep line in the dirt—Piponre who was dragged along.

Her bear had noticed this long ago. He seemed completely uninterested in the magical memories, never stopping to watch them.

Her pet already followed Piponre’s trail. They ran after him.

The trails led to a cave. The longer they went on, the more they meandered. Piponre had clearly fallen several times. The intruder had too.

They worried they were walking in circles. But they had made no mistake: the footsteps also walked in circles. An attempt to confuse them?

Dusk came. It allowed Jassia to see a pinprick of light in the distance. It wasn’t on their path, but they still decided it was worth checking out.

They found another lightbulb. This one didn’t have a single scratch from its fall. It also shone more brightly than the others and was covered in beautiful ancient symbols, expertly scratched into the metal.

Her pet bear went wild.

It jumped on top of the lightbulb and touched every part. This amplified its brightness. Tears formed in his eyes, which fell on the glass and sizzled into steam.

“Erm, my lovely bear, we have to—”

The bear grabbed the lightbulb and refused to let it go. As her pet led the way, the light helped them find the final footsteps on the trails. As soon as they entered that cave, they were practically blind, for stones did not leave footprints.

In the distance, just past the corner, a faint shadow was cast. Tibre thought he heard shuffling.

“That’s Piponre,” whispered Tibre, softly enough to prevent an echo against the cave walls. “Would recognize his shadow anywhere.”

“Me too,” whispered Jassia.

Tibre frowned at her. “We have no other option. A surprise attack is our best hope. Defeat the intruder before they can grab their Flashweapon.”

They crept to a dark alcove just before the bend. As close as they could get before giving themselves away.

Then they silently leapt towards the light.

Piponre had been attached to a heavy metal piece of wreckage, covered in wires. His skeleton was visible underneath his skin, as he shivered and looked seriously ill.

The intruder was … not much better off. It was one of the wolf-like beings who could stand on two legs, as they’d seen in a memory. A mixture between human and dog. He leaned against the wall and held onto his ribcage, as if it could fall out any moment.

The wolf had a large headwound. A small but razor-sharp piece of their spaceship was still lodged into his body. The only reason Piponre hadn’t escaped yet was his own starvation, for the wires around his wrists hadn’t been tied too well.

Jassia worried about him and easily cut the wires.

Tibre snuck up on the wolf from behind, made a fist and swung it—

The wolf reacted blazingly fast and bit at Tibre’s fist. His gigantic tail hit Tibre’s stomach en cast him against the other wall. The wolf instantly dove onto its prey and bit at Tibre’s face.

But Jassia hit the wolf with the first stone she could find.

The intruder swerved and sought support from the other wall. But he stayed on his two feet, and took a grey-blue object in his other paws. Faint lights glowed around the edges.

Away. To freedom. Jassia lifted up Piponre, but the wolf blocked the exit. He pointed his weapon at the Dwellers. It had to be the weapon that made flashes of light.

They raised their arms.

“Mercy! Mercy! We want to talk!” yelled Jassia.

“As if they speak our language!” protested Tibre. “This is useless. Shoot us then.”

The wolf pulled a flat, round object from the wreckage that had tied Piponre seconds earlier. He threw it in their midst, which made the object flash and beep.

The next time the wolf spoke, they could understand him.

“Filthy, ugly humans,” he growled. “Should’ve exterminated you when we still could.”

“Erm, well,” stammered Jassia. “We’re sorry?”

He stepped closer, the weapon still pointed at their heart. “I must shoot you all. The entire tribe. Zandir’s fate for all!”

“We can work together,” said Tibre. “Now that we can understand each other, we can—”

“But that would be too kind!” roared the wolf. “You must suffer. Filthy humans. A virus in the galaxy.”

Jassia pointed at the wreckage. “Did … filthy humans shoot you out of the sky?”

“Yes.”

The wolf’s eyes glazed over and twisted. He almost dropped the weapon, as his headwound started to bleed.

“I … I remember little of the crash landing. But you remember nothing, do you? Do you?”

The Dwellers searched for a response. Surprisingly, Jassia’s bear found one.

“Don’t pretend you’re any better,” said her bear, speaking regally. Like one of those kings her mother once spoke about. “The thousands of lightbulbs around this planet are proof of that.”

“What is going on?” screamed Jassia.

The wolf had steadied himself and bared his teeth. “They fight. They fight around this planet, for as long as I can remember, and entire species have gone extinct by now.”

“Like … like yours? Where do you come from? What is your goal?”

The wolf remained stern. “I have forgotten, ever since the crash landing. But my fiery hatred for humans will never be extinguished.”

“Clearly, you see,” said Tibre carefully, “that we are not the same as those others?”

The wolf smiled bitterly.

“Indeed. When I landed and survived, to my surprise, I sought you out in search of answers. Finally! I’d receive the secret to traveling at the speed of light! Humans must have amazing technologies and societies! But you are stupider than stupid and live as you did millions of years ago, when life only just started.”

He spit at Tibre’s face. The Dweller didn’t dare show his anger while a gun was pointed at his head.

“I want to trade,” said the wolf after some time. Even the speed of his brains seemed to have been hurt since the crash landing. “You find all the lightbulbs and give them to me. I will give you any food I have left.”

Jassia breathed a sigh of relief. That sounded … reasonable. Maybe he was right: humans were horrible, and all the other intergalactic species were more kind and reasonable. It would take her months to recover from talking animals and everything, but she felt much safer now.

The Dwellers nodded eagerly. They reached for the lightbulb that her bear was holding, as their first gift to the—

“Roarrr!” he bellowed, as he pushed the lightbulb even deeper into his fur. The lamp refused to go out, even though it had no battery.

“Dear, little cute bear of mine,” said Jassia nervously. “We made a deal. Please give the lamp to the kind wolf there.”

“They are my lamps! He may have all of them, but not this one!” he screamed. He kept talking, but was too far removed from the translation device now, which means Jassia only heard random animal noises.

Tibre swallowed. “Is one fewer lightbulb a prob—”

“Tsk. Typical. Humans. Come on, get to work!”

The wolf left and returned a while later with food. Pots, flasks, boxes filled with meat, all of it wrapped in that strange protective material that also wrapped around that box they found before. He gave them just enough to survive and execute his mission—but no more.

As the Dwellers left, Piponre leaned on Jassia. They whispered amongst themselves, snuggled close to each other, caressed each other’s hair.

“Well, Piponre,” said Tibre with a light tone. A slab of meat, his first food in days, was still in his hand. “To honor your safe return, we will obviously play a game of Rockball with the family tonight, eh? Puckle?”

“I think,” said Jassia, who nearly kissed his son. “That he has other plans tonight.”

“I think he can talk for himself.”

“Well,” said Piponre’s broken voice, “at this moment—”

“Of course!” yelled Tibre, turning red. “Even my own children walk away from me!”

“If your wife and children and everyone walk away,” said Jassia sternly, “then you might need to consider the problem is with you!”

“You know what? You have a husband, Jassia. He deserves to … to … know this. I am going to tell him!”

“Oh, oh, sure. You give up life, except when you can hurt your best friend, who has helped you and supported you for ten caving years?”

During their argument, lightbulbs fell from above like apples. By the time Tibre left, they were surrounded by a circle of light.

“My entire life I told everyone to look at the sky! At the stars, the lightbulbs, and see a bright future!” roared Tibre. “And now even the sky is falling down!”

Tibre threw away the meat in his hands and stomped back home.

Jassia could not hear him anymore, but she was certain he mumbled about how meaningless it all was and how he would give up again. Her belly, however, only filled itself with good food … and butterflies for Piponre. And the fear that Tibre was right: she had to tell her husband she’d rather be with someone else.

As they entered the underground tunnel, that resurfaced at their home, she received the shock of her life. Her husband suddenly appeared before her.

“Dear! I was worried sick! Tibre returned as if he wanted to personally smash all the caves, and—”

Piponre stepped away from her. He left the tunnel quickly, without looking at anyone, no matter how much his body protested.

There, in the dark, Jassia was left alone with her husband. Her loving husband, who had given her nothing but a warm bed, and care, and kisses, but for whom she simple didn’t feel anything.

There would never be a better moment. But there would also never be a good moment to destroy something beautiful for someone else.

“I have to tell you something.”

They organized a feast. The wolf preferred to remain in the shadows, far away from those filthy humans, but at least they knew where to find him and how to talk to him. They received permission to hang a few lightbulbs in their cave, to set a nice mood. He delivered his part of the deal—enough food for the coming weeks—and everyone was happy.

Everyone except Tibre. Jassia and her husband also hadn’t been seen yet.

He viewed the preparations from a distance. The home cave looked beautiful now, with all the lights and laughter, he could still see and feel that. His dancing and playing children still gave him a smile, but he’d refused any invitation to join that party. He still wasn’t able to eat a single thing. And the only thought that stuck around was: this is all meaningless, because even that food will run out, and one day my children will also grow old and die.

Jassia’s husband suddenly stood next to him.

“You know,” he said, “I never thanked you enough for helping my wife and keeping her safe. It really comforted me, all those years, to know you were with her on one adventure or another. I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost my sweet Jassia.”

So Jassia still hadn’t told him anything. Coward.

“That’s nice to hear,” said Tibre slowly. “How is it? Between you two? Jassia let slip … that you wanted her to be home more often … and other—”

“Oh, well, we just talked about that. Things are great between us!”

“Ah yes. Of course.”

As he walked away, Tibre grabbed his wrist and studied his eyes. But Jassia was right: she had to tell him, not anyone else. And she was also right that maybe, just maybe, Tibre was proud to see his son and her together.

“I wish you joy at the party. Where, erm, did you leave Jassia?”

“She wanted to view the memories in the other lightbulbs, before we have to give them away. Always working, that crazy girl.”

Tibre stood. His stomach had stopped growling—it had seemingly accepted that no more food was coming. The Dwellers in the home cave used their Echobelts and wooden sticks to create music now. He allowed himself a few more moments, taking in the happy sight, then left the party for good.

Jassia sat cross-legged on the floor of her cave. Her hair fell around her like a veil, and her eyes gazed at the dirt as if she wanted to look through it.

“I couldn’t tell him,” she whispered. “How can you look in those sweet eyes that love you … and say you want to end that?”

Tibre had no response. He settled next to her on the floor, as the lightbulb before them played its memory.

Humans in a cave. But this cave was far bigger, perfectly square, and had sterile white walls.

“No! Go somewhere else. This shelter is full!” yelled a man in army uniform.

“They’re all full!” lamented a woman.

The lamps glued to their ceiling flickered. The entire memory shook. For a second, all the light was gone, followed by a series of loud bangs. Then silence returned, but not safety.

The shelter was packed. Families sat on the floor and held each other’s hands, crates contained enough food and drink to survive for a while, and weapons piled up in corners.

Someone grabbed a black box that made noise. “Shelter 4A has collapsed. I repeat: shelter 4A has collapsed, we can’t contact them anymore.”

“I must return to the surface!” yelled a man in uniform. “Holed can’t be saved. We must flee while we can.”

All people in the shelter let the quitter know what they thought. But he got his way.

The memory sped forward and showed the planet surface now. That same man stumbled over rubble, collapsed homes and splintered trees. It was rare to see something left standing, or still emitting light. In that darkness the man became nothing but a shadow between shadows, mud between mud.

He found survivors of shelter 4A. Five parents, nine children. Blood streamed over their faces. A boy had lost his hand. An elderly man made circles. In his paranoia, he pointed his metal weapon, attached with a strap to his body, at anything that moved.

“It’s been like this for fifty years,” mumbled the elderly man. “I love my home planet, that I do. But nothing’s left of it. If you have a spaceship, take us please.”

The final years of Holed looked horrible.

Suddenly Tibre leaned forward. What had he seen? The gun. The gun in the hands of the elderly man.

He looked at his Echobelt. And then Jassia’s Echobelt. They were nearly identical.

Exactly that type of object hung from the humans in the memory. Only the elderly man had attached it to his hips; the others wore it as a necklace, or underneath a hat, or wherever it fit.

“This … this is us.”

“These are our ancestors from long long ago,” mumbled Jassia.

“It is … it is not a musical instrument. It’s a weapon.”

“And we have lost the ammunition long ago,” whispered Jassia.

The humans in the memory fled. They entered a green-brown spaceship, hidden by the thick vines of a jungle. The memory kept playing, though, until a bear entered view.

The darkness was suddenly evicted by a light. A lightbulb had turned on.

“Is this really that important?” asked a voice, just out of frame.

“Yes. Ismaraldah agrees with me. And these people, this planet Holed, can use all the hope and brightness in the world. Our lightbulbs mark important events, yes, often tragic or involving death. But the important part is that they provide light when everything seems dark, Enra. Do not forget.”

As the spaceship left, the lightbulb was “released”. It floated across the surface. It mostly illuminated rubble and pain, and the smoke trail of the only spaceship that fled in time.

The memory ended.

Jassia let out a deep sigh and fell backward, flat on the stones. Tibre did the same. As if their bodies had lost all their bones and their brain had turned to soup.

“I spoke to the wolf,” she mumbled. “All those pretty images we see? Those beautiful civilizations, with spaceships and all? Well, well, that didn’t happen in a month or a year. Or ten year. That happened over hundreds of thousands of years. Only if you work hard, and are lucky, and aren’t exterminated by others who have Flashweapons before then.”

She cried. “I’ve been a silly, silly girl. I worked until I was sick, my entire life, day and night, because … because mother said I had to. And I believed her. Because I believed I could grow old in an advanced, beautiful civilization. But we are never going to see that, Tibre!”

Her fist banged the stones, time and time again. “Maybe we do have the secret to traveling with the speed of light. But we don’t know it! Maybe we’ll one day become a society that travels the galaxy and achieves greatness. But we’re not going to experience it, nor will our children, or their children’s children, because it takes too long!”

He could do nothing more than place his hand on her shoulder. He couldn’t tell her that she was wrong, or had to keep hope, or any other comforting words. Because he agreed fully. In a way, hearing her say his own worst thoughts gave him comfort.

The music from the party shook their cave too. Once in a while they heard the faint laughter of a child, or a speech held by someone who mostly praised the food. Borrick had probably said something silly that made everyone laugh. Or his children played hide-and-seek, with the added challenge of dodging the party lights.

He wanted to see all those memories inside the other lightbulbs. The curiosity was there, and the desire to learn and experience new things. But it was like he suppressed it. As if he didn’t allow himself to admit there was still fire in his heart. The fire inside every living being that just wants to live.

A smile appeared.

He lacked the energy to get up. And that was fine, because for the first time in a while, he felt content. He lay on the cold floor, but at least he had a cave, as opposed to the collapsed shelters of Holed. He had to work hard, but at least he had a home and something to eat. He’d been very unlucky, but he also had a loyal and kind friend at his side, and children who played games all day.

Jassia was said because her expectation, her wish, hadn’t come true. Not because their current life, on their current planet, was that bad. The most optimistic of all the Dwellers was brought down, sobbing next to him, because she wished so hard for things that couldn’t come true. If she hadn’t wished it, there would’ve been no problem. If she hadn’t seen those bright and amazing futures in the memories, there would’ve been no problem.

When Piponre entered the cave too, Jassia found her smile back. He gave her a kiss, helped her up and cleaned the dirt from her hairs. The love between those two crackled and sizzled and burned brighter than all the lightbulbs.

He’d brought food for both, but mostly for Tibre. He embraced his father and helped him up too. Then he pushed a large slab of meat against his lips.

“Dad. Please eat something. Come on. Come on!”

His children were growing up and starting new families. But they’d always keep caring for their old family. Even if their father acted childish and irresponsible, by staying in bed all day and giving up. For all their faults, humans at least had society.

His mind seemed cleared up. He finally saw the truth that had been right before their noses all this time.

“Follow me! To the Linecave!”

On their way to the Linecave they met the wolf again. He seemed startled, although they could hardly read dog body language. The intruder was still confused and wounded.

He barked at them to hurry up with delivering lightbulbs. He growled at Jassia’s bear, who still clutched that special lightbulb to his chest. Then the wolf continued, a bag of food between his teeth, in the direction of their caves.

Tibre only explained himself when they reached the Linecave, out of breath.

“Look at it,” said Tibre. “Look at this patch of nothing!”

“Did we run all this way for that?” said Piponre. “An empty—”

“An advanced, huge spaceship crash landed here. And what do we see? Nothing. Such an impact destroys everything. It throws all the components in random directions and kills those inside.”

Tibre grabbed Jassia’s animal skin and spoke to her with intensity. “Those two pieces of wreckage you found were different, right? You thought that maybe multiple spaceships crashed here. But …”

“You’re not saying …”

“We landed on this planet,” yelled Tibre. “We crashed into these stones, in ignorance, fire, and confusion. All evidence of that has been scattered all over the planet. Most people inside our spaceship … our parents … died not long after. That impact pulled us all the way back to a very primitive society. But I believe our ancestors came from Holed.”

“And the lightbulbs?”

“Left behind by those bears as memories of all the space battles,” said Tibre. He pointed up. “As the wolf said. Everyone is fighting to reach us and steal our secret. The secret of traveling at the speed of light.”

“But,” said Jassia distracted. “That means someone is defending us. Otherwise we would’ve been conquered long ago.”

They studied the sky full of stars, hand in hand.

Somewhere out there was a guardian angle. Someone protected their planet, which they couldn’t do themselves. Someone fought war after war to keep out all the hungry vultures that wanted their secret. Only a lone wolf crash landed here, after all this time, and probably because everyone expected them to die on impact.

An entire army gave their lives to give this group of Dwellers a safe and free existence, on their new planet.

Tibre would feel endlessly guilty if he threw away his life now. He already felt guilty just thinking about it. How could he ever explain that to his defenders? Surely Tibre would became a story of shame and vice throughout the galaxy?

He grabbed the food that Piponre kept offering and ate all of it at once.

Then he entered the cave.

“You and me, Jassia, we both tripped on something heavy in this cave. It’s time we took a closer look.”

They counted the vertical lines again, and reached the number 728 again. A meaningless number. Piponre confirmed they weren’t insane, but also had no answers.

They could find their way easily now, thanks to the light provided by her bear. They dared take corner after corner, going deeper underground, hand in hand.

Until they found that object. Left behind in the middle of a corridor as if it was nothing. But everyone noticed its glow and how magical it felt.

Tibre was certain he and his ancestors had once known the name of this object. But he didn’t know it now. It contained text in a language he could apparently read.

In those days, many animals were made at me. Why did animals have to die? Why did I add fire to a world if it led to so much pain? Why did I, the God of Death, not do everyone a favor and die myself?

I wrestled with those questions myself, believe me. I didn’t know the answer at first. It was simply my power and it was simply need to keep the balance of nature. As my father, the real Chiefgod, always said: the meaning of life is simply to live. To wake up each day, work hard, and experience new things.

And yes, that is only possible if it has to end one day. That is only possible if you have the space to live, but also feel the pressure to make it count, because it could be over at any moment. After playing Chiefgod Ardex all those years, I dare summarize it in one sentence: no new beginnings without endings.

The bottom of the page held a paw print of a sabre-tooth tiger, like a signature. Just like the Dwellers often used their Echobelts to leave recognizable marks.

Their ancestors had fled from a horrible situation. Bombed endlessly, attacked by all, holes cut into their planet. Compared to that, crashing on a planet and living peacefully in nature seemed like a godly gift.

Now he knew where they came from. He also knew they weren’t going anywhere, at least not in his lifetime.

And it was freeing, instead of depressing.

It also meant that it didn’t matter much what you did, as long as you did something every day. Life had no goal or purpose, as long as it lived.

He hugged his son and give him a kiss, then did the same to Jassia. He couldn’t wait to see his children again and join them in whatever game they dreamed up this time. Before his next son “grew up” and found a kind wife somewhere to start a new family. He couldn’t wait to discover more interesting things, every day, such as crashing lightbulbs or alien creatures.

“Come on! We almost missed the entire party!”

Piponre sighed. “Did we come all this way just for that?”

Jassia playfully nudged him and hooked her arm into his.

“Oh don’t whine,” she whispered, “just gives us more time together.”

Tibre and the bear remained in the cave. They still studied the strange tallying that amounted to 728. He held Ardex’ statements under his armpit. The text said a lot more, but he couldn’t find anything else about Holed or their current planet Marmir.

“But why draw a Great Map of the galaxy?” he mumbled. “Why add marks to a cave in the last hours or days before you die?”

The bear tapped his knee. With tears in his eyes, and hesitation, he purposely turned off his special lightbulb.

A memory played, again and again.

A spaceship lifts off, a spaceship lands somewhere else, a hand scratched another line into the wall. And again.

No—it was not on repeat. Because the fourth time it repeated, the spaceship didn’t land neatly anymore, but crashed. The cycle continued. The same cycle of events, mostly identical, but slightly different each time.

Every time, another voice said they had found “the new location”, and that the “Dwellers of Holed had been tracked”. And then the next spaceship would flee again.

Tibre slowly realized. The bear grew uneasy and hurt, as if every second that the lightbulb was turned off hurt him immensely.

He embraced the bear and patted him on the head. A strange human habit. The bear seemed used to it; he saw it as a sign to stop the memory again.

They had not crashed here once.

They had, again, and again, and again, been chased away from their planet and forced to flee to another. Build another civilization. Recover again and stay alive. Be found again by CAJARA and others who want to steal their “secret”. One they didn’t even know themselves!

How often had this cycle repeated?

About 728 times, he estimated.

But Tibre fought the desire to fall on his knees and never get up again. That would have been shameful, he thought. If he gave up now, while his ancestors had tried to rebuild their society 728 times.

When Jassia came back and asked if he was coming, she found a Tibre with a straight back. He’d thrown the object with Ardex’ thoughts back into the cave, as the bear turned on the lightbulb again.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jassia.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I think that 728 is the number of caves on this planet, or something silly like that. Or the number of lightbulbs, yes, that seems right.”

“That sounds—”

“We have a party to attend! Come on!”

The entire return journey, Tibre entertained them with stories. Partly his mother’s inventions, partly his own. He talked about that world which would have carts that drove automatically. And how fun it would be to also hang those flat squares in their caves and send messages to each other that way. And—

Something wasn’t right.

They were nearly at their home cave, but the music was gone. The light inside was dim, as if half the lightbulbs had been depleted.

Tibre ran faster than ever.

“Borrick? Anyone?” he yelled.

The only response was a flash of light. Screaming. Stomping. Two Dwellers dove through the cave entrance, just before a flash of light swirled around them.

Tibre stumbled into the cave and found the wolf holding his Flashweapon. He threw away a battery and pulled a new one from a lightbulb.

Then he continued shooting.

“YOU ARE A VIRUS!” he screamed. “FILTHY HUMANS! MUST EXTERMINATE!”

Borrick jumped in front of his wife and children. The flash hit his shoulder and easily drilled through his body. He had no chance at survival.

The screams surged. Tibre’s ears rang and he almost threw up. His eyes darted left to right, left to right, but didn’t find what he wished for. Where were his children? Where were his children!?

Another shot. Part of the cave collapsed. Jassia ducked in time to save her legs from shattering.

He came for the wolf, who swapped batteries once more. That weapon, whatever it was, gobbled energy like nothing else.

“Mercy! Mercy!” yelled the Dwellers. Some raised their arms—but the wolf knew no mercy. One of them was shot in her legs. Everyone stopped begging for mercy and just ran away.

The wolf switched batteries again.

Tibre found his children: well-hidden in a dark alcove.

But if they did nothing, the wolf would exterminate them all anyway. Well-hidden or not, innocent or not.

Tibre now realized he had a weapon too. All of them did.

He pulled his Echobelt from his hips and searched the nearest lightbulb. On the ceiling. Too high to jump for.

Piponre appeared to his side and offered his strong shoulders. Tibre climbed on them; his fingers barely scraped the ceiling.

Another flash. Jassia wailed. Just a glancing blow, not a deep wound.

Faster!

Tibre’s fists hit the lightbulb until the battery came free. The black cube looked so innocent, so simple yet so heavy.

Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead. He tried to put the caving cube in his Echobelt, one way or another. He couldn’t figure it out.

Instead, he studied the wolf. He loaded and shot his gun with great ease.

The wolf pointed at Jassia’s head.

Tibre jammed the battery into his Echobelt with all his power, heard a click and a clang, then took a piece of wood and hit the Echobelt on the side.

His own flashlight shot blinded himself and bounced off the stone walls.

For seconds that stretched to ages, he only saw white stars.

A dull thud. More screaming.

Then deadly silence.

Piponre groaned and complained about Tibre’s weight. His father jumped off his shoulders and waited until his vision returned.

The wolf lay on the floor, eyes closed. The flash shot had gone straight through his heart.

His children left their hiding place and dove on top of their father. By the time he could breath again, and didn’t receive seven kisses at once, all the Dwellers had told him he was a hero.

He didn’t feel that way.

But he did feel, for the first time in a while, that he lived.

Jassia and her husband sat below a tree, a good distance away from the caves. Half its branches had burned from a badly aimed shot, the other half blossomed and cast a nice shadow.

“I must tell you something,” said Jassia, looking away.

“Again?” her husband asked, smiling. He reached for her warm hands.

No, don’t let him charm you. It just … hurts. But like Ardex wrote: no new beginnings without ends.

“I’m in love with someone else,” mumbled Jassia. “And I want to continue with him. And that’s not your fault. You’re sweet. You’re kind. And I know you’ll make someone else very happy, but—”

His smile faded as he stood. For just a second, Jassia cringed, afraid for a hit or a kick. But no, he’d never hurt her, she knew that.

Only disbelief remained, and an anger that never really surfaced. “Then what is the problem with me!?”

“I want to do things, every day, as much as possible. I want to try and experience. If I like someone, I dive on top of them. I can’t do that if I’m glued to someone else. How can I ever promise to still love you five years from now? That marriage rule is silly. We must forget all those rules from before we crashed here. Only then our society can progress!”

Her husband wavered. His face showed a different emotion every heartbeat; his one foot wanted to walk away, his other wanted to walk to Jassia. In the end, his hand flew to Jassia’s face, but only for a kind touch of her cheek.

“Dear, progress towards … ?”

“Nothing specifically.”

Jassia stood too. Her heart finally dared beat again, and a held breath flowed out of her. She was certain he’d take the news well.

She gave him a final kiss and a warm embrace, while they both mumbled they’d miss each other and said their goodbyes. Her husband kept saying he wanted nothing but to see Jassia happy, so if this made her happy …

Of course she’d miss this, at least a bit. She was almost about to propose a relationship with both of them. But that would go too far, she felt that.

Then she smiled at her ex-husband.

“A journey to nowhere, with all our heart.”

Tibre lay on the cold rocks to cool himself after an intense match of Rockball against his children—and grandchild. Jassia and Piponre had made quick work of it, but he couldn’t complain. That energetic puckle already beat everyone else at their own game! He was the first of a next generation, and hopefully a great leader for the future.

The leader Tibre hadn’t always been, but tried to be now.

His father-son relationship with Piponre had ended. As it had with almost all his children. A new relationship, though, perhaps even more beautiful, had started between them.

He kept the truth behind the Linecave to himself. Nobody else needed to know how often they’d already crash landed somewhere and tried to build a civilization again. Him and the bear, of course, who slept, ate, and walked holding that light that never went out.

Any other wreckage that Tibre found was given to Jassia and Piponre. They’d made many discoveries about how they worked and how they could copy that. Jassia had recently succeeded in making her own lightbulb, which worked using another one’s battery. She had also installed something in her cave that she called a door, which automatically opened when someone came near. Which the children obviously saw as a fun game to play all day.

They wouldn’t build their spaceship in five years, no, and not even in fifty years. But the leaps and bounds they made now were far larger than if nothing had ever landed on their planet.

And that’s life. That’s the addictive part of life: always a bit of progress, always a bit of influence to shape the future.

Those scientists in the memories could well be right. The universe will end some day, time will end sometime, and then everything will be dead or frozen.

Still, living beings keep trying. Try until the day they’re so smart, understand so much of the world and technology, that they might just survive the end of time. Or at least never have to die or hurt again.

But, well, without endings, how can anything new ever start?

And sometimes Tibre didn’t succeed. Those days, his thoughts returned to the meaningless of it all. He thought about the space battles that raged every day above their heads, just to protect the Dwellers. The same ones that had eventually killed that wolf—an alien race that hated humans with all they had.

But then he merely needed to look outside. He merely needed to do. Like playing with his children or feeling Piponre’s intense happiness at being a father. And sometimes he walked so far that he stumbled on statues of himself, made by praying animals.

And if they could understand those animals, they’d hear them talk about the “human gods”. About how some were glad they came and how they took care of them, and others were mad they had so much power and sometimes ate them. How many thought the humans were magical and all had their own powers, while other animals thought humans should have shared those powers with the animals. Some felt that a first conflict was brewing …

Maybe one day they’d find the translation device that wolf used. And they could live harmoniously with those animals. Nobody could predict the future, but the Dwellers would certainly go out every day to discover, explore, and try to reach new heights.

Maybe Tibre would lose his faith one day again. Maybe in a week, a year, he’d give up for good. He’d scratch another line into the Linecave, and after 729 attempts, the Dwellers of Holed were done.

But it was not today.

Still Tibre was a hero, dear reader, that is what I know for sure. Mankind desperately asks the universe about the meaning of life every day; the universe responds with nothing but eternal silence. The only conclusion is that life has no meaning and no purpose. There is nothing else in that cold void, nothing outside of this moment on earth. Those who know that, and still wake up every day and try their hardest, are absurd heroes.

And so it was that life continued …