The JAXA researchers fiddle with instruments to adjust the course of two stag beetle rovers that hatch from the underside of the probe to fling themselves at whatever device is lodged in the asteroid. When the spindly legs of the rovers touch down, the room gushes out one collective breath. Someone pops a bottle of champagne, and one of the staffers screams at the thunk of the cork through the heavy silence.

KAORI (VOICEOVER)

JAXA couldn’t bring the device home. Not then. Mugen had to circle back to Earth with the samples and thousands and thousands of pictures of what it had found. They shared their findings with space agencies across the globe. Governments were used to working together – begrudgingly, sure – with carbon emissions capped and HIV/AIDS wiped from the planet. But never held to this level of secrecy. The agencies united to build a craft to return to Endovelicus, dig the probe out, and haul it safely back to Earth for study. After a quick pit-stop at the International Space Agency to make sure that this black box wasn’t a bio-weapon or alien-made doomsday device.

“And who made the device?” I asked, in the Mexican restaurant in Indian Springs an hour from the Compound and just outside Southern Paiute Country, which became our favorite haunt a few weeks into our time together.

Here’s my favorite part, which I whipped out during verbal brawls with Kaori like an uppercut finisher to prove I was right, even about dumb things like “this sci-fi movie was better than that one.” And I should know, because I made the Envisioner.

I squeezed Yusuf’s hand to keep me from pounding the table in margarita-boosted bliss. Yusuf just rolled his eyes like, easy.

“There’s no actual footage of you making the device,” Kaori said.

“She can’t even say it!” I cackled. Our waiter, used to us taking over the restaurant on weekend afternoons by then, looked over with a lopsided smile. I nodded for another round. “She literally can’t even say that some version of me—and I will definitely admit that it was not this idiot nondescript version of me—was smart enough to make the Envisioner.”

“Waitwaitwait,” Kaori sputtered, laughing. “Show me the evidence. Show me!”

“We’re scientists,” Yusuf said, lowering his voice to sound serious. The voice he saves for when he’s trying to explain wave functions, or when he’s got me pinned down against my bed in the Compound, rumbling in my ear, do you want it? “We need observable evidence to—”

“Such bullshit. Such bullshit. Oh my god,” I said.

“I will concede that an alternate version of you led his universe’s Envisioner program.” Kaori tipped her forehead to me.

“Oh, thank you, Doctor, for your concession.” I laughed, licking the salt off my margarita rim. “Us fucking serfs bow to the queen.”