AN: This is a novel. It's about science and politics and terrifying monsters and dying and redemption and time. And energy. It all comes back to that: power. The power to change, and the power to resist change. It's also about funny stuff like fruit and running down hallways and the end of the world. I spent an entire summer on this so why let it go to waste? And so, without further ado: Falling Star.

There is no beginning.

Just get that, right from the start, 'cause that's what you need to start with. Start in the middle, because that's all there is. You're born, right smack in the thick of things, and you just go along with it. What were you before that? Cells, proteins, atoms. Stardust. You never began. You won't end either. Neither created nor destroyed, circle of life, sort of thing. Take the universe. Set off by a bang, but that's only because it all crunched together, on the other end. If you find a penny and you go back in time and put it where you'll find it, where did it come from? An infinite loop. Self-sustaining paradox. Doesn't have to make sense. Just has to work. So there is no beginning. No end. Right?

Wrong. I'd know. I've seen it. Every second of it.

That's who I am.

You know how when you dream, you know exactly what's going to happen, because you're the one making the story but at the same time, you're living in it? And you remember the end but not the beginning, and the you that's walking through your dream wants it to end differently but the you that's watching and dreaming knows that it has to be the way you saw. And sometimes you see the back of your own head.

That's me. Every day, every hour.

It's night, and you're staring up at the sky, all the countless stars. Pretend that what they say is true. If you see a falling star, you'll be granted a wish. So you see a flash of fire across the sky. What if you wish that the star never fell? What happens then?

I happen. That's what.

'Cause that's who I am.

Actually, it is. Literally. That's me, right there. That falling thing you just saw. Hello. Did you see what I did there? I led you into a hypothetical scenario as a metaphor and then told you that the hypothetical event is actually reality. And it's funny because you're the one who's hypothetical, since I'm not actually talking to anyone in particular at present. Not now. Not yet. I'm a bit busy to talk right now. Busy, you know...

Falling.

London

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021

At about two in the morning, all the streets are quiet. All the clocks tick unnoticed in halls and on the tops of pantries. All the noise of the city blends into one long, drawn-out hum. Time has no meaning at two in the morning, as backwards as that may sound. Not to the sleepers, not to the dreamers. But the clocks still count it and the world still feels it pass, like wind in the trees. Maybe the clocks understood something. They just sit there, patiently counting. Watching the movement of something intangible, something that they piece together. The little pocket watch rested calmly on the windowsill. It looked very old, and in a sense it was; very, very old; but it had little tiny modifications to it that made it modern. It was an alarm clock, for one. It had been set to five-thirty, at which time a minute mechanism carefully placed inside the shell would open a circuit that turned on a nanocomputer that sonorously played a recording of church bells. Quite loudly, too. So, being set for exactly five-thirty (and it was always exact about the time, even when its owner forgot to wind it up), and it being exactly one-fifty-seven and thirty-four seconds, the watch's alarm went off.

Next to the windowsill sat a queen-sized bed, half-covered by sheets that were tangled and uneven from troubled sleep and restless dreams. It was big enough for exactly two human people and possibly a small dog and baby. But there was at most one human person ever lying in it, a person who was now awake from the unwise timekeeping of the watch. In the semi-somnolent stupor of the early riser, the figure groaned and tried to untangle the covers, succeeding but with fumbling, disoriented determination also stripping the bed of them entirely. The white of the fitted sheet turned silver and spectral in the lunar glow of night as the figure pushed back the curtains in an effort to find the tolling timepiece. Moonlight shone on long locks of fine, dark brown hair, draped over the shoulders of the young woman who was tangling with the watch. She tried to pull it open, but the top was stuck. She glanced at the modern clock on the wallscreen displaying the time in blue fluorescence. One-fifty-eight and two seconds. At that moment, the bells stopped mid-toll. Confused, the girl shook the pocket watch and muttered an angry word. She tried to open it once more, but the watch had shut like a clam in a bucket. With a sigh, the girl placed it on the sill and gathered the sheets in her arms. She untidily threw them back on the bed and curled up among them. The seconds marched on.

Then she sat up again, struck by an idea. The door to her bedroom opened moments later with a hum as the electronic lock unbolted, and she walked into the hall and down a flight of stairs, with the crunch crunch crunch of creaky wood being trod upon. The house was small and full of ancient relics and scientific equipment, but it was all neatly arranged. The floor was clear of clutter, and only a desk in the little living room looked messy.

It was covered in thin plastic slides, papers, and a few large, fragile tomes open to pages of carefully copied Latin text. There also sat a thin, simple screen. The young woman pressed the corner of the screen, and it slowly illuminated itself. She cleared away some of the papers, revealing glowing letters in a QWERTY pattern. As soon as the screen had fully lit, she tapped her fingers on the desk: a password. The desktop appeared, and she touched an icon. It opened a screen full of data; letters and numbers and diagrams. The girl sat deep in thought for a few moments, staring at a point just above the screen, then glanced at a clear sheet that showed a set of chromosomes. She looked back at a book on the table, and quickly entered a series of numbers into the computer. She touched the screen again and a loading bar popped up on it. The girl brushed her hand along the side of the screen, and it dimmed. Then she pushed the chair away from the desk and got up. She walked from the living room into a kitchen, softly singing a carol in Latin, and searched through the refrigerator.

Holding a glass of milk, the young woman ambled back into the living room. The loading bar had a tiny slice filled.

"Oh, come on, you," she said to the computer, and drank the milk in a few gulps. She wiped her mouth and set the glass down on the table. "The Antikythera Machine would have been faster than that." She threw herself onto a couch and stared out the window, drifting back to sleep as she settled into a more comfortable position. Dreamily, she looked at the number on the corner of the barely visible screen. Two-oh-eight and twenty-seven seconds. She closed her eyes and pulled a soft cover over herself.

Then, there was a single bell. It must have been her watch, because it sounded just like it, but the watch was upstairs and to the girl's sleepy mind it sounded like it was far, far away. And it was richer, more mellow than she remembered the alarm being. It sounded like a real bell. And there was just one. Then there was complete silence. The girl's eyes opened and she focused her gaze on the window. The stars, usually so few in the suburbs on the edges of the city, seemed to cover the sky like a painting. She pushed herself up from the sofa and moved to the window, brushing aside curtains of blue filament, pressing her palms against the pane.

A bright, fiery streak, wide as a dime held up at arm's length, flashed across the sky, just below the waning moon, and faded. Suddenly wide awake, the girl stared at the clock, which said: exactly five-thirty.

Then she yawned, and waited for the bells from her room. Nothing. When she finally walked upstairs (after checking the computer screen, which now showed one-hundred percent completion), she saw that it was turning that blue-grey pre-dawn color. She searched for the watch, hoping to fix its clearly broken alarm, but she couldn't find it. The room was cold. She saw the reason why: the window was open (that was odd) and the curtains frosty from a few hours of winter air. Maybe she'd opened it last night for some reason and the watch, sitting right on the sill, had fallen out. Which in and of itself would be difficult to explain, because it wasn't like those cute alarm clocks that ran around in the morning to get you to chase them. And it was also heavy for a pocket watch, so it wouldn't get blown around by the wind. And it wasn't windy. Sadly, the girl shut the window, promising herself that she would look for the watch later, and, if it survived the fall, get it fixed. She had owned it for a long time, and made all the little modifications to it. It was actually funny how much wiring and computer bits you could fit inside it.

If you saw the girl walking down any street, or riding the Underground, or in a cafe, you wouldn't think she was too special. Except the way she looked at everything so intensely with dappled green eyes sitting under dark eyebrows. Or the way she read scientific journals on busses, soaking up stories of new fossils that were found in South Africa, giant dinosaurs that had poisonous fluids dripping from horns on the sides of their faces, like spiders, or tales of caves deep in some tropical country with acoustics that were better than concert halls because of crystals that reflected the sound a thousand times over and if you sang, it sounded like a whole city was singing with you. But you'd still be alone, she reflected. Just you and the stones. She often reflected on what she saw, or heard, on solitary journeys through the throngs. Always reflecting, like a mirror. Like the windows of the subways in the gloom of the tunnels. Like the metal and chrome and glass that created the color scheme of the modern world. Always reflecting. A mirror, she thought, might be the loneliest thing in existence. Hollowed out by visions, with no color of its own, all it consisted of was an echo. We are all mirrors, she thought. No one can see what we really look like. All they see in us is themselves, shuffling back and forth like passers-by. And we can't see out of our silly silver shells.

Even crowded among other people in a subway car, it was possible to be alone. Even walking through crowded streets, crushing beneath sneakers road salt prematurely scattered on the sidewalk, it was possible to be alone. Even on Christmas.

No one paid the girl any attention at all, as she walked through their world silently, with her long hair tied back in a simple braid. Had they cared, they might have been interested to know that the place she commuted to was the most prestigious university laboratory in most of Europe and much of the United States, founded in 2017 by a group of Nobelists and scholars and acclaimed scientists from nearly every field. Its stated purpose was to use the latest, most cutting-edge technology to explore new areas of science: ecological microbiology, archeo-meteorology, epigenetics. The building itself was not the original university building, which had been destroyed along with half of London on the Christmas Eve of 2019, when a large asteroid crashed into the Thames. This was common enough. It was generally accepted that a comet that circled the sun once a year was the cause of the fairly regular annual disasters. In London, Christmas was a time of joy, gift-giving, and celebration, much of which took place in deeply dug basements and sturdy graphene-reinforced steel bunkers.

It was difficult to explain just what caused disasters like the one that demolished the old university, but the effects were inescapable. And so the new Avalon University was to be constructed. Plans were drawn up to yield the maximum amount of genius per square foot, with complex facilities for every field; with chrome and fluorescence and calm female vocals issuing from the walls, with the newest nano- and pico-bots cleaning and scanning and ooh! maybe even some swishy doors! The new facility had so much potential. And yet the expense of rebuilding was beyond what the governments of the world could generously afford to spend. So the project was funded by Waterhelm, an energy company that sold a popular type of biofuel, and slowly transitioned from a home of scholarly discovery to a facility for scientific innovation, and yes, there is a subtle difference between the two.