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I sat back, staring at her. It wasn’t what I’d expected. “That depends. Some of us think there is one. Many of us, actually. There have been many wars fought over different interpretations of that very question.”

  “And you?”

  “That’s technically two questions.”

  She smiled enigmatically and said nothing.

  “Well, before today, I would have said no. You get the time you get, and then your atoms are dropped into the cosmic washing machine to be cycled out into something new.” What if I was wrong about that? Was this place the afterlife, or some kind of elaborate scam?

  Sera nodded, giving me nothing.

  My turn. “Why am I here?”

  “That’s a fair question. My kind—you can call us Seekers—we’ve always sought knowledge across our galaxy. Wherever that search took us. Now that the end is near, think of this as…” That glazed look again. “Ah yes. Our last hurrah.”

  So I’m a science project. “Okay, but why…”

  “My turn.” Her grin was almost mischievous. “What’s Earth like?”

  If this whole thing was a chemo dream, it had me fooled.

  I closed my eyes. “It was beautiful. Lots of wild space, so many animals and plants. When I was a kid, I used to run outside in the monsoon rains barefoot in the street, the pavement rough under my feet, heavy drops falling from the sky. And the creosote smell in the air as the water rushed past.” I could still smell that musty odor. I missed those simple pleasures. “Dad took me to the White Mountains once. I snuck out of the tent at dawn to smell the pine needles, and my breath made clouds in the air.” I could still see the sunlight filtering like the strings of a harp through the trees. “Can you see it?”

  Sera closed her own eyes, and a wistful smile crossed her face. “Yes. It’s beautiful.”

  “It was. We ruined it. Too many people, too much greed.”

  She stared at me like I was an insect on a pin, her fingers tapping her knee.

  Time was growing short. I could feel it. I squirmed. “My turn.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why me? There are so many smarter people, better representatives of the human race.” Einstein. Mother Teresa. Hell, even Oprah. My eyes narrowed. “Are you really human?”

  Sera laughed. “That’s two questions.” She rubbed her chin, as if considering how to respond. Just like I had. “You were chosen because you live in a pivotal time for your kind.”

  “So I’m important?” I scratched my head.

  “My turn again.” She picked up one of the now-cold fries and nibbled at it. “What’s the biggest challenge facing your people?” She sipped her milkshake, waiting for my response.

  She looked so normal. It made me laugh.

  “That’s funny?”

  “Technically two questions. But I’ll allow it.” I grinned. “I laughed because you reminded me of a girl I used to date. Before I came out.”

  Her eyebrow arched, but she didn’t ask the question.

  “And unquestionably the climate. We’ve done everything we can to destroy it, and no one seemed to care. I studied these things, and believe me, you’d be scared shitless if you knew half of what I knew.” In some ways, it was a relief to be dead—it was no longer my responsibility.

  “That’s very common. Civilizations often destroy themselves with the very things that lifted them out of the primordial mud.” She scratched her head absently.

  Just like I did.

  “You’re really not human, are you?”

  She set down her shake and her eyes sparkled. Legit sparkled. “No. What gave me away?” Technically it was a question. But it was an answer too.

  I was a scientist. I knew the odds. “The end of the universe would be millions, probably billions of years away from my time. The likelihood that humans would still be around to see it…plus you’re copying my gestures. Like you’re just learning them.”

  She laughed. “I think I like you humans.”

  You humans. It was a friendly laugh, but knowing it originated from someone, or something, alien sent a shiver down my spine.

  “To answer your question, no, the Seekers aren’t human. We never were. We’re not really one race at all. Our progenitors evolved on a small world circling a red sun, a billion years ago. After all this time, even the names of our origin race and planet are lost.”

  I whistled. I had a hard time imaging a million years, let alone a billion.

  I suddenly felt very young.

  “And to answer your next question…I don’t know how old I am. I stopped counting a long time ago. A couple million years? I’m an aggregate—a creature born of a thousand worlds and a thousand cultures that survived their childhoods. Bits of me collected over time, and now I am the sum total of all that came before. All we were able to save. So age is a rather meaningless measure, don’t you think?”

  I stared at her. It was more than I could take in, having a cheeseburger and fries with one of the caretakers of the universe.

  She reached out to touch my forehead. “Show me your favorite memory?”

  It was like an electric shock.

  Six

  It was summer, in New York, hot and humid in the way that only the East Coast in July can be, well over ninety degrees and muggy as hell.

  I was sitting on a bench in Central Park, in the middle of one of my periodic unsuccessful attempts at getting in shape. It had been a week now and I was still gasping for breath.

  Today’s attempt had ended badly, with me sitting there panting on the bench, head between my knees, feeling lightheaded and weird.

  I was thirty-five and single.

  “Want some water?”

  I looked up, half-expecting a gym rat, some muscly guy who would drive me back into full-blown body shame.

  Instead, he was aggressively normal. Light brown hair, brown eyes, nice features, someone you wouldn’t think twice about if you saw him crossing Fifth Avenue. He was dressed in athletic shorts, his shirt was tucked into the back of his pants. He had a nice chest, but nothing like you see in the magazines.

  Lots of freckles.

  “Thanks.” I took the water and uncapped the bottle, gulping it down gratefully.

  “Hey, don’t drink too much. Your body has to play catch-up.”

  “Not mustard?” I groaned at my own terrible pun. These things just slipped out sometimes.

  He must think I was an idiot.

  He laughed and held out his hand. “Peter.”

  I shook it. “Tanner. Tanner Black.”

  “Oooh. Pornstar name.”

  “Yeah, well.” I gestured at my own lackluster form and shrugged.

  He sat down on the wooden bench next to me. “Late New Year’s resolution?”

  I nodded. “Friend’s wedding next month.”

  “Oh God, I hate those.” I handed him back the bottle, and he took a sip. “Gorgeous day.” He glanced up at the cloudless sky, a stunning deep blue.

  “Damned sweatshop, if you ask me.”

  Peter laughed again. “Yeah, it is pretty bad.” He looked at me, and then looked away again.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hey, you wanted to ask me something, or say something. Spit it out.”

  “Okay.” He ducked his head. When he looked back at me, he was biting his lip. “I know it’s quick. But…you wanna go out sometime?”

  I snorted. Nobody wanted to go out with me. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’ve been watching you. Not like in the creepy stalkery way. But these last couple days. I was trying to work up the courage to ask you. I know you’re way outta my league.”

  You gotta be kidding me. I’d never had anyone tell me I was out of their league.

  I looked him over again. He was actually kind of cute, in that quiet, intelligent way I liked. He was funny. And hell, he liked me. “Why not?”

  He grinned again, and pulled out a sweaty piece of paper from his pocket. “Here’s my number. Call me.” Then he leaned
over and kissed my cheek, got up, and ran off.

  I watched him run. He was beautiful.

  Maybe the universe had a plan for me after all.

  Seven

  I opened my eyes.

  Sera had a lopsided smile on her face.

  “What?”

  She seemed ever more human. “When was that?”

  “Twenty years ago. We’ve been together ever since.”

  She nodded.

  I felt like I’d just passed a test. “So did we make it?”

  “Humanity?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stared at me for a moment, her golden eyes fixed on mine. “Honestly? We don’t know yet.”

  I laughed harshly. “How can you not know? This is the end of the universe, right? All the stories have been told.”

  She bit her lip, a human gesture she seemed to really have taken to. “This isn’t your universe.”

  I stared at her. “What?” My head ached.

  “You’re not really here. Not the original you. You and your kind are a thing still to come…” Sera waved her hand, and the window changed again to show the End of All Things. “That’s your future, not ours.”

  I stared at the screen. “I don’t understand.”

  “Our universe is in the final stages of collapse. The Seekers’ time is coming to an end. We found a way to reach forward into your universe to continue our mission. Into your time, to find places where we might intervene to set young races like yours on a different path before they self-destruct. If they are worthy.”

  “To pay it forward.” I was shaking.

  Sera’s eyes glazed, and when they refocused, she nodded, flashing me a grateful smile.

  I had been chosen to represent my entire race. How could I even begin to accept that?

  And yet… humanity must still have a chance.

  I got up and paced around the room, full of nervous energy. “How many?” I demanded. How big was this…ship? This place?

  “Races? A hundred thousand or so. Only a small fraction will reach the stars.”

  “Show me?”

  She nodded and took my hand.

  My consciousness expanded outside the room.

  In the next one over, a creature that looked like a golden beetle—albeit seven feet tall—chittered with another of its own kind in a room that was best described as organic. Beyond that, in a grassy glade, something rustled its purple leaves or feathers in what I had to assume was a query.

  As my consciousness expanded, the scene repeated itself over and over, and soon I was swooping up above it all to see the ship.

  It was vast, a white amorphous thing, more like a cloud than a hard, physical structure.

  It billowed and shifted, all the while being drawn inexorably forward toward its ending.

  “Enough.” Instantly I was back inside my own body, though I suspected it was no more than alien binary code. I sank back into my seat, overwhelmed by the scale of this effort.

  We seemed to have given up on the every-other-question thing, so I plowed ahead. Something else was bothering me. “Couldn’t you have just read my mind—or my memory copy—to find all of this out?”

  She sat back. “Yes. We could have. We did, in fact. But it was important to see what kind of creature you really are. We find that’s easiest when we speak to the being itself. You come to life—you are so much more than just your memories.”

  That made sense. I noticed she’d switched to plural pronouns. “What about you?”

  “What about us?”

  “If you could pluck my consciousness from a future universe, surely you could survive the end of this one yourselves.”

  She looked down at her hands. It was hard to believe that she wasn’t human.

  “Our time is over. We have accepted that. We’ve explored all there is to explore.” She looked up, and her eyes swirled white, like the ship. “You’re at the beginning of your potential. You have so much more to learn and explore. We’re jealous.”

  I laughed. “Some of the physicists say we’ve discovered almost everything.”

  “So bold. So confident. You’ve only just scraped the surface.” She frowned. “It’s time.”

  “The End?”

  She nodded. “In a few moments, the Seeker will be sucked into the burning heart of possibility, and a few moments later, your universe will be born.”

  I shuddered. “What will happen to me?” I kicked myself mentally. Her entire race—races?—was dying, and I was worried about myself.

  Hell, I was already dead. What did it matter?

  “You’ll be sent home.”

  Where I was already dead.

  We stood together and watched as the carnival lights engulfed us.

  Sera reached out and took my hand as we approached the End. The brightness swelled to unbearability, searing my vision.

  She squeezed my hand tightly, fingers warm in mine. Her eyes were wet.

  I’d never asked her real name. I opened my mouth…

  Eight

  …and found myself laying on a bed in a hospital room. Something beeped in a steady rhythm next to me. Sunlight filtered in through pale green blinds.

  Peter sat in a chair, bent over, head in his hands.

  Was this some kind of after-death, out-of-body experience? I am dead, right?

  I opened my mouth, but only a croak came out.

  Peter looked up, stared at the heart-rate monitor and then at me. His eyes went wide. “Tanner?” He reached me in a second.

  I looked at him. “Water.”

  “Tanner. Holy shit. Doctor Bamra!” Peter ran to the door. “Get the doctor!”

  “There’s nothing more he can do. Your husband’s gone.” One of the nurses poked her head into the room to look at me. “You need to—” She squeaked, and almost fell over as I sat up and stared at her. “I’ll go get the doctor.”

  Peter brought me a plastic cup of water.

  I felt good. Really good. Better than I had in a year. My mind was clear. No more chemo brain. No more weakness or nausea.

  Is this a dream?

  I closed my eyes, and something blossomed inside me.

  The history and thoughts and ideas from a thousand other races who had survived their adolescence flowed through my mind like a flood. The knowledge of a universe.

  And Sera’s true name. Sera meant evening in Italian. Her true name was unpronounceable, but Eventide was a more poetic translation.

  She’d been the last of her kind.

  “How are you alive?” Peter sat on the side of my bed, touching my hand, my chest, my face. “You were dead. I saw you die.”

  The cancer was gone. I knew that, as surely as I knew the charge I’d been given.

  There were ways to save us all, to guide the world onto a better path. Even now. “You’re never going to believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  I kissed him. His face was wet, and he shook as I pulled him into my arms.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” I squeezed him tight. “It’s going to be okay.”

  It was our turn to claim the stars.

  About the Author

  I live with my husband of 28 years in a leafy Sacramento, California suburb, in a little yellow house with a brick fireplace and a couple pink flamingoes.

  As a writer, I’ve always occupied the space between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy-sci fi by my mother at the tender age of nine, I devoured her library. But as I grew up and read the golden age classics and modern works, I began to wonder where the people like me were.

  After I came out at twenty three, I decided that it was time to create stories I couldn't find at Waldenbooks. If there weren't many gay characters in my favorite genres, I would reimagine them myself, populating them with men who loved men. I would subvert them and remake them to my own ends. And if I was lucky enough, someone else would want to read them.

  My friends say my brain works a littl
e differently - I sees relationships between things that others miss, and get more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. Although I was born an introvert, I learned to reach outside himself and connect with others like me.

  I write stories that subvert expectations, that seek to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something new and unexpected. I run both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with Mark, sites that bring people like us together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects us.

  I was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and my debut novel "Skythane" received two awards. In 2019, I won Rainbow Awards for three other books, and in 2020 I became a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

  My writing, whether queer romance or genre fiction (or a little bit of both) brings LGBTQ+ energy to my stories, infusing them with love, beauty and power and making them soar. I imagine a world that could be, and in the process, maybe changes the world that is, just a little.

  Also by J. Scott Coatsworth

  Oberon Cycle:

  Skythane (2nd Edition 10/10/20)

  Lander (2nd Edition 11/10/20)

  Ithani (2nd Edition 12/10/20)

  Liminal Sky:

  The Stark Divide

  The Rising Tide (2nd Edition 8/10/20)

  The Shoreless Sea (2nd Edition 9/10/20)

  Other Sci Fi/Fantasy:

  The Autumn Lands

  Cailleadhama

  The Great North

  Homecoming

  The Last Run

  Contemporary/Magical Realism:

  Between the Lines (2nd Edition 2021)

  The River City Chronicles

  The River City Chronicles English/Italian

  Storie della Città sul Fiume (River City in Italian)

  I Only Want to Be With You

  Flames (2nd Edition 2021)

  Wonderland - This Wish Tonight Anthology

  Slow Thaw

  99¢ Shorts:

  A New Year (double edition)

  Avalon