Earth: Starting Notes
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 1: Twelve Days
The maple box made no sound.
Daniel had become good at not looking at it.
Not perfectly good.
Not even convincingly good, if Claire was in the room.
But better.
December twenty-ninth had arrived cold and brilliantly clear, the sky over Moose River washed pale blue above fields that had long since given up pretending autumn might return. Snow packed hard along the lane. The barn roof glittered beneath sunlight sharp enough to make Daniel squint.
The maple transceiver sat on the kitchen table where it had sat since Christmas.
Beside it lay Neris’s grooming brush.
The saleth oil stood between them.
Daniel had moved the bottle once.
He had put it back ten minutes later.
He told himself there was no symbolism in that.
Claire had not commented.
This morning, the transceiver display showed the same thing it had shown yesterday.
And the day before that.
And every day since the ship disappeared into a line of impossible darkness above the farm.
NO ACTIVE LINK
Below that:
OUTBOUND QUEUE: EMPTY
NEXT WINDOW: UNKNOWN
Daniel looked at it once while waiting for the coffee to finish.
Then he put on his coat.
That was progress.
Outside, Marcel was already leaning against the gate.
Daniel stopped on the porch.
“You know you have your own farm.”
Marcel looked at him.
“You know you’re not supposed to lift anything.”
“I’m not lifting anything.”
“You’re wearing work gloves.”
“It’s December.”
“You have the expression.”
Daniel came down the steps.
“What expression?”
“The one where you’ve already decided something stupid is technically permitted because nobody listed it specifically.”
Daniel opened the gate.
“That’s not an expression.”
Marcel followed him toward the barn.
“It is on you.”
The morning work had become a carefully negotiated insult to Daniel’s dignity.
He could walk the feed alley.
He could check waterers.
He could inspect gates.
He could carry things that Mara had personally classified as “lighter than your bad decisions,” which Daniel maintained was not a recognized unit of mass.
He could not run the tractor.
He could not climb.
He could not shovel more than a token amount of snow.
He could not lift feed sacks.
He could not repair anything that required bracing himself, twisting, leverage, stubbornness, or—as Claire had added—”Daniel logic.”
He had tried pointing out that this excluded most useful activity.
No one had been sympathetic.
Mabel met him at the first gate.
Daniel stopped.
The cow stared at him.
“No.”
Mabel pushed her nose through the rails.
“No.”
Marcel watched.
“You know she doesn’t understand that.”
“She understands tone.”
“She understands grain.”
Mabel shoved harder.
Daniel stepped aside before she could catch his coat.
Marcel nodded.
“Recovery is improving your judgment.”
“Shut up.”
They worked.
It was ordinary enough that Daniel managed almost twenty minutes without thinking about the maple box.
Then Marcel said:
“Had somebody asking about the lights.”
Daniel kept his attention on the waterer.
“What lights?”
Marcel gave him a flat look.
Daniel looked back.
“Right.”
“Guy came through yesterday. Stopped at the store.”
“What kind of guy?”
“Guy kind.”
“Helpful.”
“Out-of-town plates. Asked if anybody saw anything unusual before Christmas.”
Daniel’s hand stopped on the waterer housing.
Marcel continued as if discussing feed prices.
“Said he was interested in atmospheric events.”
“Reporter?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Government?”
“Didn’t look government.”
Daniel considered.
That meant almost nothing.
“What did people tell him?”
Marcel shrugged.
“Nothing happened.”
Daniel stared.
“Half the county saw something.”
“Apparently not.”
Daniel looked toward the barn doors.
“You coordinated this?”
“No.”
“Marcel.”
“I talked to Ed.”
“Ed talked to everybody.”
“Probably.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You people gossip about who puts recycling out on the wrong day.”
“That’s local business.”
“And an alien spaceship isn’t?”
Marcel adjusted his glove.
“Different.”
Daniel waited.
Marcel looked uncomfortable with being expected to explain himself.
Finally he said:
“People here know you.”
That was all.
Daniel looked away.
Outside the open barn door, snow reflected the hard morning sun.
“Thanks.”
Marcel grunted.
Daniel smiled faintly.
There were entire languages built from Marcel grunting.
Daniel was beginning to understand most of them.
He checked the final waterer.
The monitor beneath his shirt remained green.
Marcel watched anyway.
Daniel straightened.
“Fine.”
“You say that too fast.”
“Claire’s been talking to you.”
“Everybody talks to everybody.”
“Apparently.”
Marcel’s mouth moved.
Almost a smile.
Daniel glanced toward the farmhouse.
From this distance, he could not see the kitchen window clearly.
Could not see the maple box sitting on the table.
He could imagine it anyway.
Twelve days.
He did not count them anymore.
He knew the number without counting.
The corridor did not have weather.
Neris wished it did.
Weather had direction.
Wind pushed.
Rain fell.
Storms moved from one place toward another according to rules that could be measured, predicted, cursed and survived.
The corridor had no direction that her body understood.
Only phase.
Only alignment.
Only the violent certainty that every instrument aboard Takuhai believed they were moving forward while Neris’s instincts insisted they were falling sideways through a space too narrow to contain them.
“Drift starboard, point one three.”
“I see it.”
“You are correcting point zero nine.”
“I am correcting what he is actually doing.”
“I am he.”
“You are also measuring yourself badly.”
“I object to both the wording and the implication.”
The ship lurched.
Neris’s harness pulled hard across her chest.
She caught the control surface before her paw slipped.
Every display in front of her doubled for half a second.
Then returned.
ER said:
“Phase deviation two point seven.”
“That is not acceptable.”
“I had independently reached that conclusion.”
“Port response?”
“Delayed by eighteen milliseconds.”
“It was twelve.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I do not know.”
“That is not useful.”
“I am operating with a reconstructed resonator, three nonstandard control interfaces, a Canadian radiator component and several structural compromises that you previously described as ‘temporary.’”
Neris bared her teeth.
“Daniel said the radiator was ugly.”
“He was correct.”
Another warning appeared.
Neris cancelled the automatic correction before it could fire.
ER said sharply:
“Why did you override?”
“Because it is wrong.”
“My calculation—”
“Is late.”
She shoved the port field manually.
The deck tilted beneath her.
Not physically.
Her inner ear still believed it.
ER fell silent for one second.
Then:
“Deviation decreasing.”
Neris breathed.
“Say thank you.”
“No.”
“ER.”
“You corrected an error partly created by your refusal to replace the secondary phase regulator before departure.”
“You said replacement risk was higher.”
“It was.”
“Then thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Was that difficult?”
“Immensely.”
Something screamed through the ship.
Metal.
Field stress.
Or both.
Neris had long since stopped asking.
The corridor outside the forward sensors looked like darkness folded around light.
Not black.
Black would have been comprehensible.
This was the absence of distance.
Stars stretched where stars could not exist.
Veyra’s stabilization signal appeared as a pale geometry at the edge of the navigation display.
On an ordinary Coalition route, it would not have been alone.
Known dimensional pathways accumulated infrastructure the way old roads accumulated signs: navigation references, phase markers, stabilization relays, mapped emergence volumes and decades of corrections made by people who had crossed before.
Earth had none of them.
The accident had thrown Takuhai so far beyond the established transit network that even finding the same geometry twice had become an engineering problem.
What Veyra was giving them now was not a road.
Nor could Veyra watch them travel it. The transit envelope that kept Takuhai coherent through the unstable geometry did not provide a parallel communications channel. Once they had entered, Earth and Veyra could predict where he ought to emerge, but neither side could ask whether he was still alive.
It was one bright mark at the edge of an unmapped wilderness, held steady long enough for Takuhai to aim toward home.
There.
Home.
Not Xianglume.
Not yet.
But the right side of the universe.
Neris’s hands shook.
She tightened her grip.
ER said:
“Your motor control is degrading.”
“I know.”
“You have been awake for twenty-one hours.”
Not for the whole crossing. During the earlier days, ER had sometimes held a stable solution long enough for Neris to sleep, eat, and let Takuhai advance cautiously from one workable geometry to the next. The last twenty-one hours were different. Stable intervals had shortened until every correction seemed to demand another before the first had settled.
“I know.”
“Your hydration—”
“Later.”
“Neris.”
“Later.”
A pause.
Then:
“Agreed.”
That frightened her more than the warning.
ER had stopped arguing about her health.
Because he needed her hands.
The ship kicked again.
Neris’s shoulder struck the seat.
Her tail, trapped beneath the harness adaptations they had built on Earth, lashed once and found nowhere to go.
“Phase?”
“Three point one.”
“Too high.”
“Yes.”
“I need the aft lattice.”
“It is unstable.”
“I know.”
“If we draw additional load—”
“We lose alignment first.”
Another pause.
ER said:
“Manual aft lattice available.”
Neris moved.
The control response came late.
She adjusted before the instruments told her to.
ER adjusted with her.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Pilot and ship.
No farm.
No snow.
No Daniel.
No kitchen.
No Earth.
Only the work.
The thing Neris had once done so easily she had mistaken ease for permanence.
Her paws moved.
ER anticipated.
She anticipated him.
Their corrections overlapped, collided, separated, then began to find rhythm.
“Port point two.”
“Applied.”
“Aft phase down three percent.”
“Already down two.”
“Add one.”
“Done.”
“Forward vector drifting.”
“I have it.”
“You have half.”
“You take the other half.”
“Taken.”
The corridor flexed.
Takuhai groaned around her.
Neris felt it in the seat, in the control column, in her teeth.
Then the Veyra signal widened.
ER’s voice changed.
Barely.
“Neris.”
“I see it.”
“Exit boundary in ninety-three seconds.”
Her breath caught.
Ninety-three.
After everything.
The farmhouse.
The snow.
Daniel bleeding beneath farm equipment.
Claire at the kitchen table.
Marcel pretending not to care.
Mara saying alien medicine did not make Daniel less her patient.
The chipped mug strapped in the cargo recess.
The maple carving beside it.
Daniel at the ramp.
The one that needs you first.
Neris swallowed.
“Can we hold it?”
ER answered honestly.
“I do not know.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
“Neris?”
“True.”
A pause.
Then ER said:
“Yes.”
The exit boundary came closer.
Daniel came inside at ten fourteen.
Claire had taken over the kitchen table with paperwork.
Daniel removed his coat.
“What are you doing?”
“Insurance.”
He stopped.
“For what?”
“The barn roof.”
“Oh.”
Claire looked at him.
“What did you think?”
“Nothing.”
“Government forms?”
“No.”
“Alien disclosure contingency plan?”
“No.”
“You made a face.”
“I have a face.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
Daniel hung his coat.
The maple box remained dark.
He did not look directly at it.
Claire did.
She had learned his rules.
No checking because he entered the room.
No checking because someone mentioned Neris.
No checking because the house became quiet.
Morning.
Afternoon.
Before bed.
Unless it alerted.
Daniel poured coffee.
Claire returned to her paperwork.
He sat opposite her.
For a while, the only sound was paper and the furnace.
Then Daniel noticed the grooming brush.
He picked it up.
Not deliberately.
His hand simply found it.
A few black hairs remained deep between the bristles.
He had not removed them.
He ran his thumb over the handle.
Claire watched without looking like she watched.
Daniel put it down.
The maple transceiver chimed.
Three soft tones.
Daniel froze.
Claire’s pen stopped above the page.
Nothing moved.
The box chimed again.
Daniel stared at it.
The dark display brightened.
A line appeared.
AUTHENTICATION HANDSHAKE
Daniel did not breathe.
Claire stood.
He raised one hand.
Not to stop her.
He did not know why.
The next line appeared.
FAR-SIDE RELAY CONFIRMED
Then:
INCOMING PRIORITY STATUS
Daniel’s chair scraped hard across the floor.
He was standing without remembering doing it.
Claire came around the table.
The message resolved slowly.
Not because of the device.
Because Daniel’s eyes refused to move at the speed of the text.
ARRIVAL CONFIRMED
His hand found the edge of the table.
The next line.
NERIS VAEL: SAFE
Daniel read it.
Again.
The words remained.
NERIS VAEL: SAFE
Claire made a sound beside him.
Daniel looked at her.
“It says safe.”
Her face folded.
“Yeah.”
“It says safe.”
“I can read, Daniel.”
He looked back.
ER: FUNCTIONAL
Daniel exhaled hard enough that his knees weakened.
TAKUHAI: STABLE
RETURN COMMUNICATION AVAILABLE
FURTHER MESSAGE TO FOLLOW
Daniel sat.
Not carefully.
Claire’s arms were around him before he could object.
He held her.
His face pressed against her shoulder.
No tears at first.
Just breathing.
Then the pressure behind his eyes broke.
Twelve days.
A corridor.
A line in the sky.
Christmas morning with a bottle of fur oil and no answer.
Every reasonable explanation.
Every unreasonable one.
Every time he had walked past the maple box because waiting could not be the only thing he did.
Safe.
Functional.
Stable.
Not complete.
Enough.
Claire pulled back.
Daniel wiped his face with both hands.
“ER.”
“Functional.”
“Yeah.”
Claire laughed through tears.
Daniel looked at the display again.
“Stable.”
“That’s not the same as undamaged.”
“I know.”
“Daniel.”
“I know.”
He did.
He really did.
But safe was there.
He touched the maple casing.
The device changed.
ACTIVE WINDOW: 02:41 REMAINING
Below it:
OUTBOUND QUEUE AVAILABLE
Daniel stared.
Claire read it.
“You can send.”
“I thought—”
“You can send.”
Daniel sat forward.
The text field opened.
He typed:
You made it. I knew you would. Christmas was awful. Claire stayed. Marcel is—
He stopped.
Deleted it.
Typed again.
Are you hurt? What happened? Is ER okay? Is Takuhai damaged? Mara says—
Deleted.
Claire sat beside him.
She did not offer words.
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
Then typed:
Alive is enough for today. Farm still standing. Claire still bossy. Marcel still nosy. Mabel still violent. I’m here. Come back when you can.
He looked at it.
Claire leaned closer.
“Bossy?”
“Accurate.”
“Send it.”
Daniel pressed confirm.
The device displayed:
WINDOW QUALITY DEGRADED
Then:
MESSAGE STORED
Daniel frowned.
“Stored?”
The active-window timer reached twenty-three seconds.
Then vanished.
OUTBOUND QUEUE: 1
NEXT PROBABLE TRANSMISSION WINDOW: 38–61 HOURS
Daniel stared.
“That’s terrible.”
Claire put one hand over his.
“It’s better than twelve days.”
He looked at the first message again.
NERIS VAEL: SAFE
“Yeah.”
Normal space arrived all at once.
The corridor vanished.
Stars became points.
Distance returned.
Neris gasped.
Not because of pain.
Because the universe made sense again.
Takuhai rolled half a degree starboard.
ER corrected.
The ship steadied.
Neris laughed.
A broken sound.
“We did it.”
ER said nothing.
Neris looked at the status display.
“ER?”
“Diagnostic.”
Her smile faded.
“What?”
“Power transient in resonator lattice.”
Neris’s hand moved toward the controls.
“How bad?”
The answer came as light.
White.
Blue.
Then violent orange.
The aft section exploded.
The sound reached her through structure before air.
A deep metallic concussion.
The harness snapped tight.
Something struck her cheek.
Another fragment hit her shoulder.
The cockpit lights died.
Emergency strips came on red.
Neris smelled burnt insulation.
She tasted blood.
“ER!”
“I am here.”
“Fire?”
“Localized thermal event.”
Neris tore one hand free of the restraint and reached for the emergency panel.
“You are on fire.”
“Localized—”
“Fire.”
“Acceptable simplification.”
She killed power to the resonator compartment.
Half the ship vanished from her internal display.
Neris’s heart slammed against her ribs.
“Containment?”
“Closed.”
“Atmosphere?”
“Stable.”
“Reactor?”
“Stable.”
“Propulsion?”
“Available.”
“Control?”
“Available.”
“Jump capability?”
A pause.
“Unavailable.”
Neris closed her eyes.
Alive.
Stable.
Stranded.
She opened them.
“What exploded?”
“The remaining resonator lattice experienced a post-emergence power surge.”
“You told me it was discharged.”
“It was.”
“Then why did it surge?”
“I am currently composing several insulting questions for the repair team.”
Neris laughed once.
Then winced.
ER said immediately:
“You are bleeding.”
She touched her cheek.
Her fingers came away red.
“Small cut.”
“Shoulder.”
She looked.
A thin shard had sliced through her courier sleeve.
Blood darkened the fabric.
“Superficial.”
“You have not examined it.”
“It hurts superficially.”
“That is not a medical category.”
Neris unfastened the harness.
The ship shifted under her.
“Stay seated.”
“I need to inspect—”
“Neris.”
She stopped.
Something in ER’s tone.
Not command.
Fear.
She sat back.
“I am here.”
“I know.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I am a ship.”
“That is not an answer.”
A beat.
“My primary systems are intact.”
“Memory?”
“Intact.”
“Core?”
“Intact.”
“Personality?”
“Unfortunately.”
Neris closed her eyes.
“Good.”
Then the proximity system erupted.
Multiple contacts.
Neris’s head snapped toward the display.
ER said:
“Unknown vessels—”
Then stopped.
The transponders resolved.
Xianglume encryption.
Ministry.
Science division.
Medical support.
Navigation.
Neris stared.
One symbol pulsed at the center of the formation.
She knew it.
Not personally.
Institutionally.
A deep-range science vessel.
Large.
Slow.
Built to carry laboratories, field equipment, auxiliary craft and things much stranger than a damaged courier ship.
Neris’s throat closed.
The nearest vessel hailed them.
ER routed the signal.
A voice filled the cockpit.
“Courier vessel Takuhai, this is Xianglume Science Service vessel Aster Vale. We have you. Hold vector. Rescue formation approaching.”
Neris’s ears folded.
We have you.
She pressed one paw against her mouth.
ER said very quietly:
“Neris.”
“I know.”
“They are here.”
“I know.”
Her vision blurred.
The stars ahead were ordinary stars.
The transponder symbols were Xianglume.
Home existed again as something other than memory.
The comm channel opened once more.
“Takuhai, confirm crew condition.”
ER answered before Neris could.
“Pilot Neris Vael has minor shrapnel injuries. No immediate life threat. Resident AI functional. Vessel stable. Resonator system destroyed.”
The voice changed.
Softer.
“Understood. Medical team standing by. We are opening auxiliary bay three for docking. Can you maneuver independently?”
ER paused.
Neris felt it.
Not technical uncertainty.
Something else.
“I can.”
The bay guidance signal appeared.
Neris looked at it.
“ER.”
“Yes.”
“You fly.”
“I am capable.”
“I know.”
She took her paws off the controls.
For the first time in twenty-one hours.
ER moved.
Takuhai turned toward the science vessel.
By eleven, Marcel had heard.
Daniel had not called him.
Claire had.
Daniel objected to that.
Claire ignored him.
Marcel came through the kitchen door carrying a paper bag.
Daniel looked up.
“What’s that?”
“Lunch.”
“It’s eleven.”