***Earth, Iceland***

***Magnus***

“Logging observation instance two on third of August 3920. Array, adjust to object: Tabby’s Star,” I dictated to the automated assistance program I had written, selected the pre-programmed coordinates on the list, then checked whether the voice recognition had inserted the data correctly into the control program.

Honestly, the system in charge of the observation array was already automated to the point at which no human presence was required. I could have done my job from home, but the university felt better about having a human overseeing operation.

After all, there was this 0.000001% chance of me hitting the hardwired emergency kill-switch to stop the system from damaging itself in case of total failure.

Yeah… like that would ever happen within my lifetime.

I leaned back in my chair and sighed while I watched the satellite array readjust tantalizingly slowly. It would take a few minutes before the system spat out usable data. Until then, all the operator could do was watch and wait.

No matter my qualifications, if something did go wrong, my best bet with a system like this was to try a reboot and call the techs if it didn’t work. The technical details for the ground-controlled deep space observation satellite array, GDSOS for short, went over my head – apart from the principle behind it.

While I was watching the screen, my hand wandered involuntarily to the printed file which the Organization had leaked to me. It was almost impossible to believe, but if it was true, then the world had truly gone to the dogs.

Government sanctioned money laundering? Secret research on human test subjects? Assassinations and abductions performed to shut up witnesses?

I clenched my teeth hard enough to hurt and balled my fist into the paper.

The fact I got these files as an old-fashioned paper print instead of a smart foilscreen already felt like a scene from some old spy movie. Nobody used paper nowadays.

There was no doubt in my mind that the Organization suffered from a persecution complex when it came to digital information.

It was so hilarious, I didn’t believe a single word when they approached me. In my grief, I almost dismissed them as some idiots who had been paid by one of the other university employees to play a horrible joke on me.

But when I used my parents’ login information to gain illegal access to the national database – everything checked out. Only God knew why their accounts hadn’t been suspended immediately after their disappearance.

My only explanation was that the world government’s criminal arm must’ve worked faster than the legal one could follow.

Slowly, I loosened my crushing grip on the documents and smoothed them out on the table, admonishing myself for crinkling them. “Stupid paper…”

The beeping operating system drew my attention back to the monitor, but I wasn’t in the mood to sight the results right away. A glance assured me the array had readjusted without problems and begun recording.

Was there any point at all to dream of the stars when I would never reach them? When humanity did its best to blockade its future?

We had more than a few automated probes and mining robots out there, but no human wanted to leave Earth aside from some insane individuals who got a ride to one of the few research stations off-planet.

There were more than enough sci-fi movies which painted a rosy image of space colonization, but the cold truth was we never got past one simple law of physics.

Gravity.

The human body simply didn’t evolve to exist outside Earth’s gravity well.

Once people lived for an extended time in low gravity environments like space or mars, things went seriously wrong inside the body. Building gigantic spin wheels on a planet to create artificial gravity simply wasn’t a feasible solution.

Of course, there were several attempts to circumvent the problem, but all failed because of the horrendous costs.

Spinning space habitats were the only feasible solution but also suffered from massive upkeep costs before the invention of a functioning fusion drive. But by then, the general population’s interests had already shifted away from space.

History might have played out differently if the technology to manipulate the human genome had come along earlier. Even now, designing a human who could survive in low gravity without adverse effects would be a stretch as far as I understood.

And in the enlightened age of today, Earth’s unified government simply wasn’t interested in colonizing other planets within the solar system.

Admittedly, they had legitimate arguments to avoid doing so – even if they were egoistic.

For one, it would inevitably create colonies with populations living in deprivation. Deprivation led to resentment and resentment led to revolution, which was a big no-no for the W.Gov after their failure on Tirnanog.

Another question was whether these new and gene-manipulated colonies could still be regarded as human? Wouldn’t they present an unwelcome competition to Earth when the solar system’s resources could be exploited with machines instead?

What was I thinking about?

I was just some geek who got stuck in a university job. A cog in the machine. There was no way I could ever make a difference.

The current me, at least.

Not any more.

I wanted in on the Organisation and give some payback to whoever did this to my family.

There was a knock on the door and I turned, narrowing my eyes at a slim woman in a figure-hugging suit with a knee-length skirt. She stood in the door-frame to the observatory with a smile on her lips.

When she saw me looking, she brushed back her jet-black hair, then stalked towards me and held out a hand in greeting. “Do you have the information, Magnuson Elrod?”

She was attractive, with a dark, Mediterranean skin tone, leaving me to guess her ancestry was Spanish or maybe Italian?

Normally, I would have hit on someone like her with a wide grin on my face, but something felt off. Instead of a reply, all I managed was a confused frown as I stared at the offered hand.

The woman kept up the offer while talking. “I am your contact from the Organisation.”

I glanced at the data crystal which held the copied information from the national database before I tentatively took the offered hand. The crystal lay on my office desk, waiting to change owners.

All the while I was wondering why all of this felt so wrong. Wasn’t I about to get my entrance ticket to the organization by delivering them some important data?

Her delicate hand felt warm and soft in mine, which sent a tingle up my spine.

“Mr Elrod, I am so glad we see each other again. I am very pleased about you and your partner completing all of your assignments.”

“My partner?” I mumbled dully, wondering what she was talking about. “Assignments?”

Then I realized the woman displayed no emotions.

Oh, her face went through all the necessary contortions, but her eyes were cold and unfeeling orbs which drew me in like black holes.

“You are especially slow tonight, but it’s nothing to worry about. I was talking about you and your ‘significant other’ besting the mindflayer. There was a high chance for both of you dying, but you survived and thrived instead. It’s good to have someone you can rely upon.”

I felt something in the back of my brain twitch, a memory. “She doesn’t just want to survive, but thrive on this world...” I whispered as the smiling face of a beautiful woman with glowing eyes flashed through my mind. It was her motto.

The visitor in front of me went on, ignoring what I just said.

Instead, she kept preaching nonsense in a sacral tone. She had taken my hand in both of hers and gotten uncomfortably close. “You see, Magnus. Now that we’ve finally gotten you where you need to be, you have to think about mobilizing the Aerie. Don’t forget your dearest sister. She is still in the hands of those despicable Thich. You have to stop at noth-”

At that moment, I had a déjà vu. As if I had been here – with this stranger – at that moment – many times before.

My hand tightened around hers and I tried to channel my electricity, but nothing happened, so I went with plan B.

My fist struck her right in the middle of her beautiful face. “This is wrong! All wrong! The contact to the Organization who visited me back then was some pudgy old geezer in a cleaner’s outfit! He almost shat himself because he was just some hired muscle!”

I got in a second punch and a third before I realized the woman wasn’t affected at all. Oh, her head rocked to the side with each hit, but it felt like punching a rubber puppet.

And she kept talking!

“… accommodate your influence by relying on the Frosts. Astra is someone you can trust…”

Weirded out, I kicked her away from me and got up. “What is this!?”

I pressed a hand against my temple as a mind-numbing headache assaulted me. With it, more of my memories came back to me, but I still didn’t know how I came to be here. Did the mindflayer get us? Was there a second one? Was this some sort of hallucination?

The woman had landed awkwardly when I kicked her, but my reaction caused something to change within her.

The emotionless eyes lost their dullness when she blinked and she drew in a deep breath before her gaze locked onto me. “How very interesting.”

The woman got to her feet and flicked her fingers once, then a second time, apparently judging my reaction to her odd behaviour. “You are lucid within the dream.”

“What dream?” I spat.

“Does it matter?” She raised an eyebrow with a mocking expression on her face. “I am in the dreams of all men.”

I couldn’t help but look her up and down. “Sorry, lady, but while I may find you attractive, you are hardly the type of gal who turns the heads of all men.”

Her mouth stood open for a few precious seconds before she snapped it shut. “I meant of humanity. All men – you know?” She rolled her eyes. “I should have just stuck with amitosis instead of introducing genders.”

The strange woman pretended to dust off her skirt while I took a wary step away from her, bringing my office chair between the two of us.

“Magnus, you are dreaming and I paid a visit to grant you a little advice. Now that your latest mutation seems to allow you lucid dreaming, guiding you may be a little bit easier. Though I have to admit it was an unexpected side effect of my original intent.” She looked me up and down and made eye contact before revising her judgement. “Or harder. Knowing you, it definitely got a lot harder. You were never the type to just do as you are told. Even as a little babe you would rather spit out your baby jam than eat when you weren’t hungry. It drove your mother crazy.”

“Wh- What? You knew my parents?” I thought I had found some solid ground in this conversation when I regained my awareness, but things just kept coming.

“I prefer to be referred to as Gaia. And despite what many humans may think of me if they knew of my existence, I am not a ‘what’ or an ‘it’.” She circled her finger in front of my face as if admonishing a naughty child.

“Gaia?” I asked. “The Gaia of lore? Or the Gaia which those cultists back at the clan are praying to?”

I was a firm atheist. Gods didn’t exist.

Did I have a mental breakdown? Maybe the mindflayer had gotten us after all.

What if she was a god? Did I just punch and kick a god? Did it even count if it happened within a dream?

No, there must be some other explanation.

Maybe the survivor we saved had mind-abilities and was messing with us. Or…

“Stop.” The woman grimaced at me. “Just stop it, Magnus. I am not a hallucination or someone messing with you. Think of me as a vastly alien energy being which evolved alongside life. I am older than humanity. I am the countless multitudes. I am… life’s Gestalt.”

I stared at her for a little longer than I cared to admit – and not because she was pretty. Nothing of this made sense.

In absence of sense, wasn’t the only choice nonsense?

“Since I can’t think of any way to prove or disprove you, I will just go with the flow for now.” I blinked and narrowed my eyes at her. “Your claim doesn’t make your visit any better. Am I wrong or did you just try to influence me through my dreams? And if you are the creator, then I must say you created a fucked up world!”

She somehow managed to look like innocence itself. “It’s what I do, dear Magnus. I don’t have a physical body, so I allow my countless sub-identities to guide the path of men as best as possible. And please don’t think of me as the designer of reality. I am a part of nature as much as anything else – if on a greater scale.”

“Still…” I didn’t want to let this go so easily. “Are you aware of what humans are doing to each other? Why don’t you stop it?”

Gaia tilted her head. “Who is saying I am not trying to? Please don’t think of me as an omnipotent entity. I am bound by humanity just as humanity is bound by me. Do you care about what your individual cells are doing as long as you feel fine? There is a constant war waging inside of you. Your immune system kills off cancerous cells and harmful viruses and bacteria, while they fight for their survival and resources. Do you care about an individual cell dying off and being replaced by another?”

I wasn’t sure how to reply. If she was something like humanity’s overmind, then it made sense for her not to care about individuals.

She sighed. “Maybe this instance of mine is coming across as too human. Magnus, you are speaking to just a little part of me. Gaia encompasses every living being on Earth and beyond which originated from my tree of life. I am each plant, bacteria, human, animal and insect. If Gaia, the whole Gestalt, would focus its attention on a single human, you would pop like a lightbulb under too much power. The reason why I feel so relatable is that the 'instance' of myself which is communicating with you is nothing but the tiniest part of the Gestalt.”

I felt my right eye twitch involuntarily as I tried to make sense of her words. “So… you are nothing more than a messenger who tried to whisper in a sleeping man’s ear?”

She smiled at my analogy, but it seemed forced. “I like to think of myself as a guardian angel or a godmother. This part of myself was guiding you since you were nothing more than a tiny cell within your mother’s womb.”

I stared at her, trying not to betray what I was thinking. Suddenly, I wanted to give her the fault for all the bad things which ever happened to me. Hadn’t she watched and done nothing?

Gaia rubbed her hands against each other, looking uncomfortable. “You are aware I know exactly what you are thinking?”

“God, damn it!” I cursed, then corrected myself. “Gaia, damn it!”

“You are a part of me, Magnus,” she explained. “It would be awkward not to know. Does it help if I say you are influencing the Gestalt as much as I – the Gestalt – is trying to influence you? Or any other person?”

I held up a hand to stop her. “This is… too much. Just tell me what you want and why you are trying to mess with me.”

“No,” Gaia replied flatly.

“Hmmm?” I pressed my lips together, considering whether I should try to punch her… just one more time. Who else could claim to have hit a god?

“I know how you feel about others controlling your actions,” Gaia explained. “If I tell you what I want, you will try to find a way to escape my influence. But I’ve already invested a lot in you. Do you have any idea how tedious it was to swerve Astra into going after the mindflayer? Or to shove her over the cliff of uncertainty when she met you? That girl and you may be a perfect genetic match, but she just doesn’t like to gamble. Stubborn like a rock.”

“You are messing with Astra too?” I wasn’t surprised by this point. Thinking back, Astra had warned me about mindflayer mutations being unpredictable in their outcome.

“Everyone,” Gaia admitted. “As far as I can.”

Looking at it now, I saw clearly how unreasonable my wish for this power was. “Why the mindflayer? If you are me, you should also know I can be reasonable if you present your case properly.”

“To power you up,” Gaia replied in a chipper tone. “The Gestalt can’t, or rather, won’t intervene directly in the world. It takes too much power to make it a habit. But what I can do is help evolution along.”

She waved a hand. “So, I can’t reach into your DNA and rewrite it as I wish. Or make you do stuff you don’t want to. But if you come across the fitting DNA strands yourself, I can make sure they fall into the right order. Especially with those neat little nanites you humans invented for me.” She nodded to herself. “I wasn’t so sure about allowing this ‘free will’ thing when the first ape developed it, but it had its benefits over the aeons. I would have never had the idea of utilizing what I consider ‘dead matter’ for my benefit.”

Gaia continued after a moment when I said nothing and just kept staring at her. “Right. So, turns out I, the Gestalt, am something of an anomaly when it comes to energy beings. For some reason I can’t explain, just as you can’t properly explain your own existence, I am attuned to the energy field which is emitted by my living organisms.

“Long, long ago, some other energy beings different from myself visited my world. They are attuned to naturally occurring energy fields. Like those created by stars or a planet’s core. At first, I was excited about meeting others...” She bit her lip.

“But?” I asked drily.

Gaia threw up her hands. “Turns out, the others are mean racists! At first, they thought of me as something of an evil, degenerated version of themselves! Then they became afraid when they realized I have the potential to overtake the entire universe. And then they tried to kill me by killing all the organisms under my influence! They are responsible for several extinction events on Earth.”

I thought about the dinosaurs and the meteor.

She clicked her tongue. “Not that! What I am talking about came much, much earlier. Do you believe it took me billions of years to create civilised life when I raised humanity in just a few million? No. I did it more times than even I want to count. And every time I am about to get to a space-faring civilisation they show up and smash everything to pieces. But I am a tenacious gal. Nobody offs me just like that.”

Gaia snapped her fingers for emphasis and huffed. “At least it looks like they gave up when I managed to infiltrate several of their spaceships and spread to other worlds. Before I began to work on humanity, they turned the Milky Way into a quarantine zone to ensure I wouldn’t escape.”

“But you are here…” I pointed out. “On Tirnanog.”

“Also within the Milky Way.” Gaia waved her hand. “Tirnanog is something of an experiment. They intentionally allowed us to get to this world. The others tried building an organic ecosystem I can’t live on, and they did a good job of it. Think of it as them trying to manufacture secure hardware which my software can’t use.”

“I see,” I murmured. “So, ideally, you want to replace this ecosystem with Earth’s. What’s the problem with the Thich?”

Gaia bristled. “They were corrupted by one of the others’ agents. They are no longer working in my interests. I need them gone, including the being which controls this experiment. That’s what you need to know. You are one of the pivot points to their destruction.”

An alien agent? Controlling the experiment? Did this mean my sister was in the hands of some alien worshipping fanatics? Was this connected to why they were looking for twins?

“Those are all things you will understand in time. They aren’t relevant right now.” Gaia hit a fist into her open palm as if she just had an idea. “Look. Why don’t we make a deal? You keep working for me, and in turn, I will look out for your sisters’ best interest and even cleanse the corruption instead of just killing them. What do you think?”

My head snapped towards her. “You won't touch my sisters!”

Gaia studied her fingernails with a smug expression. “Not if you take the deal.”

It took me time to process everything she said.

“Corruption?” My mind was immediately drawn to the secret of the mystery mutation as my head spun. Had I already failed my sisters? The more I thought about it, the more I realized the entire room was spinning, so I dug my fingers into the office chair in front of me.

“Magnus, we will continue this discussion in another dream, since you are waking up. Just remember to take control of the Aerie and that your new power is Parallel Mind. If you have trouble believing me, just know I will take my due for those three times you hit me. Remember the number three the next time something truly magnificent happens.”

I tried to stay upright but to no avail. The world kept tilting away from me. “But… how will you know whether I take the deal?”

“I will know.”

Then I woke up inside the dark room of the shelter, drawing breath on the verge of hyperventilation. Only the fact I remembered everything so clearly didn’t have me dismiss this ‘dream’ for what it was.

I looked around and found our survivor sleeping on her bunk at the other side of the room.

Astra was lying on top of me with her stupidly smiling face on my chest and drooling. She was totally out of it.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “It was just a dream. Just a dream. Remember, you ate some bad stuff yesterday.”

The memory of eating raw mindflayer had me shudder in disgust.

I lay there, remembering now that Astra and I had slain the mindflayer and eaten from it before we returned to the shelter with as much preserved meat as we could carry. The longer I went through the events in my head, the more my ‘experience’ felt like a shitty dream.

Finally, tiredness set in, combined with Astra getting heavy.

I decided the best thing I could do for now was to sleep, so I grabbed Astra’s ass and rolled us around. Her proclivity to use me as a heating mattress had me master the necessary technique soon after hooking up with her.

Then I rested my head on her chest and went back to sleep. She wasn’t as endowed as other women, but her pillows were just the right size to be soft and comfortable.