“Who has broken you…? Who made you this way…?”

Another robot sat in the middle of the dark room; it was in worse condition that the one that came before it. The three hands came down, searching its form to see where it should start on fixing it.

“Oh… You are hurt… You are hurt worse than your sibling…”

The hands began to do their work, though it was almost impossible to fix it. Most of the robot had been smashed, while the rest was an amalgamation of wire and broken metal pieces that were once the main form of the robot.

“I do not think that it is possible for me to fix you… My dear…”

A series of electronic noises and the sound of a shower of sparks hitting the floor could be heard, and after that the robot was lifted up into the air by two of the hands. The third hand eventually gripped the robot and all three of them pulled it apart, destroying it. Its broken body was thrown to the side and the light in the room was turned off.

“I am sorry… I had to…”

“You are not going to do that right now, are you?” Tomki questioned his grandmother as he watched her bring out something from the pack. The eternal night was still upon them, for it was hard for any sort of light to get to the planet; because of this, the planet was still extremely cold.

“Why can I not do this?” his mother responded, walking over to him while holding a small machine.

Tomki looked at the thing in her hands. “It hurts our ears.”

“Would you rather have hurt ears and be safe at home or have perfectly fine ears and still be stuck on this planet?”

He did not answer her; he knew she was right. Tomki watched as she set the object down on the ground and tapped a button. The thing whirred and then started to send out a beeping noise and a light on the top of it flashed green. “Hopefully this beacon will be able to signal something, anyone.”

“I do not think anyone will be able to see it. No one has been in this system for a long time.”

“You never know, Tomki. Maybe someone is under the same circumstances as we were.” The grandmother walked back over to where she had slept and took her blanket, covering her body with it again. “Maybe, just maybe, there is someone out there. Maybe someone will come for us. We have only been here for one night.”

“You’re right. Though, I still think that no one is out there.” He sighed after he spoke.

“If you always expect a bad outcome you will only get a bad outcome.”

Tomki glanced up at the night sky. “It’s so… large.”

“You knew that, did you not?” His grandmother looked up at the night sky with him.

He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. “I did, I just never thought about how big it is.”

“The Universe is massive, truly massive. No one knows what is really out there; even if we have been able to travel the stars we still have no idea what all of it holds. The area that we have explored is only one piece of sand in a giant desert that seems to last forever.” His grandmother looked over at him and then looked back up at the stars. Both of them could see the gases up in the night sky, making up the different solar systems in the center of the Milkyway—even though that is not what they called it—and beyond that, though they could not see it, there was the eternal expansion of stars and planets, going on forever and ever without ceasing. “Beyond us is something we will never understand; we can only remember so much, and the places we leave will eventually be lost in time. Think about it: are you able to remember the names of 10,000 people? No, you cannot.”

He sat there for a moment in the silence after her statement—”lost in time”.

“Will we be lost in time, appremeni?”

“If we are not recorded and kept in the minds of everyone and if the information about us is not kept… Then yes, we will.”