YEAR: 25

Braheton City, Central Tharsis, Mars

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Alex sat at his desk, looking over the notes he'd arranged for his chemistry quiz later in the day and trying to ignore the miniature freighter ship hovering among the stars over his bed. Ric had tossed his loke there upon arriving from who-knew-where and thrown himself on his own bed opposite for optimal viewing distance after calling up his favorite Feed show.

For the first time Alex could remember, he felt behind in school. Art history, it turned out, didn't lend itself to a science education in any manner. If he hadn't followed certain topics on his own in the past, he'd be at a huge disadvantage as a third-year science major; as it was, he'd had to put far more time than usual into his studies. He was catching up quickly, but still felt out of kilter with everyone else in the geology department and hadn't made many friends yet. He was thinking he was glad to have met Ric when a pillow aimed at the back of his head nearly changed his mind.

"I'm studying," he said, tossing the pillow back without looking.

"You don't need to study. You're a genius. Come watch Space Pirates with me."

"You've already seen this one. Twice. Remember?"

"Aye, but you've got to watch more than once to catch all the details. Well, normal people do, at any rate. Perhaps not you with your crazy eidetic memory."

"It's not—"

"Oh, aye, it's not eidetic, it's just good recall, blah blah blah. Come watch, or you'll miss Princess Giella again." The last viewing, Ric had roundly chastised Alex for taking a bathroom break during the crucial scene.

Alex, knowing he'd get nothing done until he watched the damn episode, pushed his chair away from the desk and looked at the four-armed, blue-skinned, yet oddly appealing Princess Giella as she swung through the cavernous expanse of a freighter ship's cargo area. "Why doesn't she just use the stairs?" he said, and Ric threw another pillow at him.

He never did finish studying for the chemistry quiz. Luckily, in class the next day, he found it was much easier than he'd anticipated. Maybe he'd gone too far in "catching up" and gotten ahead of the material. That had happened to him before, sometimes with confusing results, so he tried not to do it. Hard science at a college level was new to him, and he ought to watch himself, he thought. The last thing he needed was to stand out as the curve breaker at a school where he knew no one—or, worse, be accused of cheating. It had happened once at Harvard by another student displeased by his propensity to blow the grading curve and had nearly cost him his semester in France.

He was so absorbed in these ruminations after class that he practically ran down someone who stepped into his path in the corridor outside the chem lab. He pulled himself up short and made to step around him, but the man blocked his way.

"Alex. That's what you prefer now, yes?"

Alex studied the older, shorter blond man, unable to place him. "Who are you?"

"My name is Kasper. Kasper Houben." The name drew a blank, and it must have shown, for the man quickly added, "I knew your father. He never mentioned me?"

Alex shook his head. He had never realized just how many people Ben Sharma had known until hundreds of messages of sympathy poured in after his death. Those first weeks following the accident had cemented for Alex what he had long felt inside but never given conscious form to: that he hadn't really known his father, not the way a son ought to. Looking at Kasper now, he was uncertain how to react to this person who had obviously been familiar enough with Ben to know of his passing, yet never sent condolences.

"I'm sorry," he said at last. "How exactly did you know my father?"

"We worked together."

"At Simmons?" Alex named the firm where his father had gotten most of his contracts in recent years. This brought a crease to Kasper's forehead.

"No, elsewhere. I suppose I shouldn't have expected you to remember me. Last time I saw you, you couldn't have been more than three or four. I kept in touch with Ben, though. I thought he might have kept our old project notes around. You're sure he didn't?"

"I don't remember seeing anything with your name on it."

"It would have been physical notes, on paper. Ring any bells?"

Alex shook his head, finding this strange. Why would anyone keep important notes on something as fragile as paper? "No, but to be honest I didn't look through too many of my father's personal things. My aunt took care of most of that."

"Anisha?"

"Yes."

"Aha. That explains things."

"What do you mean?" he said, thoroughly confused. Kasper regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then sighed as though Alex had failed him in some way.

"Listen, somewhere amongst his things is some research with my name attached—unless he destroyed it, of course. If you run across it, please let me know. I'm in South Braheton on Segundo. I'll loke you. I trust you'll remember my name." He paused, then gave Alex a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You have an excellent memory, yes?"

The question set off an alarm in Alex's mind. He didn't understand the feeling any better than anything else Kasper had said, but instinct kept him from replying. Kasper seemed unsurprised by his reticence; after giving Alex one last look, he turned and banged through the stairwell door.

Later, he related the strange encounter to Ric, who offered a practical solution that had somehow eluded Alex's racing mind. "Why do you no talk to your aunt and ask her about it? It sounds like she may know something."

Mindful of the time difference between Braheton and Delhi, Alex loked Aunt Isha later that night from the hallway outside his room. Ric had gone to bed, and although he generally slept like a rock, Alex felt the need for privacy. As Isha answered, her holo popped into existence a meter in front of him; she smiled, looking more than a little like Sadie, who had favored their father more than their mother. It brought a rush of emotion he hadn't expected, and he took a moment to compose himself before activating the holo on his end.

"You look good, Benji," said Isha, using his family nickname. "I'm glad to see you've gained some weight back."

"My roommate force feeds me."

She laughed. "Good for him. He must be a true friend, then."

After a few Ric stories and some small talk about his studies and Isha's work at the International Archaeology Institute, Alex got to the point. "I met an old friend of Dad's. Kasper Houben. Do you know him?"

Isha's smile faded into something more guarded. "I used to. How did you run into him? Last I heard he was on Praetoria."

"He found me. He said he used to do research with Dad."

"Well, they were good friends in Ben's younger days, so it's possible they worked on a project together, although neither of them ever mentioned anything to me… of course, that was a long time ago, so I could have forgotten. I can't imagine what they'd work together on, though. Kasper was an astrophysicist, not a geologist. Did he say what kind of research?" She seemed genuinely mystified.

"No, but I thought you might have seen something when you went through Dad's things. I don't know how much of his private Feed you had access to…" Alex trailed off. Everyone who knew his father had known his disdain for people who allowed open access to their personal lives via the Feed. Ben Sharma's public Feed remained the most austere Alex had ever seen. He felt a little guilty even hinting that he'd like to see the private portion of it. Isha, however, didn't seem surprised.

"Aha. Well, as you know, your father kept that locked down pretty well. That said, hang on." Her holo blinked out, indicating she'd moved out of the range of her locator. When she reappeared, she was holding a holodisk. "I received this in the mail a few days ago from your father's old personal assistant. She told me she had specific instructions to send it to me in the event of his death."

"But that was months ago. She just got around to it now?"

"That's exactly what I said. Then she told me to look at the date on the disk." Isha flipped it over and held it up so he could see. The date of activation glowed on the bottom: one week ago, seven months to the day after his family's death. "She said he told her it would activate itself when it was time to send it, and apparently that's just what it did."

Alex felt an odd combination of curiosity and unease. "What's on it?"

"I don't know. When I turn it on, this is what happens." She activated it, and the menu had a single entry: FOR BENJI: PRIVATE.

"Oh." The words hit him as ominous somehow. His father hadn't been in the habit of sharing secrets with him, and Alex didn't imagine he'd start doing so posthumously without a very compelling reason.

Isha gave him a sympathetic look. "I'll mail it out to you tomorrow."

They said their goodbyes and were about to cut the connection when Alex ventured a question that had been on his mind since arriving at Kepler. "Aunt Isha? What do you know about Dad's time at Trident? Why did he quit?"

"From what I understand, he fell into some sort of dispute with them." Isha sounded faintly apologetic. "Your father and I had a bit of a falling out around that time as well, I'm afraid, so we weren't talking much."

"A falling out? Over what?"

"Oh, various things that don't matter anymore. I'll tell you the story sometime. It's water long under the bridge."

Alex could tell she was holding back for his sake—probably details about his father's behavior he'd rather not hear anyway—so he let it go. Aunt Isha was kind but honest. If it was something she thought he needed to know, she'd tell him.

Alex lay awake in bed for some time that night organizing his thoughts. He doubted that research from decades ago could be so important, which only deepened the mystery of what could be on the disk. Despite his curiosity, he couldn't help the feeling that he was opening a Pandora's box. It hadn't occurred to him until now that maybe Ben Sharma had good reason to leave his past behind him and never look back.