My whole self still aches and throbs with the force of what they are, and the longing to join them, to truly understand, makes it impossible to think.

But…there is someone I’m supposed to be. There was a surge that brought me here, memories coming in disjointed flashes. A pair of joined hands, two souls whose choice to sacrifice themselves opened the door to this world. The creature in my body trying to stop them, as I gathered the last of my strength to pull it back. No…you will not hurt them. The beings on the other side of the door reaching out to pull the tortured creature back into its world.

And there’s someone whose face is the only image my dazzled thoughts can summon, like afterimages from staring at the sun.

Tarver.

You are energy, you are of the light. He is humankind, one of billions, and unique. We cannot bring him.

I want to go back.

We have had a decision to make, ever since your people’s first ship pierced the stillness—what you call hyperspace. Whether to close the door between our worlds, or leave it open. You have flooded our world with images and words and ideas so powerful that, unchecked, they will destroy us. Pain and loneliness and hatred, and beautiful things too; love for family, for lovers, for friends. Faith. We have learned this from you. And the five who came to save you.

You’ve been watching us? All this time?

Time, for us, is not quite the same as it is for you. We see all the possibilities ahead. We had to follow those who would know pain and loss and rage, for it is not a fair test to observe those whose lives are free from sadness.

And it’s what…fate? That we all came together, here, to this spot?

Small nudges, here and there. Within the confines of your father’s cages there is little we can do. But tiny changes—ensuring two survivors of a deadly crash, or preventing an explosion from claiming a rebel’s life, or drawing a particular identity to a hacker’s attention—that we can do.

No. I refuse to believe that all of this was somehow predestined. That we’re just puppets performing some play for your amusement.

Not at all. We see the possibilities, Lilac. We know what might happen, not what will happen. And if there is anything we have learned from watching you, it is that mankind never stops surprising us. Your actions are your own. Your choices, good or bad, are yours. As are the choices of your companions.

And you’re basing this decision of yours, whether we’re cut off from hyperspace forever, on whether we’re good people?

We have no desire to destroy your kind. We know the one, alone, would have done so. But we seek only to preserve our own world’s existence. We would allow enough time for your worlds to prepare for the separation, to become self-sustaining, or else relocate their populations. We would then shore up the walls between our universes so that your engines, your signals, could no longer enter.

You said that you have a decision to make. Does that mean you haven’t decided yet?

We were waiting for one last emissary to return home.

You…you mean the entity that took me over. Used me to kill all those people, threaten the ones I love, threaten our entire way of life.

Yes.

My father tortured that creature—it’s horrible, what happened to it, but you can’t judge a whole species by the actions of one man. There are monsters among us, it’s true. But there are heroes too. There are people who fight men like him. Who will never stop fighting men like him.

Our choice remains ahead of us. Blow open this rift for good, allow our kind to explore your world and understand it, and there is no guarantee your human qualities would not eventually destroy us, as they destroyed our last emissary. Or, sever your universe’s tie to ours once and for all, guaranteeing the survival of our species, the preservation of our world. We can send you back to them, or keep you here with us if you choose, but whether we open the gates to join your world or close them to you forever…that we cannot decide.

Why not?

Of all the things mankind has taught us, the strangest one for us to comprehend is choice. For us all things are possible, and all things that can be, will be. To choose one existence or another…it is a human ability, to shape your own fate. We need your help.

I let my thoughts open to them, my sense of self blurring at the edges as I try to feel what they feel, to understand what they’ve absorbed from us. The rage is there, a simmering force like a storm about to break. This is what the whispers fear, the fire consuming their world.

I let them touch my grief over Simon’s death, the newly opened wound of my mother’s death all those years ago, the sadness and guilt at being one of the only survivors from the Icarus. I let them see my anger at my father, the gut-wrenching stab of betrayal, the simmering rage at the creature who used me to wreak such destruction. Then, with an effort, I reach for those other, deeper memories, slipping past the coating of pain and hatred into what lies beyond.

Because behind it lies something more, a rainbow of deeper forces, waiting to be summoned. The joy of a little girl whose dreams have been painted the color of the sea. The loyalty of a boy who is ready to defend his home with his bare hands and the force of his will. The love of a man whose faith transcends death, whose strength feels like fire and poetry.

The fire of a girl who had everything taken from her, and still found it within herself to leap into the unknown to open this door. The determination of a boy who held out his hand to leap with her, who had faith in that moment that we were all worth saving, if only we had the chance to prove it.

This chance.

And from the inside, surrounded by the joy and devotion and loyalty of my friends, the shimmer of rage on the outside of our lives looks paper-thin.

As my thoughts open to them, I catch the faintest taste of their minds as well. They are far beyond anything I’ve ever known, the weight of infinite minds so entwined it’s impossible to know where one stops and another begins. I can feel what we’ve given them, the swell of emotions and ideas they don’t understand. But behind the fear, the anger, the desire for safety, I sense something all too familiar…longing.

I pause, trying to form my dazzled thoughts into words. We’ve always wondered if mankind was alone in the universe. Somewhere, behind the ever-expanding frontier of new planets and terraformed moons, there’s always been a sense of being incomplete, that we were searching for something else. Something more, something greater than ourselves. To be alone in this universe is an emptiness none of us could bear.

Is it possible that, for all our differences, for all the ways we don’t and never could understand each other, the whispers don’t want to be alone either?

Help us choose.

I can’t. I can’t tell you that if you stay, and learn from us, and learn to understand us, your kind will be safe. Because if you stay, then rage and grief and pain are inevitable. To live is to feel these things.

So you would have us leave?

On this side of the rift, in this world, nothing is certain. But the only shields against the darkness are the moments that bring light, and you have seen that in these people, their stories. They are unique, and they are all the same. I can think of no better armor. And we can teach you how to forge your own shields.

Think of everything you’ve learned from us, everything we’ve been through, every choice the six of us have made that has brought us here. Having experienced that, having felt life, love, trust, faith…can you really give it all up just to be safe?