Zach III, Chapter 6 The clutter spilling across the table was a chaotic sea of papers. Each sheet bearing the scars of his struggle: equations scrawled, crossed out, and re-written in an endless cycle of trial and error. His black hair fell like a shadow across furrowed brows as his eyes darted from one calculation to another. "Come on, Zachariah," he muttered to himself, "think." A sigh escaped him, carrying the weight of futility. The numbers and symbols before him were keys to a puzzle so immense it dwarfed the vastness of the space. These were more than mere calculations; they were the fragile lifeline for the entire settlement's survival. A standard hyper-space route was child's play compared to the zero-movement hyper-space jump they needed now. One by one, members of the settlement had tried and failed to unlock the equation that would allow the abandoned colony dome to descend gently into the ocean's embrace. The Stewards, with their advanced knowledge, had edged closer to a solution than anyone else, but even they had not grasped the full answer. The stakes couldn't be higher—if they erred, the dome would plummet through the atmosphere, striking the water with the fatal impact of a killer asteroid. "Nobody's got a head for this," Zach grumbled, pushing back from the table. His chair scraped against the wooden floor, a sharp sound in the quiet room of the rustic cabin. He was fourteen, yet his mind was as nimble as any seasoned pilot’s, perhaps even more. But this problem... it was beyond him, beyond them all. He stood up, a lean figure of determination clad in the simple attire of a colonist. With a decisive movement, Zach turned away from the paper-strewn battlefield and faced his computer. It sat there, silent and unassuming, yet it was about to become the conduit for a desperate plea. "Time to swallow your pride, Zach," he said, his fingers hovering above the keyboard. He could practically hear his father's voice—strong, resourceful, and ever pragmatic—urging him to do what was necessary. "Okay, Captain Archer, let's see if you're as brilliant as the legends claim," Zach whispered. There was a trace of humor in his tone, an attempt to lighten the gravity of the situation. He tapped the keys with a kind of reverent urgency, crafting a message that would traverse the stars to reach the best theoretical mathematician known—or unknown—in the galaxy. The screen flickered as he composed his call for help, detailing the events leading up to this moment and the dire need for a solution to the zero-movement hyper-space jump equation. He left nothing out, including all the data needed to plot the equation. "Sending an SOS to the cosmos," Zach quipped, the corners of his mouth lifting despite the tension clinging to his nerves. With a final click, the message soared off into the digital void, a digital message in a bottle cast into an ocean of stars. Now, all Zach could do was wait and hope that Captain Archer, wherever and whenever he might be, would receive it and lend his extraordinary intellect to their cause. A sudden rapping at the door jolted him from his focus. His head snapped up as if pulled by invisible strings, and his eyes cut through the dimness toward the source of the interruption. "Hey, Zach, you won't believe this," called a voice from beyond the wooden barrier. "Come in," Zach said, his tone light, betraying none of the urgency that had seized him moments ago. The door creaked open, and a young man stepped inside, his arms laden with a motley collection of letters and parcels. They teetered precariously in his grasp, a precarious tower of communication from afar. "Look at this," the young man exclaimed, gesturing to his burden with a nod of his head. "A mail shuttle arrived from Ceres with all our mail that's been stacking up there." Zach raised his eyebrows, a hint of amusement flickering across his face. "Makes sense," he mused aloud. "The mail service isn't part of our disagreements with the Ceres Corporation." His gaze swept over the assortment of correspondence. "Is all that mine?" he asked, a playful challenge in his voice. "Every last bit!" The young man's reply came with a grin, one that mirrored the spirit of camaraderie which thrived within their rugged settlement. The cascade of mail landed with a soft thump on Zach's bed, the vibrant patches of the quilt absorbing the impact. The young man stepped back, eyeing the pile as if it might spring to life. "Gonna need another table, or a bigger bed," he joked. Rising from his seat, Zach stretched, arms reaching toward the low wooden beams of the cabin ceiling, muscles grateful for the reprieve. "Alrighty, let's dive into old-school communication," he said, more to himself than anyone else. His eyes roamed over the mound of envelopes and packages before snaggying on a particularly battered one, its yellowed corners curled like dry leaves. It lay at the foot of the pile, almost out of place, as if it had travelled the greatest distance. "Whoa." Zach plucked the envelope from the mountain of mail, thumb tracing the creased edges. The return address made his heart perform an odd little flip—Captain Maximillian Archer, Aurora World Ship. Confusion knit his brows together as he turned the envelope over in his hands; it looked as though it had been through a meteor shower or two. "Didn't know you were pen pals with the big shots," the young man said, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips. "Neither did I," Zach replied, his voice edged with a puzzled note. He tore the envelope open with a decisiveness that belied his inner turmoil. From within, a data disk slipped into his palm, accompanied by a slip of paper that fluttered down like a feather. Dear Zach, here is the equation you requested. Zach read the words, then read them again, certain his eyes were betraying him. But the ink remained unchanged, each letter a silent sentinel to the impossible. Zach's complexion drained of color, his fingers trembling as they gripped the data disk and its accompanying note—a silent testament to an impossibility. His gaze volleyed from the disk to the screen that still displayed the sent confirmation of his email. The room felt suddenly too small, the walls pressing in with the weight of a riddle wrapped in an enigma. "Impossible," he whispered, the word barely escaping his lips. But there it was, tangible proof that defied logic, clutched in his hand like a fragment of some distant, untouchable future. With a surge of urgency, Zach bolted from his chair, feet pounding against the metal floor of his cabin. Each step echoed like thunder through the narrow streets of the settlement, a drumbeat racing against his rapidly beating heart. He hurtled past startled faces and curious glances, all blurred into the periphery of his single-minded determination. By the time Zach skidded to a halt outside Mr. Gillian's office, his breath came in ragged gasps, chest heaving like the thrusters of a ship breaking atmosphere. Without pause for decorum or a second thought, he barreled into the office, a comet disrupting the quiet orbit of paperwork and thought. Mr. Gillian, head of operations and a man accustomed to the unexpected, merely arched an eyebrow at the intrusion. Yet Zach paid him no mind; his focus was on the Steward, the one person who might offer a shard of insight into the day's surreal turn. "Look!" Zach thrust the disk forward, motion jerky and frenetic. "This—this can't be right." The Steward, unflappable as ever, simply took the offered disk, a wisp of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He regarded Zach with eyes that seemed to twinkle with a secret knowledge of the universe. "Take a breath, Zachariah," the Steward said, his voice even and calm—a stark contrast to Zach's disarray. "Let's see what we have here." Zach's chest heaved, his breaths coming in uneven gasps as he gaped at the Steward. "You're the smartest Steward I know, how is this possible?" His voice cracked like a sheet of ice underfoot. "This arrived with the mail ship and was delivered to me ten seconds after I sent an email to Captain Archer asking for his help?" The Steward, holding the data disk delicately between his fingers, let out a chuckle that seemed to resonate with the weight of eons. He looked at Zach with the kind of indulgence one might reserve for a child who has stumbled upon a hidden compartment in an ancient clock. "Ah, Zachariah," he began, his tone infused with mirth, "you must understand that Captain Archer is not bound by the same threads of time as we are." He gestured with the disk as if it were a tiny relic from a bygone era—perhaps it was. "Captain Archer hailed from the Golden Age of Technology, two million years past. Imagine, a world brimming with wonders we can scarce comprehend." Zach leaned in, the mystery of the situation drawing him closer as he absorbed the Steward's every word. "Back then," the Steward continued, "Earth teetered on the brink of ruin, and from its ashes rose the World Ships, like the great Aurora, embarking upon the cosmos in search of new horizons." He paused, allowing the significance of those journeys to sink into the room. "When Captain Archer emerged from his cryo-slumber, what he found was us—a civilization reborn from rubble and echoes. To him, we were but infants toddling amid the remnants of grandeur." The Steward's gaze drifted off, as if he could see through the walls of the cabin and across the span of history. "We've pieced together fragments of his presence throughout our resurgence. Names that have shaped our world: Socrates, Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein...figures cloaked in legend, yet they bear his mark." Zach stood motionless, the air thick with revelations. The Steward's words painted a tapestry of human endeavor, with Captain Archer as the enigmatic artist weaving through the ages. "Such characters," the Steward smiled, "Sor’tai, Grethas—the pioneers of hyper-space drive whose intellects sparked revolutions. Each a possible masquerade for the man beyond time." He turned the disk over in his hands, as if looking for a hidden clue. "A treasure hunt indeed, for those of us who serve as stewards to history's secrets." The simplicity of the Steward's explanation belied the complexity of the enigma that lay within Zach's grasp. There, on the small disk, rested answers from a man who had traversed millennia, a silent guide through the shadows of their collective ignorance. And perhaps, just maybe, the key to their survival. Zach's black eyes widened with a mixture of astonishment and confusion. "but…" He paused, the gears in his brain churning at a phenomenal speed. "…how did he send this before I even wrote that email to him?" The question hung in the air, echoing off the rustic wooden walls of the cabin like a riddle from an ancient time. Mr. Steward, his expression still tinged with amusement, reached out and plucked the disk from Zach's unsteady grip. "I don't know," he mused thoughtfully as he turned to hand the disk to Mr. Gillian, who stood by with a look of quiet anticipation. "You’ll give yourself a headache trying to figure out how Captain Archer does the things he does." The words seemed to hover around them, a tantalizing hint at a universe of knowledge that stretched far beyond their own. Zach could feel the weight of centuries pressing down on him, the legacy of a man who had lived through epochs, danced with the cosmos, and held the threads of time within his grasp. "An understanding we can only dream of reaching," Mr. Steward added, a wry smile playing on his lips as he observed Zach's reaction. Zach nodded slowly, his mind racing with possibilities, each more extraordinary than the last. Could it be that Captain Archer had indeed mastered the very fabric of time? That he had found a way to reach back across the void and deliver hope before it was even sought? "Relativity..." Zach murmured, the word tasting like a new frontier on his tongue. He glanced at the data disk now in Mr. Gillian's possession, feeling a sense of destiny threading through his veins. If they could decipher its secrets, perhaps they too could glide along the currents of space-time, guided by the enigmatic wisdom of a man who had become legend. A slight chuckle escaped Zach's lips, a spark of his usual banter flickering to life amidst the awe. "Guess I'm not the only one playing games," he quipped, though the gravity of the situation was not lost on him. "There is a chess board in Captain Archer’s office. I saw it once as a boy, and again when I graduated from the Destiny Academy, in all that time, only one move had been made," Mr. Steward replied, his eyes twinkling with memories of long ago. "Captain Archer plays the long game on a board we've yet to fully comprehend." And with that simple exchange, Zach felt at once both incredibly small and part of an infinite game, where past, present, and future converged at the hands of a two-million-year-old player. Mr. Gillian settled the data disk into its cradle with an almost reverent care. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, a whisper of anticipation in the air. "Let's see what the eternal man has sent you," he murmured, his voice steady but not without a hint of excitement. With a decisive click, he initiated the sequence. The room bloomed with light as screens adorning the walls flickered to life, washing the cabin in a pale glow. Zach leaned forward, his black eyes wide as the digital tapestry unveiled itself. Numbers, symbols, and equations cascaded across the displays, intertwining into the most intricate dance of logic and mathematics Zach had ever witnessed. "That's it," he breathed out, awestruck by the complexity before him. "That's the equation we need." In that moment, a brief exchange of glances passed between Mr. Steward and Mr. Gillian. It was subtle, a mere flicker, yet laden with unspoken words. Zach caught it, the corners of his mouth twitching in a fleeting smirk. "What? I saw that look." The two men shared a silent conversation, their expressions unreadable. Zach's heart pounded with the thrill of the unknown, the weight of the discovery pressing upon his chest. This was it—the key to their salvation or perhaps the harbinger of their undoing. Only time would reveal the truth hidden within those cryptic digits. Mr. Gillian rose from his seat, the leather creaking under the shift of his weight. His shadow fell across one of the glowing screens, the numbers casting a strange mosaic on his face. With measured steps, he approached the digital labyrinth of calculations that sprawled before him. "None of us can read this equation," he murmured, tracing a finger along the glass as if to physically grasp the enigma. His voice held a gravity that pulled at the edges of the room. "Remember, Captain Archer wants us off this planet, or so it seems. One mistake purposely hidden in here could do just that." He turned, fixing Zach with a look that was both stern and cautious. "I don’t think we should use this equation." Zach’s response was almost reflexive, his head shaking before the words even spilled out. "I don’t think he would do that," he countered, the flicker of disbelief dancing across his features. His black hair swayed as he leaned into his conviction. "He could have bombed us out of existence if he’d wanted." The young man's fingers curled into fists at his sides, the intensity of his belief radiating like heat. "I think he wants to play fair, why else challenge me fairly to a rematch in one year?" Humor glinted briefly in Zach's eyes, a spark of light banter ready to lighten the tension. But it faded, eclipsed by the enormity of their predicament. This was a game of cosmic stakes, played on a board where every square could be booby-trapped. Yet, Zach stood resolute, a testament to the hope that still thrived in the heart of mankind—even when faced with the unknown intentions of an eternal man. Mr. Steward, with a deliberate calm that seemed almost out of place in the charged atmosphere, adjusted the glasses perched precariously on his nose. He leaned forward, his eyes scanning the screens that flickered with numerical mysteries only few could hope to unravel. The room hushed as he studied the equation, each symbol and variable scrutinized beneath the weight of his gaze. "Let's distribute this to all our math whizz's," Mr. Steward finally said, breaking the silence as he straightened and turned towards the others in the room. His voice carried an air of cautious pragmatism, a stark contrast to the thick tension that had settled around them. "If anyone finds something that bares the mark of deception, we won’t use it, but even if we don’t find anything, I think the Board needs to vote on whether we use it." Zach nodded, his black eyes reflecting a storm of thoughts. The gravity of their situation was not lost on him, nor the irony of relying on a man from millennia past. He watched as the equation continued to pulse on the screens, a beacon of both hope and potential doom.