Stars Rise

I. One Hundred Years Later

Stephen Potestas, Nice To Meet You All

We have twenty-four hours.

Twenty-four hours until eternity ends.

Imagine a company.

If you're listening, I want you to do something for me. If you can hear me, wherever you are, I want to ask you for something.

Imagine a company invented magic.

Imagine a company invented magic, packaged and sold it. Constellation unlocked the power of the stars, connecting the infinite energy source to people's lives. And charged for it. With infinite energy, an eternal life force, stellar fire dripping and crackling in our veins, no one ever has to die. Only it must be more complicated than that. Such things are never simple.

I say 'imagine' because maybe you don't believe in magic. You don't think it exists. Maybe you won't believe me if I say it's the truth. Imagine it for a second, though. Unending energy. Unending life. Priced like any other commodity. So, imagine a company.

Constellation gave us eternal life, and it can take it away. Don't feel bad for us, though. We have lived long, fulfilling lives. Doesn't mean we're going out without a fight, though. Would you?

We have twenty-four hours. Outside Potestas Tower, a satellite branch of the company, the sky is a burning galaxy seared by all those hot suns the size of a pinprick. Inside my top-floor office, we leave the light off. I'm Potestas. Nice to meet you all.

We stand around in the dark. We're silent. Silent revolutionaries dressed in dark. We don't even need to be quiet yet, but we seem prepared. Nova holds on to a file folder, looks prepared. My daughter, a revolutionary. Nova, a rebel, like me. She strangles the paper with her fingertips and it's starting to bend and crease and rip.

Silence never is total, is it? Maybe our breaths echo the empty office tower, maybe our hearts do with their beating. Do we sound like a drum solo or a drum circle? One of us takes a deep breath, nostrils hushing audibly, to calm down. Someone's hair whispers behind an ear. A scuffed black shoe scrapes against the shiny opal flooring and streaks it. Smells in here like dark matter and starfire, probably from the floor cleaner. When the cleaning magician spelled the tiling clean at the end of the day, it was for the last time (not to be dramatic).

Won't they just need to hire a new one? By Monday they'll replace us too. I put a hand where my gnomon used to be, in a tailored holster inside my suit jacket. Cristo toys with his like it's a letter opener. Or a pocket knife. He flicks it over his fingers and reflected starlight and moonlight whirls with the wand.

Has it already been a hundred years? That makes me feel old, but old is relative. It should mean nothing. Twenty-four hours. Can you imagine being promised forever, then coming to your final twenty-four hours? It's like coming to the end of an infinite series. Shouldn't happen. Shouldn't be possible.

Cristo has become my last hope. I can never decide if I like my daughter's husband. Cristo Vedid Gloriam reminds me of a friend I used to have. But Cristo can get us, this pack of rebels against simple life and death, to Soliara's capital and inside Constellation's main office. Cristo has 'unlimited access.' Not me — Constellation cut me off. He's got direct linking. I practically invented the magic behind instant teleportation; I innovated the theoretical mechanics to make direct link possible, but I have never experienced it. I feel a yearning when, after a watch check and a wink, he disappears. I'm jealous, and I have a right to be, but I fight the feeling that at times gets so strong I want to kill him, I want all that he has.

He must have completed step one — disrupt surveillance links. A portal slices a doorway into my office, half an inch from bisecting my azure opalwood desk. On the other side of the link, from inside Constellation, Cristo's head appears, his face beaming, and then an arm waves us in.