Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (62 page)

These are chambers designed for alien anatomies, the first extra-terrestrials to ever truly touch upon our planet’s surface. In this room, sterilized by technologies that combine the wisdom of both races, the two men open their real eyes for the first time in decades, stretch long dormant limbs, and groan as the last of the days-long reanimation process brings them back to consciousness.

As they both focus, they look at each other, and then at the small group of aliens waiting to meet them. They see their human selves and smile into these mirrors, the faces familiar from a decade of shared experience.

And next to their simulacrums they see Madeline and Jack. They know them both from now rejoined experience. They know them, but they have never truly met them until now. They warily nod, not a natural movement for Mobiliei necks but they attempt it anyway, knowing their faces must appear strange to these people who had come to be family.

But they all smile with very real affection, instantly seeing past their differences, knowing these men for who they really are: the people ultimately responsible for every saved life, for giving humanity back the future it now looks forward to.

These men are the ones that truly saved them, they know that, and Madeline steps forward with a tear in her eye. She steps up to the one she knows to be Shtat Palpatum, both of them remembering their first tentative meeting in a hotel room eleven years before, and slowly, but without fear, they extend their alien hands toward each other and touch for the first time.

For more information on books by Stephen Moss, and to hear about future releases,

you can find the author on Facebook, or email him directly at
[email protected]

Look for new titles from Stephen Moss in 2015,

including The Similar Infinites, a new series that explores the extent of our infinite universe,

and the many differences and similarities we can expect to find

if we ever discover a way to explore it.

Also look for The Orphans’ End, the story of the fates of

Banu and the orphan pilots, to be released as a short story in my newsletter

and on Facebook in the new year.

For now, though, this story is at an end.

But the greater questions it begets are just beginning.

Thank you for reading,

-Stephen