Fiction: The Reunion, a short story

The Reunion 📡

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-05-22

In pitch perfect silence the vessel cut through the vast darkness.

It left no ripples behind. The stars made almost no reflections upon the hull and the eyes that once had seen its creation had since long been closed forever.

Had it not been for the marking on one of the wings, then the name would also have been forgotten.

It was a generational spaceship, assumed to be the last of its kind. Where the crew was born, where they lived and where they died.

Every person onboard had their allotted number of resources. There was an equilibrium of sorts were nothing went to waste and everything was recycled somehow.

The food was distributed through a simple algorithm, invented before anyone currently living in the ship had been born. They sometimes referred to that era as the old days.

In the evenings the older generations would tell the young ones stories of the old days, as their predecessors in turn had told them the stories throughout the millennia.

One of the most popular stories spoke of a red planet. With dense forests in which the flora reached high, gatherings of clear water, tall mountains and large deserts with caves.

The young ones would look at the person telling this origin story as if they were enthralled. They had heard it a hundred times by now, knew it by heart even, and who knows how many times the story had been repeated.

Everyone knew the end of the story, for it was also the beginning. It carried a grave message. The destruction of the planet, weapons that generated the energy of a small star, the lingering radiation and the end of all that was good. Trees being atomized, lakes turned to steam and later into pure plasma and volcanic stones covering the surface. The once colorful dot in space was now a quiet graveyard with few traces of civilisation, as desolate as its celestial neighbors.

This extinction event did not put a full stop to civilisation, but it marked a new beginning for the select few that boarded the last of two ships that had managed to escape the planet. The first ship boarded was destined for a nearby planet, but for a long time it was believed to have been lost when communication ceased. The second ship took their chances in other regions of space, in search for a habitable planet.

Months without communication passed at first, then the years and eventually generations. A few attempts had been made to send out scouts. Vehicles harnessing the power of light made desperate patrols as long as the fuel lasted, but they always returned unsuccessful, if they returned at all.

Countless generations had passed when strange signals first reached the remaining generational ship. Electromagnetic waves, both long and short, barely noticeable at first. Rhythmic and to some degree resembling a pattern.

A few generations later a strange object had been caught by the advanced sensors. What looked like an unmanned spaceship was traveling through space and a golden disk that it carried was brought aboard after the vehicle was slowed down using a spacetime reverser. The crew aboard the ship knew they had found the traces of the descendants of the lost twin ship.

It was only some time later that the dark ship carved an elliptic path towards the blue, green and white planet. The resources would finally let them be free from their casket. They had also learned to decode the electromagnetic signals over the years. A simple, almost barbaric, method of communication but it was clear that they communicated with the ship now.

After simple decoding, enhancement and translation, the message simply read "Welcome to Earth".

Fiction: The Visitor, a short story

The Visitor

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-05-10

In the cosmic scale of things, a thousand years is nothing.

For mortals it is an eternity, a lifetime.

This universal fact had never been clearer to Eolia Nemertinth.

She stood before the council, accused of interfering with the cosmic order when she had refused to carry out adjustments of the official timeline, changes that she didn't believe in and was opposed to.

Working for the council normally meant avoiding interfering with the timelines and the human world. Though something had made the eldest members worried and they foresaw a future that they could not allow.

Eolia, being the perfect entity to carry out the mission, had flat out refused. Much to the anger of the council members.

For this disobedience she was sentenced to 50 years of mortality, to live a life amongst the people she so adamantly had defended, against her own superiors. They wanted to teach her a lesson while showing her the nature of mankind and why they once had sought the actions that they had needed her for.

After a brief hearing amongst the stars and interplanetary dust clouds they sent her essence to earth.

Nine months later she was born as a human baby somewhere in a big city.

The formative years were not easy, the human parents struggled to give her the essentials. Salaries were low, the costs of living seemed ever rising and society offered little help. Despite this they worked hard and did their best for young Eolia.

The school years that followed were shaped by the stress to perform, a feeling of being different from other children and the worship of obedience, as the teachers and adults demanded attention and the following of rules for the sake of following them.

Eventually Eolia entered the workforce and to her it seemed much like the previous years of school, manmade order and control held a higher standing than the principles of goodness. She saw abuse of power, wages being cut and the worst sides of people coming out. She would read news and get glimpses of videos depicting atrocities and misfortunes around the world. At this time she never felt more alone and she wondered why she was there, why the world looked like it did. While she had no clear memory of what came before, there was still a subtle echo that never left her. A feeling that she was not of this place and that she would leave one day again.

And as she left the middle age years, living decades among people had taken the best parts of her spirit and made her dull to the aches of the world. She had seen too much, experienced too much. Her human parents had since long passed on to their next destination and she was left alone in the world.

Some month after her 50:th birthday she stopped showing up at work, it took days before anyone came looking for her and they found her sitting peacefully in her favorite armchair. For the mortals her story was over, but for her this was a brief chapter in an eternal corpus. She had gone home and repented.

Having returned to her part of the universe, she once again found herself in familiar surroundings and she was brought before the council again, who in their high seats looked down upon the homecomer.

They fixed their radiant eyes upon her, and after a moment they spoke.

"You know more than anyone about the humans. You lived among them. You know how they treated you, each other and the planet we gave them. What is your judgment, do they deserve a second chance?"

She looked down on her hands, once again perfect in their own creation no longer worn by mortal hardship, her hair covering her face for a moment as it hung down.

She then looked up on the higher beings, delivering her verdict.

Fiction: The Sleepwalker, a short story

The Sleepwalker

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-05-08

The alarm went off, an energic sharp sound, it cut deeply into the subconscious. Pulling the man out of another night of disturbed sleep. 

He had had the dreams again. The forest. The stone. The runic carvings.

When he first moved out to the countryside it was not only to escape the stressful city life as he had told his family, but there was something else. An magnetic attraction guiding him just like a compass pointing in a specific direction.

At the time he did not know what it was, he explained it away with the regular reasons, that fresh air and the connection to nature is close at heart for any human being.

But things started happening almost after the first week. His belongings started going missing from the wooden cabin, everything from tools to food. Strange dreams would plague his nights. Voices low as a whisper would be carried by the breeze.

The area was supposed to be sparsely populated and the nearest neighbors were far away, at least a good fifteen minutes of walking. He had bought the simple home for a bargain not even a month ago from an old lady destined for a nursing home. A plaque with the name Eunice Crants stamped into it was still nailed to the wall next to the door. Apparently Mrs. Crants’ health had deteriorated rapidly the last year and the family could no longer take care of her in her remote residence falling deeper into a deteriorating state.

One day, in order to clear his foggy mind, he decided to have a walk though the forest as it was still early afternoon, and he told himself he would remove the plaque with her name later as well so he could put up one with his own name, Loris Stedman.

As he was walking in the forest his mind quieted down. He focused on the surroundings and let himself forget his troubles for a while. His boots threaded onwards seemingly carelessly, but as with anyone that doesn’t heed their next step he ended up on a path he hadn’t seen before. It led deeper into the forest. The change in the air was subtle, barely noticeable by the conscious mind, but rather something that the primal instincts would pick up on. The trees grew taller, the light grew dimmer and the air grew thicker as if it had stood still for some time.

When he realized his predicament he had already arrived at an opening in the forest, where the treetops almost weaved together, forming a ceiling of sorts. Roots, thorns and small rocks covered the path, but it was as if his feet knew every obstacle, guiding him towards a large stone rising up in the middle of the clearing. A runic stone that made Loris shudder as it towered above him as his stood in front of it. 

 

As if something pulled his arm, his hand moved towards the gray obelisk and touched the surface, which was colder than he expected. His finger traced the roughly carved runes and it was as if the stone itself slowly fed off of his body heat. He stood in the high grass around the stone and as he moved his feet he heard a crunching sound. Looking down he could see pale bones strewn around. Some had been there for a long time and others still had traces of dried blood, indicating that whatever was going on here, had been going on for a long time and still to this day.

Disturbed by this finding, Loris turned around and quickly headed back to his new home. Heartbeats deafening and his breathing almost burning. 

He got home before the evening and it was first as he stood on the porch that he spoke the first words out loud. “What the hell was that?”. Even as he tried to make himself busy with the new name sign outside the door, he could not shake the feeling that he had been in the presence of something dark and evil. Trying to smooth out a bit of the surface of the wall where the new plaque would hang, he looked for his chisel, but despite emptying the toolbox on the porch, it was nowhere to be found. Under normal circumstances he would have just gotten angry but eventually gotten a new one, but something about this felt unusual. Ever since he had moved here, things had disappeared. Just the other week a hammer got lost and before that his favorite knife. Once is misfortune, twice is coincidence but three times, at least? Something was at play and it made Loris feel uneasy, so much so that he begrudgingly accepted a slight tilt on the sign with his name and returned indoors for the evening.

He lit a fire in the fireplace, washed his hands and headed for the sofa in the small living room. Facing the fire he felt calm return to his body, a sigh of satisfaction escaped and he leaned back eyes staring into the ever chaotic dancing of the flames. The flames that had brought protection and safety for humans since it’s first discovery, before the words to describe its comfort even came into existence, now kept him company.

He zoned out for a few seconds and found himself staring into the bright light, almost in a hypnotic state. For him there was no past, no future, not even the present. It was as if the fire spoke to him directly and he could only listen.

And at the edge of what is audible, a voice spoke, as if it was part of the background noise of the forest surrounding the cabin or coming from the walls themselves.

Shadows moved independent from the wild movements of the fire and he heard the voice of something ancient speak.

“I know you can hear me. You have bridged the abyss. They took her away from me before the work was complete and now you are chosen to fulfill the prophecy. You have done a good job so far. There is one last thing you need to finish before I can return from the other side.”

Hearing this Loris just nodded. Everything made sense to him now. The destination had revealed itself and so had the path leading there.

Night eventually came and this time he didn’t bother locking the door or setting the alarm.

Raspberry Pi: Pi-hole revisited

Having lost the SSH-password to my Raspberry Pi which was running the Pi-hole network wide adblocker and having a router that started bugging out every day, it was again time to redesign my home network.

This time I sat down and set up a more organized network map, by working with fixed IP:s and listing up my personal devices.

First I removed the router that was having issues and reset the intended router. Having the new router set up I could then work with the rest of the equipment again.

I reset my Raspberry Pi and reinstalled the OS following this guide.

Now having access to a fresh installation of the Raspberry Pi OS lite and Pi-hole, I could also do something I wasn't able to before due to the lost credentials, namely updating the Pi.

As usual you open Powershell as admin and run the command SSH username@ipaddress which connects you to the device itself.

Then you run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade to update the Pi itself.

After it is updated, you update the Pi-hole by first checking the version, using sudo pihole -v followed by sudo pihole -up if needed.

In the Pi-hole GUI I could also set up a list of clients, and divide them into two groups. I started with a group for personal devices and one group for IoT to get some practice in.

Cybersecurity: Networking, back to basics

Introduction

Every once in a while, it is good to brush off your knowledge and repeat the fundamentals. Sometimes you are completely new and need to build an understanding of the big picture or you don’t even know where to begin asking questions.

One important but ever-present area in cybersecurity is networks. It is one of many things that the blue team defends and the red team tries to breach. It is in the air and in the walls around you. It is with you when you travel and it keeps the world connected.

When thinking about networks I like to think about it from the perspective of the user and their devices. These devices at the “end of the line”, our phones and computers, are also known as endpoints.

In order for them to get updates, send messages, use certain apps or do anything productive in the web browser they need to be connected to the network. The smartphone or the computer might be connected wirelessly to a wi-fi, while a stationary computer might be connected with an ethernet cable.

The physical setup

In a business environment you sometimes see devices in the ceiling. There are devices like these that broadcast one or multiple wireless networks. Have you ever connected to a guest network at an office or a wi-fi in a café? It is likely that your device was communicating with that device in the ceiling, often called access point, or referred to as an AP.

So how is the access point able to broadcast a network for you to connect to? It happens to talk with something called a switch. It has a large number of ports, which are outlets for network cables. The switch can be managed by the IT team, segmenting the network traffic so that some devices cannot talk to other devices even if they are physically connected to the same switch. This division of traffic is referred to as Virtual Local Area Network (“VLAN”). This is a great way to enhance network security, for the simple reason that some devices might not be very safe and needs to be kept isolated.

The question then arises, how does the switch get network access and data to distribute throughout the workplace? Usually there is a router in the building that is connected to the outside, usually through a coaxial, copper or fibre-optic cable. Through this connection the router is talking to the company providing the customer with internet, the so-called internet service provider (“ISP”). When you look up your own or someone else’s IP-address online, it is the address of the router that you find, the public IP-address.

In a home environment on the other hand, it is common that you have only one device that does all things. It broadcasts wireless internet, distributes network through physical ports and has network protection in the form of a firewall. A firewall is basically a set of rules that allows and blocks certain traffic from going in or out. In a business grade environment, the firewall can be located in separate devices.

The non-physical side

We looked at the physical devices that can be used in networking, but it is only one side of the story. We also need to cover a bit about the things that you might not see, that are equally important.

Let’s start with the devices that you connect to the network, in order for the information to go to the right device they are provided an internal (“local”) IP-address on the network by something called the DHCP-server. IP stands for Internet Protocol and DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.

The IP-address that your phone is given on the network itself is normally not visible outside the network, when your phone visits a website it is your public IP-address that is shown. This is why devices on completely separate networks might have the same IP-address without any conflict. If two devices have the same IP-address on the same network however, it might cause issues. You can see the public IP-address as the address to an office building which the postal service is trying to deliver mail to. The local IP-address works like an identifier for the specific office to which the receptionist in the building is carrying the letter to. The router on the network, also called a gateway, has an IP-address too. This is so that your phone knows where to send the outgoing data for example.

It is worth mentioning MAC addresses as well, these are unique identifiers that is connected to the hardware in your device. While IP-addresses are provided and can change, the MAC normally cannot. However, it is possible to fake your MAC address, making it look like you use a different device than you actually are using. The act of faking this identifier can also be referred to as spoofing your MAC address.

When you visit a website you might enter a website address in the web browser, but your devices are thinking in IP-addresses, so there is something called DNS that helps with this translation. DNS stands for Domain Name System and it works like a phonebook. First your computer checks if the IP for the address that you are searching for already is stored in memory, otherwise it talks to a DNS server to get the correct IP so that it can communicate with the website. The DNS server can exist in different locations such as at your Internet Service Provider or at a public DNS provider (Cloudflare and Google being two commonly used ones). There is a certain type of attack called DNS poisoning that basically means that the phonebook contains malicious entries, so that the translation is corrupted. So even if you enter the correct website address, it connects you to a bad IP-address.

Finally, we will take a brief look at what is actually sent across the network.
The simplified version is that the raw data is sent through the network in wrappers called packets. Something called protocols define how the data is contained in these packets. With older and unencrypted protocols sensitive data might be intercepted if someone is sniffing the network.

The role of the defender

As you can see, there are many components that interact with each other and the defensive task doesn’t get easier. Taking inventory of what you need to protect, updating firmware and maintaining firewall policies are just a small part of network security. Security hardening is the process of reducing vulnerabilities and making your system harder to attack and that is something you need to work with regularly as a defender.

Cybersecurity: Quantum Computers

The quantum future

Introduction

One of the next big leaps in IT is the on-going and imminent development of quantum computers. I was very fascinated when I first heard about them and their potential a couple of years ago, which is why I want to share some of the fundamentals because of their implications on the cybersecurity field. This article aims to spread awareness without digging way too deep into the technical details, because frankly it is a complicated topic.

Encryption

First, we need to talk a bit about the basics of encryption, what it is and how it works.
The most basic example would be when you visit a website and enter sensitive information such as a password, perhaps you log onto your favorite social media. In many modern websites the information that travels between your computer and the remote server is protected with encryption. It is not readable for a human mind, it requires a key to remove the encryption essentially.

When sensitive data is sent, it often includes encryption. This essentially means that it is sent in an unreadable format, instead of a plaintext format, and only the right key can unlock the secret information. The encryption can be done with a method such as asymmetric encryption. One example is cryptography based on RSA (“Rivest-Shamir-Adleman”).

Asymmetric encryption uses two keys, one public and one that is kept private.
If you want to send data to someone, you send it using the recipient’s public key. They can then decrypt the data using their private key without having to share it with anyone.

As an extra step, the sender can sign what they send using their private key, which allows the receiver to confirm it using the public key of the sender.

The idea is that even if someone intercepts and stores the data being sent, they can’t read it, because they don’t have the right key. Sounds good right? In some cases, the encryption can be brute forced, revealing the secrets without having had the key. This can be done with a regular computer, but not always within a reasonable amount of time. This is where the quantum computers come in.

Quantum computers

So, what on earth is a quantum computer? They are energy efficient computers that solves really complex computational problems with the help of quantum mechanics. When we look at classical computers, which are the ordinary computers we are used to, they store information in bits, whereas the quantum computer stores the information in qubits. A bit is zero or one, while the qubit can be zero, one or a specific combination of both. When the qubit is in multiple states at once, it is referred to as being in superposition.

While there actually are quantum computers in use today there are still difficult problems that researchers are working on, still making them something of a thing of the future. There are organizations that already claim to have reached so called quantum supremacy, which is when a quantum computer can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve within a practical time frame.

When practical quantum computers will be more readily available it will also mean that plenty of sensitive data will be vulnerable. Fortunately, this scenario is still in the future and there are many years left to take precautions.

Asymmetric encryption is vulnerable to something called Shor's algorithm and even the longer encryption keys seem to be in danger of being defeated. Even if this might happen in many years there is still data stored today. Whether the data is stolen or not, it runs the risk of being decrypted. Data harvested today can be cracked later on as the quantum technology keeps maturing. This is one reason why new cryptographic algorithms are part of the solution.

As an example, NIST ("National Institute of Standards and Technology") that has worked with other encryption standards released three resilient post-quantum encryption standards in 2024.

The three standards that were selected after a lengthy investigation were:

* ML-DSA (Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm)

* SLH-DSA (Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm)

* ML-KEM (Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism)

There are multiple participants in the quantum race and perhaps we can see similarities with the AI revolution. Some companies will fall behind and others will excel with this new exciting technology.

Access to quantum tools will lead us to a world with new rules. New security challenges will arise which will put new demands on software and hardware. Threat actors will have new ways of working and the role of the defender will also change along with it.

I, for one, follow the development with great interest and hope you found the article interesting.

Sources

Below are links that helped me put the article together so that you may research the topic further.

Information about asymmetric encryption:

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/what-is-asymmetric-encryption/

An interview with D-Wave CEO regarding quantum computing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOfuh_Wdshw

An introduction to post-quantum cryptography by NIST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE_Y1C4QPU8

Why regular encryption is not quantum safe by IBM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecvCfTPRBrI

The three finalized post-quantum encryption standards by NIST:
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/08/nist-releases-first-3-finalized-post-quantum-encryption-standards

Fiction: The Fall, a short story

The Fall

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-12-26

A light smog covered the top of the buildings as the red morning sun shone through the ghostlike mist. The rays barely reflected off of the grey concrete monoliths rising up from the urban jungle.

From one of the buildings a long line of people stood waiting for something, trailing across the otherwise empty street like a slithering snake.

His hand clutched a small device, not much bigger than a vintage USB-drive. It was his authentication device that would grant him the daily rations of oxygen and water. He had fetched his monthly licence for seven hours of ad free sleep earlier that day from the ministry of dreams.

Behind him he could still hear the hushed but audibly concerned voices of people talking about how their productivity credits were running low. How things used to be different. How people had started going missing.

He himself glanced at his port-a-thenicator to see his balance, it would barely cover the caloric purchase later.

A robotic voice spoke up from the panel located on the wall as he finally got to the front of the line. He scanned his device and the voice spoke. “Greetings, Bastian Mynscel. In the delivery compartment to your right your oxygen and water is available for pickup by the grace of the Council. 17 productivity credits have been withdrawn”.

He picked up his goods and as he was leaving he could hear the next person in line being declined due to insufficient funds. A scuffle broke out as a nearby guardbot attempted to arrest the citizen. He had seen this before and was sure the rumors of disappearances had something to do with it. Hardship and cybernetic implants had made his senses dulled, cold to what was happening at the supply shop. He was already on his way to the protein factory to make his purchase and he was running late.

He counted the blocks he was passing as he was walking along the street, it was easier to count the buildings than trying to recognize them as individual buildings as they were essentially looking the same. After a couple of blocks he arrived at the factory, where chimneys worked tirelessly to contribute to the unnatural clouds covering the top floors of the neighboring office buildings.

The line of waiting people was shorter than ever before and he joined the end of it. A scrawny man stood by the side, twitching slightly and he spoke with a slurred voice. “Do you never ask why the line keeps growing shorter for every day? They say that the workers that no longer are productive goes here. To feed the other workers.”

Bastian had already looked away, and his initial reaction was to ignore the man and consider him a fool.

But there was something about these words that gnawed at the back of his mind. Sometimes truth only needs to be spoken once. It made sense. The one thing they never ran out of in the city was meat. This was indeed where the Council would send the least productive workers.

In the old days this would cause an outrage. But greed changes a system, hunger changes a person and desperation triumphs over morals.

Virtualization: Testing Proxmox and ESXi

After evaluating my home environment I thought it was time to repurpose the home server into a dedicated host for virtual machines. Ideally one of these will run my Minecraft server and as time goes on I might find other uses that I can launch additional VMs for. 

However instead of running a Type 2 Hypervisor, such as a Oracle Virtualbox on top of a Window 11 machine, I wanted to see if I could get a Type 1 Hypervisor to run bare metal. I have some experience working with VMware workstation and vSphere, but not installing one. So this is a documentation of my journey, more than a  guide. Note that VMware ESXi did not work on my Dell Optiplex, because it did not find the ethernet adapter. So then I tried Proxmox instead.

Downloading the .iso for ESXi

1. I started downloading the software which required me to register on Broadcoms website. In the top corner I clicked on register and followed a simple registration process.

2. After login in I went to the free downloads portal and looked for "VMware vSphere Hypervisor".

3. There I clicked my way to version 8.0U3e. I had to accept an agreement before I could download the .iso with the cloud icon. The download itself was just about 600mb and it is already licenced.

Installation issues with the .iso for ESXi

According to guides online it is as simple as booting from the .iso.

So I was going to put that to the test, but first - backup the current installation of course!

I wrote the .iso to a USB and booted from it, so far so good, but in the middle of the installation I ran into a common problem, the ethernet adapter was not supported by the OS. So here the journey ended.

Going with Proxmox instead.

I started by getting the .iso and wrote it to a USB with Rufus.

Then I booted my server from the .ISO and let it install. One learning I took away from this was that I had to put AHCI mode instead of the RAID, this is because the Proxmox installation didn't find the harddrive.

After a while I was faced with a login screen on the computer and an IP. This was my cue to get on my usual computer and browse into the IP.

The username is defaulted to "root", password is the password you set up in the installation.

You get into a view that is segmented into "datacenter", "username", "localnetwork", "local (username)" and "local-lvm (username)".

Creating my first test VM

My first takeaway here was to upload the .iso that you want into the segment called "local (username)" and ISO-images. It is a simple upload.

Next step is to press the segment just called "username" and do the create VM button.

You fill in name, ID, select cores and an amount of RAM that will be sufficient.

I had some easily fixed issues in my first attempts, too many cores and too much ram.

After fixing that I could start it with no issues. Surprisingly enough even the network worked.

I loaded in a Win11 x64 .iso with 8gb om ram and a couple of cores to do my first testing.

After that it was a usual Windows setup.

Updating the Proxmox

You can either login on the computer directly, or use SSH root@ipaddress with your password.

Then do the usual apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get update -y and you will update the OS.

Fiction: The Descendant, a short story

The Descendant

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-09-17

A couple of pigeons were strutting around on the ground as a cool breeze swept across the plaza. It was early spring when I decided to have my coffee outdoors for the first time this year.

One of the birds stood out against the others, it was white and slightly spotted. They were living in the moment, scouring for crumbles that had been left on the ground from earlier guests.

After a while they took off flying towards another part of the city, and I was once again alone with myself and my thoughts.

Glancing at my wristwatch, I knew it was time, they would be here any minute so I took my cup and went inside and found a secluded corner in the café.

As expected, and as they usually are, they were on time. Temporal agents were coming through the door and gracefully coming over to my corner where they sat down, face to face with me. Apart from their wildly different clothes, they all shared the same face. My face. Or maybe I carried their face.

When you work for The Time Council you are sometimes provided a new identity. Instead of looking like a nobody, they make you look like everybody. Should one agent be caught, then the opposition would simply think that they have captured the only agent. Perhaps they would even dismiss the person as a regular time traveler as there would be photos of the same person in multiple points in time.

One of them handed me a letter addressed to Ramel Loveworth, which read:

“Mr. Loveworth, you have been permanently dismissed from the Council for interfering with the timeline. As an agent you are there to observe and not be observed. Your actions have costed us greatly. The rules are clear and despite this you intervened. Hand in your device to agent Sidney Bardlet and continue your civilian days in time alone from this point onwards.”

I stared at the paper, deep down I knew that I had broken the rules but even now I was also convinced that I did the right thing. Countless lives had been saved from a terrible fate no one knew about now. A brief moment followed and I removed the wristwatch and put it in the outstretched hand of agent Bardlet.

Without a word they got up and left as proudly as they had entered, leaving me alone in the corner again. My eyes drifted to my wrist, realizing what it all had costed me.

As we had been to every point in the past and the future, we also developed a near perfect understanding of cause and effect. What people sometimes attributed to random occurrences or accidents we always knew how to trace back to the source.

What is difficult with having access to any point in the timeline is not that you don't know what to change, because you will not run out of such things.

It is knowing that you are able to but shouldn't change it, and now I know the price for doing so.

 

Fiction: The Returned, a short story

The Returned ❄️

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-10-29

What is scarier than entering cryo sleep? Well, that would have to be waking up from it. That's at least what the scientist told herself when she was looking down at the cryo chamber laying before her in the subterranean vault. A plaque with the name Rose Monime was the only thing giving the metal box a purpose to the unknowing eye. 

To the scientist this was a purpose greater than herself, the box had been there before her, and it had originally been intended to be there after her. In fact, no one at the Ark facility alive today had personally seen Rose. She had been frozen in time since a previous era, when cryo sleep, cloning and factory made humans were illegal, and at best instantly deadly. A horrible fate awaited most brave souls participating in the early, secret, trials. Rose had been one of the first to successfully enter cryo sleep.

Every day the scientists painstakingly ran checks and documented the vital signs provided by the now dated technology. Every day also meant a world that became more different from the world that Rose had known, should she ever return. 

And the day eventually came when the union between cutting edge science and luck were put to the test. With specially crafted microwave instruments and state of the art quantum particle analysis the scientists brought her back from this undefined state of being, neither alive or dead.

The pain of thawing after decades or centuries was indescribable. Every cell waking up from deep slumber was making it clear that this was against the wishes of any creator and the laws of nature.

The scientist looked at Rose as she became conscious after an almost 24 hour long recovery process. Her old memories, being electric impulses, were gone and new impressions flooded an almost factory reset brain. No one really knew what to expect either. In the same room, cryo chambers stood empty like open caskets gathering dust, indicating that there once had been others. She was the first one to not only make the journey but to also make it back, but some journeys make the traveler a different person. 

Rose's bewildered gaze met the scientist's and for a moment it looked like the two women shared a silent understanding. She spoke to Rose, but the woman in the cryo chamber said nothing. Her eyes had lost their human quality and she was just blankly looking at the scientist as if there was no one inside. As if the human spirit had left the body, leaving only a primitive animal behind.