Kyl had not slept in four cycles. By the third, his hands trembled constantly, light was painful, and time itself seemed to stutter.

 

The medtechs called it “chrono-fracture” — a drift of consciousness from the body. Too many time zones. Too many light-jumps. The mind loses its tether to the physical body. Most cosmotroopers accepted sedation for what they called “droning.” He declined.

 

Instead, the clinic pointed him toward a lounge tucked behind the cargo atrium. A place where deep space travelers sometimes found sleep.

 

The sign above the entrance read:

 

THE ORACLE LOUNGE

 

Inside: soft blue lighting, muffled acoustics that made sound seem delayed, and a single attendant seated at a chrome console. She stood with composed precision when he entered.

 

Her eyes were amethyst irises of glass; lenses. Her voice, the calm of a still lake. Definitely humanoid; impossible to say how much was machine.

 

“Welcome, traveler. You may call me Anima. I will guide your rest.”

 

Her nametag read the same. Anima.

 

She gestured to a reclining pod. Its interior was silver with a black padded armchair. Kyl nodded and stepped in. The walls curved closed as a small light dimmed inside the pod. A hum began, deep and low, then a chilled mist filled the chamber.

 

His breathing slowed as his thoughts scattered like birds.

 

* * *

 

He opened his eyes to a pale gray fog. No sound or ceiling. Just a cool light that rippled as if underwater.

 

Then a quiet movement, more known than noticed.

 

A figure hunched over a massive book that sat atop a stone pedestal in the center of the space. The man’s hooded robe draped to the ground, and his fingers trembled as he turned each thick, glowing page.

 

As Kyl approached, the old man seemed to regard him without looking up.

 

Each page of the book displayed four moving images. As he got even closer, it became clear these were scenes from Kyl’s own life. One showed his mother’s hands cutting fruit. Another, a battle, firing his blaster into darkness. A third, a corridor he couldn’t name but somehow remembered. The fourth, himself as a boy, alone, staring out a window on Earth.

 

Each time the page turned, new fragments appeared. Unordered. Some painful. Some tender. None forgotten; all unexamined.

 

He looked up to speak. Intending to ask who the man was and how he came about a book of this significance. But the old hunched-over figure had vanished. In his place stood Anima.

 

But not as before.

 

Her skin now shimmered like molten silver. Her eyes glowed a bright metallic violet. Her voice, when it came, was not the robotic cadence he remembered, but something older. Something human beneath the artifice.

 

“You trained yourself to endure silence,” she said, “but not to listen.”

 

She stepped closer. The fog rolled around her like water, sending ripples infinitely in every direction.

 

“You held the world at arm’s length to survive it. And in doing so, you held yourself there too. That is why you can’t rest.”

 

Kyl said nothing. His throat tightened, and he became aware of his body turning to stone from the legs up.

 

“You did not abandon your soul,” Anima said, softer now. “You forgot that you had one.”

 

He looked into her eyes and saw no machinery, only reflection. Silver and shadow, storm and stillness. Himself, and something more. Her voice carried no judgment. Only grief.

 

As though part of her had waited — years, lifetimes — for him to return.

 

Kyl strained as the stone tightened around his neck. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, trying desperately to move any part of his body.

 

He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. He opened his eyes. The silver Anima was gone. The old man stood again beside the book and lowered his hood.

 

Kyl’s thoughts reeled as the figure gazed at him through broken and compassionate eyes. The recognition struck him like a pulse through the stone. It was him. Not as he was, but as he might yet become.

 

He gestured to Kyl, then to the book beside him. With a low rumble the book closed, the stone shell around him crumbled to ash, and he took in a full, relieved breath.

 

* * *

 

Kyl woke with tears on his face.

 

The pod opened in silence, and the mist billowed out gracefully. The lights of the lounge had warmed slightly, as if responding to the shift inside him.

 

Anima sat again at her console. She looked almost human again: soft-skinned, poised, quiet.

 

He passed her on the way out. She didn’t speak. She only nodded toward a rack of books by the door. He hadn’t noticed them when he came in. The sign above the rack said, “Take One.”

 

He opened it to find the inside cover had a brief note:

 

This dream journal is for you.

Write them all down and look for the patterns.

Your first service is always free.

You may return any time, but you can never go back.

 

He turned toward Anima and returned a gentle nod, holding up the journal before tucking it into a back pocket.

Outside the door, Kyl paused. For the first time in cycles, his hands had stopped trembling. But something else had begun: a motion not of the body. More of an emergence from an unknown depth — from somewhere inside himself.

 

Sleep might come now, and so would the dreams. And this time, something from within would respond.