It’s important for me to send my kindlings out into the world, and see them make their own way. You joked in your last letter – the one I didn’t answer, the latest one I didn’t answer – that you never imagined me as a stay-at-home mom when we were out fighting the Axiom and plying the spaceways together. I never imagined myself that way, either, and to be fair, being a kindler isn’t exactly the same as being a human parent. I programmed and tended the incubation pods, and when conditions were right, I sparked the life within them to growth. Unlike humans, when my people are born, we don’t have a long period of helplessness. We come out of the pods nearly two-thirds of our adult size (barring post-birth alterations), and since my people are capable of passing on our collective memories, once the kindlings are fed the right neural buds, they know things – like how to feed themselves, sure, but also the history of our people, or at least a history. Most of my people have no history, as you know. My kindlings are rare, because they know both the truth about our origin, and the truth behind the truth.

  Still, knowledge isn’t always the same as understanding. I birthed five kindlings that first year, Solvent and Crowbar and Windowpane among them, and seven the next year, and six the next, and two the year after. My sect always had a contingent of twenty-one people on our space station, and it seemed right to kindle enough young to meet that standard, even knowing most of them would leave, rather than lurking and spying on the fringes of the system like my generation did. The station is full and boisterous, though, with my people – my family, even if the relationship isn’t quite like that of mother and child. More like a beloved aunt or maybe a respected teacher, for most of them, anyway.

  It is still eerie, running this station, where I grew up, and where I was fed so many lies in the guise of truth. My elder on the station, and those on the central council, taught me and my siblings that we were the defenders of the galaxy. Our purpose was to stop the reckless humans from discovering the existence of the Axiom, because the humans would surely wake the old aliens, and then those nightmare beings would come shambling out of the grave to try and kill us all.

  To be fair, that did happen. You know. You were there. But there were other truths behind those truths. We weren’t really protecting the galaxy from the Axiom: we were protecting the Axiom until they were ready to return and rule the galaxy. When I found out the elders of the truth-tellers, those of us devoted to honesty and transparency among ourselves, had a secret agenda, and one so monstrous… I don’t know if I can explain how foundation-destroying that realization was, Elena. When you woke from cryo-sleep and found five hundred years had passed, that you’d entered a strange new world of wormholes, colony systems, and aliens who’d become commonplaces after centuries of interaction, how did you feel? The world had changed beneath you. The familiar was strange, and the bizarre mundane.

  That’s how I felt, when I learned that my leaders were secretly loyal to the Axiom, and working to ensure their return and the culmination of their horrible, universe-altering projects. I did what I had to do, when I discovered the truth. I allied myself with you and your friends, became part of your group, and fought to destroy the Axiom wherever we found them. I remember those days with pride. Taking down the ship-building station. Destroying the engine of the Dream. Liberating the people of the Vanir system.

  The hardest thing was taking over my home, Veritat, after we removed Elder Mizori for her crimes. The people I’d grown up with, people who’d become my enemies, who thought me an apostate and a traitor, were all gone. I walked the empty halls of that station, so full of memories, all now colored by the knowledge that my upbringing had been a lie.

  I served, though. I helped. I made up a story for the elders on the central council to explain the loss of my fellows, and took over the station monitoring the Sol system. When the elders initiated me into the mysteries – finally told me the real truth – I pretended it was all a surprise to me, and a welcome surprise. “All glory to the old masters, the Axiom will rise again!” I spied, and I hacked, and I stole, and I used their knowledge against them. When we finally obtained a map to all the other truth-teller stations in the galaxy, I went out on the sorties and led parties and helped take those stations, disable them, destroy them.

  I tried so hard to convince the people on those stations. They were like me: they’d been lied to. They’d been misled. Their elders had used them for dark purposes, and did not value their lives. I tried to tell them that everything they’d been told, about being the keepers of the flame of the true history of the galaxy, was a lie.

  They didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe it either, until I saw the evil my sect was willing to do in service of protecting the secrets of the Axiom. The other truth-tellers all died, or were captured.

  We could never find the central council, though. They were in hiding, fled, their station housing the museum of subjugation missing from its last known orbit. Eventually Callie and Shall ran enough simulations to decide the council wasn’t really a threat anymore. Their power came from their legion of spies and secret troops, lurking on the edges of every inhabited system and near all the Axiom facilities. Their forces were spread out and unseen, “like dark matter,” I remember you saying. Once we had access to the council’s computer systems and knew everything they knew, and neutralized those shadow forces, the council itself was deemed to be no longer a threat. “Let the old Liars hide out on some shitty asteroid until they die of disappointment,” Callie said.

  I went along with that, because there was no other option. But it bothered me. Why couldn’t we figure out where the council went? If they had some secret hidey-hole, some safe house (or safe planet, or safe system), it wasn’t listed in any database I could reach. I was an elder of the sect, a system chief, but the central council must have had secrets beyond my ability to access. My whole organization was based on a series of nested lies. I never believed I’d made it all the way to the center of the sphere of deception.

  If the council had a secret fallback location, I wondered, what other secrets did they have?

  So I retreated to my station, and I worked on the problem. Oh, I did other things: I raised my kindlings, and got the station repaired, and did my part to help rebuild the TNA. I attended government meetings in simulations and sent representatives when doing something in person was relevant. I shared what I knew about Axiom tech with Ashok to help his engineering projects. Shall’s inaugural bash five years ago was the last time I was with any of you physically, though.

  I’ve missed you, Elena. I shouldn’t even tell you how much I’ve missed you. We had a moment, once, on Owain, when I hinted about my true feelings, and I think you understood me… but that’s as far as it went. I understand why. You’re in love with Callie. It’s a beautiful thing, and I have accepted it. But my feelings didn’t go away. I thought being away from you would make it easier, but it didn’t, really. You were where my mind went when I wasn’t too busy to think. So I tried to stay too busy to think.

  While I was doing all the obvious stuff I mentioned above, I was doing secret stuff, too. I hate having secrets, from any of you, because being honest is deeply ingrained in me. I try to never knowingly lie, but I hate omission, too. I needed total control of the operation, though, and I worried it might be a giant waste of time, and that would have been embarrassing.

  The big secret is: I kept trying to reach the central council. I left messages at every dead drop in the galaxy. I sent encrypted splintercasts at the appointed times on the appointed channels. I followed protocols, and then I broke protocols, in a way I hoped would read like the desperate acts of an operative cut off by circumstance.

  I told the council a story. I told them that humans had discovered the Axiom, and the complicity of our sect in protecting the Axiom. I said the humans had hacked our systems and found our secrets. I explained that I’d pretended to turn traitor, to work with the humans, in order to protect at least one small bastion of our sacred cause from utter destruction. I explained that I was now deeply embedded with the humans, trusted by many of your governments, and in a position to do real damage, before all was lost. I crafted those messages so, so carefully, because telling lies, especially big outlandish lies, does not come easily to me. (It’s why I never lied to you about how I felt. The best I could ever manage was omission… and you helped me by not asking, I think so we could still be friends. You’re always so kind.)

  I did not hear from the council. I began to believe, after a few years, that Callie and Shall were right – the elders had given up, disbanded, fled to live out the remainder of their lives in hiding, rather than face death at the hands of the humans, or a trial for their crimes and complicity. They were, after all, the ones who ordered the destruction of the original Meditreme Station, and their organization was responsible for the genocide of countless species of sapient life over the millennia. We had to kill those alien intelligences for the good of the galaxy, because if they developed space travel, they might wake the Axiom, and then everyone would die. Terrible sacrifices, but necessary for the greater good.

  The only reason the truth-tellers didn’t exterminate humankind was because they discovered you too late, when you’d already spread throughout the galaxy, so they had to settle for a strategy of containment instead, and try to keep you away from the Axiom. They should have known it wouldn’t work. What’s that line you quoted to me once, about how accidents always happen? Something like “fences always fail?” We tried to fence the humans in, restrict you to relatively safe systems where you wouldn’t stumble on the Axiom, but that didn’t work, because humans get into everything. My people are generally not so reckless. (My sect, anyway.) We’re also more patient. Because we live a lot longer, and we can share in the memories of those who came before us, which gives us a long view and a greater perspective. (There are individual exceptions. Some humans are paragons of restraint, and Crowbar is the least patient and most impulsive member of the Free I’ve ever met.) My patience paid off. Yesterday, the central council finally made contact. We received a shipment of food-printer stock from Ganymede by way of New Meditreme, and I don’t know when or how the council hid their drone messenger inside. Either they have agents in our system still – a chilling thought, since I’m supposed to be in charge of their agents in our system – or they just found a way to pay someone off. One of my kindlings unloaded the crate, and brought me the little silver orb she found nestled among the barrels. The orb would only broadcast the words “Deliver to the head of station” for her, but once I had it alone in my private office, it spoke to me:

  Elder Lantern. We were pleased you made contact and that you have not been compromised. We require a meeting in person. We will open a bridge for you. Come alone, and tell no one of your destination.

  Hail the ancient masters, may they yet live again.

  Then they provided a time, and a location, on the surface of Pluto. Why they chose that particular icy planitesimal is a mystery to me, though it is the most famous of the dwarf planets out here on the edge of the system, so maybe it was selected out of convenience. I look for hidden meanings everywhere. Since I sometimes find them, I can never stop.

  I considered reaching out and calling you and Callie and everyone, because this is it, the chance to get the council, finally. Except they’re opening a wormhole for me, to take me to an unknown location. They’re opening it on the surface of a planet, so we can’t sail a battleship through, and I have no idea what will be waiting on the other side. The council was always paranoid, always looking at worst-case scenarios, and since we systematically destroyed their organization, they’re doubtless even more careful now. If I lead some kind of strike team into a trap and everyone dies I’ll never forgive myself. I could send drones, bombs, mobile weapons platforms, things that wouldn’t risk lives… but I don’t anticipate passing through that bridge and stepping into a room where the elders of the council are lined up waiting to be murdered. There will doubtless be precautions on their end.

  I have to pretend to be what they claim to believe I still am: a loyal member of their sect. I have to go, and find out where they are, and what they plan, and somehow get that information back here.

  I will do everything in my power to return, Elena. But if I can’t, I didn’t want to disappear without reaching out. To tell you how much I love you. That love never came with expectations, or obligations, or honestly even hopes, but still. Feeling what I feel for you has deepened and enriched my life, and I wanted you to know that. The days and nights I spent with you were the happiest in my difficult life.

  You told me once that you thought my name – the name I chose when I emerged from my own incubation pod – was perfect for me, “Because wherever you go, you bring so much light with you.”

  I hope you’re right. I hope I can take some light into the dark now.

  Yours,

  Lantern

  Dear Elena,

  I knew you would receive the last letter I wrote. I sent it, encrypted with our private key, to your personal account, right before I shut down my comms and went dark and proceeded with my mission. I could have kept my channels open until I passed through the bridge, but I was afraid I’d get a reply from you before I left. I know I must have worried you, but if you told me how much I’d worried you, I would have felt even worse about disappearing on what might well be a doomed mission.

  You always write back so fast – did you know that’s part of why I’ve been such a terrible correspondent? You write these wonderful letters, full of chat and history and philosophy and quotes from ancient Earth media and funny stories about our friends and these little glimpses into your innermost mind and heart, especially when you talk about the work you’ve done setting up the schools and clinics on New Meditreme. I am methodical, slow, a plodder, and it takes me time to read, and reread, and absorb, and to look for the things you say between the lines, the implications, the unasked questions, the suggestions of speculation on your part.

  I used to spend a week crafting my replies, gazing at every word, every comma, gauging nuance. Then I’d send if off, and the next day I’d get a reply from you, just as full as the one before, and it amazed me, how those thoughts and words could just spring from your fingertips that way. I got overwhelmed. The time between letters got longer and longer because otherwise I would have thought about you, and what my next words to you would be, constantly, and I was both too busy for that and not strong enough in my heart. (The metaphorical sort of heart, I mean. My circulatory system has a lot of things that could be called hearts.) I think you were hurt, that our correspondence flagged. Maybe you thought I didn’t like you as much anymore, or that we’d grown distant.

  The truth is I liked you more than ever, and the distance was a coping mechanism and a way to protect myself. It’s hard not to feel silly about… all this. One of the Free, in love with a human. It’s not unheard of, but it’s understandably pretty rare. To be in love with a human who’s married to another human already is worse. Add in the fact that your wife Callie is also a friend of mine, and it all becomes so awkward I want to crawl into a black hole because then there’s no coming out.

  I thought about talking to Shall, sometimes. He mentioned once that he knew how I felt about you, but I just brushed him off. I regret that sometimes. I know he was in love with Callie for a long time, and that he is also close to you. I thought he might know some coping mechanisms for how to deal with these complicated feelings – the ones where I genuinely wish you well, but also genuinely wish… well. I never broached the subject with him, though. I was afraid he’d pity me. Or that he’d found his similar situation easy to get over, and would wonder why I was having such a hard time. I didn’t think I could stand that kind of reaction. I kept everything to myself. Until now, of course.

  I am being more honest than usual here because this is a letter you’ll probably never get, though I have made a promise to myself: if I ever find a way, I will send it to you. If I die, you might as well know my truth. And if I survive this experience, I can also survive laying that truth before you. I believe in the truth as an absolute good. I believe in the power of light and illumination over darkness and secrets. That is why I named myself Lantern. That is why I joined you in the fight against my sect and the Axiom. I have to be brave enough to live those convictions.

  But for now, I’m very far away with no immediate prospect of return, so, here’s what happened.

  I took a small ship to Pluto. It’s a beautiful little planetling, did you know that? Ice and craters and mountains, patterns of dark and light on the surface, making the sort of shapes that seem almost intentional. Once upon a time that not-quite-a-planet was the farthest humans could see – its discovery marked the very limit of your vision. The galaxy opened up for you later, and cracked wide when you met my species, those tribes and sects and families that earned the name Liars with their wild stories and impossible assertions… but Pluto was the last milestone once, and so deserves its otherwise oversized place in your history.

  I settled at the appointed place, and emerged from the ship in my environment suit, with a pack full of things I didn’t think the council would find too threatening, mostly food and medical supplies. I waited, in the dark and the cold, my suit lights shining on barren ground.

  We almost never open bridges near solid objects. You’ve seen what happens when a wormhole opens inside a ship, or a station – the forces of altered space-time tear everything apart. In theory we can open a bridgehead half a meter off the ground, and there won’t be a negative impact on the surrounding environment… but aim incorrectly, and you’ll gouge a hole out of the ground at best, or set off a seismic event at worst. The chances of miscalculation are very small, but the consequences of miscalculation are very large, so why not be safe?