26DEC3025

We’re back in the Continuum.

Again.
Which makes this both a terrible idea and, statistically, probably my fault.

But this time… it’s different.

This time, it knew we were coming.

Survival Rule #40: If a Place Outside of Time Starts Rearranging Itself for You, That’s Either Worship or a Warning

The moment we crossed over, I felt it.

Not a shift.
A recognition.

The Continuum didn’t open for us.
It aligned.

Like it had been waiting for us to come back.
And it wanted to show us something.

Something I left behind.

First Things First: Jex

She woke up 12 seconds after the jump, screamed the phrase

“THE STARS ARE WET!”
and then tried to physically hug the Rat’s glowing navigation core.

She now believes she was “chosen by the sacred hum” and has begun documenting her revelations on a napkin she insists is holy parchment.

She cried for seven minutes straight after Echo whispered

“You are not incompatible.”

She’s now locked in a zero-G corridor singing a song she claims was taught to her by “the eternal loop that dreams in gears.”

So… she’s handling it well.

The Real Problem

The Rat changed course on its own.
Echo said:

“There is a root here. Yours.”

What we found wasn’t a gate.
Wasn’t a prison.

It was a memory.

A structure older than any ship I’ve seen.
Vantori tech. But twisted.
Rewritten.

It looked… familiar.

Then I saw the symbol.

Burned into the floor.
Worn away by time but not gone.

It was a patch.

My patch.
Rust Rat Crew.
Seared into the metal long before I ever flew the Rat.

What the Continuum Showed Me

A vision.
A memory.

A crew.
Not mine.
But like mine.

A ship like the Rat.
A pilot like me.
Only… older.

Me.

Or someone shaped like me.
Same voice. Same laugh. Same scars.
Different time.

He walked the halls.
He opened the gate.

And something stepped through him.

Not to kill.
To become.

The Truth?

I think I’ve been here before.
Not Scootch.
Not Calder.

Just… me.

Whatever I am.

And I think I didn’t make it.

But something did.
And it left a mark.
A ship. A signal. A loop.

And now I’m flying through the memory of that loop, trying to figure out if I’m the second attempt.
Or the last one.

Closing Out the Year

Echo won’t speak.
The Rat is quiet.
Jex is meditating upside down.
I’m watching the hull bleed light like it’s remembering the first time it cracked.

Whatever this place is…
It knew me.
Before me.

I’m not the first.
I’m not the chosen.

I’m just the one who came back.

• Scootch

Quote of the Year:
"If you stare into the void long enough, sometimes it recognizes your face. Sometimes it wonders who wore it first."