A Universe Away
This is my first story here! 🌌 A short romance/sci-fi series, 9 episodes, posting one at a time. This is just the beginning for Callum and Iris... stay tuned for episode 2! :)
Episode 8
Twenty Years of Listening
Everyone believed Callum's love of astrophysics came from a love of the stars.
He let them believe it.
It was true. Just not in the order they assumed.
He studied.
He trained.
He applied to the astronaut program once, twice, a third time, rejected every time, and kept going anyway.
He kept a private notebook — small differences between a universe he could no longer visit, just in case the details ever mattered to someone besides him.
He never told anyone why he really wanted to go up.
Even in waking life, some part of him kept listening — in static, in silence, in the hiss of a receiver tuned to absolutely nothing.
Twenty years.
Two decades of looking up and finding only sky.
Then, on an ordinary watch, on an ordinary night, his instruments caught something they were built to dismiss as noise.
He didn't dismiss it.
Nobody believed him.
Still listening.
Everyone believed Callum's love of astrophysics came from a love of the stars.
He let them believe it.
It was true. Just not in the order they assumed.
He studied.
He trained.
He applied to the astronaut program once, twice, a third time, rejected every time, and kept going anyway.
He kept a private notebook — small differences between a universe he could no longer visit, just in case the details ever mattered to someone besides him.
He never told anyone why he really wanted to go up.
Even in waking life, some part of him kept listening — in static, in silence, in the hiss of a receiver tuned to absolutely nothing.
Twenty years.
Two decades of looking up and finding only sky.
Then, on an ordinary watch, on an ordinary night, his instruments caught something they were built to dismiss as noise.
He didn't dismiss it.
Nobody believed him.
Still listening.
Chapter 8
— Episode 8 of 9