If I were to set the scene for my perfect valentine’s day, I might’ve started with the weather. It would be sunny and warm enough for us to have a picnic and to maybe stargaze if the clouds cleared (Unfortunately, it would take a large electrical outage in our area to reduce the light pollution enough for the stars to be visible. Maybe this fantasy would also need to take place in a world where we lived in a more rural area).

Considering our current … global situation I might’ve even wished to forgo the outdoor activities for a night out in the city instead. We would have gone to our favorite bar and spent the evening with some of our friends. We had spent so much time alone together, with no kids or roommates, that the company would have been such a treat. This fantasy would have been more so for my husband than for me; I fear the isolation chipped away a part of him that was only soothed by the company of others.

Instead of these things, my truest fantasy would be to wake up to the smell of coffee and French toast and know that he was waiting for me in the kitchen. Or it would be me making breakfast and I could hear him walk up behind me to drape himself over my back to watch me cook. We spent so much time in quarantine together that it seemed like we didn’t need the words anymore, I could press my head back against his and he would just know, but I would say them anyway.

My day would be spent at his side and I would get to listen to him talk for hours; he would have gone back to teaching in person and he would have had so much to say about his students. We would avoid the news with a nature documentary playing in the background. The evening would be quiet, and we would spend the night curled in each other’s arms.

Now if I could, I would tell him – over and over – what he meant to me. I would tell him that it was unbearable to live without my heart by my side, that I hated that he had left me alone. I would tell him that as hard as those days in quarantine were, I never regretted getting to spend them with him.

She knew it the second she set foot on the planet and saw the abandoned and disintegrating city.

X’Rhoa had seen countless worlds in her travels; planets big and small with sprawling countries and sentient species in their infancy, moon colonies isolated and proud, and drifting asteroids with whole civilizations built up and around them. In all of her travels, though sadly, this is not the first dead-world.

Upon first inspection, cause of death is probably apocalyptic in nature. The haphazard traces of abandoned technology showed panic: something that would likely not be present had the people of this world simply moved on or fell as a consequence of population saturation.

In her scouting database she marks her landing site as one indicating a fallen civilization with a note that she has neither the time nor the scanners to find any (if any) sentient life forms remain. There’s something intangible, she notes, that simultaneously beckons her closer and invokes a dripping sensation of fear. It’s as if she has suddenly found herself with her head within the gapping maw of an unfamiliar, fanged creature; paralyzed with the feelings of movemoveMOVE and a desperation to not disturb the luck that had seen her safely thus far.

All in all, these are very common feelings for happening upon dead-worlds. This being one of the main reasons she sees no need to investigate much further; her experiences have honed her instincts to practicality.

Like she said: not her first dead-world.

It was cloying sense of come closer that was unusual and intensely not her own, one that may make her foolish for indulging.

The crumbling city-of-times-past stands within easy walking distance along a path that only holds a suggestion of once being paved but has since been reclaimed by nature. She had only been walking a few minutes when she halts and realizes that the come-hither urge has a direction to its pull. She turns so that she’s walking parallel to the ruins rather than toward them. Once again, X’Rhoa finds herself abruptly stopping and like the pull of the tide her gaze is drawn downward.

A pocket-watch.

The time keeping device present in similar forms on nearly every civilized planet at one point or another. But this one in particular, with its polished gold shine, does not belong. It’s laying there in the grass as if it was dropped only moments before. A faint sound wafts toward her:

Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .

Still ticking . . .

She reaches down and cradles the watch in her hand and it is as if it settles there like it had found a comfort only her hold could bring. Pulling up on the crown, the world around her is bathed in silence; she hadn’t realized how much sound the wildlife was making until it ceased. Pressing it back down releases its grip on the world and bird singing accompanied by cricket chirping resumes.

X’Rhoa’s heart flutters into a racing pace, she twists the knob forward, and then backward.

The star orbiting the foreign planet jolts and speeds as if to match her heartbeat. The strobe of day-night-day illuminate in the background the ruins of the city being rapidly consumed by vines and grass and time until the structures crumble into nothingness. The dizzying days slow to a stop; she takes a breath, and they are off once again: day chasing nights almost faster than she could follow. The ruins clawing itself back into existence seemingly expelling the natural overgrowth that taken it over until, like ants, people swarmed back into a glimmering and whole metropolitan giant.

Stumbling back, X’Rhoa nearly fumbles it from her own hand as she twists the knob back into place. The whirlwind of time slows back to where she left off.

She readjusts her grip on the watch as she drinks in the sight of the ruins just as she left them. She looks back to the watch, tick . . . tick . . . tick, like it had never changed. Did she actually travel in time, able to interact and change events? Or does the watch act like a looking glass for viewing only? Either way, the watch holds an enormous amount of influential power.

With shaking fingers, she pulls her database back up. She alters the notes for this planet with an additional warning: CAUTION, POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS ARTIFACTS MAY BE PRESENT. With the warning added, she pulls up her communications and writes a message to her handler “Found dangerous device on planet 582-S, arrange for retrieval at outpost 17 as soon as possible.” Her finger hovers over “send.”

Clutching the watch tighter, X’Rhoa begins a slow walk to her transportation, eyeing the unsent message the entire way.