I pulled the diary from the desk and fumbled for the on-switch on the top. It whirred into life, and I was shocked when I read the lock screen.
Diary of Leya Raynor, 2331 to 2336.
I remembered the moment Mum had rung me, back in early ‘32. I remembered the tears when she’d told me that Leya was missing; both hers and mine. I remembered us agreeing that we would do our bests to find her.
And yet, this journal was here. How could this have been? How could-
‘Mum?!’ I shouted. ‘What on Terra is this?’
When my mother poked her head around the corner, her face soon dropped. She lunged towards me, meaning to grab at the journal, but I pulled it away from her.
‘You have Leya’s diary? From while she’s been missing? And you didn’t tell me?!’
‘I knew if I told you, you’d want to take it. And didn’t want you losing it.’
‘I’d lose it? What are you talking about?’
‘Well, you know… since you started drinking you haven’t exactly had your life completely in order, have you?’
‘Mum! You can’t say something like that to your daughter! Not like you don’t have your own vices, is it? And to keep something like this from me?’
I paused, realising that maybe I’d gone too far by referring to her Stirlik addiction. ‘What does… what does it say?!’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I’ve tried decoding it. I’ve taken it to every specialist on Terra, but… nothing.’
‘Can I try?’ I asked.
Mum looked at me with sad eyes. ‘I… she sent it to me…’
I could see that this diary meant more to my mother than I had realised. It was her last remaining memento of my sister, and I could see the parallels with her losing the journal, too.
‘Please…,’ Mum continued, holding out her hand.
Repressing both sadness and irritation, I gave the diary to her. She held it to her chest, close to her heart.
‘You could have told me you had it.’
‘And you wouldn’t have tried to take it from me?’
I said nothing; we both knew the answer to that.
‘I need some air,’ I said suddenly, surprising even myself.
I took the transmat down to the ground floor and allowed myself to walk around the area one last time.
Like everywhere on Terra, the streets were pristine. So clean were they, in fact, that I could see that their spotlessness even in the dark of the evening light. Long had issues like littering been eradicated and the cleaning process itself perfected.
Where once my mother’s street had been full of art galleries, restaurants, bars, there was now nothing. All commercial enterprises had been placed by more residential properties. The charm that this area once had was now gone.
It was the lack of bars that particularly frustrated me.
A Terran man turned the corner in front of me, heading towards me. I waved him down as he grew closer.
‘Hey, do you know where the nearest bar is around here? I used to go to the Woodsman, but…’
‘The Woodsman?’ he replied. ‘That’s not been around for a few years now. You want a drink, you’re better off heading to the main road.’
The main road was a good half-hour walk away. I hadn’t been expecting my search for a drink to require so much physical exertion.
‘Thanks,’ I told the man, letting him go… and then I called after him again. ‘Hey, do you work ‘round here?’
The man shook his head. ‘Not any more.’
‘What were you, a waiter, barman?’
‘Something like that. Why’d you ask?’
‘Where do you work now?’ I grilled him, completely ignoring his own question.
‘EEO. Ethics Export Office. Down at the Crystal Palace.’
I pursed my lips. ‘Yeah, I know what it stands for.’
The man smiled at me. ‘I suppose everyone does.’
With that, he turned away from me and continued on with his life without me in it.
My quest for a drink turning out to be unexpectedly convoluted, I instead turned back, heading for my childhood home.
When I returned, Mum was already asleep. I poked my head into her bedroom - to see Leya’s diary sitting on the pillow next to her.
I resisted my very un-Terran instinct to steal it from her while she slept.
Instead, I went to Leya and I’s childhood room, which was preserved exactly as it had been when we’d lived here, and fell straight to sleep.
I awoke in the night to screams.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened in this apartment. During my childhood, I’d often be rudely awoken in the night by the sound of a woman shrieking. Always, the source was my mother.
I rushed to her room to find her sitting bolt upright in bed, slowly coming back to the land of the conscious.
My Mum looked up to see me standing in the doorway.
‘It’s OK,’ she reassured me, ‘It’s OK.’
I sat down on the bed next to her. ‘I think I’m the one who is supposed to be saying that to you.’
Mum laughed gently - that kind of laugh where you breathe ever so slightly harder than normal out of your nostrils. Clearly her heart wasn’t in it.
‘I thought you weren’t having these nightmares any more. Not since…’
I trailed off, but Mum finished the sentence for me.
‘Not since the ‘Liks. It’s OK, you can say it.’
‘I mean… yeah. I thought whatever memory was causing these nightmares, they’d overwritten.’
‘Once upon a time that was true. But one of them has been coming back to me. Over and over, every night.’
‘For how long?’ I asked.
‘Months now. Three… maybe four.’
‘Mum…,’ I began. ‘You could’ve told me.’
‘Oh, I didn’t want to worry you. I know you have lots on your plate already with that job you have.’
‘What is it? The memory?’
‘I don’t know if I should say, Syl. Some things you’re better off not knowing.’
‘First the journal, now this. Mum, you can’t protect me forever. I’m not that little girl you still
