This is all Ernest has known for fifty years. He was a young man when he came here, filled with enthusiasm, eager for adventure, but when he’d stepped through the portal, he’d lost everything. His home, his fiancée, his job, his entire world, ripped away from him in the time it took to blink. Or more accurately, he was ripped away from all he’d ever known, all that was familiar.

It would have been easier to deal with if there had been people here to provide him with company. In the early days, as he’d been learning to survive wherever this was, he’d had hopes of finding someone else, because it was obvious there had been people on this world at some point. Someone had built the fortress that housed the stone ring, someone had created and used the meeting room, and the device that housed all the combined knowledge of four distinct races. But although he’d walked for miles along the coast in both directions, and as far inland as he’d dared, he’d never found another living soul.

Fifty years alone. He’d conjured Catherine in his mind to keep him company, had long, involved conversations with her, at times he’d even convinced himself that she was really here, in this lonely ruin teetering on the edge of a cliff. Illusion, delusion, hallucination, what did it matter? There was no one to hear his ravings, no one to care whether he lived or died.

But in spite of the loneliness, and sometimes despair, he’d never given up because he’d found a purpose: to understand as much as he could of what the alien device projected. That was more than enough to keep him busy for a lifetime. Even after fifty years, he’s barely scratched the surface.

But he isn’t a young man anymore. He’s old, and tired, and although he’s learned so much, he has no one to share it with. When he dies, everything he’s worked so hard to understand will be lost. Has he wasted the last fifty years? Should he instead have been trying to find a way home? He had to begin with, but the device in the room with the ring was broken when he’d arrived, and he’d had no idea how to fix it.

Now, when he’s almost given up, there are people here, come through the portal, looking for him.

It’s about time.


The End