You know you are fucked when you see fragments of the broken radio on the floor. Your damaged ship lay nose caked into the sand, and coupled with your sprained ankle that hums an excruciating pain, and slight concussion on your head—your chances of survival in this unknown territory have now drastically dropped. In your first year as a space cadet, you were taught to remain calm, breathe slowly, and call for help in the event of a crash. The lecturer didn’t think of the possibility of a lonely, injured pilot, incommunicado, and in a place where he has largely veered off course.

Remain calm, you got this, you vocalize to yourself. You scan the first-aid box, looking for painkillers to halt the pain throbbing your body. At last you lie down, eyes shut, thinking. In that moment of deep thought, you weigh the alternate courses of action you would have taken when your ship beacon detected a random anomaly at the fringe of an unregistered space.

• • • •

You lose contact with your crew, and every pointer of opportunity that breathes your way is a chance to find them. Against your commander’s order you pilot your ship through a ring where matter is suspended, and radiation thickens as a haze formed as a statue. Inside the belly of the uncharted area your ship’s controls are hijacked from your hand by a great force as it dashes forward at the speed of sound travelling in vacuum, and a cascade of lights rushes into a vortex.

When you finally get control of your ship, the fuel is emptied, yet you notice the engine is running. It is sailing as though riding on imaginary waters. It doesn’t make sense to you. The elements of force existing in this area defy the laws of science. You speak to your ship’s AI companion, Ake, about your whereabouts. Its voice distorted, uttering an arcane language. The lights on your ship’s dashboard flicker before going out. Ake’s voice rises in a cadence before speaking in a drowsy tone and finally going silent. Your ship gets upended, falling like a drone before the crash.

Perhaps you should have listened to your commander. But you are obstinate and wouldn’t give up on your crew.

• • • •

Morning: The sun seeps in through the window glass, providing warmth that penetrates your torn suit. The pain has attenuated. You sit up, placing the sprained ankle on a seat. There are movements outside the ship. Slowly, you lower your body, enduring the pain sending another shocking wave to your brain. The voices are coming closer, footsteps pattering on the floor. The strangers come inside the ship, and you see them.

They are you, and you are them.

The first person is older in age, and by the wrinkles on her face you can guess she is in her early sixties. She’s carrying a field medic’s kit, and wearing glasses that sit on the bridge of her nose. The second is dressed in a military uniform, with a scarred face, her hand clasping a machine gun, and a bandolier worn crisscross on her chest. She’s looking out the window as if on the lookout for something trying to kill you all. Judging by her looks and frame, she is either your contemporary or a little older than you. The third looks like a space researcher—her grizzly hair recedes from the radius of her hairline. She’s wearing a uniform that has the insignia of a space researcher who likely works in an institute. She ignores you, taking notes, looking at the ship structure with precise carefulness, and staring at the ship’s dashboard with gaiety smeared all over face.

The one with the medic kit comes close to you, looks at your eyes with a penlight, and unzips the kit. She looks at your leg, brings out a mobile scanner to x-ray the extent of injury in your ankle.

All the while this is going on, you are befuddled. Perhaps you are still searching for the right words that fit into this situation.

“Sit still,” she says.

She opens a small box, and nanites jump out of it onto your leg. You watch them fixing the injury as they move up and down. At first the pain felt as an itch, but later it disappears. The doctor bandages your head, give you some drugs that will accelerate the healing.

“The nanites do not treat concussion,” she says.

The nanites repair some torn tissue in your belly. The doctor explains that the planet’s atmospheric conditions support the growth of reactive spores that release toxic gas into the air to accelerate tissue decay. Any injury you have that isn’t treated on time, you will only last three days before you become food for predators.

“Who are you people?” you finally gather the courage to ask, at the same time checking to confirm that your sprained ankle has now healed.

“We are you, and you are us. I chose to be a doctor instead of a pilot like you. There’s something you must know. I saw that you died after you escaped from here. The radiation clogged your system, took hostage of your nervous system. I am sorry.”

“Are you referring to me or another version of me?” you ask.

“A future version of you.”

You deduce she’s from the future. She stands to take her leave, your other two clones follow suit.

“Will I see you all again?” you ask.

“Time will tell.”

• • • •

The following day you scout the area carrying a rifle the soldier left behind for you. You take down notes, watch patterns like lattices form in the sky before they implode when gaseous matter runs into them. Stars ripple like echoes with bulging dotted eyes before vanishing into the void. Flying jellyfish swim through space currents, altering their shapes when the sky goes bleak, giving way for the appearance of a gibbous moon. The stars dim their glow, scared that the entity appearing would suck all their energy force. A shadow entity moving as a horde of black smoke is conspicuous. It’s an intelligent entity that perceives when strangers like yourself are present in this area. It hunts anomalies like you who are broken into multiples, scattered in a multiverse. It sees you as a paradox to the cycle of this planet, a thing whose mere existence disrupts the flow of normalcy. You run, shooting at it, but the bullets pass through it without hurting it.

A wave of sparks appears at a near distance ridgeline, like broken rays from the sun. Someone appears out of it and starts running towards you; it’s the soldier.

“Follow me,” she says.

She takes you to your ship, puts on all the lights.

“Light repels it. It won’t come inside,” she assures you.

“What is that thing?” you ask, gasping for breath.

“It’s our worst nightmare. It is attracted to clones, feeds from a fractured timeline.”

From the way she sounds, you can tell this entity is a predator, and clones are its prey.

“How do I get out of this place?” you say, watching the entity swirl away to where it emanated.

“You cannot outrun this place. You have to out-think it. We are rooting for you to not just survive, but return to where you truly belong.”

“How many versions of me have passed through here?”

“I cannot remember. But only a few have survived.”

Before going, she taught you how to read the terrain, temperature level, how to know when a magnetic storm is coming. Lastly, she tells you how to conserve ammunition in case you meet a creature that a bullet can kill.

• • • •

The physicist comes to you at dawn days later. She explains that this area sits inside a three-dimensional cone forming this planet. It’s encapsulated in a region of space where timelines clash against one another. This planet seeks to entice gullible pilots like yourself in a game of survival. Your crash here wasn’t accidental; it was written in the stars. She warns that this area is unstable and bits of it are gradually getting swallowed into a black hole. If you fail to escape soon, all versions of you will be fused into a convergence where you all will be scattered into different timelines. She assists you in repairing your ship.

“Tomorrow, the gravitational pull that collapsed your ship will take place again. Get ready. It’s an opportunity for you to escape,” she says before leaving.

She is right. At sunrise everything gets lifted from the ground. Levitating until it nears the clouds. Your engines don’t work. And so you wait it out. Wait for the gravitational push to release its reins from your ship. Your calculation is timely. Your ship begins to fall down, but you are quick to power the engines and take full control of it, flying out of this place. Ake jerks back to life, asking you for the trajectory of your next course.

“This is Simi. Can anyone hear me?” you speak into the radio transmitter.

You speak again for the fourth time before a response comes through.

“Where you have been? We thought you were dead when we didn’t hear from you,” the commander says.

“I will tell you everything when we see. What’s today’s date?”

“April 22nd, 2037.”

You are amazed at how three months has quickly raced by. The ship is on autopilot. You recline on the headrest, thinking of your clones. The only thing that comes to mind is that the clones are outcomes of life’s attempts you are yet to make, would make, or didn’t make.

“Ake, head west.”

You still have a mission to find your lost crew.