The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,1

variation was only a tiny fraction of a percent. Ultimately, that wouldn’t be enough to make much of a difference. But that wasn’t the point.

Why had it happened at all?

“Am I correct in assuming that’s weird?” Alin asked.

“What? For a planet to wobble like it’s hit a bump in the road? Yeah, you might say it’s weird.”

“I wasn’t sure. These planets are all, you know, assembled—built by the Unseen.” Alin gave an affable shrug. “This is my first time surveying one of them with you guys. I’d kind of assumed they’d be more or less perfect all the time.”

Harolyn exhaled in disgust. “Yeah. So did I.”

Dash tried to remember what the simulation had taught him. Draw the rod back then snap it forward, releasing the bail on the reel as he did. The hook and lure sailed out across the water and landed with a soft plink.

Now, he waited.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just get a drone or something to dive in there and retrieve the fish for you?” Leira asked.

Dash shot her a mock glare, but most of it was lost in the early afternoon sun. She was picking her way down the muddy bank, her boots skidding in the black muck. She reached a log, regained her footing, then stepped across the rocks to where Dash was sitting.

“The point isn’t to catch fish, Leira. I told you that already.”

“Yes, and I rolled my eyes and said, Ah, okay, yes dear, as though that made any sense.”

“So what has brought your natural wellspring of judgmental cynicism bubbling back up to the surface like this?”

Leira stuck out her right hand and gestured to her arm, where several red welts blared angrily from her otherwise smooth, pale skin. “This. There are things biting me, Dash. Feasting on me like I’m some sort of delicacy.”

He gave her a look of wide-eyed innocence. “You are a delicacy, my darling Leira—”

“You can stick that right up your exhaust port, you know that?”

Dash chuckled. “The bugs are just part of the package. A basic part of the ecosystem here. Custodian explained it all, remember?”

“Of course I do. I just—” She paused as another of her tiny tormentors appeared, then she slapped at it. “What the hell do they eat when they can’t feast on fresh Leira, anyway?”

Dash, still smiling, shrugged and turned back to the lake. His eyes tracked the line to his bait, which was dancing through the water in a jerky motion a half-meter under the bobber. He’d discovered this thing called fishing from an Old Earth text, something that had, for some reason, been included in the vast archives opened up by the Unseen at the end of the war against the Golden.

Dash had found a multitude of Old Earth documents in the Unseen archives. Apparently, the enigmatic aliens had, over the course of centuries, surreptitiously gathered samples of their culture into an enormous, curated collection, against the possibility of humanity wiping itself out. Dash never realized Old Earth had been so bent on destroying itself, but it did explain a lot about how humanity worked—or didn’t work—in the present day.

In crafting these sixteen super-Earth planets that they had gifted to Dash and the Cygnus Realm, the Unseen had gone to great lengths to replicate humanity’s ancient home. This one, the first they’d explored and settled, had come with what amounted to an owner’s manual—an extensive documentation of the entire planet they had come to call Pristine. Because that’s exactly what it had been, a lush, hospitable, and entirely unspoiled world.

The documentation included a comprehensive list of every species that the Unseen had introduced to the place, such as varieties of terrestrial fish called trout, salmon, and catfish that were good to eat. This particular lake was supposedly home to the type called trout, so Dash, intrigued, decided to try his hand at catching some. He’d studied images of the varieties—Brown, Rainbow, and the ominously named Cutthroat—and concluded that trout were, all in all, beautiful creatures he very much wanted to catch.

And eat.

Which brought him back to what he’d told Leira—the point isn’t to catch fish. According to the Old Earth books, the act of fishing was, in itself, the objective.

But, having seen nothing to indicate that the damned trout even existed, Dash was beginning to think that either the Unseen had played an obscure and specific prank, or the Old Earth books were just full of crap.

Dash started to slowly wind the reel, tugging the bait through the water in a

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