Aphelion

Author: Bed Time Stories

In 2026, The crew of Hope is sent into space to do the one thing left that can still make people look up: photograph the Sister Star's supernova, the first of its kind to occur near Earth, and the last one anyone alive will ever see since it won't happen again for 4.2 million years. But the moment the star dies, something in the physics of the event goes wrong, and the crew is thrown forward through time itself, arriving not at the Earth they left, but at one 4.2 million years older than the one they said goodbye to. The world waiting for them is unrecognizable, advanced and beyond anything they can fully understand, and dying. Not from war, not from ruin, but from a sun that is running out of time, in a civilization that stopped believing it was worth trying to save it. Everyone the astronauts knew, everyone they loved, is not just gone but ancient history, buried so long ago that even the ground has forgotten them. And then they learn something that changes everything: a second supernova, rare enough that it may never happen again, could send them back to their families, back to the exact moment they left. But going home means walking away from an Earth that may not survive without them, and from the people already asking them to stay. Staying means saving a future they were never meant to be part of, at the cost of every person they crossed 4.2 million years for.