Porthole

7788 17 Future Past

Guinan grabbed me after lunch. "We have to talk."

"The lunchroom is empty."

"No, the lunchroom has ears."

She lead me through a door. And then another. We sat on dimly lit rocks, bare rocks, surrounded by no stars.

"The clouds hide what I don't want you to see. Good."

I didn't know what to say. Guinan would speak when she was ready.

"No, I speak when you are ready to listen. And no, I don't read minds. We've had this conversation before. By now I figured you've learned. Some don't."

A sound of crystals ... like wind chimes ... I listened hard.

"You expect everything to carry a message. This is merely the wind."

"But..."

"Nope. Not living. This world is dead ... in the past as in your future. You breathe oxygen and assume there is life. You see clouds and assume water. You see no stars and assume they aren't there. You assume that what assails your senses are true. They aren't. Just like you assume that your dreams and nightmares may come true. Here? They won't."

"I'm listening."

"Listening too hard. What I have to say won't matter if you don't open up."

The windchimes changed their tune.

"Not much time but time enough."

Guinan tapped a finger on the rock.

"In the future there are worlds of great beauty, others ruins of beauty past. Places where life barely holds on that in another thousands of years will host great civilizations. Try as you might you cannot predict it. Your imagination, as great a gift as it is, is not based in fact. There are a million possibilities but no certainty except for a moment of time." She looked straight through my eyes. "Live it! We sit here in a future you'll never experience in a place you'll never find, a future you are not allowed to know."

"Why here?"

"The lunchroom has ears and now it's time for coffee. Let's go."

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The planet is "The Sky Was Never the Limit"   [13+] by Robert Waltz

Prompt: Do you think today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact? IRL response: No, but some, not all, are possibilities

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