(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 2

The black of deep space hung like a dark rag from one end of the horizon to the other. It was only a matter of minutes, now. Minutes before space itself would rip apart, immense spears tearing through its fabric to cross into new regions without crossing the space between their origin and destination. They would arrive, and they would destroy everything. Forever.
"Marie," said a voice covered in soft, crackling static. A mist of greenish light gathered into a solid form. Invisibly small machines carried the voice, and the personality behind it, towards that endless black abyss. "We are waiting for you. The transmitter is fully charged."
Ruben. That was what the mist called itself. Gender made little sense. Ruben had long ago transfered his or her consciousness to this form, to gain a range of practical freedoms. It could have once been a man, or a woman, or even an artificial intelligence. It had never really seemed like an important matter to debate with Ruben.
"I am ready. I just wanted to...."
"You wanted to see how it all ends," Ruben added, finishing a sentence that felt impossible to finish at all.
"No, not end. Nothing ends. We're always in the middle of a story, everyone of us."
The response made Ruben fall silent for a moment. Even the soft crackling of the machine mist seemed to fall away for a few seconds, out of some absurd respect for the sentiment.
"That aside, Marie, we are running out of time."
Ruben reacted visibly, with a small reshaping of the green mist, to the brief, low laughter that came in response.
"I get the humor," said Ruben in a dry tone, "but whatever your connection to time, we are running out. If you want more future, you will have to go there yourself at some point."
It was tempting to try to explain how that was no longer possible. How this was the last accessible point in time, the last accessible bit of the future. Soon, war would rage so brutally that methods to access the future would be disrupted. The surfaces of planets would be reshapen, and it would be impossible to access them, at least with the tools available to the Embassy.
But telling Ruben any of that would be a waste of everyone's time.

The transmitter looke deceptively simple, mostly because the vast majority of it was hidden inside the structure of the station. Long, silvery hallways ran through the enormous structure, other misty people sliding along ridges in the walls like ghosts. They were setting up the station to self-destruct. There was no victory to be won here, once space tore open and the enemy came pouring in. It was a delay. They wanted to slow the enemy down, to allow more evacuations from places not even visible from the station. It was going to get very, very bad.
"Too bad you never converted. Mists are so much easier to work with."
Ruben was being a bit of a jerk, but only to lighten the mood. This was likely goodbye. One last run together, one last mission.
"I know, I just wanted to feel special."
For a fraction of a second, Ruben hesitated.
"You are, Marie."
With meaty clacks, the transmitter closed. It felt like a casket, like a coffin, filled with light. For a few seconds, all was silent. Then, a low rumble filled it, piercing flesh and bone until everything seemed to rattle. One final crackle, and it all disappeared. Blackness above, rolling grey beneath.
"The Moon..."
"Correct," replied Ruben. The greenish mist floated just an arm's length away, transmitted there quick and easy.
"Marie, we only have a few moments. Find what you came for."
It took a second to get used to the transmitter. There was no body, nothing physical. Just hanging in empty space, floating above the Moon, seeing everything clearly. So clearly.
"There..."
It was mostly just a speck of red, hiding out in a shallow canyon along a crater side. In any place not so grey, it would have been drowned out by other colors. Here, there was nothing to drown it.
With nauseating speed, the speck of red rushed up closer. Ruben seemed barely even affected by the rapid movement, but for someone less used to it, it felt wrong, very wrong. But there was no time to worry about the motion sickness of futuristic travel tricks. In the dark above the Moon, pinpricks were beginning to appear. Whatever was attacking this far future, it was very close to arriving.
The red speck was not a speck. Up close, it looked like a gigantic plant, a web of roots trying to crack open the lunar rock to make way for a twisted flower. Reds and purples ran across the dark but not black surface, as if it was meant to be just the dark surface, but rips in it were letting the soft glow through.
"What is it?" asked Ruben, the green mist wisping back and forth near the dark surface. The flower, for a lack of a better word, was the size of a small house. Despite the looks, it was completely rigid, as if made of rock or metal. The faint glows of red and purple seemed to move a bit when looked at from different angles, but it quickly became clear that it was just an optical illusion.
"A beacon"
It was a pretty unsatisfactory answer, but Ruben made no complaint. Flowing closer, the green mist instead seemed to suddenly become uncomfortable near the softly glowing lines of the flower. To an untrained eye, the red and purple could seem like writings on its surface. They were not. The lines conducted energy along the surface, like reflective bands to be seen at night. But this was not just meant to be seen at night.
"Who is it a beacon for?" asked Ruben, finally wanting to know more.
"I don't know. But she wants to lead someone through this place, through this time."
"She?" For once, Ruben sounded outright surprised, like there was a part of the story that had been kept secret.
A tremble ran through everything. Not a tremble in the Moon or even space around it. Reality itself seemed to tremble.
"The transmitter. They are arriving," said Ruben in a voice that sounded, if anything, melancholic.
The vision of the Moon and the strange flower beacon flickered and disappeared, replaced with clear, white light. The transmitter coffin snapped open, and outside of it stood, or rather floated, Ruben.
"Marie, it is time."
It was, indeed, time. The short journey from the transmitter and back to the open platform looking out across space seemed to be a blur. There was nothing special about it, nothing more than floating through a space station in the middle of nowhere. But this would perhaps be the last time it happened.
"Ruben?"
The green mist seemed, for a brief moment, to take on a vaguely humanoid form and turn to look.
"Thank you for your friendship."
For a few seconds, Ruben said nothing. It seemed like a pensive silence, a moment to think about what to say.
"Thank you, Marie," was the answer that finally came. Then, a few seconds more of silence, as the first dots of brassy yellow ripped through the emptiness of space and appeared in the black, out of nothing.
"This body is a burner," Ruben then added. It was hard to pinpoint the tone of voice that accompanied that information. It seemed sternly sad.
Large lines formed in the black space. The distant pinpricks of starlight flickered as huge shapes formed, blocking them out. Like chains of brass and black, covered in spikes that had to be as large as the space station, each, the first prongs of the very alien, very ancient starships forced themselves into this universe, or this part of it, depending on where they actually heralded from. None of those details mattered. Soon, this part of the universe would know nothing but war against these things. Anything else was trivia.
"We are evacuating everything and going into hiding, for as long as we possibly can," Ruben continued. "We cannot allow them to trace anything back. I made this body as a copy. My main self is back there, already being brought to safety."
It was a lot to take in. As space ripped open with abominable ships, the gravity of them alone causing the station to warp, little colored dots began to dance.
"So you won't even know that I told you how much this means to me?"
Ruben just gave a glance mixed between a friendly smile and sad regret. It looked bizarre in the green mist, the vague outlines of a human face, trying to show emotions.
"Sorry, Marie. I will never know we even said goodbye."
The colored dots now danced wildly. Time was resetting, pulling back.
"Goodbye, Ruben."
The station began to rip as strange forces from the arriving ships tore at it.
"Goodbye, Marie."
The colored dots formed a rough sphere. Then pain. Then, gone.