"I think it shows today's date, let me just confirm real quick..."
Lines of text began to appear, the AI sweetly explaining something brutal:
"Attention: The 'Elias' black hole is 11.7 billion times the mass of the sun, which means it distorts time. Do not exceed 5 minutes on any planet/moon."
"Fish Bubble Bubble \ Bubble Bubble \ Bubble \ Bubble Bubble Bubble \ Bubble Bubble Bubble Fish \ Bubble Bubble \ Bubble Bubble \ Bubble Bubble"
"Departure Date: September 26, 2027."
"Current Earth Date: October 8, 2551."
"Time elapsed on ship after undocking: 1 day, 14 hours."
"Time elapsed on Earth: 524 years."
"...What?"
Following that, a table, with that cursed Frutiger Aero touch in the background:
🧑🚀 1 Second on Elias IIIa ➔ ~33.5 Hours on Earth. (Every blink you made was nearly 34 hours on Earth! ✨)
🧑🚀 1 Minute on Elias IIIa ➔ ~84 Days on Earth. (It's like you took a nap, and Earth lived a whole soap opera! 😮)
🧑🚀 1 Hour on Elias IIIa ➔ ~13 Years on Earth. (Wow! Just one of your hours, and Earth had over a decade of adventures! 📅)
🚀 TOTAL: 38 Hours on Elias IIIa ➔ 524 YEARS on Earth. (You guys lived a little bit... and Earth changed EVERYTHING! Centuries have passed! 😱)
Five minutes later, Ketlen opened the hatch and stood outside the ship, utterly mesmerized by the view. The horizon was an infinite tapestry of dark blue and deep sea-green, punctuated by clouds of an almost fluorescent hue, the thin, cold air penetrating her suit. When she climbed and reached the top of the ship...
"What's up?" she asked, her voice muffled by the helmet, curiosity overcoming her anger.
Nunes, sitting on the floor, his eyes fixed on the landscape. "Look around... no solid ground. Just water."
At that moment, a part of a gigantic creature passed near the surface, so colossal that its scaly green skin looked like a floating island. It must have been fifty meters long, maybe more. Its back shimmered with a mossy, wet olive-green, and small alien algae trembled on its carapace like silk threads in the wind.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" Ketlen's eyes widened behind her visor, her body stiffening with dread.
Then, with a slow, ominous movement, the creature partially leaped out of the water, revealing a pointed jaw and an eye the size of a hatch, which for an instant seemed to fixate on both of them—and then disappeared, diving back down.
The impact was overwhelming.
Even hundreds of meters away, the sound came with force. A deep, heavy roar, as if a mountain had detached from the sky and collided with the sea. A wet, muffled, monstrous THUD, which reverberated through the liquid surface like subterranean thunder. The water trembled. The ship swayed subtly.
Ketlen instinctively recoiled a step, as if it could emerge right beneath them.
"Just a little monster." Nunes replied with a serene voice, as if speaking of a small fish.
"N-Nunes...?"
"Hm?"
"I'M SERIOUS!" She gestured exaggeratedly, panic rising in her throat.
"Relax, this moon has an aquatic ecosystem, there are some creatures around..."
"W- What do you mean, Nunes?" Her voice was choked with terror "So those mountains were…?"
"Yeah, we're floating in this sea, aren't we?" He finally looked at her, very calm, an almost imperceptible smile behind his visor.
Ketlen, dying of fear, her eyes wide, looked at him, incredulous. "Yeah..."
"So. It's more than eighteen miles deep. There are some really big prehistoric creatures here. Did you know?"
"NO, OH MY GOD!?"
... Nunes smiled faintly, seeing her despair, a bittersweet satisfaction.
"WHY ARE YOU SO CALM, HUH?" She bellowed, her voice bordering on hysteria.
"Oh, I don't know, there's nothing to do." He shrugged, resigned.
CRACK!
A sudden, sharp noise, like a fork scraping a porcelain plate with excessive force, cut through the silence between them. It came from outside both of their suits, but it reverberated ominously in their ears, making their hearts leap. No one knew where it came from, but they both heard it, and the tension mounted.
"I'm going... going inside." She clasped her hands, timid, the urge to flee overwhelming.
She quickened her pace towards the hatch.
"Wait a minute, blockhead, I need to tell you something. It's serious." Nunes's voice stopped her, urgency in his tone.
She turned to him impatiently, the fear still latent, glaring at him atop the ship:
"WHAT IS IT?!"
"Oh... I hope she doesn't freak out." Nunes thought, a shiver of apprehension.
"Calm down. Listen carefully to what I'm about to say. It's serious."
She fixed her gaze on his, her breath held.
"Remember I was talking about the movie Interstellar?" He gave a faint, forced smile with his lips through his helmet's visor, the mention seeming strained.
"You've got to be kidding me... This DAMN movie AGAIN?!"
"Okay... look." He closed his eyes for an instant, gathering courage for what was to come. He looked at the horizon, serious, all his calm dissolving.
"You know we've already lost a little time here, right?"
Ketlen frowned, not understanding, her mind still processing the terror of the sea monsters.
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"Connect the dots. If the signal doesn't get through because of the black hole, it means that here, where we are, isn't normal."
"And what does that have to do with time?"
"The moon, being close to the black hole, even orbiting a planet, has different days than Earth."
Ketlen's voice began to become more choked, the meaning of his words starting to penetrate.
"What about it?" Her eyes welled up, even without having fully understood, a chilling premonition invading her.
"Ketlen..." Nunes began to cry, tears blurring his visor. "Ketlen, we... we lost a lot of time."
In a reflex, she began to cry too, a guttural sob escaping her chest.
"What do you mean, Nunes... HOW MUCH TIME?!"
He didn't answer, just stared at her—as if the silence spoke for itself.
"HOW MUCH TIME, DAMN IT???" She bellowed again, hysteria dominating her, her words echoing in the vacuum of their helmets.
Nunes held back his tears. You could see the face of defeat through the suit's opaque visor, a mask of pure pain.
"More than 500 years."
She froze. Her face was perplexed, eyes wide, jaw dropped. Her vision began to darken as she listened to Nunes's muffled sobs, the sound of life disintegrating.
"W-... What...?"
"We lost everything."
She continued looking at him, her eyes empty like a black hole. Her legs suddenly gave out and she slipped, stumbling, unable to remain standing. With a muffled thud, she fell into the murky ocean water, disappearing for an instant beneath the liquid surface.
"KETLEN?!" Nunes's voice sounded alarmed over the radio, despair now evident, cutting through the painful revelation.