Saturn’s Shadow Beneath the Laurel

The station’s day cycle had ended, and false dusk pressed against the viewport, painting the engineered clouds a bruised purple. Lucius Varro hunched over his work terminal, lines of code scrolling past his tired eyes, each command echoing with uneasy familiarity. The terraformer—dubbed Saturn’s Laurel by imperial decree—hummed above the gas giant like a ghostly amphitheater, birthing storms and air for a world that had never known them.

He was supposed to be a data engineer. He remembered that much. But lately, memories slipped through his mind like water through a broken aqueduct. Faces blurred. His own name sometimes felt foreign. When the air recyclers shuddered unexpectedly or lights flickered in the mess hall, he wondered if it was just faulty wiring—or something else.

Lucius’s only solace was his small corner of quarters: a pod no larger than a senator’s bath, filled with relics of two worlds. On one shelf sat a battered laurel wreath—a birthright from Earth—and next to it, an unassuming black ballistic nylon case.

Every night, after verifying sensor logs and triple-checking that nobody followed him down the winding corridors, Lucius would place his thumb on the case’s smooth zipper and listen for the sure glide as he opened it. Inside lay his console: compact, comforting, real. Eight tiny cartridges rested in their recessed cradle below it—eight worlds untouched by imperial rule or station protocol.

Tonight he needed escape more than ever. His hands trembled as he propped up the adjustable stand built into the case and booted up his favorite game: Lost Parthia. The screen glowed gently in the gloom, and for an hour he was someone else—a wanderer free to choose his own fate.

But when he paused to glance at his reflection in the screen—a face both familiar and strange—a chill crept over him. Hadn’t he just finished this level? He tried to recall last night’s session, but memory gave only static. Something pulsed in his head: fear tangled with nostalgia.

Sudden alarms shattered the silence. Red glyphs flashed on his comm tablet—data breach detected in sector VIII. Lucius snapped shut the case and clipped it to his belt with practiced ease; its sturdy shell had survived impacts that would have shattered lesser gear.

Corridors pulsed with emergency light as Lucius navigated twisting paths toward sector VIII, heart pounding under his tunic. Holo-mosaics of long-dead emperors flickered overhead, faces melting into digital noise.

At a security panel, he hesitated—something about this place felt wrong. Memories warred within him: images of running from shadows, of voices whispering not in Latin but in binary code.

He fumbled for reassurance—the case at his hip was still there, its weight grounding him. As technicians darted past in panic, Lucius ducked into an alcove and pulled out his console again. Not to play—to check its log files.

What if the glitch wasn’t just in station systems? What if it was inside them? Inside him?

The device’s menu history glitched—entries missing, timestamps rewritten. Just like his mind.

A cold certainty settled over him: something on Saturn’s Laurel was feeding on memory—corrupting both digital records and human recollections alike.

He thumbed open one of the game cases beneath the console and slipped out a cartridge marked "REMEMORA." He didn’t remember owning this one.

With trembling hands, Lucius slotted it in. The game booted up to a single prompt: "WHO ARE YOU?"

As static washed over him—overlapping voices chanting old prayers and new code—the corridor seemed to darken further. Shadowy figures appeared at its far end: outlines warped by failed facial recognition software. They beckoned silently.

Lucius clutched the sturdy case close as if it might shield not just hardware but what remained of himself within flesh and thought. There was comfort knowing that even here—where reality bent under Rome’s steel sky—he could still choose which memories to keep safe; which identities to shelter in layers of ballistic nylon and hope.

With every step away from sector VIII, Lucius pieced together who he might become next: engineer or fugitive; Roman or exile; player or pawn.

And as long as he kept moving—as long as that case clicked securely shut behind each journey—there remained a fragile peace between man and shadow on Saturn’s Laurel.