Welcome back to the Atlas, friends. Usually, I chart my own course through the imagination, but today I’m sailing according to someone else’s stars. This story is my entry for the Power Up Prompts challenge by Bradley Ramsey, a Level 3 attempt that weaves together a specific setting (The Crater Anomaly), a character (The Pilot), and a conflict (An Impossible Choice).
But beneath the sci-fi trappings of time travel and anomalies, this is really a story about a bonsai tree, the wires we wrap around our own hearts to keep memories safe, and the terrifying, necessary act of cutting them loose.
To read about the full prompt, check out the post here:
Now, let the story begin. Words: 2442.
Image inspired by a youtube thumbnail from an ASMR storyteller called NightMotherASMR
The scissors snipped. Andy worked over the juniper, her last gift. He twisted the copper wire, the metal biting into the bark, restraining the wood from growing where it wanted to. He hadn’t let it die or let it grow. It simply survived. For ten years he had kept it in a state of suspension.
Another small branch was revealed by the tug, threatening to change the bonsai’s shape. Gripping the scissors again, he twisted the cutting edge around the thick bit of wood and strengthened his grip on the tool till the tree gave way. The branch yielded but the handles snapped shut, pinching his skin between cold metal. A sudden spike of pain lanced up his arm as the pinch flared. No blood. Just a little nip. He sucked the tip of the finger and winced a little.
She used to ‘kiss it better’ whenever he hurt himself.
He spat the finger back out, the taste of the memory suddenly turning to ash. That was before he left her. Before the day he confessed his sadness and ended it. The same chaotic chain reaction replayed itself again and again, blankets strewn, pillows thrown, cries so guttural, so wild, it had frozen his heart.
Turning away from the circus, he refocused.
Picking up his journal, his thumb flicked to the front page, from his first week when he had just taken up his new position on the observation craft. The leaves of paper were desperately soft from having been handled over the years, and the writing was blurred from the repetition of his fingers scanning across the page. The entry was like a familiar prayer.
‘The anomaly was supposedly created by a group of scientists who failed to time travel. Wild stuff. They call it a cataclysm, but it feels too serene to be called a cataclysm. It’s hard to imagine that something so calming could be dangerous. It feels like a perfect companion for me to reflect on things, to heal. Some days, I feel like… it knows me?’
The anomaly outside the observation pods window had been a perfect companion, he had developed a ten year relationship with it, tenderly recording each new change in the logs, and reflecting on its beauty in his meditations, a beautiful distraction. A pile of cushions were permanently stacked around the edges of the window for just the purpose. Looking now, an unusual purple cut on its otherwise peaceful surface was pulsing slightly. The readouts registered the new colouration in the log.
He leaned back and looked at another of the consoles to see if this colour change was worth paying much attention to. It flicked through a couple of readout screens. Radiation measurements, light emittance, temperature recordings, gravity fluctuations. All normal. His desk chair tipped further back as he watched the monitor, when suddenly the balance was lost, and he kept going. His hand flailed, knocking his favourite mug off his desk with a loud smash.
The room swam for a moment. Looking up at the ceiling, it wasn’t just spinning, it was pixellating. Sitting up rapidly he rubbed his eyes, but when he reopened them, the whole room around him was off kilter. Lines that used to join up were disparate. Patterns flowed in the walls. Things that should be inert flickered. His mug that he had heard smash seemed to be caught in a time loop. Clattering off the edge of the desk and crashing into the floor, only to reappear on the desk again ready to be knocked off. Slide. Smash. Reset.
Andy stared, his breath locked in his chest.
Clambering up to his desk, he grabbed his journal, a feeling of terror climbing up his spine. His heart hammered against his ribs. He turned pages, needing... something... needing to ground himself. The familiar words of the first page screamed at him.
‘- a group of scientists who failed to time travel. Wild stuff. They call it a cataclysm-’
“No,” he whispered. The page between his fingers splintered and reformed over and over.
Crazed, his thoughts cast about, trying to find normality. A deep white shaft of light sliced through his living space, half blinding him from its intensity, a blinding flash from the anomaly. But the light didn’t follow the rules, it didn’t just come through the window, it lanced through every part of his ship, ignoring the sheets of metal that held him safe as though they were glass.
Panicking, he looked around his room. Cushions and pillows flickered in and out of existence, cast about the room as if thrown there. His bed vibrated with energy, like something was trying to escape.
Running over to his bed, he chucked the duvet over his shoulder and threw the pillows out of the way, each one landing exactly where the mirage had indicated they would be. Lifting up the mattress, a panel was revealed. He tentatively reached down. As his fingers manically gripped the seam, he yanked it away. Inside there were books, papers, and an old dictaphone.
He picked up the old dictaphone and clicked play. A voice crackled through, scorched, broken and interrupted.
“...Day 13... Anomaly is beautiful... I’m not going in...Who is she?”
Pulling out a tattered piece of paper between shaking fingers, he read in printed letters.
“Day 481: Food arrived today. I heard her voice again…”
Hidden underneath the paper was a journal, an exact replica of the one on the floor by his desk. Checking behind him,his real journal was still there, open from where he had been reading his earlier notes. Air sawed in and out of his lungs. A tremor started in his hands, consuming him. He peeled open the front page... There were pictures, and crazed drawings. A sketch of his Bonsai leapt out to him, rendered in thick stark pen marks.
Scrambling backwards, the new journal gripped tight in his white-knuckled fist, he slammed against the desk, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. Every hum of the station, every impossible flicker was a predator’s movement.
He flipped the page. The scrawl was angrier, digging into the paper.
‘I betrayed her, and myself. She never understood. Why did I leave her alone?’
And the next page, the writing shaky:
‘The loneliness is... too much. I’ll try again. Just to see her. Just once more. I have to make amends.’ It was his handwriting. As he flicked more and more manically through the journal, the only sound was a faint rustle of the pages passing one by one. Over and over, message after message, the same meaning in each comment of his own shame. Lifetimes of entries that he didn’t remember creating. Looking into the hidden compartment, he saw hundreds more journals, diaries, pieces of paper with dates going back centuries. His familiar scrawl on every one.
Getting up frantically he ran over to the window and pressed himself up against the glass. The anomaly looked different now, bruised all over, like a fruit that had been cut into and left out in the sun. He hammered with his fists against the glass.
“What are you?! What is this?!”
The anomaly below thrummed, and a gentle ripple swept over it, like wind in long grass. The lights in his room dimmed, and then came the smell, sweet, heavy, and familiar. Different from the usual sterilised air of the ship. The smell of lavender. His nostrils flared as he breathed in its aroma, his eyes glazing over.
He turned. She wasn’t by the window. She was by the bonsai, running a translucent finger along its twisted branch.
“You’re still torturing this poor thing,” she said teasingly. Her voice was the same voice that had teased him for 8 years. Warm. Playful. Real.
Andy’s back hit the cold glass of the viewport. The journals and sheathes of paper, hundreds of sheets, all in his handwriting, slid from his grip, scattering across the floor like dead leaves.
“How...?” he croaked.
“Oh Shh silly.” She stepped over the scattered papers without looking at them. She didn’t seem to see the chaos of the room, the way it was glitching, the way it seemed less solid. She only saw him. “Why would you bother with all of that, put it away. You’ll work yourself up again.”
She walked towards him. His stomach dropped, not with nausea, but with the sickening vertigo of a prayer finally answered.
“I saw the writing,” Andy whispered, pointing at the journals. “I’ve been here... before? We aren’t observing anything, are we? We’re being observed.”
Charlotte reached him. She didn’t explain. She didn’t talk about scientists or cataclysms. She just reached out and placed a hand on his chest, right over his racing heart. Her touch was like warm water, a penetrating honey-like feeling spread into his chest.
“Do you remember what I said to you on our second date, at that gig, when I made you choke on your wine?” she asked cheekily, the glint in her eye exactly right. She glanced with that crooked smile at the bed behind her. “It’s been a while. Come away from the window and all these papers. Let’s play catch up. I’ve missed how we play together.”
She smiled, and it was the wry smile that had shattered him ten years ago. The smile that promised shenanigans, that made him feel like a boy finding his best friend, that offered security where he knew there could be none.
“Come on, I know a good song we can play,” she whispered. “Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake.” The song as it came to mind tugged at every string in his heart.
She leaned in. The lavender filled his head, drowning out the logic, drowning out the warnings. It would be so easy. To just lie down. To let the loop reset, to go back to the way things had been, before it got really bad. To laugh again, suspended in this perfect, amber-trapped moment forever.
He closed his eyes, her touch pushed into his body, forcing him backwards into the desk.
Clack.
The sound of the scissors on the table, the memory of the noise, echoed in his mind.
His eyes snapped open. Looking over his shoulder he saw the bonsai. It sat on the desk, beautiful and tormented. The copper wire he had applied earlier was biting deep into the bark, forcing the bough to bend, stopping it from growing as it should.
I haven’t let it die or let it grow, he thought. I just kept it.
He looked at Charlotte. She was beautiful. And she was exactly the same as the day he had left her. She hadn’t grown. She hadn’t aged. Just like the tree.
“This isn’t it… I.. I can’t anymore.”
Charlotte frowned, a tiny, confusing ripple in her perfection. “Don’t say that. You have just been working too hard. You are tired.”
“No.” Andy stepped back, out of her reach. The air rushed in to replace her warmth. “I’ve always been tired, I have been tired for too long. I’m done.”
He moved around the desk. His hand didn’t shake this time. He picked up the small pruning scissors. They felt as heavy as he did.
“Andy, don’t,” she said. Her voice wasn’t teasing anymore, it was panicked. Anguish edged into her perfect face. “It’s not too late, we can find a way, we could have always found a way! Don’t leave.”
“This was never the way,” Andy said, looking at the wire choking the wood. “I’ve been stuck.”
He didn’t look at her. He looked at the tree. He slid the jaws of the scissors around the thickest coil of copper wire, the main artery of his attachment to a past that he couldn’t reclaim.
“Andy, please! I always knew you would hurt me.” She was screaming now, throwing cushions, just as she had done the first time, the cosy illusion fracturing.
He squeezed the handles.
SNAP.
The sound was like a gunshot in the small room. The copper wire sprang apart, falling uselessly to the table. Freed from the tension, the branch of the juniper sprang upwards. It didn’t look neat anymore. It looked messy, wild, and free.
The ship shuddered.
Andy turned around. Charlotte wasn’t screaming anymore. She was smiling. She was ending. She looked at him, her expression softening into something blank and peaceful, and then she dissolved into lavender mist, like Provençal nights on a cold morning window, fading away.
The flowery scent vanished, replaced by the smell of dew on the grass.
The space station walls, the console, the bed, they all began to dissolve and fracture into the same mist. The floor beneath him turned translucent, and tile by tile, started to fold in on itself.
Andy’s shoulders finally dropped their tension, spilling it into the ground. He placed the scissors on the nonexistent desk and picked up the bonsai instead, its branch still quivering from the release.
He walked toward the window, which had also disappeared. A profound peace lifted his chest as he watched the anomaly’s glassy surface swell to fill his view, reflecting the entire universe behind him. The final tile of the floor folded into infinity under his foot, and so, with the tree in his arm, he stepped out, descending into the anomaly’s expansive, fluid embrace.
He knew he was falling, but in the absence of anything to fall against, he seemed only to drift. The energy of the anomaly rose to meet him not as hard light, but as a shimmering tide. Its surface contained patterns he could no longer describe, a garden of raw potential flowing like deep water.
Digging his hands into the luminescence, he felt it yield like wet sand, finding a perfect spot where his bonsai could thrive. He planted the tree.
The juniper, no longer constrained by its pot, its wires, or by his tormented attachments, exploded into growth. Roots flowed into the stars. Branches stretched into the furthest corners of the universe like coral reefs seeking the sun. It became wild. The scars on its bark where the wire had cut into it were still there however. Touching it gently with his fingertips, he leant in, and gave it a little kiss better. And for a second, pressed against his lips, he didn’t feel bark. He felt a heartbeat. Slow, steady, and strong.
Andy watched the tree in awe as it healed in front of him, his own form beginning to dissolve into the current. He let go of what held him.
He was the ocean, and the ocean was him.
And so, the wire is cut. The anomaly offered Andy a perfect, frozen eternity, a museum of his own grief, but the price was growth. His impossible choice wasn’t about saving the timeline or the world; it was about choosing the messy, wild uncertainty of the future over the manicured perfection of the past. He chose to dissolve into the ocean rather than drown in the memory.
Now, I turn the impossible choice to you. In your own life, have you ever realized you were “wiring” a part of yourself to keep it small or safe? What was the moment you finally decided to cut the wire and let it grow wild?
I’d love to hear your stories in the comments.
Bradley often adds a song at the end of his posts, so as a sign of respect and admiartion. I have included the same.
This is amazing. I love this one.
Truly a hauntingly beautiful piece. The opportunity for reflection is appreciated as well. Amazing work 👏👏👏