Recreating the history of Shurwinn is a task no historian relishes for the peoples were disparate and their objectives varied. But what we have been able to piece together is that a band of misfits on Earth rejected authority around the time Earth joined the 9 Galaxies in 2337.

  Distrustful, these mostly vegetarian pacifists decided that they couldn’t rely on the leaders of Earth to make decisions for them. They thought that the warring governments of the past would continue in a new form. So, they rejected what everyone else had surrendered to and devised their own plan.

  A wide, wide variety of people pooled together, invested in starliners, and colonized an undesirable desert sphere in far-off Andromeda Galaxy.

  Shrewd business skills and masterful marketing made the separatists a powerhouse in the Trade Guilds. They chose to be isolationist and marketed themselves as such, creating a demand for exclusive Shurwinn products across the Known Cosmos. Despite their isolationist philosophy, they were a remarkably successful colony.

  There is much, much more to the story, however. And far more can be told about the reclusive, secretive Shurwinn.

  - Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn, (2777)

  PEYDRAN

  I wondered if Ren would fall into sleep like Ryst, but he just stopped chanting the moment she fell silent, shook his head, and turned to me with a broad smile.

  I put a pillow beneath Ryst’s head, and we went outside on quiet feet.

  I pulled Ren into a tight hug, whispering into the chilly night air, “You miracle, Ren Crieve! You miracle! For four years, I’ve been trying to get info, and you just sang her into a vision clearer than anything we’ve gotten before. We’ve got details now. We’ve got a building shaped like a candle. A man younger than Ryst who is accomplished and wealthy. And something about Earth and the Galaxies.”

  “Well, we know how Earthens left Sol.” He said it like it was a matter of fact as obvious as the sun.

  Hoping that Ren could pull stuff out of thin air like Ryst, I decided to start questioning him, “What do you mean, Ren? What do we know about Earth?”

  “Well, the story. They had to form Trade Guilds and join the 9 Galaxies like everyone else does.”

  “And what does that have to do with Her Ahtah?”

  He looked off into space. “Hmmm. Why would that matter now?” He shook his head and returned to looking at me and said matter-of-factly, “You’ll figure it out, Pey’o. Let’s look for the building.”

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  And so we did. We started with Sturm. Nothing stuck out that looked candle-shaped. Ren asked, “What’s a tall building that isn’t an office? What else, Peydran?”

  Neither of us knew much about skyscrapers. We lived in little desert huts. The buildings we were scrolling through looked like a stream show, not real life.

  Tall buildings. What were they? Offices. Hospitals. Hotels. Hotels? We started focusing on hotels. Still, nothing on Sturm stood out. So we looked Galaxy wide.

  Eventually, Ren stopped me again, “Wait, back up, yeah—that one. Phallic!”

  He giggled. I did too, trying to be quiet so we wouldn’t wake Ryst.

  “What is that?” Ren snorted.

  Ren was right. It was a rather phallic-looking skyscraper: a giant circular hotel with a sperm on the top. It was actually called “The Teardrop.” So, it wasn’t a phallus, it was a hotel with a teardrop on top of it.

  Which kind of did look like a lit candle. And something else that wasn’t a candle. Or a tear.

  “Do you think that looks like a candle, Ren?” I snickered.

  RYST

  I woke to an empty house. Ren and Peydran must’ve left. I closed my eyes again and let my mind drift over all the new information I’d gotten from my Ahtah.

  Rivers of gold. Young, but accomplished. Confident. The Galaxy. A building shaped similar to a lit candle. Skyscrapers that weren’t offices.

  Hospitals? Shopping centers? Manufacturing? Hotels? Hmmm. Earth. Great wealth. The Galaxy. Well, you’d have to have great wealth to leave Earth, right? He’d said the story. What was the story?

  My eyes flew open! I sat up and grabbed my pad. How did the Earthens leave Sol System? Yes, on starliners, but they left because they formed Trade Guilds! You can’t have great wealth without trade.

  And to be younger than me and be accomplished and confident and have great wealth meant one thing: Ministry!

  I pulled up all those 15 million unmarried black men in Sturm and added a new filter: Ministry. Thirteen. There was one at the top: a twenty-three year-old Galactic Minister of Hospitality.

  Nayth Carmidee. Hospitality. Hotel.

  I started shaking and trembling all over with the magnitude of the moment. I searched images of Sturm for hotels that looked like candles. Nothing. I searched wider—all of Andromeda. It was worse than a needle in a haystack. There were so, so many buildings.

  No, wait. Look for Carmidee Hospitality hotels shaped like a candle. There were still too many, but eventually there was an odd— wait, what was that? What kind of hotel was that? Could you call it. . . a candle?

  I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped my lungs.

  PEYDRAN

  Ren was still giggling at the not-quite-candle-shaped hotel when he pointed, “Look at this picture.”

  In the photo he pointed to, the Teardrop Hotel had flowers shooting out of a hole in what should have been the roof—the apex of the drop. It was a giant phallus building spurting flowers out its top.

  We rocked with quiet laughter.

  Then I pulled up the hotel stats and stopped laughing. The Teardrop was on Floria. Which wasn’t far from Sturm. And one of our new details was that he had two worlds.

  The corporation that owned the Teardrop Hotel was Carmidee Hospitality. And the CEO was Nayth Carmidee. And his home world was Sturm. And he was black. And handsome. And 6’3.” And Galactic Minister of Hospitality for Andromeda.

  “Mmm,” Ren hummed appreciatively.

  “Yeah, handsome devil, isn’t he? Ren, this is gonna be the biggest recon I have ever done. If there’s any chance at all that he is or is not Her Ahtah, we have to find out everything—everything on Nayth Carmidee. The picture looks like it fits right now. But we have to take our time. Because Ryst can’t take any more heartache. We have to know. These financials are gonna take a lot of time to go through. He’s a quad. This is wealth unimaginable."

  "For a 23-year-old to have that kind of money and be a Galactic Minister, there are skeletons in his closet, and I have to find them. Can you take the family—go through stream sites? Everything public. Every photo. Every video.”

  I threw data at Ren’s pad, and he started combing through it.