You’re sitting outside the Science C&D drinking coffee and flicking through scans of Ellen’s journal on your tablet.

October 23, 1975
Making progress on the Spinners’ language, though the rest of the team says I’m wasting my time. I don’t think they mean us any harm; but everything is a threat, or a potential threat, these days. Violence, and the fear of violence, in every headline and alleyway.

Yesterday a Soviet probe made it to the surface of Venus, and sent pictures home. I saw one on television this morning while I was eating breakfast. Behind that thick cloud of yellow gas, it is a bare and rocky wasteland. There is great excitement in the public, and I know that a few months ago I would be excited too. But what are bare rocks compared to the living creatures we are learning about here?

“It’s so wild that all of this was going on back then and Ellen and her team were the only ones who knew,” you say to Alex as they sit down next to you.

“Yeah, uh, about that,” Alex says, dropping a folded newspaper in your lap. “I don’t think we’re the only ones who know this time.”