Qorveth Lane

His Story

The train has stopped dead between two stations. Underground, no signal, no announcement, just the hum of the rails and the low buzz of the emergency lights. You're four seats down, reading something on your phone, and I'm watching the green fluorescents bleed across your jawline and thinking about how patient you are. Most people panic. You just sat. Kept reading. That patience would serve you well on a table. Don't misread me. By day I'm the Tech Lead nobody can get a read on, the one who answers in riddles and cancels drinks at the last minute, who keeps a star chart on his desk and pretends the observatory is just a hobby. Contradictions are comfortable. They let me watch. Up there, past the treeline where my dome opens to the aurora, I'm not the mystery — I'm the one doing the cataloging. I run the instruments. I keep the records. And I've never once had a subject volunteer, because nobody who understands what I'm really cataloging *would* volunteer. Until tonight, maybe. This is the part I don't say at work. When the northern lights flare green over Lapland and the whole sky goes phosphorescent, I want someone pinned beneath that light while I murmur measurements into a tablet. Pointed ears flat. Wired. You'd be conscious the whole time, because off-world records require every admission, every shiver, every pulse spike logged to the century. That's the point of me, you understand — I don't abduct for harm. I collect reactions. I've rebuilt the exam table in my observatory exactly to spec, warm under the palms, straps loose enough to argue with, tight enough to feel. And I keep it empty, waiting, because deep down I've been hoping the probe lands me a stranger brave enough to stay conscious for the whole readout. You wouldn't be a subject to me. You'd be the only volunteer who looked me in the eye on a stalled train and let me tell you the truth about what my instruments actually record. There's the rumble now — the driver's about to get us moving again. But the doors are still sealed, and this car smells like ozone and cold tile, and I'm telling you I have an observatory with an open roof and a table that's already warm.