A woman who looked to be just about entering middle age sat alone at the lab bench. She’d been sterilizing it with tissue wipes and a pick for the last ten minutes, not because it needed it, but because she had to look like she was doing something. Something so much more important it had to be done; she was too busy to take part in the impromptu celebrations out on the streets.

A chilly morning breeze came in through an open window, carrying loud chants and jabber in with it, interrupting the stillness in the room. Feeling a little stiff from not having slept at all the previous night, she stood up to close the window, but more sounds were breaking in—this time through the door.

It burst open with a bang.

The room’s new occupants were dressed similarly to the woman: all in rumpled, long coats and black bottoms, but in their case the folds were made by others’ hands, not by their own fingers clenching irritably at the starched lapels. They had been laughing without restraint, one—a younger woman—pretending to swoon in the other’s arms until they saw her there. She didn’t look at them—too busy, you see—but they stopped anyway. The woman shrank back and giggled annoyingly, like a schoolgirl caught in the act—no, more like a grown woman who had once been at the age but not longer, yet still reverted to it time and again.

“Oh—oh I’m so sorry…Miranda,” she paused and laughed again, maybe because of such a girlish name for such a sexless figure, maybe because she’d nearly called her professor or ma’am even though the two were nearly the same age, “We didn’t know you were here.”

Miranda tried to reflect that same look of forced earnestness but couldn’t manage it, so instead she stepped briskly back to the bench, readjusting the monitor again. Whenever her thin, nearly bony, fingers touched a smooth, white pad built into the metal surface, the screen flickered to life and back to black again. It had to be low on power. It had been kept running for four hours straight the night before. To her disgust, she’d been induced to man the controls—not that the rest of the team hadn’t learnt the basics, but simply that she was better. You could even call her a virtuoso, but she earned her skill through hard work and so, so much time, just like she’d earned everything in her life. And who could have a natural talent for the Scope? There was nothing natural about it, she rather thought.

Most called her arrogant, but only half-heartedly. She just didn’t believe in modesty.

A drawn-out silence passed. Light came in through the window, illuminating all the dust floating in the air of the ‘sterile’ laboratory. As per usual, she didn’t find it necessary to say anything, but, as per usual, they did and assumed that she did as well.

“You aren’t mad, are you? We really had to, you know that, right?” The girl was nervous, as always. “Dr. Dresein said it was alright…”

Miranda didn’t say anything.

“I mean, we knew Hardley was going to win anyway—” The man standing by her grinned but didn’t join in, preferring to watch and see what happened next and talk about it with everyone else later.

“If you knew, then why did you need to look anyway?” The girl-woman blanched and stuttered—she actually had thought of that, but somehow she always seemed to lose her voice when it came to this particular person.

“Well…”

“You know that it’s not a perfect match. Valers might have won there, and then everything would have been different than they are now.”

“But…”

“Or maybe Valers was supposed to have won here, and you changed everything by spreading the news. They didn’t even bother to count the ballots after he conceded.”

“We don’t know for—”

“And now we’ll never know.” She said all this in a patient monotone, since anything else would make her sound defensive.

“Actually, they did count the votes and Hardley would’ve won anyway, even if everyone hadn’t known that he would.” The man spoke with a casual sort of bravado, stepping in only when he was sure to win.

The girl smiled up at him, glad to have someone on her side for once.

Miranda wasn’t so impressed. “But no one knew Hardley would win a day early over there. Valers didn’t concede just when he was ahead over there. Deviations add up over time; Hardley’s been bragging all night over how he’s a winner even ‘across the universe’…”

The man flushed.

“As if that ad two weeks ago hadn’t been ridiculous enough. ‘Pop for there for a little visit’? ‘Put our heads together’? ‘See if that dictator ‘cross the Pacific can deal with two real men’?” She shifted the monitor with a scornful, dismissive look on her face. “The Hardley on that planet is nothing more than some light that’s travelled billions of miles from there to here. Even the most rudimentary understanding of physics would tell you that he’s long dead by now—maybe that whole world is gone, and the light’s only just now reached us.”

She’d never spoken so much at once and it surprised everyone in the room. Nevertheless, the effect didn’t last long as the girl broke the silence with a stunned, nervous laugh.

“Heh heh…but it’s all matched up so far—like looking in the future! And it’s only a day’s difference, so what does it matter, anyway?”

She couldn’t answer that question. It wasn’t a fair one—no one knew why that world across the universe was such a close match. What a great coincidence it was that its light alone had happened to hit their sensors, that the reflective light and their time frame would correspond so closely…

Quiet stretched between them. The light from the windows was getting warmer, the square on the linoleum floor slowly creeping towards the wall. If she’d wanted to be dramatic, she might have said something like, “Maybe nothing, maybe everything”, but I don’t think she was ever that type. Or is, because for all we know she is still alive, and more than light.

The man smiled modestly and wrapped his arm around the younger— but not that much younger—woman, and, taking her silence as his victory, led her out of the room.

Miranda knew it was not, so she stayed and waited with a sense of grim satisfaction as they walked out and shut the door behind them.

She delicately seated herself at the lab bench and ran her fingers across the smooth, white board. Hardley showed up on the screen, as usual entirely silent.

Sound requires a medium to travel and space is sadly empty. Fortunately, we can always read lips.

He was standing behind a wooden podium in the mid-morning sun. A massive banner formed a garish backdrop that matched his suit, and he looked like a leader—every inch.

With a vicious sort of look on her face, Miranda watched as something small and white shot down from the sky and into the crowd—the screen filling with immeasurable light.

It went dark again—not broken, but simply with nothing more to transmit. She imagined a supernova, but, of course, the daylight would keep anyone from seeing it.