March 20, 2012
Half past nine at night
The Space Room, Level Nine

She'd been drifting for so long that if it hadn't been for the shining little jewel of a world before her, it would have been impossible to tell which way was up.

The starscape of the Space Room seemed to shine brighter than normal tonight, perhaps lent some vigor by the outside world's equinox, which marked the transition from winter to spring. Kaia sat cross-legged somewhere just inside the orbit of Venus, curly locks splayed around her like the corona of a star, her gaze focused intently on an upside-down Earth. Silently, she watched as a small bright speck arced between the Earth and its shining silver satellite, orbited around, and then curved down to its surface, colliding with a barely visible impact on a large island deep on its underside.

In front of her, a series of shining blue numbers and symbols changed furiously, relaying positions and trajectories at a rate that nearly rivaled Muggle computers until they came to a sudden, final halt. But Kaia was barely paying them mind tonight. Instead, she reached out to grasp at the invisible fabric of space and twisted. All around her, the stars and planets seemed to slow their movement for a moment, and then began to move in reverse: the small bright thing rose from the surface of Great Britain and quickly began to retreat back around the Earth, until it had reached the point where it had started and she let the room's magical space-time resume its normal flow.

Orbit, impact, reverse. The magical calculations borrowed from ARTEMIS ran through their numbers again, and Kaia frowned as she glanced at them, and then let the pattern resume once more.

It was always the breeze that made it impossible for anyone to sneak up on her. It ruffled her hair like a shiver, and the Unspeakable glanced up just in time to see the door to the Space Room closing behind a familiar figure, who was oriented upside down to where she hung in time and space.

"A bit late for a spacewalk, eh?" Smiling, Kaia let the blue numbers fade as she waited for the Head of the Department of Mysteries to make his way across the heavens to her little corner of the solar system. "I didn't expect you to get my note until you were back in again tomorrow morning."

He had been prepared to go home after a final round in the Thought Chamber, which had necessitated a shower and a change of clothes. Yavin was feeling his age - watching younger Unspeakables wrangle heartily with encephala and getting veritably soaked in viscous brain fluid.

Still, much as he anticipated the pleasant aches of a long day, his curiosity was piqued by Arahanga's note. He was long overdue a briefing on the meteorite's progress and Kaia was one of the more sociable Unspeakables. The old wizard would not have been so willing to listen to the more taciturn of them drone on about variables or experiments.

              "I didn't expect you to get my note until... tomorrow morning."

Kicking off the door had brought him quickly and easily to the witch, sailing through the starry blackness. There was peace here.

"You're, hah, you're my last stop." Yavin replied in good but subdued humour, righting himself in relation to Kaia's position - he paused a moment to get used to this orientation. "I see we've taken a, hm, a step back in time as well as space."

His bespectacled gaze slid from her smiling countenance to that of their home planet. He folded his legs the way you might when seated on a floor, and appeared very casual due to his tiredness.

"What have we here?"

Once again, the small bright thing made its approach. It streaked towards the tiny blue-green world, racing across the dark blue of the Pacific as the planet continued its slow rotation. Finally, it impacted at the lower end of an upside-down Great Britain, giving off a tiny white flare.

Kaia paused, pursing her lips as she considered the Department Head's question.

"Here," she said after a beat. "I reckon it's best if I show you, but we'll need to start a little earlier in the story."

She tangled her fingers in the invisible threads of space-time again and gave a tug.

It was a nearly impossible thing to get used to, seeing the cosmos shift around you. It left you with a spinning feeling, as if you might be the center of the universe after all and maybe the heavens would do what you said if you'd only thought to ask. Kaia found the disorienting thrill of the Space Room to be exhilarating, even if it left her feeling a bit like she'd crossed into the taboo. It was one thing to count the stars and number them, to use them to mark your way and even to calculate their journeys. It was quite another to stand as her own little god here, to manipulate the night sky in ways that so much of humanity would have never dreamed possible.

When the heavens finally stopped moving, they were floating in the ether of outer space. The star of the Sol system -- the Sun -- looked as if it were a mile away, a tiny beacon brighter than any of its brethren, but still just a bright speck dwarfed by all the darkness.

A large oblong rock about the size of a football hung in the air in front of them. Although it looked like it was barely moving, glowing blue numbers hovered next to it, calculating its speed and trajectory.

"Here we are, then," Kaia said cheerfully, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. "The eighteenth of July, 2011. That's when we first spotted this bugger on approach." She glanced sidelong at her boss; that had been just before he'd come to the Department of Mysteries, before he'd been summoned in like a savior to wash away the stain that Mortimer Gamp had left on the department. "I know you've read Rosier's report from back then, eh?"

He blinked slowly, watching Arahanga's hands work their magic as the starry blackness around them began to move. It was different to be subject to someone else's manipulation of the Space Chamber - you were not in control and yet you found yourself hurtling through the endless heavens in a manner otherwise impossible.

Impossible for now anyway.

             "That's when we first spotted this bugger on approach."

Yavin's mouth twitched into a smile and he glanced at the meteorite, moving himself slightly so that he was across from Kaia with the mysterious object between them.

"Yes," he replied, looking in the direction from which their visitor had come. "Alpha centauri, he, ah, he suggested. Reasonable assumption. The muggles have conjectured a liveable planet in the star system, haven't they? Assuming that, um, that other civilisations require the same conditions for life."

A shame their space simulation could only go so far. But then, it wouldn't be a mystery if it could. He shook his head to himself and looked past the meteorite to meet Arahanga's gaze.

"What does ARTEMIS tell us?" Yavin asked, wondering if the nomaj calculations confirmed or disproved Rosier's theories. "The Sphere isn't, hm, isn't talking at any rate. If it's a weapon we're out of our ah, depth. If it's a gift, how do we unwrap the damn thing? It was hard enough getting it down here without causing, hah, causing a national disaster."

These ramblings hovered at the meeting point of the philosophical the scientific. He didn't expect Kaia to have an answer to that last query. Only that, if you asked enough questions, it could send someone's thoughts down the right path at some point later in time.