I could remember! I marveled at that. As I marched my hundred to the lockers for their clothes, armor, equipment and weapons, I rejoiced in the fact that my memory had not been wiped clean by the Golden One. I wondered why this time was different. Aten always erased my memory after each of my missions. Sometimes I had overcome his erasures, sometimes I reclaimed my memories. Aten often smirked that he allowed me to remember, that I could never have overcome his erasure with nothing but my own efforts. I myself thought that Anya probably helped me.

But now I could remember it all—or at least, I could remember a lot. Anya. I loved her and she loved me. She was one of the Creators, as far beyond me as a goddess is to a mortal, but she loved me. She had risked her life to be with me in all the ages I had been sent to by Aten. I wanted to find her, to be with her, forever.

But there was a crisis, out among the stars, far from Earth. Anya was out there fighting somewhere, as were the other Creators. Fighting for their lives. Fighting for the survival of the human race. Fighting for the survival of the continuum.

Against whom? I had no idea. Was this the time of the great crisis in the continuum that Aten and the other Creators had feared so deeply? Is that why I was here, with my memories intact?

I wondered about that. How much of my memories were with me? There was no way to tell. How do you know if you don’t remember a lifetime or two? I could hear Aten’s mocking laughter in my mind. It seemed to say that I remembered what he allowed me to remember, nothing more. I was his creature, destined throughout all the lifetimes of the continuum to do his bidding.

“ORION TO THE BRIDGE.” The order sounded from the speakers of the ship’s intercom, overhead. “ON THE DOUBLE.”