So I sat for over a day, opening the file and staring at it, and closing it once more. On the positive side, I got the vacuuming and dusting done, so the time wasn’t wasted completely. And then I remembered one tiny detail from the second sentence of the story! The sun in the sky had a reddish color. So, being as this is science fiction, I looked online for red stars. That led to Alpha Scorpii (Antares), to Scorpius, the constellation, to Serket, the ancient Egyptian scorpion goddess.

Now I’...