Carried Forward

Carried Forward #### by Charlie Forêt A short story set approximately 52 years after the events of Signal Zero. ©2026, by Charlie Forêt, all rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. --- The announcement arrived in Petra's inbox at 8:14 on a Tuesday, sandwiched between a vendor invoice dispute and a reminder about the office's mandatory fire drill. Internal Promotion — Strategic Planning Division: Stellan Brant elevated to Director, Strategic Planning, effective the first of next month. Please join us in congratulating... She read it twice. Then she set her coffee down carefully, because the cup was nice and she didn't want to break it, and she allowed herself ninety seconds of reaction time before filing it in the place in her mind where she kept things she'd decided not to do anything about. Ninety seconds. She'd learned to be efficient even with this. The thing was, Stellan was fine. That was the precise word for it. He was fine. He processed data at a speed that most of her colleagues found impressive and that she found adequate. His projections were...