"The Room Time Refused To Touch" [Melantha Hastings - History Pt 7]

Posted on Wed Oct 21st, 2026 @ 1:57am by Ensign Melantha Hastings

3,316 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Younger Years
Location: Berkshire, England- Hastings Manor
Timeline: Summer 2393

The corridor felt smaller than she remembered. Melantha moved slowly along the upper gallery, one hand trailing lightly against the polished oak panelling worn smooth by generations of Hastings hands. Late-afternoon sunlight spilled through the tall windows overlooking the western gardens, illuminating the familiar portraits and the occasional imperfections in the ancient woodwork. The house was quiet. Not entirely silent.

Somewhere below, a door closed. The faint hum of the estate's environmental systems could be heard if she listened carefully, and beyond the open windows came the distant sounds of birds settling among the trees. But it was not the house she remembered. There were no raised voices from the morning room. No footsteps hurrying along the gallery. No Oliver complaining that Robert had borrowed something without asking. No James reminding everyone that Father expected them downstairs for dinner. And no Robert.

Never Robert. Four centuries had passed. Yet Hastings Manor had somehow survived. Wars. Changing governments. The devastation of Earth's Third World War. The gradual transformation of humanity into a civilisation that travelled among the stars. The future had reached inside the old house, certainly. Environmental systems lay hidden behind eighteenth-century walls. Automated lighting supplemented the old chandeliers. Structural reinforcements had been installed beneath Georgian stonework, and sophisticated conservation technology protected the estate's most historically significant rooms.

But the soul of Hastings Manor remained. It still smelled of polished wood, old books and the faint fragrance of flowers brought in from the gardens. It still felt like home. And sometimes that was the hardest thing of all. Mel passed the family portrait gallery. She stopped.

There they were. Spring, 1995. The final formal family portrait. Edward Hastings stood beside his wife, Sarah, one hand resting lightly against the back of her chair. James stood with the impeccable posture expected of the heir to the Hastings title. Oliver looked as though he would rather have been anywhere else. Robert... Mel swallowed. Of course Robert was smirking. He had always hated portrait sittings. And there she was. Twenty-one years old. Red hair arranged exactly as Mother had instructed. A gown she remembered complaining about because it had been entirely unsuitable for anything other than standing still and looking decorative.

Six people. A complete family. Within a year, one would be dead and another would be lying inside a cryogenic chamber, suspended between life and death. Mel looked away. She could not bear the portrait today. Not when she knew where she was going.

***

The western family wing had changed remarkably little. The corridor narrowed slightly beyond the portrait gallery, where the older part of the manor joined the nineteenth-century extensions. She remembered running along this passage as a child. Remembered Sarah calling after them to slow down. Remembered Robert deliberately making more noise simply because he had been told not to. She almost smiled.
Almost. Then she reached the first door. Her bedroom. The brass nameplate was still there.

**Lady Melantha Hastings**

Below it, a smaller modern plaque had been installed.

*Private Family Apartments — Preserved Heritage Interior.*

She stared at it for several moments. Then reached for the handle. The door opened without resistance. And she stepped into 1996. Her breath caught. The pale walls. The cream curtains. The familiar four-poster bed with its green and ivory furnishings. Her dressing table.
The bookshelves. The little writing desk beneath the window. Everything. Not merely similar. The same. Her old hairbrush rested upon the dressing table beside a small silver jewellery box. A photograph of herself with her brothers stood beside the mirror. Several university textbooks occupied the shelves above her desk. Her wardrobe remained closed. Even the embroidered cushion Sarah had insisted upon purchasing during a visit to Bath was still sitting on the window seat.

Mel crossed the room slowly. She touched the dressing table. Then the bedpost. Then the small porcelain dish that had once held her earrings.
Someone had cared for these things. For centuries. She had learned during the estate briefings that her parents had instructed the household staff to maintain her bedroom exactly as she had left it. Edward had expected her to return. Sarah had refused to allow anyone to pack away her daughter's belongings. After their deaths, the instruction had passed into the estate's permanent records. Generations of household custodians had followed it.

When twentieth-century materials began showing signs of deterioration, conservation specialists had been engaged. Later, environmental preservation systems had been installed discreetly behind the walls. The room had been maintained, not abandoned. Preserved. Protected.
Waiting. Mel opened the wardrobe. Her clothes still hung inside. Dresses. Blouses. A favourite dark green cardigan. The formal evening gown she had worn to a charity dinner shortly before the war. She reached for the cardigan.

The fabric was soft beneath her fingers. She remembered wearing it. Remembered sitting in the library with Robert, arguing over which of them had stolen the last of Cook's chocolate biscuits. She laughed. A small, unexpected sound. Then the laughter faded. She carefully returned the cardigan to its hanger. For a long time, she stood in the middle of the room. Twenty-two years old. Nearly four centuries removed from the last time she had slept in that bed. And somehow...

Home. She closed the wardrobe. Stepped back into the corridor. And turned toward the door opposite.

***

Robert's room. Dark walnut. Brass handle. And there... Near the lower frame... The scratch. Mel stared. She remembered that scratch. Robert had struck the doorframe with a cricket bat during an argument with Oliver. Mother had been furious. Father had threatened to make him pay for the repairs. Robert had declared that the mark gave the corridor character. And somehow... Nobody had ever repaired it. She reached down. Touched the shallow indentation. Her fingers followed the uneven line in the wood. Four hundred years. And there it was.

She straightened slowly. The door carried a plaque similar to her own.

**Lord Robert Hastings**
*1969–1995*

Below it:

*Private Family Apartments — Preserved Heritage Interior.*

Mel closed her eyes. Robert had been twenty-six. Only four years older than she had been when the world ended for her. He had been killed during the Eugenics Wars. She remembered the news. The disbelief. The terrible silence that had descended upon Hastings Manor. Sarah retreating to her rooms. Edward standing in the library for hours, staring through the windows without appearing to see anything. James becoming painfully composed. Oliver furious at everyone and everything. And Mel...

She had been twenty-one. Too young to understand how permanently a family could change in a single afternoon. She opened her eyes.
Then, very slowly, turned the handle.

***

The door swung inward. For several seconds she could not move. Robert's bedroom was exactly as she remembered. The dark wooden furniture.
The navy bedspread. The bookshelf beside the fireplace. The old stereo system. The framed photographs. The aviation manuals. Even the model aircraft suspended from the ceiling. Late-afternoon sunlight stretched across the floorboards, catching the edges of the furniture and turning the room a familiar warm gold. Mel stepped inside. The air was clean, faintly scented with cedar and leather. The original fabrics and furnishings had been carefully maintained, protected by conservation systems that were almost impossible to detect.

There was no thick dust. No decay. No sense of abandonment. Someone had looked after Robert's room with extraordinary care. For centuries.
She moved toward the bookshelf. There were his books. Military history. Aircraft. Exploration. Several battered novels he had read repeatedly.
A collection of detective stories. She recognised one immediately. Robert had borrowed it from her. And never returned it. Mel reached for the book.
Opened the cover. There, written in familiar handwriting, were the words: *Property of Mel Hastings.*

Beneath them, in a different hand:

*Possession is nine-tenths of the law. — R.*

A laugh escaped her. Unexpected. Almost painful. "Oh, Robert..." She ran her thumb across his handwriting. "You absolute beast." She could hear him answering. *You left it lying around, Mel. Practically an invitation.*

She closed the book. Held it against her chest. And looked around the room. For the first time since awakening, she was surrounded by something that had belonged entirely to her brother. Not photographs. Not official records. Not historical accounts describing his death. Robert. The boy who had taught her to climb trees. The young man who had teased her about her first boyfriend. The brother who had insisted she learn to defend herself because, as he had once put it, *being a Hastings did not mean the world would always behave itself.*

She crossed toward the desk. His old writing materials were still there. A half-finished crossword. A fountain pen. A small stack of correspondence.
A framed photograph. Mel picked it up. Cornwall. Summer, 1982. All four Hastings children on the beach. James, seventeen, standing behind the others with the slightly embarrassed expression of someone who considered himself far too mature for family photographs. Oliver, fifteen, grinning. Robert, thirteen, with one arm thrown around eight-year-old Mel. And Mel herself, red-haired and smiling, clutching a bucket of seashells. She remembered that day.

Robert had convinced her there were pirates buried beneath the cliffs. Oliver had helped him invent increasingly ridiculous details. James had eventually told them both to stop frightening their little sister. And Mel... She had believed every word. A tear fell against the photograph. She wiped it away quickly. Then another followed. She carefully returned the frame to the desk. Not yet. She wasn't ready. She moved toward the window.
Outside, the gardens stretched toward the distant Berkshire countryside. The same view Robert had looked upon. The same trees. The same lawns.

He had once stood beside this very window and declared that humanity would eventually build machines capable of travelling faster than light.
She had laughed at him. He had insisted he would live long enough to see it. Mel pressed her hand against the glass. "Oh, Robert..." Her voice trembled. "You were right."

Beyond the gardens, somewhere far above the atmosphere, starships travelled between worlds that neither of them could have imagined. Robert would have loved it. He would have asked a thousand questions. He would have wanted to see everything. And he never would.

***

She did not know how long she remained by the window. Eventually she moved to the bed. Sat carefully upon its edge. The mattress gave slightly beneath her weight. She remembered sitting here as a teenager, complaining about Mother. Remembered Robert lying across the bed in his shoes, laughing at something Oliver had said. Remembered the arguments. The teasing. The secrets. The ridiculous plans they had made. All the ordinary things that had once seemed so unimportant. She looked toward the wardrobe. A dark navy blazer hung neatly from the door.

Robert's favourite. The one he had worn to family gatherings whenever Mother insisted he make an effort. She remembered him complaining that it made him look like a politician. Sarah had told him that was precisely the point. He had responded that he would rather join the circus. Mel smiled.
Then she noticed something else. A small photograph tucked into the edge of the wardrobe mirror. She stood. Crossed the room.

And carefully removed it. It was a photograph of the two of them. Taken in the gardens. She could not remember the occasion. Robert was smiling broadly. Mel was laughing at something beyond the frame. They looked happy. Carefree. Alive. Her fingers began to tremble. She stared at Robert's face. Twenty-six. Forever twenty-six. She was twenty-two when they placed her into stasis. When she woke, she had still been twenty-two.
And Robert... Robert had never been given another birthday. Her breathing changed. At first she barely noticed.

A small tightening in her chest. A sudden difficulty swallowing. Then another breath. Too shallow. She lowered herself onto the bed. "No..." The word escaped before she understood why. She looked around the room. At the clothes. The books. The photographs. The ordinary possessions of a young man who had expected to come home. And suddenly she understood something she had never properly considered. Her mother had kept this room. After Robert died. After the funeral. After the terrible weeks when the family barely knew how to speak to one another.

Sarah had preserved it. Then, less than a year later, Mel had been critically injured. And Sarah had preserved her room too. Two bedrooms. Two children who were not coming home. One dead. One suspended between life and death. Edward and Sarah had lived in this house for decades afterwards. Walking these corridors. Passing these doors. Waiting for one child who could never return... And another who might. Mel pressed a hand against her mouth. "Oh, Mother..."

The first sob came without warning. Then another. She bent forward, still clutching the photograph. "How did you bear it?"

There was no answer. Only the quiet sounds of the summer afternoon beyond the windows. She thought of Edward. Of the promise he had made beside her hospital bed. *I will be here when you wake.* He had believed it. For thirty-one years after her stasis began, he had lived with that hope.
Sarah had lived another four years beyond him. Neither had seen their daughter awaken. Neither had known that the extraordinary medical advances they had hoped for would eventually come. Neither had known that Mel would one day stand in this room. Alive. Healthy. And utterly alone in a world they had never seen. The photograph slipped gently into her lap. Mel covered her face. And wept.

***

It was not the first time she had cried since awakening. There had been the hospital. The historical briefings. The first visit to the family crypt. The terrible moment when she had read the dates upon her parents' memorials. But this was different. This was not the grief of discovering death. It was the grief of discovering everything that had continued after her own life had stopped. Her parents had grown older. Her brothers had carried on.

The family had changed. People had married. Children had been born. Funerals had been held. Christmases had come and gone. And through it all... Two bedrooms had remained waiting at the end of the western corridor. Not because anyone believed Robert would return. But because Sarah and Edward had loved him too much to let his existence be reduced to a name on a gravestone. Mel drew the photograph against her chest. "I miss you." Her voice broke. "I miss you so much." The room offered no answer. She had not expected one. She curled onto her side upon the neatly made bed, drawing her knees slightly upward as the tears continued.

For a little while she was no longer the woman who had survived four centuries. She was simply Robert's little sister. And she wanted her brother.

***

By the time the afternoon light began fading, Mel had been in the room for well over two hours. The estate's discreet medical monitoring system had registered her elevated distress, but there had been no immediate medical emergency. A private notification had been sent to the household's designated medical contact. Doctor Renwick had arrived quietly.

She did not rush into the room. Instead, she stopped in the doorway. Mel was sitting on the floor beside Robert's bed now, her back resting against its wooden frame. The photograph lay in her lap. Her eyes were red. Her face pale. But her breathing had begun to settle. "Mel?"

Mel looked up. For a moment she seemed uncertain who had spoken. Then recognition returned. "Doctor."

Renwick stepped inside. "May I come in?"

Mel nodded. The doctor approached slowly and lowered herself into the chair beside the desk. She did not immediately ask questions. Did not produce a tricorder. Did not attempt to explain what Mel was feeling. She simply sat.

After several minutes, Mel spoke. "They kept everything."

Renwick glanced around the room. "Yes."

"All of it." Mel looked down at the photograph. "His books. His clothes. Even that ridiculous cricket bat." Her voice trembled. "Four hundred years."

Renwick remained quiet.

Mel swallowed. "And my room." A pause. "They kept mine too."

"Your parents wanted you to have somewhere to come home to."

Mel closed her eyes. "But Robert..." She struggled to continue. "Robert was already gone."

Renwick nodded gently. "Yes."

"Why would they..." The words failed.

The doctor waited.

Mel looked toward the wardrobe. "Because they loved him." It was barely a whisper.

Renwick's expression softened. "Yes, Mel."

Mel began crying again. Not violently this time. Just quietly. Exhaustedly. "Poor Mother." The words came through tears. "Poor Father."

Renwick moved from the chair and sat beside her on the floor. For a long time neither spoke. There was nothing useful to say. Nothing that could restore the years. Nothing that could return Robert to the family. Nothing that could give Edward and Sarah the reunion they had spent the remainder of their lives hoping for. Eventually Mel looked toward the photograph again.

"He would have loved all of this."

Renwick followed her gaze. "The future?"

Mel nodded. "Starships. Other worlds. Everything." A small, broken smile touched her lips. "He always wanted to know what was beyond the horizon." She wiped her eyes. "And I used to laugh at him."

"Perhaps you can see some of it for him."

Mel looked at the doctor. The suggestion was gentle. Not an instruction. Not a demand that she turn grief into purpose. Simply a possibility. Mel looked back at Robert's photograph. "Perhaps."

***

When she finally rose, the room had begun to darken. The estate's environmental lighting responded discreetly, bringing a soft golden glow to the bedside lamps. Mel returned the photograph to its place beside the wardrobe mirror. Then she picked up the borrowed detective novel. She held it for a moment.

*Property of Mel Hastings.*

*Possession is nine-tenths of the law. — R.*

A faint smile returned. "I think..." She looked toward Doctor Renwick. "...I'll take this one back."

The doctor smiled. "I imagine your brother would approve."

"Oh, he'd complain terribly." Mel brushed her thumb across the cover. "But he'd get over it." She walked toward the door. Stopped. Turned.
For a long moment she looked around Robert's room. The bed. The books. The model aircraft. The familiar furniture. Everything preserved with extraordinary care by people who had never known the young man who once lived here. She understood now. The room had not been waiting for Robert. It had been remembering him. Just as her own bedroom had been waiting for the possibility of her return. Two rooms.

Two very different kinds of hope. And four centuries of family love preserved within the walls of Hastings Manor. "Goodnight, Robert." Her voice was quiet. Steady. "I'll come back." She switched off the bedside lamp. Then stepped into the corridor.

***

The western gallery was almost dark. Through the tall windows, the last traces of summer sunlight stretched across the gardens. Mel stood between the two bedroom doors.

Robert's.

And her own.

For a moment she looked from one to the other. Then she reached out and touched the nameplate upon her bedroom door.

**Lady Melantha Hastings.**

She had come home. Not in the way Edward and Sarah had imagined. Not when they had hoped. But she had come home. And Robert... Robert would always have a place here. She looked once more toward his door. A small smile touched her face. "Don't worry, Rob." She held the old book against her chest. "I won't forget you."

Then Melantha Hastings turned and walked slowly toward the main staircase. Behind her, the two preserved bedrooms stood quietly in the gathering dusk. Not abandoned. Not forgotten. And no longer entirely waiting. For one of the Hastings children had finally returned. And she would remember the others.


**OFF**

Ensign Melantha Hastings
Counsellor
USS *Tokyo*

 

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