Hari Seldon University, the hub of Psychohistory for natives of Earth, has its home on an artificial island on the frozen seas of Europa, named Aurora, from the newest Earth’s colony. As lecturer, soon to be promoted to full professorship, I have been allocated a cottage, in the middle of the vast forest that covers most of the island, which suits me, or I should say, us, as Melissa joined me a few weeks after the trial that I recounted earlier. The cottage has two floors, the ground being dedicated to machinery (power, heating, water generator, lighting and telecommunications, and the quantum computer, as well as the army of small robots that takes care of most chores), a garage for a small vehicle, and a vast kitchen, and the upper floor divided in to a spacious lounge, an observatory room with optics and telescope, four bedrooms, and a library. Melissa chose the furniture, or, rather, designed it and built it, using the local resources: rustic oak tables and shelves, comfortable chairs and sofas (I chose the textile, material, colours and design) and some of the gadgets. Our sound system – some days I will say more about five-dimensional acoustics – is said to be the best on Aurora. The walls, of a uniform pale blue colour, are decorated with prints, and objects collected by Melissa and me.

We moved in as soon as services were connected, and the furniture ready. This was a month ago, but Europa’s solar month is three and a half times Earth’s month. We are now in the lounge, I am revising my notes for tomorrow’s lecture, inspired by the second volume of Asimov’s saga of “Foundation & Empire”, and Melissa, from time to time disappearing from view, is conversing with Inga. I am reflecting on the political realities I understood from the trial, and this brings me back to the first Foundation and the succession of events on Terminus. My mind visualises the Encyclopedists, devoted to their research work, as yet ignorant of the true purpose of the Foundation, isolated on a planet without metals, at the very edge of the known Universe. Yet the following centuries would turn this peaceful world upside down, through the convulsions of uprisings, and wars, the Foundation surviving each crisis.

3085 was the year Arcturians first visited us, the first “alien” living visitors in our whole history, but nonetheless human, as predicted by psychohistory. The resulting Arcturian-Earth cooperation had motivated the creation of the Third Foundation, a monument of political, legal, economical, trans-spatial, trans-dimensional, scientific governing body, so named in the memory of Asimov and Seldon. Melissa is emerging from her long chat with Inga. It was seventy years later that Melissa and I met. She comes to me, wearing the long dark blue robe that we now wear at home, decorated with a hieroglyphic Owl of her own design. Her smile is radiant, her light fills my soul with delight. For long minutes we are silent. Then we start speaking at the same time, we laugh, we collapse on the sofa.

“Inga sends her regards,” she says, her arm around my shoulders, “and she has finalised her statement to my coven. She’s hopeful that they will see no reason for continuing the case against me, but I will wait until it is settled. How are you doing with this lecture?”

We kiss, I say: “I think I will improvise a little. They are third year students, including a few Arcturians who have enrolled before I was based here. Not all of them have read the “Foundation” trilogy though, so, I will have to set out the scene, in 1950 AD in North America. Can you imagine? I don’t want to submerge them with details… Besides, this is not a literature course, just an example of Asimov’s pioneering writing.”