Cole rubbed his face. He’d been on shift for a long time and really should be getting some sleep. But there was no way he could rest while Molly dealt with something as surreal as this. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “You sure nobody else could know how to spell your old name?”
“I can’t think of anyone. Not besides a bunch of backwoods frontier people on Lok, and they shouldn’t be involved in any of this.”
“What about the titles of those old books?”
Molly shook her head. “Nobody besides me and my dad, I’m pretty sure.”
“I just don’t know,” Cole said. He scanned the screen, taking in the snippets of conversation above the flashing cursor. “I don’t wanna get your hopes up, but we’ve seen some crazy stuff in the past month. The technology they had in the Darrin system blew my mind—”
“Have you ever heard of the Dakura system?” Molly asked.
Cole thought for a second. “No. But the name seems familiar. Why?”
“That’s where my mom says she was integrated into the ship, and where we need to go. Watch.”
Molly typed another question: COLE AND I WANT TO KNOW HOW WE CAN BELIEVE THAT IT’S REALLY YOU_
I CAN PROVE IT TO YOU AT DAKURA_
“See?” Molly asked, turning to Cole. “Pull it up on one of our newer charts. See how far we are from this place.”
Cole leaned forward and switched the nav computer from the bizarre conversation to the duller use for which it was intended. Pulling up the Bel Tra charts—the most accurate depiction of the Milky Way they owned—something horrific occurred to him. He slapped his forehead and shouted, “Flank me!”
Molly startled like the hull had been breached. “Gods, Cole! What?”
“When we were on Darrin, installing these new charts, do you remember how close I came to wiping out the old ones?”
She turned white. “Oh, my gods. I’d forgotten all about that. Do you think it would have—erased her?” She nodded toward her nav screen, having very nearly said “killed” instead of “erased.”
“I don’t know. We need to find out how fragile she is, or if we need to make a backup or something.”
“Good idea. I’ll add it to my to-do list.” She gave Cole a wry smile. “Now, if you’re done giving me heart problems over stuff that nearly happened weeks ago, you can get back to navigating.”
Cole grinned and gave Molly a crisp Navy salute. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and returned to her keyboard.
MOM, WE’RE AT 24% ON THE HYPERDRIVE. COLE IS CHECKING DAKURA AND OUR CURRENT LOCATION_
She hit enter, then thought of something else.
CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? ACCESS THE SHIP’S COMPUTERS OR CAMERAS?_
NO, MOLLIE. BUT I WOULD LIKE THAT. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, AND MAYBE ONCE WE GET TO DAKURA OR LOK, WE CAN WORK ON THAT_
There was a pause. And then her mother fired off a question of her own:
WHO IS COLE? IS HE A BOY? HOW OLD IS HE?_
Molly smiled, and some of the doubts rising up inside began to settle back down. The questions comforted with their normalcy. She glanced over at Cole to make sure he was busy with his calculations, then she leaned over her keyboard to shield the screen from his eyes, launching into a conversation she had long dreamed of having with her mother—but never thought possible.
And not just because her mother had never been around, she thought, glancing over at her navigator.
A few minutes later, Cole sighed and flopped back in his chair.
“Not good,” he groaned. He leaned forward again to switch back to the conversation with Parsona, and Molly started tapping the enter key furiously, filling the screen with blank lines to push the conversation off the top of the display.
Molly stole a glance at Cole and saw him surveying the blank screen of empty prompts, his head tilted as he tried to puzzle it out. She could feel sweat popping out of the pores on her scalp and became consumed with the impulse to scratch her head.
Her mother lobbed a bomb into the stillness.
AS LONG AS YOU TWO ARE JUST KISSING, MOLLIE, THAT IS WONDERFUL NEWS. HE SOUNDS LOVELY_
A contest began: seeing who could turn the brighter shade of pink. Cole tried to look distracted, fiddling with the flight controls, but Parsona had been floating in empty space for hours.
“Uh… nowhere near enough juice to get us to Dakura,” he said. “We can’t even make it back to Lok, which we passed two jumps ago. Our course from Earth to Drenard took us near both, but we’re now too close to our destination to do anything but forge ahead. Unless, of course, you want to get arrested while we ask the Navy for some fusion fuel.”
Molly began communicating the bad news to her mom, eager to change the conversation away from romantic advice:
NOT ENOUGH FUSION FUEL FOR DAKURA. AND WE’RE IN A BIT OF A SPOT WITH THE LAW—CAN’T TOP UP AT ANY ORBITAL STATIONS. WE’VE BEEN HEADING TOWARD DRENARD FOR SEVERAL DAYS NOW_
DRENARD? WHY ARE YOU GOING TO DRENARD? IS THE WAR OVER?_
This woke Molly up to how long her mother must have been shut away in a computer. It felt nice to not be the only one with gaps in her knowledge. Even better was the feeling of having answers to someone else’s questions.
WE HAVE A DRENARD ON THE SHIP WITH US. HER NAME’S ANLYN, BUT DON’T WORRY, SHE’S A FRIEND. SHE SAVED MY LIFE. SAID WE’D BE SAFE ON DRENARD AND THEY’D STOCK US UP WITH FOOD AND FUEL_
The screen stayed blank, the cursor flashing. Her mom seemed to need some time to digest the news. Molly really wanted to jab the enter key a dozen more times and get the “kissing” sentence off the screen. She felt like Cole could see the sweat beneath her hair, then worried her mom was gonna be angry at them for having an enemy alien on the ship.
Her stomach knotted up with worry, impatient for a response.
When her mother finally typed out her reply, Molly realized she hadn’t been queasy enough.
I NEED TO SPEAK WITH THE DRENARD. ALONE. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE_
2
“Should I go wake her?” Cole leaned forward, his hands on the armrests of his seat. Molly couldn’t tell if he was eager to help or just feeling the urge to get away from the nav computer before it said something even more peculiar.
She looked from the screen, to Cole, then back again. Shrugging, unable to make sense of anything herself, she whispered, “I guess so.” Her voice sounded weak and feeble to her own ears, as if temporarily stunned.
Cole crawled out of his chair and padded away, leaving Molly alone with the computer once again. She reached for her keyboard, partly obliged to keep her mother occupied—not sure what the passage of a few minutes might feel like to a consciousness that could compute billions of operations a second—but also in an attempt to alleviate some of her confusion.
MOM_
She wasn’t sure how to phrase what she felt, so finally settled on being completely honest: YOU’RE SCARING ME_
I’M SORRY. IT ISN’T LIKE THIS IS EASY FOR ME. I_ THERE IS SO MUCH I WANT TO TELL YOU, TO CATCH UP ON. THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU, WE WEREN’T EVEN SURE IF YOU WOULD LIVE FOR A YEAR. AND I WAS VERY SICK. EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT YOU ARE JUST FACTS GIVEN TO ME LATER. I’M SORRY, IS THE DRENARD THERE YET?_
NO, COLE IS WAKING HER UP. WE’RE ON A NIGHT SHIFT. AND HER NAME IS ANLYN _
VERY WELL. PLEASE INTERRUPT ME AS SOON AS ANLYN IS THERE. WHAT I WANTED TO EXPLAIN EARLIER IS THAT MY WORLD FEELS VERY STRANGE RIGHT NOW. STRANGER, PERHAPS, THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. I HAVE MY THOUGHTS, AND THEY SEEM LIKE A WAKING DREAM. LIKE I’M IN A DARK ROOM WITH MY EYES CLOSED, ALONE WITH MY MEMORIES_