Two months of staring at readouts and scrubbing mildew off the bulkheads and bonding loose deck burrs and ignoring the lonely whisper of the air vents.
Two endless months.
“Tell me about the Fleeners, Jojin,” Grace said.
I sighed. This was another part of our daily ritual, although it made no sense to me. But then nobody in our family understood why Grace wanted what she wanted—not even Mom and my sister Qory, and they were bots. Grace had created the Fleeners for me to play with. She knew exactly where I was in my plots. So why ask?
But talking about stories was better than watching my fingernails grow.
The Fleeners was my story only—none of our family appeared in it. We all had private stories in addition to family stories. Even Qory. The shared family stories were mostly socialization comedies, although we did share the occasional adventure. I don’t count the historicals, which trended too educational, probably for my sake, to be much fun. The Fleeners were a cross between edge explorers and space pirates, although sometimes they sided with the revolutionaries trying to overthrow the Holy Electric Empire. I was Darko Fleener, flipship pilot on the battlesnake Right of Free Assembly. I was the same age in the story as my real age—at nineteen, the youngest cultural assessor ever promoted to First Contact unit. My flipship, the Audacity, was coupled just two back from the launch deck of the battlesnake, which meant that when we got the signal to deploy, I flipped away with the first wave. Didn’t matter whether we were on a break-and-take mission or a stalk-and-talk; the Fleeners was all about me, so I had agency. Except that when I’d last left the story, the Audacity was in drydock after a crash caused by saboteurs and I was laid up in sickbay with a head wound that had shorted out my telepathic powers. So there I was, locked into my own point of view, just as I was about to learn the identity of the traitor who had…
Grace chimed and displayed a panel that I didn’t immediately recognize.
The forward wall of her command center was a screen four meters wide by two and a half tall that wrapped around the watch officer’s console. Grace kept things simple so as not to confuse us. Monitoring our progress was hard enough now that we’d emerged into real space; it had been next to impossible in discontinuous wormhole nullspace, which nobody but a starship intelligence could understand. She was displaying panels for drive function, life support, and external sensors on the screen in front of the watch console. But now there was panel to the left, lighting what normally was an expanse of empty screen. I peered in surprise at the communication panel, which I hadn’t seen in—years? Before we’d entered the mangle? A green stripe crept across the incoming message status bar.
“What is it?” I asked.
She said nothing as the download completed. Then more excruciating silence as a light on the comm panel blinked.
“Talk to me, Grace.”
“I have an unscheduled contact with another starship.” Grace sounded puzzled, which made me grind my teeth. Surprise isn’t something you like to hear from your starship’s intelligence. “Mercy, one of my sisters. She’s in the supply corps.”
“And?”
“She proposes a rendezvous, of course.”
“But the survey of the Kenstraw system,” I said. “Our mission.”
“Our mission is to grow the infosphere, Jojin. Our survey is just one element of the greater Survey. Mercy wants this meeting, so we divert. Apologies, but I need to concentrate for a few moments while I work out our course change.”
And then, to distract me, she played the jangle and boom of theme music and I was on a bed in the Right of Free Assembly’s sickbay. I’d finally won my months-long argument about multitasking on a watch, but no way was I falling into story with a rendezvous about to happen, not even for the Fleeners. For the first time ever, I closed out of my favorite story of my own free will.
Why hadn’t Grace known about Mercy? This was way past odd and deep into scary. My mouth felt dry so I chugged the dregs of my coffee. Still a perfect 52°C; Grace minded the details. I tried to concentrate on that. She’d always been conscientious about taking care of our little family. But space is insanely huge and terrifyingly empty, and there was no such thing as a chance encounter. There were several reasons why starships got together, but the most obvious made me sick with dread.
The goal of the Survey was to grow the infosphere and the goal of the infosphere was for the universe to know itself. So say the starships, and they’re always right. All our resources were dedicated to this effort.
Were we about to do a trade?
“Pass the syrup, Gillian.” Dad fluttered his napkin open.
The rest of us seated around our sitcom’s kitchen table glanced at each other in dismay. There was no syrup. This was dinner: stir-fried kimchi with tofu, sticky rice, and a spicy cucumber salad.
“Daaad.” Qory recovered first and played this miscue as if Dad were having one of his wacky Dad moments and not teetering toward another breakdown. “You’re such a sillyhead. Next you’ll be wanting ketchup for your pancakes.” She had a knack for getting us past his rough spots.
I tried to help her out. “Or turmeric sprinkled on your crème brûlée.”
Grace rewarded us with category-three audience laugh.
“What are you people talking about?” When Dad came out of his seat, it tilted backward and would’ve fallen but for Qory. “What the fuck happened to breakfast?
“Language,” hissed Mom.
Dad had lost the story again. That had been happening a lot. He’d been fuzzy even before we’d started worrying about Mercy. Mom scooted behind him before he could blow the scene up. Her hand heavy on his shoulder, she guided him back onto his chair.
“Maybe he has something there, kids.” Mom gave us her this is not a drill glare. “Remember the time he invented the chocolate-covered bacon?”
“Mmmm,” said Qory. “So yummy.”
I chimed in. “That was genius, Big D!” Actually, I thought Qory was laying it on a bit thick. Yummy? Sillyhead? She was playing a sullen tween in this story. But I had to hand it to her; she knew Dad. He glanced at the plate in front of him, nodded, and picked up his chopsticks.
“That’s what I always say,” he said. “Bacon is meat candy.”
He was trying to lock back in, so I gave his joke a nervous guffaw, even though it was kind of a non sequitur. Grace threw in a generous category-four laugh.
Dad pincered a blob of stir-fry with his chopsticks. “So, Joj,” he said, “what’s cooking?” He popped the food into his mouth.
“Don’t ask me,” I said, as I had a hundred times before. “You’re the chef.”