Chapter 3

I met with Raul in the recreation room. He sat by the table in the corner, knitting one of his “space hats”. He smiled as I sat down opposite him, looking at the bits of colourful yarn that covered most of the table.

“It is still rendering”, he said without interrupting his knitting, meaning the report I had asked him to do.

So the computer had decided it had low prio, I thought. I nodded and smiled back. There was something about Raul that made me really relaxed when I was around him. His speech pattern resembled that of an android with almost 70% accuracy, at least when he spoke to me. So, to him, was I an anomaly, just like I was to Eva?, I wondered. The sudden thought passed through my systems, but this one was easy to explain, I realised. He had told me in the beginning that his best friend was an android, and he had learned a bit about our culture, so it felt understandable that he tried to use his knowledge when interacting with me.

I looked at the almost finished hat and smiled brightly.

“It is beautiful.”

“Really?” He looked at me, surprised. “I tried to scrape the last bits of yarn I had left, so it is a bit…”

“Unpredictable”, I added, feeling enchanted by the randomness of the pattern.

“Exactly,” he chuckled. “I never expected I would actually enjoy knitting, but now that I know this is the last one, I regret not taking it more seriously and packing enough yarn.”

Before we left Earth, it was recommended that we find ourselves a hobby. Apparently, it would help us deal with the boredom and isolation. Raul, who had a passion for fitness and ran for some charities, never took it seriously and so when the psychological team started to worry about it, he had picked the first thing he saw in a shop that could be counted as a hobby, never expecting that, exactly as the experts had predicted, boredom and monotony would make him willing to try anything.

So, for the last few months, he had been making hats and scarves, intending to auction them for a charity event back home. I picked up a few pieces of blue yarn and held them in front of my eyes, letting my systems analyse them.

“What do you try to solve?”, Raul asked, looking at me with a curious smile.

“The lack of yarn.”

I ran the results against the station's inventory, looking for something that would match my analysis.

“There are broken cargo nets in D4”, I said when I was done. “They will be stiffer than the yarn, but still possible to use for this purpose. You could ask Amin to try to soften them in the lab with heat treatment”

Raul nodded, considering my idea for a few moments.

“It may actually work. Thank you, Rea”, he smiled. “What about you? Aren’t you getting bored enough to try something new?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m exempted from that rule.”

“But it doesn’t mean that you cannot do it.”

I blinked. I had never considered that possibility before. Was there anything I wanted to do?, I asked myself. I shook my head.

“I am too busy with my research to be bored”, I said.

Raul chuckled. “You are like Eva.”

My systems went into full capacity as I tried to find out if this apparent similarity would provide me with more data that could help me understand Eva’s behaviour. It was the Station’s mystery what hobby she had chosen, as she had neither mentioned it nor had anyone ever seen her pursuing it, including me, who shared a cabin with her. Raul was right, Eva spent most of her time working and seemed uninterested in pretty much anything else, except her workouts.

No, it is a coincidence, I thought. I was able to regulate my need for external stimuli, while the human brain didn’t have that capacity, so the reasons for our actions were different. I sighed. Another false lead that wouldn’t help me understand why Eva treated me differently.