Chapter 8

I met with Sven in the afternoon after he had finished his shift. When I walked into the workshop, wondering why he needed me, he looked at the door behind me and switched on the red “Hazard” light in the corridor, ensuring that no one would try to disturb us. I looked at him, surprised by his actions, and started to wonder if the prolonged isolation had affected him more than he was willing to admit.

“It’s ok, Rea”, he smiled softly. “I just don’t want Nhi to find out about it. You know she has started to wander around the station lately when she gets bored, so knowing my luck, she would come here.”

He chuckled and shook his head. I nodded slowly, still feeling confused about the situation, and asked him,

“Do you need me for something specific?”

He sat down heavily on the chair and spun himself around a few times before breaking the motion with his feet, bringing a smile to my face. He was the oldest one among us, but when I compared his behaviour against the data about his age group, he was definitely an anomaly. At least, it was an anomaly that neither bothered me nor affected me in any negative way. Sven was certainly easier to understand than Eva, and his behaviour hadn’t changed at all since we came to the station.

I sat on a chair and turned towards him.

“So..?”

“Nhi has her birthday in three days”, he said softly. “And I want to do something special for her.”

“And it will require my assistance?”, I asked and looked at him, trying to understand what he planned to do, but my systems couldn’t come up with any definitive answer. I lacked a lot of data, but it didn’t bother me. I knew Sven pretty well, and I knew that if I gave him enough time, he would provide me with all the information I needed.

“You are an engineer…”

I nodded.

“I want to cook her something. Real food, you know…and make her happy”.

He smiled and started to play with a pen he’d pulled from his pocket. I hadn't yet decided what I should give her, so his idea caught my attention, even though I couldn’t figure out the relationship between my engineering skills and cooking. Nhi always complained about the food, though, so cooking something for her that she would like seemed a perfect idea. I leaned back in my chair.

“If you could build an oven, I could bake a cake for her. She would love it”, he smiled and pointed to the workbench. “I got some stuff you can use….fire blankets for isolation, cutting torch for heat source….But I am not an engineer.”

He chuckled and looked at me with a smile. I nodded, finally understanding what he wanted me to do, and somehow felt relieved that he had asked me for help rather than trying to build an oven by himself. There was an 89% possibility that his oven would trigger a fire alarm and reveal his surprise to everyone on the station.

“Let’s see what we can do”, I said, and went to the workbench, letting my systems scan the station’s inventory for suitable materials.

“Thank you, Rea.”

We spent a couple of hours designing the oven with the limited resources we had, and I agreed to come back to build it tomorrow so he would have plenty of time to test some of the recipes he had come up with.

I was happy that we could do something nice for Nhi together, and I enjoyed this small project. Even if I didn't get as bored as humans, I welcomed the break from my routine tasks and the opportunity of doing something other than working on the scanners and the endless stream of data they produced.