Chapter 13

In the next couple of days, Eva’s behaviour changed yet again, and once again I could not come to any conclusive results about the cause. She seemed to be trying to revert to how she was in the beginning. But even if that was the case, and according to my systems, it had only a 63% chance to be true, she didn’t manage it very well, creating even more anomalies between us. I had analysed the possibility before, and realised how futile it would be to try to reverse the chaos those anomalies had created when they appeared for the first time.

At least she is aware of it and tries, like me, to find a solution, I tried to tell myself. But with only 63% chances, I didn’t dare to believe that was the case, and her sudden change of behaviour could have had a totally different reason behind it.

After a long discussion yesterday evening, she convinced me to let her paint my toenails. Of course, her argument, saying that because I would not see it for most of the time, I didn’t need to remove it if I didn’t like it, was totally valid and changed the equation. But it also stirred all those strange feelings in me when she sat down on the floor and put my feet on her lap, telling me to be still as she painted my toes.

I still felt confused about it. Objectively, I didn’t care if my nails were painted or not and found it completely neutral, but the fact that Eva did it somehow changed the equation, even if I could not understand why. I considered asking Nhi about it, as she always had colourful nail polish on her nails, and so should be really experienced in this area. But I estimated that her knowledge could be too subjective, and putting this kind of data into the equation was the last thing I wanted. I tried to keep my database updated with data that was at least 98.7% accurate, and in this case, my systems didn't give Nhi’s expertise more than 57% accuracy. So no, I told myself, I would need to find the answer myself.

I kept working on the power supply, upgrading the scanners' software and monitoring the results on my holo screen long into the lunch break when Raul came to the command centre looking for me. He stood in the door and asked,

“How is it going?”

“I managed to improve it by 1.43%”, I sighed.

“That’s great”, he smiled. “You should take a break.”

“No.” I shook my head. “We will still lose 103 minutes in this configuration.”

He came inside and looked at the screen.

“Are you sure that the issue still lies in the software?”

“Not yet, I still need to run some tests.”

He nodded.

“Let me know when you are done, and I will run another diagnostic.”

“Thank you”, I smiled.

I kept running more tests, but none indicated that the fault lay in the software. I messaged Raul asking him to run the diagnostics, but the chances that they would discover something new were only 11%.

My next candidate was the EMI, but this would need to include Eva, and even if we found that the shields that protected the scanner from electromagnetic interference were faulty, we couldn’t do anything about it on the station. We could order them to be sent from Mars, but they would come with the next supply ship in 41 days. But I calculated that the time needed to carry out the replacement would extend the 103 hours we tried to save, making the whole operation pointless.

I sighed and got up and walked to the canteen. It was time for me to have another nano drink, which, according to my manual, I should have once a week to keep my systems in perfect condition. Only Nhi was there, waiting to have a few sips of my drink, claiming that it reset her systems and made her appreciate the canteen food for a couple of days afterwards.