Chapter 15

I went to the biosphere to meet with Nhi and Eva for our girls’ night. I had no idea what to expect from it, and I couldn’t find any definitive answer in my database. I was 81% sure Nhi didn’t mean for us to sit in our pajamas and watch a movie or play games. We were way too old for that. The second most likely candidate, to go out and get drunk, was also discarded, since we didn’t have any place to go out to, and drinking was strictly forbidden on the station.

At the beginning of our journey, Raul joked that he could turn sugar and dehydrated fruits into something drinkable with some effort. But he never went further than joking about it, and I was almost certain that Nhi would never break the rules either, even if she hated most of them. Even she understood that those rules kept us safe and prevented accidents from occurring. Even a small mistake could lead to serious consequences, and we all knew that any rescue launched from Titan in the case of an emergency would likely arrive too late to make any difference.

I came up with a few more scenarios of what Nhi could have planned, but none had any big chance of being the thing. The next best candidate, Space Walk, met the criteria of going out. But after considering the fact that it would require the rest of the team to monitor us from the command centre, my systems assigned it a 7% probability to be the thing we would do during our girls’ night.

I really didn’t like the unknown, since I had no way to prepare myself for it, but at least I would spend some time with Eva, I thought as I entered the biosphere.

Nhi sat on a blanket between the small apple trees at the far end of the biosphere. She wore a loose tank top and short pants, something I had never seen her wear before. Even if there wasn’t any specific rule about it, for most of the time, everyone tended to wear standard overalls with the station logo printed on the left sleeve and a name tag on the chest for practicality.

She smiled and waved at me.

“Hi Rea!”

I smiled back, walked over to her, and sat on the blanket.

“Where is Eva?” I asked.

“Did you miss her already?”, Nhi chuckled and put her arm around me. “Don’t worry, she will come soon. Tell me…”, she whispered. “How is it going…?”

I looked at her, surprised. So the girls' night was about discussing our work while sitting in the biosphere, I thought. But if that made her happy, I didn't mind it. I had my pad, and with it, I could access the main computer if I needed to retrieve any data for our conversation.

“I updated the software controlling the power distribution, but it only improved the total output by 1.43%. I suspect the EMI is responsible for the rest of the power leak…”

She blinked and looked at me.

“What?”

“There must be a fault with the scanner’s EM shields, but we cannot do anything about it here.”

She stared at me silently, and I started to be concerned about her, as I had never seen her stay quiet for so long. My systems reached full capacity in nanoseconds trying to evaluate her condition, but before I had a chance to finish my analysis, the door to the biosphere opened and Eva walked in.

Nhi took a deep breath and sighed, shaking her head.

“I see…”, she said, before waving at Eva and gesturing for her to join us on the blanket.

“Something happened?” Eva asked, looking at us.

I looked at Nhi, but she looked fine, and my systems couldn’t detect any anomalies with her heartbeat or breathing, so I shook my head, relieved.

“No.”

“We were just waiting for you”, Nhi added.

“So…what shall we do now?”, Eva asked, pulling her pad from her bag.

“Definitely not that. No work, no serious stuff, just fun”, Nhi said with a serious voice.

For a few moments, I was confused as she had first asked about my work, but maybe the rules only applied now when all three of us were here.

“So…what shall we do then?”, Eva asked and put her pad away.