Chapter 16

Nhi took her Jenga from the bag and built a tower from the wooden blocks.

“Let’s play”, she smiled and picked a piece from the tower.

We joined in. I didn’t have any special advantage in these kinds of games, and they were much more interesting than the games of pure chance. Most of us found those boring after the first few rounds, so most of the time, strategic games tended to be the ones of choice when I took part in the play.

Only Raul still dared to play chess with me, but for him, it was a social thing that reminded him of his time in the university. He never took it seriously, no matter with whom he played, and did not mind losing to me every time. In the beginning, we used to play more, but then the objective of the game was different. My opponent tried to survive as long as they could while the rest of the crew cheered for them. Eva once managed to survive through 15 moves, which surprised even me, while Sven’s strategy of using random moves to combat the capability of my quantum processor never proved to be effective. In the end, we got bored with that too.

“I wish we would have some real food now”, Nhi sighed. “I ordered some, but it will be another month before the supply ship arrives.”

She stretched out and looked at Eva.

“What did you order?”

“Real coffee.”

Nhi nodded.

“I miss real coffee too.”

We had a 2-kilo limit for personal items we could order every 3 months when the supply ship arrived at our station. Everyone wished for more, but our station lay far beyond the commercial routes, which stretched until Saturn, so sending anything here was very expensive. I didn’t really need anything, so I shared my allocation with the rest of the crew, making everyone happy.

Eva sat quietly, and I noticed that she glanced at me from time to time. I assumed she was also wondering what we should do during this girls’ night, hoping that my systems had already figured it out. I smiled, and she looked away. I was surprised by her, realising she was as lost as I was. But maybe after having spent so much time together, she noticed more about me than simply when I used my processing power to think while I did something else.

I sighed. I didn’t want to disappoint her. She wasn’t very social, and if the conversation didn’t focus on her field of study, or science, she got easily bored with it. In this matter, we were pretty similar, as I too preferred silence to being social. But I didn’t mind listening to other people's stories. On many occasions, I liked it, but she preferred to avoid such conversations as well.

That was probably the explanation for why we connected with each other with such ease and became friends so quickly, even if we were obviously different in other areas. My systems gave that explanation a 93% chance of being the correct one. I still didn’t know what we were supposed to do, though, and without any new input, analysing it again was pointless. At least there were no anomalies in Eva’s behaviour, and I could stay relaxed.

Was Nhi the reason for it? She was definitely an extra input to our equation, so this line of reasoning was valid. I couldn’t understand what it meant, but the idea that an external input could eliminate the confusion that the anomalies created was worth investigating further.

Nhi put her arm around Eva and said playfully,

“Don’t overthink it, okay? Trust your feelings…”

Eva sighed and looked down.

“Hey, don’t worry.”

She patted Eva’s head.

“I will help you”, she said with a smile.