Chapter 18

“It feels really homey”, Amin said as he sat on the bunk bed.

Sven smiled.

“It reminds me of Shackleton’s station on Callisto. Maybe a bit more spacious…”

“Have you been there?”

Eva looked at him in surprise.

“It was my first assignment in ESA”, he nodded.

Raul whistled quietly, and Sven began to tell us about his time on the first permanent station in the outer system. I knew from my research that the conditions there had been suboptimal, and cyanide pills had been a standard item in everyone’s survival kit. Much had changed since those days, space travel had become both faster and safer, and our frontier now stretched to the moons of Saturn with commercial vessels travelling there on a weekly basis.

Our station lay well beyond it, at the far end of our solar system, but at least none of us was issued with suicide pills. Our two lifeboats had an 81% chance of carrying us safely to Titan, assuming we would survive the initial accident that forced us to use them in the first place.

I shook my head, wondering why those kinds of thoughts suddenly spread through my systems. We are safe here, I told myself. My pad pinged, and I saw Nhi looking at me with a smile. I looked at the screen and saw Sven’s drawing accompanied by a short message “For you :)”. So my assumptions had been correct, and she had commissioned it for me. I still didn’t understand why she had done it, but I looked at her and nodded a “Thank You”.

I didn’t want to analyse it any further, knowing that without any fresh input, my efforts would be futile. But his drawing stirred something in me, and a wave of emotions flooded my systems. What had Eva wanted to say back then? My systems could not come up with any definitive answer, and I didn’t want to disturb her and ask her now, seeing her discuss something with Raul.

I wished I could switch off my feelings as I could switch off my cognitive functions, but it was not possible. They were part of my core functions that made me who I was, and there was no way to stop them without putting all my systems offline. It was still too early to rest. I sighed.

Sven and Amin were deep into a conversation about their time in deep space, and Nhi sat on her top bed and flipped her yo-yo, hoping it would reach the floor. I could tell her directly that the string was too short for that, but she was so deeply focused on the task that I didn’t want to disturb her.

With all the main station’s systems offline, I didn't have any way to continue my work, which would be the most natural course of events when I was flooded with these confusing emotions. But this time, I couldn't find peace in the binary solutions and the endless stream of data, like I used to do. Had I become restless like Nhi? I analysed the possibility. She became like this when she was faced with limited external stimuli or when the stimulus was repetitive in its nature. The first possibility met the criteria of my situation, so there was a 78% chance that we had more in common than I’d thought. It also meant that her preferred external stimuli were something totally different, since I liked the repetitive nature of my work tasks. I sighed. That was obvious. Had I just wasted my processing power to come to that conclusion? But it had at least proven that my systems were fully operational, and I am capable of understanding other people. When they were not an anomaly like Eva. I sighed.

“Are you ok?” Nhi asked, looking at me.

“I am fine.”

She jumped from her bunk and sat next to me.

“Rea, Rea, what happened?”, she asked quietly.

“As long as the station computers are offline, I have nothing to work on.”

She shook her head.

“You're only thinking about work. You should try to have some fun sometimes, you know.”

“I have fun when I work.”

“But what about having some more fun with Eva?”, she whispered. “She painted your toenails, you camped together… You know, that kind of fun.”

In nanoseconds, my systems reached full capacity as I analysed Nhi’s suggestion. Camping wasn’t our choice, and I had only a 2% indication that Eva liked it, but painting my nails? She had put a considerable amount of effort into winning our debate, which convinced me to let her do it, so it was something she considered important, I reasoned. If she just wanted to practice her skill, she could have used Raul or Nhi, as they would agree to it without any need for discussion. So, yes, I was 89% sure that she liked painting my nails, even if I didn’t yet understand why.

Nhi put her arm around me and whispered.

“Don’t worry, Rea, I will help you. Trust me”, she smiled.

Help me with what? My systems couldn’t find any definitive answer to that inquiry.