Chapter 19

We spent 21 hours in the shelter before the lights on the control panel turned green, letting us know it was safe to go outside.

I went to the reactor room and brought our main power source online, checking for any potential damage the solar flare might have caused. Slowly, the station came back to life and all the systems functioned within the standard parameters, indicating that the station hadn’t suffered any permanent damage.

We gathered for a quick briefing in the command centre before we went our separate ways in search of space and privacy after being forced to stay together in the shelter for so many hours.

I plunged myself into work, using the rare opportunity of bringing our scanners online to run some tests that I could not perform otherwise and test my new algorithm for scanner recalibration.

It worked as I had expected and shortened the process by 86 minutes, giving us more time to finish our research. Eva would be happy about it. I smiled and assessed the best opportunity to show it to her. It was a 74% chance that she would be tired after the emergency, so I decided to keep it a secret until tomorrow and show her my surprise at the beginning of the new shift.

Working always calmed me, and all the emotions that had overflowed me in the shelter were replaced by the fresh stream of data our scanners delivered. Eva came in with a cup of coffee and sat in her console. I smiled. In this case, she was like me and also came here to find peace and comfort in work after being forced to share the small space with everyone.

Why did none of us look for each other's company when we were there? It would be an obvious thing to do. Even without access to the main computer, we had countless things we could discuss, as we had done so many times before. But she had spent her time talking to Raul instead.

I noticed that she had glanced at me a few times, but I couldn't understand if she wanted me to join their conversation or if, for some reason, she was checking on me. My systems didn’t give me any definitive answer in this matter, and I decided, after drafting a game theory equation, to ignore it. It was the best course of action in this situation, and I spent the rest of my time with Nhi.

I listened to her stories about her love life that seemed complicated and resembled 53% of her favourite K-dramas that she summarised to me. As I had never experienced such a thing as love, even if my manuals said I was capable of it, I had no personal experience to share with her. She didn’t mind it and reassured me many times that “Everything will be okay” and “She will help me”, but she never specified exactly what she meant by it.

We ended up watching some of those K-dramas on her pad, and they made me wonder why

people didn’t just tell each other what they felt from the beginning. It would make everything so much simpler for them, but it would also end the show in the first 20 minutes, making it highly unprofitable.

Eva walked up to me and looked at my screen, standing behind my chair. This time she didn’t put her hand on my shoulder as she used to do, increasing the possibility that she tried to fall back on the behaviour she’d had before the anomalies appeared.

“I saw you improved the power distribution software “, she smiled.

“Yes, we got a 1.43% increase in scanner capacity”, I nodded.

“Well done! Do you think that the rest of the leak is due to EMI?”

So this is what she had discussed with Raul in the shelter, I thought.

“78% chance, with a 97% possibility that the leak is caused by the hardware in the scanners.”

In our old configuration, she would have put her hand on my shoulder by now, but she didn’t, proving how impossible a task it was to reverse the chain of events started by all those anomalies. Assuming, of course, that that’s what she tried to do. 74% was a fair chance, but it still left 26% odds that her actions had a totally different cause.

Eva sighed.

“I see we will need to do our best with what we have.”

I nodded and suddenly, I remembered how, during the emergency, I held her hand as we ran towards the command centre. It felt good to do so, but why had I done it? I tried to analyse my own behaviour back then, but the results were inconclusive. I could explain why I had taken her hand in the first place, but there was no reason to hold it after those few initial moments. At least Eva seemed to not mind it, and she never mentioned it afterwards, so at least that experience was neutral to her.

I really hoped that I didn’t create any anomalies in her life as she did in mine. I really didn’t want to confuse her in the same way as I was.