Chapter 29

When we entered the med bay, Tanvi was sitting by Abedi’s bed, holding his hand.

“He is awake”, she said with a smile.

Amin walked over to them and put his hand on her shoulder before turning to Abedi.

“What's the status, Chef?”

Abedi smiled slightly.

“Could be better, Captain.”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“A beer…and a pizza?”

Tanvi chuckled.

I was always impressed by Amin’s ability to cheer up the people around him. He always seemed to know exactly what he should say. I often wished I could be like that, too, but my systems had never figured out what sort of database he used to achieve that level of knowledge. When I asked him about it, he couldn’t explain how he did it, so I was left to analyse the behavioural patterns of humans around me and choose the best possible course of action from my database. It worked well most of the time, and as long as humans didn’t change too much, I could navigate my way around them with relative ease. It was only when their behaviour became erratic, as in Eva’s case, and our relationship was filled with anomalies, that I became confused and didn’t know how to act.

So I spent my time observing Tanvi and Abedi as they chatted with Amin and filled my database with all the information I could get about them.

“Rest well and get better soon”, Amin said and got up. “I will definitely find use for another engineer.”

“Thank you, Captain”, Abedi smiled and closed his eyes to rest.

Tanvi sighed, and Amin put his hand on her shoulder.

“He will be fine.”

“I know…”, she said quietly.

Amin left to take his watch, and I stayed with Tanvi, sitting quietly next to her.

“I need to go and do some maintenance on the shuttle”, I said after a while. “Do you want to come and help me?”

She considered my words for a few moments before she nodded.

“I can come, but don’t expect me to be much help with only one hand.”

I smiled.

“You will probably know more about D-4 than I.”

“I guess… I used to train on them in the academy, years ago.”

We walked to the hangar and set to work. Tanvi sat in the cockpit and ran through the maintenance checklists, and I followed her instructions and checked system after system. Ceres had fared relatively well during our flight through deep space, and we encountered only a few minor issues that I easily repaired. We refuelled her and made her ready for another takeoff.

Tanvi seemed happy to have something to do and put her mind on something other than the accident. After we were done, I showed her around the station before she returned, wanting to be with Abedi in case he woke up. I would do the same if Eva were to get hurt, I thought. I wanted her to be happy… I wanted to… I sighed.

I wished I knew what I wanted, but any output my systems gave me was inconclusive. I was not even sure if I wanted to return to the time before the anomalies appeared, or if there was something I was missing. I walked to our cabin, analysing the possibilities. The few good moments we had after the anomalies appeared made me happier than before, but I couldn't classify them in any way, which left me confused.

When I walked in, Eva sat on her bed with a pad in her hands, reading. I smiled and went for a shower, washing away all the oil stains the work on the shuttle had left. I wrapped myself in a towel and walked back to the room.

“What did you do today?”, Eva asked and put her pad down.

“Maintenance on the shuttle”, I answered, sitting on my bed and relaxed. Now that I understood why she did it, I really appreciated that she made an effort to speak in a way that felt natural to me. Open-ended questions like “How are you?” required a lot of processing power for me to figure out exactly what the person was asking for.

I smiled.

“How are you?”

“Restless, after the trip. All my routine is gone.”

Exactly as I had expected, I thought. We still had some time before our watch started. Way too much time to spend in bed.

“What do you want to do?”, I asked.

“Did you like having your toes painted?”, she asked.

I considered my answer, as it was not as simple as I expected it to be.

“In itself, the experience was neutral, but the fact that you did it changed the equation, making me like it.”

She blinked, processing what I had said, before she blushed and looked at me.

“Rea…”