But we must know more.
Nari and I work in perfect concert as we retrieve Dr. Pinkerton’s passkey from his corpse, and once we are within his quarters, I am able to navigate through a now-familiar set of menus promptly. We no longer waste time in surprise at the crystal fragment that is a twin to Scarlett’s, or the sheer improbability of our predicament.
Finian and Scarlett are buying more time—distracting the patrol that otherwise arrives at Pinkerton’s quarters, shooting us and ending our loop.
The station shakes around us.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
Nari stands watch as I gather data about the disastrous tests that were running at the moment the loop initiated. I have learned during our recent escapades that she is more talkative than I had anticipated.
I do not find it distracting. Rather, it is calming. My eyes are gritty and I know fatigue is slowing my thoughts. I anchor myself to her voice.
“So,” she muses. “You’re friends with aliens, huh?”
I do not look up, speaking softly. “Technically, everyone is an alien to somebody.”
“You know lots more races than the Betraskans?”
“Many,” I confirm. My mind goes to Kal, so far away in space and time. And then to Auri, leaning over Magellan as she tried to catch up on two centuries of history, to learn about the aliens that so fascinate Nari.
But Auri is gone now, and Magellan is a broken collection of circuitry in Finian’s bag. I set that memory aside.
“You must have seen some amazing places,” Nari continues, unaware of my momentary lapse in attention. “I mean, all those alien homeworlds. You said there are hippos on one, right? I can’t believe hippos beat me to interplanetary exploration.”
I am unsure why, but I find myself wishing to remove the note of regret from her voice. “This is still a wondrous time to be alive. There is so much to be seen now that will soon be lost.”
“Like what?”
“That book, for example,” I reply, nodding toward the display case. “What an extraordinary thing to hold in your hand.”
“I guess so?” Her tone suggests I am humoring her, but this is not so.
“A book captures a story within its pages. Not like a specimen pinned out lifelessly for display, but vivid and alive. A whole world lies within the cover, a life waiting to be lived by each new reader.”
“You still have stories in the future,” she points out. “Though that’s more poetic than I expected from you.”
It is, perhaps, more poetic than I expected too. “We still have stories,” I agree. “But they live in the ether. The book in that display case represents something we will never know. Something … permanent.”
“Stories never die,” she counters.
“They do not. But in a book, you always know where to find them again. They have a home.”
There is something in my tone, on that last word—as I speak of something that has not been mine since I was a child.
Home.
She hears it, and turns from the door to regard me thoughtfully. A question is about to push past her lips, so I continue.
“You have also seen many places that are lost to us,” I say, leaning in to study the screen. “Strange as it sounds, I have never even been to Terra.”
“What, never?”
“Never,” I reply.
“That’s … kinda sad,” she smiles.
“REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
I look her over, noting the way the light from the tempest outside highlights her features. Black and mauve pulses, gleaming in her eyes.
I should be working more swiftly on a solution to our quandary.
But I am drawn back once more to the idea of … home.
“Will you tell me about a place from Terra that you have visited?” I ask.
“Gyeongju,” she says immediately. “It’s this really cool city in Korea with all these historical protections put on it by TerraGov. It has these tombs hidden inside its hills, really well preserved—it used to be the capital of the kingdom that was there before it was called Korea.”
I turn back to the console, unraveling a series of menus and studying their contents, pushing through the woolly thinking of fatigue.
“I had not taken you for a history buff,” I admit.
“I’m not,” she admits. “It’s where my halmoni lives—my grandmother. So, you know, my family visits there sometimes.”