I put my hand over hers and lowered it, so I could see her tears. “You can do this. You can do anything.”
“I used to think that was true,” she said softly. “It’s nice to know you still believe it. Maybe we’ll have to think of this as my getting that moon warmed up for you to come join me in a few years.”
I’d laughed at the time, but I guess her words had something to them after all. Because here I am, halfway to Titan.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 330 *-_
Out of what’s probably some deep emotional dependency of mine that I’d rather not mull on, I play through that memory reel every few hours as the days go by. Minerva and I have that conversation in my bedroom, and while I’m eating breakfast. I start playing with the rendering, so that we have that conversation in parkas, in bathing suits. We have it as merfolk and as vampires.
“I need you to accelerate your progress on the task list,” OS says one morning.
“Yes, yes. You don’t need to remind me,” I say. I start putting my violin away, loosening the bow and removing the shoulder rest.
“Perhaps you consider these tasks beneath you?”
That one stings. How many times in training did I hearOh, you turning your nose up at us, Ambrose the Great?Maybe I never was Ambrose the Great. Maybe I was just Ambrose the Privileged. What can I say? I guess I’m having some sort of outer space crisis.
“Watch your tone,” I tell OS after I bite down some less diplomatic responses. “I guess inspecting thermoregulation log lines feels like it’s not doing a thing to help Minerva, so it’s hard to work up the energy.” I don’t add that I feel bad about that, too, and that the ensuing depression spiralalways gets me mooning about and watching whatever semipornographic reels I can find in the ship’s memory.
“I appreciate your self-awareness,” OS says. “Now go take that cake of silicone wax and lubricate the med bay door instead of your genitalia.”
“Ooh, sexy,” I tell OS. “What’s next on the list? Caressing the ship’s ball bearings?”
“Cleaning and replacing the air filtration gaskets, actually,” Mom’s voice says. “Get going, Ambrose. This list isn’t getting any shorter.”
That voice skin is my peace offering to Kodiak. OS’s Devon Mujaba days are officially over.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 279 *-_
I’m not making much headway on the med bay door, and nothing else on the list is particularly appealing, either. How did the ship’s engineers screw up this much? There are six Rovers in total, and once I finish with the gaskets I’ll be tasked with getting the other five back online. At the thought of my endless debugging list I find myself on my back, staring at the ceiling. I feel like I can do nothing that will help Minerva, and “learned helplessness” is most biologists’ definition of depression.
Mother’s voice cuts into my stupor. “Ambrose, this is urgent.”
My blood suddenly surges through my veins, setting my vision winking with crystals. I stagger to my feet. “What is it?”
“Minerva. There’s a transmission from Minerva.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 279 *-_
I stand in 06, heart pounding, while OS compiles the transmission. A little green bar, with no units on it, slowly fills in midair. Could be terabytes of data, could be megabytes. An uncharacteristically sloppy display. “Come on, come on,” I say.
The green bar fills and fills.
“Is Kodiak on his way?” I ask OS. There’s no time for an answer, though, because the green bar suddenly completes.
A grainy, half-imaged Minerva is before me. Her jumpsuit is ragged, the arms emerging from it thin and rangy when once they were strong. But the determined expression is definitely hers. The image cuts out entirely, then returns. I can see, dimly in the background, the polycarb-printed walls of the Titan habitat. “I have only seconds until this last battery goes. Ambrose, please hurry. I need your help.I’ve rigged—” The transmission cuts out entirely.
I hang there in the darkness, staring out at the revolving stars.
Then she’s back. “—the ship, Ambrose! The wear on the ship is too great on the approach, more than mission control predicted. You must finish OS’s tasks as soon as you can. Any defect, like... in the old shuttles, will lead to catastrophe. The ship must be... pristine to survive the friction and heat. My brother, I love you, there is no one better to—”
The transmission cuts out. I hang in the stillness, not daring to breathe, waiting for Minerva to return.
“There is no more incoming data to process,” OS says finally. “I will let you know the moment anything more comes in.”
“Play this transmission over,” I order, hands over my mouth, tears streaming from unblinking eyes.
I study everything about it. Minerva is lit by emergency lighting and some other source, strobing her face in red and white. Her right elbow is bandaged, blood seeping through to create a raspberry-sized stain in the center. At first her face looks scarred, but the last few seconds of the reel are higher resolution, and I realize that the lines on her skin were artifacts of the reel’s compression.
