_-* Tasks Remaining: 502 *-_
Strange. The yellow portal is surrounded by polycarbonate that’s a different color than the rest of the wall. Close but not quite the same. I nearly missed it.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 502 *-_
I nervously whisk my hands over my hair, feel the capillaries pulsing under my scalp. I understand OS’s words, but allthe same I can’t make any sense of them. “What the hell are you talking about? Reciprocal permission fromwhom?”
“From the Dimokratía spacefarer,” OS answers.
I hear the hum of the ship all over again. It breaks over me, stops time for long seconds while my skin crawls.
“OS,” I say slowly, “are you telling me that I’m not alone on this ship?”
“That is correct,” my mother’s voice says. “You are not alone on this ship.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 502 *-_
I open the last unexplored cabinet. My eyes dart with tears. I don’t remember deciding to bring this. Just as I start to play the Prokofiev, the balsa-wood bridge shivers and slides apart, folding into two pieces. I don’t hear anything; it must have broken earlier and been pieced back together.
I hold the thin balsa in my fingers, tears in the corners of my eyes. I can print a new bridge. But it will be polycarb, not wood. Wood can’t be printed. Wood can only be grown. This bridge was once alive, part of a tree surrounded by other plants and creatures. It once pulled carbon from the air and made it solid.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 502 *-_
As I near the orange portal, it opens.
Oh my.
He looks like he spends his day crushing warriors under the shield of Aeneas. Muscles band his arms and neck. Thick, lustrous hair falls in blue-black waves along his cheeks, his eyes a speckled tan, nestled deep. His olive skin is smooth and unmarred, except where thick stubble shades his jawline. Even his stubble looks like it could take me in a fight.
Our hands. His are crushers. Mine were just stroking a violin.
Dimokratía dresses its spacefarers in red acrylic. Kodiak’s uniform is so atrociously ugly that it’s actually pretty cool. An aviation-mechanic-in-space vibe, down to the nylon ribbing inlaid in the fabric. “I like your—” I start.
“Do you have any strange rooms on your half of the ship?” he interrupts.
“Sorry, what?” I ask as my hand flutters to my throat.
He lets out a long breath, like speaking to me is an ordeal that will simply have to be suffered. “Do you have any strange rooms on your half of the ship?”
I understand the words. Still, my mind sputters on their meaning. “Strange?”
Kodiak’s neck muscles cord and uncord as he strains to tolerate my idiocy.
“No,” I manage. “I don’t.”
“I think I might need your help,” this warrior statue says.
I nod, eyes wide.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 502 *-_
The Dimokratía half of the ship is like mine, only even more spare. It looks like the inside of a shell. Not even a pretty one, just a calcium-white skeleton no one would think to bring home from the beach.
As I pass through it, my mind is divided between the spartan walls and the mesmerizing sight of Spacefarer Celius’s ass shifting in his red pants. When we turn an unexpected corner I trip, sprawling onto my face.
Marine ships have lips in every doorway, to prevent stray water from sloshing through, but spaceships don’t. Or shouldn’t. This room has one, though, and I just face-planted because of it. Kodiak drags me to my feet. His grip is so strong that I get some airtime before landing.
That’s when I see the room that I tumbled into. The walls are gouged, like it had some disease and scratched itself todeath. I pull the fabric of my jumpsuit over my mouth and nose, so I don’t breathe in anything from the powdery surfaces. “What in the lords is this place?”
