“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.”
There is something easier about Nari’s manner than there has been on previous loops. She is facing the door once more as she keeps watch, but I can see her profile, that dark energy illuminating her skin.
My disobedient mind casts itself back to our last loop, after Nari and Finian fell asleep and Scarlett made herself comfortable beside me.
“Nari Kim’s growing on me,” Scarlett admitted softly.
“Finian would suggest that you can get a cream for that sort of thing,” I had informed her gravely.
She’d snickered. “She’s growing on you, too, Zila.”
“Oh?”
Scarlett’s tone turned sly. “She’s … not tall.”
I rue the day I spoke to Scarlett Jones about my taste in women.
“Zila?”
Nari’s voice recalls me to the present.
What were we discussing?
Home.
“You have a large family, Lieutenant?”
“Oh yeah, huge. But my halmoni still likes us all to report in every week. I swear she’s got a schedule, and if you miss your slot … It took a long, long time to convince her I can’t phone home from a black-ops posting.”
“And have you visited her often, in Gyeongju?”
“Every year, until I enlisted. Now it’s more like every second year.” Nari sighs. “It’s great there. I mean, I’m always sharing a room with half a dozen cousins, because we’re trying to cram so much family into her apartment. But there’s always so much food—she makes the best doenjang stew in Gyeongju, plus a dozen little dishes on the side, and that’s for an informal meal—and one of my cousins is a tour guide on Jeju Island. They’ve got this fruit there—huuuuuge citruses called hallabongs. Stupidly juicy, they end up all over you, but they taste amazing. I took my ex-girlfriend with me once, and I swear the only reason we’re still in touch is that she wants me to bring her back a box of them when I visit. Anyway …”
She trails off, perhaps aware she has spoken at length. Or perhaps—I am not skilled at divining such things—attempting to gauge my reaction to the mention of the ex-girlfriend?
“I have not encountered a hallabong before. But I enjoy citrus.”
“What about the rest of it?” she asks softly.
“The rest of it?”
“Family? Somewhere you’ve been? I’ve talked about me, what about you, Futuregirl?”
“WARNING: RADIATION DETECTED ON DECK 13, ALL DECK 13 STAFF PROCEED FOR IMMEDIATE DECONTAMINATION PROCEDURES.”
“I can offer only disappointment, I am afraid.” I switch my attention to a new set of entries, intrigued by the methods used in the scientists’ attempts to power up the crystal. “I grew up in state care with no family members. And I have not taken a vacation.”
She blinks. “What, ever?”
I shrug. “It was more fruitful to spend my academy leave studying.”
We are both silent after that, and I choose to devote the better part of my attention to the results of the power cycle experiments.
“Were you … always in state care?” she asks eventually, quieter now. Gentler. “Is that common, in the future? I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. If you don’t want.”
I hesitate, which is uncharacteristic. “It is not common,” I say after a while. I am about to continue, to inform her that I do not wish to speak of the experience, when I look across at her.
Our eyes meet.
“Perhaps we can speak of it during another loop,” I say instead.
She smiles, and in that moment there is something so familiar about her that my attention is caught entirely.
I feel my mind trying to switch gears, to fire up the search routines that will help me match her to some memory or experience that explains this familiarity. But I do not have time to study her smile, her eyes. I clear my throat, turning back to my console.
“You want to hear some more ancient history while you work?” she asks. “Or am I distracting you?”
“Both,” I realize.
As she keeps speaking, I let myself sink into her voice, and into the lines of data before me. Unless we find a way to break out of this loop, this will be my life. This will be my day.
Over, and over, and over again.
This will be my home.
“I think I—”
The loudspeaker cuts me off.