Stargazer - Segregation

Chapter Twenty-One - Message

The four went to sleep immediately after they arrive back at the Stargazer building. Riley is working her brother's shift as he needs rest now. Tomorrow is the day when Henry is finally going to do the simulator training.

Instead of sleeping, he just crawls inside his blanket out of happiness. He can't wait to finally fly a real machine, even if it's on a computer screen. His thoughts are everywhere; he remembers when he was sitting inside Darryl's, looking around the cockpit, trying to figure out what all the buttons mean. As for screens, he doesn't know how he will fight with an all-around screen, but he will give it his all.

Michael told him already about dealing with the vision since he has glasses, and wearing a helmet over it doesn't sound too good. His thoughts lead him into the center where Riley is working together with Doug.

"Did you know that guys who part their hair to the right live longer than those who do it on the other side?" asks Riley to Doug, who is eating a donut.

He immediately stops and looks at his hair. Today, he has parted it to the left side. "Oh, oh." He says and runs off to the bathroom.

At the same time, Henry is walking in, "What happened to him?" he asks, pointing at his leave.

"I don't know," she shrugs. "What do you want?"

"I know it's probably a weird question to ask at his hour—"He seats himself next to her to face her, making her slightly uncomfortable. "As I know, we need to wear a helmet, so how am I supposed to do it with these glasses? Like wouldn't that be bad or something?"

She looks down and speaks. "Wait here," and walks off past Doug, who just came back in.

"New haircut?" asks Henry looking at him.

"Oh, thanks for noticing," he says and bites a piece of his donut.

"Yeah, it looks good on you."

"Thank you very much," he says, brushing over his hair parted to the right.

He goes back to work, and Henry waits with his hands rubbing against each other, looking at the eating Doug makes him hungry as well. He hasn't eaten anything like that in forever. The last time he remembers was when he was still in Nios. The temptation is too strong; he needs to distract himself and looks away to Riley's screen, seeing what she is working on now.

He doesn't understand anything; it seems to be a programming language. "Hey, Doug. Can you tell me what this is?" his finger point to her screen.

Doug glances over his shoulder from afar.

"Oh," he says and continues to work. "It's just ConnectronLang. A programming language."

"What does that mean? And where do you use it?" asks Henry carefully.

"Well ConnectronLang stands for Neuron Connection, they wrote it to connect and program the fluctuation system. She's probably writing it for your machines now, as theirs is pretty outdated," explains Doug.

"Why you didn't just call it fluctuate then? Wouldn't that be easier?" asks Henry.

"Surely, but I didn't write it and didn't name them. So ask the twins," he shrugs and continues to eat.

Riley walks back in with a helmet from the pilot suits; it has no stripes on it, a prototype. "Here," she says. "Try it on and see how it works with your glasses."

Henry puts it on, with his glasses still on the nose. It squeezes the temples tight to his face. His lenses move up. "I don't think it works," he says with one eye closed.

Riley starts to think again. "What is your strength?" she looks at him.

"My strength? I don't know. I mean, I did get pretty strong lately, but why would you want to know that?"