What Dreams May Come

Chapter 18: space piano

I had hoped that coming to the Aeneid would resolve some of the drama in my life, but so far, the trip had done nothing but generate more. My papa was sure to be furious with me for leaving, Lully and Alcott would both be in trouble and we might have intercepted a call that the base had been trying to ignore for a half century. All in all, this hadn't been the best idea.

"After that, everything here seems a little boring." Lully gave a laugh that sounded too forced to be comforting. "But we're here, and we need to leave in an hour. Let's get to the tekcom for Levi's discs and then get out of here, pas mal?"

"Agreed," Alcott replied. "Marcus is going to be tidal when he finds out he slept in instead of meeting space people."

Levi unplugged his holo-rib and followed me back into the hall, and we headed for the old comm bay. Lully walked next to me.

"We need to tell your papa," he said. "I'm not happy about it, but he's the one who would have to come up with oxygen for four hundred more people."

"I would rather my papa not discover I snuck off base," I sighed. "But it can't be helped, can it?"

"What about O'Keefe?" Alcott inquired.

The silence in the hall spoke more than I could. Our captain was an imposing figure, and I didn't believe he was ignorant of Anita's ship. Levi was still on his holo-rib, swiping through page after page, and barely paying us any mind. I glanced about the ship; it had been awhile since I had been here. Lully snuck out here all the time, but that was, in part, why he was constantly in trouble. We arrived at the comm bay and I opened it with my codes to let us inside. Levi finally looked up from his device.

"This hasn't changed much," he said in surprise.

"We mostly use it for conversion, so it has to stay the same," Lully replied. "And if we can pry your holo-rib from you, we can plug it in here to upload it."

"I'm trying to catch up on a hundred years of history," Levi retorted. "Forgive me as I try to figure out how we could lose a whole ship of people and forget about them."

"I was teasing you," Lully said reproachfully. "Sorry."

Levi's frown smoothed and he sighed. "It's not your fault. I'm just... I know what it's like sending messages for years and getting no response. Earth wouldn't contact us like they were supposed to for the whole time I was historian. They'd ask for data and I'd send it, but the moment I asked for something: radio silence. We felt so unwanted hurtling through space like a great big damn experiment to those on Earth. But I guess, that's exactly what the Aeneid was. I had no idea they were sending more ships after us."

"A dam experiment?" Alcott asked.

Levi raised an eyebrow and then shook his head. "Old world swearing, I guess. It's short for condemned, which is painfully apt now."

I opened each of Levi's CDs and loaded them into the tray, waiting for the go-ahead from Levi to turn the machine on. The holo-rib lit up and began blinking. Now, all we had to do was wait.

"Do we want to find this 'piano'?" Lully asked. "What is a piano?"

"A musical instrument," Levi replied. "Technically in the tuned percussion family, but since we didn't bring a whole orchestra onboard, it doesn't really matter. I bet the poor thing is grossly out of tune."

"Are you aware of how many words you use that we had no idea were words until you said them?" Alcott queried.

He frowned, and then looked at me for confirmation. I shrugged, not willing to make this an argument.