Internship work uploaded into her datascroll; numbers, measurements, questions, points of interest. Her shifts spent shadowing Thuni taught her much of the differences and similarities between the class shop and the real deal, as well as how to conduct herself with her internship and studies. She logged all her activities and notes all the same way for reference and marked down any issues she spotted in her droid. Several of the engineers met in the break room near the facility to chat about their work, though Thuni, like her, preferred his own company, with Ulin acting as a sort of mediator between two socially awkward people.
We're going to launch these droids out into that nebula and find the D.S Butterfly. As long as my droid doesn't hold back the others, I'll consider that a success for my internship. Anything I can learn to submit into my paper when we get back home. Nova readied her to-do list for launch prep for her upcoming shift before hauling herself off the squishy covers of her wallbed. Across from her, Neo's unit had his Codex tucked inside the shelf. Over the small arch out into the hall, the time which ticked down for the next block.
At the desk, Neo rested his head in the crook of his arms with his ears covered by headphones. His shoulders rose and fell in even waves. Nova clipped the tools on her desk before shuffling over to his side and put a hand on his back. Graphs bounced along on his computer screen, oscillations of unheard noise in repetitive lines. What is he listening to that put him to sleep?
Nova gently lifted the headphones off his ears to place it over her own, then reached over his shoulder to restart the sound file.
It started with a touch of spatial silence, dragging on until it shuddered her bones. One beep, into two, until it formed into a dissonant heartbeat with a mechanical touch of a UCG standard distress beacon. Its wavelengths coiled around her arms and pickled gooseflesh raised on them. A chill swept down her spine when it lowered in frequency, a deep drum between the high pitched, metallic screeching — as if something ripped apart a chassis hinge by hinge, the last call of lost lives. Nova dragged it off her ears when the silence swallowed all, and Neo stirred.
"What time is it?" he murmured into his sleeve.
"What is this?" she asked when he lifted his head out of his arms. "Neo, what are you listening to?"
He brushed his hand through his hair and straightened himself against the back of his chair. "It's the last signal from the D.S Butterfly's cosmomarker," he explained. "You see, they've been struggling deciphering it due to some weird oscillations within the pulse. Everyone on the research team has been listening to this file, and I have the honor of helping with that." He squirmed in his seat with a burst of energy. "I wasn't expecting that one, if I'm honest! I mean, these people have been at the game longer than I have been around." Neo took the headphones from her to put them in the holder. "So, I was listening to it to see if I could figure out the anomalous wavelength but I guess I dozed off, I'm sorry," he said in a single breath.
"Of course you'd fall asleep listening to that." Nova stopped at the door. "I need to hand in my launch prep to the engineer I've been shadowing."
"Oh! Perfect!" Neo raced to stand beside her. "I'll come with you."
Nova glanced at his computer. "Shouldn't you focus on your work?"
"Ah..." Neo tipped his hand forward. "I need a step away from it. Longer I take, the harder it gets to focus." His eyes widened, and he added, "My next shift won't be for a while if that's what you're worried about."
"What about your training sessions?"
He avoided her gaze. "I've been doing those."
Sure. Nova smiled. "Well, I guess I should introduce you to who I'm shadowing, since they work with an AI programmer who wants to talk to you about the scanner details you gave me for my droid."
Few Interns loitered in the halls. A hiss came from their door when it closed behind them, and Nova took him on the route she found the most comfortable and efficient to the southern facilities. Neo pressed his fingers together when they walked past the mess hall. Groups of soldiers and scientists ate at the long tables, with a food delivery system line with station grown flora from the western branch to add to the mix of their regular bland fare to meet nutritional requirements.
In short, she started to miss the options from the college cafeteria.
Onto the tram, she slipped her keycard into the slot and waited while the doors closed behind them after a soldier nodded them off the station. "How has your work been going?" Neo asked, never content with pure silence. "I just realised I've been mostly discussing what's been going on on my end of things, but we haven't really talked about your stuff since you brought up that their delay of the launch was strange." He went to the other end, and Nova followed him. "Which, I still don't think it's that strange."
"Most of the engineering team disagrees," she muttered and rested her hands on her toolbelt. "We don't hear the things you do, Neo."
"What things am I hearing?"
"I don't know," Nova said with a shrug, hoping to slip into a conversation full of clarity. "Most of us don't go into central command, let alone the anomaly labs." You'd tell me if there was something up, wouldn't you? It was the last bastion of her nerves ripping across her skin when he took too long to respond. "People are just worried since we don't know what happened to the Butterfly. Do they think it was a human error?"
"They're not sure," Neo admitted.
"What do you think?"
"I don't know, that's why I'm here." Neo scuffed his boots against the bottom of the tram. "The research team is doing what they can. I haven't heard anything that I thought was worth noting about. I've just been shadowing one of the senior researchers and studying new anomalies and making notes in my Codex... which I forgot again." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with a loud sigh and shook his head. "I'm sure there's a logical reason for the launch delay."
"Just like there's a logical reason as to why ghosts can't be real?" she grumbled when the tram slowed with a beep from the system of their arrival.
"You are not going to let that go, are you?"
"No."
Neo shrugged. "I just think there tends to be a more obvious explanation to things. It's like the debate on if we can consider something anomalous if we understand how it works," he said with a sharp wave of his hands. "Or, for better wording, what it does and how it affects things around it? Where do we draw the line? Are we calling things anomalies due to misunderstanding the nature of it?" His questions bounced off her head, and she missed her numbers and measurements with philosophical dread. "Isn't our whole purpose to understand it? Considering our whole society is driven by the study and use of anomalies and sometimes using their oscillation as fuel—"
"Neo, I don't really get all of that," she said carefully, and he went silent. "I don't think about it."
Neo nodded. "Of course, but think about it like this. You can not think about it, but it'll exist in your day to day. You don't need to question how things like anomalies work, just that they do. You don't really ask what the use of your tools are once you know what they do. Did you know those light anomalies assist in the solar power of our college campus? That means there might be some sort of direct connection to our star." He folded his hands, bringing them up to press his nose into the butterfly necklace with a grin. "Does that make sense?"
"I guess so... though that train of thought was a little difficult to follow."
"Sorry, I just needed to talk about those little lightbulbs since I think they're the perfect representation of the point I was trying to make." He leaned closer to her. "So does this mean you now understand why ghosts aren't real?"
Nova shoved him when the tram came to a stop before disembarking with her infodrives in hand. Neo's quick footsteps followed behind and a smug smile of victory pressed into his cheeks. It's like we never stopped arguing our points since our first class together terms ago. Out of steam for a new counterargument, she led him into the droid facility.
Tools whirred while thermotorches welded things together or broke them apart. In the workstations, several engineers hovered over the blueprints of the launch droids, one of them her own. Her heart clenched at the thought of judgment when some of them made notes, but she spotted Thuni and Ulin by the terminal of their droid.
"I'm here with the launch prep," she said, causing Thuni to eye her when she approached. "And... I want you to meet somebody." She motioned for Neo to come forward. "This is Neo Teimea. He's interning here as well, working with the research team in central command."
"Ah, this is the scientist you were talking about?" Thuni straightened himself out and stood inches taller over Neo. His frame almost engulfed them in a broad shadow, and Neo stood out like a rake, who tipped his head with no sense of stature at her internship mentor's words.
"Nova talked about me?" Neo asked, causing Thuni to stop. "I mean, she spoke a lot about you. You're Thuni Horizol, right?" He bounced closer into Thuni's space, who took a small, shrunken step away from his invasion. Embarrassment heated up her cheeks when Neo remained unaware. "She's spoken quite highly of your abilities, and so, I got to thank you for sort of being around to help her out. I'm Neo Teimea, as she said," he repeated her introduction.
Ulin beamed in amusement from behind Thuni, who never responded to Neo's greetings. "Ah, so you're the one who gave Spacyn the anomaly scanner requirements?"
"Yes, that was me," Neo said without hesitation when his attention flew over to Ulin and he abandoned Thuni in an instant for the new curiosity. "Its specifications are a little different from the I.A.R standard for their anomaly scanners, but I believe it fit well with her droid proposal so I gave her the specs to do what she wanted with them."
And he was fast asleep a few minutes ago. Nova smiled at him, causing Thuni to eye her and sidle over to her to take her launch prep.
"You could've warned me," he whispered as Ulin and Neo chatted with each other about their work.
"You get used to it," Nova told him and followed Thuni to her droid terminal. "Also, it seems like he doesn't know anything as to why the launch was delayed either."
Thuni placed the infodrives into the dockets underneath the terminal without another word. "I suppose there's no point questioning it at this rate," he commented. "We're going to be launching after the next rest shift. So, I want you down here when we start."
"Am I going to have to do anything?" she asked.
"Just insert your admin codes and follow the directions on your scroll. I'll handle everything else," Thuni said. "Afterwards, you'll just be waiting around until they come back after the first initial sweep. I doubt they'll find anything, but that's standard procedure."
The tension in her nerves dissipated at the predictability. "I understand. I'll be up and ready. And..." She tipped her head at Neo. "I apologise if he overwhelmed you. I promise he meant well."
"Eh..." Thuni grunted. "Well, that's all I need from you for this shift, Spacyn. I'll send you a callout when it's time."
Nova left Thuni at her terminal, but caught the suspicion when he folded his arms, but not when he looked at Neo, but when he turned inward towards the direction of center command, though a wall blocked their team from what happened at the heart of the B.H Supernova.
It was the same sentiment etched on the engineers faces as she stole Neo out of the discomfort of the droid facilities.
None of them believed in the senior research team's words.