Guin couldn't freaking believe it.
An undetected anomaly had swallowed them up two months ahead of schedule. Every posited theory would have to be redacted and amended. Ah, so went the game of quantum physics, or any science ever.
It's possible that the anomaly was a curvature, or a stretching of space. Not really a black hole, but an expansion of space, and therefore, of possible expansion of time. However, there was little in the way of harnessing this potential.
Guin recorded frantic thoughts into the interface hanging from her wrist while the Control bot attended to Russ. She had been slumped over in the pilot bay for hours, unresponsive to tech or medical intervention. Guin stayed nearby because she wanted to know what she'd seen and how long she'd been able to see it for. Upon first learning from the bot what had happened, she shook Russ, her limp head lolling back and forth.
"Stop that!" Tiptree dragged her away.
"We have to know what she saw!" Guin ran back and slapped Russ.
After that, she remembered little except for the red dots exploding where her eyes used to be. She rubbed her head, fingers running over the knot caused by Tiptree's savage right-cross.
No one appreciated tenacity.
Guin's over-eager nature had gotten her into trouble many a many a times. Her curiosity drove her science, and her science drove her curiosity. She ate up both.
"Let's take things easy," Forster spoke gruffly next to Tiptree, arms crossed.
Kathar cleared his throat. "We can't afford to lose control. Get ahold of yourselves."
The man spoke too much. Guin hated that, and she hated Kathar. Then again, so did the rest of the crew. It was the one thing she had in common with everyone.
"Our instruments failed to detect the scope of this anomaly. We should learn what we can." Guin sank into the seat, listening to her explanations as though from the audience seat and not from the speaker's podium.
Verbalizing always helped her contextualize meaning. Though she relayed the ideas from her head, they remained dormant until spoken, when finally born.
"Uhhhh."
She whipped around at the sound. Had to be Russ coming round, and sure enough, the second-in-command stirred within the harness straps. Tiptree settled next to her, shooting Guin dirty looks. She resisted the urge to flip a middle finger. With the long years stretching ahead, the last thing she needed was a grudge with a crewmate. Damn sensitive social-science types.
The first thing Russ asked for was water. Then, she asked where they were and how long she'd been out.
"We're stationed near the anomaly. We waited for you to wake up. Glad ya made it to the other side," Forster said.
"Me too," Russ rasped.
Tiptree strode back into the room, a glass of water in hand, harvested from the oxygen garden. Russ grabbed the glass and downed the contents in seconds. She belched, but nobody laughed.
A space of silence branched out and grew.
Forster cleared his throat. "When you detected the oncoming anomaly, why didn't you get inside the dura-sleep chamber?"
"I wanted to see," Russ said.
"Different points of tech recorded everything," Tiptree said quietly.
Russ shrugged.
Forster laughed, his large chest heaving with the effort. When he quieted, another silence crept in.
"What did you see?" Guin asked. While everyone regarded her with incredulity, she went on, "C'mon, just a few sentences."
Tiptree scoffed. "You think she can distill a trans-spatial experience into a few sentences?"
Without addressing Tiptree, Guin kept the focus on Russ. "I don't know. Can she?"
Slowly, Russ released the harness and sat up. She moved as though to stand up, but her legs buckled beneath her. Tiptree told her no one needed answers just yet, but Russ batted her away.
"It's okay, I can answer." She inspected both of her arms, squeezing her forearm as if in confirmation. "The through and through was...amazing. Everything spun, like it would never stop, and then things came apart, sliding stacks of..." she searched for the right word, then said, "...matter. I thought nothing would be put together the same way, if at all. In truth, I didn't see much before passing out."
"Hear that? Not much she can tell ya, so leave her be," Tiptree said.
"You two dating?" Guin asked.
Tiptree launched up, ready to throw another punch. Never one to learn from mistakes, Guin smiled crazily and waited for the inevitable. A second blow never landed because Forster jumped in between them.
"No time for stupidity," he said, one hand warding off Tiptree, and the other fisted at Guin. "We have to take measurements, and you have to gear up." His large, dark hand thumped on Tiptree's shoulder.
"Yeah, me too," Guin said.
"You're one funny gal," Forster noted. "You know only Tiptree and Samuel are cleared for direct observation."
She sighed. "Right. Because they're people-persons. Only, we don't know if there's people down there." She gestured at the wide expanse of scenery, featuring an orange and green sphere which grew larger by the minute.
Dangerously close, Forster said, "The matter's been decided. Get some sleep."
Briefly, she considered kissing him out in the open, just for shits and giggles. Then, the casual thought morphed into a flash of fantasy: her olive-brown skin sliding across his dark muscles. She crashed back down, and sighed. She'd finish the thought later, by herself.
"Goodnight, Cap'n." She shoved up and out of the chair, stalking to the personal barracks.
Why was it the soft-science nerds got all the perks, when she was the only real scientist on board?
~*~
A/N: What or who will they find on the surface? And what might Guin be up to?
Dedicated to an author I recently discovered, emoryskwara. He's been on WP a while, I just needed to trip over myself to find his work, and I'm glad I did.
Check out his novel, Of Song and Singularity, a utopian critique featuring A.I.