A few minutes late, there was a knock on the door, Kessick went to answer it. "Jori, you're late." He said.
The woman on the doorstep, Jori Lemn, frowned slightly. "I overslept." As if to explain further, she yawned and stretched one of her arms.
"It's been a while since I last saw you," Kessick said. "What have you been up to all this time?"
"I've been working aboard the ship ever since the chief engineer fell ill. I was the only person with comparable training."
"Well, don't just stand there," Kessick said in a commanding tone that he knew would amuse his friend. "come on in!"
She nodded sleepily, rubbing her eyes. She stepped past him into his home, which he had meticulously tidied up for her visit. He usually kept to himself, preferring to prepare for visits. Frequently, his place would be quite messy until someone gave advance warning of their arrival, then he would become a whirlwind, cleaning the entire prefab within less than an hour; people used to say that he had a talent for destroying evidence -- indeed, he had more talent than he cared to admit.
"Coffee?" He asked, guessing that she hadn't had any yet.
"Please," She replied, her grogginess and familiarity with him made the notion of formality irrelevant. It was to her as though she'd never left.
Kessick went to the kitchen and started preparing some. While he did so, Jori eased herself into a chair and began to fall asleep again.
"Did you get any sleep, before coming here?" Kessick asked her, concerned for his friend's health.
"I only got..." She struggled to find the words through the mist that clogged her part-dormant mind. "... two hours of sleep... before the alarm rang."
"Dammit, Jori," Kessick exclaimed. "I would've fully understood if you called and asked for a few hours delay. The days here are very long, I could wait!"
With effort, she pulled herself out of the armchair's seductive coziness. "Lemme tell you something." She said, barely coherent. "When you're an engineer, everything must be done on time. If not, then the entire ship comes crashing down on your ass! And it's not as pleasant as it sounds."
"It doesn't sound pleasant at all!" Kessick protested.
"Well, you're entitled to your opinion."
The coffee maker made a ding, Kessick grabbed the handle of the coffeepot and extracted it from the machine. Since he had no clean cups available, he handed the whole thing to Jori. "Careful," He warned her. "It's still hot, sip carefully."
"If it ain't hot," She muttered. "It ain't good coffee."
Kessick responded with a shrug, she was entitled to her opinion.
She took a small sip and winced. "Kessick, I see you haven't changed at all, your coffee still sucks.
"Good to see that you haven't changed either, Jori, you nitpicky little tinkerer."
"Hehe, tinkerer," She mumbled, taking another sip.
"Is it really that bad?" Kessick asked.
"As far as coffee goes, yes. But I have tasted worse things."
"Like what?" He raised an eyebrow. Judging by her unending criticism of his coffee, he had imagined that there was nothing she found worse.
"Umm..." She said, the grogginess beginning to leave her system. "Do you remember the hazings back at the university?"
"No. I was never in a fraternity, remember?"
"Yes, of course," Jori replied. "Well... they were... quite private, actually. If you don't mind, I would rather not tell you exactly what tastes worse than your coffee."
"Nevermind that, Jori," Kessick said, ending the topic. "are you feeling more awake now?"
Jori nodded, taking another sip of the coffee, and gulping it down before it could assault her taste buds.
Kessick sat down on the sofa. She was about to sit down across from him, but decided against it; remembering how much of a trap it had been earlier.
"So," She said eagerly. "what shall we discuss?"
Kessick looked up at his friend. Even after knowing her for several years, he still couldn't decide what kind of relationship they had. Most of the time they had a casual friendship, sometimes it would temporarily evolve into a passionate romantic affair. He knew he loved her, but he wasn't sure which way: as a friend, or as a lover? Fortunately, both worked. And whenever their romantic periods came to an end, their friendship seemed to take no harm from it; things merely returned to the way they had been before.
He suddenly realized that he'd been quiet for over a minute, she was still staring at him, waiting for him to tell her what they would discuss. She tended to be a quiet person, herself; she sometimes had difficulty making small talk. Highly introverted, she relied on others to initiate social interaction.
"Well," He said. "have you heard all the drama going on about aliens?"
"Who hasn't?" She said loudly. "Even up on the ship, we were listening to every report, I even had them broadcast over the speaker system."
"You did?" Kessick asked, confused; he didn't think she had the authority to control the speakers.
"Of course," Jori said. "with the captain and her first officer living down here for the period. I'm in command up there."
"Whatever happened to the original chief engineer, by the way?"
She smiled at him. "He's fine, still recovering from his ailment."
"I thought there was a preexisting chain of command, up there. Aren't you outside of it?"
"Technically not." She agreed. "But the chain of command only extended to the top three; captain, first officer, and the chief engineer; everyone else was a civilian recruit, untrained in higher level tasks."
"You're a smart woman, Jori," Kessick replied. "but I don't recall you ever going through the years of training that are required for making command-worthy officers."
"No, I didn't," Jori admitted. "but I score highly on the IQ tests, and the captain gave me a crash course before handing the reins over to me. I also spend most of my little free time in the simulator, honing my command skills."
"Don't you ever have any fun up there?" Kessick asked, taking the mostly-empty coffeepot from her, and drinking the last bit. It tasted okay to him.
"Sure I do. Sleeping's pretty fun for me -- as you already know. I only regret not getting enough of it."
Hansu had proved superior at making business propositions. Woq, of course, accepted. What had her method of proposal been? She placed a blank sheet of paper on the table and began writing down the pros and cons of marriage. She listed many pros, the only con she cared to write was, 'Doesn't want children (But you knew that already)'.
An app opened, a few swipes and a confirmation from Woq's account sealed the agreement.
Very little actually changed, it was more of a sentimental thing given that they could break the agreement at any moment if they wished.
It was one of the few reasonably dry days. The grasslike turf was still damp, but the dirt remained largely solid, only a thin layer of mud.
They walked together, through the streets and alleys between buildings.
Building after building went by, they were all rather simple of build. Sharp, angular structures, built out of generic plastics and metals. The painting scheme was dull as well, only a mediocre gray. Some people had already repainted their homes, choosing garish colors to contrast with the chillingly subdued nature of their world.
"Do you suppose," Hansu asked. "that this planet could be made more livable someday?"
Woq looked around, turning his head every which way. "Probably within our lifetimes, Han. If we resolve this alien business, we should have a weather-control satellite going. Once that's done, we can turn this particular spot into a paradise, a little patch of warmth and vibrance in this cold world."
"And if we don't?" Hansu said. "What do we do then? Will they be our enemies? Will we be forced to flee? Forced to destroy them? Or will we be destroyed?"
"Or," Woq suggested. "they could be friendly, we could share this planet. And be the greatest of allies."
"Tell that to the Aztecs." She murmured,
"The who?"
"Just some ancient civilization." She said. "Wiped out and looted by a technologically superior race who claimed to come in peace."
"What does that have to do with this?"
"I'm saying. That whoever holds technological advantage will ultimately destroy the weaker race. Rarely, if ever, has it happened otherwise."
He sighed. "When did you get so bloody-minded and pessimistic?"
"I didn't." She replied, grabbing his hand. "I'm just giving facts. And the facts say that this won't end up very pretty."
The color had finally returned to her face in full. Jori tended to look pale when she'd just woken up.
Looking at her under the warm yellow light of the overhead lamp, Kessick discovered again how undeniably beautiful she was. Her long brown hair, deep turquoise eyes, and her smile. In truth, Kessick had never found any of the ultra-feminine girls attractive, not even in his youth. Jori sometimes showed a masculine side that he adored very much.
"Did you ever read that book I sent you?" Jori asked.
Kessick realized that he'd been admiring his friend like an artwork at a museum for over a minute. "Yes." He said. "I found it pretty interesting. Though I agree with your opinion that the ending was weak."
"I think the author was getting bored of it near the end." She surmised. "You can tell by how alive and vivid the first half of the book was. And by how the ending basically cheats the reader, closing all the plots and subplots in an abrupt and unsatisfactory manner. The guy who wrote it must've really wanted to quit, too bad, too."
Kessick nodded. "Yeah. Who knows, maybe he'll return to it someday, publish a new edition with a proper ending."
"Perhaps he might've." Jori agreed. "If he hadn't been murdered."
"What?" Kessick exclaimed. "What happened?"
"He was stabbed to death by an enraged fan."
"You're pulling my leg? Right? Nobody would ever take a story so seriously as to kill the author for making a crappy ending."
"The killer was tried. The court found him Not Guilty. Something to do with insanity."
"Okay," Kessick said. "that might explain it."
It was almost saddening, the sight of her walls, blank.
The shipping people had just arrived and taken most of Ley's paintings -- at her reluctant behest. She had accidentally damaged one in a romp with one of her countless partners, not to mention all the incidents of paint from a work-in-progress splattering onto the completed paintings. She was pained at losing custody of her creations, but she knew that it would be even more painful to look at them in damaged form.
Unable to tolerate the bareness of her walls, she prepared to paint again. She had some more blank canvases in the closet. She removed one and put it on the stand. Then she took off all of her clothes -- she had very few sets of clothing, and washing was expensive for the moment.
She began to paint, primarily drawing smooth lines in a slow, sad fashion. Like a mother whose children were leaving the nest, she felt a sense of sadness and worry for the future of her paintings; she conveyed those feelings to the canvas, creating new works with her feelings for the old.
"So, I've heard you're writing stuff now," Jori remarked.
"Yes. I'm writing scripts for the stage. Theatre."
"Sounds good." She said. Bending down, she picked up a sheet of paper that was lying on the table. "Is this one of them?"
Kessick nodded. "It's a new printout."
Confident that she could stay awake now. Jori sat down, finally. She read through the script, taking her time. No doubt scanning every word; Kessick knew her well, she rarely read fiction due to the circumstances, but when she did, she was extremely meticulous, not missing a single word. He distinctly recalled that she'd once gotten upset at a person because he skipped over too much.
He was surprised when she began to hum an unfamiliar song while she read. She suddenly caught herself, looking up from the page, she apologized. "It's something I started doing; that is, I imagine the musical score for stories while I read them. I watch too many movies, I guess."
"No no no," Kessick dismissed the apology. "That's a real talent, Jori, that little tune you composed perfectly captured the theme of the story."
She smiled shyly. Kessick suspected that she still hid many of her talents from people. He often theorized about what she could achieve if she had the confidence to take the initiative on things rather than doing exactly what the captain and her XO ordered and nothing less.
"Come on," He begged. "Hum some more for me."
She shook her head. "I can't be that good!"
"You are, you're a really good composer, Jori."
"I'm not!" She protested.
"Please, some more."
She groaned. "Why do you demand things of me, Kessick?"
"I'm not demanding, Jori. I'm admiring your imagination. I want to hear more of your music, you have a natural talent."
With a sigh, she relented. "I'll just pretend that nobody's listening. Maybe that'll make it work."
She began to read again. Kessick found it interesting, how shy she was, and somewhat endearing.
Finally, after a few minutes. He could hear the humming, a tune that fit the mood of the story perfectly.
When she finished reading, he clapped his hands. Her face reddened slightly.
"You know, Jori," Kessick said. "once the Chief Engineer is fit for duty again, you should start composing music."
There was an awkward silence. She handed Kessick the paper. "It's a good story." She said. "I just hope you don't milk me for music again anytime soon."
Kessick placed a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. I've memorized the tune. Can I use it?"
She replied nervously, stretching out her words. "Okay."
Kessick thanked her and quickly scribbled the notes down on a sheet of paper.
Jori got up for a moment, looking around uncomfortably. "So, umm, is there anything else for us to do than sit around a table and chitchat? I've only got a few hours of leave left before the captain needs her XO back from the ship."
"Well, engineer Lemn, you could fix the gutters outside my place."
"Thanks for the invitation, but no, I wouldn't dream of stealing someone else's job." She said, the corners of her lips twitching slightly upward in a barely perceptible smile. "But I would like a tour of this little city, Kessick. I'll be living here next week, for good, so I want to know where everything is."
"Sure." He replied. "Give me a second to put my waterproof clothes on, please." He went into his bedroom and stripped off his standard indoor clothes; unlike most, he didn't wear undershirts and pajamas while indoors, he fashioned himself as a more 'cultured' individual. He slipped the rubbery coat and trousers on and went back out. "Alright, I'm done."
Jori was already out, standing on the turf just outside the door. He opened the door and went out to meet her.
"You took a while." She observed.
"Yeah, these clothes don't fit perfectly, I had a bitch of a time getting them on."
She looked at him quizzically. "Aren't they more trouble than they're worth? It's not even raining! Just boots would've sufficed."
He remembered how soaked he had gotten on that one expedition a couple of months before. He wasn't going to make it happen again. "Well, you're not exactly dressed for this weather either." He remarked.
It was true enough, she wore a standard jumpsuit uniform from the ship, its woolen fibers allowed a lot of breathing room. Kessick doubted that they were any protection from the elements. Though he found it fit her very well, and unwittingly advertised her curves.
"Well, I just got off the ship a few hours ago." She retorted. "Besides, I like this uniform, its comfortable."
"It looks like it." He agreed. "I think we'll go that way first." He pointed out eastward, down a street. "Our first commercial places are setting up there; shops, restaurants, even a school for all the children that haven't been born yet."
Jori nodded, shivering slightly in the cold. "Sound's good."
She followed him down the road. Even without rain, it was a bleak day, as were all the days. Many buildings stood out like sore thumbs; painted in bright colors, they added a spark of life to a deathly dull-colored world.
The ground was muddy, only slightly. It was in that state between wet and dry where it became sticky. It wasn't long before the soles of their boots were so thoroughly caked in mud as to completely fill the treads.
The commercial district was built festively. Unused prefabs had been gutted and repurposed for other functions. Stretched between the buildings was a tarpaulin ceiling, that kept the rain off of the pedestrians. The entire area was lit warmly by strings of yellow lights that hung between buildings. It all had a thrown-together appearance, which made it feel so much more human than anything they saw on Hestia. In truth, the order and cleanliness that were imposed by the benevolent machines had taken the humanity out of human communities. In contrast, this new area had the feel of human hands upon it; enough to make an upper-class city dweller faint at the sight of such terrible confusion and disarray. The street itself was paved with imitation-wood, the warm light reflected off the deep earthy texture of the floor, making it feel all the more natural. Yes, that was what would define Messier; making robots only do what was absolutely necessary, the creative economy extended to far more than little things, the cities themselves were canvases to be painted on, and only humans could do that painting.
They came to a little shop that sold trinkets. They went inside, the little bell of the door jingled upon opening; anywhere but Messier, it would've been an electric buzzer. Inside, at the counter, sat a small statured old man. His hair so bleached of color as to be nearly transparent, the wrinkles of his face drooped enough to make him look like a wax figure that had melted. His dark skin, almost completely black, was covered in freckles.
"A nice day out there, fellas," The old man croaked, his voice sounded ancient. "isn't it?"
Jori smiled at the old man. "It is. Any day where it isn't raining is a nice day."
Kessick departed into the maze of shelves, all covered in weird, exotic merchandise; all small enough to be used as a paperweight, but resembling nothing Kessick had ever seen back on Hestia.
Conversing can be hard for the introverted, they find it difficult to initiate social activities on their own; usually requiring an extrovert to provide the spark, once done, introverts can be just as chatty as everyone else, but only with whoever they were already talking to. Jori was interested in talking with the old man, though she felt some internal resistance to the thought of speaking first. Luckily for her, the old man, a talker by nature, began to speak the moment it was clear that she wasn't leaving too soon.
"Have you ever seen any worlds other than this one and Hestia?" He asked in a voice that was slow and cracked as if each word took some effort to produce. After Jori replied in the negative, he continued. "Well, I have. I've seen three whole provinces of the collective, spent at least a year living on every major planet."
Amazed, Jori asked. "Is that where you got all these trinkets?"
"Yes." He said. "One person's trash is another person's treasure. None of these little things cost much at all in the local markets. I've spent my entire lifetime stocking up on them."
"To sell them?"
"What else would I do with them? I'm getting really old now. I was once rich, did you know? I used to be a member of the Hestian upper class."
"What?"
"And you know what? I took the money I inherited from my parents and spent it all on my lifelong travels. I even had the old status tattoo lasered off of me, I disliked the way it tainted me in the eyes of the people."
Jori had picked up a small trinket, a marble with a tiny holographic generator on the inside that projected dancing ribbons of light on its interior, and turned it over in her hands. "If you pardon my asking, how old are you, then? Three provinces are a ton of parsecs to cross, with dozens of important planets."
He took no offense, answering in a boastful tone that made clear that he took pride in his age. "Physically, I'm two-hundred and fifty-three years old; chronologically, I'm seventy-thousand years old. Not bad, eh?"
Kessick was still searching the aisles, looking for something he liked. All the trinkets were pretty and quite exotic to what he was used to, but he hadn't found one that interested him yet.
As he turned a corner, he saw it; a tiny globe, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Looking closely, he recognized the planet; two major landmasses, one consisting of two separate sections conjoined by a tiny strip of land between them, another, much bigger one sat to the east of it; the two major continental structures were separated by both a narrow ocean and a much larger ocean, each occupying different sides of the planet. There was a massive frozen continent on the southernmost area, obviously uninhabitable.
He picked up the globe, held it in his hands. Finding a very small button at the top, he pressed it. And suddenly the globe was covered in illuminated text. Along the equatorial band, over the larger of the two oceans, appeared the words, 'EARTH: BIRTHPLACE OF HUMANITY'. Kessick had heard of Earth, done a lot of reading on it, but had never seen a visual depiction of its topography.
He made his mind to buy the globe.
He navigated the maze-like layout of shelves back to the counter. Jori was busy talking with the old man, who was in the middle of a story. Kessick held the globe out for a moment. "I was wondering where this came from." He asked.
The old man rested his chin in the palm of his hand, tapped a finger on the hard counter. "I got that one from Luna."
"Luna?" Kessick asked.
"It's the capital of the Orion Province, a rather peculiar world."
"What's peculiar about it?"
"Well, it's less than a quarter the size of most colonized planets. And its surface is covered entirely in one single building. Over a trillion people live there."
"A trillion!" Jori exclaimed. "I find that hard to believe."
The old man raised a hand. "You better believe it." He said, looking serious, no one would dare doubt him. "Luna is, second to Olympus, the most powerful planet in the entire Collective. And it deserves that right; you see, Luna was once the moon of Earth. Its people have never forgotten that. They sell little souvenirs like this globe to just about everyone who visits them. I attended concerts where those few, highly cherished, works of original Terran composers were performed amidst holographic recordings of the Earth; it was almost mystical, the experience I mean."
Kessick placed the globe down on the table, and twirled its top, setting it spinning for a moment. "How much do the people of Luna remember?"
"Quite a lot, actually. I bought that globe at a museum, they were showcasing an old probe that had been launched by Earth approximately nine-hundred years before the planet was lost. It was called 'Voyager', they found it drifting in interstellar space, and brought it back to Luna.
"On its hull, was a golden plate. Engraved in grooves on its surface were recordings of audio, and encoded pictures. I listened to the audio; there was nothing more haunting that could be heard, in my opinion. The voices of people who lived in the era of pioneers," The old man rambled on. "I heard people, speaking in so many languages, all saying 'hello'. Those words, that greeting, is their sole legacy, everything else they ever did is long forgotten. Just as they, themselves, turned to dust long before The Loss.
"Oh, how I wish," He sighed. "that I had been born in those times, to see firsthand Humanity's first steps from the shore of Madre Terra, into the Ocean of Eternity."
"Will we ever know what happened?" Kessick asked; despite his knowledge, the childish part of his mind somehow assumed that the old man knew.
"Probably not." The shopkeeper replied. "It is saddening. All those moments, lost, to time. Our ancestors, the pioneers, recorded those messages in hope that their probe would one day be intercepted by intelligent life; they were right, except that the aliens were us."
The old man, the shopkeeper, stood up. "Come with me, I have something you might find fascinating."
Kessick followed the shopkeeper into the backroom. "I keep my more valuable merchandise in here." He explained.
The back room was filled with treasures. One of them was held on its own pedestal. "I bought this from an artist on Luna." He said. The shopkeeper pressed a button on the artifact on the pedestal.
The surrounding room suddenly disappeared. Kessick recognized it as a hologram.
"This," The shopkeeper said. "is Earth. A holographic recreation pieced together from ancient photographs and audio recordings and star charts."
It was a nighttime scene. The Sun was down. The sky was clear. Kessick looked up and saw it dominated by the familiar band of radiant nebulae that composed much of the Galactic Disk.
"You see that?" The shopkeeper asked, pointing at a star. "That's Rigel. One bottom-right star of the constellation Orion, the hunter."
"Constellation?"
"Connect the dots, young man. The sky is an expanded edition. An imaginative mind can see images in the layout of the stars, and trace them for his friends to see and recognize them too."
"What's that?" Kessick asked, his attention taken by the sight of a silvery circle that cast shadows like a dim sun. It was pockmarked with craters and volcanic basins.
"That's Luna before it was colonized by humanity."
"It's beautiful."
Kessick became aware of the sounds, crickets chirping, the wind rustling through the grass. He became aware of his surroundings: a lake, a shimmering body of water that spanned nearly to the horizon; and the forest behind him, furnished with trees that looked strange to his senses, they resembled neither Hestia nor Messier.
A little creature scurried across the ground. It was small and chubby, with fur and long whiskers, and a hairless pink tail.
"That's a mouse. One of the native animals of Earth, they were once seen as pests; they chewed their way into people's food supplies and devoured them. They also helped to carry deadly diseases that killed thousands, sometimes millions of people."
Overwhelming didn't quite cut it. "How much does this device cost?" Kessick asked.
"It's priceless." The old man said, refusing to sell.
Disappointed, Kessick nodded. "How much is the globe, then?"
"Only a credit."
Kessick reached into his pocket and extracted the credit, a coin whose holographic exterior coating made each face display a different image from different angles.
The shopkeeper took the credit, and stepped away from the pedestal; the device automatically shuts off. Leaving Kessick disoriented and saddened, he was already missing a world he'd never truly seen or set foot on.
He followed the shopkeeper out of the room. Jori was still waiting patiently at the counter. "What did you see in there?" She asked.
"I'll show you." The old man said, leading her into the room.
"I assume I've purchased the globe?" Kessick asked.
The old man held up the credit, pinching it between two fingers. He nodded. "Thanks," Kessick replied, pocketing the globe.
Jori returned a few minutes later. Looking just as amazed as Kessick had felt. "That was one of the most eye-opening experiences I've ever had." She said.
"Please, come again." The shopkeeper said, looking and sounding tired. The two customers got the message, it was time to leave.
It was raining again when they left the shop, the pattering of raindrops was amplified and made to echo against the surface of the tarpaulin ceiling. Kessick recognized a couple a couple sitting at a table at the Diner. With Jori following, he went inside.
"Hey," Kessick greeted them. "didn't expect to see you two here."
"Why not?" Hansu Gal asked. "We've got to eat, too. And this Diner food is better g we have at home." Woq Do nodded in silent agreement, he had a mouthful of potato salad to swallow and a huge glass of soda in one hand.
Jori went to order. "Hey, Kessick, what do you want?"
"The usual." He answered back.
"What is your 'usual'?" She asked.
"The Diner keeps records of these things. Just tell them that you're ordering for me, and ask for the usual."
While Jori ordered their meals, Kessick got down to chatting with his two friends; the three of them discussed many things, Woq and Hansu's recent marriage, Kessick's screenwriting ambitions, the still-looming alien-threat, and assorted little things.
"Now, this," Kessick said. "is a real treat." He pulled the globe out of his coat-pocket, and pressed its power button; when the illuminated text appeared, he handed it to Woq first, who scrutinized it for a moment before passing it to Hansu.
"It's pretty amazing, isn't it?" Kessick remarked.
"I think so." Hansu agreed.
"It is very detailed," Woq said. "but I doubt that Earth looked exactly the way this globe shows it. The globe was manufactured millions of years after The Loss. There is no way of absolutely confirming the geography."
"There might be," Kessick argued. "Earth launched a probe once, it carried a collection of sounds and pictures in a storage device. It's now in a museum on Luna. Maybe it has a map of Earth at the time of it's launching."
"Kessick," Woq shook his head. "we cannot go all the way to Luna."
"We don't have to, you just have to ask the old man who runs that shop over across the street."
"I'll do that tomorrow," Woq said. "after this meal, we'll be going home."
Jori returned, having placed the orders. "They say they will have to cook your 'usual' meal, Kessick. Apparently, you're the only one who ever asks for it, so they don't have any of it already prepared." She sat down at the table adjacent to Woq and Hansu's, Kessick sat across from her, facing his back to the window.
"But what did you order?" Kessick asked.
"Just a fruit bowl. I figured the poor cooks were probably working hard enough just on your order alone."
Though the brightness of the sky had hardly changed, it was late in the evening according to the Messier time system; a hundred hour day/night cycle, divided into four total days; two of them light, two dark.
Sitting semi-comfortably in a well-upholstered chair, Jori Lemn spent her last hours of leave in the company of Kessick -- who was still amused by what had happened.
Jori's clothing was by no means suited for walking in the rain. And, unfortunately, it happened to be raining. By the time they got back, she was soaked to the bone. She still refused to speak to him after the way he'd behaved. All the way back, she couldn't help but stare lustily at the waterproof coat he was wearing; hoping that, through some form of obsolete chivalry, he would give it to her and let himself get wet; she wasn't so lucky, Kessick's generosity had limits. Intellectually, she knew that she wouldn't have shared such a garment either if she had had one; but such knowledge was of little comfort, she still got wet, and only he had spare clothes; she would have to return to the ship in a damp outfit. Damn him.
Kessick looked up from the pages of his latest script; one he'd just written and was not proofreading. "You know," He said thoughtfully. "perhaps I should take the opportunity and go up to the ship."
"What for?" She asked, startled.
"Well, I like the view. That's the first thing. The second is that I have some things that I would like to bring back with me, I doubt that the shipping people will get to them anytime soon, and I would like to have them sooner than next year."
Jori didn't reply. She didn't relish the idea of him going up to the ship; but her reasons for that were personal, based on her current frustration towards him. She decided not to openly object to him coming aboard, but she wouldn't give him any special treatment.
Silently, the shuttle took off. Its quantum engines, the same as those on the mothership, were totally soundless. Its claytronic outer hull absorbed the heat of the takeoff.
Doctor Remni Ori had found himself with nothing to do. The next expedition was going to go without him. The alien box was out of his possession, likely being poked and prodded by scientists of other fields. And the local plants had turned out to be inedible. He felt like he'd been put out of the job.
Suddenly, the lights went out; and everything moved to silence as the humming and whirring of electric devices came to a stop.
He had been dozing when everything went dark. The sudden light change jarred him back to wakefulness. He got up from his sofa and stumbled around the room in search of the emergency light. He knocked into several items of furniture, which he could not identify in the darkness.
He was only a mere half-meter away from bumping his face into a wall when someone burst into the Lab. "Doctor!" The voice shouted.
"Right here!" Ori shouted back. He traced the source of the sound and looked to his right just in time to see the dark figure step carefully into the room, shining the powerful beam of a military-grade flashlight directly ahead.
"The captain wants you in the Command Center, at once." The messenger announced. "It's very important."
Ori nodded, knowing that the captain's messenger could see him in the flashlight beam.
Following the messenger, Ori made his way out of the building.
Upon exiting the well-insulated structure. He heard a loud buzzing from above. Looked up, and saw the black silhouette of an aircraft against the bluish-gray of the overcast sky.