"I thought you'd decided to work here on base with me a month ago, when you made rank," said Jo as they walked to their Russian as a second language class. She was the other candidate being trained as the potential future Mars Mission Commander. There were always multiples. It only made sense when the mission was about a decade away.
"I changed my mind," said Zhen.
"That's weird," said Jo, who had the subtlety of a brick crashing through a window when she wasn't speaking about aeronautical issues. "A month ago, you were ready to leave what you called a boring job. You told me you'd packed up your desk and only had one project left to do. What happened?"
"Nothing happened. I just changed my mind."
"You never just change your mind."
"I change my mind, sometimes."
"Never without a justifiable reason."
"Can we talk about something else?"
"Hmm, why are you changing the subject? Is this subject uncomfortable for you to talk about?"
They walked into a room with several other astronauts in training. "Looks like we're here. Time to start learning some Russian."
Jo responded in Russian as they took their seats. "People act with me like you're acting with me when the subject involves other people. Especially if it's about romance. They say I don't get it."
"I don't want to talk about romance," said Zhen in Russian.
"Do you want to talk about MechSoft and how much it infuriates me that they practically own the ISS 2?" Jo replied with a little more bile in her voice than was warranted.
"Yeah, it's messed up that a corporation can own a space station."
Jo went silent for a beat ad then asked, "You'll keep working at the Think Tank?"
"I will."
"Till when? They'll expect you to make a choice before we start training for the ISS 2 trip. Or they'll pass on you."
Those three training days at the Global Space Initiative went too slow. Slower than Zhen had ever known them too. She had always looked forward to those three-day weekends at the base, but now she couldn't wait to get back to work. And somehow, four days of work suddenly didn't seem like enough. It was the last hour of their workday, a few nights later. The sun had set hours ago. Zhen had enjoyed another day blowing Jack's mind with her and Finn's proposals. Finn had headed to the 3D printer room to get something before they walked home together. Zhen smiled at the thought as she saved a few files on her computer. She was about to close the last window of her word processor and shut everything down when the indifferent robotic voice from her computer came alive.
"Cascading system-wide malfunction initiating from this workstation. Reformatting full network hard drive in twenty seconds..."
Zhen almost had a heart attack. She began checking every part of her system, her heart racing. If her workstation took out the whole office system, that would be a huge problem! Nothing looked out of place.
"...ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven..."
She was doing everything to find the fault, but Zhen was stamped. If this was Finn's work... but she couldn't have gone this far... right?
"...Three. Two. One."
Zhen's palms were drenched in sweat. This wasn't happening. No. No, no...
"Dictation complete."
Zhen almost shrieked. No freaking way! She went back to the word processor window she had minimised. The white screen was still blank. Or was it? She swept the cursor across the screen. The words had been typed out in white font and the AI set up to dictate the words using a timer. So old school, Zhen had completely overthought it. That's when she heard Finn. She was standing behind Zhen, laughing her head off, holding her phone up, still recording Zhen.
Finn gasped to catch her breath. "You should see your face."
"Have you never heard of the boy who cried wolf?" said Zhen, trying not to smile, but failing.
They walked home together again that night, with Zhen relating all the different ways she could kill Finn and get away with it and with Finn responding by replaying the video of an ashen white Zhen almost pulling out her hair as she tried to stop her computer from "crashing". Zhen opened the door to the building. She let Finn get in first and then held the door open for a few moments to allow the ginger cat in for the night. All the while, she was still recounting all the ways she could commit the perfect murder.
They got to the apartment and Zhen set the printer to make her usual cheese pizza dinner while she showered. Finn went straight to the living room and turned on that serial killer case that she'd been obsessed with for weeks now. Sometimes she'd start taking notes and muttering to herself as she watched the media circus unfold. First, she watched the highlights when they walked in, then she would head to the kitchen and start preparing herself dinner as she listened to the in-depth trial analysis that followed the highlights. Zhen knew she'd find Finn cooking up some veggies and meat for dinner after she came out of the shower.
"What poor critter had to die for your meal tonight," Zhen needled Finn as they sat at the dining table together for dinner. Finn was the only person Zhen knew who ate animal meat when in-vitro meat was available and just as tasty and nutritious.
"I'll have you know that Betsy was a proud and dignified fryer rabbit to whom I will be forever grateful for nourishing me. There's a connection between conscious souls that can't quite be captured in lab-grown meat," she said, defiantly. "Besides, you print every single one of your meals. You have no say in this."
"We eat printed meals in the space station for every meal. And we'll probably do so in Mars too," said Zhen with a shrug. "I figured I should get used to it."
"That's all the more reason to cook any and everything under the sun while you're still on Earth!" said Finn, dabbing at the rabbit jus on the corner of her mouth. "I just think you like how perfect everything comes off the printer. Perfect and predictable."
"Predictable is nice," said Zhen, a little too quickly. Finn narrowed her eyes at her and Zhen turned her focus to her pizza.
They ate in silence after that, the only sound coming from the trial proceedings in the background. Zhen looked up at Finn and found her doing that thing that made her smile. When Finn ate, she'd sometimes close her eyes and chew really slow. She'd take those few moments to savour whatever she was eating without making a single sound then open her eyes and continue eating and talking like nothing had happened. Zhen absolutely adored that, even though it was a death of a thousand cuts to continue finding all these little things she adored about Finn.
"I'm in the mood for ice-cream," said Finn.
"You usually are," Zhen replied with a chuckle, standing up to clean after herself.
Just one more thing Zhen found endearing about Finn. She would randomly have ice cream cravings. It wasn't every day, but it was always at strange times. For breakfast, as a midnight snack, ordered by drone delivery during an office coffee break. Zhen continued to load the dishwasher but did it as slowly as she could while she waited patiently and watched from the periphery.
"No. Freaking. Way." said Finn.
Zhen chuckled again. Finn had just found that Zhen had replaced her favourite tub of passion fruit and boysenberry ice cream with a slab of ice. Hotdog water ice, to be exact.
Finn looked up at Zhen, who couldn't take the smug look off her face. There was a line she'd crossed, messing with the girl's ice cream, but it had been too tempting not to.
Finn had the tub of ice in her hands, her eyebrow raised. "You're going to regret this."
Zhen laughed and walked up to her, stopped for a second to look into those green eyes with a smile, then walked past her. "Promises, promises."
She'd acted all brave before, but the anticipation of Finn's payback was almost painful. Zhen got increasingly paranoid with each new day, but she kept her cool, not wanting to give Finn the satisfaction of knowing how unsettled she felt. On her part, Finn was good at keeping her cards close to the chest. She just kept watching that damned trial and brewing herbal concoctions that made their apartment smell like forests and meadows and the mountains. It was impressive. Impressive and absolutely terrifying.
"Have you cracked the case yet?" Zhen asked, waking up to find Finn still watching the trial. She hadn't slept all night, which was extremely strange. Zhen was starting to get a little concerned.
"This is serious, Zhen," Finn replied, her Irish accent made heavier by exhaustion. She pulled her pyjama clad legs up to her chest and stared intently at the screen. Her hair was an unruly mess of curls and she looked a little scraggly from lack of sleep, but she was gorgeous, being bathed in the rays of the rising sun.
"Is it, now? Looks like a pretty straight forward case," Zhen replied, just a little irritated. "That dude is going to jail. For a long time."
"Did you know he's an engineer?"
"Well, the very creative moniker 'Engineer Serial Killer', kind of gave it away," said Zhen. She walked away from the living room to go prepare her breakfast.
"He worked for MechSoft," Finn replied. "Don't they partner with GSI? Your space company? This could be you."
"There's no way that would be me," said Zhen with a laugh. Then, lowering her voice to its most sinister octave, she added, "I would never get caught."
Finn suddenly went serious and turned to look at her. The look on her face got Zhen to stop and listen.
"That's just it, Zhen," she said, sombre. "He shouldn't have gotten caught. He's way too smart."
"You're getting a little too invested in this, Finn," Zhen said.
Zhen reached into the refrigerator to pick a new pancake mix capsule for the food printer. The other one had been used up yesterday morning, after making exactly twenty-eight buttermilk pancakes, just as advertised. She stopped short when she had the capsule in her hands. That wasn't her pancake mix capsule. It was a 3D printed PLA plastic model that looked exactly like her pancake mix capsule. Suspicious, she looked at the other stuff in the fridge. Every single one of her food items were just 3D printed models, impeccably finished to look exactly like the real items.
Even the glass of maple syrup in the pantry, along with everything else next to it, was just a plastic model, down to the labels she'd put of her name that first week. Zhen shook her head in awe. How long had it taken Finn to model every single item and perfectly finish them? That girl was insane. Good thing Zhen had a secret stash of chocolate and other snacks in her room. She retrieved a bar of chocolate and her jaw dropped. Finn hadn't just perfectly resealed the wrapper over the perfect plastic model of the chocolate bar, she'd done the same for every single snack in her cache. Really? How did Finn even know about her secret stash? When did she even go into her room?
Zhen walked out of her room with all the items from her secret snack cache and dropped them all into the plastic recycle bin. She found Finn smiling as she cooked pancakes on the stove. They were round, but not perfectly round like her printed ones. They apartment smelt delicious as Finn dropped butter onto the pan and then poured the pancake batter onto the sizzling mess. When she finished that pancake, she added it to a stack of three and handed the plate to Zhen. On the dining table was her maple syrup and small cubes of butter on a saucer next to it, along with a glass full of ice and orange juice. The real stuff.
"Exactly how long did it take you to do that?" Zhen asked, sitting down to eat the imperfectly shaped, yet incredibly delicious, ground cherry and buttermilk pancakes.
"Way too long," said Finn, laughing. She joined Zhen at the dining table with her own stack of pancakes. Zhen pushed the maple syrup towards her. She'd never shared her dad's maple syrup before.