Administrative Tower
True to his word, Ren Zel had forwarded the Uncle’s math.
It was preposterous.
Or—no.
The math was elegant and perfectly balanced.
The situation it described was preposterous.
Jen Sin looked over the top of the screen, to the shelf where the green and blue bird-bots perched charmingly together, looking pleasant, if not entirely birdlike. He recalled Vinsint Carresens’s careful face softening into a smile when she was able to understand them as the gift of a kind friend.
A kind friend.
He sighed, and looked again to his screen.
He had run the equation set twice. He supposed he would run it a third time, because one was taught, was one not, to be trebly sure of one’s equations before taking flight?
At this moment, however, he wanted nothing so much as an analgesic. Or possibly a brandy.
The door pinged, and he spun in his chair to greet Lorith as she entered the office.
She paused, frowning.
“I did not remember that your sweater was red.”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “My cousins Anthora and Ren Zel brought me more clothes, so that I may be as gay as I wish, and sport all colors equally.”
“There is a ring in your ear,” she said.
“Yes. It is my trothing. I wear it so that I may properly recall and honor my teammates.”
“It is a memory device?” Lorith asked.
Like the beads, she meant. Jen Sin caught his breath against a flash of…anger. But there, she did not know, and the beads were a central fact of her life.
“A mnemonic, only,” he answered gently. “Sit, do, and share your news.”
“My news is older than yours,” she said, sitting in the chair next to the desk. “Station said that you had met Vinsint Carresens, and together toured the section made available to the second-wave crew.”
“That is correct. The crews will be moving in over the next several shifts, and situating the caf unit, when it arrives. I will meet again with Coordinator Carresens, with a proposed work schedule in hand. There will scarcely be anything for the light keepers to do.”
Lorith glanced aside, then leaned forward, looking into his eyes.
“Jen Sin—all these people. I am uneasy. How can we protect them all?”
“They seem very able to protect themselves.”
“From Tinsori Light?”
“Lorith—” he began, and stopped, hearing the impatience in his voice, knowing full well the devastation he might produce with words alone. Lorith had feared Tinsori Light—as he had. If she clung to that fear, to the need to be vigilant; if she distrusted the new facts of her life, was that anything else than his own moments of disorientation, horror, and dismay? Lorith had been on Tinsori Light far, far longer than he had. It was nothing short of marvelous that she held true to her duty, and sought still to protect the vulnerable.
Still, if she were to thrive, she must learn to accept their new condition. It fell to him, her comrade, and her sole companion in madness, to bring her, gently, down the path from the past to the present.
He had control of himself now, and met her eyes firmly.
“We are assured by people who make it their business to know these things that Tinsori Light is dead,” he said, matter-of-fact and calm. “It is difficult to credit, I know—I have my own moments of disbelief. But, look you, Lorith—what remains? Everything in the deep core has been swept out by upstart organics, and carried away to be rendered into useful components. Surely, Tinsori Light cannot wake, if there is nothing to support his intelligence.”
“Tinsori Light was the whole station, not only the core,” she said.
“That is so, but—see here!”
He spun the screen so that she might see the appalling equations displayed there.
She was not an idiot, but nor was she a pilot, and the mathematics she had been schooled in did not begin to describe the universe into which she had been thrust.
“This—” he said, waving at the screen, “is a proof provided to my delm by no one less than the Uncle.”
“What does it prove?”
“Well you might ask. It proves that space—I speak of the space here, at Tinsori Light—was cleared, and forthwithly remade, before anyone properly had a chance to notice.”
Lorith looked at the screen again, a line between her fair brows.
“What effected this event?” she asked, quite calmly.
For a moment, he could but stare at her. Then he recollected that Lorith had been by chance evicted from a universe that was being systematically and deliberately rendered into crystal.
“If one is to believe the narrative, Tinsori Light had been caught between this universe and the old. When it phased, it reentered the old universe. This constant back-and-forth over so very many years wore the fabric of space very thin, and it tore, creating a leak.
“The leak was repaired, and in the midst of the repair, we were erased.”
He sat back in the chair, having fair exhausted himself with nonsense, and waved a hand, showing her the control room, the screens, and the view of near-space.
“But, all’s well, as you see. We have been safely reawakened.”
“With Tinsori Light fully in this universe with us.”
“That is so, but the Light, alone of us, did not survive the wakening.”
“That seems…quite unlike him,” Lorith said.
From the edge of his vision, he saw the blue bird stir, and turned his head to look at it.
It struck him, then, that he and Lorith had been much apart of late. Before, they had each been the sole comfort of the other. They had eaten together, played cards, toured, slept and shared pleasure, reveling in whatever present they found for themselves.
And now it had been—had it been weeks, with only a few snatched meetings, such as this?
“One of the fortunate things of having so many people on-station is that we will soon be able to arrange our off-shifts together,” he said, following this thought. “It has been long since we have had the chance to merely sit together as ourselves, without duty taking a third chair. You…my friend, you are worn thin, and I make no doubt I am the same. Surely, we may grant ourselves a shift—or two—of rest, to do whatever may please us?”
She stared at him, dark eyes wide, and lips slightly parted. He had a moment to congratulate himself on his laggard cleverness, before she snapped to her feet.
“No!” she said sharply. “I am—no. Jen Sin, I must go.”
“Lorith—” He came to his feet.
“I am—perhaps later,” she said. “After I have done.”
And with that she was gone, the door snapping shut behind her.
Jen Sin sat down, his eyes on the door, his heart troubled. One could scarcely demand that a comrade share time with one. And it was true that choice now existed. Perhaps one of the Stronglines might be more to her taste.
He closed his eyes, and spun his chair back toward the desk, wishing he could convince himself that she had found ease elsewhere, and was not merely sitting alone, fear her only comrade.
Opening his eyes, he saw that the green bird was perched on the top of his screen. And on the screen itself, that beautiful and demented equation.
He took a deep breath, and sighed it out.
Then, he turned off the screen and rose.
Perhaps he would do his third check—later.