“When will that be?” Bolshakov asked.
Crane turned steely eyes on him. “When you need to know that, commander, I will tell you.”
With a brisk nod he left. Hanna stayed put. She surveyed us all coolly, and then slid into a seat in the front row.
Luka and I took our turns on the EEG, as usual. For the first time, Luka appeared to have some success with it. I flashed him a little thumbs-up and a smile. Maybe I’d actually been able to pay him back for all the times he’d helped me.
But he didn’t appear as happy as I expected. He returned my smile politely, but still seemed troubled.
Hanna stayed for the entire class. When it ended, she stood by her chair and waited for the rest of us to file out.
I paused in front of her. “Nice to see you again,” I ventured, though that was stretching the truth. “I guess we’ll be working together.”
There was almost a smile on her lips. “Don’t worry, Cass, I’m not here to compete for your precious spot. Mr. Crane needs me on the ground.”
“Why?”
Now the smile brightened; she had clearly been hoping I would ask. “That’s on a need-to-know basis,” she said, brushing past me toward our instructor, who seemed to be waiting for her at his desk. “And you don’t need to know.”
“Close your eyes.”
I did. The chill tickle of electrodes slid through my hair as the tech fitted the helmet over my head. She checked to make sure the helmet was secure, the electrodes placed correctly.
Exam Room 2C was a nondescript gray box of a room, with what I was fairly certain was a two-way mirror on one wall. I was reclined in a dentist’s chair beside a large, whirring machine, my pulse thumping in my wrists, goose bumps breaking out across my skin.
The tech assisted me with the helmet, specially fitted with dozens of tiny wires just like the one I’d wear during our voyage asleep in the HHMs. The helmet directly connected me with the computer that would monitor our vitals during flight.
I was given little instruction. Only that I was to go into my meditative state and attempt to make connection with the computer. When I asked how, the tech only shook her head.
“This is a new area of science,” the tech said. “The brain is a complex organ, and each has its own unique makeup of neural connections. You must discover your own way to connect to the computer.”
Over the speaker, Pierce’s voice: “Whenever you’re ready, Gupta.”
Inside the helmet my hearing was deadened, my peripheral vision gone. With my eyes closed, it was actually easier to disconnect from physical sensations—the cool steel of the chair, the heavy weight of the helmet over my head, the sound of my own breathing echoing inside the helmet, the vaguely electric smell of plastic—and went to the now-familiar space in my mind. I heard only the distant mechanical whoosh of the machine, until that, too, became nothing.
The place I went to in my meditative state was bland and quiet, a void with little else beyond a distant consciousness of melody that blended into a constant refrain that ebbed in and out of focus.
But this time when I faded away, I didn’t go entirely away. I felt a thin connection to conscious thought, an awareness of being watched. The awareness of something else aware of me.
Something else was there in the quiet of my consciousness. I searched for it but it kept away from me, always at the edge of my awareness, making me wonder if it was really there at all.
I stopped chasing the feeling. It didn’t go away. Instead, I formed a thought, aimed it, as though I were calling out hesitantly to an empty room: Hello?
The awareness flickered. Strengthened. Its attention focused on me like a laser. There was no response, but had I really expected one?
Instead of trying to communicate again, I simply tried to make myself more visible, more open. Here I am. See me.
I repeated the mantra as long as I could maintain the openness of my mind, to no response. But the awareness was stronger now, more of a concrete presence. It was also somehow closer. If this wasn’t all happening in my mind, I could’ve sworn I might have been able to reach out and touch it.
But then it was gone, a pulled plug, and even in my reduced state I felt the nauseating swoop of failure.
“That’s enough, Gupta. You can come out of it now.”
I swam back to the surface of consciousness. The electrodes retracted and I shivered at the removal of my helmet. Cold white lights suddenly brightened the room, blinding me as I realized the tiny lab was now full of people.
Blinking away the spots, I eventually recognized the stern outline of Colonel Pierce and the smaller, only slightly less stern figure of Hanna. A tech was removing the heart-rate monitor and unstrapping the various other devices that had been monitoring my vitals. Four or five others in white coats were looking at the digital readouts from the computer and whispering to themselves.
“You did well, Gupta,” Pierce said. There was disbelief in his eyes.
Hanna was watching me with curious concern, her tablet poised on her arm as if she were a reporter taking notes. “How do you feel?”
“A little groggy. But fine.”
“Do you remember being aware at all?”
“I remember being aware. I remember something being aware of me.”
Hanna’s stylus froze above her tablet. The white coats stopped their whispering and looked at me.
“Is . . . that bad?” I asked, a worm of anxiety twisting through my chest.
The white coats smiled.
“No. It confirms what we saw on our end,” Hanna said, touching her stylus to her tablet a few times, then looking back at me. She actually looked happy. “It’s exactly what we had hoped.”
One of the white coats explained. “This is the first time you were connected to the supercomputer. Your semiconscious state must have felt the connection and relayed it to you as a sense of being watched. Your brain was, in fact, directly connected with the computer. It interfaced with your bioelectricity.”
Someone was slowly clapping, the noise quieting everyone in the room. Crane strode through the crowd, the sea of white coats parting for him like repelling magnets. “Congratulations, Cassandra. You’ve just shown us you’re able to form a direct neural link with the computer. Something that precious few test subjects have achieved.”
The words test subject made me narrow my eyes. “It didn’t feel like I did much of anything.”
“It’s good news,” Hanna assured me. “It’s just what we wanted to happen. This is only the first step, making the connection. You have no idea how many thousands of trials haven’t been able to get this far. Cassie, this is the reason why we need you. Older people, even our established astronauts, they can’t form this type of connection. Not to the level you’ve shown today.”
“No, they cannot.” Crane’s closed-mouth smile was tight. He was thrilled—triumphant, even, but trying not to show it. He addressed a group of scientists to his left. “It’s too early to tell if this was a complete success. We’ll need more attempts. Gupta will need time and practice to refine the connection. And we have exposed her only to the beta version of the software. The full potential of the neural link may not be known until she interfaces with Sunny in her whole form.”
I gave Hanna a “what the hell is he talking about” glare. She waited for visual permission from Crane before she answered. “Sunny is the nickname we’ve given to PROPHET, the supercomputer that will be installed aboard the ship. There’s only one, and she’s on board Odysseus, so you’re practicing with a less powerful version—an earlier prototype. She will monitor the crew while in flight as well as perform a multitude of other functions: autopilot, recording scientific data, and so forth.”
“Our little joke,” Crane said, not at all looking like a man who could tell a joke. “Sunny is solar-powered. Well, photon-powered, to be precise, as solar power will have little importance on an interstellar journey.”
“You calling a computer she is a little disconce
rting.”
“Sunny is as intelligent as a young human child,” Crane said. “Theoretically, of course—intelligence is such a difficult thing to measure. We don’t typically think of children as intelligent; the lack of impulse control, attention span, and basic knowledge of the world tend to cloud their true potential. But in the capacity to learn? The ability to process data and extrapolate it into new conclusions, to solve problems? Sunny is as near to human intelligence as we have yet achieved.”
I tried to find the sense of triumph and elation everyone around me seemed to feel. And there was a sense of accomplishment. But it was overshadowed by apprehension. What was I getting myself into, directly connecting my brain to a supercomputer? A prototype supercomputer. Nobody else had done this before—that meant no one knew the risks. What might happen to me when they finally connected me to the real Sunny?
Everything about this felt rushed. Research half finished, hypotheses half tested, results unknown. I was their experiment.
I reminded myself I was already a product of human experimentation, from my very conception. Science had given me life. Maybe this was my turn to give to science. Was I really going to let untested science keep me from my lifelong dream?
Maybe this was my destiny.
My reservations shifted into resolve.
Two techs helped me to my feet. I took one step on my own.
“I’m fine,” I told them.
They released me, and I promptly lost consciousness.
TWENTY-FOUR
INCESSANT POUNDING ON my door. I roused, groggily, finding myself alone in my quarters, the lights off.
I stumbled out of bed, pulling open the door just to make the noise stop.
Krieger was in my room before I could fully process her existence. She was in a metallic cream jacket and glittering gold dress that nearly blinded me. High-heeled shoes added to the considerable inches of her hair, making her taller than me.
As Krieger brushed past me to the closet, reality slowly filtered back into my brain.
I’d briefly regained consciousness as I’d been carried back to my room, during which someone had explained what’d happened to me. Apparently the process of forming and maintaining the neural link was so incredibly taxing on the brain that mine simply shut itself off. A hard restart. Not uncommon, they said. I’d been told to sleep it off.
According to the clock beside my bed, that had been seven hours ago. The slice of sky I’d glimpsed out the open door was black. I’d missed the entire day.
I watched her flit around like a wild bird that had accidently flown into my room. She was examining every article of clothing in my closet, giving each a brief moment of scrutiny before impatiently shoving it aside. A few items she flung onto the bed beside me. “Mr. Crane is pleased with your success today,” she said into my closet. “He’s decided that you and Luka are to attend the party tonight.”
“The party?” I repeated. I struggled in vain to remember what the hell she was talking about.
“Mr. Crane is hosting cocktails for his investors and wants to celebrate your success from this morning.” She finally turned and eyed the articles of clothing she’d thrown onto my bed disapprovingly. “A bit short notice, but we’ll make it work. The entire crew is going to be there, as well as a few key investors and some higher-level people from NASA. We need you looking respectable.”
So it wasn’t just a celebratory party—it was Mr. Crane trotting his crew out for inspection like so many prize horses. I stopped dragging my feet.
Whether or not I was actually guaranteed a spot on the ship was still up in the air. If the rest of the crew was going to be there to schmooze, I would, too.
I dressed without complaint. The nicest clothes I’d brought were a businesslike black skirt and a slightly wrinkled gray blouse with buttons. I had two pairs of shoes: a pair for running, and the brown clogs I wore every day. I picked the clogs.
I twisted my thick hair—wild from not having been properly brushed in days—into a messy bun, and glanced at my reflection. I looked like a librarian headed to a funeral. Who had bad taste in shoes.
But it wasn’t bad for five minutes’ notice.
She clucked her tongue disapprovingly but said nothing as I followed her next door to Luka’s room. She rapped on his door, and he joined us on the sidewalk, already dressed.
He must’ve had prior warning about this party, because he looked good. He was wearing a white collared shirt with a gray suit jacket and pants, looking every bit the GQ model, Russian edition. I felt a twinge of . . . something, maybe jealousy, that he looked more put-together than I did.
We barely had a chance to greet each other in mutual confusion before Krieger escorted us across the courtyard. The “party” was being held in a conference room on the training campus, a few minutes’ walk away.
The room was only just large enough for the amount of people in it, but dressed up for the occasion with a bar and bartender set up in the far corner and a poker table on the end near us. A few tables and chairs were scattered around the perimeter of the room, a buffet table lining one wall.
“Well, you two, get to mingling. Make us look good!” She left Luka and me stranded by the door.
“Tell me you were given more notice about this than I was, so I don’t feel so bad,” I said.
To my surprise, he laughed. “My apologies. We were given strict instructions not to disturb you after your collapse. And apparently, until this afternoon, neither of us was actually invited. But Crane wanted to celebrate your success.” He shot a furtive glance around the room and lowered his voice. “I want to say congratulations. But . . . are you sure you’re all right?”
Triumph mixed with some gray emotion filled me. “Just groggy. It hardly felt like anything at all,” I said, affecting nonchalance. What was wrong with me? I was proud of myself. But when my breakthrough threatened Luka’s hard-won place on the crew, it felt like I was lording it over him.
Bragging had never bothered me before.
“Apparently it was quite something. Certainly much more than I had achieved.”
My heart twisted. “Luka, don’t . . .”
But his eyes were already roaming the room, and he nodded as he spotted some familiar faces.
The others of the crew were here already. I saw Dr. Copeland, in a silver dress with dangling earrings sending sparkles dancing across her ebony skin, sipping wine at the bar beside Bolshakov, who looked gruff but handsome in a dark suit. Jeong and Shaw were at a round table socializing with a few people I’d never seen before, each dressed more expensively than the next. Jeong herself was in a formal gown, deep blue, with a dramatically steep neckline. I’d never seen any of them like this before. Dr. Copeland was always in polo shirts and khakis, and Jeong was dowdy at her best.
I attempted in vain to tug out the wrinkles from my department-store blouse.
“So,” Luka said, crossing his arms and looking out over the intimidating faces. “Mingle. What does this word mean again?”
“It means we should probably split up,” I said, dreading it. “Make small talk with strangers. Impress them with your wit and intellect and accent.”
He smiled warmly, grasping my elbow for only a moment. “Thank you for the clarification.” He made his way to a group of bored-looking scientist types in bow ties and glasses standing idle by the buffet.
I scanned the room again and spotted Hanna at the bar, where I was surprised to see the bartender pour amber liquid into a scotch glass without even asking for ID.
I came up behind her. “Pretty sure you’re not twenty-one.”
“Pretty sure I don’t care.” She motioned with her head to the far corner, where in the dim light I made out the tall, well-dressed figure of Clayton Crane. “He’s hosting this party, and he swore to the bartending company that everyone at this party was of legal age. And where I come from, I’ve been legal for years.” She took a sip, ice cubes tinkling in the glass, and sucked in a breath. “If we’re old
enough for space, we should be old enough for a drink.”
She motioned to the bar. The bartender, unbidden by me, had poured a glass of something dark and bubbly and put it in front of me.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
Hanna’s expression went from carefully cultivated boredom to that laser-focused intensity I knew so well. Her voice dropped an octave, lips barely moving to conceal her words. “Before the month is over, you may or may not be leaving Earth on an experimental spacecraft, which may or may not bring you back. Live a little.”
Point taken. I tipped back the glass before I could let myself think about it too much. “Wait—is this Coke?”
Hanna flashed a wide grin. “With a splash of rum. Now give me a minute. I just need a little liquid courage before I go introduce you to Crane’s friends.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I left her in peace, drifting around the room and sipping from my cup. It just tasted like Coke, syrupy sweet, with only a warm tingle down the back of my throat that betrayed the alcohol entering my system. The rush of sugar and cold carbonated liquid was like a kick in the mouth, and I realized how long it’d been since I’d had anything stronger than tea.
“I didn’t take you for a drinker” came a voice behind me, and I felt a rush of relief at seeing Luka at my elbow again. “An underage one, at that.”
“Hanna is a bad influence,” I said, shrugging and looking into my glass. “But really, I think it’s mostly Coke.”
Maybe it was the alcohol—at least, I was going to blame the alcohol—but my heart was thumping a little harder than usual, and my hands felt oddly warm and tingly. “How was mingling?”
“Fair,” he said. “Though you don’t seem to have made any new acquaintances.”
“Hey, I’m just the alternate,” I joked, even though the truth of it stung. “No one cares much about me.”
His face lost its mirth. I bit the inside of my lip, regretting the words. With this breakthrough, the scales were tipping in my favor. And possibly risking the last friendship I had left.
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