Niall and I have no difficulties ignoring each other. Plus I’m determined not to initiate a conversation with him. Ever. So I spend my soch-time fooling around with the game system. Of course tricking the system becomes boring and by the fourth day, I test how deep into the Q-net the game terminal will allow me to go.
My biggest problem is the screen. During soch-time, the screen must show what’s going on—game, video, music—it’s all visible, including worming. I need to squish my worming activities into a tiny section of the screen which would be still showing attacking zombies. I study the babysitter, noting the places she frequents. Then I take a stroll around the rec center, marking angles. Eventually, I figure out if she sits at her desk, she can’t see the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
It takes me a couple soch-time sessions to manage to have both and as soon as the babysitter is at her desk, I worm into the ship’s schematics. I just need a few minutes to find a terminal that’s been forgotten.
When I glance over my shoulder to check on the babysitter, I catch Niall staring at me. I. Can’t. Resist.
“Are you done?” I ask.
He scowls at me.
“Staring. Are you done?” I ask again, but this time I’m more smug.
“Passengers are not allowed to access that information,” he says.
I quickly exit the data cluster and the game fills the entire screen. “What information?”
He stands up. He’s tall and lean, but his shoulders are tense. Is he planning on ratting me out to the babysitter?
“There’s a reason passengers are barred from those areas. You could endanger the ship and kill us all, you idiot.”
Seriously? An idiot? “Look, Mr. Drama King, I’ve barely scratched the surface and can’t get deep enough to affect the operation of the ship. You should know that.” I cock my head to the side. “Or do you need me to teach you about the Q-net? The Q stands for quantum.”
His fingers curl into fists. “Worming is illegal and if you’re caught you’ll be tossed into the brig for the rest of the trip. That’s B for brig.”
“Oh you can spell, your mother must be so proud.”
Niall takes a step toward me and unease rolls up my spine. Did I hit a nerve?
But he stops. “I should report you, but you’d just deny it.”
Plus he wouldn’t have any proof. Although I believe he wouldn’t hesitate to rat me out to the babysitter if he catches me again.
When I don’t respond, he says, “Consider this a warning. Don’t do it again.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” I just couldn’t resist the sarcasm— who does this guy think he is? I’m rewarded with a nasty glare before he resumes pretending I don’t exist. I don’t press my luck and return to just tricking the games during soch-time, but that doesn’t mean I plan to stop worming.
After soch-time, I find the forgotten terminal. According to Jarren, the research bases and colonies always have a couple that are installed in areas the designers think people will use, but end up being forgotten. I’d figured it was the same with an Interstellar Class ship, and I was right. It’s in a quiet out-of-the-way part of the ship not used by the crew or passengers—a perfect place to worm deeper into the Q-net.
The terminal is similar to the one in my room with a seat and screen, except this one doesn’t have as many restrictions, and, as long as I don’t broadcast my identity, I should be able to access deeper data clusters. Inserting my tangs, I keep the screen blank as I worm past the initial inquiry as to who I am.
Since my parents dodged my questions regarding my new home planet—which I suspect must be bad, otherwise why not tell me?—my first foray is to pull up the classified file on Planet Yulin. When the explorers in their Explorer Class space ships find a potential exoplanet in the Goldilocks Zone, their primary objective is to do a preliminary assessment and search for any sentient beings. If there are none (although everyone is ever hopeful), then the next step is to hunt for alien artifacts and Warriors.
After that, it’s up to the scientists to locate and catalog the native species and determine if a planet is a good candidate for colonization. The Warrior planets are not open for colonies. At least, not yet. Once all the Warriors are uncovered and inventoried, the data is sent to DES. Then the planet is closed and protected from looters until DES decides what to do with it.
Thinking about it, almost all the information from a new planet is stored within DES’s secure database. Everything and everyone who’s not on Earth is governed by DES. It’s funded and run by all the countries of Earth. Once the Q-net was invented, there was one thing the entire world could finally agree on—when we’re off planet, we are not Mexican, Russian, Egyptian, or any “ian”, we are Earthlings.
After the explorers leave a new discovery, first responders are sent to construct the base and prep it for the scientists’ arrival. They’ve done this for…at least a hundred planets so far.
Good thing for me, Jarren taught me how to worm into the cluster where DES keeps the survey information. I asked him because I hate not being in the loop. I scan the stats for Yulin. It’s the fourth exoplanet orbiting around a G1V star. It’s size is about one and a half times the mass of Earth. However, the planet is sixty-eight percent desert. And guess where the Warriors were discovered? Yup. Right in the middle of freaking nowhere…or thirty-four percent from anywhere the least bit interesting. No wonder my parents kept changing the subject.
Small consolation that the air is breathable and the climate is warmer than Xinji. All the Warrior planets have been found in what’s called the Goldilocks Zone. Just the right distance from their suns so they aren’t too hot or too cold for life. The experts figure that the aliens who transported the Warriors are probably biologically close to humans since it appears their ideal zone matches ours. And yes, the theory is that they are aliens. Unless the dinosaurs developed a way to cross the Galaxy, there’s no evidence early man had the ability to ship millions of Warriors hundreds of light years away from Earth.
The other thirty-two percent of Yulin is forests with a variety of insects, flowers, small mammals, etc… I’m sure the biologists are drooling with excitement. The natural resource list is quite small. In fact, the file itself is sparse in details.
I dig for more information and find the personnel list for Yulin. More scientists are traveling from other Warrior planets and will arrive at some future point in time, depending on where they’re traveling from. Maybe one of my friends from Wu’an became a scientist and volunteered for Yulin. A girl could hope. Of course, she’d be decades older than me, but a familiar face is always welcome.
Scanning the list of names, I jump when the door behind me hisses open.
“I found the worm,” a male voice says.
Oops. I disentangle. My pulse speeds up as I swivel around. A security officer stands in the threshold. The officer is near my parents’ age…I think. There’s gray in his bristle-short black hair. He seems familiar.
He taps on the portable he’s holding. “No back up needed. Radcliff, out.”
I flip between being insulted and being relieved over his comment. Then there’s the chagrin mixed with fear over getting caught. Guess I’m not as subtle as I’d thought. Or…the name Radcliff rings a bell. Niall! Figures. He must have ratted me out to his father or uncle or older brother or it could be his great grandfather— with the time dilation you never know.
Officer Radcliff studies me. “Do you realize what you’re doing is highly illegal?”
“I wouldn’t call it highly. I’m not meddling with any of the ship’s systems.” I try to downplay it before he yells at me for endangering lives or something equally dramatic.
His expression hardens. He is not amused. “Let me ask you another question. Do you want to be confined to your quarters for the rest of the trip?”
Ah. “No.” That would be torture.
“Then don’t worm into the Q-net again. Understand?”
“Yes.”
; He waits.
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Good.” He sweeps a hand out, gesturing to the hallway. “Allow me to escort you back to your parents.”
It’s not a request. We walk in silence. When we arrive, my mother is not happy to see us (an understatement). She keeps her temper in check until Officer Radcliff leaves.
“Lyra, it’s only been seven days, you can’t be bored already.”
“It’s your fault,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
Her tone is scarier than getting caught worming. I should have kept my big mouth shut. “I was curious about Yulin.”
She softens a bit. “Well now you know what to expect. And now you can help us. That’ll keep you out of trouble.”
Oh no.
“Your father and I have a ton of things to do before we reach Yulin. Seeing as you’re so good using the Q-net, you can take over all the tedious tasks.”
At that moment, I consider doing something highly illegal. Maybe Officer Radcliff would throw me into the brig for the rest of the trip. A girl could hope.
“Lyra?”
I suppress a sigh. “What do you need me to do?”
Turns out it’s quite a bit. While the research base is the same rectangle as the others, my parents have to assign labs and decide on housing. In other words, organizing lots and lots of little details. And that is okay. The work makes the days go faster. It keeps me from counting down to the time when I lose my friends forever, and makes my soch-time an actual break where I find creative ways to annoy Niall, like having his avatar tell the zombies that eating people is illegal and they’ll be thrown into the brig with a capital B.
When we arrive at the crinkle point on 2472:016, the thrusters are shut down. An eerie silence steals through the ship. It’s creepy. Everyone is required to strap into their bunks. I lie in mine, staring at the ceiling, and say good-bye to Lan, Jarren, Belle, and Cyril. A klaxon cuts through the silence, warning us that the BP Crinkler engine is about to be engaged. A second later my world blurs and spins. I close my eyes as nausea swirls in my stomach and I clutch the straps. This repeats a dozen times or so. It’s too fast to count and all my energy is on keeping my breakfast down.
We fly fifty years into the future without a sound. Strange, right? You’d think there’d be a boom or a roar. Even a click or snap would be satisfying at least. No. There’s nothing.
That is until the Crinkler engine is turned off. As soon as the spinning stops and the walls solidify, fifty E-years’ worth of messages, news and important information flood the ship’s Q-net. My screen pings and flashes as the thrusters fire up and we sail toward Yulin. I’m reluctant to read what I missed and learn who died—Diamond Rockler is over seventy A-years by now—because once I know, I can’t unknow and it becomes real. Now I can still believe nothing has changed.
Yeah, I understand all about denial. What’s your point?
Then I realize there is one good thing about the time dilation. It’s now 2522:016. I’m fifty E-years closer to my brother. When the next Interstellar Class ship arrives at Yulin in four E-years, it’ll probably be heading back toward the other planets since this is the furthest point of populated space. I could eventually travel to the university on Rho. By then Phoenix would be on Earth and I’ll be able to actually communicate with him in real time.
My father is sitting at the terminal in our living area with my mother hovering over his shoulder. If they noticed me, they don’t show it. The screen is filled with messages, data files, and various information.
“Any new discoveries?” she asks.
“No new Warrior planets,” he says, scrolling through the reports. “But they completely reconstructed the damaged Warriors in half of the pits on Xinji.”
That’s pretty good. Even though the robotic diggers are programmed to clear the sand and dirt from around the Warriors without harming them, they’ve been buried for over two thousand E-years and, during that time, cave-ins and partial collapses of some of the pits happen.
“What about alien artifacts? Did they find more? Or translate the markings?” She’s clutching the back of his chair as if her will alone will bring good news. She could insert her own tangs, but I think she’d rather not be overwhelmed with too much information at once.
“Not that I can find. But don’t worry, Ming, there are hundreds of files here, some are encrypted.” He hums to himself. “They haven’t improved on the BP Crinkler engine yet. We need another scientific breakthrough that fixes the time dilation.”
I silently agree.
“What about that file?” Mom points to the screen. “It’s marked high importance.”
“Dated 2520:289. It might actually be relevant,” Dad says.
The desire to bolt pulses through me. Those red arrows never mean good news. But curiosity keeps me in place as my father reads the message.
“Oh no.” Dismay colors his voice.
An uneasy feeling swirls in my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Mom leans closer. “Spencer, tell me.”
“There hasn’t been any communication from Xinji in over an E-year.”
My parents exchange a horrified glance. I step toward them on unsteady legs. Did I hear that right?
“No communications at all?” Mom asks.
My dad shakes his head. “No. Xinji has gone silent.”
Four
2522:016
“What do you mean by silent?” I ask, joining them by the terminal. A burning nausea rolls up my throat.
My parents blink at me as if I’d appeared from nowhere.
“Er…” My father clears his throat. “It’s probably a communication glitch, Li-Li, nothing to worry about.”
I exchange a look with my mother and she raises her eyebrows as if to say “he’s only trying to protect you.”
But my bubble of denial has already burst. “Planet Gamma went silent and when the Protector Class space ship arrived, they found everyone dead.”
“That was due to an incurable disease,” Dad says. Spotting my expression, he hurries to add, “There could be a million different explanations. Let me read through these files and see what I can discover.” The screen goes blank.
My mother rests her hand on my shoulder. “Did you read through your messages? Maybe your friends mentioned if they were having problems.”
I squeeze her hand, grateful for the distraction, even though I haven’t received any messages from my Xinji friends before we crinkled. Dead is dead after all and I kept to my side of the agreement and didn’t send them any either. But I return to my room.
Not bothering with my tangs, I say, “Show me personal messages sent during crinkle time.”
Expecting to see nothing, I’m surprised when messages fill my screen—all from Lan. The first one is dated 2473:364—roughly two E-years after I left—and the most recent one is dated 2520:161—about one and a half E-years ago.
With my heart tapping out distress signals, I select Lan’s first message. Might as well read them in order.
2473:364: Hi, Li-Li! I know I’m not supposed to message, but I’m so devastated and I’ve no one else to talk to! Jarren left today!
o Suzhou in the brig! We only had a moment together before he left!
Poor Lan. Even though we all know not to get involved in relationships just for that very reason, sometimes the heart refuses to listen. Suzhou is twenty-eight E-years from Xinji. By the time he arrives, she’ll be forty-five A-years old if she stays on Xinji. I’m not surprised Jarren ended up in the brig—trying to alter the schedule of an Interstellar Class space ship is what I’d consider highly illegal. Plus people could die.
2480:123: Me again. Sorry for the drama in my last message. It’s just…tough. Which you know! You’re probably not even reading this, but it helps me to get it all out.
I laugh over her career choice—it’s not a goofy chuckle, trust me—and I’m glad she was accepted into the university.
2484:349: Graduation! I made it even though this last year was touch and go for a while.
My chest tightens and I’m not sure if it’s embarrassment or jealousy. When I factor in the time dilation for her trip to Rho, Lan was twenty-four A-years when she sent the message.
Navigating the Stars Page 4