The Stephanie Glitch - Part 7
(includes links to previous chapters)
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We are approaching the end of the first big chapter now. Stephanie and Lauren’s worlds are soon to collide. Thanks for being here and reading this. I am currently submitting it to Unbound books and will let you know how that goes.
LP walked through a long and darkened starship corridor. She had kept the boots and gauntlets of her spacesuit on, preferring their comforting weight to the feeling of the undersuit alone. To her right wheeled a short yellow-orange machine, one of Toumai’s many avatars. Above and to her left the golden rails were empty.
“Would it not make sense to leave this body with Stephanie instead, since it can shoot things?”
“You can teleport. If I need someone to shoot things, I will use you.”
“It’s not easy,” LP said, “But fair enough.”
“Anyway,” Toumai’s wheeled robot replied, “The orb has greater diagnostic tools. If something goes wrong with the printing, he is the most useful.”
They passed under a mesh of support beams. LP glanced up at the cavernous form of the asteroid above. Here the naked brown-grey rock was exposed, no doubt sealed by microfoam on the other side, but nonetheless a threatening reminder of just how close everything was to the murderous vacuum of space. She jumped up and tapped the rock with the tips of her fingers, the gloves scraping on the coarse surface.
“Nature at last,” she said. “So tell me about this chair, how comfy is it?”
“Is comfort really as important as you claim?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
They continued through the narrow corridor. Here the wires and tubes that serviced each section of the Artifice were exposed. LP thought about this. Toumai leading her through her was like an animal rolling over and revealing its soft spot. She glanced again at the wires; red, green, blue, yellow, and thought about how easy it might be to cause trouble.
“You trust me,” she said, barely hiding the surprise in her voice.
“The crew has determined you are not a threat.”
“Good. Good. I have a theory they might want to hear.”
They passed under a rack of shelves, each filled with spare parts, tubing, tools.
“Go on,” Toumai said.
LP slowed her pace as if the thought was thickening the air around her. She glanced around conspiratorially, leaning close to the rover.
“These images she’s sending. I think they are a distress signal.”
The little rover twisted its centaur-like body beside her.
“Why would she send a distress signal?” Toumai asked. LP thought about the question. She felt an almost imperceptible intuition that she was being watched, and not just by Toumai or by the spirit of Stephanie, but by something else, something cutting through the regular angles of space and time, something other. Something that wanted to harm her.
She shook the feeling off, tried to ignore it, pushed it back.
“Maybe knowing her mind has at least two bodies to occupy?” she suggested.
“The signal was sent before we began printing,” Toumai said.
“That’s neither here nor there, and neither is Stephanie,” LP quipped. Then she stopped and remembered the feeling, saying, “That’s not the end of my theory.”
They began walking again. The yellow-orange machine chirped, “Elaborate.”
“She sends you these pictures when she’s sleeping. Her head isn’t screwed on right. She’s loose, not fully in either world. Naturally she wants to explore. She sends these signals out like someone calling out in a forest. You said they show up everywhere. Not just from the intersect, but around it.”
“Correct.”
“Then there are multiple holes. We just don’t have the tech to detect them here. Maybe they don’t last long. Either way, she’s sending them, looking for where the images came from.”
“She is not conscious of the mechanism of acquiring them?” Toumai asked.
“Not yet. It comes naturally.”
“I see.”
“Toumai. I think Stephanie is building a bridge.”
“A bridge?”
“From there to here. She saw into the Artifice. Maybe on some level she knows.”
Back in the biogenesis deck strands of musculature continued their languorous expansion over the skeleton. The cheekbones were bathed in red fibres, the eye sockets filling out. The printer bugs went about the task without complaint, barely visible, always present, like the beginnings of a fog.
What did you think?
