Episode 148

Outer space is famously bad at carrying sound. On the bridge of the Plum, the silence was absolute, save for the hum of machinery vibrating through the hull like a mechanical heartbeat.

Teiro was curled into a miserable ball, clutching his legs as if trying to fold himself out of existence. Standing over him was Koume. It was a classic tableau: a human with eyes like swollen cherries and an android with the facial expression of a blank wall.

"I was such a naive idiot..." Teiro croaked.

He was mostly just wallowing in self-pity, so when Koume didn't offer a polite "there-there," he just kept rambling.

"Thinking everything would be fine just because it had been for centuries... thinking the WIND was too busy playing defense to actually attack. It was just wishful thinking. I’m the absolute worst."

The words scraped out of his throat, thin and pathetic. He’d seen plenty of people kick the bucket before, but it had never been someone from his inner circle. He wasn't just sad; he was a total wreck.

"Why did I leave her behind? Why...?"

Just when he thought he’d run dry, fresh tears leaked out, carving new damp patches into his trousers. His jaw was numb from clenching it, and a headache was currently tap-dancing on his frontal lobe.

"…………Hmm."

The voice was utterly out of place—bright, inquisitive, and borderline chipper. Teiro blinked his blurry eyes upward. The pint-sized android was staring at him with unnerving intensity.

"So, are we done yet, Mr. Teiro?"

She tilted her head, her unblinking eyes boring into him. Her mouth moved with terrifyingly fluid precision, giving Teiro a sudden case of the creeps. Mostly because he had no clue what she was getting at.

"Done?" he parrotted, his brain currently stuck in neutral.

"Yes, quite," Koume said, leaning into his personal space with zero regard for social boundaries. "As an AI, I believe I grasp the concept of 'death,' though I must admit the specifics are a bit fuzzy."

Teiro flinched at the D-word. He tried to stammer a response, but Koume cut him off before he could get a syllable out.

"Simply put, death is when the life-stuff stops and there’s no reboot in sight. That’s the main difference between being dead and being in cold sleep."

She began to pace back and forth like a professor lecturing a student who was failing remedial math.

"Now, let us look at the facts. Miss Marl was spat out of the ship in an escape device 120 hours ago. The manufacturer’s warranty on that device is only 90 hours. Statistically speaking, yes, one could infer that Miss Marl is currently a corpse."

Koume stopped, did a theatrical about-face, and glared at him.

"However, that is merely a guess. Mr. Teiro, have you actually picked up Miss Marl’s body? No? If you had, we wouldn't still be drifting around the Wyoming Star System—which, I might add, is still a designated Danger Zone."

She started pacing again, keeping her eyes locked on his.

"Are you familiar with Schrödinger's Cat, Mr. Teiro? According to the fun world of Quantum Mechanics, a cat in a box is technically both alive and dead until someone bothers to open the lid."

She looked at him as if expecting a gold star for her explanation. Teiro felt a surge of irritation through the grief. "Are you saying Marl is a cat in a box?"

"Precisely, Mr. Teiro. I’ve crunched the data, and I don't have enough proof to declare Miss Marl officially dead. As of right now, her status is simply 'Missing.'"

The anger bubbling in Teiro’s chest started to cool. It was just too ridiculous to stay mad at. "That’s just wordplay, Koume. Give it a rest."

"Oh? I don't think so."

"Whatever. Fine. Do what you want."

"I certainly intend to, Mr. Teiro. So, to confirm: you’re resigning?"

"…I told you, what do you mean by 'resigning'?"

He sounded defeated. Koume shot him a look that was dangerously close to pure contempt.

"I am referring to this Search Activity, Mr. Teiro. If you are going to quit, I shall take over command of the rescue mission."

"…………"

"I am an AI, not a human. I do not 'give up' on high-priority objectives unless the probability of success hits absolute zero. Miss Marl’s life is my top priority. Period. In the math of my Quantum Brain, infinity multiplied by anything other than zero still equals infinity."

"…Basically, you’re saying you’re not quitting until you find her?"

"Oh, look at you, Mr. Teiro! What a fantastic summary."

"This is insane... the odds are basically zero! How could she possibly be alive? Tell me! Is she just swimming through the vacuum of space!?"

Teiro lunged forward, grabbing Koume by the shoulders and shaking her like a Polaroid picture.

"She’s not there! We checked everywhere! The exit trajectory, the angle—we have the logs! She should be right here! But she’s gone!"

"…………"

"I’ve run the numbers a thousand times! A thousand!"

He collapsed back onto his knees, his spirit broken. Calculate, adjust, jump, despair. The cycle had been grinding his soul into fine dust for days.

"One more time. We’re doing it one more time, Mr. Teiro. It’ll be fun."

Koume straightened her ruffled clothes and knelt beside him. She patted his back with all the warmth of a refrigerator and grabbed his hand to haul him up.

"This time, we’re going to be thorough. The battle logs are a mess, but we can aggregate everything using the Plum's Neural Network Relay Function. It’s a literal mountain of data, but—"

She peered into his eyes.

"You can do it, Mr. Teiro. I’ll be your cheerleader. So, one more time."

"One more time...?"

"Exactly. The Uncertainty Principle only really messes things up on the micro-level. In the big leagues, if you have all the data, the future is easy to spot. A billiard ball knows exactly where it’s going the second the cue hits it."

"Predicting the future... from data?"

"Something happened out there, Mr. Teiro. A collision with the WIND, a stray bullet, space trash, a gas leak—who knows? But something knocked that Escape Pod off its path. We just have to find that 'something.'"

"…………You want to calculate every single interaction on the battlefield? Like a giant game of pinball?"

Teiro stood up, looking at Koume like she’d finally lost her marbles. But the android looked dead serious. She didn't have a doubt in her silicon soul.

"Yes. If it’s not impossible, it’s worth a shot."

"It is impossible... Or close enough. And besides..."

"…………Are you scared? Scared that you’ll actually find her body?"

Teiro flinched. He opened his mouth to make a defensive excuse, but the words died in his throat. She’d hit the nail on the head.

"Mr. Teiro. My calculations suggest Miss Marl is alive."

"...Alive? How?"

"I know her. She’s a mechanical genius. I am 100% certain she would have MacGyvered her Life Support System the second she had a spare hand."

"I thought of that! But everyone said it was impossible!"

"Everyone is wrong. I can already predict the modification method. I’d love to give you a PowerPoint presentation on it, but we’re a bit short on time."

Koume spun around and waved her arm at the main screen. A [COUNT TIMER FUNCTION] flickered into existence, ticking down with frantic precision. 8 hours, 22 minutes, 54 seconds. The milliseconds were a blur of digital light.

"That is my projected Operating Limit Time for her life support. If she made the mods I’m thinking of, she’s still breathing. For now."

Teiro watched the seconds bleed away. Was a second always this short?

"I’m pulling data from every warship, civilian clunker, and Information Station in the sector. It’s a lot, but—"

"...It’s the only shot we’ve got. Even with a thousand supercomputers, this would be a nightmare."

Teiro spat the words out and stared at the floor. He saw flashes of his life with Marl. From the moment his second life began until now, she’d been the constant. The highs, the lows, the 'don't-blow-us-up's.

"…Alright, screw it. Let's do this. Koume, I’m putting my chips on you and Marl."

Teiro hopped into his pilot's seat. He closed his eyes, shunting every bit of focus into his brain.

"Factoring in travel and retrieval, we’ve actually only got five hours, right?"

He slammed the switch to engage [BISHOP], redlining the Plum's comms. Instantly, a tidal wave of raw data slammed into the ship’s banks. The sheer processing load was enough to make a normal computer melt into a puddle of slag.

"I’ve always been a reckless bastard... fine. If my brain melts, it melts. Let’s go!"

He reached into his pocket and gripped the key-shaped accessory he’d been hiding there.

"Let’s do this!"

---

Etta, who had been hitching a ride on the Plum for guard duty, had been dead to the world in a deep sleep. Usually, you could set off a bomb next to her and she wouldn't blink, but she suddenly bolted upright in bed as if she’d been electrocuted.

"…………A tornado?"

Etta didn't see the world like normal people. To her eyes, a literal hurricane of information was swirling through the ship’s corridors. It was a chaotic vortex of red and black light, moving with a terrifying, structured madness.

"The Neural Network... is it back?"

The only thing she’d ever seen that looked like this was the Old Neural Network that used to link the entire Galactic Empire.

"No. It’s a one-way street. Everything is being sucked... there."

She watched the waves of data screaming in from every point in the sky. This wasn't a conversation; it was a cosmic-scale data dump, and the Plum was the garbage chute.

Etta tried to squint at the data, but she nearly blacked out. The sheer volume was like trying to take a sip of water from a landslide. Her brain just wasn't built for that much 'everything' at once.

"Beautiful... so beautiful."

She stumbled out of bed, looking dazed and entranced. The vortex was screaming toward the bridge, and Etta followed like a moth to a digital flame. She bounced off a couple of doors—[BISHOP'S COMMUNICATION BAND IS FULLY OCCUPIED]—but eventually stumbled onto the bridge.

"Just like I thought."

At the center of the storm, she saw a light so bright it was almost sickening. The source of the beautiful, terrifying torrent was exactly where she expected it to be.

It was shaped like a man.