Photons surged into Ops, forming into the shape of my least favorite hologram.
“Hi! I’m your host, Jenny Perez, whom you probably remember as the precocious kid detective and bestselling author Anastasia Darling on the award-winning mystery entertainment program Murder Your Darlings. If you’re seeing this holographic message, then you’ve initiated your Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive.”
“We did?” Jenny asked.
“No we didn’t!” shouted DJ.
“Sure you did,” Jenny Perez said in a tone that managed to be simultaneously cutesy and condescending. “These things don’t initialize on their own.”
“How do we stop it?” I asked. My heart was ramping up again. I had to lean against the back of the nearest chair for support.
“Warning! Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive will initialize spatial tear in three minutes. Warning!”
Jenny Perez flickered. “It seems that you’ve recently rebooted your Nexus Systems Quantum Cluster Advanced Logic Engine, which should only be done by a certified Nexus Systems technician.”
I stared bullets at her. “Have you ever investigated your own murder?”
“Actually, yes!” Jenny Perez replied. “In episode seven of season four, Anastasia Darling—”
“What’s restarting the computer got to do with the fold drive?” DJ said, cutting her off. Whatever calm he’d had earlier had fled.
“Rebooting the Nexus Systems Quantum Cluster Advanced Logic Engine has initiated the Phone Home protocol.”
“We’re going home?” Jenny asked.
A small flicker of hope ignited within me. Jenny Perez quickly snuffed it out.
“Under normal circumstances, Qriosity would return to Earth upon the initiation of the Phone Home protocol. However, the navigational system is unable to determine Qriosity’s current coordinates, which are required for plotting a course.”
“So the drive did initialize on its own,” DJ said. “I knew we didn’t do it.”
“Who cares about that right now?” I said. “Are we going home or not?” I didn’t understand what Jenny Perez had said, though it sounded like she’d implied we were lost.
“Without origin coordinates,” the hologram replied, “Qriosity will select a destination at random in an attempt to reach Earth, though the chances of doing so are infinitesimally small.”
“That seems silly,” Jenny said at the same time as I shouted, “Make it stop!”
“I’m trying,” DJ said, though I hadn’t been talking to him. “Nothing works. I’m locked out of the computer.”
Jenny Perez continued talking as if I cared what she had to say. “The Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive creates a tunnel through space-time, connecting two points, allowing for near-instantaneous travel between destinations millions or even billions of light-years apart. Isn’t that neat?”
“No!” I said. “Shut it down!”
“Sorry, Charlie,” Jenny Perez said. “Once initiated, the Phone Home protocol cannot be terminated. The Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive will engage every nineteen hours until Qriosity successfully reaches Earth. Sorry about it!”
“Warning! Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive will initialize spatial tear in thirty seconds. Warning!”
“DJ?”
DJ shook his head. Tears rimmed his eyes.
“What is going on?” Jenny asked. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
If rescue had been coming, they’d find no trace of us when they arrived. Once we passed through that rent in space, we would be lost forever.
I fell into the chair, my arms limp, my heart broken, and my soul exhausted.
The tear pulsed and grew brighter. Qriosity spasmed.
“Warning! Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive initializing spatial tear. Warning!”
A final convulsion shook Qriosity as blinding light filled the viewport. I covered my eyes and when I looked again, we were somewhere else. I couldn’t tell the difference between where we were and where we’d been—the stars looked the same as before—but it didn’t matter. We were never going home.
A countdown clock appeared on the screen at my station. 18:59:59.
Tears ran freely down DJ’s splotchy cheeks. “Noa, I’m sorry. I can fix this. I can—”
“Forget it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
WHERE NOA HAS GONE BEFORE
ONE
QRIOSITY’S MEDIA LIBRARY CONTAINED 330 episodes of Murder Your Darlings—including a mercifully short season that skipped ahead a few years to follow Anastasia Darling as an adult—and I was determined to watch every single one.
In the week since we had rebooted Qriosity’s computer, which had resulted in the ship, and us along with it, being sent skipping randomly through the universe, I had done absolutely nothing but sit on the overstuffed couch in the rec room and watch the worst program ever created. Murder Your Darlings had run for thirteen seasons, but it should have been suffocated after thirteen episodes. Anastasia Darling was obnoxious, her parents were oblivious and had no business raising a child, I easily guessed who the murderer was within the first five minutes of each episode—it was nearly always the guest star—and the only person worth rooting for was Dominique Lavoie, Anastasia Darling’s nemesis-slash-cousin. And yet, undeterred by the show’s terrible acting and predictable plots, I spent my every waking hour on the couch watching it.
I didn’t shower or brush my teeth. I ate Nutreesh bars, which tasted like an old book that had been left to soak in a mud puddle, I drank coffee, and I only got up when I needed to pee. I attempted to sleep in my quarters during the day, but the persistent noise of DJ and Jenny pleading with me to come out made that difficult. When I did sleep, I dreamed of falling. There were no stars, no Qriosity. I just screamed and fell. Fell and screamed. Forever. And every nineteen hours when Qriosity vibrated as it prepared to fold space, I sat alone and cried. Each new location we jumped to was as devoid of light and life as the last. No sun, no planets. No hope.
Between watching Murder Your Darlings, not sleeping, and avoiding DJ and Jenny, my schedule was full. DJ had been especially persistent in his attempts to cheer me up. At one point, he sat outside my door for four hours, talking at me. I almost broke during that time; I almost got out of bed and let him in. Five more minutes and I would have. I told myself I was proud for outlasting him, but there was definitely a part of me that wished he’d stayed.
The rec room on Qriosity could have been a living room in any one of a million homes on Earth. There were a couple of reclining chairs to use while wearing the Mind’s Eye virtual reality devices, which I hadn’t tried yet, a sagging couch with lumpy cushions, and a projector for watching the ship’s catalog of movies and programs, and the room smelled like old sweat and feet. That last part was mostly my fault.
DJ flopped down on the couch beside me and let out a dramatic sigh.
I fought the urge to look at him. I kept my eyes straight ahead, my attention on Anastasia Darling. Not that watching the show required much brainpower. Some programs were better if you gave them your full focus. You picked up on nuances and details that casual watchers might miss. Murder Your Darlings was not one of them. I’m pretty sure paying attention made the show worse.