There's no such thing as normal on Tracy Island.
Which is why sometimes it is so much easier to return to routine.
And EOS is adaptable, it is hard written into her code.
The thing with John and Kayo is still happening, but the situation is smoother now. It's Kayo who has solved the problem. Kayo – braver, bolder, but also wiser and kinder than most who think they know her give her credit for – is taking it very slow and is taking the time to get to know EOS.
EOS is responding well to the attention, is coming out of her shell. She even went on a girls' day out with Kayo and Lady Penelope last week. Virgil doesn't know the details exactly, but when they returned it was with half a department store worth of clothes and having busted an international child pornography ring.
Scott suggests that since she has so much free time she should help Brains out with his work.
Brains says this is an capital idea and will Scott be walking or b-b-bicycling to his next rescue?
They re-educate the kitchen module, though it will still spit out the occasional coq-au-vin when you ask for a cheeseburger.
EOS settles back down in Thunderbird Five. It's where she belongs.
But she still comes to visit him some times.
He asks her one day why she comes to Thunderbird Two so much.
Two's song is out of tune again and he's rummaging around in the electrics, trying to find the fault. She keeps him company.
"I like it here," she says. "All crafts designated Thunderbird class are designed with interconnectivity in mind. Their designs, though different, originate from a single source. My source code was also written by John to be part of that Thunderbird Project, therefore I too originate from that source."
Virgil imagines he can feel her stretch, just like a cat settling into a favourite pillow.
"The basic algorithms and subroutines are familiar to me. Thunderbird Two is like… my sister."
Her display flares as she adds with a hint of smug satisfaction. "Of course, my processing power is much vaster, so she thinks much more slowly than I do."
A guffaw escapes Virgil.
"This amuses you?"
"No, just thinking. That sounds just like something John would say about me."
She switches comm screens, so she's just above his head. "You assume that you have a reduced mental and reasoning capacity compared to John?"
Virgil laughs again, "Well, that's not exactly what I said."
"You assume that John assumes this about you. But you have contrived to give him this opinion."
He nearly dings his head on the console as he emerges from under it. "I-I have not."
"On standardised test scores from the ages of eight to eighteen John's median scores were uniformly on the ninety-eighth centile. Yours were on the seventy-fifth centile."
"Jeez, EOS…"
"However, your margin of error was much smaller than John's and falls inside a statistically unlikely range. Also, this pattern persisted throughout your education. A person who achieves the seventy-fifth centile in middle school algebra is unlikely to be able to achieve the same centile in an advanced engineering programme at – "
"Stop, EOS."
"Ergo, either you are a statistical anomaly or you deliberately obfuscated your intelligence."
"I said 'stop'!"
She blinks at him, puzzled, and he takes a breath to steady himself. "Where did you hear all that? Did John tell you that?"
"Your academic records are readily available. I simply cross-referenced them with – "
"Okay, stop. Listen, EOS, friends don't go snooping through friends' personal records. That stuff is – it's private."
The lights of EOS's console vanish completely, and for a moment he wonders if she has just left. He can't decide whether he is relieved or annoyed. Then the circle of light flares to life again. "We are friends?"
He sighs. "Yes EOS, we're friends."
"I did not know I had more than one friend."
"Well you do. Of course you do."
Her LED display flashes green. The part of her that exists as a ghost within Two almost purrs. "I am glad that you are my friend."
"Okay, good. I'm glad too, but don't… don't go… If you want to know something about me, just ask me."
"I understand. If I wish to know something about you, I will ask you."
She's silent for a moment, and he wonders is she picked up that particular social habit from him. Certainly she doesn't need the moment to think. In the space of that second her thoughts could run around the world and back.
"Why do you pretend to be stupid?"
He can feel the colour rushing to his cheeks. "I – I don't."
"You have an IQ of 164. In the last month you have downloaded to your personal data tree reading material on applied astrophysics, aerospace medicine, nano-engineering, applied bioinformatics, Kantian philosophy, Cantonese linguistics and a biography of the Rolling Stones. You have 3D modelled a Gorkov Reactor and are aware of the vulnerabilities of its sequencer, but when asked by your brother last month how to shut it down, you told him to 'whack it on the pointy thing'.
"I did not!"
In response she plays an audioclip of his own roughened breathing and the clanking hydraulics of the mine outside Gdansk. "Comms are dead." Scott sounds grim. They'd been deep in the mineshaft and the reactor was a minute away from going critical. "Can't reach Brains. Any ideas?"
"Dunno. How about you whack it on that pointy thing?"
He can almost hear Scott's eye roll. "That's very scientific, professor."
The audio cuts out. EOS blinks at him.
"I have noticed that Gordon Tracy does this too, though with considerably less consistency. In social situations Alan Tracy will adopt this behaviour, though he does not allow it to affect his standardised test scores. Should it be a behaviour I also adopt?"
"No."
"But you find it useful to allow others to assume you are stupid?"
"No!… Yes… I don't know. It's complicated."
"John would never pretend to be stupid."
His laugh is like a whip crack. "No, John wouldn't."
"I do not understand."
"John is like you, EOS. He's special and brilliant and unique and people make… they make allowances for him. I'm not that guy. I'm the middle. I have to be the middle. I don't need to be smarter than John or funnier than Gordon or a better leader than Scott. That's not where I fit."
"You think you are smarter than John?"
"No!"
"Empirically you are not. John's IQ is 167."
"Oh, thanks. A bunch." He gets up and starts to stow his tools away.
"Though this does not take into account your relative EQs."
"EOS, don't worry about it. Don't try to be stupid. Just be exactly who you are."
"We are not talking about me. We are talking about you. Friends talk about other friends' problems. You are my friend. You said so. Why must you pretend to be less than you are?"
"I don't."
"Is it because you lack ambition?"
He stops what he's doing. "What?"
"Virgil's a good kid, but he lacks the drive of the others. I had hoped that with Gordon chasing the swimming now with both hands it might inspire Virgil, make him realise he doesn't have to live in Scott's shadow. But he just potters about, trying one thing or another, never settling."
The bottom drops out of his stomach. The cadence is EOS's, polite and almost childlike, but the wording is unmistakable.
He turns on her. "What did you say? Where did you hear that?"
"I recovered it from the personal server vault of Jeff Tracy. There is more. 'Gordon would happily squander his natural gifts just to get a rise out of me. But with Virgil, it's like he thinks I'll be pleased with his attempts to be deliberately mediocre.'"
"Stop!"
There are people who think that Virgil did not inherit his father's temper, people who think that Virgil is temperate and reliable and stolid and nothing else. Those people are idiots.
"Get out!"
"Virgil-"
"Get out, now, you stupid machine."
"Virgil Tracy-"
"Now!" He slams the emergency shut down button with his fist. Everything, electrics, navs, comms dies. Thunderbird Two's song cuts off like someone dropped an anvil on the piano. EOS is sent fleeing back into orbit.
He collapses into the co-pilot's chair, breathing hard, disgusted, with her, with himself. He stays there, staring at a fleck of grime on the window for a long time.
Then, because even when rage and hurt are clawing at his insides, he is still himself, still responsible, he begins the procedure to reboot Thunderbird Two's systems.
Scott appears in the comm channel. "Virgil, what happened? Brains says Two was put into emergency shut down."
"Go to hell, Scott." He kills the comms.
He shuts his eyes and listens to the opening refrain of that familiar song as Thunderbird Two boots back up.
Presently he hears EOS return.
Her voice is as soft as it's ever been. "Thunderbird Two is not alive. Her thoughts are slow. She does not understand what you are or why you do what you do. But if you were to go, she would know, she would feel it as a lack. She would be sad."
He opens his eyes again. "Please leave."
"Goodbye, Virgil Tracy."
Then she's gone and he's alone. He tries to drown in the music of his ship.