TWO of THIRTY-TWO
"I don't believe this." Katie snapped angrily. Apparently, she wasn't taking the news too well. "I thought you knew what you were doing!"
"And what's that supposed to mean?" I asked, trying to remain calm. Of course I knew what I was doing. I was a Navigational Officer, for God's sake!
"What do you think it means, Matthew?" She retorted. "In case you haven't noticed, we've been in hypersleep for… twenty-three years! You said it'd take two years to get here. Two! So please, Matthew, tell me, what part of this suggests any sort of competence on your side?"
"We ran the calculations, Katie." I insisted impatiently. "An ETA of the 22nd of June, 2321at a speed of Light-12. You cannot blame me for this."
"Then who can I blame?" She demanded cockily, staring at me coldly as she spoke. "Hmm? Your little Japanese friend, perhaps?"
"She's not my friend…" I began, my voice rising in volume as I spoke. "She's the ship's computer and it's not my fault she doesn't speak English!"
Suddenly, a deafening roar erupted from the corner of the room. Katie and I immediately fell silent as the bellowing growl continued. I swiveled on my heels to see Xena standing at the foot of her hypersleep booth, bearing her teeth as she growled angrily. I looked back at Katie, who seemed both terrified and fascinated by Xena's outburst. Being so unused to seeing Xena behave so…primitively, I found myself feeling the same odd mixture of emotions. She was a formidable woman, and no mistake. Finally, she stopped growling, but continued to scowl at the two of us in discontent.
"Sorry, Zee." I mumbled, feeling guilty that I had caused her upset. "And I'm sorry, Katie. I shouldn't have gotten so worked up over nothing."
"No, it's my fault." Katie insisted humbly. "You're right, Matthew. I can't blame you for this. I just… it's shocked me, that's all."
"I know." I replied sympathetically. I suppose I couldn't really blame her for being upset. She'd been away from home for over two decades. Worst of all, she'd spent those two decades in stasis aboard a foreign ship with a strange man she'd never met before and an admittedly terrifying alien.
"We'll get to the bottom of this." I assured Katie, still trying to calm her nerves. "And if you're really that bothered about Andi speaking Japanese, I'll see if there's anything I can do about it."
"Thanks." She mumbled in response, smiling apologetically as she spoke.
"Andi…" I called out once again, attempting to interface with the ever-present mainframe. "Intaafeisu gengo o henkou suru koto wa kanou desska?"
"Mochiron." Andi replied affirmatively. "Watash no gengo deitabeisu ni wa, Afurikaansu-go, Arubania-go, Amuhara-go, Arabia-go, Arumenia-go, A-"
"Eigo de onegaishimass." I interrupted. We could have been there for hours otherwise.
"Naruhodo." She said chirpily. "Watash wa Eigo no tame ni san-juu no kekka ga arimass. Iokasute no Eigo, Kasei no Eigo, Rishitea no Eigo, S-"
"Igirisu no Eigo!" I snapped. Dear God, how many dialects of the English language could there be? I never even knew that they spoke it on Iocaste.
"Hijou ni yoku." Andi agreed. "Chottomatte kudasai." Then, she fell silent for several moments. I glanced at Katie, who simply shrugged her shoulders, then at Xena, who seemed equally confused. A few more moments later, though, Andi finally spoke again.
"Default language set to English (UK)." She announced. I think she had the same voice as before, as I could still detect a slight East Asian accent coming through as she spoke. As long as Katie and Xena could understand her, though, it didn't matter.
"Thank you very much, Andi." I beamed, looking over at Katie with a smug grin on my face. "Happy now?"
"I'll be happy, Matthew…" She replied, unimpressed. "When we figure out why we've been in hypersleep for twenty-three years."
"Alright!" I exclaimed sarcastically. "All in good time. Andi, perhaps you could explain. Why have we arrived at Sedna in twenty-three forty-two and not twenty-three twenty-one as planned?"
"I believe I can explain." She explained. "As I explained before you went into hypersleep, I explained that the explosion of the Constantinople caused some damage to my systems. I explained that the air ventilation system had suffered some damage, which, as I explained, had also affected the-"
"Andi…" I interrupted, already becoming annoyed by her unnecessary repetition. "Andi? You don't have to say 'explained' so much."
"My apologies, sir." She replied. "I've never spoken English before. It may take a while for me to get used to it."
"No problem." I assured her. "Just… try not to use the same verb over and over again."
"Understood." Andi assured me. "And if there are any other issues with my grammar, please don't hesitate to let me know."
"Anyway…" Katie said impatiently, urging us back towards the topic at hand. "What were you saying about the damage, Andi?"
"Ah, yes." She replied hastily. "As I was saying, the damage from the explosion of the Constantinople seemed minor at first. Unfortunately, after you had all gone into hypersleep, I ran some further diagnostics and discovered that the ship's hyperdrive had been all but destroyed in the blast."
"Wait, the hyperdrive was destroyed?" Katie repeated. "Do you mean to say…? Matthew, does she mean to say…"
"Yes, she means to say." I nodded solemnly. "We've been traveling at less than the speed of light for this entire journey. Haven't we, Andi?"
"That is correct, sir." Andi replied. "Light-0.96, to be exact. This was the fastest the Andromeda could travel without breaking the light barrier."
"And you never thought to wake us up and tell us about this?" I asked. Surely she'd realised at some point that things weren't right.
"I was given a direct order, sir, by you, to awake you and your passengers when, and only when, we arrived at our destination." She explained.
"Yes, but I would've thought you'd've made an exception when we passed our expected arrival date and were still 21 light years away from Sedna." I remarked, annoyed (and for the record, yes, I did just use the word 'you'd've', and no, I'm not going to apologise for it).
"As I said, sir, I was given a strict order." Andi repeated. "You asked me to awake you when we arrived at our destination, not when we reached the expected arrival date." I heaved a deep sigh and shook my head in disappointment. I couldn't believe this. Then again, it was typical, really, and probably to be expected of an N.X. Tulmorian system. Damn Russians and their efficient, perfectly obedient machines.
"So that's it then, is it?" Katie remarked glumly. "Twenty-one years behind schedule and all she has to say is 'I was given an order'?"
"She's a computer, Katie." I replied. "She only did as she was told." Admittedly, though, I shared her sentiment. Andi could have taken emergency measures. She could have woken us back up as soon as she realised the hyperdrive was damaged. Fair enough, we might have been ill for weeks as a result of such a short period in stasis. But at least we wouldn't have ended up in this dire situation, would we?
I looked over at Katie, who was leaned against a hypersleep booth with her infant daughter in her arms. She had a troubled look in her eyes, almost verging on tears. For me, it didn't really matter how long we'd been away. Now that I had Xena, I had no intention of going back to my home on Earth, anyway. But for Katie, things were different. She had friends and family on Sedna. Her closest acquaintances were now twenty-three years older than her. Her brothers and sisters, if indeed she had any. The father of her child. They had all aged well past her by now. Not to mention how much society could've changed in that time. Again, I was used to being out of the loop for years on end, but Katie? Her world had been turned upside down by this.
"Are you alright?" I asked, drifting over and leaning back against the hypersleep booth beside her.
"I'm fine." She assured me, although she clearly wasn't. "What's twenty-three years, anyway? At least most of the people I know might still be alive."
"Hey, calm down…" I said warmly, placing a hand on her shoulder as tears began to stream down her face. "Don't cry." Of course, telling somebody not to cry is generally not an effective way to stop them from crying. I quickly took my arm away from Katie, and gently lifted the baby from her arms. After carefully laying the infant down in the open hypersleep booth behind us, I stretched my arms out towards her, offering her a comforting embrace. She continued to weep as I put my arms around her, hugging her tightly in her time of distress. I could only imagine how badly this had affected her.
For several long moments, I continued to hold Katie close as she cried. Finally, her tears subsided, and soon she was calm again. Relatively speaking. I gently released my arms from around her, stepping back slowly. She still appeared distressed, but significantly less so than before.
"Alright now?" I asked. She nodded slowly, and gave me a sad smile. I returned the smile, trying to lift the mood a little. Then, I looked over at Xena, and my smile quickly fell. She stared at me coldly, both annoyed and slightly taken aback. I'd been so worried about Katie, I hadn't even considered what Xena might have thought.
"I'm sorry, Zee." I said apologetically. I walked over to her and attempted to embrace her in a hug. She stepped back as I did so, and turned her back to me.
"Xena…" I tried again, stepping closer. "Come on now…" I slowly reached one arm around her back, resting my head against her arm. She continued to give me the cold shoulder for several moments, but eventually looked me in the eyes with an indifferent expression on her face.
"I was only trying to keep her spirits up, Zee." I explained, keeping my voice low so that Katie wouldn't overhear me. "She's lost everything, you know." Xena nodded slowly, understanding of Katie's situation. She smiled weakly, as if apologising for her overreaction. I held my arms out to offer her a hug, which she graciously accepted. A sigh of relief washed over me knowing that I was forgiven. Perhaps I had overdone it a little bit with Katie just then.
"Now," I announced, releasing my embrace around Xena. "Before we land, there are a couple of things you need to know, alright?" She nodded solemnly, although I got the sense she was also quite intrigued by my remark. I just wanted to make sure that she was prepared for life on Sedna.
"Things are going to be very different once we get there." I explained, stroking the back of her hand as I spoke. "You've never set foot on solid ground before, and it's not like being up here on a ship. There's real air, real gravity. Plants and animals everywhere. It might unnerve you at first, but… I think you're going to like it here." I smiled warmly as I spoke, gazing into Xena's empty face. She smiled back, clearly looking forward to 'planet' life. Admittedly, I was looking forward to it too. It had been more than a few years since I had last set foot on good old-fashioned soil and rock.
"I've never been to Sedna before," I continued, sighing. "But from what Katie's told me, this village is a nice, quiet little place. Hopefully it hasn't changed much while we've been away."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that." Katie announced. I turned to see that she had opened the door into the corridor, and was stood outside gazing through an enormous window. I marched out into the corridor after her to see what it was that had caught her attention. My face fell as soon as I saw what she had seen.
Through the vast, sweeping window of the corridor, the dwarf planet Sedna stood proud. Although it was nothing more than a large, misshapen rock compared to the Earth, it was still an eponymous sight. And, of course, before extrasolar colonisation took off, it was the furthest human colony from Earth. But that was but a distant memory now. For as I looked out across the surface of the miniscule planet, I saw that those tiny villages, the first settlements of those 21st Century pioneers, had been completely eradicated. Now, the entire planet was covered in bright lights. I looked closer, and saw enormous buildings. Mighty skyscrapers, immense motorways. A concrete jungle. There was not a single inch of untouched ground in sight. In the space of twenty-three years, this distant, mostly rural planet had become a hub of human civilisation. And in that moment, I knew that all hope of Xena and I lying low here, of me protecting her from those who would so easily kill her, had gone. My whole plan had come crashing down like a ton of bricks.
"Andi…" I mumbled, my voice quiet and distant. "Could you please identify our current location?" I refused to accept that this was really the dwarf planet Sedna. It simply couldn't be so.
"Certainly, sir." Andi replied. "We are currently in orbit above the Greater Metropolitan Area of the City of Manchester, Sedna. Estimated local population is approximately… nine million, six-hundred-thousand, with a density of roughly fifty-thousand inhabitants per square kilometre."