The next 100 steps feel like they take two months. No shots; things start moving normal speed again. I can’t help but check my chronometer.
The next 100 steps feel like they take two months. No shots; things start moving normal speed again. I can’t help but check my chronometer.
The chronometer says that those 100 steps took about one minute. And two months. Wait, what? WHAT?
Jon and Dierdre’s read the same: two months since we got off the Bin. D says she might know why, but her eyes say it’s not a good thing.
Jumpspace (which this station, impossibly, floats within) is, as we understand it, ‘between’ time. Not that anyone *really* understands it.
Every pilot’s manual explains why FTL travel is impossible, and concludes with “Then we found an old ship that could do it, and copied it.”
Deirdre’s long explanation (which still feels dumbed-down) is that this impossible station is old; time dilation is “leaking in”. FanTAStic.
So we shouldn’t be experiencing time dilation while in a shielded vessel. Except we are. Randomly, and in varying amounts. That’s super.
Ignoring the fact we might randomly scatter into atomic confetti, it’s harder to find Kaetlyn. “When” just got added to “How” and “Where”.
A voice from the comms unit on the wall explains it’s the time variation affecting the station that “faceted” the station’s AI.
Voice In The Speaker is calm, cultured – sounds amused, but kind – and says it knows what’s going on and can be trusted. I almost laugh.
How to tell if someone plans to screw you: they ask you to trust them. Dead giveaway. I can tell Jon knows. De doesn’t, which is a comfort.
Not that Deirdre’s gullible. But since she’s already (much) smarter than me, I’m glad she’s not cynical – that they don’t go hand in hand.
… Or so I think. She turns to me and says that, objectively, we can’t trust the Voice In The Speaker. Her reason? The subsonics.
Subsonics? Repeating Deidre makes me sound slower than usual, but sometimes I can’t avoid it. The V.I.T.S? It’s using ‘sleepy’ subsonics.
So I don’t trust the thing because of what it’s saying, she doesn’t because of how it’s saying it — the science of it. Less comforting.
Voice In The Speaker asks if we’re done talking like it can’t hear us. Don’t like it when hardware gets sarcastic. Get that enough from Jon.
Voice In The Speaker doesn’t care if we trust it – using that phrase just means we’re 97% likely to listen to what it says next. Fair point.