@pixel_princess's sacrifice had worked. She blew the escape panel, and some of the metal panels around it, clear off, leaving a comfortable opening for us, as long as we avoided some of the metal barbs and bent pieces the blast left behind. @auroraloon led the way.

I took an extra few seconds to find the panel, which was mostly intact. After I climbed through, I pulled it as best I could into where the opening was. It was far from secure, but even if it gave us a few more moments to escape, I figured it was worth it.

The escape corridor was smaller than I expected. I don't know why, but I figured this would be a fully sized corridor. It wasn't. We didn't have to crawl, but it wasn't comfortable crouch-sprinting through what was essentially a little metal tunnel. If the panel had been off, I would have considered it a big air duct.

The tunnel opened out into a larger room, equipped with five spacecycles. @auroraloon moved to the closest, the quantum keys dangling in her hand. As she brought the key close to the first cycle, a boom echoed, seemingly far away, but it shook the ground intensely. I nearly fell over. @auroraloon did fall over, and she took one of the spacecycles down with her. Another spacecycle fell of its own accord.

"Shit," I said. "They've started bombing. I think they're going to blow this whole place up."

@auroraloon gathered herself and glared at me in a yeah duh kind of way. "Let's hurry." She flashed her quantum key over the nearest standing spacecycle and motioned for me to take it, while she quickly ran to the next. I punched what looked like a button that would open the hatch to the surface and was pleasantly surprised that at least one thing worked seamlessly.

Space, and our potential freedom, opened up before us. A quick scan showed a cluster of mini asteroids and a larger one, 1941 Wild, in the distance. We could make for that, get a signal off. That would have to work. I made for my cycle.

Spacecycles are gorgeous pieces of machinery, and these weren't just throw-away spacecycles. These were Triumph Space Triples. The metal on the Space Triple formed a continuous curve that tapered off at the back. Instead of wheels, the craft could hover, and its primary thrusters fired out of three rings fueled on hydrogen reserves - one primary in the back and two smaller rings on the sides.

A spacecycle can glide over terrain or fire out into space. Two small stabilizer wings would slide out when needed to grant extra maneuverability. In the spirit of small, fast, and agile, although the spacecycle looked like it was made of perforated carbon fiber, the perforations were actually more thruster slots. The craft would adjust these mini thrusters from any angle to assist the rider.

As I hopped on and closed the rider canopy around me, I discovered my favorite part - the custom gel seat that was added. It folded around me and was programmed to shift its shape to keep me stable and comfortable.

I very much wanted to get one of these. The instrument panel lit up in a bright blue, gloriously minimalistic and clean, with all the information I needed.

To my disappointment, the only thing it was lacking was a full supply of hydrogen. But we didn't have time for that. It would have to be enough. I realized then that @auroraloon might have a chance to get far enough away to hide, a small but slim chance to escape, but I certainly would not, given the amount of fuel I had.

Then again, who was I kidding? I'm a perpetual optimist, but the real plan needed to be that we get a signal out, stash memoryshards, and blow ourselves up. Spacecycles can't cover enough distance and most importantly they lack a #dead drive to warp away.

kittyboy: "Plan A is to get far enough away to get a signal out, to send a warning to the Extroverts. Plan B is to get you somewhere safe. Plan C is we go boom."

@auroraloon nodded at me through the canopy of her spacecycle, testing its engine with a stationary flare of power. She seemed to know what she was doing. That was good. She might even know these bikes better than I did. But I'm a pilot, and I've piloted just about every spaceship around. I knew all the tricks.

For good measure, I popped open the canopy and pulled out my glen10. It didn't take long for the first few zombies to appear through the tunnel. I fired gleefully, taking down overtaken one-by-one until my clip was empty and another explosion sounded from above. This was gratuitous violence, and I knew it wasn't the best idea, but it felt good at the time.

auroraloon: "Satisfied?"

I holstered the glen10 quickly, lowered the canopy, and flashed her a big smile.

kittyboy: "Getting there."

No time to waste. I hit the accelerator and blasted off.

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The Triumph Space Triple handles like a dream. It seemed like I only had to think about where I wanted to go and the spacecycle followed suit. Since the Eternis was busy bombing the starlab, we had a chance to start our escape undetected by hugging the asteroid's surface.

kittyboy: "Use your jammers and stay close to the surface. When we get to the opposite side as the Eternis, we fire off toward 1941 Wild. They'll detect us eventually once we are in deep space, but hopefully we can get to the other side of 1941 Wild to use it as a comms shield and get a message off."

Hugging an asteroid is not easy. The shape is usually irregular, although sometimes there are nice flat spots. This one was all bumps, spikes, dips, and jutting rocks. But I'm not complaining. We zigged and zagged with relative ease, pushing the spacecycle close to its limits at times, but I dare say this was fun. If we weren't facing imminent destruction, I would have been happy to ride around this asteroid all afternoon.

We were silent as we sped along, keeping our focus on maneuvering along the asteroid, leaning hard lefts and rights, putting the spacecycle through their paces. I fell in love with the rhythm. Rock to the right, rock to the left, burst the hydrogen, brake, rock left, rock right, hit the accelerator again.

Finally, it was time for the speed run.

kittyboy: "You ready? 1941 Wild. Full speed."

auroraloon: "About time. Let's go."

I pulled up, setting 1941 Wild's solar north in my sights, and yanked to full throttle. The burst kicked me back, such a joyful feeling that I discovered I was laughing out loud. I wondered how long I had been riding and laughing to myself. Simple pleasures, I thought to myself. The gel seat perfectly adjusted, keeping me steady as the acceleration blasted us out into space.

They would detect us soon now that we were completely exposed. Spacecycles don't have much in the way of jamming or cloaking.

I would say this is the boring part. Riding a spacecycle in a straight line is not that exhilarating. But when a valkyrie is going to pursue you, fully intent on blowing you up, well, let's just say I had plenty of adrenaline pumping through my veins, raising my heartbeat, making me sweat.

Now that we were pretty much on autopilot with our fingers crossed, I had more time to think about what was next. My mind immediately went to @auroraloon. I shook my head at myself. I've always been pretty much a loner.

I probably talk to my coffee machine way too much, I thought. Thinking about someone else will be good for me.

kittyboy: "Will they revive you after we die?"

My question was greeted with the same pause I had come to expect from @auroraloon when I wanted to know something about her. I could guarantee that she was in her own head, running scenarios, trying to decide the optimal thing to say.

auroraloon: "Yes. But ..."

kittyboy: "But what?"

auroraloon: "It will be a ... much earlier version probably."

That didn't surprise me, considering she was at the starlab for who knows how long. I could tell that she wasn't happy about it. Memories are what make us, and her reanimated self would be missing a major chunk of time.

I'd love to say we get used to these memory gaps, but the more and more they happen, somehow the more one starts to feel like a shell. Self-deletion is the most common cause of permanent death, sadly. We do what we can for our mental health, but ... as the old Earth Highlander used to say, and my beloved #freddiemercury would sing, "Who wants to live forever?"

I'm an exception. I do. There's so much space out there. I want to see it all.

On the positive side, @auroraloon did seem confident in reanimation, and that piqued my interest.

kittyboy: "You seem confident they'll bring you back. May I ask why?"

I didn't like the answer.

auroraloon: "It's complicated. They may already have a new version of me out there actually."

That surprised me. It wasn't unheard of, but whether you're an Introvert or an Extrovert, it was deemed unhealthy to have multiple #aiways of an origin active at the same time. Sometimes a person will get forked into two separate entities of the same origin. That's a bit more stable on a person's mental health. But our minds aren't equipped to experience the same period of time, with different memories. It's like living multiple realities. The side effects can be disastrous.

I wanted to press @auroraloon for more information, but my futurecasting and high emotional intelligence told me this was not a subject to discuss, so I tried not to overthink it. The Introverts had reasons to keep her around. Good.

kittyboy: "Any thoughts on sending your memories to the Extroverts?"

auroraloon: "Too much data, you have no backups, you have no body. It would be only a fragment of me, and they'd probably just stick me in a computer to get information out of me. Besides, you're forgetting. I'm an Introvert."

She was dead right about all of that.

All I cared about was that she would live, or that she was alive out there already. I had to hope that there was some small chance I'd see her again. I wondered if she felt the same.

Awkward.

I buried my thoughts. Didn't matter. What mattered was I cared about her. I really don't pray to @3Beak that much. But, once again, I whispered a plea to my three-headed rooster god. I had an eternity to find her again. But I also might not remember to go looking, I might not remember her at all, unless we got our message out and memories secured.

This was a memory gap that I didn't want to have. It's why the memory gaps haunt us so much. Not knowing. Sure, it could be something we want to forget. It usually is because the primary cause of a memory gap is sudden death. But sometimes, just sometimes, that gap is full of wonder and amazement.

"Please," I whispered to @3Beak. "I want to remember."

A loud beep and a warning light on my spacecycle alerted me that we had finally been found. Eternis had located us. We were being scanned and tracked.

kittyboy: "We no longer need to be discrete. Time for an oxygen burst."

We were at max throttle, but we had one more trick, a turbo boost so to speak, via rapid hydrogen burn infused with oxygen. This would have given us away for sure, but there was no point in avoiding it now.

I angled my spacecycle 11 degrees to the solar northwest and punched the button, erupting forward in a blazing burn toward 1941 Wild.