'You're a lifesaver, Captain.' I sent Aisling as I mirrored the launch codes to the port authority to signal that I was ready. I didn’t really know if I was actually emotionally prepared for this, but that feeling of soaring through space unhindered was what I needed after that long long moment of desperation for a modicum of control.

"I try." She smirked, but it only lasted a moment before she sat up and added "What'd I do now?"

'Nothing' I typed back before I pulled up my flight interface. Engines building thrust, propulsion primed. I turned to my external sensors and I could see the stars above over the walls of the landing pad. It was an odd experience seeing in a full 360 degrees around myself with the kind of visual clarity my new hardware offered me. I wasn’t sure how I could possibly have interpreted it if I was able to perceive it with my eyes opened.

I gently pushed the ship to rise. The landing gear rose up the moment I felt myself leave the ground, and I flew straight up into the waiting arms of the colony’s rail. It actually felt like I, myself, had risen up and was being pulled along the rail, eagerly prepping for release into the air.

After the sims, it felt like a crutch to simply be carried away by a complex mechanical system, but they didn't want people pulling dangerous takeoff stunts near the colony itself, so I knew that it was an important protocol.

As I started to build speed and was released from my rail, I accelerated at a smooth rate and in just a moment, I was free. I knew there was no air in space, but the minute friction of passing dust that I felt against my outer hull made me feel like the wind was slipping past my wings. After so long on the ground, getting back to what felt like my more natural state of rocketing through space felt wonderful. I felt like a pet that had been cooped up indoors for too long and had just been released for a walk. The emotional release was exhilarating. This was me. I was in control of my mind and my shell. It all felt right, and the agony of being trapped inside of my own skull a short time ago was beginning to fade.

It wasn’t hard to build the speed for Lunar orbit, and I started circling around the planet to get into a better position to launch toward Earth, already calculating escape velocity. ‘I wish you knew how amazing this felt.’ I sent the captain with a relieved, ecstatic smile on my face.

“Oh yeah, lemme just take over real quick and see.” She clicked through her terminal, reading through several of the automated system reports I was outputting even as I was quelling the unnecessary ones, muting several of the new systems so they wouldn’t keep outputting every little unnecessary detail to the captain’s terminal “You got an ETA for me?”

‘Shouldn’t take more than five hours.’ I started noting down quirks in the newly repaired systems for Mouse, and then I immersed myself back into my external sensors. I couldn’t get over how beautiful it all was. It quickly made me forget the horror that I’d just experienced with the test run of the psionic damper.

‘Hey captain.’ I sent to Aisling’s terminal, feeling like I should make some small talk. I couldn’t help but make a jab at her, though, after seeing the good-natured ribbing that went on between crewmates all the time ‘I’ve been wondering, why did you name it Theseus anyway? Boyfriend of yours?’

She let out a hearty laugh “No fucking way would I name my ship after a fling. No, Ray actually told me the name.” So Ray must have been with the crew since the beginning if she was there for the ship’s naming. I briefly wondered how the two met. “It’s from an old Earth story about a naval ship. It got used so much that every single part of it got replaced one after another.” She started, a sense of adventure to her words “Every weapon, every rudder, every board covering it was changed out at one point or another, to the point where there was nothing at all left of what they started with, and people debated if it was still even the same ship. When I bought Theseus, it was in rough shape. I had to get a lot of things ripped out and replaced, and it was already a slipshod mess of all sorts of different parts, so it wasn’t very new to start with. It even has entire rooms that are basically just torn off from other ship models. I can’t even tell you what it was when it was manufactured. So Theseus seemed like an appropriate name for it once it was space-worthy.”

It was an intriguing story. It was no wonder that I was so far from any standard starship layout, it must have been changed significantly so many times until it had ended up in this unique state.

‘Must be a storied ship then, if it’s survived this long.’ I wanted to hear more about it. I wondered if I’d be able to piece together where some of its parts came from if I kept playing Horizon.

“Wouldn’t know. Dealer was tight-lipped about it. Probably thought he’d lose the sale if I knew everything it’d been through. Not a great salesman if you ask me. Reliability and the legend behind it would’ve been a selling point to me.” She swiveled around in her chair, standing up and walking forward to the display window. “Great liftoff, by the way. Way smoother than your first time.” I scoffed. Of course it was better, I’d done it hundreds of times now, even if just in sims. And also the colony took care of most of the work. Still, it was good to get recognition for it.

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I was staring out into the stars now. I wished that I could share my unhindered view of the entire system around us and show her just how amazing it could look. It was clear that she had an appreciation for what she could get, though. It seemed that even someone who was seasoned at sailing among the stars could be struck by the beauty of it all, even if all she could see was one angle over the distant Lunar surface.

I knew better than to disturb her reverence, so I dove down to the cargo bay. Joel was monitoring our cargo, and seemed a little bored. I hadn’t thrown the room around this time, so he was just idling until he had more to do I guessed.

Next was Mouse. He was pacing back and forth between different sides of the engine room, watching the readouts of the new thrusters carefully to make sure they were operating safely.

Ray still sat in her room, stock still in front of her small ‘altar’ shelf, where incense burned in a bowl. I wasn’t sure if she was just meditating or if she was in some kind of trance, but as she didn’t have a personal tablet, I wouldn’t have any way to disturb her if I wanted to.

Last was Doc. I returned to my heart to see him staring at his own data pad. It had my medical file on it. I had to wonder what could be so fascinating about my medical history. It wasn’t like I was hiding anything from him. He already knew everything I knew.

I forced open a text file, thinking it a little awkward to talk to him again after the test I’d just undergone under his watch. I thought it best not to call back to it. ‘You know you can just talk to me if you wanna know more.’ I told him as I looked at the file alongside him.

He was silent for an eerily long moment before he mumbled “Frankly, Meryll, I’m not sure if I can.” He looked up as if to make eye contact with me through the metal again “This file is… strange. It’s too sterile. Too clean.”

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ I typed as I looked closer at the file with him. It didn’t seem unusual to me, but then again, I wasn’t exactly accustomed to looking at this sort of document, and I wouldn’t know what to look at on it. It didn’t have any signs of corruption, degradation, or tampering. It did admittedly look a little barren, but I didn’t think that there would need to be too much data on a patient record for someone who didn’t often need much care.

He shook his head “There are appointment records that say you attended, but the doctors never made any notes. You have a singular diagnosis with no other biological flaws of note. Ever. You don’t have any emergency contacts listed. The insurance information is nonsense, no company uses this format. It’s almost as if this file was completely falsified just to make it look legitimate to a layman at first glance.”

‘Okay, now you’re sounding like a conspiracy theorist.’ I couldn’t lie though, what he was saying sounded more than a little bit disconcerting. But we’d gotten the file from the medical relay, it’s not like it could have been falsified.

“I don’t really know what it means, if anything. Perhaps you just had neglectful doctors.” He shrugged, hoping that his words wouldn’t send her into another mental breakdown “But there’s just so many odd details here, it’s hard to overlook when you’re used to looking at legitimate patient files.”

‘Any way I can help?’ He had me curious myself at this point, and I couldn’t leave it alone now.

He seemed to hesitate “Perhaps. But I need some time.” He mumbled. The way he said it was a barely veiled fib. He was holding back. It’s not like he could get more information from the relay while we were out of network range of the colony after all. I considered just calling him on it, but I trusted him by now. He had my better interest at heart. But he had me feeling concerned that there was something serious enough that he would want to protect me from it.

But what could be in there? No one knew me better than I knew myself, and there didn’t seem anything abnormal in my file as far as I could tell. It really seemed like he saw something wrong, though.

I’d have to just let it go for now ‘Okay. We only have a few hours until Earth. I’m not going to have to shut down for this one, am I?’ I really hoped that I would get to at least spend a few days as Theseus without having to leave the core module for more than my regular checkups.

“Actually, no.” Doc looked up from the file “At a colony, we’re fairly safe. Out in the wild, we never really know how things are going to shape out. We might need to launch at a moment’s notice. We actually need you to stay in there the entire time we’re on the ground.”

I was surprised to hear him endorsing what I really had to admit was becoming an addiction, but it made sense. I didn’t know how much of it was true anymore after learning that the Dario had been a lie, but the rest of the crew hadn’t corrected my assumption of the Earth tribes being… different. It didn’t have to mean they were bad. Ray had a more primitive, supernatural view of the world, but those things didn’t make her dangerous or untrustworthy. Still, tribals that we didn’t know might have cultures with which we might conflict.

Not only that, but we would also be vulnerable to other dangers down on Earth. It was a natural world with countless different living things, it wasn’t just a colony where there were only humans and predictable environments, it was a living world. Anything could happen.

‘That’s perfectly fine with me. You know how much I like the void.’

He let out a small laugh and I felt myself blush a little bit “The sensory deprivation means that much to you, huh? I know I’ve been using the word too since you described it, but is it really so good?”

‘It is. But really, it is a void. There’s nothing. I know realistically that there’s a wall in every direction mere feet away, but with those lights on, it doesn’t feel that way. It’s probably an optical illusion, I know, but there’s nowhere else like it. I can think so clearly in here. It feels safe. Once I got over the panic of waking up here the very first time, it felt like home. Almost like it was familiar to me.’

He read my words and went quiet. Sitting back in his chair, he looked to be in deep thought. After what felt like an age, he muttered out “Sorry, give me a bit. I… have to think about some things.”

Again, he was hiding something from me. I took a deep breath ‘Okay, I’ll leave you to it. Maybe I’ll be able to properly talk to you next time. I’m going to try out to figure out this voice synthesis thing.’

“Good luck.” He mumbled as he opened my file once more.