Chapter Forty-Seven

“Viktoriya, darling, you seem a little distracted,” her mom said, touching the jacket covering her daughter’s CyberArm lightly.

She pulled it back quickly—and her mom cursed herself for forgetting that she hated to have it handled, and certainly not unexpectedly.

“I’m fine, Mom,” she said, turning back to look out the window. She fiddled with the new pair of electromagnets in her hand.

“Mom, I know you don’t mean to, but my arm’s haptics are very screwy sometimes, and what you think is a tap comes across as a hard thud.”

Their entire family was on their way to visit the Mothership Ark. It would be Viktoriya’s first time aboard the ship.

They were sitting in the coffee shop at the dropship landing pad, waiting for a few passengers who were running late.

After the last of the invited team arrived, they all boarded the vessel. The transport ships that shuttled employees and special guests to and from the ark were quite ornate—decorated similarly to a luxury private jet.

They sat in leather seats that reclined to the point where one could sleep comfortably. The seats arranged in groups of four, the chairs facing inward to sturdy wooden tables used for eating or working.

Viktoriya and her mom sat together on one side in their little nook, with her dad, and then CLEFF—in standby mode, recharging during the flight—on the other. Each table had a small tablet built right into the surface to order meals or watch the latest movies.

All-in-all, the dropships were quite luxurious. Her mom sighed—she supposed it was the least the government funding of the ark could do, considering the transports were most used by workers who labored long hours to build the vessel that would save them all.

The woman and men doing the work—with no certainty it would provide them a place on the ark—deserved all the praise in the world, but the best the UiN could do was a pleasant commute.

Few were willing to spend their last days laboring over something that would save everyone else. Very few.

Her mom looked out her window to the ice-covered pavement. She then turned back to Viktoriya.

Their daughter had said little to them all morning and hadn’t even wanted to order food onboard—something she’d always loved doing on planes.

Viktoriya’s mom nudged her dad’s foot under the table, careful not to hit CLEFF’s metal leg. His head snapped upward, and he looked toward her. She motioned her head toward their girl.

He cleared his voice.

“Hey Vik, want to tell us what’s going on?”

“Not really,” she mumbled, not looking their way. “I don’t think I have it all quite figured out yet.”

Her mom raised an eyebrow. Her dad pressed on. “Have what all figured out yet? You know we can help, sweetie. With anything!”

“Anything,” her mom said, leaning forward, trying to crane her neck to see their girl’s face.

Without reading her daughter’s reaction, she had no clue what she could be thinking. “And whatever it is, you can come to us, and we will not judge, and you’ll never get in trouble for confiding in us.”

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“Never,” her dad agreed.

“Never?”

“Never,” they both said in unison.

“We’ll always love you, dear,” her mom added. “No matter what.”

Viktoriya sighed. She pulled herself away from the window and toward them.

“Okay. So, remember my flash-outs?” she asked, twiddling the magnets in her hands. She avoided their eyes. “The ones I am working on with Dr. Maribelle?”

Her mom nodded.

“I still have them—almost daily now.”

“Oh darling,” her mom said, wrapping her arm around Viktoriya’s shoulder. She recoiled at the sudden touch even though it was her human arm, and her mom immediately withdrew, folding her arms across her chest.

“You should have told us; we’d have to book extra sessions and—”

“No, Mom, you don’t understand. I have them on purpose.”

There was a pause.

“On purpose?” her dad asked, leaning forward in his seat.

She nodded.

“Yes. Like, um. When you go to a movie that you enjoy or a restaurant you like. You go there because you want to.”

Her mom slicked back her dark hair, taking a moment to rein in her emotions. So much time had passed since the last flash-out that they were aware of, and not once did she mention this? All her mom wanted was for her daughter to be safe.

“Why?” her mom finally asked in the calmest tone she could muster.

She shrugged back, still avoiding eye contact.

“I like them. I need them. They are showing me things. I’m not so sure now—but something happened, I saw something… something that—”

Her mom’s stomach lurched. “What happened, dear?”

“I—I really, visually saw something,” she stumbled, “I’m actually still seeing things—you know what? Never mind, it’s silly. Probably just—”

“Viktoriya Kuzland,” she said. “It is not silly at all, whatever it is, if it is making you feel this strongly, this upset, it is not silly.”

“You’re not listening again. I’m not upset.”

Viktoriya flipped the small electromagnets in her hand as they pushed against one another, manipulating them as if they were playing cards in the hands of the most masterful Vegas dealer. The poles repelled against the pressure of her fingers, forcing them to comply, then they suddenly flung apart from the momentum in opposite directions.

She instinctively snatched one, then the other, from mid-air in an instant with her CyberArm in less than a blink of an eye.

“Listen to me. I’m not upset. I—I just don’t know where to start. Y’know?”

Her parents stared silently, stunned, at the instantaneous, impossible reflex of their girl.

Her dad rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Just start at the beginning.”

She sighed and finally looked up at them.

“It started years ago. Obviously, you know that. What you didn’t know was that I liked the flash-outs. They were adventurous and amazing to me. They brought me to a peaceful place. It was like being surrounded by nothing and everything at once. Anyway, that’s not really the point.

“The more I flashed out, the more vivid this place became, and the more I saw each time. Silvery, glowing webs appeared, and it was almost like, umm… almost like a strand of magnetic plasma. The web strands pulled me through this nothingness. Until I ended up at HH190.”

Her mom hummed quietly. So far, this all sounded as if it might be a reoccurring dream or a hallucination, perhaps.

“Maybe you saw HH190 because we’ve just been talking about it so much? It was probably just a dream—”

She shook her head vigorously.

“They aren’t dreams, Mom. They’ve never been dreams. Listen.”

“Right,” she said, sinking back into her seat, “I’m sorry.”

“Anyway, last night, in my flash-out, I saw the ark at HH190. And four more arks, there were five in all, once the other four came in along the web corridor.”

“You saw five arks?”

She nodded.

“And now, I see not only the web, there in my other space—the silvery glowing threads—it is here too sometimes. I see it flowing like web strands out into space, threading between everything. If I just look hard enough. Looking for them, but not ‘at’ them, they appear faintly for a moment. Can’t you see them? It looks like an infinite spiderweb, drawn over the entire galaxy… and the tubes that make the web parts are the paths, the corridors throughout the galaxy, like giant channels of connecting, um, web. Can’t you see it? If you stare too long, it will disappear.”

Viktoriya’s eyes were desperate, as if she were pleading with them to understand.

Her mom shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Vik… I see nothing, darling.”

“It’s okay. I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to see them. I’m not even sure why I can, but I feel like it is leading me, leading me to something that I don’t understand how to explain yet.

“But don’t worry, I’ll figure it out somehow. And then, if you can get your mind together, you can come across to me.”