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“Five.”

I was beyond ner­vous, then, as I stared off into the infi­nite night that backed the mas­sive glit­ter­ing con­struc­tion gantries arrayed below me. The nerves had dis­ap­peared weeks, even months ago. Now, all that remained amongst our team was the almost blank real­i­sa­tion of what we were about to achieve. It was almost as if we’d slowly begun to see the threads of fate bunch­ing up around us.

“Four.”

Four sec­onds. How long had our soci­ety, our species waited for this moment? From when the plans were first drawn up, fifty-four years ago? From the first time a human being left the con­fines of Earth – my Angel inserted the data into my head almost before I realised I needed it – 921 years ago? Or even from that uncount­able time in the dis­tant past when a human looked up to the night-time sky and thought “I want to go there”?

“Three.”

Trails of flick­er­ing text appeared across my vision, blem­ishes on my 360-degree starscape. With a thought, I dis­missed them. I knew how the start-up was pro­gress­ing any­way, so why should my tran­quil­ity be dis­turbed by such an anti­quated con­cept as a sta­tus text?

“Two.”

Then, rather than those obso­lete mes­sages, an over­lay of the Moon Seraph’s Ether sys­tems over­layed itself over my vision. That was to be my job, as I had known for weeks – mon­i­tor­ing of this spe­cific sys­tem for just one ship as it came online. I won­dered exactly how many of us there were, star­ing at net­work schemat­ics at this very moment. Of course, I knew that there were 39 of us within a mil­lisec­ond of wondering.

I gri­maced. “When all this is over,” I told myself, “I’ll have that blasted thing turned off for a while.”

“One.”

I closed my eyes, block­ing out the stars and leav­ing only the grey schematic and con­tin­ual sub­con­scious data chat­ter on the inside of my head. I was alone in the uni­verse, alone and con­tent with only myself and my com­puter systems.

“Jenny?”

I almost died of fright. A child’s voice, call­ing my name? Impos­si­ble – I was hard-linked into the Moon Seraph’s –

“Zero.”

The schemat­ics in front of me exploded with colour, expand­ing and bub­bling and fill­ing and drown­ing my mind. For a frac­tion of a sec­ond I thought I’d lost con­trol, that the data had been too much for my brain to han­dle. But I sur­faced, then, and directed my thoughts, and the infor­ma­tion became more manageable.

I glided my con­scious­ness through the net­work paths of the ship, through the com­put­ers’ equiv­a­lents of door­ways and cor­ri­dors, method­i­cally check­ing each and every node and every stream, mark­ing them green as I went.

After what seemed like hours yet was recorded as barely sec­onds, my vision – if such a word applies when one has one’s eyes closed – panned out to dis­play the whole of my domain, each part of the net­work, glow­ing with a healthy green glow. I dis­missed it, and sat for a while in the dark­ess with noth­ing over­layed on the black inside of my eyelids.

Peace, at last. I opened my eyes, let­ting the sights and sounds of the reas­sur­ing real world rush in.

“Jenny?”

I jumped, scared again for a moment; but it was a man’s voice this time, that of fel­low engi­neer Lance Peterson.

Reach­ing over my head, he dan­gled a bot­tle of puri­fied water into my line of sight. I span my chair around to face him.

“Thanks, Lance.”

“No prob­lem. How’d it go?”

For his sake I tried to sup­press my mem­ory of that girl’s voice, call­ing my name, reach­ing out to me through empty space…

I shook my head from side to side as if doing so would dis­perse my thoughts.

“All okay.”

“Mine too. You don’t look okay, though, Jenny. Ner­vous wreck, more like. Want some inhibs?”

“No. Let’s take a walk.”

We headed to the ele­va­tors and went all the way down to the gantry level, where we took a shut­tle out to the Moon Ser­aph. Though the three ships would not be offi­cially opened for another two weeks, no-one was in the mood to stop us pay­ing a visit to the great Leviathans – they had, after all, been our entire lives’ work. Our chil­dren, almost.

We weren’t the only ones, either – another five of our team joined us in the shuttle.

Ris­ing almost imper­cep­ti­bly over its rails, our tiny craft glided out into the abyss. Each one of the city-sized star­ships dwarfed us utterly, and yet as I turned so that the entire sta­tion was within view I saw that they resem­bled noth­ing more than mere piglets suck­ling from their gigan­tic mother.

Explorer Fed­er­a­tion Jupiter Orbit Dock. Home.

No mat­ter how many times I saw it, I never failed to be awestruck by its vast, indus­trial beauty. From this angle, the lights on the station’s fur­thest reaches seemed as dim and dis­tant as the stars themselves.

An instant later the stars, both real and man-made, were cut off. My reverie bro­ken, I looked down from the shuttle’s over­head window.

“EFS Moon Ser­aph Star­board A 14 Ser­vice Dock,” announced the computer’s ear-bypassing voice. “Please disembark.”

The very sec­ond my feet touched the floor of the dock­ing bay, my Angel picked up on the new net­work inside the ship – the very same net­work that I had super­vised the startup of barely fif­teen min­utes earlier.

“Switch­ing Ether Net­work,” came a sub­tle halfthought, pass­ing across my mind like a daydream.

The serendip­ity of the sub­con­scious mes­sages was lost a sec­ond later as diag­nos­tics swarmed across my vision. To be expected of course – after all, I was an engi­neer on board a ship still in testing.

I wasn’t in the mood, though.

With both aurals and visu­als dis­abled I looked around, almost for the first time, at the real inside of our ship.

Even on the ser­vice docks, no expense had been spared. Just as else­where on the ship, the walls and ceil­ings glowed with an inner light that sparkled like crys­tal. Raised areas of soil sprouted trees and shrubs, while hid­den speak­ers played quiet music. In fact, only the absence of shops and seats dis­tin­guished this bay from the one in which the pas­sen­gers would first arrive.

I reached out and touched one of the trees as I passed, remind­ing myself that despite the utterly arti– ficial sur­round­ings, they were real. Real trees, shipped in from Ceres! How much must that have cost? But then, it wasn’t as if the Explor­ers were ever short of creds.

“Jenny!”

The voice again! I tore the leaf I was hold­ing right off the tree. Lance had his back to me, and seemed not to have noticed.

“Jenny came to see us!”

I turned around, look­ing, hop­ing for a mun­dane source for that lit­tle girl’s voice. Not only was there no lit­tle girl, none of the other peo­ple around me even seemed to have heard it.

“It’s just me?” I mut­tered, think­ing that it was only to myself. The girl heard, though.

“Of course, silly,” came the sing-song voice again.

“They’re strangers. But you’re my friend, Jenny.”

I can only assume that Lance had heard me too, for he came sprint­ing back to my side and took me over to a bench under­neath two short trees.

“Come on, Jenny, what’s up with you today?”

I sighed and, fool­ishly, told him.

Within min­utes I was off the ship. Poor Lance, he really did care about me – though he always man­aged to do exactly the wrong thing.

The voice fol­lowed me even as I stepped off the shut­tle; even when I was home.

“Please don’t go, Jenny,” the girl urged. “Come back and play soon…”

By the time we reached the res­i­den­tial decks, my Angel had already declared me to be suf­fer­ing from schiz­o­phre­nia. Rather than a con­cerned friend, it was a doc­tor who met me as the ele­va­tor opened its doors.

Of course, there was no choice but to go with her to the hospital.

Exten­sive tests and brain scans showed no signs of a men­tal ill­ness, but yet the voice con­tin­ued to call out to me – often plead­ing phrases, some­times creepy phrases, but usu­ally just my name chanted over and over again until–

One day, they stopped. I woke up, I had break­fast, and a whole day passed with no voices inside my head.

The next day passed with no voices either, and so – now a lit­tle more con­fi­dent of my san­ity – I checked the feeds to see how the ships’ test­ing had been going in my absence.

The night the voices had stopped had only one entry.

    Bug #23691
    Moon Seraph Ether Network
    Central Control module "Elizabeth A" has developed a serious intermittent
    fault and must be replaced with a backup immediately.
    Date: 02891-06-24
    Assigned to: 192387032AF Lance Peterson
    Status: Resolved
    Notes: New unit installed. Elizabeth A has been disposed of as advised.

“Dis­posed.” The word hit me like a ham­mer to the head. And yet I’m not sure why. Despite our jok­ingly giv­ing them human names, even treat­ing them like our babies, they were still only computers.

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