A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(34)

‘Don’t clean. Go out. Or stay in, whatever. Just . . . do something that feels good.’

Sidra moved her gaze away from Pepper. The guilt associated with the previous night’s memory file was bleeding into everything else. This conversation was making her feel guilty, too. Why was she acting this way? Why couldn’t she just get used to the way things were? What was wrong with her? ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered.

‘It’s cool. We’re going to figure this out.’ Pepper walked out of the room, rubbing the back of her head. ‘Seriously, though. Do something fun.’

Sidra stayed in the corner long after she heard Pepper walk out the front door. She wrestled with the ugly knot of emotions clouding her processes. She was angry with Pepper for not understanding. She was grateful for Pepper trying to help. She was angry with Pepper for not agreeing with her about Linking access. She was ashamed of how she’d behaved just then. She was justified in how she’d behaved just then. She wasn’t. She was.

Do something fun, Pepper had said. Sidra thought about going down to her spot in the living room and plugging into the Linkings all day. Considering the topic at hand, it was the obvious thing to do. But in that moment, she didn’t want the Linkings for a day; she wanted a solution. She wanted the knot in her pathways to melt away. She wanted to fix this, to fit in, to stop clinging to corners and reaching for Linkings. She needed to change, and didn’t know how.

Even though the corner felt good, even though her chair was right downstairs, even though going out was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, she wasn’t going to find answers in a public feed. She climbed down from the desk, put on her shoes and jacket, and headed for the Undersea.





Feed source: unknown Encryption: 4

Translation: 0

Transcription: 0

Node identifier: unknown

ACuriousMind: greetings, fellow modders! i am about to embark upon a great journey of scientific discovery, and i need your help! i am extremely interested in the practice of genetic manipulation, particularly sapient hybridisation. i am new to this field, but i have read several linking books on the subject, and am confident that my theories will shatter the realm of biology as we know it. but first, i have to get some gear! can anybody recommend a reliable source for gestation chambers, preferably cheap? i am on a budget.

tishtesh: is this a f*cking joke KAPTAINKOOL: amazing. i can count six different kinds of stupid in one paragraph ACuriousMind has been banned from Picnic CuriousMind2 has joined Picnic CuriousMind2: i can’t believe this. picnic is supposed to be an open-minded place for tech trade and cutting-edge science! clearly, this community isn’t as high calibre as i was led to believe. there’s a whole channel here on genetweaking! why was i banned????

fluffyfluffycake: because you lack subtlety, which means you have no clue what you’re doing. enjoy your inevitable arrest. flagged.

pinch: also if you think sapient manufacture is the same as genetweaking, your science is a f*cking horrorshow. flagged.

tishtesh: also you’re an idiot. flagged.

CuriousMind2 has been banned from Picnic tishtesh: anybody else want to scrub that kid’s scrib?

KAPTAINKOOL: stars yes. i’ll message you.

fluffyfluffycake: me too me too pinch: fry his patch while you’re at it FunkyFronds: i love this feed





JANE, AGE 10


Jane woke up excited and scared all at once. She and Owl had been real busy. Today was the day to see if all that busy worked.

She got out of bed and stared at her clothes, lying in a heap on the floor. They were sleep clothes, not work clothes, but they were all she had. They were gross. That was a good word Owl had taught her. Gross. Gross was how it felt to have clothes that were all smudged with dirt and old blood, and to not have had a shower for four days. She didn’t want to put on the gross sleep clothes. The thought of it made her itch. She put them on anyway.

‘Good morning,’ Owl said. ‘You ready for today?’

Jane’s stomach flipped over, but that hot, buzzy feeling in her chest was louder. ‘Yeah,’ Jane said.

‘I know you can do it,’ Owl said. She smiled, but her face was a little scared. Jane tried not to think about that too much. She didn’t want to think about what it meant if Owl was scared, too.

Jane got up, went to the bathroom, went to the kitchen. She emptied a pouch of water into a cup she’d found two days before. She crumbled a ration bar into it, and drank it down once the bits got soft. She’d figured out that getting the food wet was better practice for her stomach. The bathroom was gross, too. They needed running water.

The things she’d built with Owl’s help sat in a row on the living room floor. Jane felt good looking at them. Usually, seeing a pile of sorted scrap just made her feel a quiet kind of good, because sorted scrap meant the day was over. But this was scrap she’d fixed. Scrap she’d made into tools. It wasn’t just bins of junk brought in and taken away without knowing why. The scrap in front of her had jobs, and that made her feel real, real good.

First, there was the scrib, which had been easy to fix. Just a few pins bent back into place. Owl said she didn’t have enough power to talk to Jane through the scrib, but she could activate a signal that would tell Jane which direction to walk in if she needed to get back to the shuttle. Jane was glad of that. She’d had enough of running around lost.