🌒

“You decide, I don’t trust my luck,” you say.

“Okay,” 7 says. “2 is prime, but it is the worst prime, I don’t trust it...but 1 is terrible, much worse, useless number...”

“They could just be А and Б?” you say.

“That works. Okay. А for Aydan.” She pulls out one of the power cables from the case. “First, a hard reset.” She plugs it back in.

“That relay should be back up now,” you say.

“No change,” she says.

“Me neither...”

“Okay then, let’s try this.” She pulls out the æthernet cable from the same side and, turning her head aside, plugs it into the port on the back of her collar.

“Ahh!” She makes an exasperated vocal stim and strikes the air duct next to her with her hand.

“Are you okay?!”

She unplugs herself. “Fine. It’s just no good. It isn’t the transmitter at all, even going directly from the source I can’t resolve the æther. I don’t think it’s a hardware problem...”

“I guess it was a longshot,” you say.

She reconnects the module and screws its case back together. “I just hope 5 is okay...” Strapping her terminal back onto her right arm, she sits up and aims its light back toward the entrance.

Being closer, you crawl back to the hole you can in through. You let yourself drop down to the floor, this fall being of no danger in 0.16G. 7 climbs out after you, rooting herself to the wall while she closes the access panel. Then she drops down to the floor.

“What a waste of time...” she says.

“Sorry, it was my idea,” you say.

“We tried something at least,” she says.

“Well, let’s--” You try to take a step, but you can’t. Your magnets have engaged at full strength--the boots’ LEDs glow red. You see that 7’s are the same.

“Oh no.” She tries to unstrap them from her legs, but struggles. You reach down to try it, but the magnetic strap locks have also turned on too strong for you to pull apart.

2254-10-01 19:09:13 ADMIN > WARNING: Unauthorized hardware modification detected. Stay where you are.

“I’m receiving network messages again! Oh. Oh no, are we in trouble?” you say.

“Fuck, not good, not good, not good, what was I thinking?!” She shakes her head as she grasps the sides of it, her eyes shut tight. “She’ll be so mad at me...”

“I guess they noticed us...” You send a command to suppress your cortisol. Then you notice the wire connected to your terminal and remember.