Copy of a Copy

No Space for Family [Chapter 17]

“You what?” Dad hissed as soon as we heard the news from my mom and brother in the cockpit.”

“Yeah,” Terren sighed. “All that flashing and flickering was for show. Gram was just messing with us.”

“Do you see how it feels to just be along for the ride, not knowing anything that’s going on?” Grandma taunted. “That’s how it feels like to be fed all these strange orders. Then whatever computerized business is going on in the background just feeds information to me and expects me to spit it out. I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time.”

Dad rubbed at his face and head, glancing back to make sure nobody else was listening. “Well, I guess it also scared Caddel into believing we were doing something necessary. For the both of us.”

“Yes, that little twerp needed to be put in his place,” Grandma chuckled.

“Yes, yes,” Mom sighed. “Let’s put the new data to work and get out of here.”

“I’d like that,” said Dad. “Aida, do whatever you need to do.”

“If I weren’t so keen on protecting my family, I could interpret that statement in many ways.”

“Does it work?” I heard Caddel shout as he walked into the common room, his pack returned to his shoulders.

Dad nudged me out of the way and met with the scavenger partway. “Seems like it will. Get us out of here, Aida.”

“Yes sir.”

I felt the pull of the warp engines creating their field. Seconds later, space and all the hunks of junk were distorting around us. Caddel huddled into the cockpit with us and glanced at the view windows and navigation screen. “Can’t see anything wrong with how it’s goin’.”

After a few hours, grandma finally made another announcement concerning the journey. “All unstable warp signatures on the scrapfield map are behind us.”

“Does that mean?” Dad asked from the door of the cockpit, leaning back to acknowledge the scavenger.

Caddel had been nursing a cup of tea silently at the common room table for a while. He nodded and turned his eyes up. “It means you may jet on out of here. And that it is also time for me to depart, too. Finally.”

“Amelia, take the controls?” Dad asked.

My mom had been cleaning the kitchen for those last few hours unendingly, like it was an impossible task. She finally wiped her hands and marched out of the space. “Got it.”

Caddel had yet to move. He looked up across the table as my dad approached him. “I suppose you want something before you leave,” Dad asked.

The scavenger nodded. “For the… unusual trouble we happened to come across, I wasn’t sure if some fancy new insurance policies were going to cut it. Which I do appreciate, Good Plip.”

Our guest jerked up in his chair, nodding to disguise him half-asleep state. “Yes, of course. And remember, we will absolutely contact you when your policy has been approved and activated.”

Caddel blinked and looked my dad up and down. “So, the sanitized version of the AI.”

“Follow me.”

The instructions were for the little man but I heeded them as well. Dad went back into the storage bay first. “Aida, all of that new data we just took on got isolated into a sole memory array, correct?”

“I think I did that.”

“And where would that be?”

“Let’s see… array 7, section A, bay 14.”

“And you’ve followed standard procedure with it?”

Grandma stopped herself mid sigh. “Yes.”

“Good. Unmount it and unlock the bay if you would.”

“Doing… and… done.”

Dad leaned down into one of the arrays, pulling at a rounded metal handle, and unseating one of the modules with a click. It was about the size of one of those old fashioned paper books, but bound in metal with lots of hexagonal holes about it. I could hear the sound of a fan coming through the vacated bay.

“It’s all yours,” Dad said, handing it off to the scavenger.

Caddel could barely hold it with both hands, but it managed to stay in his arms like he was hugging it. “Perfect. If you ever come this way again… well, hopefully, we don’t ever need to cross paths again.”

Dad walked him back to the airlock and his ship beyond. We watched as the doors closed and the controls indicated his departure.

“You just gave him all the data it took Grandma so much time to take apart?”

Dad smirked. “The copy. All data on those arrays is copied across two modules, should any one memory module stop working. And if anyone knew the value of a copy it would be him.”