No Space for Family [Chapter 29]

“Well dang, I didn’t teach her that.”

Mom jerked up so fast that she nearly threw Terren and me off of her. My Dad was coming our way, eyes still up at the sky, when Mom nearly tackled him, pounding her hands against his chest and finally burying her face in his collar.

“Shh, it’s okay,” he said, stroking her hair. I ran up beside him and grabbed at his free hand.

“If not you, then…” Mom sobbed, then shook her head harder. “It was her?”

Dad shrugged. “I was being dragged away by the big fellow, and then I heard my own voice through the communicator. I wasn’t aware she was… an impressionist. And I certainly didn’t give her any instructions on how to fly. But… I suppose she did what she thought she needed to.”

“Damn it, Mom,” sniffled my mom, pulling her face away. “What are we going to tell her lawyer?”

“Before the lawyer…” interrupted Terren, “That wanna-be bully and his cronies think they’ve done their job. Dad, you should make yourself scarce before they believe otherwise.”

“Indeed,” hummed Dad, glancing back to the tarmac.

Mom shuddered and gritted her teeth. “That’s right. Time to put on one last act, I suppose?”

“More lies?” I teased, bouncing up and down on my toes.

“Just telling them what they want to hear,” said Mom, stroking my hair. “Come back in with me, but… give me some space.”

Dad slinked off into the shadows while Mom stomped back to the administration building and Sakura. Lanky was still on the ground under her restraint. He barely had a chance to peel his head off the ground with a smirk before Mom jabbed at his side with the heel of her boot.

“Ugh,” he winced and groaned, still pressed against the floor by the Overseer’s hold. “Too little, too late, woman.”

“I’m so sorry, Amelia,” sighed Sakura, shaking her head.

Mom bounced her heel up and down. “You can make it up to me by holding him there while I break his ribs.”

“Do your worst,” hissed Lanky.

“Amelia, you don’t have to do this,” sighed Sakura. “Not in front of your kids.”

“Fine then,” Mom smirked back at us. “Kids, go with Dr. Pois back up to the Overseer’s office. I’m going to make sure he doesn’t think up any plans for the rest of us.”

“Hold it,” snapped Lanky, struggling against Sakura’s grasp. “I don’t give a damn about the rest of you. My orders were to deal with Umburter and the AI core on your ship. As long as my ribs stay intact, I’m fine with having my men pick me up and get the lot of us off this backwater, geriatric colony without any more fuss. No need to trifle with a woman and children. And of course, the Doctor here, who is under a nondisclosure that she should abide by still.”

Doctor Pois huffed and shook her head.

Sakura waved at my mom for her to back up before releasing Lanky’s arm back to him. “Don’t think you’ll be able to get any of those services I promised you,” huffed the Overseer.

Lanky stood, brushed himself off, adjusted his jacket, and gave a final rub to his wrist. He looked at me and my mom and the others before picking up his walkie-talkie from the ground. “You’ve confirmed that the ship is destroyed, I hope?”

“It’s space debris now, boss,” said the respondent. “Just as he was about to jump off into his warp field.”

“As I expected. We’re done here. I’ll be on the tarmac momentarily for a touch-and-go.”

I bit my lip as Lanky walked out the door without another word or look. I ran to the window and nearly shouted as I saw him cross paths with Dad, still in his disguise. Lanky didn’t react at all and allowed Dad to join us inside.

“You needn’t help them,” Sakura sighed and relaxed her shoulders.

Dad yanked off the technician’s cap and threw it down. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Sakura did a double-take and then stared at my mom. “Amelia… this was part of your plan?”

“Part of someone’s plan,” Dad huffed and shook his head.

“Having them blast the ship apart…” Mom slumped to the ground and held her hands to her face. “The Ora, the core… Mom’s consciousness, all gone.”

“What matters is that we’re safe,” Dad sighed. “Aida did… what she needed to.”

Doctor Pois stepped up, shaking her head. “It is partially my fault for allowing myself to be caught. I hope you can forgive me for everything. It is unfortunate that you could not salvage your mother’s body or the copy of the consciousness in your core.”

Sakura blinked at the doctor. “We do have her body, though. Quite safe and secure.”

“But then…” Mom glanced up, looking around. “A copy of her consciousness?”

Doctor Pois wrung her hands together. “I assure you, the process your mother went through… didn’t erase a single neuron or memory in her brain. But I assume that the optimal resolution here was to reintroduce her memories formed during her time in your core.”

I jumped up to the doctor. “So you mean… Grandma is all still in there?”

“In her body?” puzzled the Doctor. “Of course. Everything up until the accident. Just… nothing new, assuming she’s been held unconscious.”

“Perhaps…” Dad said, rubbing at his head. “This would be the preferred resolution… especially for her.”

Doctor Pois nodded slowly. “I can offer any of my expertise to aid in her healing process.”

Sakura shuffled between us. “She’s in good hands at the moment, so I don’t think there’s any rush. But first, I think it would benefit us all to… rest for the night.”

As Sakura said that, I felt the tiredness take me. Out the front window, I couldn’t help but notice the bad guys skating against the tarmac for only a moment or two before jerking back up into the sky. Once the glow of the engines departed our field of view did Terren peel himself away from the view.

“Here we go, imposing upon you once more,” said my mom.

Sakura held her arms across her chest. “Not too much. Alas, I hope you won’t find the chairs and couch in my office to be too terrible a prospect for the night…”

Terren shrugged and joined us. “Well, our bags are already up there.”

“Lead the way, Ms. Ishii,” Dad prompted.

I found myself nearly hanging off my Dad’s arm as we reached the top of the elevator. The closer we got to the Overseer’s office, the more tired I got. I almost thought that the loud ringing coming from the office was the result of a dream.

“A phone call? At this hour?” Sakura said, rushing ahead. “Did we leave something down below?”

She had the handset to her ear as we shuffled in, almost too tired to care. “From what? Who? Amelia, remind me of the name of your ship.”

“The… Ora,” responded Mom.

“Patch us through,” Sakura directed as she flipped it to speaker and set it down on the table.

“Here you are, Madame Ishii.”

The slight fuzz of long-distance radio crackled on. Other than that, the transmission was silent, punctuated by a rhythmic tapping. “Is someone there?” Sakura finally spoke up.

“Oh stars. Uh, I’m… depends on who’s asking.”

Dad stepped up to the table and slapped his hands on the shiny wooden surface. “Plip, is that you?”

“Mr. Umburter,” replied our old hitchhiker.

“And you’re aboard the Ora?”

“Yes, sir.”

My mom rushed up to grab my Dad’s back, shaking him happily. “The ship is… saved?”

“Hi there, Mrs. Captain,” Plip said back. “Uh, this gonna’ sound crazy and all, but I promise I didn’t try and steal your ship.”

“Explain everything,” said my Dad, anticipating Plip’s tale. “From the beginning.”

“Uh, first thing’s first. So you might remember I went and left you crazy lot back there for good, at least I thought. Well, this planet seemed nice, but it’s utterly desolate, at least for my sort of business. No real stores or bars, no real space port, and I just felt terrible going door-to-door to… see what I could gather from the inhabitants here. Well, terrible or not, I still had to get out there and make some sort of connection.

“I’ll tell you what, half of them didn’t even open their doors, and the other half just wanted to have me sit and talk with them about anything other than insurance. Nobody but a bunch of lonely old folks. The moment I saw you land here in the colony was about the same time I decided my prospects here were fully bust.

Here’s where I mighta’ done things a bit smarter, you know? I didn’t want to seem desperate or anything, so I mighta’ just snuck back into your ship. Just this evening, actually.”

“You could have just asked,” Terren sighed, long since settled into one of the office chairs.

“Shush, let him finish,” urged my mom. “Yeah, this evening was a little… frantic.”

“So what then, Plip?” urged Dad again.

“Gee. So, the lot of you were gone. Except for that peculiar AI voice. And even she seemed distracted. Then I heard that other ship make a landing. I was going to hop out and greet them, but then I remembered you all don’t have a lot of friends. So I decided to hunker down. And that’s where it all went crazy. The ship just started on its own. A whole takeoff procedure, with nobody at the controls. I was up in the cockpit because that AI woman was shouting at me to get out of the cargo bay with all your computers and junk.

“Then right as the ship was hitting space proper, there was a loud siren, followed by a jump right to warp, with me just standing there with no place to grab on. I might have heard a big explosion along with it, but none of that was my—“

Dad slammed on the table with his fist, interrupting the story. “Aida! Damn it.”

Mom leaned on his shoulder and stroked his back. “She did what she had to do.”

“She detached the cargo pod?” Terren said, sat up in the chair solemnly.

“With… her in it,” I added.

“The calculations she must have had to do…” Dad postured. “Detecting the missile… decoupling the cargo pod to intercept the blast while getting the rest of the ship past the warp threshold…”

Doctor Pois was at the window, looking up at the night sky, populated with stars. “And to make it seem to my captors like they had completed their mission. There’s a certain… selflessness that seemed to find itself in the build of this kernel. Both Hows and Aida. It’s a shame that I can’t study it.”

“Hey, friends,” Plip interrupted. “I’m glad we’re all on the same page now. But your selfless AI has left me a bit stranded, and I’m certainly no pilot.”

Dad huffed and stood up, clearing his thoughts with a clap. “Sure, let’s get you back down to us, Plip. We’ll give you coordinates to get you back into orbit, and then I’ll talk you through the landing procedure.”

“Better to do it before that patch job on the door fails,” Terren added.

“Wait, what’s going to fail?”

No Space for Family [Chapter 28]

“We’re in asset protection, Overseer,” Lanky continued there on the other side of the half wall. “We didn’t come this way to wreak havoc, only to secure the things that belong to our benefactor. That includes anybody who has gained access to trade secrets through illicit means. That being said, we have a modest weapons array on board our ship. If our target had tried to escape us again, we would have used them on his craft. Now, if you were to get in our way and let that happen, your little communications relay in this system might end up in the crossfire.”

Sakura huffed. “You wouldn’t. That’s a necessary device for connecting us to the Galaxy Net. For ordering vital supplies for the colony.”

“And that ship out on the tarmac here has a one-of-a-kind piece of technology that my employer has paid a fortune for.”

The Overseer sighed. “Can you confirm that with the utmost certainty? You would interrupt the operations of this colony and threaten my people without being one hundred percent certain that you have the right people? The right ship?”

“Shut up!” Lanky whined. “You’re just stalling! Once that man is here, he’ll let us into his ship so we can wrap this up. No more interruptions! Doctor, go back to the others and wait for instructions.”

I saw my mom’s shoulders perk up. “Damn, we can’t let her go,” she said under her breath.

“Everyone listen up,” Lanky spoke up as if talking to his walkie-talkie. “Don’t trust anybody on this planet. I’m sending the doctor back to the ship. Make sure she gets there. Bugan, where is the human?”

My mom jerked up to her feet and jumped out into the lobby. “Dr. Pois! We won’t let you go! Sakura, we outnumber them!”

“Amelia, why are you still here?” Sakura hissed back.

I braved poking my head out around the corner. I spotted Lanky, in one hand his walkie-talkie and in the other an energy pistol, moving back and forth between my mom and the Overseer.

I nearly fell over but Terren held me by my collar. He shook his head at me when I turned back.

“Who needs numbers when you can persuade people in other ways?” Lanky chuckled. “Hands up, woman. Doctor, you may get going.”

I wanted to run out there and tackle him. I grasped my hands into tight balls. Terren grabbed my shoulder and whispered in my ear despite my wriggling. “Sola, please. We need to just go. Mom knows what she’s doing. If we’re quick, maybe we can take off…”

I heard a crackle from my mom’s pocket all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, Amelia.”

“Whose voice is that?” Lanky said, jutting his weapon at my mom. “Answer!”

I heard my Dad’s voice continue. “It’s me they want. Me, and the Ora. And I can’t let this technology fall into the wrong hands. Sakura, keep my family safe, okay?”

A familiar whine came to my ears. I crept out of Terren’s grasp again and knelt around the corner to look out the lobby windows. Sure enough, the Ora’s cockpit lights had lit up, accompanied by the glow from the takeoff thrusters.

Lanky stared agape out the window and yanked his walkie-talkie up to his face. “I don’t know who you have, but it’s not Umburter! He’s in their ship, about to take off! Get up there and SHOOT HIM OUT OF THE SKY!”

Before I could blink, Sakura was behind Lanky, chopping the gun out of his hand and throwing him across her back and to the ground with a thump and a grunt of pain.

“Nice moves, Sakura!” My mom praised, running to kick the weapon away and step on the walkie-talkie in his weakened grasp.

“Do… what you want… with me!” Lanky said through gasps. “My crew knows what they need… to do.”

“Go!” Sakura said, leaning down on Lanky’s chest. “Get yourselves to safety.”

Terren and I rushed out after my mom. The Ora was just pushing up into the sky. The bigger ship was powering up with a roaring hum.

“Jeff!” Mom yelled into her communicator. “We’re okay down here! Jump to warp as soon as you can! Or they’re going to blow up the ship with you on it!”

The communicator was silent. The lights of the Ora were beginning to blend in with the stars above in the night sky. With a deafening hiss, the bigger ship pushed off the ground with a violent twist to follow Dad’s trajectory.

“Go, Dad, go!” I said, jumping up and down, hands in tight balls.

“Can he even make it to warp at this distance?” asked Terren, eyes locked to the sky.

“He’s got to clear the atmosphere,” Mom said, eyes closed tight. “But he’s a good pilot. He can do this.”

I jumped up and down, watching as the bad guys’ ship roared into the low atmosphere. Its boosters glowed and flared as it tried to make up the distance. I almost couldn’t watch. The high-pitched hum of something charging cut through the cold night air.

“Get out of there, Jeff,” groaned Mom, her fist to her mouth.

“Go, Dad, go!” chanted Terren.

The bad guys’ ship launched its payload. It sounded like a crash of a drum, but without any reverberation. It shot off into the sky with a red glow before seeming to disappear. The three of us nearly breathed a sigh of relief, but before we could draw in an ounce of breath, the sudden blue explosion tore across the sky. A half second later, I heard the crash which shook the air.

Mom dropped to her knees. Terren tried to catch her but she simply fell through his grasp. I don’t remember what I thought, but I couldn’t help but lean across her shoulder, my heart in my stomach and the blast still ringing in my ears.

Mom leaned on her knees and fumbled with the communicator in her hands. She pressed at the screen and tried to talk into it, her voice raspy and full of regret. “Jeff, Jeff… tell me you made it out of there.”

Terren grabbed my mom’s arm, his head shaking. “He’s… probably out of range… now… if he did make it.”

No Space for Family [Chapter 26]

So there we were, running back into the arms of the lovely and cool colony overseer Sakura Ishii. Those are Grandma’s words, not mine. I think she didn’t think my dad had a plan. We had hurriedly packed up into our day bags, and off me and my mom and my brother went to the colony’s administration building.

The three of us pushed through the doors, holding what probably seemed like days’ worth of supplies and making enough racket to match. Not a moment later, a set of automatic lights came on and out walked the plump green lady from before.

“Oh… to what do we owe the visit… at this hour?”

My mom smiled a big smile and presented herself before the desk. “Hey, hi, again. Once more, I apologize for the intrusion. I’d like to see if Sakura is available.”

The woman twisted up her wrinkled face and nodded. “In person, I’m assuming? Huh, I’m sure we had our technical people get a radio connection to your craft the last time you came.”

“Seems the airwaves are… finicky today,” sighed my mom. “Please, we need to see her.”

The green lady shook her head and tapped away at her computer systems. “Madame Ishii currently isn’t answering. I would assume she has turned in for the night. May I take a message to relay to her? She will be able to access it at her earliest convenience.”

I saw my mom fidgeting, probably thinking up another lie to not make everyone panic. Terren was at the far side of the lobby there on the ground floor, looking out through the wide corner window to the Ora sitting lifelessly under the meager orange lights cast across the tarmac.

“What do you think Dad has planned?” I asked, creeping up behind my brother.

Terren shrugged. “It might be a good idea to lift off from here, we’ll be sitting ducks. Hide the Ora in a more secluded part of the planet. He mentioned running off to the flight control station on the other side of the tarmac to talk to the folks there, probably to see if they knew a place.”

“Dad would just lift off on his own and leave us here?”

Terren clicked his tongue and shrugged sadly. “I don’t want him to get hurt… or worse, but… he would risk it if he had to. But he won’t get himself hurt.”

“Or worse,” I repeated.

Terren slid back and patted my head. “Right. I heard him also talking to Grandma. About what she could do if she had to do something.”

“More than she usually could?” I asked, the gears in my head turning. “What if… she flew the ship herself?”

Terren shrugged. “I suppose it could work with the right connections, but… do you really think she would agree to that, flying all alone?” he declared with a chuckle.

“Or she could get all in the systems and booby trap the whole ship for anyone besides us who wanted to get in. It’s like that old Earth movie from a long time ago, where the boy gets left by himself at home.”

“You’ve watched way too many of those movies, kiddo.”

“Hey,” clapped my mom from the reception desk. She was pointing to the elevator off to the side. “We’re being let inside. Best behavior.”

“Of course.”

“Yes, Mom.”

We ended up all packed in the boxy lift with all of our things. That Sakura woman was waiting for us as the doors opened. She looked us up and down as my mom pushed Terren out first.

“Pardon me,” said my brother lowly.

“Don’t tell me,” sighed the Overseer, looking into my mom’s eyes. “A family dispute? I mean, I don’t see Jefferson anywhere.”

Mom held up her finger. “First off, no. Second, can we do this someplace a little more private?”

Sakura pursed her lips and urged Terren down the hall in front of her. “To my office yet again.”

I shifted the strap of my bag around my shoulder and followed off after everyone else.

“Little Terren, all grown up, I see,” reminisced Sakura as my brother glanced back for guidance to the correct room.

He smiled a fake smile back at her. “Apologies if I don’t quite remember much about back then.”

The Overseer shrugged. “Don’t worry, I won’t say one of those embarrassing older people things like how I changed your diaper before. Which I haven’t, mind you. Right there, the corner office.”

“You never were quite interested in the idea of kids,” said my mom back. “Any of that stuff.”

Sakura took point to open the door to her office and allow us in one by one. “You’re right. Which is strange considering that older folks can end up needing as much care as little children. Diapers included. So… Amelia, I’m assuming you’re anticipating getting your mother into our care, is that it?”

My mom stopped by the door and pulled the handle out of the Overseer’s hand to shut it on her own. “Not quite. I need you to listen. I kind of… lied before.”

Sakura exited the doorway and took a seat behind her desk. She glanced out the corner window to where our ship had settled. Terren helped me set down our bags while also watching the landing platform and the dim sky.

“Lied? What possibly could you have lied about?” Asked the Overseer like she wasn’t surprised.

“It was for a good reason,” I blurted out.

Mom scowled at me before sitting down in the visitor’s seat, crossing one leg over the other. “Let’s see, I think it was about the people that were here for us… that they wanted something back. Well, the truth is, we didn’t get it back to them. In fact, they still want it pretty bad, and they’re likely more upset than ever.”

Sakura sighed and rubbed at her brow. “Well, at least you’re not on the run from the law.”

“They do kind of work for a prison,” I pointed out, leaning on the arm of the second chair. “And good guys put bad guys in prison. So…”

“That’s right, Sola,” said my mom, grasping my arm and tugging me around against her leg. “But we’re not sure about the legitimacy of this whole prison thing. We were transporting an AI core meant for them, but it… the AI… divulged that they’re practicing some pretty heinous things there.”

Sakura sat back in her desk chair and stared up at the ceiling. “So you, in your good conscious, decided not to stick around and turn over the AI to them?”

Mom grimaced. “Well, before that, there was an accident. The one that got my mother… in the condition she’s in currently. And the AI took it upon himself to digitize her consciousness and put it in the core, overriding himself in the process. So we couldn’t just…”

The Overseer sat up suddenly and held her hand up. “Wait, so the… AI… I conversed with while in contact with your ship… was actually your mother?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“That explains a couple things.”

Mom huffed a bit. “She didn’t say anything… strange to you, did she?”

“No. But… is there a way to get her back? In her body, that is?”

“Yes, well there’s a doctor but she might be—“

“Hey, Mom,” Terren interrupted, standing up off the side wall. “Before all that, take a look.”

Sakura jumped up out of the seat and stood at the window where me and my mom joined. “Is that your doctor?”

The jets from a ship’s landing boosters were shimmering above the tarmac not far from our own ship. It was probably a bit bigger than the Ora and looked like some sort of transport ship, probably not with a bunch of weapons.

Terren hummed. “Were you expecting anyone else, Overseer? Because no doctor would pilot a ship like that.”

No Space for Family [Chapter 25]

I was calling for my dad on the way to the cockpit, but Mom intercepted me in the kitchen first. “What’s up? Did the door explode or something?” she said with a chuckle.

“All’s green up here, Sola,” Dad said back. “No blown fuses, either. How’s it look?”

“There’s something being… delivered,” I announced, standing there in the door between the cockpit and the common room.

“Huh, like what?” asked Dad, leaning up to the window in the direction of the colony structures.

Mom leaned over me, poking her head inside as well. “They were clear they didn’t have anything to spare. Mom?”

“Yes, my love?” Grandma responded.

“This isn’t anything to do with you, is it?”

“I didn’t ask for anything. What would I even need for?”

Dad grumbled. “And no messages came in, either?”

“Now I didn’t say that,” Grandma admitted.

“So one did,” Mom groaned. “Mom, why wouldn’t you let us know about something like that?”

“Well, it came from Sakura, and I’m pretty sure bringing her up again wasn’t going to lighten the mood here.”

“Mom!” Hissed my mom. “She’s our one and only connection here. She may have been alerting us to something. You didn’t just block her, did you?”

“Of course not. I answered, was quite nice, didn’t let her know that I’m actually a person stuck in the shell of a computer, and I even recorded her message.”

“Yeah, if you could play that for us now, that’d be lovely, Aida,” Dad begged.

“Got it.”

“To the lovely Amelia and family,” began Sakura’s message. “I apologize if I was a little short earlier. I’d love to talk to you some more before you leave, even if it is just for business. I did manage to pull a few strings and get one of our spare cryopods that you asked for. I’ll have someone wheel it out to your ship, along with one of our nurses to do a checkup on your mother. Thank you, that is all.”

“That must be a cryopod for Grandma!” I celebrated. “Does that mean… I can get my room back sometime?”

“It means,” sighed Dad,” we can get Aida’s body into proper medical care and healed up so we can put her consciousness back into it. If that’s even possible. The bedroom situation… that might be a while longer.”

I lowered my head. “That’s what I was expecting.”

Dad stood up out of the pilot’s seat. “Well, I don’t want to leave Terren hanging again outside. They might need help getting the cryo pod into the cargo bay.”

“Hold on now, I was never told about this,” Grandma interjected as Dad slid out. “Where is my body going to go from here? What happened to medical standards and asking consent for all these different operations?”

“I don’t think we have another option, Mom,” said my Mom. “Technically you’re physically incapacitated and in our care. And not many people besides Dr. Pois know about your consciousness being active and detached from your body. This is how we have to do it if you want your body back.”

“And to be able to get hugs from all of us,” I added.

“Well if you didn’t know the magic words, Sola,” sighed Grandma.

“Besides all that,” Mom continued, guiding me out of the cockpit with her, “I don’t think that storage room was ever going to keep you long term, as good of a job as Jeff did to convert it to a fridge for your body.”

I heard the voices of my dad and brother and someone else from the cargo bay. I rushed ahead of my mom to get there first. As I stepped into the doorway, I saw what all the commotion was.

The stranger was in nurse clothing at the back of the big bubble-like device. It was on wheels but it looked heavy nonetheless. The bottom part had lots of ports and vents, and the top was like a big uncomfortable bed with a long clear tube-shaped enclosure that was slightly fogged up. My dad and brother were at the other end, trying to get the bulky rolling appliance through the confines of the cargo bay.

“I don’t think it will fit,” said the strange nurse woman, hands on her hips at the back of the cryopod.

“Maybe Gran—Aida can run a simulation for the best path to get it through the arrays,” I suggested loudly.

Dad glanced back at me. “Uh, let’s maybe spare the AI for a bit. Nurse, we can just carry the body out. She’s already frozen stiff in our makeshift cold room here.”

The nurse sighed and slithered around the stuck contraption and joined my dad. “I’ll have you know I’m very confused. Is this person alive or not? The Overseer told me she needed a pod, but that the situation wasn’t an emergency– that the patient was alive. You’re aware what these are for, correct?”

“Don’t worry,” Dad nodded and loaded more lies into his barrel. “She… is suffering a rare disease, and… also has some major frostbite. It was a… malfunction in our original cooling systems. She has been on ice to keep the… disease from progressing. Don’t worry either, we have a specialist doctor coming who knows exactly what needs to be done to treat her.”

The nurse shook her head. “And while suffering this rare disease, she decided to make the trek all the way out here?”

“It’s hard to tell my mother-in-law no sometimes,” grinned my dad.

I felt my mom standing behind me. I glanced back and saw her at the doors to what once was my room. With one hand planted on the metal seam at the center, she eventually turned to face my dad and the nurse. “We can help you any way you need. Sola, Terren, go to the command console in the cockpit and listen for us to unlock the door seal.”

I nodded but didn’t move yet. I held my hand against the door beside my mom’s hand. Terren came through and pushed at my back. “Hey, kiddo,” he sighed gently, still ushering me along. “They can’t get Gram out if you’re standing in the way.”

I did as I asked, only looking back a couple of times as we crossed into the common room and onto the cockpit. I settled into the pilot’s seat with a sigh.

“Don’t worry,” Terren said comfortingly, standing in the doorway with arms stretched out to either side of the frame. “After we get Gram back on her feet, in her real body, I’ll help you fix up your room… get it even better than it was before.”

The still-digitized grandma interjected as I nodded and looked at the control panel. “I’d hope it would be fixed up for my physical form at the very least. I’ll need a place to sleep on my way back to Chandra that isn’t an icy cold box like the room is right now.”

“We’ll get right on that once you get better, Gram,” Terren chuckled. “And then you’ll get your own room back, Sola.”

I nodded but didn’t feel any better. I heard my mom’s voice call out from the back of the ship. “Kids, open the doors for us, would you?”

I pushed the button to release the seal. There was a low hiss down in the belly of the ship. I glanced back to Terren, still standing in the door. “You don’t think Dad will get into trouble, though?”

“That’s what’s got you down?” Shrugged my brother. “Get in trouble for what, exactly?”

“For… hurting Grandma. For letting an AI take her thoughts and consciousness and store it all away. And then lie all about it.”

Terren scoffed and chuckled, leaning his head down. “Sola, we’ve dodged space mines and almost had our systems hacked, our door torn off, we even ejected people off into space with not a care for their well-being. Everything that’s happened with Grandma here has been a result of… dire situations. You know, I think in the grand scheme of things, we could probably be lying more.”

“You wouldn’t know the beginning of it, Sola,” Grandma interjected. “Well, me neither for that matter. I don’t know what white lies your parents might have told you over the years. But that’s just the ordinary stuff that parents do to protect their kid’s innocence.”

“Of course, Gram,” Terren said with a click of his tongue.

“Let me finish. Sola, I don’t hold anything against your father for any of this. Unless I miss out on the inheritance that my deceased husband and that lawyer of mine owe me.”

“Mom, you can’t be serious,” interrupted my mom, flicking Terren’s arm out of the way so she could enter into the cockpit. “You’re still on this?”

“Just joking with the kids.”

Mom sat across from me in the copilot’s seat, looking over the control panel. “Well, there goes your body, Mom. Maybe we’ll just leave it here and I’ll collect that inheritance myself. Remind me, this last husband of yours didn’t have any kids of his own I’d need to split it with?”

Grandma hissed, almost making the speakers sound like they had broken. “Don’t you dare even joke about something like that, Amelia Mary Ankern!”

Dinner that night was kind of normal but also kind of quiet. I was almost happy when the quiet clinking of dishes and utensils was interrupted by Grandma announcing something. “We’re getting a message from here on the planet.”

Mom jumped up instinctively. “Must be Sakura.”

“Look at how quickly she jumped up,” my dad said with a wink to the both of us.

Mom growled and rolled her eyes. “Shush, maybe she has an update on my mom.”

“It’s a different frequency than before,” Grandma added.

“Put it through to the cockpit,” instructed my mom, slithering away into the front of the ship.

I crept into the doorway to listen in. “Amelia, did you get my message?” said the overseer’s voice. “About me sending the cryopod your way?”

“I… yeah, I checked our system shortly after the nurse and pod came our way.”

Sakura giggled. “Ah, well, of course, it’s silly for me to have asked. Either way, we have your mother under our care and watch now.”

“Thanks again, Sakura.”

“And I must mention, I never would have guessed that a ship as small as yours would have had such an advanced and… non-linearly thinking AI aboard. If she has the capacity to accept it, I’d like to give her my thanks for the nice talk.”

Mom narrowed her eyes and stared up at the ceiling as if she were shooting lasers from her face and into the systems grandma was inhabiting. “I’ll let her know.”

“Is she… is your AI a creation of your husband?”

“Something like that,” sighed my mom, loafing back into the seat.

“I knew Jefferson was a special one.”

“Good thing he isn’t here to hear that, or it would go to his head.”

They both chuckled. Mom patted at the side of her face. “Well, we’re still waiting to hear back about my mother’s treatment, so until then, just… make sure she stays on ice. I let the nurse know all that stuff, of course.”

“Oh, right!” Sakura exclaimed back. “I… got distracted. We’ve perhaps heard back from your… liaison who you said was on their way here. He should be landing here in an hour or two, we’ll gladly offer her a landing spot.”

I felt my dad’s big hand suddenly on my shoulder. I looked up at him as he made eye contact with my mom. They both mouthed at each other the word ‘he’.

“I see,” my mom returned. “Well… we might be off to bed soon. Long day. If they ask anything about us, tell them we will get into contact with them when it’s back to daylight here.”

“Can do, Amelia. Wish your family good night for me.”

My mom hovered her hand over the comms panel. “You the same,” she said, terminating the call and turning to face us. “Tell me this. I’ve heard Alpha Standard spoken in a variety of accents, but there’s no way that someone could mistake Dr. Pois for having a masculine voice.”

My dad shrugged. “She could be using a voice mask so nobody traces her communications back to her.”

“We could do that too if we needed to,” I suggested. “I bet Grandma could change her voice to be anyone else’s. One of us, or even a complete stranger.”

“I think I’d get myself scolded again if I pretended to be one of your parents, Sola,” Grandma replied. “Jeff, don’t you think it could be one of those baddies pretending to be the good doctor to get landing clearance here.”

“Thank you, Aida,” Dad groaned, “I was going to get to that point next.”

Mom hissed lowly. “We’re sitting ducks just sitting here. Are we space-worthy, Jeff?”

Dad shrugged. “We haven’t done a full cabin pressure test with the newly installed door.”

“Wait!” Grandma added. “You want to try and escape from here? Don’t you forget that my body is no longer in your possession!”

“Mother!” Mom stood up and stomped. “If they blow us up, not a single one of us will get home to see that lawyer of yours. We should at least move the ship.”

Dad rolled his head back and forth in thought. “If we lift off like we’re trying to escape they might zap us on sight. Who knows if they’re already in orbit or something?”

“So what, then, Jeff?” mom said, pushing at his chest.

“I’ve got an idea.”