1:1:10 Silus (Part 1)

Limping. Char too had now sustained a minor injury to her lower back although she was certainly playing up its affects. She smiled as she finally finished her journey to the cabin section. There was a whirring noise that slowly died as the orbital engines disengaged leaving them riding their inertia as they left the planet’s gravity; the engines finally died with a shudder, shaking the cabin just enough to cause Lore concern.
They sighed. “Have I told you how much I hate shuttle travel?”
“I… I don’t think you’ve ever told me but I have multiple memories of a few Lores telling various Chars.” Char chuckled.
“That’s a point… What memories do you have?” Lore rifled through their bag.
“It’s basically what you got but more me.” She smiled. “Early life, the academy, the war, meeting you… that’s about it.” She paused. “Oh and the mission.”
“You saw what the Oracle showed me?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I got a crudely drawn slide show of that memory hosted by a version of you.” She dropped into a monotone drone and put on a severe face. “Here we see the walls of the universe being destroyed by an unknown purple fissure monster from gods only know where.” She imitated the slide being changed. “And now you see the universe is gone and the purple monster is still present and the only thing that will survive this apocalypse.”
Lore couldn’t help rolling their eyes at the, admittedly rather accurate, impression. Their look of distain quickly evaporated as a second jolt indicated that the sub-light engines kicked in.
“It’s alright.” Char moved slightly closer but left enough room so that they weren’t touching. Lore nodded and she moved closer. “Better?” She tentatively put an arm around Lore. Again, they nodded. “We’ve got a couple hours before we get there. How do you want to spend the time?”
“We could… Hold on. Did you do the pre-flight checks? How long had the fuel cells been sitting?” Lore was beginning to spiral. Char sat silently as they wore themselves out. She just smiled.
“I honestly don’t know why you’d ever keep that memory.” She hoisted herself up and knocked on the conduit above them. A hollow metallic sound rang out confusing both of them. “That’s the orbital stabiliser.” She nodded before hitting the next conduit in line. This time it sloshed with a dull ring. “Safe as houses. And this is a fabricator enhanced system, it cycles itself so it doesn’t matter how long you leave it, as long as you’ve got an energy source, it’ll start.” Char gestured to the fabricator panel. “Drink?”
Lore’s eyes narrowed as they smiled. There was a childlike cheekiness behind it. “Just a small bottle of water please.” They waggled their brows. Char rolled the small, aluminium bottle over to them. Lore cracked it open and inhaled its contents. They replaced the cap and laid it on the floor. Lore leant over the bottle and tapped the floor opposite them.
“You know, this barely works with a group. It’s going to be a touch awkward with just the two of us.” She turned back to the fabricator and searched its databases. “Thinking about memories, I wonder if you’re as lucky as your progenitor.” She threw a deck of cards at the bottle.
“What’s the game?” Lore swept away their bottle and opened the deck. They discarded the top three cards as per usual and placed the rest near where they wanted Char to sit. “And what’s that noise?”
“What buzzing?”
“There’s a faint buzzing coming from that conduit over there.” Lore pointed at the piping above the landing ramp. ”What if we’re leaking plasma?”
“Into space? It’ll cool into oxygen and water and eventually freeze onto the conduit itself and hey, problem solved.”
“But until then? What happens when we’ve depleted the tanks or the pressure drops too low.” Lore was on the verge of hyperventilation. “And how did an idle ship get a ruptured conduit?”
Char virtually dived at them, wrapping them in her arms. “Darling, it’s going to be absolutely fine.” She cradled them in her arms. She lowered her voice slightly, making her tone more relaxing. “And the Fabricator has more than enough water in reserve for the engines.” “This is nice.” Lore purred. “Thank you.” They lingered in one another’s embrace.
“I wonder how much of this is them?” Char pulled away. “I’m sorry.” She moved away, sitting with the cards, and began shuffling.
“From what I’ve seen, not a lot.” Lore got up and refilled their bottle. “From what I remember, there was no reason we… they should have even stayed together. In fact, they nearly broke up when they got arrested on Terra Three.”
“Nearly. Nearly arrested. It was just a caution after Char slipped the officer a few Rel.” She chuckled, looking at her cards.
“I think I’m looking at another difference right now.” Lore looked at their two cards. “Stay.”
“Is that an order?”
“No. I don’t want any more cards.” They looked at her beaming face confused. “Oh, you were joking.”
“That’s new too.” Char took another card from the deck. She looked again at her hand, then at her actual hands, counting her total on her fingers before slamming the cards onto the floor. “Bust!” She gathered the cards and began dealing again.
Lore looked at their hand and, once again, they were pleasantly surprised. “Hit.” The third card still saw them well under the threshold. “Another?” Four cards and they were still in the game.
“Seriously? You sure? That’s looking like a dangerous hand.” Char chuckled nervously.
“I suppose I like to live dangerously.” Lore gestured for a fifth card.
“Your funeral.” She handed over the last card. Lore’s smile remained.
“I think I’ll stay here.”
Char looked at her own cards. In the excitement, she had neglected them. “I think I’ll stay too.”
Together, they revealed their cards. Char looked down at her own pair totalling twenty then to Lore’s in amazement as she saw that theirs barely broke ten. She shook her head. Lore pretended to rake in their winnings. “Well, it’s been nice but I think I’m going to call it a night there.” They remained with their legs crossed and pushed themselves back slightly.
“Beginners luck.” Char’s head was still shaking as she gathered the cards. There was a series of small pops followed by a very loud bang. Char threw the cards at the fabricator and leapt into action. Lore was firmly adhered to the ceiling as the ship’s Jump drive kicked in. “Come on now.” Lore was like gallium in her hand, frozen solid but quickly melting.
They were silent. They didn’t know why they couldn’t talk or why their heart was beating nearly three times its normal rate but it was. Char’s smile warmed them and seemed to last forever. They were frozen in the moment but that too soon thawed. There were no words exchanged. Char looked at Lore and Lore looked at Char. Then Char took a long look at their surroundings.
“Ah.” They were holding on to her for dear life. “I’m so sorry.” The Quatarrian accents were becoming clearer as she saw past the modifications and original ship became clear. “Too soon?”
Lore nodded.
“I’m going to check the readouts. Do you want to come?”
Again, Lore nodded. Together, they walked the three paces to the bridge. Each one re-opened fresh yet weirdly closed wounds but also brought them back to reality. There was pain but it was gradually becoming easier to manage. “Thank you.”
Char tapped at the console and re-routed the leaky conduit. “That should make the transition back to sub-light smoother. It’ll take a touch longer but, we’ll get there.”
“That’s the difference.” Lore drew in closer. “How much longer?”
“Twenty minutes. Not long.” She paused. “You want to stay here or go back to the cabin?”
“Can we stay here?” They lowered themselves to the floor, this time remembering the lack of seating.
Space was streaming by at unimaginable speeds out of the window. They were travelling at nearly thirty light minutes an hour and they still had an hour left to go so Lore tried their best to settle in.
“You want to talk about it?” Char felt them squeeze her hand just a little bit tighter.
“Why the cubes? I get the mission one. I get the one telling me how ‘I’ met you but, why include the traumatic bits? Why do I need to know what they got up to in some war on some planet… No offence.”
“None taken. Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that before I had my last set of memories given to me, I wasn’t scared of cats. It was a good set of memories but they didn’t need to include that. I’ve never even seen a cat but I know I hate them.”
“You’ve never seen a cat? I’ve got fond memories of a massive black and white one. When this is all over, two thousand and three.”
“I think we’re thinking of the same cat.” Char’s hand re-inflated. “It’ll be nice when this is all over. But, until then, we use what we’ve been given, for better or for worse and we get the job done.”
“I still don’t understand why a fear of flying was necessary.”
Char’s eyes narrowed. “Char loves cats. I only don’t because I saw a memory out of context. You only hate flying because you watched the unedited memory.” She smiled. “I suppose we have no-one to blame but ourselves then. It is interesting, even though we have the same memories of the same experiences, we’re still nothing like them.”
“I wouldn’t know. Never met them.”
“I met a couple of the Lores. I could probably only call one of them nice.”
“Nicer than me?” Lore smiled innocently.
“That remains to be seen.” She smiled back. “You’re certainly a better human. The other Lores were closer to ice sculptures.”
A sudden burst of air shot from Lore’s nose. “I’ll endeavour to break the stereotype then.”
 The remainder of the journey was mostly uneventful and the drop to sub-light which Char had been dreading, was relatively smooth. They were ten minutes from the station and it was finally visible to the naked eye. They watched out of the window as they came closer and closer. Char let go of Lore’s hand and ventured back to the fabricator. She picked up the deck of cards that she had thrown earlier, returned them to the store and requisitioned two thin, plastic rectangles.
“Here we go. We shouldn’t need it but it’s always good to have.” She handed them one of the cards. Printed on it was their name and not much else. “Most of your information is still confidential but ID is ID.” Char shrugged. “We’ll be coming in for dock in a few minutes so get yourself ready.”
“Ready? For what?”

Three minutes later, Lore found out exactly what they were preparing for. There was a series of bangs as the shuttle connected with the station. There was a hiss as the airlock pressurised to allow them to exit. The station they had just connected to was one of two halves; each half was comprised of a habitation saucer measuring over a kilometre in diameter and three hundred metres tall, an engineering ring that was thinner but fatter and a hangar ring at the base. Connecting these three sections, a spine with a series of elevators that ran the one thousand six hundred metres from base to tip. A series of pylons linked the two stations by their habitation saucers, allowing quick shuttles to pass between the two like trains between cities. Lore and Char stepped out of their airlock and onto the station. Surrounded by ships of various sizes but alone, it was a strange welcome but, given that they were not yet in the main attraction of the station, they took it at face value and continued. Again, the lift to the habitation ring was empty, the entire terminal was deserted which set off alarm bells until Char pointed out the displays inside of their lift car.
“Traders bazaar. Oddities and rarities from across the Milky Way and beyond.” She translated. “Thought the other ring looked rather full.”
“That explains why there’s no-one here. Wonder if we could pick anything up.” Lore thought for a moment. “Never mind, we’re skint.”
“I’ve got a few Rel somewhere I think.” Char dug through her pockets and pulled out a handful of cogs of various sizes. “Ten, eleven, eleven twenty, eleven twenty five. Eleven twenty five might get us something good if we haggle.”
“Wait, that’s money everywhere?” Lore started searching their bag.
“ A remnant of a day before humanity. Before humans graced the wider galactic community, there were three great powers. Originally, they were all unified under the Quatarrian Imperium but your lot changed that. The three groups didn’t agree on much but they did believe that it was in the best interest of their subjects that they all used the same currency; so the Quatarrian Pareld became the unified Rel. There are fifty two Tares in a Rel and the Rel’s value is consistent with the value of C-Sixty. A litre of C-Sixty solution is always ten Rel.”
“That’s for the Jump drive isn’t it?”
“It’s for everything. Mix it in with your screen wash to reduce the intensity of Jump travel, solidify it and put it in with your control rods to get back some of the energy your using. I mean, some weirdos drink the stuff. They shouldn’t, the factories aren’t kept dark enough.”
“Would this get us anything? Add it to the pot?” Lore held up the three cogs the barkeep had told them to hide and the one they had rejected.
“Bloody hel.” She nodded. “We won’t be needing to haggle. That takes us to a hundred and fifty six. Nice.”