“What is it?” Mia her assistant asked.
“It’s a scanning computer from the Union ship. I am hoping that it will see what our scanners can’t.” Seo-yun said.
“Just the computer? What about the other equipment?” Mia asked.
“Out scanners are copies of theirs, a bit improved actually, the only thing that is different are our computers, there is a ton of data on each scan, the computers sort it out and present it in a way we can understand, perhaps there is something that our computers are overlooking, because we haven’t programed them to recognize it.” She said.
Seo-yun felt that she was right.
“They are done Seo-yun.” Mia said, referring to the loading of the scanner.
“Good, tell the Ship Master that we can get underway at his leisure, I will be in the lab.” She said, the science ship Insight, was the only one of its class, at least for now, there were plans to make more, but there was always something else that needed to be done. And now with half the fabricators working to help fleet expansion on Thanatos, it will be at least another year before they could start building more. The ship itself was unimpressive on the outside, it looked exactly like most other Olympus ships, its hull was grayish, and was shaped like an elongated box with soft corners, though Insight had much more sensitive sensors and telescopes than any other ship, and a state of the art labs, where the science crew could do their research. It didn’t have weapons, only two laser emitters for clearing out debris. It was equipped with two shuttles for missions, and of course an FTL comm.
Seo-yun entered the lab and sat at her holodesk, bringing up the data from the earlier scans.
“Have you found something in the earlier scans?” Seo-yun asked Luna.
“Not in the thousand times I have read through them.” Luna answered.
“I’m sorry, I’m just excited.”
“I know, I can monitor your vitals.”
“Are you sure that there isn’t anything in the data that jumped out at you?” Seo-yun asked.
She could hear Luna sigh. “Seo-yun, you have been in charge of our creation, you should now that the Ai’s that you created have been ‘growing up’ with you, we can’t know more than you do, we can only calculate faster, or process more data. When I see that data, I see the same things a human would.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just frustrating, I know that there is supposed to be something there, and yet we can’t find it.” Seo-yun apologized.
She closed the files pertaining to the translanes, and opened her queue, there was still a lot of work to be done.
“Anything out of the ordinary?” Seo-yun asked, they had arrived at the coordinates where the Union ship entered the system, and had been scanning for the past hour. First with the computers they built, but when that failed to produce anything, they hooked up the Union computer and were now analyzing the data.
“Not yet, I’m still getting used to the Union programing structure.” Luna said over the ship speakers. She was connected to the ship’s computers via Seo-yun’s implant. They were on the bridge, with Seo-yun’s assistant Mia, three more scientists and the Ship Master and his crew.
“Alright then.” Seo-yun said. She remained silent while Luna worked. She could analyze the data much faster than a human could.
“I found something.” Luna said 15 minutes later. “It was under a secondary protocol, so I didn’t see it immediately. It is detecting some particles, untranslatable to our language, or at least we don’t have a translation for that word.”
“Great!” Seo-yun said excitedly. “Alright people, I want a detailed analysis of the data. Get to work.” She said. Finally, Seo-yun thought, Another Union puzzle we solved.
Chapter Six
Sanctuary orbit – Olympia station
Elias Bakas, head of the Olympus Army Corp, sat in his office. He was waiting for Seo-yun. The insight had arrived at the station just a few minutes earlier. She was on her way to Olympus city, but Elias had insisted that she meets with him before going down to the planet. He needed to talk with her about Tomas, they needed to do something about him. He had shut himself in his office, and his people were already starting to comment on the fact that no one has seen him in public in a while.
A few minutes later Seo-yun entered his office, he stood and walked up to her greeting her by kissing her cheek.
“You really need to visit me more often Seo-yun, I barely see you once every few months. And you were just going to pass without saying hello.” Elias said with a soft smile.
Seo-yun grimaced. “I’m sorry Elias, there is just too much work to be done.”
“That’s okay, I understand. I am busy as well, but that doesn’t mean that I forget my friends. A call from time to time won’t interrupt you too much.” Elias said, his smile growing. He guided Seo-yun to a couch and took a seat across.
“I’ll try.” She said.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“No thank you Elias.”
“Alright then, I hear that you are on a verge of another great discovery, even faster space travel?” Elias asked.
“Yes, well we are on the right path. But there is still a lot of work to be done. We have gathered all the data, now we need to make sense of it.”
“I know you will.” Elias said, and then grew silent and looked at Seo-yun, finally his expression grew serious and he spoke. “Well, the reason I asked you here, was to ask you about Tomas.”
“What about Tomas.” Seo-yun said, her expression guarded.
“You know that he had not been the same since we came here. Since the Cloud station.” Elias said.
“He was hit hard with what happened, we all were.” Seo-yun said.
“We were, but we moved on. He is stuck back there. He rarely goes home, he is closing himself off. I barely managed to convince him to meet me for lunch at his home 10 days ago. He surrounds himself with reports in his office, and he rarely leaves it.”
“I know, but what do you want me to do? I can’t order him out.”
Elias’s expression softened. “Seo-yun, we have known each other for a long time. You are one of my closest friends. You know, you must know.” Elias said, looking at her eyes.
Seo-yun averted her eyes, and remained silent.
“I tried to snap him out of it, but he won’t listen to me. He will listen to you.”
“I don’t know. He never did anything, in all these years.” Seo-yun said uncomfortably.
Elias laughed. “He is a man, we are all stupid like that.”
A corner of Seo-yun’s mouth lifted into a crooked smile. “That you are.” She said.
She looked at Elias for a moment before nodding. “Alright I’ll go see him.”
“So you are finally going to ‘talk’ to Tomas?” Luna said. Seo-yun was in a transport, going back to her home from Olympia.
“What do you mean finally?” Seo-yun said.
“C’mon, I might not be human, but I am not stupid.” Luna said.
“I hope not, if you were, then we would have failed, and I would’ve had to scrap you.” Seo-yun said.
“Funny.” Luna said sarcastically. “But I’m glad that you finally decided to take initiative.”
Seo-yun felt lighter than she had in years. Just the decision to talk to Tomas had already made her feel better. “So am I.”
She started reading the reports while she waited to arrive home. There were still things that needed to be done.