“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” I whispered to Luka, sliding into the chair next to his. I’d spent half the night cramming, overslept, and had barely made it in time.
Luka just shook his head.
Our instructor from the last two days was absent. Pierce was an imposing presence at the head of the room, arms crossed like a bouncer. His eyes followed me as I slid into my seat, the last one in.
Instead of our usual instructor, Mr. Crane entered the lecture hall. Everyone shifted in their chairs, sitting up straighter. “A few announcements,” Crane said, without so much as a greeting. “Everyone’s swabs came back clear. Tomorrow morning, all of you will move into quarantine in preparation for launch. Tonight, there will be a short cocktail party for some of our investors. Gupta, Kereselidze, you are excused from this event. In fact, Gupta, directly after this lecture, report to Exam Room 2C for an individual assessment.”
I furrowed my brow at Luka, wondering what new surprise they could possibly have waiting for me. But before Luka could offer any hypothesis, the door opened, and the last person I ever expected to see again walked into the room.
Hanna Schulz looked different than when I’d last seen her, pale and shaking in the locker room. She sported the same sleek ponytail, but now she was wearing makeup and a black blazer over a white button-down and black pants. She faced us serenely—almost defiantly—her shoulders square and chin high. She looked ten years older. Nothing of that defeated girl remained.
“You all remember Hanna Schulz, one of our more promising candidates from the selection phase.” My mouth gaped, but Mr. Crane continued. “I plucked her from the competition because I believed her skills could be put to better use on the ground crew. She’ll be observing you while under quarantine and reporting your progress directly to me. Our accelerated training schedule means we have much to do in little time. It is imperative everyone is performing at their peak in time for launch.”
So she hadn’t been kicked out because of her claustrophobia? What sort of skills could Hanna possibly have that were so valuable to a man like Crane, who could afford the best of the best in every field?
“When will that be?” Bolshakov asked.
Crane turned steely eyes on him. “When you need to know that, commander, I will tell you.”
With a brisk nod he left. Hanna stayed put. She surveyed us all coolly, and then slid into a seat in the front row.
Luka and I took our turns on the EEG, as usual. For the first time, Luka appeared to have some success with it. I flashed him a little thumbs-up and a smile. Maybe I’d actually been able to pay him back for all the times he’d helped me.
But he didn’t appear as happy as I expected. He returned my smile politely, but still seemed troubled.
Hanna stayed for the entire class. When it ended, she stood by her chair and waited for the rest of us to file out.
I paused in front of her. “Nice to see you again,” I ventured, though that was stretching the truth. “I guess we’ll be working together.”
There was almost a smile on her lips. “Don’t worry, Cass, I’m not here to compete for your precious spot. Mr. Crane needs me on the ground.”
“Why?”
Now the smile brightened; she had clearly been hoping I would ask. “That’s on a need-to-know basis,” she said, brushing past me toward our instructor, who seemed to be waiting for her at his desk. “And you don’t need to know.”
“Close your eyes.”
I did. The chill tickle of electrodes slid through my hair as the tech fitted the helmet over my head. She checked to make sure the helmet was secure, the electrodes placed correctly.
Exam Room 2C was a nondescript gray box of a room, with what I was fairly certain was a two-way mirror on one wall. I was reclined in a dentist’s chair beside a large, whirring machine, my pulse thumping in my wrists, goose bumps breaking out across my skin.
The tech assisted me with the helmet, specially fitted with dozens of tiny wires just like the one I’d wear during our voyage asleep in the HHMs. The helmet directly connected me with the computer that would monitor our vitals during flight.
I was given little instruction. Only that I was to go into my meditative state and attempt to make connection with the computer. When I asked how, the tech only shook her head.
“This is a new area of science,” the tech said. “The brain is a complex organ, and each has its own unique makeup of neural connections. You must discover your own way to connect to the computer.”
Over the speaker, Pierce’s voice: “Whenever you’re ready, Gupta.”
Inside the helmet my hearing was deadened, my peripheral vision gone. With my eyes closed, it was actually easier to disconnect from physical sensations—the cool steel of the chair, the heavy weight of the helmet over my head, the sound of my own breathing echoing inside the helmet, the vaguely electric smell of plastic—and went to the now-familiar space in my mind. I heard only the distant mechanical whoosh of the machine, until that, too, became nothing.
The place I went to in my meditative state was bland and quiet, a void with little else beyond a distant consciousness of melody that blended into a constant refrain that ebbed in and out of focus.
But this time when I faded away, I didn’t go entirely away. I felt a thin connection to conscious thought, an awareness of being watched. The awareness of something else aware of me.
Something else was there in the quiet of my consciousness. I searched for it but it kept away from me, always at the edge of my awareness, making me wonder if it was really there at all.
I stopped chasing the feeling. It didn’t go away. Instead, I formed a thought, aimed it, as though I were calling out hesitantly to an empty room: Hello?
The awareness flickered. Strengthened. Its attention focused on me like a laser. There was no response, but had I really expected one?
Instead of trying to communicate again, I simply tried to make myself more visible, more open. Here I am. See me.
I repeated the mantra as long as I could maintain the openness of my mind, to no response. But the awareness was stronger now, more of a concrete presence. It was also somehow closer. If this wasn’t all happening in my mind, I could’ve sworn I might have been able to reach out and touch it.
But then it was gone, a pulled plug, and even in my reduced state I felt the nauseating swoop of failure.
“That’s enough, Gupta. You can come out of it now.”
I swam back to the surface of consciousness. The electrodes retracted and I shivered at the removal of my helmet. Cold white lights suddenly brightened the room, blinding me as I realized the tiny lab was now full of people.
Blinking away the spots, I eventually recognized the stern outline of Colonel Pierce and the smaller, only slightly less stern figure of Hanna. A tech was removing the heart-rate monitor and unstrapping the various other devices that had been monitoring my vitals. Four or five others in white coats were looking at the digital readouts from the computer and whispering to themselves.
“You did well, Gupta,” Pierce said. There was disbelief in his eyes.
Hanna was watching me with curious concern, her tablet poised on her arm as if she were a reporter taking notes. “How do you feel?”
“A little groggy. But fine.”
“Do you remember being aware at all?”
“I remember being aware. I remember something being aware of me.”
Hanna’s stylus froze above her tablet. The white coats stopped their whispering and looked at me.
“Is . . . that bad?” I asked, a worm of anxiety twisting through my chest.
The white coats smiled.
“No. It confirms what we saw on our end,” Hanna said, touching her stylus to her tablet a few times, then looking back at me. She actually looked happy. “It’s exactly what we had hoped.”
One of the white coats explained. “This is the first time you were connected to the supercomputer. Your semiconscious state must have felt the connection and relayed it to you as a sense of being watched. Your brain was, in fact, directly connected with the computer. It interfaced with your bioelectricity.”
Someone was slowly clapping, the noise quieting everyone in the room. Crane strode through the crowd, the sea of white coats parting for him like repelling magnets. “Congratulations, Cassandra. You’ve just shown us you’re able to form a direct neural link with the computer. Something that precious few test subjects have achieved.”
The words test subject made me narrow my eyes. “It didn’t feel like I did much of anything.”
“It’s good news,” Hanna assured me. “It’s just what we wanted to happen. This is only the first step, making the connection. You have no idea how many thousands of trials haven’t been able to get this far. Cassie, this is the reason why we need you. Older people, even our established astronauts, they can’t form this type of connection. Not to the level you’ve shown today.”
“No, they cannot.” Crane’s closed-mouth smile was tight. He was thrilled—triumphant, even, but trying not to show it. He addressed a group of scientists to his left. “It’s too early to tell if this was a complete success. We’ll need more attempts. Gupta will need time and practice to refine the connection. And we have exposed her only to the beta version of the software. The full potential of the neural link may not be known until she interfaces with Sunny in her whole form.”
I gave Hanna a “what the hell is he talking about” glare. She waited for visual permission from Crane before she answered. “Sunny is the nickname we’ve given to PROPHET, the supercomputer that will be installed aboard the ship. There’s only one, and she’s on board Odysseus, so you’re practicing with a less powerful version—an earlier prototype. She will monitor the crew while in flight as well as perform a multitude of other functions: autopilot, recording scientific data, and so forth.”
“Our little joke,” Crane said, not at all looking like a man who could tell a joke. “Sunny is solar-powered. Well, photon-powered, to be precise, as solar power will have little importance on an interstellar journey.”
“You calling a computer she is a little disconcerting.”
“Sunny is as intelligent as a young human child,” Crane said. “Theoretically, of course—intelligence is such a difficult thing to measure. We don’t typically think of children as intelligent; the lack of impulse control, attention span, and basic knowledge of the world tend to cloud their true potential. But in the capacity to learn? The ability to process data and extrapolate it into new conclusions, to solve problems? Sunny is as near to human intelligence as we have yet achieved.”
I tried to find the sense of triumph and elation everyone around me seemed to feel. And there was a sense of accomplishment. But it was overshadowed by apprehension. What was I getting myself into, directly connecting my brain to a supercomputer? A prototype supercomputer. Nobody else had done this before—that meant no one knew the risks. What might happen to me when they finally connected me to the real Sunny?
Everything about this felt rushed. Research half finished, hypotheses half tested, results unknown. I was their experiment.
I reminded myself I was already a product of human experimentation, from my very conception. Science had given me life. Maybe this was my turn to give to science. Was I really going to let untested science keep me from my lifelong dream?
Maybe this was my destiny.
My reservations shifted into resolve.
Two techs helped me to my feet. I took one step on my own.
“I’m fine,” I told them.
They released me, and I promptly lost consciousness.