Page 12 of Bound By Stars
“It’s actually kind of my fault. I gave him some bad news and he took it out on you. Not to say that excuses his behavior.” Skye squeezes my arm reassuringly and glances at her comm. “Gotta go. Nice meeting you, Weslie.”
Asha waves Skye off and takes my hands. “You’re new, and I know everything about everyone. We’re having lunch together.”
My stomach groans on cue.
“Weslie.” Calypso leans out of the classroom door, barely making it without ducking. “Bring your bot in for a minute. We can brainstorm ideas for your journey project.”
I pull away from Asha. “See you around.”
“I’ll wait. It’s no problem.” Asha slips down into a cross-legged seat next to the door. “I don’t have anything to do anyway.” Her eyes light up. “We’ll take a tour after lunch! I memorized the ship’s map before we boarded, but it’s no fun wandering around by myself, and Tarak, Tar, my twin, my identical twin, actually—he looks exactly like me, except with short black hair and no sense of style or self-expression—anyway, he’s never up for exploring.”
“Do you always talk this much?” If I ever had one, I left my social filter on Earth.
Her smile doesn’t falter. “Definitely.”
I huff out a muted laugh.
At least she’s self-aware.
“Guess I’ll be right back, then.” I release a heavy sigh and open the door, waving ILSA in first. “Wish me luck.”
“She’s amazing. No luck needed.”
“This human is very intelligent,” ILSA states.
Seriously, she’s a bot. How did she get so conceited?
…
“ILSA, demo mode: lifesaving protocol.” I lie on the floor between her and Calypso, who’s perched on a stool with their arms crossed and an excited glint in their eye.
The bot reacts by running my vitals and conducting a scan on my skeleton and internal organs, opening to deploy her adjustable stretcher, while I explain each step out loud.
“No evidence of internal damage,” ILSA announces.
I take a deep breath, already tapping alternating fingers to my thumb and silently counting. I always have to close my eyes for this part.
Her rounded hands expand and extend around my head, sealing together to form a pressurized helmet to deploy oxygen. She curves her stretcher to scoop me up. Cradling my dead weight, she pulls me into a temperature-regulated embrace, forming around me like a personal space pod.
“End demo.” My voice is echoey and muffled behind the thick plastic, though she can hear me perfectly from the comm inside the helmet. She releases me gently on my feet. The excess adrenaline still courses through my veins and my breaths come too fast, but I can’t help grinning at the amazed expression on Calypso’s face.
They are nothing like Ms. Kimball, my instructor on Earth, a petite woman with a permanent scowl who only spoke in clipped sentences. Calypso has wide, muscular shoulders, a head shaved clean to their dark, ebony skin, and a squinty-eyed smile that seems to be their natural state.
“She is fully voice controlled, so she can communicate and take instructions from the podded subject. She’s equipped with enough oxygen to support life for fifteen hours. With full conversational capabilities, she learns through interaction and adapts to her companion. She also has propulsion, tracking, messaging, and—”
“Message received from Mom: Whiz-lay, answwwerrr my—”
I whip around. “Silent mode.”
Her message bubble icon disappears immediately. At least she listens.
I bite my lips and press my eyes shut before facing Calypso again. “She still has some communication bugs to work out.”
“Programming issue?”
“Possible.” I’m not about to admit the number of times I’ve been through her code and checked over every connection.
“Have her plans?”
