Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,30

tasks. Where the branching me had failed to look, the abstraction remained blank.

A derelict ship drifted into view, and I realized Sarah was exercising some directorial control, since there shouldn’t be any direct footage of that event. Still, it showcased the vessel, an interplanetary passenger shuttle that looked like it had been adrift a while, quite nicely. “I have been unable to find a match for this ship,” Sarah said. “The shuttle is a Raven-class transport, common to the inner system and used most often by the megacorporations. No registration markings were obtained from the original feed. A cross-reference of vessels listed as missing is currently under way.”

The scene swept forward, and we were seeing the ship from a different view—one I recognized quite readily. This was the direct camera feed of someone EVA, mag-booted to the hull of the derelict vessel. This was the direct feed from the me that hadn’t made it back. There was no breath, not really, not in VR, but mine quickened anyway, and I felt a sudden chill twining up my spine. I was witnessing part of the life lost to me, taken from me.

“Is it always like this?” Chan asked in wonder.

For a moment, I thought she meant the video itself, the sense of reliving the irretrievable. But, no, that didn’t make sense. These were my last moments, not Chan’s. I realized, then, that she meant being outside, shuffling along the hull, with the stars spinning languidly as the ship rolled. VR could create abstractions that most swore were better than the real thing—Chan was talented enough that she could probably program them herself—but they were abstractions, processed and filtered and with an intelligence, artificial or real, imposing a viewpoint. Almost no one looked at raw footage anymore, and fewer still actually experienced a spacewalk.

“No, not always. From the movement of the stars, there was quite a bit of pitching and tumbling going on. Which was probably why Miller sent me over in the first place. My branch I mean. Couldn’t get close enough for Harper to use the heavy equipment or to just do a hard dock with the ship.”

I trailed off as the hatch came into view. “What the hell are those?” Three neat holes had been bored through the tough metal and composites, clean-edged and perfectly round. Chan just shrugged. “Sarah?”

“Analysis indicates the holes form the points of a perfect isosceles triangle measuring thirty point four-eight centimeters per side. They are most likely the product of a laser, rather than a drill. Further analysis is impossible with the data available.” There was a brief pause. “At this point, communication took place between you and the Persephone. Do you wish me to play the conversation?”

“No!” Chan and I said in unison. I nodded at her, though she probably couldn’t see it from within the giant, fish-bubble helmet. Watching this unfold was bad enough, but neither of us wanted to hear our voices… voices that belonged to bodies dead and gone, however Chan’s avatar might appear. “Summarize,” I added.

“Of course, Langston,” Sarah replied. “After a brief, inconclusive discussion on the origins of the holes, you made the decision to attempt to cut your way into the vessel. The following ninety-three-minute-and-fourteen-second video stream is that cutting.”

“Skip it,” I said shortly.

The view lurched, and a hole, the edges still glowing faintly, appeared in the airlock as if by magic. Then the camera was moving smoothly again, swimming through the hole cut into the door. “The second anomalous event is about to occur,” Sarah said helpfully. The light swept over the airlock, and Chan let out a little scream as it fell across a distended corpse.

“Shit,” I spat. “Pause video, Sarah.” The abstraction obligingly halted, with the camera thankfully pointed away from the body.

“You okay?” I asked Chan. Her avatar really was good, programmed to emulate the user’s emotions. The anime-ish features had gone a pale and pasty white, with a slight tinge of green, and the too-big eyes had gone wider still, showing white all the way around.

“Yes,” she said. “Just… surprised, I guess. I’ve seen bodies, but… I wasn’t expecting… that.”

“Exposure to vacuum,” I said with feigned detachment. It was every spacer’s worst nightmare. The reality wasn’t quite as bad as decades of romance and drama made it out to be—your blood didn’t boil in your veins, nor did your body explode like an over-filled balloon. But the end result, which had stared at us from the video feed, was bad enough. “Sarah,