In a Clean White Room

“Yeah yeah.” Young watched dappled light play over Rush’s hair. “Everyone’s real impressed.”

“Distracting,” Rush said, around the pen in his mouth. “Very distracting. Contain yourself, please?”

“Stop pretending you don’t understand the concept of karaoke. It’s not that difficult, and you’re a supergenius, all right? No one’s fooled. Zero people.”

James drags herself into the light.

“We spent weeks, together, trying to solve the problem of fixing our link. And now that we have, now that we’ve blown the door wide open, you wanna walk away?”

“The hole in the wall gang,” Young murmured, reading off the laptop screen, “led by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, are all dead now.”

Rush shot Young a wounded look. “Make me tea then, if you’re so desperate to be useful.”

Brody could spend a lifetime trapped on a derelict starship if it meant working with Nick Rush.

“You’re gonna wake up at bullshit o’clock,” Young whispered. “Midnight. 0300. Aren’t you.”

//I can’t believe I missed you, you jackass ,// Young projected, his tone as soothing as he could make it.

Park strikes a pose and puts those years of high school musicals to use at the edge of the known universe.

Young was just a guy from Wyoming. Doing his best with crap rations and ship-wide power failures. Hostile incursions and math.

Stepping away from the wall like she was materializing from smoke, Chloe brought her gun up in a smooth, fast arc.

How many more were they gonna have to take down?

“I’m in charge here,” Wray says.

Something scraped across the floor.

“Nick Rush and the starship he taught to lie,” it said coolly. “Has a bit of a ring; I’ll admit that.”

Even at the unravelling of the world, some things stayed the same.

“Optimal outcomes are unlikely,” the AI whispered.

“What kind of life have you had,” Rush rasped, “that you’re so bloody taken with some Universal Rule Book?”

It’s a heck of a thing.

“Stop fighting inevitabilities; it’s your least useful quality.”

“Hi,” Eli said, looking up into empty air. “Hi, Mr. AI. Or Ms. AI. So, um, I’m Eli.”

“Doc, stop crash-testing the colonel,” Greer said. “He’s had a hard week.”

“Little ghost.” It calls for itself.

“Okay, well, this has been a great talk.” Young hit the door controls. “Let’s never do it again.”

“Sorry, genius,” Young sighed, “but you’re in for a world of trouble.”