In a Clean White Room

This is not the hard part.

“And what’s work, anyway?”

Only 0.3 lbs!

“Don’t get yourself in trouble now,” Rush said softly, and caught the edge of Wray’s blue track jacket.

“What are ‘whales’?” Varro asked.

This is the way Ginn returns to the river of time.

“Y’fuckin’ patronize me an’ I’ll rewire your heart.”

Brick by metaphorical brick, Young ate away at his own block.

“If it’s not him, opening the gate will destroy us,” Emily whispered.

“A bearing. ” Rush’s voice cracks. “Derived from the nautical term.”

They are coming.

Water runs into the dark.

A ship or a gate or a ship.

“I don’t know, man,” Greer whispers, “Lisa talks shit about tidally locked planets like you wouldn’t believe, but this one doesn’t seem so bad.”

The nature of his problem is a dictionary problem.

Greer releases a shuddery breath and sits a minute, holding his luck tight.

Lightning in the ionosphere.

His mind snapped in half.

“The shuttle just came up on short range. They’re ballistic.”

“Every human being is created from a blend of two others,” Rush said, smiling faintly. “Cooperation and conflict play out on the level of our crystal.”

“Less tea, more sit.”

“Is this an argument?” Rush asked delicately. “Or—” he let the word trail off.

The combination, dressed in black, stood alone in a clean white room that stretched to infinity on all sides.

“Who’s Nick?” He asked the question of the universe itself.

He’d fix this.

Dale Volker misses his cat.

“Daniel was so kind to me.” The AI wiped its eyes. “I thought that meant I was good.”

None of this seemed like chance.

“I am a Cartesian demon, but I’m a nice one.”

“Alignment’s gotta go both ways,” Young whispered, stroking his hair. “Seems only fair, don’t you think?”

“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?”