If Jove Stray

Chapter 20: captain's log

Cameron was dismayed by how much work had piled up this morning, and so didn't feel bad about working through lunch. She did, however, send Keller to pick up some cucumbers and a tomato for her lunch so that Madison didn't find out and lecture her. Matisse promised to stay until Levi stopped by, and so was helping Cameron sort through the mess of builds pay. They worked bizarre hours at various levels of pay since a couple of the calls had been in the dead of night.

"I am never so grateful to be in personnel than when I'm working on payroll for the others," Matisse mentioned. "Seasons. I like having a schedule. A consistent schedule."

"Then you may have picked the wrong project to be on," Cameron joked. "I'm sure Keller would love help organizing the Canary's archives."

"Ha, non merci," he said. "I will accept the odd hours to learn the fate of Earth. I don't know why my fellow Aeneid colleagues are so apathetic; I started this project not at the behest of Dashiell Turner, but because I was curious. And you were willing to fund it. Gliére was not, I will admit. He thought that people would become fixated on the past."

Levi ambled into the personnel with a smile.

"So where's this tekcom I keep hearing about?" he inquired. "Unless you are busy?"

"Oh no, let's go," Matisse said, grabbing his holo-rib. The three of them headed into the back; Levi was peering into the offices inquisitively and then stopping dead in his tracks when he spied the tekcom.

"Seasons above," he laughed. "This is... I don't know how much help I'll be."

Levi sat in one of the chairs, scrolling through the data on the holos and frowning a little bit. He didn't say anything while he was looking at the screen and then finally turned to Cameron.

"How are you interpreting the binary?" he asked. "I thought the Canary ships didn't use quantum?"

"They didn't," Matisse said, leaning over Levi to take the keyboard. "See, we're using our tekcom only to store the data; the Canary's system isn't large enough. Austen built us a converter, back before she hated this project and all."

Matisse flipped on the old screens from the Canary and Levi smiled, typing for a moment before pulling up a menu system that looked like a video log. He seemed much more comfortable with the older technology.

"The Canary and the Aeneid used the same system," Levi mused, clicking through the computer and perusing files. "I guess the Canary didn't want to upgrade midflight like we did. Who was the communications officer? They'd be able to help better than I."

He glanced up at Cameron, expecting an answer.

"That was my father," Cameron replied after a pause. "He died in the crash. I know the system, but no one else used those computers like he did."

Cameron didn't think about her father much. It hadn't seemed odd until she saw how the others interacted with their parents. She rarely saw her mother either; perhaps it was just another difference between Canary life and the base. Levi frowned and patted her arm, and then turned back to the computer.

"Do you have speakers?" he asked. "You'll need a way to have playback."

"We already have files?" she inquired, surprised.

"Oui, they were just saved in a different menu. Well, actually some of these had to have been saved while the Canary was in transit; this is from decades ago."

"I pulled speakers from somewhere," Matisse stammered, rushing from the room.

Levi selected one of oldest clips and rose from his seat, getting out of the way when Matisse came barreling in. He was holding dusty speakers and a mess of wire and cable, muttering to himself as he configured the tekcom.