If Jove Stray

Chapter 22: executive orders

Dashiell was as giddy as a child when he walked into personnel with Titus. Cameron yawned discreetly. It was too early in the morning. She hadn't expected a meeting today with Dashiell and Titus, but she was glad that it was before she was due at the medical bay. She could always excuse herself to pick up Harper.

"So we really have video logs?" he asked. "That's amazing, I didn't think that you'd have data from Earth so soon. Levi is a wizard."

"A what?" Cameron inquired.

Dashiell laughed. "A wizard. It was a fictional person that solved tremendous problems quickly."

"Oh," she responded, not sure what to think. "Anyway, here you are."

She booted up the tekcom monstrosity and flicked on the holos. The older tech whirled and whined, the holos were as quiet as a whisper. It took her longer than it had taken Levi to locate the video logs, but she pulled them up and demonstrated the strange quality of the monotonous woman on the screen. The three of them watched for several minutes, no one speaking as the woman droned about facts from 2074.

"And this is it," she said finally, turning the volume down. "Levi said that we have some files on the older tekcom, but they haven't finished downloading. Matisse thinks that the signal either made it to the last buoy and was stored, or that the Canary intercepted it and carried it here. We have some old files on this system."

"And Levi figured all this out so quickly? What was the holdup before?"

"He's worked with this technology before," Cameron explained. "My father would have been a better resource, but he died in the crash without an apprentice. Perhaps we could wake someone from the Aeneid's cryo that worked in communications before they switched to quantum, but you both know how difficult it is to pull anyone from cryo."

"Well, you'll need Harper, of course," Titus mused. "Probably Levi. Is there any tech we can print to make this process go faster?"

"What? No, I don't need any of that," Cameron replied. "We're fine."

"Really? Your team has been working on this for weeks and Levi strolled in and fixed things," Dashiell said. "And I know the dates and facts maybe nonsense to you, but I know what these dates are referencing. I was President during 2074. She's detailing out policy changes, wars we were involved with, the beginning of the Wheat Crisis. She's making a timeline."

"Having dates for events doesn't help us," Cameron pointed out. "It tells us what's happening on Earth, but that was nearly a hundred years ago. Ancient history."

"And I'm more than certain that we'll get more current events. Now. What do you need to make this a priority? There are a couple of empty berths we could convert, provided, of course, this mess can move without damage. Or perhaps we can just remotely access it? I just imagine you're running out of space, especially I want more people working on this. Harper couldn't even fit with his wheelchair."

"Harper doesn't want to work for me," she objected. "And I don't think we need a whole team for anything from Earth when the data doesn't make sense and the video logs seem like random ramblings to anyone who isn't from Earth." She gestured to the tekcom with a scoff. "Of course we'll still work on it, but after the earthstorm and with less priority."

"I thought you wanted to make this base better," Dashiell replied. "Why have you chosen this to argue about?"

Titus was watching the videos at the tekcom, seemingly paying little attention to the argument behind him. She had hoped to prove that this was not worth being a priority at all and instead Dashiell had countered with greater funding.