“So it didn’t work then?”
“Apparently not, it was a long shot, we planned to divert him to our relay station for around 400 microseconds, using a temporary QSID environment to try and stretch subjective time long enough to deliver my message to him.”
“What went wrong?”
“Not sure, could have been a psychological response to bringing him out of QSID transfer like that.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I probably told him not to trust anyone, even me.”
“That’s a start - ”
An almost imperceptible pause between them.
“You know, despite your constant insubordination, I do value you Jemima, I thought that was rather dangerous of you to pull that relay move off, I would hate to lose you.”
She was glad he couldn’t see her face, she winced at his words, he seemed to love playing at being her superior, even though he was nothing of the sort. Let the other side play at being toy soldiers, that kind of thing was meant to be beneath her side. She briefly considered her answer to him.
“Thank you - ”
She had phrased it just so that it wasn’t unreasonable of him to expect her to finish the sentence with a “sir”. Instead she left just the right amount of silence at the end of her thanks, then simply snapped their comms link off.
Jemima got up from the low lounge chair she’d been sitting in and crossed the main room of her apartment, from her window she could see the low hills in the distance and to her right the rocky pass at the bottom of Olympus Mons. Her apartment was itself placed on one of the escarpments that led up to the solar system’s highest volcano.
The Martian landscape below her belied the cleaner air in this district, the habbed zones didn’t start for another two hundred clicks, far beyond the moss covered, golden-brown western hills stretched out in front of her.
She thought of their meeting, which in reality had lasted less time than it took a human eye to blink, she wasn't sure if she had had time to give him her little clue, it was small, but it was all she could think of at the time, had he even heard it?
She knew she would have to try and speak to him in the game, she had been trying to avoid that, but there was no choice now. K-Rox had every chance of finding Asimov, and whether he gave its location to aZorl or Ziper, it would be equally as bad.
Jemima had no way of knowing what character he’d be playing, what squad he was with, or what kind of exo he was wearing, she did however have a unique insight into how K-Rox thought, though how she was going to use that to find him she didn’t know, but that insight was all she had to go on.
Jemima turned from the window and strode towards the door, the other version of her would have to wait for its absorption and debrief. For now she would have to get into Krusher and hope that she could find K-Rox, she had been so desperate to tell him everything, about Veritum, about Interim, and most of all, Amorphia. She sighed as she sat down at her immersion interface and attached four trodes to her temples.
“At least he’s on my turf now.”
She uttered the words to nobody in particular, Jemima closed her eyes and sent the thought command to take her onto the Marschain, her last words a mere whisper.
“See you soon my little K-Bot.”
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 25 - Mind Loss
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 24 - The Immorality Of Krusher9
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 23 - Descent On Krusher9
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 22 - The Mars Problem
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 21 - Thought Patterns
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 20 - Reality Dysfunction
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 19 - The Lost Scream
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 18 - The empLink Story
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 17 - A Problem With Time
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 16 - Neither Here Nor There
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 15 - At The Edge Of Madness
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 14 - A Sense Of The Real
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 13 - The Search For Truth
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 12 - Empires
Original artwork by @nekromarinist
Original words by Cryptogee