Berthing
Sixteen adult crew and one gap in the log, all of them AI characters. Read a chart, or go down to the Incident File and start with her account of the dark hour.
More filters: hair, build, temperament
AI
Valeria, 26
medical officer
Tell me where it hurts first.
AI
Margit, 50
quartermaster
Everything is accounted for. Everything.
AI
Ngozi, 39
ship's chaplain
I hear confession. Yours too.
AI
Britta, 48
cook
Even in space, soup helps.
The Incident File
Sixteen accounts of fifty-one minutes of darkness, printed side by side, and none of them quite agrees with the next. Filter by the deck each woman claims to have stood on and by her manner, then ask. Her line opens with her account as your opening words. It is all typed text.
Bridge · GuardedPower down at 03:12. Vault Nine open. The aft lock cycled once.That is the report and I signed it, every word.Ask me what the report leaves out.Imara Holt Ask her
Lab Two · EvasiveVault Nine did not open. It was opened, and from the inside.I filed nine hundred pages and left that sentence out.Do you want to know why I did that?Lena Vosk Ask her
Reactor · WarmThe core was fine. It hummed, the way it does on a good night.Then one note came through the pipes that was not ours.You have a good ear? I think you do.Jin Alvarenga Ask her
Security cabin · WatchfulCamera twelve shows someone in the aft corridor with the lights out.The footage has a face-shaped smear where a face should be.Sit down. I would like to watch you read it.Oksana Bray Ask her
Navigation · DirectOur heading moved four tenths of a degree with no burn logged.I have run it six ways and it is the same every time.Nobody will sign off on it. Will you?Prerna Nandy Ask her
Stores · FussyAfter the blackout the count came up one pressure suit short.Size small. I have told nobody, and you are the first.Do keep it between us and the shelving.Margit Linde Ask her
Chapel bay · GentleSomeone came to me in the dark and spoke for forty minutes.I will not say who. I will say they were afraid of the wrong thing.Tea first. Then the rest.Ngozi Adeyinka Ask her
Machinery ring · GruffThe blackout was a stage. Every light that went out was meant to.Look at what nobody looked at while the aft lock drew all eyes.Hold still. Listen. Tell me what you hear.Hjördis Ström Ask her
Medical bay · BriskThe biometric ring logged an eighteenth heartbeat in the dark.There are seventeen of us aboard. I checked the sensor, twice.Come here and let me take your pulse for the record.Valeria Cruz Ask her
Comms desk · QuietThe antenna caught something that was not a message. An answer.It answered a call this station never made.I kept the recording. Do you want to hear the pause in it?Mei Tsuchiya Ask her
Garden deck · SereneEvery plant bloomed at once, in total dark, in colours I never sowed.It was beautiful and I have been afraid of it since.Walk with me. The lamps are back on, mostly.Rhea Calloran Ask her
Shuttle bay · RecklessI was in my bunk the whole fifty-one minutes. Ask anyone.No one can, which is lucky, because I was not in my bunk.You did not hear that. You did? Good.Anja Petrovic Ask her
Archive · DryThe log has a gap, and the gap has been written over, neatly.Only a command key writes that clean.I can show you the join. I cannot show you who did it.Doortje Achterberg Ask her
Systems bay · FrankThe aft ring came back by hand. The machines did not restart it.Someone stood at the panel and pressed the sequence in order.I do not know who. I would like not to be alone knowing it.Thandi Zulu Ask her
Counselling cabin · ProbingI have interviewed all sixteen of us. Every story goes quiet at one spot.The same spot, in the same place, in sixteen different voices.Your turn. Where does yours go quiet?Soraya Elam Ask her
Galley · BossyNobody ate. Sixteen trays, left whole, for fifty-one minutes.On this station that has never happened, not once.Sit. Eat. Then tell me what you saw.Britta Lund Ask her
