“And I’m sorry for taking your stuff earlier, I put it on the chair in there,” Flint said, pointing to my backpack.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to come with us?” Abel asked as she and Flint prepared to leave Nori’s apartment.

  “It sounds like Nori wants to talk. We’ll see you back here in just a few uh… Rotations, anyway, right?” I said, still not entirely understanding how time worked on board the lifeboats.

  “Right, yeah. So you said the big round one with a big long part to it?” she asked, looking over the picture I drew for her.

  “That’s right, and make sure it has six strings on it” I said as I noticed Flint coming up from behind me.

  “Six strings, got it” Flint interjected as he grabbed the paper from Abel’s hand and rushed out the door.

  “Hey! That was mine!” Abel exclaimed as she ran out after him.

  I giggled a little to myself as I saw how eager Flint was to get the instrument from storage.

  I closed the door behind them as the sound from the outside lobby faded, leaving myself and Nori in the quiet apartment together.

  I took a deep breath and made my way back to the living room where I found Nori sitting on the couch, leaning forward with her hand holding her beak, something I noticed she did when she was lost in thought.

  I quietly made my way to the couch, sitting in the seat beside her.

  Despite weighing a lot more than her, causing me to sink into the chair a bit and shifting her weight toward me, she barely seemed to notice me.

  We both sat in silence for a few minutes as Nori gently tapped her fingertip to her beak, causing a light hollow clicking to chime through the room.

  “Nori?” I asked quietly.

  Her eyes slowly turned to me for a moment before she looked forward again.

  Just before I was going to try to grab her attention again she decided to speak up.

  “I don’t understand it Tess” she said, sounding defeated.

  “What’s that?” I asked, leaning toward her.

  “I… I don’t understand why he would do it” she said, “I have a feeling I’ve been kept in the dark on a lot more than I thought. I think I understand why they’re trying to get the black shard now. It’s not just about what happened, it’s about why it happened. They don’t trust Artemis unless they know why he did it. Otherwise they don’t want to turn him back on. Not completely at least.”

  I bit my lip, looking down at the floor.

  “Yeah I don’t know. I think there’s a lot that’s… What?” I asked as I looked up to see Nori staring at me with a strangely excited look on her face.

  “You didn’t notice?” she asked with a smile.

  “Sorry… What…” I started to ask.

  “‘Kept in the dark’, it’s a human expression, it means…” she started to say.

  I laughed, holding my hand up to cut her off “I, yeah I got it” I said.

  It was interesting how even in such a serious moment she was still so focused on seeing what expressions I may or may not notice when slipping them into conversations.

  “Oh, Tess, I wanted to show you something” she said, seemingly snapping out of her thoughts.

  She got up from the couch and started rummaging through a drawer at her desk, turning around a moment later with two objects in her hand.

  She sat down again and held one out for me to see. It looked like a small cylinder about the size of a film roll. There were several markings along its sides and a series of gears at the top.

  “What’s this?” I asked, leaning in to get a better look.

  “It’s a clock. But not just any clock, I made it myself, back when I first arrived on lifeboat eight” she said, sounding particularly proud of herself.

  “Oh, I’ve seen a lot of mechara with things like these. Do you make them by hand?” I asked as Nori set it on the table.

  “We do, it’s something we learn when we’re young. It’s how we first learn about how gears and ratios work and how to make precision tools” she said as she pressed the cylinder down, causing it to make a gentle clicking sound.

  When she let go it continued to make barely audible clicks as the hands of the clock started to slowly move.

  “Oh wow that’s pretty neat” I said as I watched the various gears inside the object come to life.

  I could hear the smile in her voice as she continued “Thanks, yeah this one means a lot to me.”

  “How long can it go for?” I asked, leaning in as I watched the gears move.

  “Not very long, like I said it was one of the first ones I made, but the closer to the center of the ship you are the longer it goes. Where we’re at now it’ll probably last about a kilorot” she said.

  I nodded, pretending to know what that meant.

  “Huh, so it lasts longer the higher up you are?” I asked.

  “Exactly, it moves slower when we’re closer to the center of the ship” she said.

  I tilted my head, a little confused, “Doesn’t that mean it doesn’t keep track of time very well?” I asked.

  “That’s what makes it special” she said as she reached forward, picking it up again, “back on lifeboat seven, my dad and I lived on one of the green levels. We weren’t exactly rich so we lived where there was a lot of gravity. I designed this so that it’d keep accurate time based on the level where we lived. The further away from that level you go, up or down, the more it’ll deviate from accuracy.”

  I was a bit confused, “Why would you want that?” I asked.

  “It’s to remind me where I came from. The more it fails to tell the time, the more it tells me how far from home I am” she said.

  “That’s interesting” I said as I leaned back into the couch, “I’ve never heard of someone making a clock that deliberately doesn’t tell the time.”

  “It’s not just about telling the time. We make these sorts of things for all kinds of purposes, sometimes it’s not about the function of it, it’s about the meaning behind it. This is my home clock and that’s what makes it special to me” she said, sounding a little defensive.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean any offense, I just haven’t heard of that before” I said, shrinking into the couch a little.

  Nori shook her head “It’s fine it’s fine. Here, I wanted to give you this” she said as she reached her other hand out, holding the other thing she’d grabbed from the drawer.

  “What’s this?” I asked as I reached out, taking the item from her hand.

  It was another cylinder, but instead of any sort of complex gear system along the surface it was smooth with a small cylinder at its center with a little window at its center.

  “It’s a gift for you. I admit I didn’t make this myself, we started designing it as soon as we got here around earth. This is the prototype that we made but we have a few others now” she said.

  On the left side were a set of numbers, like the ones I was used to seeing going between zero and nine. It looked like a rotating number set like what you’d see on a bike lock with eight digits, a decimal point separating out the last two numbers. The other side had a similar arrangement but with an extra digit on it, however the ones on the right had symboles I didn’t recognize.

  “It’s a converter, from ‘minutes’ to rotations” she said, the word ‘minutes’ spoken in english.

  “Oh really? How does it work?” I asked.

  She reached out, taking the device and moving the sleeve in the center over to the left side. With a talon, she reached in and moved a dial so that it read ‘000001.00’.

  “You can put in the number of minutes here, then slide this over” she said as she moved the little sleeve over to the other side.

  There was a series of gentle clicks as I heard things spinning inside. As the window was moved to the right side a new number was revealed.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Zero point four three four rotations” she said with a smile.

  “Oh! Okay uh, can you go the other way? From one rotation?” I asked.

  She nodded, moving the symbols on the right a few notches.

  “There we go. So, one rotation equals…” she said as she moved the sleeve over to the other side.

  The little machine clicked and whirred along as she moved the sleeve, revealing a number on the other side.

  Nori was about to speak but I read it first “Two point zero seven?” I said, reading it aloud.

  She smiled “Oh right I forgot you can read that. It’s not a decimal though, that’s displayed in seconds. So it’s two minutes and seven seconds” she said.

  “Huh, it’s amazing it can convert it to seconds like that” I said, realizing how intricate the interior of it must be.

  “More than that, it converts the base too,” she said.

  “Ah… What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Hmm… I guess you probably haven’t had anyone sit down with you and teach you this stuff… Well, we use base… Uh, well I should probably use the word you’re used to. We use base ‘eight’ and you’re used to base ‘ten’, this device does that conversion for you, along with accounting for the minutes being broken into ‘sixty’ seconds” she said.

  It was strange to hear her switching to the English pronunciation of numbers but it made sense in order to explain the difference.

  “Oh… Wait… When you say eight, what number are you saying?” I asked, hoping the question didn’t sound as silly as it seemed.

  She reached over, grabbing a small tablet and a pen.

  “So if I used your numbering system” she said, drawing a one and a zero, “it would look like this.”

  “But that says…” I tried to think of the mechara word for ‘ten’ but realized I’d never come across it.

  Nori nodded, “Eight” she said in mecharan, “but in english you would say ‘eight’”.

  I was feeling a lot more confused about the topic than when she’d started. I hadn’t realized how their numbering system would change everything.

  “Okay so… When you say that we’re on lifeboat eight. You mean like… Lifeboat ‘one zero’, that's equivalent to ‘eight’ in English but it would be written the same way as ‘ten’, right?” I asked.

  “That’s right you’ve got it” she said, handing me the device once more.

  “I… Feel like I don’t… But okay” I said, taking it from her reluctantly as I tried inputting some numbers to see how they would change.

  “Here” she said, reaching out for a piece of paper and writing on it for a few seconds before handing it to me.

  It was like a cheat sheet with the Arabic numbers on the left and their equivalent symbols on the right, written in mecharan.

  “Why do you keep the number systems different between the two sides? Doesn’t that make it hard to read?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “We keep them separate so we know which base they’re referring to. It’s not too hard once you get used to it” she said.

  “Hmm… I’ll have to take your word for it” I said as I looked over the sheet of numbers.

  Before I could ask another question there was a loud knock at the door.

  Nori quickly stood up, looking at me, then out to the door.

  “They shouldn’t be back so quickly,” she said.

  “Were you expecting anyone?” I asked, setting the sheet down.

  “I… I don’t know. Hold on let me see who it is” she said as she swiftly moved across the room and out of sight.

  I looked down at the converter again, wondering what kind of mechanisms could be hiding inside. The mechara could have easily made a digital readout with a small computer inside to tell them the answer, but they seemed to prefer mechanical devices over digital ones wherever they could manage. As odd as it seemed, I couldn’t help but admire their dedication to it.

  “Sedim!” I heard Nori’s voice from the hallway “I wasn’t expecting you!”

  “Nori are you okay? I saw what happened, I wanted to see how you were doing” I heard him say.

  I tried to think if I’d heard his voice before but I couldn’t think of anything.

  “One moment one moment just… Stay there” Nori said as she quickly closed the door, rushing into the living room a second later.

  “Tess!” she said in a loud whisper “Can you go into the kitchen and start washing the dishes please?”

  I furled my brow, looking at her a little skeptically.

  “Uh… Wha…” I started to ask.

  “Please just go do that, don’t draw any attention to yourself” she said, pointing me toward the kitchen.

  I bit my lip, wanting to ask her more but she didn’t look like she was in a position to explain any further.

  As I got up from the couch she said “And don’t let him see your eyes” as she disappeared around the corner once more.

  I made my way over to the kitchen, noticing a small stool sitting off to the side, just like I used to have back at my house.

  I pulled it up, standing over the sink for a few seconds before I heard the door open once more.

  “Sorry sorry” Nori said before he could say anything, “I had some quick cleaning to do, wasn’t expecting company, hehe.”

  She sounded a little nervous at the man’s presence.

  “Nori it’s fine” he said as I heard him enter, closing the door behind himself “I just wanted to check in on you. That was quite a scene you made out there.”

  He sounded more concerned than anything else.

  “Yeah, sorry about that, I was caught by surprise, was heading down to the lower decks for the spin-down and… Yeah…” she said sheepishly.

  “Did you not see that we disabled the cars?” he asked.

  “I… Uh…” Nori started to respond when she suddenly cleared her throat, her voice sounding a bit louder.

  I could practically feel her eyes on me despite being in the other room when I realized I was supposed to be doing the dishes.

  I reached forward, grabbing a dish as the faucet came to life on its own, telling me there was some sensor somewhere I must have activated.

  “Sorry, um” Nori said again, “I saw that but I thought they were just broken for some reason.”

  I could hear in her voice that she was lying, but Sedim didn’t seem to hear it the same way I did.

  “You should have known that if they were off we'd have done it intentionally, Nori” he said.

  “I guess I wasn’t thinking… I’m sorry…” she said, trailing off as she sounded like she was shrinking into herself as she spoke.

  He sighed as I heard him sit on the couch.

  “We turned the cars off because Artemis told us he wasn’t sure if we’d need a different calibration for the power station now that we’re around earth. If it was all fine we were going to go forward with the power cycle but if not we were told we’d at least be able to set a new calibration before starting up again. I guess we hadn’t planned on someone in a senior position overriding it and going down anyway.”

  He didn’t sound angry at all, just disappointed in Nori for what had happened.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause such a problem. Was anyone hurt?” she asked.

  “No, no everyone’s fine. If anything they seem excited to talk about something new. They’ve been waiting on news about earth but we’re just not quite ready to share everything yet. Speaking of which, have your studies been going well?” he asked, his tone changing to a more positive attitude.

  I could hear Nori relax as she responded “It’s going great actually, I feel like I’m ready for the conference after I practice just a little more. There are still a few things I’ve been trying to work out.”

  “That’s good, but we still have to get that processing core for them. It might take some time to figure out…” he started to say as Nori jumped in.

  “Oh! We got that actually!” she exclaimed.

  “You… What?” He asked, sounding confused “You got one? How?”

  Her voice got louder as I could hear she’d turned toward me “Hey Te-... Uh, Artemis? Do you know where the core is?” she asked.

  I froze for a moment, looking up at the wall.

  She said to not let him see my eyes, so I couldn’t turn around.

  I thought for a moment, thinking about how a melodian under the influence of the assembler might act.

  Calm down, relax, speak in a monotone voice I said to myself.

  “In the bag” I said in as bland of a voice I could muster “on the chair” I said as I took a deep breath and resumed doing the dishes.

  “Ah yes, perfect” she said as she made her way over to the table.

  A moment later I heard a very excited Sedim.

  “Oh wow! And it works? You tested it?” he asked as I heard him get up from the couch and make his way over to Nori.

  I heard another moment of rummaging through the bag as I assumed she pulled out the testing unit inside, showing him that it worked.

  “Oh! Wow this is great! Fantastic! How… How did you get this?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s what I was going down there for. A melodian found it for me. I was going down there to get it from them” she said.

  “A melodian? Did they use the assembler or did they go in lifeboat seven without it? They’re not supposed to be going in there without…” he started to say as Nori cut him off.

  “Don’t worry about the details, what matters is that we got it” she said.

  “Right… Well, as long as we got it I guess that’s all that matters. This means we can move forward. Thank you Nori” he said as he started making his way to the door.

  “You’re welcome!” she yelled after him as he rushed out, slamming the door behind himself.

  There was a long sigh out in the living room, followed by silence.

  I put the dish down, making my way out to see Nori sitting on the chair next to my backpack.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Sedim. He’s the one in charge of the ship. He’s… Hmm… He means well. But he’s pretty new to the job and I’ve been on this lifeboat longer than he’s been alive. He looks up to me a lot even though he’s the one that’s technically in charge. It’s… an awkward relationship to say the least but he means well.”

  “Why did you give him the core?” I asked.

  “That’s what we’ve been looking for. It’s a gift to the humans, before we make our proper first contact” she said.

  “I guess I should have asked before but, what does it do?” I asked.

  “It’s, well. It’s like a miniature synthetic brain. In order to make something like Artemis you need millions of them strung together, but one by itself is already able to do more than anything the humans have made for themselves, so we figured we’d find a working one and give it to them as a gesture of goodwill. We don’t know what they’ll do with it but that’s up to them” she said.

  Before I could ask anything else, another knock rang through the apartment.

  “Expecting anyone else?” I asked.

  Before Nori could answer, two melodians came through the door, one of them was holding an acoustic guitar.

  “Got it!” Flint exclaimed.