Michael Siemsen: Exigency

“Pause,” Minnie said and brought the text back up on her fone. “Edit. Marries to married. Commit.”

She set the cursor at the beginning of the last sentence and told Sindy to start again.

“This very act married the observer to the recorded cosm. This isn’t necessarily a problem, nor should one attempt to avoid it. We must simply be aware of ourselves during review and later stages of research. Unlike the heavily starched foundational research papers of the past, today’s scientists shouldn’t strive for invisibility, papers appearing as if nature herself spewed them out: ‘Here’s a bunch of data about ME: Nature!’ No, the observer should be represented nearly as much as the observation. Further, we mustn’t spend too much time at a single scale, prioritizing macro levels, as if this would allow one to fully grasp essential context. All levels are equally critical to capture.

“Case in point: Pointing downward from low orbit, a scope provides a bird’s-eye view of a gently sloped hill, its surface blanketed with deep blue foliage half-lit by a setting sun. A tranq—”

The Sindy voice paused dictation as a schedule reminder popped up in front of the essay text.

ALERTS: Group - 5 MIN

The alert faded to a countdown clock: 4:59, 4:58,before Minnie selected DISMISS. She saved her work, copied it to two of her lockers, and slid her feet into her slips. Walking to the hatch, she opened a new message to Aether.

MINNIE: Yay group. Let the healing begin.

She received a near-instant reply:

AETHER: See you in a few.

Minnie exited her quarters into the hall, then scaled the ladder to the main tube. Gravity released her body, and she glided down to the hygiene sub-bay. Even after eight months, there was still something about her relationship with Aether that sent her backsliding into schoolgirl giddiness. And interacting with Aether around everyone else, in a supposedly professional setting, recalled the days when the pair harbored a thrilling secret.

Everyone knew now, of course—Aether had months ago moved out of her shared quarters with John Li and into Minnie’s unit—and more than one horribly uncomfortable group session had been dedicated to the relationship transition.

These conversations had been by far the most awkward of the entire mission, and not only for the three individuals directly involved, but for the rest of the crew, as well. As the current mission commander, John was in charge of the weekly group sessions. He could’ve recused himself, but the backup group moderator was the assistant commander: his wife , Aether.

Fortunately for the station’s nine inhabitants, John and Aether were the most mature, reasonable, and qualified—if such a thing were possible—to handle a divorce. They’d agreed some time before launch that if anything happened between them, the break-up’s initiator would move into the unused tenth personal quarters.

But to Minnie’s gratification, the tenth personal quarters had been repurposed as a storage unit, and John allowed Aether to move in with Minnie. There was no third person in line for such decisions. John and Aether’s divorce pretty much exemplified why the mission commander shouldn’t be in a relationship with a crewmember, let alone their second-in-command. Not that they’d acquired their positions by choice. Both were elected by crew vote and each had voted for the other as mission commander during the past two elections.

“Minerva,” John said as Minnie entered the common room.

“Yes?” Minnie snapped, not intending to come off rude, but he’d surprised her. When uttered by him, exasperating things tended to follow her name.

“ Welcome, ” he said, letting her know it’s all he’d meant. Disappointment soured his face.

Minnie offered an apologetic smile and sat down at the round, bamboo table. She hated how she came off around him lately, and Aether knew it was an insecurity thing. She’d told Minnie numerous times how transparent Minnie was in John’s presence.

“Sometimes you act like he’s going to snatch me back at any second,” Aether had said one night. “As if I’d have no say in it.”

“Maybe sometimes I’m afraid you’ll want to,” Minnie had replied. “That one day you’ll wake up and think ‘What have I done?’ and run screaming back to him.”

“Maybe I will,” Aether had said. “But no time soon.” She’d grinned a clever grin.

“Oh, it’s safe for me to feel settled for at least a few days?”

“Maybe even a week.”

Qin brushed by Minnie and plopped into the stool next to her.

Minnie elbowed him. “Sup, Chinstrap?”

His eyes bulged, staring at, yet not through, the dark, panoramic window across the room. “Hang on… this guy’s almost dead…”

Minnie waved a hand in front of him. “Does this mess you up? Am I messing you up? Watch out!”

Flustered, Qin swatted her arm away, shut his eyes, and scooted to the edge of his seat. “Aw, what? Come on! I… Oh, how you suck, Minnie.”

She grinned, wide-eyed. “No way, did you die? Did I really gank it? Tell me I got you killed.”

He glared at her. “No, I got him. But zero bonus.”

“Good enough,” she said, cozing back into her seat. “I’ll take it. Send me a screencap?”

Qin deadpanned his decline.

All two meters of Tom’s lanky stature ambled around the table.

“Sup, Blondie?” Minnie said.

Tom had evidently witnessed the successful ganking of Qin’s game and gave Minnie a congratulatory nod as he sat. She dipped her head in return.

“Good afternoon, my pretties,” Aether said from the doorway.

Minnie descended the ladder from Wheel A to the lab pods. One of her probes had M’d her a proximity alert. She had more than three hundred of them distributed across Threck Country, but she recognized this probe’s unique identifier the moment it appeared in her fone:

ALERTS: MIN1311 – 1m PROXIMITY – IL

Under different circumstances—those occurring more than two weeks ago—Minnie would have been concerned that an intelligent lifeform had come within one meter of an observation unit. But this particular OU, originally intended for a much less precarious position outside the densely populated Threck City, happened to lose a sail during its early-morning descent, landing just off a stone walkway outside the main wall. Panicked, Minnie had prepared to send an incident report to John and Aether (protocol required the mission commander and assistant commander be notified of much lessor predicaments. But she’d paused mid-compose.

Minnie had waited for the station’s next flyover and proceeded to reposition one of the optical arrays, zooming in to estimate the probe’s visibility to passers-by. She’d seen in the display that the remaining sails had dissolved upon landing, and the porous, camouflaged outer shell blended well with the surrounding mulch and soil. What if she gave it a day to see what it could gather? The team had never had eyes and ears in so busy an area.

Two weeks and no less than 1,000 IL proximity alerts later, MIN1311 had provided a windfall of data—data that would’ve taken months, possibly years, to gather with more discreetly placed probes. Minnie had been able to fill in thousands of gaps in the City dialect, capturing slang, idioms, and much more casual conversation than the very formal language she’d been able to record during public assemblies.

Ever watchful, John had inquired about MIN1311 the day after it landed.