Blindsight, page 9 by Peter Watts
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rillion trillion protons slowed her down and refilled her gut and flattened us all over again. Theseus had burned relentless until almost the moment of our resurrection.
It was easy enough to retrace those steps; our course was there in ConSensus for anyone to see. Exactly why the ship had blazed that trail was another matter. Doubtless it would all come out during the post-rez briefing. We were hardly the first vessel to travel under the cloak of sealed orders, and if there'd been a pressing need to know by now we'd have known by now. Still, I wondered who had locked out the Comm logs. Mission Control, maybe. Or Sarasti. Or Theseus herself, for that matter. It was easy to forget the Quantical AI at the heart of our ship. It stayed so discreetly in the background, nurtured and carried us and permeated our existence like an unobtrusive God; but like God, it never took your calls.
Sarasti was the offical intermediary. When the ship did speak, it spoke to him-- and Sarasti called it Captain.
So did we all.
*
He'd given us four hours to come back. It took more than three just to get me out of the crypt. By then my brain was at least firing on most of its synapses, although my body--still sucking fluids like a thirsty sponge-- continued to ache with every movement. I swapped out drained electrolyte bags for fresh ones and headed aft.
Fifteen minutes to spin-up. Fifty to the post-resurrection briefing. Just enough time for those who preferred gravity-bound sleep to haul their personal effects into the drum and stake out their allotted 4.4 square meters of floor space.
Gravity--or any centripetal facsimile thereof--did not appeal to me. I set up my own tent in zero-gee and as far to stern as possible, nuzzling the forward wall of the starboard shuttle tube. The tent inflated like an abscess on Theseus' spine, a little climate-controlled bubble of atmosphere in the dark cavernous vacuum beneath the ship's carapace. My own effect