Clone Earth : MELVIN
Desperate Moments

Ari held the box for the autopilot program in her hands. Yes, the burn marks made it visibly obvious it was unusable but she squinted and passed it between her hands while wishing she could reconnect it. But wishing was useless. “If you were a person,” she said aloud to the hunk of metal, “Trevon could heal you in seconds.” It answered her with silence.

It occurred to her she hadn’t thought about using Trevon’s ability that way before. Instead of healing tissue and skin, what if he could have healed wires and metal. Removed the scares by filling in the broken gaps and holes.

The idea amused her. Could there be such a power? Trevon’s ability to heal human tissue was unheard of, why couldn’t healing a piece of machinery exist in the universe as well?

She closed her eyes and focused on the odd shaped cube. She imagined it in its polished factory made shape. Right off the assembly line. She methodically breathed in and out. Then she peaked through her eyelashes to see its blackened unchanged shape. Ari laughed at her ridiculous idea.

“Right, like a human being could manipulate medal with their mind.”

A sharp stabbing in her gut cut Ari’s laughter short. The tight ache for food and water had intensified over the past few hours. She had managed to ration her supplies over the days that passed, but those supplies were now nonexistent. Proving to Ari she didn’t have much more time to float aimlessly.

She dug back into the floor console where she crossed more wires to route any amount of electrical current back to the engine. She removed and reconfigured other parts and if it were in any other shuttle it might have worked. But this hunk of metal refused to come to life.

She switched locations back to the front of the ship. Digging under the dash of the navigation console and flight chair she found no new wires to cross just the same old ones that she had attempted several times before. Her stomach gave another agonizing growl. She wrapped her arms around her and curled into a ball trying to think warm thoughts. But all she could focus on was her pain and stupidity.

If only she’d have left the ship alone. She would have reached Meckam by now. True it was a prison but at least she would have been alive. A least she would have had food. At least Trevon would know she was alive and she could try to get a message to him once in a while. What would happen to him now? Was he at the Academy? Would they tell him she was missing? What would he do when he found out?

Knowing her brother, he would drop everything and come looking for her. Even though he wouldn’t know where to look he would try. He would throw his life away trying to save her, and she would be long dead by the time he started his search.

Great, she buried her face into her hands, her heart hurting more than her stomach. Somehow she’d still managed to ruin his life by being dead!

You can start a message, the thought slipped in between the painful throbs of her temples. She squinted through the shadowed room where she’d left her personal.

“I’ll never be able to find a connection.”

What if the ship drifted closer to the planet? Ari didn’t want to hold on to that strange hopeful thought. Though she’d dismantled her navigation diagram she had been confident her calculations had placed her drifting father away from any transmitter. Yet, the curiosity continued to tap inside her skull. Which was as annoyingly persistent as the growling of her stomach.

To weak to climb to her feet Ari crawled over debris from the shuttle deck and back into the dark corner of the living area. Her eyes took several moments to adjust but she found her way to her meager looking duffle. She pulled open the top revealing the cool exterior of her handheld communications device. Tucking it under her arm she crawled back to the pool of light at the center of the same living area and then crossing her legs she placed the device in her lap.

With several deeps breaths she went through her mental checklist. Once she turned it on, she would see the amount of battery life. That would determine the amount of time she had to search for a signal. If she could find one, she would use the remaining time to craft a message …

Who would she write to first?

Trevon. Sorry brother for being an idiot. You were right, I should have listened to you.

She could write to Uncle Clint. Sorry Uncle Clint. I didn’t mean to get caught. I should have done a better job waiting for you at Midway.

She rubbed her face. No matter what she said it would be that she died because she thought she was smarter than she actually was - No I am smart! I did everything right. There is no reason I should have ended up this way, I was just trying to fly - Ari lifted her head.

“Where was I trying to go?” The instant she had taken the helm she turned but not all the way around to go back to Midway. Nor had she turned toward the planet for a clean getaway. No, she had turned the opposite direction out into the black. Why had she turned that direction?

You can’t just die without trying to reach someone!

Her eyes snapped open as the thought so urgently took over her. It didn’t matter how much battery her personal device had. She wasn’t the kind of person to give up. There had to be a way to get a message out.

Pressing her finger over the power button the screen flickered to life, and instantly the battery with less than half of its life blinked in the corner. She quickly set to work searching for a signal while at the same time crafting a sharp S.O.S message using her most sophisticated language. And yes, ‘dying here save me now’ was at that moment the most intelligent thing she could write.

With the message at the ready she desperately searched for a place to connect. There was nothing. No transmitter. No passing ship within range. She may have destroyed the communications on the ship but a small flicker of hope sparked as she grabbed a connecting cable and directly attached her communicator to the ships internal transmitter. The hope that a hard connection would bypass the wireless one quickly faded as error after error flashed across her screen.

Tears brimmed, Ari squeezed her eyes shut and her fists tightened around the device.

You are being searched for. Keep trying.

“Keep trying? Keep trying what?” She sobbed aloud. The tears fell freely as her voice echoed across the gutted hull. “There’s nothing else to try! There is no signal! ZIG is wrong, there isn’t always a signal! Technology has limitations! He’s finally wrong and I can’t tell him. It doesn’t - ex-exist -” she stuttered as she remembered something. Tucked deep inside her drive was a coded file. ZIG’s file.

Ari’s breathing slowed as her curiosity about its contents pushed her hunger away.

CHAPTER END

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