Yes, it’s a lame title. You get what you pay for.

I do not know if this will just be another short story about these two, or whether it shall metastasize into its own novel. There is a bit of revelatory info in this segment, and there is also Pai’s original mission. I simply have no idea where any of this is going. I love that.

Best place to start a story? In the middle. How do you hurt a man who has nothing? Give him back something broken. Here we go, frens.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

Graf waved his Intended off and pulled himself up into the saucer.  She called it an S-3.  Wonder how many types they have?  They must have larger ones if they take colonists to Mars.

She was next to him.  The opening at their feet closed.  “This way, please,” she smiled, waving at a rather typical looking ship’s hatch.  It was already open and they stepped through.  A man not much older than Graf but in field gray rather than Pai’s faded scarlet.  He saluted the girl before giving a nod to the young man.

“Welcome, once again, onto INS Lulu,” he said.  “As the Miss here indicated on our first jaunt to your family home, there was no point taking time for introductions.  I am Midshipman Levos, one of six of our crew.  Our time to destination is about an hour.  Where would y’all care to wait?”

As I have no idea, I hope that… “Forward observation, please.  My Intended must become older quickly about both your realm and mine.”

“Of course, Miss.” He turned and glanced back.  “Please follow me, though I’m sure you know the way.”  His only reply was a little laugh from her.

Around some kind of central core of the saucer, Levos pressed a button to have a door slide up and open.  There were two banks of four seats, facing a sloped, blank wall.

“Please let us know when you are ready, Miss,” the midshipman said, excusing himself.

With a tug, Pai let Graf in and indicated where he should sit and to put his four-point harness on.  “These can move really fast, if someone like me wants them to,” was her justification.  She sat to his right and blinked.

The sloped wall was gone.  No, it’s still there, sorta, but I can see through it.  I’m just some farm kid, and now this is a part of my life?  I… He snuck a look at his Intended.  Did I bite off more than I can chew?

“Of course not, Beloved.  Now, I’ve asked the ship’s captain for a moment to recollect myself before our departure.  Please leave me be until I speak again,” she smiled before staring straight ahead, her red-orange eyes a wilderness of fire.

What the heck…?

He noted that with only the slightest feeling, the ship lifted about a thousand feet up.  Makes sense:  if Parson Gibbs from down the road saw this thing, he’d get his shotgun.  Looking down and out, he was fascinated.  Never been in the sky, before.  There was a touch to his shoulder.  Turning his head… she looks… different.

“I am whole, Graf.” I’m back to my name now?  “Fret not, I am thinking very hard about what I did over the last thirty hours, away from myself.”

“What…?”

She put her left index finger over his mouth.

“The Pai you have in your mind is that of what I had in this android.  Supposed to always be in signal, that is, in full communion with my totality, she was, and is, to talk some tech and diplomacy with the imperium.” A blink.  “I lost you at some point.”

“Totality?”

She leaned over to kiss him.  “Interesting now it is all of me doing that.  Please be older.  I am now completely myself, Pai Mendrovovitch.  Who you interacted with was about five percent of me.  Have you seen Lake Michigan?”

“What?  Sure,” he answered, confused at her question.

“Imagine a puddle next to that lake.  That was the Pai you know.  Now, that puddle is back into the Lake.  That is who is talking with you, now.”

Oh.  So…

“So, we’re not engaged.” Graf looked away, staring at the nothing a thousand feet below.  “It was just a… nothing.”

He tore off his harness.

“Can you land this thing?  I need to help my dad and sister.”