Page 162 of Every Almost

Itescaped.

It started out small. Tavi, who had appointed himself Chief Music Conversion Officer, a title he had made up and Charlie was certain wasn't Reyna-approved, had set up a permanent station in the corner of the Engineering Bay where he spent his off-hours importing cassettes. He listened to every song as it converted, head bobbing. Occasionally, he'd get Charlie's attention.

"Charlie! This one sounds like what falling in love would feel like if falling in love was a guitar solo!" Every time, she responded with enthusiasm. Living vicariously through Tavi, hearing these songs for the first time, reminded her of all the memories she had with Frank, Helen, Katie, even Joss, listening to music and reveling in its mastery.

But then the music started showing up in places Charlie didn't expect.

One afternoon, she heard something playing in the corridor returning to Engineering. It was tinny through a datapadspeaker, barely recognizable, but unmistakably "Take On Me." She'd stopped walking and listened, trying to figure out where it was coming from, or who was listening. A few moments later, a crew member she didn't know rounded the corner, datapad in hand, and startled when he saw her.

"You're Charlie!" he said, then gesturing at his datapad.

"I am," Charlie responded tentatively.

"This," he said, gesturing at the datapad again. "This came from you, right?"

"The music?" Charlie asked. The man nodded. "Yeah, I mean, it's Earth music. From my collection. In my bag." Charlie stopped before she told him what pocket she kept it in.

"This song is very..." he searched for the word. "Energetic."

"That's one way to describe 'Take On Me,'" Charlie said.

He nodded seriously at her. "Thank you for sharing this with us." And with that, he gave her a slight nod and kept walking, the song trailing behind him down the corridor like a small, synthpop ghost.

Borran had taken to humming. Charlie had walked into the galley three mornings in a row to find Borran working dough while producing a sound that was unidentifiable, until a special bridge in a certain song, and Charlie suddenly realized it was, “The Longest Time." This was both the worst and the most endearing thing she'd ever heard. She didn't have the heart to tell him he was humming it in the wrong key. But honestly? She suspected he already knew and he just didn't care.

Maren had pulled Charlie aside one afternoon, requesting a specific song that she'd heard Charlie play just once, three weeks ago, when she, Charlie, and Tavi were constructing the initial build. She gave Charlie the date, the time, and even the section of the particular tape it had been on. Charlie had stared at her. "You remember all that?"

Maren had looked at her with confusion, as if the question itself was strange. "Of course."

On her lunch breaks, Charlie had started visiting the Aetherfin habitat.

She'd arrange to take whatever Borran had packed for her down to the central atrium, lean against the railing overlooking the zero-gravity sphere, and eat while watching the creatures drift and the changes among their slow, bioluminescent patterns. It was the quietest spot on the ship, and the rhythm of the Aetherfins had a way of untangling whatever engineering problem had knotted itself in her brain.

And, she also started talking to them.

Somewhere between the thermal coupling issue on deck four and the power distribution problem in the aft corridor, Charlie had fallen into the habit of thinking out loud at the railing the same way she used to think out loud over open hoods in the garage back home. "Okay, so if the flow rate drops when the secondary valve compensates, then the issue isn't pressure, it's timing," she'd murmur, gesturing with half a sandwich, while Aetherfins drifted past in slow, blue indifference.

She was fairly certain the creatures couldn't hear her through the sphere walls, but it didn't matter much to Charlie. The Aetherfins were good listeners

Outside of the music, Charlie had also taken to spending more and more time with Orion, talking about Earth and anything she believed was worth mentioning for Coalition archives. The number of actual species that were on Earth, the concept of national parks and why humans set aside land specifically to not build on it, which Orion found both beautiful and baffling, and even what kinds of natural resources were naturally available. Surprisingly, the Voxlink didn't require much translation when it came to the elements she could describe to Orion. Though they were named differently, theircomponents were the same of what the Coalition used as reference.

"You said it's calledLatin?" Orion asked one afternoon when they were talking about science.

"Yes," Charlie responded. "A 'dead' language on Earth now because no one uses it to communicate, but so many words in multiple dialects on Earth derive from Latin, including most scientific and medical field subjects and studies. So, no one communicates with it anymore, but I would guess that almost every human on the planet uses it everyday since it's still widely used in those ways." Orion had been writing all this down and noting it on his datapad while nodding his head as he listened.

"This is all fascinating, Charlie," Orion said as he finished up his notes before looking up at her.

"You really think the crew will be interested?" Charlie asked, not for the first time, regarding the upcoming Earth Night. "I mean, it's happening this week. And, no offense Orion but, you're a librarian. You love this stuff."

"It's true, I am assured I'm your best audience," Orion said, laughing.

Charlie smiled at the truth behind his words. "It is in just a few days."

"That it is."

Charlie leaned back in the chair Orion had designated as hers. She laid against the cushion she found attached to it just today, something she suspected Orion had added in between sessions to make her more comfortable.

"You know, I have been looking forward to this more than I care to professionally admit," Orion said. Charlie's eyes snapped up to him.