Spaceship Situationship

01 - Lance

17:39 - E01 West Wing Robotics Lab
63 Cretan Days to Landing
Lance Z-64

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"Ouch!" I shout.

I drop the soldering iron that burned my hand onto the counter, then try to wave off the hurt.

"Lance, are you okay?!" Kassia whirls around from her work bench behind me, taking my hands into hers. She looks up at me with wide brown eyes under a pair of plastic work glasses.

"Yeah, I just burned myself with solder," I slip my hands out of hers and wince in pain.

"Clumsy," she sing-songs, before turning back to her work bench to rummage for the first aid kit. She clicks it open, fishing for a bandage, before triumphantly picking one out and waving it in front of me. She's so much like a little kid that I can't help but chuckle. Then wince in pain.

Kassia gently applies some burn cream to my wound, then seals it with the bandage. "There, you're all patched up."

"Thanks," I say, unconsciously rubbing over my bandage with my other hand. Then she turns back to her work, and I to mine.

The two of us have been spending a lot of time together since we're both in the Engineering Section, but our classes end today. I feel a little strange about it. We won't be able to see each other as much afterwards, probably.

She's supposed to be the kind of person I dislike interacting with the most (rambunctious) but somehow I can't stop myself from poking her.

"Hey, Kassia."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for helping me with my summative project."

"Jeez, no need to thank me. I'm so happy I got to help you out with it!"

The summative project for Robotics Specialists is to rebuild the Egg-0 robots that zip around our ship and perform helpful tasks, but I wanted to make something more challenging: a cleaning robot that runs on food waste.

And challenging it is, because I've been working on this overnight for days. When Kassia noticed yesterday, she very kindly offered to help me out.

"Hey Lance, I'm almost done putting together the side compartment. Do you want to look it over?" she asks me, her ponytail swinging slightly as she reaches over for the silicon glue.

"Yeah, it looks good. Things are done on my end, so can you flash the code?"

"Sure thing, boss," she gives me a small salute then hands me the finished component. I snap it into place and finally attach the freshly-soldered motherboard back into the centre of the robot.

"Alright, everything's in place."

Kassia comes up behind me and peers over my shoulder. A stray hair falls from her ponytail and tickles my cheek. "It's beautiful," she exhales.

"You designed it."

"Yeah, that's why it's beautiful."

"Wow, okay then."

"If we continued with your original design... there would be one very ugly robot roaming around at home. I couldn't stomach it!"

"Just upload the code," I want to glare at her but I'm laughing.

"Okay, let me just..." Kassia swipes her index finger over her wrist-watch. The robot chimes and begins to roll around the floor.

"Yes!" the two of us shout, and jump up to high-five each other, smiling like crazy.