Deep Black Road: The Head of the Snake

Chapter 37

They were just about to go into lunar orbit the next day when Ricky felt the pressure from Philip; so he pulled him out of the backpack and cleaned him off.

Seeing that the little guy's arms and legs had developed somewhat from the last time, he checked for processor activity, and found that there was actually some very low-level processing going on.

With a bit of experimenting, he built up some basic input and output functions for the main processor and some of the sub-processors; and Philip was soon happily but blindly twitching his new limbs.

"What's going on?" Suzanne radioed, having caught sight of their glow ahead of her.

"I'll come and show you if you promise not to grab me."

It galled her that Ricky was reminding her of her 'uncleanness;' but she was trapped in it by the situation-by God.

"Alright," she conceded, "no grabbing."

Drifting back, he held Philip out for her to see, and radioed, "Take a look at this."

"Ohh! He's moving! ... I cannot believe I'm saying this, but that's so cute."

Ricky slipped Philip back into the backpack so that his hand thrusters would be free. "Ready to go into orbit?" he radioed. "I'll feed you the timing."

Soon they were coasting at around fifteen kilometres above the surface of the moon.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked.

"A good place for skiing," she replied. "Maybe it'll help me get my mind off my problems for a while."

"Sure. There's a nice deep crater coming up in just a few minutes; so let's break orbit."

As they fired their rockets to slow down, Suzanne said, "I can hardly wait to see what it's like down there."

#

Suzanne stared up the slope of the mountain they'd just finished skiing down, and radioed, "You know, there's sure not much thrill to it anymore."

"Yeah," Ricky replied. "Our bodies aren't built to get excited."

"What do you think we are built for?"

"Obviously Dad and Dr. Shamir made our bodies to save our lives; and Dad gave us rockets so we could go into space; but I've got no clue what God's got in mind beyond that."

"Okay," she radioed. "I better take a break. I need some sleep." She'd gotten the <dynamic memory ninety percent full> message as they were coming out of orbit because of all the thinking she'd been doing.

"Sure," Ricky replied. "I'll play with Philip."

While she stood like a statue, he took off the backpack and pulled out the little guy, now ten centimetres long.

"What do you want to do?" he radioed, and was startled when Philip opened his eyes for the first time and looked back at him. "So you're able to update your own BIOS now, huh? That's really good. I better check how your video and radio are working."

He lit up his hands, and Philip turned on his glow in response; but this time there was a full connection, which Philip had never done before; and Ricky was able to see himself through Philip's eyes. Then Ricky realized that the little guy was looking at himself through his-Ricky's-eyes. Ricky could feel his fear.

"It's okay," Ricky said through the connection, even though Philip had no speech function yet. "I'm here. You don't need to be scared."

He triggered an arm movement in Philip, which scared Philip even more for a moment; but then he moved a leg several times on his own, and an arm.