The Soulmate Curse

Promise - Part 2

"I thought you'd decided to work here on base with me a month ago, when you made rank," said Jo as they walked to their Russian as a second language class. She was the other candidate being trained as the potential future Mars Mission Commander. There were always multiples. It only made sense when the mission was about a decade away.

"I changed my mind," said Zhen.

"That's weird," said Jo, who had the subtlety of a brick crashing through a window when she wasn't speaking about aeronautical issues. "A month ago, you were ready to leave what you called a boring job. You told me you'd packed up your desk and only had one project left to do. What happened?"

"Nothing happened. I just changed my mind."

"You never just change your mind."

"I change my mind, sometimes."

"Never without a justifiable reason."

"Can we talk about something else?"

"Hmm, why are you changing the subject? Is this subject uncomfortable for you to talk about?"

They walked into a room with several other astronauts in training. "Looks like we're here. Time to start learning some Russian."

Jo responded in Russian as they took their seats. "People act with me like you're acting with me when the subject involves other people. Especially if it's about romance. They say I don't get it."

"I don't want to talk about romance," said Zhen in Russian.

"Do you want to talk about MechSoft and how much it infuriates me that they practically own the ISS 2?" Jo replied with a little more bile in her voice than was warranted.

"Yeah, it's messed up that a corporation can own a space station."

Jo went silent for a beat ad then asked, "You'll keep working at the Think Tank?"

"I will."

"Till when? They'll expect you to make a choice before we start training for the ISS 2 trip. Or they'll pass on you."

Those three training days at the Global Space Initiative went too slow. Slower than Zhen had ever known them too. She had always looked forward to those three-day weekends at the base, but now she couldn't wait to get back to work. And somehow, four days of work suddenly didn't seem like enough. It was the last hour of their workday, a few nights later. The sun had set hours ago. Zhen had enjoyed another day blowing Jack's mind with her and Finn's proposals. Finn had headed to the 3D printer room to get something before they walked home together. Zhen smiled at the thought as she saved a few files on her computer. She was about to close the last window of her word processor and shut everything down when the indifferent robotic voice from her computer came alive.

"Cascading system-wide malfunction initiating from this workstation. Reformatting full network hard drive in twenty seconds..."

Zhen almost had a heart attack. She began checking every part of her system, her heart racing. If her workstation took out the whole office system, that would be a huge problem! Nothing looked out of place.

"...ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven..."

She was doing everything to find the fault, but Zhen was stamped. If this was Finn's work... but she couldn't have gone this far... right?

"...Three. Two. One."

Zhen's palms were drenched in sweat. This wasn't happening. No. No, no...

"Dictation complete."

Zhen almost shrieked. No freaking way! She went back to the word processor window she had minimised. The white screen was still blank. Or was it? She swept the cursor across the screen. The words had been typed out in white font and the AI set up to dictate the words using a timer. So old school, Zhen had completely overthought it. That's when she heard Finn. She was standing behind Zhen, laughing her head off, holding her phone up, still recording Zhen.