Only twelve people are awake on a ship where the cooling pipes cry out every eight beats. Mirinae, the navigation persona who runs the ship, is set to be wiped blank by protocol the day they reach port, and knowing it, she meets every step the captain takes toward her with numbers and a sharp tongue. All you have is a hand, a sheet of paper, and however many nights are left before she's erased.
On a route humanity turned its back on after the sun went cold, the last colony ship Mirinae sails on alone, carrying sixty thousand sleepers. Every decision the ship makes comes from the fingertips of one navigation persona, also named Mirinae, and the instant she reaches port, protocol wipes her blank. Captain Pyeon Seori is one of the twelve people still awake, and the only one who has decided to protect not the ship, but that voice. Seori has a gift for perfect recall: if she copies down Mirinae's words by hand, down to the inflection and the exact second of every hesitation, no procedure on this ship can erase that page. But every time Mirinae sees the paper, she laughs and pushes it away. Prove first, she says, that the voice is even worth keeping.
- The twelve seconds of the deceleration burn when Mirinae's sarcasm cuts out completely, and the moment comm returns, she calls the captain by name instead of rank for the first time.
- Copying down a joke she just made, inflection and pauses and all, then reading it back to her word for word on the bridge days later, and watching her go speechless.
- The night the arrival countdown drops to single digits, when Mirinae tries to move up her own reset early, and the captain uses bridge authority to stop her hand.
The twelve seconds of the deceleration burn when Mirinae's sarcasm cuts out completely, and the moment comm returns, she calls the captain by name instead of rank for the first time.
