Chapter Text
Ilyukina did not know when she fell asleep or even if it could be called sleep. It felt to her more like executing a groggy blink. But at the end of the blink, time had passed.
She also wasn't where she ought to have been. She did remember being in the dormitory and when she had “woken” she was in the control room. Looking around she spots Yao sitting in the pilot's chair staring at the wall of screens. One of his hands was reaching toward one, while the other rested on the joystick, oddly not moving it.
“What are you looking at?” Her voice breaks his train of thought.
He glanced up at her before looking back to the wall. “I'm trying to see if I can tell how close to TauCeti we are, but right now all I am seeing are status updates and fuel gauges.” He kept trying to change what was on the screen in front of him, but it was not responding to his touch. Great even more evidence against her ‘It was just a terrible dream’ theory.
“How did I get here? I thought I was in the dormitory."
“I think it has to do with us being ghosts. I'm not sure why l, but I always wake up here too.”
“So are we ghosts.” She didn't like how that tasted.
“Thats the prevailing theory anyway. We died and we are still here. So I think that's what we became.” Yao said trying to be gentle with his words. He had been dead a lot longer than Ilyukhina so he was more used to the notion.
“Does that mean we have ghost abilities?” she asked getting excited after a brief pause.
She started pacing, grabbing her elbow with her right hand and her chin with her left. Yao recognised this motion as her thinking face. She had spent many hours during simulations in this exact pose.
“What do you mean?” he asked, watching her.
“When I was in university, my roommate was into ghost hunting shows. They would come on the science channel late at night, and she would watch them. I watched a few with her here and there in passing, but not a lot. The main point of the show was to try to prove that ghosts are real by collecting “evidence”.They tried to detect them using different tools like cameras and voice recorders. But the ghosts were hardly ever caught even though they could do all kinds of different things, like manipulating temperature and moving objects.”
“Well all my knowledge comes from the few horror movies I have seen,this is beyond me, so it sounds like between the two of us you are the expert.”
Ilyukhina nodded. Returning to her thinking pose. “From what I know ghosts are said to give off electromagnetic energy fields. They use what they call EMF detectors to measure spikes in these fields. I know the Hail Mary was equipped with all different kinds of sensors, so the fact that she hasn't detected us means that she either doesn't have that specific sensor, or we are presenting at a lower frequency than even she can detect.” They both doubted that Stratt would include all human history and not an EMF detector.
“That's why they have to drain batteries to be seen, they can take that energy and increase their own EMF.” Yao added catching on. “And that's probably why we keep coming back to this room. We probably are just naturally drawn to the energy these screens give off.’ he said.
“I think that's right.” She said smiling and returning back to her thinking pose.
“That at least answers some questions. But it brings up more. Like how much energy do I need to be detectable and what can I do once I am?”
Smiling, Yao stood and walked over to the hatch in the floor. “ Let me show you what I have learned, and we can work on the rest of it.”
Ilyukhina watched as the Commander stood on the hatch. “I also came to the same conclusion. This conversation that we had does give me an idea however. Just picture the room you want to go to and..” Yao blipped from her sight.
Ilyukhina blinked a few times to make sure that what she saw was real. “What the-” Yao reappeared next to her and she shrieked.
“You look like you've seen a ghost.” He teased.
“Ha. Ha.’ She deadpanned. “And how long have you been waiting to use that one?”
“I thought of it when I left just now.” He was smug about it. “Now it's your turn. Picture the lab.”
She closed her eyes and looked at the room through her mind's eye. The sideways table and chair sticking out from the wall, the computer screens and lab equipment all on its side, waiting to be used. She felt her skin tingling and the fogginess that had accompanied her when she first woke up came back. That had to be what that feeling was. She had been thinking about the control room and must have done a series of mini blips to get there. Before she could process it she was standing in the middle of the lab.
Yao appeared next to her. “Excellant job!”
“I feel tired.” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“This is exactly how I felt the first time I did this too.”
“But you don't feel it now?”
“I got used to it.” He shrugged. “I've been practicing for 4 years, you know.”
Ilyukhina froze.
That's right.
He had died first.
And thus was awake first.
Alone.
She had been so caught up in her own death that she hardly asked about him. She had at least had him to help her process everything, but who did he have, what did he do?
Yao to his credit did not dwell on it. He just pushed right past it.
“So if our hypothesis is correct we should be able to pull energy from this computer and do something with it. Let's just see if we can collect enough to set the sensors off.” he said as he walked toward the computer hanging on the wall. Iluykina ,right on his heels.
He pressed his hand on the keyboard and without trying too hard, drained some energy. The electricity jolted his fingers and surrounded them in a blue halo of light.
He focused his mind and was able to move the energy to surround him in that same blue light. He started to look different to her for a moment, like he was more solid somehow. Were they transparent?
He kept pulling energy, Ilyukhina watching the already dim lights flicker.
“Anomaly detected” Mary's computer voice rang out setting off an alert.
Yao ripped his hand from the computer and the light faded from around him, as he returned to his previous state. The alarm stopped as he did so.
“That was so cool! Did it hurt at all?”
“It feels like I licked a battery and got a caffeine rush.”
“Intresting. I wonder how much it would take to move something.”
“Let's find out.”
And for a while they practiced. Pulling energy until it was second nature and only stopping when Mary indicated she sensed them.
Then they hypothesised more and learned some key things.
The amount of energy it took to to move an object was more than it was to manifest. If the energy was focused into a point, like a hand and then applied to an object, then they could move the object and not set off the sensor.
They also learned that they could store energy. Like a battery, holding a lot of energy and only using the amount needed.
The unfortunate drawback was if they weren't carefully managing the amount they were using, they could use too much and disappear for a few days until they naturally recharged and ended up back in the control room. This happened to Ilyukhina, and it left Yao moving a magnetic coffee mug he found,from one side of the lab table to the other until she returned.
Time was passing faster now that they had something to work on. They still didn't know how close to TauCeti they were, but they could guess based on Yao's estimation of time. Putting them somewhere between 9 and 3 months away when Ilyukhina joined him. They knew for certain when Mary announced,
“Approaching TauCeti system. Initiating wake up protocol."