"It's in times like these when I remember the words of our Great Prophet Sagan," John5 continued and looked at the men and women gathered in the sweltering heat. "There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the distance is endless. The sensation of depth is overwhelming and the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, and fierce, but light exists almost nowhere and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.”
Jessica13 didn't understand how anyone could know about that either, but then again, she wasn't one of the researchers. Maybe one day she could be, but for now, she tended to trust them and their trust in the Great Prophet Sagan. The sneaky voice in her head reminded her that it was only because she didn’t know anything else, but she shoved it out with a mental sigh.
John5 turned to the bodies, held his hands over them, and closed his eyes. All those gathered recognized that he was about to end his prayer with the traditional words and bowed their heads and closed their eyes in reverence.
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. Go forth and find out. Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust," he said. His voice cracked a little as he spoke and he raised his hand to wipe a couple of tears from his wrinkled cheek.
She liked that. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. It was a wonderful thought and something that felt like a genuine assertion—something she could believe herself. It wiggled into her mind and settled there like a presentment of some kind, although she had no idea why it felt important.
The old man took a step back to allow the recyc operators to step in and do their jobs. They pushed the bodies into the furnaces and to feed the fires and release their energy one final time for the benefit of Sanctuary.
"Thank you all for coming," John5 said and raised his hand in farewell to the folks assembled, who began to shuffle aside quietly to create a path to the elevator. The recyc operators resumed their business as usual and to feed most of the materials they had collected from above the day before into the appropriate furnaces. Some pieces would be smelted down to be used elsewhere, while others simply fed the fires.
When John5 and the other admins disappeared into an elevator which would take them to their levels, Armstrong7 turned to the pilots and bulletfoots who had been assembled.
"All right, folks," he said. "We've paid our respects to the fallen and in a little while, they'll bring in some people to apply for their positions. Until then, the rest of the staff will need to carry their work detail. It means a little more work and a little more canteen until we're at full capacity. You'll see the updated schedules on your pads. For the moment, though, we already have folks upstairs working through what's left of the mechs we tore apart, and some of the pilots will have to pull extra duty to find the parts we'll keep."
There was a collective groan from the pilots in question, and Jessica13 couldn't help but roll her eyes. It wasn't like they worked to protect the bunker on their own, but simply because they were the ones who did all the shooting, they thought they didn't need to help with the clean-up.
"Go back up, read your assignments, and get to work," the CO said. "I don't have the time to constantly track you down whenever you need a hand to hold. Get to work, and I'm sure we'll find our way out of this."
There was a collective response of “yes, sir” from the crowd.
"Peachy," he said. "A7 out. Dismissed."
She would never call him that, but it was entirely irrelevant. They would all head up to finish the work they had started the day before.
As it turned out, however, she was not included in that particular duty. Jessica13 would not go Topside to work on the mechs, after all. Her pad told her she was confined to the lower level to work on separating the bits and pieces that had been collected from the damaged mechs and identified as useful without the necessity to go through the recyc process.
As much as she wanted to go Topside, it was good to work with her hands again. She liked being able to take the various pieces apart, study them, and put them back together in a way that made them work correctly. Maybe it was the Athena genes that made her tick, but it was something she genuinely enjoyed.
Or would have at any other time but today, she felt a little twitchy and impatient for some reason. Either it was the ceremony in the recyc level or maybe it was all the talk about something somewhere waiting to be discovered. She had heard those words hundreds of times before and not only when someone got themselves killed.
People often spoke the words of The Great Prophet Sagan, and they usually said them like they knew what they meant, but it had never made much sense to her. It seemed like they simply took his words and twisted them to make sense and fit their way of thinking and never really considered what the man himself had intended for them.
Then again, she had no idea what the great prophet had actually said, so she had no idea if people merely adjusted the words to fit their worldviews or if their worldviews were altered by the words. Still, talking about how the
