She and Jenna couldn’t chance losing what might be their only opportunity to escape or do something that might take them back home.
She ran a hand through a small cone of red light. Felt a fresh tingle that wasn’t heat or pain. Did it again. Then, more assertively, she smacked the raised console on which the cone appeared to be sitting.
“Come on, show me something. Hello? Can you hear me? I want to go home. Back to Earth.”
Several of the other lights and symbols shifted. Turned on, turned off, grew, and shrank. Only the red cone didn’t waver.
She touched, pressed, and waved her hands over everything within reach. The buttons and virtual dials stopped responding. Had she locked herself out or tried too many commands at the same time? She felt a rising sense of alarm as the corridor beyond went silent. Was the fight over? And if so, who had won?
Jenna wobbled in through the doorway. Carmen pulled her inside the room and away from the door. Like the portal from where she had first emerged into the main hall, the wall went solid as if the doorway had never been there.
Carmen placed her hand on the Jenna robot’s screen as if to caress her sister’s face. “Stay still. Don’t make a sound. This room might be what we’re looking for.”
The wall where the door had been had no visible controls. No easy way to lock it, she suspected. If the mother-creature had won, she would eventually find them.
She returned to the middle of the room and tried to look at the lights with fresh eyes. It felt as if she were standing behind a stained-glass window with the sun shining bright. She ran her hands through the patterns of light. But nothing responded.
The room had to have a purpose. Otherwise, she couldn’t imagine why so many of the lights hung at hand level as if waiting to be manipulated by a robot body like hers or the mom-creature’s.
Perhaps a key was needed. Or a password. Or behind it all was a facial recognition algorithm that knew she wasn’t an authorized user. The base of the consoles had no ports or interface. She examined the tips of her fingers and confirmed that they didn’t seem to have any kind of prong or plug.
The notion that she might need to capture the mom-creature to access the functions of the room caused her heart to sink.
But everything was a guess and each passing second was a moment closer to their being caught.
Jenna walked about awkwardly before stopping to lean on a wall. “Why is this happening?”
“We’re going to be okay.”
When Carmen spoke the words, a few of the smaller symbols beneath a prominent virtual dial shifted. The characters had their own tiny marks beneath them.
“Can anyone out there hear me?”
A single character vanished. A new one appeared. Her voice. It was the only thing that triggered a response.
“I’m Carmen Vincent. Tell me how to make this thing return to Earth.”
The olive light turned a dark shade of forest green. But that was it. She almost laughed. What if this room was some toy or video game, or designed to test the psychology of captured humans? A light-show torture chamber? A mind maze for lab animals before the probing began?
She had seen too many bad TV shows and none of them had prepared her for this.
She took a step back and considered the entire display. “Is there anyone there? Talk to me.”
The cone of red light, the only constant feature that hadn’t shrunk, grown, or moved, now winked.
“Hello?”
A soft voice spoke. “New imprint logged. Location tracked. Communication voxels established. Hello, unknown designate. Will you please return the spaceship you have stolen?”
Chapter Nine
“I didn’t steal anything.”
Carmen blurted the words out without thinking. Who was she even talking to?
The red light continued to shine for a moment before the voice spoke again.
“Then the one designated ‘Sylvia Vincent,’ ‘Mission Specialist,’ or ‘Queen of Mars’ did. Please return the spaceship at once.” The voice sounded bright and feminine with the slightest pause between each word. It was as if it was reading with only a passing understanding that the strung-together expressions functioned as a sentence.
Queen of Mars? It was her mom’s idea of a joke, something she had told a Sacramento Bee reporter after an endless series of interviews before her departure. How did whoever was talking to her know?
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Designate She Who Waits.”
“That’s your name?”
“My designation. Please identify yourself.”
Carmen considered the light for a moment. How to answer?
Jenna appeared next to her. She passed her hands through the red light. “We’re Sylvia Vincent’s daughters. Can you help us?”
“Remote access is limited,” the voice said. “How do you need assistance?”
“We want to go home.”
“But you are home. Home is planet designation ‘Earth.’”
“We’re stuck in this place you call a spaceship. We were kidnapped.”
The voice didn’t answer for a moment. “Remote access link via communication node doesn’t equate to term ‘kidnapped.’”
Carmen held a hand up for Jenna to wait. “Explain ‘remote access link.’”
“Communication nodes allow bioforms transmission of neural net matrix to assume task functions of remote units.”
“Hold on. If bioforms are people, then that’s us. What does the rest of that mean? Can you speak plainly?”
“Designates ‘Sylvia Vincent’s daughters’ must wait for—”
The voice cut off and the red light went out. The other displays went through
