“Whoa! Are you seeing this? Look at all those stars!” Jenny shoved past me and made her way to the enormous wraparound viewport that dominated the front of Ops.
“Oh, I’ve seen them,” I said, averting my eyes so that I didn’t have to see them again.
Jenny pressed her face and hands to the glass. “Is this real?”
“It’s real,” DJ said. “We’re on a spaceship called Qriosity.”
“Supposedly,” I added.
“You don’t think we’re actually on a ship?” DJ asked.
I took a seat at the nearest station and ran my hands over the console, looking for a convenient button marked “Home.” There was not one. “I’m not saying we’re not on a ship.” I leaned back in the chair, which was more comfortable than it looked. “But I don’t think we should take it for granted that we are either.”
DJ’s eyebrows knit together while he tried to work through what I’d said. Mostly, I was just trying to sound confident because it was better than sounding afraid.
“Why is nothing working?” Jenny had finally gotten bored of the stars, though she’d left prints of her face and hands smudged across the glass, and joined the conversation in progress. She motioned at the consoles, which did appear mostly powered down.
“We shut off the reactor,” I said.
Jenny frowned at DJ and me like we’d admitted to eating rocks. “Why would you do something ridiculous like that?”
“Well…,” DJ began. I feared he was going to recap what we’d been through in excruciating detail, and I wasn’t in the mood to relive dying, so I cut him off.
“It’s a long story,” I said. “The short version is that the ship was going to explode and we stopped it. No thanks necessary.”
DJ hiked his thumb at me. “Yeah. That.”
“Great,” she said. “That explains literally nothing.”
DJ rested his hand on my arm, and I jerked away. “Noa, maybe we should—”
“We shut off the reactor; what more is there to explain? Should we draw a cartoon? Maybe perform an interpretive dance?”
Jenny squeezed her eyes shut and flapped her hands in the air. “I just want someone to tell me what’s going on!”
Brightly colored lights swarmed into Ops from vents near the ceiling like an army of tiny fairies and began to coalesce in the center of the room. They were beautiful because they were sparkly, and terrifying because I had no idea what they were going to do to us.
“They look like fireflies.” Jenny moved toward them like she was going to try to catch one, but DJ pulled her back. “What are they?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” DJ said.
“They could be anything,” I said. “A security system that’s going to irradiate us and then leave us to die as our skin slowly sloughs off.”
Jenny laughed. It was a sharper sound than DJ’s laugh, and it made me wince. “Oh, I get it. You’re an optimist, aren’t you.”
“I’m optimistic that we’re probably going to die.”
The lights did not, thankfully, attempt to kill us. Less than a minute after appearing, the tiny stars solidified into a surprisingly well-defined hologram of a middle-aged woman wearing a fashionable periwinkle suit. Her perfectly styled wavy auburn hair hung to her shoulders, and her smile, which remained fixed in place until each dazzling photon reached its position, was both beautiful and predatory. It was the kind of smile that said, I’m so happy you’re here! I’m dying to murder you and sew your skins into an oversize tunic.
I looked at DJ to see if he had any idea what was happening, but he was staring at the hologram with a slack-jawed expression that said he was just as clueless as me. I nudged his arm, but before he could speak, the hologram woke up.
“Hi! I’m your host, Jenny Perez, whom you probably remember as the precocious kid detective and bestselling author Anastasia Darling on the award-winning mystery entertainment program Murder Your Darlings.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but what the actual—”
DJ waved me quiet. “Hush.”
“Don’t hush me.”
“If you’re seeing this holographic message, then something’s gone horribly wrong aboard Qriosity. Is it murder? Sabotage? A mysterious illness? I don’t know; I’m a hologram, silly. But on the bright side, Qriosity’s emergency beacon will have initiated the moment the ship detected you were in trouble, and a rescue team is probably on the way.”
Only about a third of what came out of the hologram’s mouth made sense, and I was having trouble processing even that. “Probably?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When will rescue arrive?” DJ asked, glossing over the whole “probably” part.
Initially, I thought the hologram was a recording and wouldn’t answer, but it stuttered after DJ asked his question and then said, “Due to the current limitations of space travel, rescue may arrive in six to nine months. Sorry about it!”
Six to nine months couldn’t be right. There was no way I was going to accept being trapped on a rundown spaceship, or any ship for that matter, for that long. I was, apparently, not the only one.
“Nine months my ass,” Jenny said. “I don’t know what the hell is happening, but I want to go home right now!”
The hologram waved her finger in the air. “A good junior detective never uses profanity. Let’s see if we can come up with a better word together.”
Jenny snorted. “I’ve got a couple of words for you.”
I buried my face in my hands. How was I supposed to survive six months in space when I hadn’t survived the first hour? Space was going to find a way to kill us, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. This was a nightmare wrapped in a disaster glazed with a catastrophe.
DJ, who seemed to be taking the news of our extended captivity relatively well, cleared his throat loudly enough that Jenny stopped harassing Jenny Perez. “We had to shut down the reactor to keep Qriosity from blowing up. Will we be okay without it?”
Jenny Perez paused to think, or whatever holograms do, before answering. “In the event that you’ve been forced to shut down the Cordova Exotic Particle Reactor, Qriosity’s Quazar High-Density Batteries will continue to power essential ship’s systems for up to twelve months. Essential systems include basic life support, obviously, Qriosity’s oxygen farm, your Freshie Stasis Fridge, and me! Your Emergency Jenny Perez Holographic Help System. Lucky you!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Lucky us.”
“However,” the hologram continued, “all non-essential systems will remain offline to conserve power until the Cordova Exotic Particle Reactor is reactivated. Non-essential systems include: environmental comfort controls, hot water, and galley prep stations. Better get used to cold showers! But don’t worry about food because Qriosity is stocked with enough Nutreesh meal replacement bars to feed the entire crew for a full ten years. Nutreesh! Put some in you!”
Jenny had sunk to the floor during the hologram’s speech and was sitting cross-legged, staring blankly into space. “I preferred being locked in the toilet.”