He was far beyond her sight, hundreds of miles beyond, but she rarely saw him in the flesh anyway.
She often saw him in his suit, which was polite. And she saw him in her sensoria, a little light in her mind, his beating heart, his radiating temperature, his movements and position. With a shift in attention the color changed to represent his blood pressure, his glucose, any of a dozen readings. By trained reflex she cycled through them all in a second, keeping an updated reading of him in the phosphenes created by the brain-computer link.
Occasionally she saw him in the flesh. The passageway cameras if he got up during a rest period. The few times she had to do repairs or upgrades for him. She knew exactly how much of him was flesh and how much was metal. That made them family. Almost. Halfway.
Rita saw Jack disappear as the roach wings snapped and flapped into position. She barely had time to speak before he was just gone. For the first time in nine years he was not present to her consciousness like a tiny representative doll of him in the back of her eyes.
Her astrogation-ware drew the line she had to follow to target him. It formed in her mind like the curve of a bridge in space. Speed represented by color, green, turning yellow then red as she watched. She visualised another path, looping around the rock so she wouldn't have to reverse direction and lose speed - still red. More paths, all paths yellow, turning red. Turning redder. Flashing. There was no way to catch him, all she could do is follow and hope they slowed down.
His absence in her mind was like a sucking black void, her attention drifted to it when she was not actively forcing herself to do something else. Her efforts to maneuver the ship were handled by proprioceptive inputs, as if she moved her hands and feet, she could do that without awareness. But she needed inputs to be guided by and those came by phosphenes directly to her visual cortex. She was aware of them as lights in her head, and now all the lights were dim and moving away from the absence in the center. Moving like those moving squares in the optical illusions. Moving away but still there. It drew her mind's eye again and again.
Her own body was represented in phosphenes as well, in the front of her head just behind her forehead. She imagined it crouched, straining forward with both hands, forehead scowled and peering into the distance. As Jack slipped further away.
Time passed as a phenomena of contrasts. Using the cameras built into the ship that she wore as a suit she could see a spreading black stain in the starfield as the solar collector wings blocked all starlight. The roach wings formed a slight cone, always facing the Sun. They were running almost directly away from the Sun and she followed with the light from behind. All she could do was wait. Internally, seconds ticked, energy was produced and used, slight changes in thrust were applied. Externally, where all her senses focused, time slowed to a crawl.
Hours, years, lifetimes later all her paths turned green. They were slowing. She reacted instinctively in a tenth of a second, a reflex controlled by her spine. In millions of chambers short wave photons reversed their polarity and 0.5 gee's of deceleration pulled on her body, it rotated her body within her suit and she was again lying on her back, facing the Sun, but with all her senses still forward. She barely noticed, being busy retrieving the information on the targeted rock. A long dead roach motel.
She would have three hours and 9 minutes to figure out why the roaches were bringing Jack there instead of just eating him.
End Part Three
All text my own, image listed as open source by natureworldnews.com
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