The alarm was still ringing, and the electronic countdown sounded like a hammer pounding on our eardrums.
“10……9……”
Chen Hao's hand was still on the red button, and he looked like he had just been pulled out of ice water. He jerked his hand back, sprang up from the main seat, and turned to reach for the spacesuit hanging on the wall. The thing was dusty and gray, like a dried silkworm cocoon, dangling from the hook.
“8……7……”
He ripped it off and tried to put it on, but his arms got stuck a couple of times before he could squeeze into the sleeve. The waist was clearly too small; the zipper got stuck halfway up, and a bulge of flesh piled up at the neckline, making him look like a rice dumpling stuffed into a size too small.
"Damn it! Who designed this? Is the standard body shape a monkey?!" He cursed as he tried to pull himself up, but his foot slipped and he stepped on the crease at the edge of the cushioning pad. He fell forward, and his helmet flew out of his hand with a "bang" and rolled into a crevice in the corner.
“6……5……”
He froze for a second, his mind going blank. His oxygen mask wasn't on, the gaskets weren't fastened, and the outside was already collapsing. The main ship's frame was making a sickeningly painful, twisting sound, like someone scraping a blackboard with fingernails. If the cabin depressurized during ejection, he wouldn't last three seconds before turning to mummies.
Just as he lunged for the helmet, the silver-gray box in the corner suddenly snapped open with a "click." Several metal arms unfolded like snakes, their joints rotating so smoothly they seemed less like machines and more like living things. A slender mechanical arm shot out with lightning speed, precisely clamping the helmet back in, while the other arm gently pushed, sending a weak but steady stream of air carrying the helmet back to him.
Chen Hao grabbed it, his fingers trembling as if electrified, and it took him two tries to tighten the sealing ring. A calm voice came from beside him: "The left latch is not closed."
He looked down and, sure enough, one side wasn't fastened properly. He quickly pressed it down hard, and it locked in place with a "click." A soft oxygen supply sound immediately came from inside the mask, and the hUd indicator on his vision lit up in green.
“Life support is connected,” she said. “Don’t breathe too fast, conserve your oxygen.”
"Calm down!" he panted. "I'm practically a kebab and you're still reciting menus!"
“Emotional excitement increases oxygen consumption.” She didn’t raise her voice, nor did she sound sarcastic; it was as if she were saying, “The weather is nice today.”
“4……3……”
The hatch was still closing, but at a slower pace. The hydraulic levers made intermittent "clunking" sounds, like an old elevator stuck in mid-air. There were still twenty centimeters of gap left, and the sound of metal tearing outside grew closer. A flash of fire erupted from the end of the corridor, and fragments struck the edge of the hatch, sending sparks flying.
“The sealing valve is not fully closed,” she said. “Switch to emergency power and force it forward.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the entire robotic arm retracted, and a silver-white figure swiftly unfolded from its box-like state, standing before the control panel. Her fingers swept across the operating area, moving so fast they left afterimages. The red lights on the panel went out one after another, only to be replaced by a green line.
"Buzz—"
The hydraulic system suddenly engaged, and the hatch closed rapidly. Just as the gap was reduced to only ten centimeters, a sharp piece of metal whistled past, grazing the hatch and leaving blinding sparks on the protective layer.
“Magnetic screen activation,” she said.
An invisible barrier instantly deployed, deflecting the shockwave. The hatch slammed shut with a bang, the seals locked, and the pressure inside began to rise steadily.
“2…”
Chen Hao slumped into the main seat, his back drenched in cold sweat. The seatbelt tightened automatically, securing him firmly. He stared at the countdown screen above him, the numbers jumping like a heartbeat.
"Nana?" he suddenly asked.
"I am here."
"That was... was that your first time rescuing someone?"
“No,” she said. “I assisted 37 drivers with their escape procedures.”
"Oh." He grinned. "Then you're very experienced. Why didn't you say so earlier? I thought you were the kind of AI that could only read the instruction manual."
“When the instruction manual can solve the problem, there’s no need to do it yourself,” she said. “Now, there is.”
1.
The moment the numbers lit up, the bottom thrusters ignited with a roar. The entire escape pod trembled violently, as if it had been violently pushed into an abyss by a giant hand. Chen Hao felt a sudden heaviness in his chest, as if his internal organs were being pressed into his spine. Outside the window, the final section of the main ship's stern was disintegrating, its metal hull curling and breaking like paper before being swallowed by the blue light at the edge of the wormhole.
Their hulls shot out like bullets, narrowly escaping the mothership wreckage. The wormhole in the distance continued to shrink, its edges glowing ominously, like a slowly closing mouth.
“The orbit is normal,” she said. “It has deviated 0.7 units from the center of gravity and is expected to leave the capture range.”
"What did you say?" His ears were ringing; he couldn't hear clearly. "Say it again?"
“We’re not dead,” she said. “For now.”
"Temporarily?" He smiled wryly. "You really know how to give people hope."
The cabin continued to accelerate, passing through a distorted zone of space. Starlight outside the porthole stretched into lines, then suddenly vanished. The gravitational field began to fluctuate, and the cushioning devices under the seats constantly adjusted their attitude.
He looked up toward the storage tank, where Nana had folded back into its box shape and was quietly embedded there, with only the indicator light flashing slightly.
"Hey." He licked his chapped lips. "The way you stretched out your arm just now... was pretty cool."
There was no response.
He didn't seem to care, leaning back in his chair and staring at the navigation screen above him. A red line stretched forward on the screen, ending in an unknown area.
Suddenly, the cabin tilted violently, as if it had hit something unseen. The alarm sounded again, but this time it wasn't a countdown; instead, it was a series of short, continuous beeps.
“An unusual gravitational disturbance has been detected,” she said. “It is recommended to shut down non-essential systems.”
"Turn it off! Turn it off! Turn it off!" He frantically slammed his hands on the panel. "He even turned off the function that makes me snore!"
The screen flickered and then went dark, leaving only basic life support and power monitoring functions still running. The interior light turned a dark red, as if the cabin were soaking in aged vinegar.
“Where are we going now?” he asked.
"I don't know," she said.
"Huh?" His eyes widened. "Don't you have a database? You can recite more than three thousand books and calculate wormhole closing times, and now you're telling me 'I don't know'?"
“I know a lot of things,” she said, “but data can’t predict places I haven’t been to.”
So we're just drifting aimlessly?
"To be precise, it is drifting along the folds of time and space."
“Wrinkled my foot!” he rolled his eyes. “It sounds like you didn’t dry yourself off after taking a shower.”
The cabin shook again, more violently than before. Chen Hao felt a churning in his stomach and almost vomited up the energy bars from his breakfast. He gripped the handrail tightly, his knuckles turning white.
“Just a heads up,” he said, “if I really died, the accident report can’t write something like ‘operational error led to successful rescue.’”
“You don’t have to write it,” she said. “If you don’t want to.”
“That’s true.” He grinned. “Anyway, nobody’s watching.”
A brief silence. Only the low hum of the machine and the occasional structural creaking could be heard.
"Oh, right." He suddenly remembered something, "You said you're an auxiliary system, so do you have a designation other than your name? Like EVA-7N?"
“Yes,” she said.
"What's your name?"
"You don't want to remember."
Tell me about it.
"Project X-9's fourteenth failure."
He paused for a moment, "A failed experiment? Then what you just did..."
"The functionality has been restored at a rate of 98.7%," she said. "The rest are still being debugged."
"So you're now a repaired piece of junk?"
"That's one way to understand it."
"Alright then." He sighed. "Then we're quite a match, one a slacker and the other a good-for-nothing, let's escape together."
Outside the capsule, the light from the wormhole gradually engulfed everything. The star map completely failed, and the navigation lines snapped halfway. The escape pod, like a fallen leaf, was swept into an endless vortex.
He gazed at the bottomless darkness and suddenly smiled.
"Do you think... what if we drift somewhere, open a door, and find aliens queuing for a bus?"
“The possibility exists,” she said, “but the probability is less than 0.03%.”
"Hey, don't be a spoilsport," he muttered. "Everyone has to have dreams."
The cabin shuddered violently, as if pulled taut by something. All the lights went out instantly, then came back on a second later. On the navigation screen, the previously interrupted red line suddenly flickered and continued to extend forward.
Before he could speak, a vibration came from under the seat.
The indicator light on the bottom of the storage tank turned from blue to red, and the robotic arm loosened slightly, seemingly about to unfold again.
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