Chapter 6: |6| – Routine

My phone's alarm going off woke me up the next day with my usual morning grogginess. I tried to reach out in the darkness toward where the noise was coming from, but it was still in my pants, which were floating somewhere in the middle of the room. So I reluctantly released the clasps holding me in my bed and activated the lights with a voice command. Thankfully, the ship knew not to go full brightness right away and gave my eyes time to adjust.

Fishing the flashing screen out of my pants, I saw that I had slept for just over eleven hours. Pretty standard for me. Often times people either use the days of their home planet as a baseline or the 24-hour standard. New Melbourne had a day length of over 120 hours - not that you could even see the sun in the city - and was thus unsuitable as a base for a circadian rhythm. The reason I was used to the 36-hour cycle was mainly my aunt and uncle back at the scrap yard. They had already used it when I had started to work for them, and it was simpler for me to get used to it than to always be in different sleep cycles.

With a heavy yawn, I gathered my other clothes floating around. A smell test told me they didn't stink too much, and I didn't want Noma to catch me in my underwear... at least I think I didn't want that. So, throwing them on, I made my way to a wall cabinet and pulled out my medication and a small armband. I put the band on, with a screen positioned on my biceps. After tapping the screen and putting the machine in medical check-up mode, I opened the three plastic bottles and took one pill out of each, before swallowing all three at once. They were my long-term bone density enhancers, muscle growth stimulant, and heart meds. There was a reason, after all, why pregnancies were discouraged on low-g worlds, especially with a family record like mine, but at this point, it was just routine for me.

A few seconds later the armband beeped and flashed yellow, normally a warning about a potentially dangerous situation or long-term health detriments. The low blood pressure was what I expected and so I opened the band and put everything back in the cabinets and put my boots on and, as the last step of my morning routine, did some light stretches. They weren't as effective as if we were under thrust, but better than nothing.

My PC was still sitting on my desk, thanks to the small magnets on the backside of the keyboard, so I made my way over there. I wanted to check what secrets the data core contained, but military encryption was even more robust than I expected. The program estimated it would take another hour to crack it.

Suddenly I felt a pressure building around my lower intestine and, realizing what was about to happen, rushed to the small private toilet area my quarters had. In theory, zero-g toilets worked similarly to the showers. Water comes in from the top and gets sucked in by a pump at the bottom. They were a lot less pleasant to use, however. So I took my phone out of my pocket and looked for anything to distract myself with. As fun as it would have been to check in with Noma, I didn't want to bother her if she was doing something important. I remembered something from yesterday that I wanted to check out and thought it should be distracting enough, so I opened the ship's internet and opened a translation software.

Apparently, Fuchsbau was german and meant fox den or foxhole. I had never heard of a fox, but checking the internet revealed, that they were small fluffy animals from Earth. They honestly looked a lot like some of the strays I had seen back home, but with cuter tails and a pretty red coat of fur. I would give them 8/10 on the cuteness scale!

I may or may not have spent the next few minutes watching fox videos on the toilet before it was time to move on with my morning. Again, my body decided what I should focus on next, namely: breakfast! Me skipping dinner, even if a bit involuntarily, left me hungry and so I checked that I have my phone, set it to notify me if the data core was finished, and made my way out the door.

I was two levels down from the kitchen, the captain's quarters were directly above me, and where the showers were located on her level, I had the Gym and training area. It was important to train your muscles while in zero or low-g, otherwise, muscle atrophy will set in quickly. I normally did that before having my shower, so the time slot we had spent scouting the Fuchsbau yesterday. The ship had everything one could expect and more, and while some equipment would obviously be rather useless without gravity, a surprising amount of it was designed to work with springs and rubber bands as resistance. That wasn't common on civilian ships, let alone freighters like the Northern Seal. A freighter not under thrust was wasted money, after all.

As I made my way into the central corridor, I could see the door was open and also hear Noma's heavy breathing and the occasional click of her boots hitting the ground. I should probably at least say good morning, although I didn't know when she had gotten up. Unlike me, Noma didn't seem to have a favorite training time. So I went over and popped my head in.

Noma was doing pull-ups on a bar in the ceiling with a thick rubber band wrapped around both of her ankles. Besides her boots, she was only wearing a sports bra and some shorts, both light grey in color. She had her back turned toward me and for a moment I had a déjà vu to back in the airlock. Just this time she also glistened from the sweat she had worked up.

"Hey, sleepyhead!" She suddenly called out, and that pulled my eyes back up. She had already turned around and was wiping her forehead with a towel while looking at me, still in the doorframe.

"G-good morning, Noma!" My voice came out a bit too loud, like it always seemed to do when she caught me off guard.

"It's more like noon to me already, but good morning. You wanna join me?" She asked with an inviting wave of her arm and, for a moment, I was tempted to do that, but I should probably eat something before doing anything too physically demanding.

"Nah, I gotta go grab breakfast and then maybe see what the data core is hiding?" I answered with a slight shake of my head.

Noma, meanwhile, had grabbed a water bottle and was drinking it, before she turned her attention back to me, with a raised eyebrow. "Still didn't crack it?"

This time, I shook my head stronger. "No, encryption is better than I expected. Estimate is only another hour, though."

"Okay, I was just about finished here, anyway. I will come up after I took a shower, okay?"

"Sounds good to me!" I said with a smile and made my way to the ladder shaft.

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I deactivated my boots and floated up the two levels to the kitchen. Normally, my breakfast was pretty small, but as I said, I was starving. The fridge still held my home-cooked lasagna - without meat or real cheese, as they were too expensive to waste on my skills - but thankfully I wasn't that desperate yet. There also was that nutri bar floating around the table, but if it came down to that, I would prefer my home-cooking. Instead, I just grabbed a bowl of the brand of curry I had always liked back in the yard.

Pushing it into the holders of the microwave, I sat down on the couch and pulled my phone out again. And for a moment, I just stared at the background picture. It was me and all of my moms. It was taken on my 12th birthday and always made me smile when I looked at it. Now it also made me a bit nostalgic. I had never been out of contact with them for so long, even though Noma and I had barely been out for more than a week by now. I mean my message saying that I left the yard for a while should have just arrived for them, and I was already missing them.

The picture also perfectly showed the family dynamic between me and my moms. Addy and Vicky were cuddling in the background and looking at me like I was the funniest thing that could have existed at that point, while I was being carried on the shoulders by Alina, who was running around the house. Zoe - my biological mother, though they were all my moms - chasing after us, scared to death that something could happen to either one.

Alina's and Zoe's relationship was also what eventually lead to the other two meeting each other. At first, they just had an open relationship, even though I don't think Zoe ever actually saw anyone besides Alina - not that the woman in question would have minded - and Alina herself only had a few sexual relationships, nothing in any romantic way. That's how she eventually met Viktoria once they were on New Melbourne. Vicky worked as the bartender for a small bar and, according to herself, left behind a string of broken hearts wherever she went. That was until Addy came to visit her new sister-in-law - namely Alina - because her younger sister had just married a scrap yard overseer, who also happened to be Alina's twin brother. Their first impressions of each other were pretty good, all things considered.

On the last day of Addy's visit to the colony, they went to the bar where Vicky worked. All of them except for Vicky were too drunk to later give any accurate account of the evening, but what they all agreed on was that a drunk Addy asked Vicky to marry her. Vicky said she should ask her again when sobered up. That lead to Addy adding a few more vacation days to her visit. At first, she was too embarrassed to meet Vicky again but eventually went back to the bar. Initially to apologize but somehow she ended up confessing again, so the two tried it out between them.

A few years later, Addy and Zoe also kind of started dating, when their respective girlfriends pointed out that it was pretty obvious they were into each other. Add another couple of years and they all decided to get married. That also lead to the weird situation where the two sisters-in-law are legally married to each other, despite not being anything more than best friends, just because in a plural marriage everyone was a partner of everyone else in the eyes of the law.

It was a pretty chaotic story. At least it would have been for a normal family, but it always seemed pretty sweet to me. I mean one look at them, even after all those years, and it was clear they still loved each other more than ever. But pulling my thoughts back towards the present, I heard the beeping of the microwave and went to grab the bowl out and grabbed a spoon from one of the drawers.

While slowly shoveling the hot food into my mouth, I opened the messaging app. I looked around and, more specifically, listening for any sign of Noma. Thankfully, she still seemed to take her shower and so I started a new video message:

"Hey mom, mom, mom, and ma," I started with a little smirk.

"I guess you should have heard from uncle Moe by now that I got hired. And don't worry, it all went fine. We're already on the way back to the yard, actually." I said while taking another spoonful of food.

"The job just was some water hauler lost a few light-years out. Most of the stuff looked pretty messed up, but nothing I couldn't handle. That isn't why I am recording this, though." I collected my thoughts for a few seconds while taking a small sip of water.

"I guess I'll cut right to it. I think I may be developing a bit of a crush for my new captain. I know, I know, I said I would never live such a clichéd life, but that's why I'm asking you, okay? I mean, what should I even do? In a few weeks, we should be back in the yard. Which also means, that if I want to say something to her, I have to do it before then. This also means there is no way you receive this message in time to send a reply before I have to decide. So it may be a bit useless for me to record this now. Ahhh..." I let out a big sigh. I guess this was more for me to collect my thoughts than to inform my parents.

"Sorry for rambling! Just... wish me luck, okay? And don't worry, I'll be fine. Love you four! Bye! I'm gonna stop now! Bye!"

With a smaller sigh, I put my phone down and ate the rest of my food before putting everything in the bin. The recycler should make sure the spoon and cup get back into their respective places, eventually. I checked the decryption of the data core again and the estimate had been a bit pessimistic, as at that exact moment I got an alert, that it was finished.

I jotted a message to Noma, that I would check it out up here, and a few seconds later she replied that she was on her way. The PC back in my room was connected to the ship's internal network. Therefore, I could access it from where I was. Displaying the folder layout of the data core on one of the holographic screens was pretty easy, and with a few hand gestures, I navigated it.

Most of the storage space was taken up by logs and a communications buffer. One file, however, stood out. It was a simple text file and just read:

WARNING! DO NOT INTERFACE ON SHIP NETWORK! POSSIBLE MALWARE INFECTION!

Hmmm, that sounded kind of serious.