Page 13 of Ava Stargazer

Ava nodded and looked at the tablet, not watching him leave.I don’t want that, not yet.If she went too deep in her memories, she was worried they would overwhelm her. She put her head on top of her hands. The sheer amount of data was overwhelming. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again.There’s just so much here.The data was going to be hard to go through, but she steeled herself, straightening her shoulders. I need to know.

The main bulk of the information was from Cipra, the place Ebel had bought her from, and where she was born. “Humanity, the perfect help,” she read the headline and then the words underneath, written as an advertisement, aloud, in a whispered tone. “Only strong stock now resides within these walls. Compliant and helpful.” Ava spent a few minutes trying to figure out what that meant.Can’t mean anything good.

The descriptions of Humans were hard to read. The advertisement was short and to the point, with even their intimate anatomy being described. But the descriptions were done in such a cold, clinical way that it turned her stomach.I'm so lucky that I ended up with Ebel. So lucky that she ended up on a ship where her only job was to help Ebel and climb in the vents.

Her eyes started to hurt from reading and concentrating before she finally hit the right place in the file. She cleared her throat and called out. “Vox? I think I found something.”

He came to sit next to her, bringing her some food. It had become a ritual of his to do so, feeding her if she was upset. The fluorescent lights shone bright in the control room, competing with the blue light from the tablet in front of them.

Ava expanded the logs the Phor had, which had been sent by the minders on Cipra as a sort of pedigree.Right here.Her hands trembled as she opened the feed, her body swimming with anxiety as she forced herself to focus. And look.

She spoke slowly, patting his arm until he bent over to listen and look with her. The words came out in a rush. “It doesn’t say what happened to her, but this is her name. My mother never liked us to say her name. She said she wasn’t that person anymore, and we couldn’t say it. But she said it to herself sometimes, and wrote it too. We only called her Mama. But there it is.”

Ava pointed at the word on the screen, voice hitching. “Laura.”

It was spelled in Common and in another way, a funny way, the way she remembered her mother spelling it in her old Earth language, with a right angle for the first letter.My mother. And sisters.And then underneath, fifth in line, was the only thread that the Phor had kept good track of, all the way toR526.“AVA.”

She traced the line with her finger.Me.Ava’s hands shook, and she decided not to look further at her family lineage, instead choosing to see what else had been sent.

Not all of the data packet was of the information from when Ava was sold. There were also memories there. Simple ones. And much easier to look at.

She widened them on the screen. “These are from when I lived with Ebel. He liked to keep records.”

The logs contained some pictures that Ebel had added from her time with him here on the Phor ship. He measured and weighed her regularly in the early days, when she had arrived and needed to gain extra weight, scribbling little notes in places about what he noticed and silly things she said. Ava smiled as she looked closer.So many records.The file also included a tally of every win he scored at the card games Ebel played against her, until she started winning too, and then that log was abandoned.

She remembered him entering those numbers to declare their victories over each other. At one point she even changed his name to“Ebel is a loser”on his defeats.

Ebel is a loser. . .Her hands shook, suddenly overwhelmed even by these happier memories, and she looked away.I need a break.The monitor got pushed away with a shaky hand as she took a deep breath and forced herself to click off the screen. It made her too emotional to look at that.

“Laura,” Vox finally echoed, leaning close and watching her movements.

Ava sat stiffly, looking absently ahead.

He clicked his tongue at her. “Come here, Ava.”

When she didn’t move, he moved over to her chair, and she felt his strong arms around her as he lifted and carried her away from Ebel’s old beanbag.

His arms grounded her as they sat on another chair. The biologics swirled in the other room, the light muted from a smallwindow overhead that showed her the late afternoon sky of Xai in the background. Ava tucked into him, folding in on herself, and took the security he offered in his arms.

She looked outside through that window over his shoulder as she listened to his twin hearts pump, feeling numb. The stars were up there, hidden right now by Xai’s bright sunlight. But they were so beautiful at night when she gazed at them.What deception. Her head began to pound from the excitement she felt earlier to the grief she felt now.This day is too much.

“How is it?” she whispered into the silence. “How is it that out there is so cruel? I don’t understand.”

Vox swallowed and breathed deep before saying, “I do not know, Ava.”

Another question blossomed, something that Ava never had the capacity or drive to be curious about before. “Who initially sold us?”

Vox just shook his head sadly, his eyes holding no answers. “Did Ebel ever say?”

Ava looked down, thinking. “No. We never had any dealings with the people from Cipra that I can remember. I never saw them again after leaving. I only remember getting shipped from there toR526...Celestial... on a shuttle, and then our ship was off to another quadrant.” She thought for a minute and continued, “The Phor didn’t really care about if something was wrong or not. I mean, they did lots of work for the Tuxa, and look how awful they are.” She paused and then added in a small voice, “But Ebel wasn’t awful. He wasn't a loser.”

Vox spoke in a soft tone. “Ebel told me he bought you because he had another Human before. He must have known more. Maybe he still does know more.”

“If he did, he never shared it with me. That other Human died taking care of the engine.” Ava looked up, her eyes wide on Vox. “Her hair got caught.” She looked back at the monitor onthe other side of the room, now displaying a blank screen after she’d clicked off the log earlier. When she had tried to find the party responsible, the species behind Cipra, or anything about Earth, everything came up blank. Ebel apparently only had what the minders sent him, the advertisements and primer on Human behavior, back when he purchased Ava. “I don’t know. They didn’t put anything about their group on there, just the ... Humans. But if the Phor were doing cargo runs for them at one point, it would explain how Ebel knew enough to buy one of ... me.”

Vox hesitated. “Did your mother know?”

Ava shook her head. “I can’t ... remember. A lot of it is fuzzy. She never liked to talk about leaving Earth, said she woke up at Cipra and didn’t remember being taken. She said the Earth was poisoned and destroyed. I don’t know if that means that it's just ruined or if it really is no longer there? The other children, from different mothers, told stories when we saw each other. But I don’t know.”

---