“A Chinese dragon, or a European one?”
She thought for a second. “A European one… wait, are you messing with me, doc?” Parkowski asked, suddenly angry.
“No, no, most definitely not,” he said, defensively. “Just trying to gather information.”
“But you didn’t see it?”
Pham shook his head again. “No. You were coming up on the waypoint, you were almost done, and then all of a sudden you screamed and fell. We still had a signal then, the robot fell hard to the ground, same as you, but when you started rolling we lost the connection. Not sure where along the pathway we lost it, but lost it we did. Most of the team started trying to bring it back up while a couple of the techs and I went over to make sure you’re ok." He took a breath. “It happened so fast. But, I feel like I would have remembered a dragon.”
Parkowski nodded. “I know, and I know it sounds insane,” she said. “But it was clear as day, right there, coming over the ridge at me, breathing fire like out of a movie or something.”
“How clear was it, if I may ask?”
She bit her lip in thought. “To be honest, it seemed incredibly detailed,” the engineer said slowly. “Which is interesting, because the rest of the environment had quite a bit of lag and artifacts.”
“Got it,” Pham said with a nod. He fished another protein bar, this one a more acceptable peanut butter flavor, out of his desk drawer. “Are you ok?”
“You’ve already asked me that, Jake,” Parkowski replied with a forced smile as she took the second bar. “I’m fine, really. Now that the initial shock wore off I feel great.”
“Ok,” he said. “Just making sure.”
Someone knocked on the door.
It was another technician, this one older and with his graying hair in a ponytail. “Connection is back up, boss,” he said to Pham. He turned to Parkowski. “Are you ok, ma’am? I saw you take a spill.”
“I’m fine, thanks for asking. Are the robots ok?”
“Yes, they are,” the tech said. “Right where they were supposed to be. Mohammed is suited up and is going to take over unless you want to stand in for him.”
“No, he can handle himself,” Pham said, standing up from his chair. “Give me a minute with Grace here, and I’ll join you in the control room.
The tech nodded and left.
He sighed. “Not your fault, Grace, these things happen. Get out of here, take some time off, and come back Monday. I’ll have some of the weekend staff pull the logs and see if they can figure out what caused the anomaly.
“We’ve only got a few months before planetary alignment limits our contacts and we have to go on a bit of a hiatus. Unless we run into the problem again, we’ll probably not do a deep dive until then.”
Parkowski nodded. She didn’t agree, but she understood.
He patted her on the shoulder. “It’s going to be alright. When is your next shift?”
“Shoot,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
Pham leaned down to his desk and grabbed a notebook. “This might not be accurate,” he said as he looked at it, “but it looks like you’re on the sticks again on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday,” Parkowski repeated.
He nodded slowly. “Any plans for the weekend?”
She gave a quick laugh. “No, not really,” Parkowski said. “Probably just a relaxing weekend.”
“Your place or your boyfriend’s?”
“Probably his, it’s only a ten-minute walk to the beach,” she answered.
Pham smiled. “Go for a walk, get some fresh air, hell, even get out of the city and do something,” he suggested. “Whatever happened back there, get it out of your system and come back ready to go next week. You’re doing great, you’ve got a great future here. Keep it up.”
“Got it, thanks,” Parkowski said. She got up, a little unsteadily, and started towards the door. “Have a great weekend, Jake.”
“You too, Grace, take care of yourself,” she heard Pham say as she walked down the hallway.
Parkowski headed through the high bay, sneaking a peak at Mohammed in the VR gear.
There was no dragon up on the 100” TV screen. Just the cloudy, rocky surface of Venus.
Parkowski had a surprisingly good time with DePresti’s unit that evening at Rock ‘n Brews. The dragon and the ILIAD mission were the furthest things from her mind — and she hadn’t breathed a word about them to anyone after she had left the Aering building.
But, as she tried to go to sleep that night, the problems came back. Parkowski had worried about the events at Aering, replaying them over and over in her head to see if there was anything she could have done differently.
She wasn’t sure if there was.
On Saturday morning, Parkowski woke up in DePresti’s bed to find the Space Force captain gone.
She yawned and rolled over to check her phone.
It was just after seven. Why her boyfriend was up so early she didn’t know, but the townhouse was deathly quiet. He wasn’t here.
Parkowski flipped through the news on her phone for a few minutes before she heard the front door slam. DePresti wasn’t the quiet type. “Mike, is that you?” she called.
“Yeah,” she heard him say. “One sec.”
