#femsano

At least, that was what her sleepy imagination supposed was happening. Upon further investigation, once she had dragged herself out of bed and thrown on the pink, fluffy dressing gown that she had grown mildly attached to, she discovered that the clatter was only Linksano, typing away irritably at the computer inside the lab next door and making enough noise to wake up the entire ship while he was at it.

Groggily, she wandered into the lab, almost knocking over one of the many piles of empty Mountain Dew cans that were scattered around the already-messy room. The guy was as bad as her sister when it came to tidying up his lab, it appeared. There were spare robotic parts and wires strewn haphazardly across the floor, blueprints folded and stacked in one corner, chemicals dripping onto benches and turning them an odd variety of colours, and even the workbench was covered in suspicious-looking substances. To make matters worse, the lights didn’t work, meaning that the only illumination came from the main computer, which sat on a desk in one corner of the room. She had to be careful to look closely at the floor before she took a step, in case she stood in some dangerous chemical or explosive experiment.

Linksano himself was slumped over that computer, typing away with a manic energy that she knew all too well. Running a hand through her messy hair, Femsano rolled her eyes. Typical mad scientist. It would be up to her to save him from the Sleep Madness, then.

“How long has it been since you last slept, Linksano?” He started, evidently unaware that she had entered the room. Not looking away from his screen, he stammered out a response.

“F-Femsano! W-what are you doing here? D-don’t mind me, I-I was just working on…some…project-” He waved a hand evasively, finally turning his head to glance at her. His goggles had been knocked slightly askew, revealing a glimpse of bloodshot blue eyes and

“So at least a day, then? You look exhausted. What are you working on that’s so important? Or do you do this for every project?” Femsano smiled wryly. If he was anything like her sister, it would probably be the latter. She was very much used to forcing her sibling to sleep after one too many hours spent at the computer. Wandering casually forward, she glanced at Linksano’s screen over his shoulder.

“You do realise that the last three pages of that code is just the word ‘waffles’ repeated over and over, right?” she said, struggling to suppress a giggle.

“Huh?” Linksano squinted at it, readjusting his goggles so they once again sat properly on his nose. “Oh. So it is. I, uh, must have been-”

“No excuses, Linksano,” Femsano said, tapping him playfully on the nose. “You need to sleep. Now. Before you collapse and faceplant that noisy keyboard of yours.”

Linksano blushed, his face turning a deep crimson colour. “Is that why you’re in here? I-I’m so sorry, Femsano! I’ll-”

“Go to bed?”

“I was going to say ‘be a lot quieter’. This is important stuff, dammit! It will be completed!” And with that, he turned to the screen once again, hands poised and ready to type. Femsano groaned. It looked like there was no persuading him. That, too, was a familiar situation. Back before Missy became...whatever it is that she was now, Femsano had spent many a night in the lab with her, trying to persuade her to just stop working before she collapsed into whatever volatile experiment she was attempting to fix.

“Just don’t drink all the Red Bull on the ship and die of a heart attack, okay?” she said, turning on her heel to leave the lab. His only response was a soft grunt, which made her smile. Stubborn and unwilling to see sense. He was definitely her sister’s alternate. If that thought even made sense. Alternate universes were hard to get used to.

Making a note to ignore her own inner monologue when she was tired, Femsano settled back into her room, creeping around to her bed so that she didn’t wake up Steeve. Linksano was stupid, sure, but he wasn’t any of her concern. Not that night. She flicked off the light with a yawn and decided to forget about the whole incident.

Unfortunately, this was not going to be the case.

Hours passed, and once more Femsano was roused from her sleep by a loud, irritating sound. This time, the horde of imaginary woodpeckers had been replaced with an army of robots hell-bent on her destruction. She opened her eyes, to see that the communicator was beeping at her. So that was what the noise was about. In the corner of her little room, Steeve bounced up and down, telling her in his own way to answer it already. She stuck out her tongue at the yellow fuzzball, making him giggle.

Dragging herself over to the communicator (why did they have to put it as far away from the bed as they possibly could have?) she pushed the button and rubbed her eyes.

“Wha’s it?” she mumbled into the system, internally wincing at how incoherent she sounded. “This better be ‘portant...”

“Femsano!” Linksano’s voice was abnormally loud, with a strange wobble that Femsano was much too tired to question. “I’ve, uh, finished that thing that I was working on! And I think you’d be interested in it...mostly because I, uh, sort of made it for you...anyway. I’m in the Holodeck! So if you want to meet me there, I’ll show you it! If you want, that is. No pressure.”

Femsano’s eyes widened. The Holodeck? Why would he ever think that she would want to go back there? Not after what happened last time! That was a bad place, nothing good could ever come from the Holodeck...

“Linksano, I’m not going to the Holodeck! Remember what happened last time?” she said, cautious not to say anything that would insult him. “It’s got...bad memories attached to it.”

“I know, I know,” he replied, his voice distorted slightly by the comms. There was a crackle of static – a sigh? – before he spoke again. “But I’ve spent ages on this! And I just...I thought you might want to share it with me, that’s all.”

With a sigh of her own, Femsano glanced over to Steeve. Her orb-shaped son was perfectly content in the room, with his plushie unicorn and stash of toys that she had brought over from her home universe. He wouldn’t miss her if she left him alone for a few hours. And it wasn’t like there was anything in the Holodeck that was actually threatening...

“Oh, fine,” she sighed, already resigned to her unknown fate. “Just let me get dressed first. Some of us only just woke up, you know!”

Fifteen minutes later, Femsano was standing outside the Holodeck door, feeling incredibly nervous. What was she even doing here? She had no idea what Linksano had planned, and she most certainly wasn’t prepared for whatever it was. And what if something bad happened, like the last time she was in that room? Oh, this was insane. She should have never agreed to come!

But even as she thought that, her hand was moving towards the door controls, as if it had a mind of its own. Before she could do anything to stop it, the door had slid open, revealing the too-familiar interior of the Holodeck, its orange and black interior seeming almost menacing to her as she stepped inside. And there, standing right in the middle of the room, was Linksano, sheepishly holding a bouquet of white roses out to her.

Bouquet of...white roses?

Femsano blinked, attempting to make some sense of this strange scene. Was this some sort of a date? Oh. Oh, crap. This was not what she had expected at all. Her breathing quickened slightly, and she clenched her fists, trying to hold back the flood of conflicting emotions that was threatening to overwhelm her. Did she want it to be a date? Searching her mind, she found that she had no answer to that.

“Hello!” Linksano grinned at her, his cheeks flushing slightly. Trying to regulate her sudden nervousness, Femsano found that it was her turn to stammer a reply.

“H-hi.” Even that one word sounded too nervous, too awkward. What was wrong with her?

“So I, uh, brought these for you. I just remembered what happened, and I thought I could use them to apologise as well as giving you something nice so I could reassure you that it’s not going to happen again...” His voice trailed off, as he proffered the flowers with his right arm. “Do you want to take them? It’s okay, you can leave them on the bench or something. I don’t mind. I have to show you this simulation!”

Trying unsuccessfully to keep her hands from shaking, Femsano took the flowers from Linksano’s arm, carefully setting them down on the bench behind her. When she looked up again, Linksano was at the panel in the wall, preparing the room to run whatever simulations he had planned.

“Wait!” she cried, her voice cracking slightly. “What is this simulation? What are you-” But her cry was cut short as the room changed around her. Linksano’s grin widened as he stepped back from the panel to stand at her side, looking out into the hologram.

“So? What do you think?”

Femsano just stared. All around her, there was space. Linksano had transformed the Holodeck into a small part of the solar system! It was as though they were standing on a distant planet, staring at the stars. Except, she corrected herself with a frown, that wasn’t strictly true. For as she looked down, she noticed that technically, they weren’t standing on anything at all. It was just the two of them, floating out among the stars, almost as if they were just floating, hovering in the blackness of outer space. It was a breathtaking sight.

To her left, she could see the planet Jupiter, its red surface raging with endless storms. To her right, a satellite was floating past, its metal body gleaming at her, showing the planet in its reflection. Above her and underneath her feet, distant stars whose names she would never remember glowed and burned in the endless expanse of space. And next to her, beaming like a madman, was Doctor Linksano, the man who had created all of this. For her.

“We’re seeing the view from a small probe that I launched a few weeks ago, to explore the other planets in the solar system. I’ve hooked it up so that what we see is, essentially, live from space! It’s such a fascinating concept, I’ve been meaning to implement it for years but I’ve never had the technology until recently-” He stopped, almost to catch his breath, and looked at her once more. “Do you like it?”

“I...” She didn’t trust herself to speak, but Linksano was giving her his best puppy-dog stare. How he managed that behind the goggles, she’d never know, but she still relented to it. “It’s fantastic! Did you build the probe yourself?”

“From scratch!” Linksano’s manic grin widened, until he nearly came to resemble an angry shark. “Took a while, but I got there in the end. And then it took about three days straight to code the holograms and link it all up, etcetera etcetera...but the end result is rather impressive, if I do say so myself!” He rubbed the back of his neck; a nervous habit, she had noticed, that he often displayed around her. “Uh, so...care to explore the universe with me?” His smile was suddenly more bashful as he hesitantly held out his hand to her. Resisting the urge to giggle at his cheesy line, Femsano took it.

All around them, the universe carried on its business. Stars flared and planets spun in their unending dance. But just then, in that single second, Femsano felt as though time had stopped just for the two of them, just for that touch. All too soon, however, the spell was broken. As Linksano’s face broke out into yet another elated grin, the pair ran out, out into the black.

They spent hours out there among the stars, laughing and dancing between the planets, testing the gravity on Io and playing basketball on Ganymede, soaring into space to see Jupiter from above and playing hide-and-seek in the planet’s whirling surface, chasing comets and racing around Saturn’s rings; in short, exploring space in the only way they could. Together.

Giggling, Femsano dived out once more, dropping like a stone into the blackness of the universe. The simulation was so detailed! She looked around her, counting the limitless stars that pulsed and glowed out in the vast, unexplored sections of the universe, feeling like she could do anything. There was so much beauty in the universe, beauty that the average person would never get the chance to see. She sighed. Out here, her life back at home seemed so distant. Everything she had ever worried about, everything that had ever troubled her, every negative experience...it was all gone. It didn’t matter. Because the universe was so big, and she was so tiny.

“Are you alright?” It was Linksano, his scratchy voice breaking through her reverie. He must have crept up on her while she wasn’t paying attention. The scientist was rubbing the back of his neck again, suddenly nervous again.

“Yes! I’m sorry, it’s just so much to take in...no wonder it took you so long to code!” She smiled encouragingly, and Linksano visibly relaxed, his eyebrows raising to assume his usual, cocky demeanour.

“And you wanted me to sleep! I told you it was important,” he smirked. Playfully, she punched him on the arm, prompting an indignant grunt of pain and a cold glare. She glared back, meeting his eyes beneath her goggles. The stares lasted for only a moment, however, before the pair broke out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Suddenly, a strange noise interrupted their mania – a beeping sound that appeared to be emanating from Linksano, somehow. The scientist looked down at his wrist. His watch was the source of the noise, beeping and buzzing incessantly at him. His eyes widened as he pressed a button on the device, opening a door in the hologram – a portal back to reality. Femsano looked at him quizzically. What was going on? In response, he took her hand once more, dragging her back out onto the ship.

“What are you-where are we going?” she protested, but it was too late. They were back on the ship and around a corner, the majesty and beauty of the Holodeck left far behind them. Linksano didn’t respond, instead gripping her hand that little bit tighter and quickening his pace. They were running now, sprinting through the ship, corridor after dull corridor blurring around them until they reached a certain door and Linksano skidded to a halt. Panting slightly, he turned to face her, his hand once again straying to the back of his neck.

“I-I wanted to show you this, as well. It’s...well, it’s better than anything I could ever conjure up. In here.” Glancing at the sign next to the door – ‘The Viewing Deck’ – Femsano followed Linksano inside. And what she saw there took her breath away.

The Viewing Deck was a large, empty room, with only a few benches for furniture. They were all pointed forwards, towards the giant glass windows that allowed them to see out into space – genuine space. And there it was, right in front of them. The Earth. Larger than life and yet, at the same time, more real than anything she had seen in the last few hours. She had seen it in pictures, of course – who hadn’t? – but this was something completely different, completely awe-inspiring. People said that seeing the Earth from space was a life-changing experience, and just then, Femsano was inclined to believe them.

His arm around her waist, Linksano led Femsano to one of the benches, and they sat in silence for a moment, just watching the planet. Clouds swirled above the deep green lands and cerulean oceans. It reminded her of a marble; a giant, living marble that hosted all of humanity. She was looking out across America, its vast expanse staring at her, reminding me how large her home really was. Except it wasn’t her home, not really. It was similar, sure, but this wasn’t her universe.

“Not my planet,” she muttered with a wry smile. “Not my Earth. Not my America. Not his, either, come to think of it.”

His. The word made her think of Linksano again, as he sat quietly next to her. She was so grateful to him at that moment, for taking her away from her sister and showing her the stars. Her heart heavy with conflicting emotions, she turned to him, the words of a confession forming on her lips.

“Linksano, I-”

But her words stopped short when she saw him. Linksano was slumped over the arm of the bench, his breathing deep and regular, his lips trembling in a soft snore.

“Never mind,” she smiled, gently getting up to leave. “It can wait.”

And when Linksano awoke twelve hours later, the viewing deck was deserted; the Earth spun around to the other side of the world. He sat up, quickly glancing around, searching for the girl who was nowhere to be seen. With a heavy sigh, he got up off the bench; but something dropped to the floor as he did. Frowning, he looked down at it. It was Femsano’s labcoat, which she had draped over him like a blanket as he slept. He picked it up with a small smile. She hadn’t just left, then.

Inside the top pocket, a folded piece of paper bore his name. Scrawled on it were three sentences, words that made his smile broaden.