I left without another word. She had her stuff to deal with and I had mine.

The memories are coming back more smoothly now. I still can’t remember everything, but it’s no longer an epiphany when they happen. It’s just sort of… “Oh hey, I know that. Always knew it, really.”

I guess I’m one of those people with coma resistance. That explains why I’m here instead of any of the far more qualified candidates that should have been sent.

But Yáo and Ilyukhina probably had those genes, too, and they didn’t make it. My guess is the medical robot wasn’t perfect. They must have had some medical situation arise it couldn’t figure out.

I shake off their memory.

The next several days are an exercise in patience. I learn more about the ship to distract myself.

I catalog the entire lab. One of the first things I find is a touchscreen computer in a pull-out drawer in the center table. It’s actually a fantastic find, because it has a bunch of research-related screens. As opposed to the panels in the control room, which are all about the ship or its instruments.

I see a bunch of math and science apps—most of which are off-the-shelf that I’m familiar with. But the real boon is the library!

As far as I can tell, this panel can bring up literally any scientific textbook ever written, every scientific paper ever published on any topic, and a whole lot more. There’s one directory just called “Library of Congress,” and it appears to be the entire digital catalog of everything that’s ever been copyrighted in the United States. No books about the Hail Mary, unfortunately.

And the reference manuals. So many reference manuals. Data on top of data with data in between. I guess they figured solid-state hard drives are light, so there was no reason to be stingy with information. Heck, they may have just burned the data into ROMs.

They gave me reference material on stuff that can’t possibly be useful. But hey, it’s nice to know that if I need the average rectal temperature of a healthy goat, I can find that out! (It’s 103.4 °F / 39.7 °C.)

Playing with the panel leads to my next discovery: I know how I’ll report back to Earth with the beetles.

I knew they’d be involved, but now I know specifics. In addition to the absurd data storage array aboard the ship, the panel also has four comparatively small external drives mounted: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Each one of those shows 5 terabytes free. It’s not a huge leap to assume that’s the beetle’s data.

So how do I launch them when the time comes? To find out, I head to the control room.