“I’ve never seen one that shape,” I said.

“We have a few in Maria Nova.” He walked over to the box and wiped his hand over the top. Then he brushed the dust off the rest of it, between the wires that had been hooked up to the back and cracked through the cover. Then he laid his hands on either side of the box, his fingers finding precise spots in the sides, and miraculously the screen flickered.

Curious, I sent a nanomachine out towards the box. Just one—it probably wasn’t wise to expend the things that were keeping me alive on curiosity, but it wasn’t like I was going to leave my curiosity unindulged.

When the nanomachine came back to my skin, it reported something strange. “The Dreamer doesn’t know that computer’s there,” I said. There was a blank space in the nanomachine’s vision, like a gap in reality.

“If it had known, it would have wiped the data,” Indigo pointed out.

“But the computer’s hooked up to the ship.”

Indigo looked up from the screen to frown at the wires connecting the little box to the ship at large. He touched one of the wires carefully, rolling it between its fingers.

“I believe,” he said, “that the scientists connected the hardware to the AI in such a way that the AI would provide power to this computer and keep it in good repair without being aware of its existence or what data was kept inside.”

“So can we disconnect it and leave?”

“I am concerned that the hard-wired connection is the only reason this computer is still functional,” Indigo told me.

Yikes. No disconnecting that, then. I crouched down next to the slightly glowing little computer. “So how do we get the data?”

“Perhaps we can broadcast it,” Indigo said. “I can’t read the text.”

“Oh! Right.” I leaned into his space to see the screen, which was of course written in Ameng. The screen was cracked, the image unsteady. Even with assistance from the Dreamer AI, this little computer was on the verge of failure.

“Put your hands on either side,” Indigo instructed. “There should be indents for your fingers to slide into. You can type that way. And the top is a touchscreen.”

There were indents, just about the right size for my hands. I rested my fingertips in those indents, the way a dying scientist must have done a thousand years prior. “Okay, here we go.”

The computer was slow. I was afraid of sending it into a failure, so I had to baby it, waiting for it to load, changing course slowly, taking my time to read the Ameng so I didn’t click the wrong thing.

It was harder to concentrate than I’d anticipated. “How long until the sun goes?”

Indigo was somewhere behind me, quietly pacing the empty space from the sound of it. “A few hours.”

“How many?”

“It’s impossible to say precisely,” he reminded me. “The radiation is constantly increasing; it’s a gradual process. After a point it will become lethal for us to remain here.”