Sebastien squatted down and brushed his fingers over an irregular ellipsoid of a screen, causing lights to shift and cascade on the display. “Those people are strangers. And their little squid, too. I don’t know them. I can’t risk letting them interfere with what I’m trying to achieve here.”

“They’re my friends, Sebastien.”

He looked over his shoulder, and smiled reassuringly, and paternalistically. Like she was a child, worried about foolish things. “No. They may as well be aliens. They’re so different from what I am. Besides, I’m the only friend you need, and the best one you’ll ever have. If they really are good people, like they’ve convinced you they are, then they’ll join in the great work eventually. This is just… a very delicate moment. I can’t take the risk of unpredictable variables.” His fingers danced busily across the screen.

“Sebastien, what are you doing there?”

“Making sure your so-called friends can’t scurry away, that’s all. I can control the whole station from here, though it’s mostly self-regulating.”

“I don’t understand what you’re doing. We came to save you!”

“It was very kind of you to come back for me. I didn’t expect that. I just wanted you to be safe.”

She looked around at the displays. “If you can really control everything from here, why didn’t you help Hans and Ibn? Or Robin? Or Uzoma?”

He looked at her blankly. “Oh. I don’t know. I was distracted, I suppose. I always did get distracted by my work. You know how it is. You get your teeth into a problem, you find a solution, you decide to implement it, and the next thing you know, hours have flown by.”

“What work are you talking about?” She was trying to make sense of the information displayed on the screens, but it was all unfamiliar shapes in an alien alphabet.

“The great work. Work that truly matters. A project on a scale unprecedented in human history – back in our era, anyway. But I doubt humanity has managed anything bigger and better than what I have planned since we left. You remember my specialty? Large infrastructure, city planning, formulating sustainable social systems – that was my purpose on the colony ship. My area of expertise. Oh, but I was wasted on that mission. I see that now. Come with me. You can witness the beginning of everything.” He grabbed her hand, squeezed it, and beamed at her, though his once-lovely face seemed sinister with the metal spider-legs dug into his skull on either side. “Come on.”