[There is nothing to be seen but an endless ‘sea’ of the frozen, glassy waves. The shapes of the waves against the white blizzard create eerie shadows that look like prowling creatures, encircling Taban and the HARE. The Wyvern is nowhere in sight.]

Taban (looking around, uncertain): What? Here?

[The HARE’s camera slowly pans around. The waves, impossibly, seem to loom larger than before.]

HARE: My processors must be faulty.

Taban: . . . So what does that mean? We have no way of getting back to the ship? We’re lost?

[There is neither anger nor despair in his voice. Just a wooden, resigned kind of calm. He speaks almost as if he’s been put in a trance. His breathing has acquired a painful, asthmatic scrape.]

HARE: I will continue to analyze. With enough time, I should be able to locate the ship via transponder signal.

Taban: Why weren’t you doing that in the first place?

HARE: The simpler way is to return to the coordinates marked in my global positioning system. To communicate with the ship’s computer and locate its signal through the storm would be far more complex.

Taban: But it would make way more sense to do that on a planet that changes direction, wouldn’t it?

HARE: You did not instruct me to do so.

Taban: I thought it would be common sense.

HARE: I have not acquired ‘common sense.’

Taban: I thought you were a heuristic learning model. An evolving intelligence—that’s what it says on the label on your back. I thought you get smarter over time! Have you even learned anything?

HARE (processors whirring): . . .

Taban (turning away): Whatever. It’s fine. Just go ahead and do it now.

[The HARE hunkers down on the ice, processing furiously, as Taban stumbles a few more feet, one hand pressed against his ribs as if he has a stitch. His breathing is scratchy and strained; blood has now clogged the lower half of his face. He appears to be fighting unconsciousness, or hypothermia, or even just immense tiredness. The HARE keeps watching him as he sways on his feet, even as it processes.]

[Gradually, the wind stops howling.]

Taban: . . . Wait. What the fuck is that?

HARE: What is what?

[Taban points at something in the distance. The camera follows his outstretched hand. He’s pointing at something in the waves, a few meters away from the pair. The wind has died a little, clearing the air of the film of ice crystals, and the HARE’s field of view has widened significantly. The camera zooms in, pixelates briefly, then clarifies: there’s a dark, lumpy shape caught in the frozen waves. It looks like the figure of a man.]

Taban: That’s not—

HARE: USER Daley.

[Taban begins to run. The HARE follows.]