Movement in the passageway outside my room catches my eye. The two armed individuals standing outside my door snap to attention as two people approach. With a slight hiss, the door slides open and two men enter my room.

“Am I a prisoner?”

“No, Eve. We moved you to an isolation room for your protection. Once Doctor Ihejirika clears you medically, you may explore my ship as you wish.”

I recognized this man’s tenor voice and its peculiar accent from the times I woke before. The accent wasn't one I'd ever heard in Riga or aboard any ship I'd sailed.

“Then why do you have armed soldiers outside my room?”

“Those are Mars Fleet Marines, not soldiers, Eve,” the tenor said. “The Marines are there for your protection. You will have a Marine escort for as long as you are aboard my ship.”

I glanced toward the doorway again. From here, all I can really make out are two armed figures in unfamiliar red-and-white uniforms.

“Why do I need Marines protecting me? Are there other Marines aboard?”

The two men exchanged brief glances.

“You have, Eve, or rather certainly will have, a very high-profile status,” the tenor said.

“Why? I am nobody.”

“Eve, you and the other Jason survivors aren’t simply people from the past,” the baritone said. “Biologically speaking, you are members of a human population that no longer exists anywhere else in human space. Your genomes are historically, medically, and scientifically priceless.”

I stared at him. “Priceless?”

“You were born on Earth,” the tenor added. “That alone is exceedingly rare.”

“The Mars Senate and Congress will also be very cognizant of the optics,” the baritone said. “Pollies are always looking for good public relations. While covering their ass, passing the blame, stealing credit from others, and getting as rich as possible.”

“Pollies? And you do not appear to have a very good opinion of them.”

“Ah. Sorry, Eve. Short for politicians."

"Oh. That explains it."

"Current acronyms, abbreviations, and slang are going to be a challenge for you,” the baritone said.

“You asked about the Marines,” the tenor continued. “My security detachment is Fleet Marine. This is a Mars Federation Navy ship.”

Ah, so that is what MFNS meant on the ship’s crest and my medical smock.

“Is the Mars Navy large?”

“The largest navy in human space. Which is fortunate. We have facilities and resources many other armed forces lack.”

“So it’s possible other groups will want access to the Jason survivors.”

“We will not have to wade into that nest of snakes just yet.”

“The Captain is being cautious, Eve,” the baritone said. “You are an extremely valuable specimen.”

“Specimen?”

He grimaced immediately.

“A poor choice of words.”

“No shit.”

“I meant person.”

“Much better.”

He cleared his throat.

“Shall I try to explain in Latvian?”

“Please do not. You speak Latvian like my ass chews bubblegum.”

Silence.

Both men look at each other.

The tenor’s mouth twitches.

The baritone looks wounded.

“You are a highly valuable person,” he said at last. “Some people will want to use you. Others may want to control you. Some may want to possess access to you, your medical information, or your genetic material. And there may be people whose motives are considerably worse.”

“All this talk about protection makes me feel like a paranoid politician.”

“We will discuss the other considerations later,” the tenor said. “Most are not immediately important. Be assured, none of this is your fault. We may be overly cautious, but it is better to have Marines and not need them than need them and not have them.”

“Like a fire extinguisher.”

“Yes.”

“On a ship, rumor spreads faster than almost anything,” he continued. “I don’t need a bunch of curious, interfering sailors inventing reasons to wander through Sick Bay.”

“Your voices are familiar. You spoke to me before. The first time I woke up.”

“Eve, we both spoke with you briefly before Romée, the ship’s medical AI, decided to return you to healing sleep,” the baritone said. “Do you remember my explanation that you would never again require corrective eyewear?”

“Yes. I remember.” I squinted at him. “You’re the damned comedian who called me Just Eve.”

“I was not trying to be funny, Eve. Determining the proper way to address you was difficult. I did not wish to give offense.”

“Doctor Ihejirika has never performed comedy,” the tenor said, “to everyone’s great relief.”

The baritone snorted through his rather prominent nose.

“This is not the Jason’s medical compartment. Why have you removed me from my ship? The Jason is not just a wreck to me. It is my home.”

“I have some difficult news for you, Captain,” the man with the familiar tenor voice said. He glanced at the other man. “But first, Doctor, we should stop being rude and introduce ourselves.”

“Yes,” the other man replied. “Now that we’re reasonably certain she isn’t just hearing word salad.”

“The Captain’s bedside manner often leaves much to be desired,” the deep baritone continued. “We’re both a bit out of practice.”

The man with the tenor voice stepped beside my bed, giving me my first good look at him. He had an olive complexion, a trim build, and dark, slightly slanted almond-shaped eyes. Resting atop his head was a white-crowned cap with a glossy black visor adorned with a single row of golden scrambled eggs. A neatly groomed black mustache and goatee framed his expressive mouth. He wore a red, brass-buttoned, collarless jacket over a crisp white shirt and narrow blue necktie. Crossed silver oak leaves adorned his shirt collars. Navy trousers with a thin red stripe running down each outer seam completed the unfamiliar uniform.

“I am Senior Commander Menéndez, captain of the Mars Federation Navy Search and Rescue ship Nyasaland. You’re in my ship’s medical ward.”

He pronounced his surname meh-NEHN-deth. Spanish, I guessed. Certainly not Latvian. Gesturing toward the taller man beside him, he continued.

“This is Doctor Ihejirika. Commodore, retired, Mars Naval Medical Corps.”

“I can understand you,” I said. “Before, I could have sworn everyone was speaking incomprehensible gibberish. I remember when you tried speaking Latvian.”

He chuckled, the smile briefly reaching his eyes.

“Languages, Eve, have changed significantly since your time.”

I frowned.

“How long?”

His smile faded.

“Nearly five hundred years.”

Wait... what the fuck did he say?

My eyebrows must have shot into my hairline.

“Five hundred years,” I croaked.

Nobody spoke.

The words simply hung in the air.

My entire world shifted in an instant.

Finally, Doctor Ihejirika cleared his throat.

“The captain introduced me. I am Doctor Ihejirika, acting commanding officer of the ship’s medical department. Captain Menéndez is correct. You have been asleep for four hundred ninety-nine years, eight months, and twenty-nine days. If you wish, I can even break it down to the exact second we decanted you from your malfunctioning cryostasis pod.”

Only now did I really look at him.

His impossibly deep voice came from a tall, slender man with a swarthy complexion and a gleaming bald head. Piercing dark brown eyes studied me over a broad, sharply hooked nose. He wore a pristine, knee-length white medical smock over tan trousers, a tan long-sleeved shirt, and a black belt. A single silver star adorned the left collar of his knee-length medical smock. On the right was a silver insignia depicting a stick with two snakes coiled around it. I assumed it had something to do with medicine.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Doctor,” Captain Menéndez said.

He glanced toward me.

“But the good doctor is correct. You’re an extraordinarily fortunate young woman. It took the Nyasaland a little over five standard years to reach your derelict colonial ark ship. When we arrived, we honestly didn’t know whether we would find anyone still alive.”

“Good thing we did,” Doctor Ihejirika interjected with unmistakable pride. “My SAR crews specialize in rescue; recovering injured or trapped personnel from damaged spacecraft.”

“SAR crews?”

“Search and Rescue,” he explained.

Captain Menéndez nodded.

“Your surviving colonists will remain in cryostasis until we return to Mars. When we departed, we believed the Jason was either a missing merchant vessel or perhaps an old passenger liner whose crew had entered emergency cryostasis while awaiting rescue.”

“Captain, is that a common occurrence?”

“Not terribly common, Eve, but common enough that we prepare for it.”

“Before leaving Mars,” Doctor Ihejirika added, “the ship’s hangar bays were filled with portable emergency cryostasis pods, just in case your vessel contained casualties requiring continued cryogenic support.”

He smiled faintly.

“As it turns out, every one of your surviving colonists does. Fortunately, you were in slightly better condition than your shipmates.”

Dreading the answer, I asked, “How many of the ship’s company and colonists survived?”

The two men exchanged a glance. 

Captain Menéndez’s eyes suddenly lost focus.

“Captain?”

He blinked.

“Yes?”

“What did you just do?”

“I accessed my neural net. Rescue operations aboard the Jason are still ongoing.”

He drew a slow breath.

“So far, of the seven thousand five hundred thirty-five souls aboard the Jason, our current estimate is that fewer than three hundred survived.”

The number refused to make sense.

“...Less than three hundred?”

He nodded once.

“Fuck.”

“It’s a miracle any of you survived,” Doctor Ihejirika said quietly.

Captain Menéndez met my eyes.

“Eve... you’re the only surviving member of the Jason’s crew.”

I stared at him.

“The only...?”

“The only one.”

He allowed a moment to pass before continuing.

“Under the Interstellar Laws of Salvage, command of the Jason now passes to you. You are her captain.”

Doctor Ihejirika reached above my head and adjusted something I couldn’t see.

“You probably haven’t realized it yet, Eve, but you are speaking Standardized English.”

“I am?”

“Your neural net is translating in both directions.”

I stared at him for a long moment.

“Great. You gave me a Babel fish.”

Both men looked at each other.

“What?” they asked in unison.

I tried to shrug, forgetting I still couldn’t move anything below my neck.

“Never mind,” I muttered. “I’m a fucking stranger in a strange land.”

Dr. Ihejirika looked over my body lying in the bed before turning to Captain Menéndez.

“Her neural net installation is nearly complete.”

“I’m right here,” I protested. “I hate it when people talk over me as though I’m not in the room.”

“I apologize, Eve,” Dr. Ihejirika said with an embarrassed smile.

I wonder what the young woman will do if she discovers I paid out of pocket for a far more capable neural net than the bog-standard civilian model she would otherwise have received, Dr. Ihejirika thought. A better neural net may prove beneficial to both her and us in the years ahead. Physically, she's about the same age as my youngest great-granddaughter.

He returned his attention to me.

“Eve, it will probably take another few minutes for the medical nanites to finish integrating your neural net and installing the associated wetware.”

“That’s the thing you put inside me?”

“Yes.”

“I remember that not every new technology turned out to be a blessing.”

A faint smile crossed his face.

“A healthy skepticism is not a bad thing.”

“So... what exactly is a neural net?”

“It is far more than a communications device or a computer,” Dr. Ihejirika replied. “It is a biological-computational interface grafted directly onto your nervous system. Every citizen receives one shortly after birth. The net grows with us, becoming as natural as our own senses. We quite literally cannot imagine life without it.”

“That sounds... invasive.”

“It is,” he admitted without hesitation. “To someone from your century, I suspect it always will.”

He folded his hands behind his back.

“Neural networks, in their earliest forms, were little more than machine-learning systems. Your era's scientists, the Revered Ancients, as we often call them, only began exploring what they might eventually become. Over the centuries, humanity built an entire civilization around them. Today they serve as our communications system, our identification, our financial interface, our medical monitor, our educational platform, and much more. Society evolved alongside the technology.”

I considered that for a moment.

“Could I have it removed?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Technically, the procedure is possible.”

“But...?”

“But life would become extraordinarily difficult. You lived before neural nets, so you would adapt better than someone born in our era. Even so, nearly every aspect of modern society assumes a citizen has one. Living without a neural net would be like trying to live in your own century without identification, money, communications, or access to public services.”

“So I'd become an outsider.”

He nodded.

“An exceedingly rare one. Technology has changed humanity far more than you yet realize. The neural net is no longer merely a tool. For better or worse, it has become one of the foundations upon which our civilization is built.”