Naskia smiled and felt her heart swell as she sat at the kitchen table, her daughter on one side and her husband sitting atop the table opposite her. These days were rare. Sorcha had been a full time resident of Avalon for the last four years. Both Naskia and Niall’s busy work schedules kept them from heading out there as often as they liked. And Sorcha was a lot more independent than Naskia was at that age. Calls home were rare. Trips home even rarer.

It was nice to have her family together. Even if that usually meant drama and bickering. As much as she despaired during Sorcha’s tumultuous childhood and longed for a simpler, quieter life she missed the sound of life in the house. With just her and Niall it was just a little quiet. And then it dawned on her. Something was off this dinner time. Very off.

“Are you alright Tuppy? You’re very quiet this evening. And you’ve hardly touched your stew.” Naskia said breaking the silence.

There was quiet as Sorcha continued poking her food around her plate.

“Your mother’s right. You’re oddly quiet. You haven’t punched someone you’re not telling us about have you?” Niall joked.

Sorcha looked up to her mother and gave a half-hearted smile. “Sorry Mum. It’s delicious. I’m just not feeling very well.”

“Do you want me to get the medical scanner? Look you over?” Naskia said with motherly concern.

“No Mum, it’s not that.” Sorcha put her fork down and rubbed her eyes with her hands. “I’ve just spent the day reviewing the data Loona sent to me. I think I may be in over my head here…”

“Nonsense! Not my daughter. And certainly not your mother’s. There’s no one I’d rather see in charge…”

Niall stopped as his wife held her hand up her hand a little.

“I thought you said it was achievable?” Naskia asked.

“It is! If done properly it is. But this colony is a real half arsed affair.” Sorcha grumbled, clearly frustrated. “Me and Lessy submitted a plan. It’s a good plan. A plan that could work. And now Loona’s asking for us to start shaving time off of it. Pushing to have all two hundred and fifty million refugees on the planet in a year. She’s pushing to start with a million! And another ten million a month after!”

Sorcha let out and long, slow sigh.

“It’s all getting a bit much.” She said.

“Do you want us to call her? Talk to her?” Naskia asked.

Sorcha smiled and shook her head. “This isn’t Loona, Mum. You know her. This is the Floor Leader breathing down her neck so she’s breathing down mine. It’s just the way it is. I’ll work with Lessy to rejig the numbers. See if we can’t buy ourselves a little breathing room.”

“You always did say you wanted to do something big with your life.” Niall added.

“Yeah Daddy, but I meant more like what you and Mum did. You made things better, helped improve things. All I’m doing is taking someone else’s mess and cleaning it up. You never had people’s lives on your hands!” Sorcha said.

Niall and Naskia looked at each other and chuckled.

“Daughter, did you ever hear about the first ever long range gate jump?” Niall asked.

“Yeah…you and Mum helped Tarsuss-Granak to triple the range of the jump gates.” Sorcha said unsure.

Naskia smiled softly and took a bite of a spoonful of meat.

“I don’t expect you to remember.” Naskia said between bites. “You couldn’t have been more than two.”

“It’s in the records! There’s footage! The ship goes in one end and five seconds later it appears at the other.” Sorcha looked at her laughing parents confused.

“We weren’t laughing then!” Niall said.

“We were terrified!”

“What…what happened?” Sorcha asked.

Niall took a deep breath and buried his laughter. “So your mother got talking on some trip with one of the scientists who worked on the jump gates. She got curious and noticed the principle they used was similar to her ‘Bigger on the Outside’ theory.”

“And I got a hold of the schematics for one of the gates and with a bit of help from your father we rather excitedly put together an idea that could keep the tunnels more stable over longer distances. Initially we figured we could get it up to around one hundred light years but generating that kind of power cost a fortune!”

“So we got Tarsuss-Granak interested and they built us two test gates thirty light years apart. We did our work. We tweaked and we tweaked and after the drones had gone back and forth a dozen or so times we sent a test pilot through.” Niall followed.

“So we sent in the first test pilot. There were loads of people. Dignitaries, shareholders, Pryvani, Rixie and young Sorcha tottling around.” Naskia smiled and Sorcha rolled her eyes. “We heard the signal saying the ship had gone in and we waited…”

“And waited…” her husband said.

“And waited some more.”

“I was shitting myself! It shouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds and a full minute had passed. Your mother rushed to the consoles and we spent half an hour going over readouts and running diagnostics and basically…”

“Freaking the fuck out.” Naskia joked.

“What happened to him?” Sorcha said with baited breath.

“Oh he was fine!” Naskia said. “He turned up thirty minutes later thinking only five seconds had gone by. He was totally clueless.”

“What went wrong?” Sorcha asked.

“Well it turned out that the receiving gate was a pico-hertz out of sync with the transmitting gate. We assumed…”

“You assumed!” Naskia corrected.

“I assumed it wouldn’t matter. It turned out it did.” Niall did his best not to turn beetroot coloured.

“Thank the Emperor the media weren’t there sweetie? You would have looked ridiculous.” His wife gave him a soft poke in the side.

“I would have feigned ignorance! Claimed I was your pet and the whole thing was your fault!” Niall replied. “The long and the short of it is, some of the work we have done is pretty strong stuff, dangerous even. In the wrong hands, malevolent or just careless, a lot could go wrong.

“How’d you cope?” Their daughter leant in.

Niall and Naskia looked at each other.

“It gets easier. You get used to working a certain way, making sure you have everything checked, rechecked and confirmed. But at the end of the day all you can do is your best.” Naskia said. “I’ll not lie, that night I cried a lot. The terror and the relief were a bit too much to deal with.”

“At the end of the day daughter it comes down to one thing.” Niall said.

“What’s that?” Sorcha spoke softly. It was odd to hear her parents talk this candidly about near misses. It was mildly reassuring to know that even her seemingly infallible parents were capable of doubt and near misses.

“Is there anyone else out there you trust more to do this than you?” Naskia finished.

There was quiet for a few seconds that was broken by the chime of Sorcha’s pad. She looked to her parents who went back to their meals. They didn’t expect her to answer. That was a question for Sorcha to ponder herself. She picked up the blinking pad and read the message.

It was from Alesia.

“Pick me up?” the message said.

“I’m gonna go out.” Sorcha said and stood up. “Lessy wants to meet.”

“Ok tuppy, tell her we said hi.” Naskia said.

“If you’re back late try not to be too loud.” Her father reminded.

“I’ll walk as a softly as a shaar Daddy.” Sorcha said and kissed her father atop the head and her mother on the cheek.

“With those big lumps you call feet? I doubt it.” Niall said.

“Bye Dad.” His daughter replied in a bored tone.

“And Sorcha?” Naskia said.

“Yes Mum?”

“You may think you’re just cleaning up someone else’s mess. But to these people, you’re building them a home and a future. You’re giving them real lives. The chance to have what we have here under this roof. That’s far more important than anything your father or I will ever do.”

Sorcha gave her mother a half-hearted nod and a smile and disappeared out the door unsure whether he mother’s words made her feel better or worse.

Niall and Naskia continued to eat, listening out for the sound of the shuttle leaving.

“Do you think she’ll be ok?” Niall finally spoke up.

“I’ve no idea. We’ve given her the best of us and some of the worst. The fact she’s nervous is a good sign. She won’t take things for granted. She’ll be careful.” Naskia spoke thoughtfully.

“Aye…but it’s a lot to take on.”

“Yes, it is.” Naskia smiled down her husband. “But you would trust anybody else to do it?”

****

“So what’s at these coordinates?” Sorcha asked her friend as she sat at the controls of her shuttle. Below them sped the northern ocean of Archavia.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Alesia said. “It’s a surprise.”

“As much as I love your surprises Less, aren’t we a bit busy? I thought you wanted to discuss Loona’s request to up the numbers or something?” Sorcha spoke mildly irritated.

“That’s important, and we’ll need to spend some time looking into it but I think this is just as important.”

“Something that will help with the colony?”

“Yeah.” Her friend replied. “I think it will help.”

Sorcha wasn’t sure what it was but Alesia seemed off. Her voice was a little lower, both in pitch and volume than it normally was. It didn’t surprise her though. Both of them were under a lot of pressure. They knew what hung in the balance.

“So my Mum told me a few weeks back that the way to get myself in balance is to listen to the Titan in me. She thinks I focuses on my Human heritage too much and that my anger is the Titan in me trying to get out.”

“I can see that.” Alesia replied. “You’ve always been protective. Not just of me or any Humans you saw, but animals as well. Hells, I know you punched a few bullies at a school for trying to shakedown other Titan kids.”

Sorcha shrugged. “My parents brought me up not to ignore people who need help. Human or not.”

“Though not to punch people.” Alesia added.

“I know, I know. My Mum has said I could do with learning from you in that area.”

“Maybe. But I’ve said it many times before. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as assertive with bigoted Titans without having your strength at my back. I’ve always needed your strength behind me. Without you I’d just be a girl stuck at home…I owe you.”

“What do you mean?”

Alesia shifted in her seat atop the dash, pulling her legs up into herself. “Well you’ve given me a lot over the years. I dunno if you noticed that.”

“From what I recall I still owe you eight.” Sorcha said adjusting course slightly to leave their transit corridor and to start their descent.

“It’s six and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but my family like to stay at home a lot. They don’t go on trips or adventures or do much outside.”

“That’s understandable though. Your mum writes, your dad invents. Your brothers followed them. Not like it’s really safe for them to go wandering on their own.” Sorcha glanced down at her friend momentarily.

“That’s just it though. I don’t write, I don’t invent, I don’t do science. I didn’t do sitting in one place. One of my earliest memories, proper memories not a fuzzy blur but a fully formed memory with feeling was playing in the sandpit in your back garden. Just me and you.”

Sorcha grinned. “That was always fun!”

“It was. I loved it. You built sandcastles big enough for me to live in and I decorated the walls. And occasionally I’d get buried in sand.”

Sorcha laughed. “I swear I never once did it on purpose.”

“I know, I know.” Alesia reassured even if she didn’t entirely believe her friend. “Do you remember the rork?”

“The rork?”

“Nasty brown and red bird with a beak nearly as big as me? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”

Sorcha shook her head. “I remember the sandpit but no bird.”

“Looking back on it I don’t think I was ever in any danger. We were both young and your mum was always watching. But that bird used to drop down near the sandpit and watch us. I remember how scared I was when I saw it. It would hop closer and closer and then you’d throw sand at it and scream at it and it flew away. Each time it kept coming back and I wouldn’t have to ask, you would scare it off and tell me not to worry.” Alesia explained.

“Huh, I did that did I?”

“You did. And I felt safe. From that day you’ve allowed me to live like a free person. Without you my life would not be what it is now. I’d be stuck at home, not able to do anything. There’d be no Atlantis, no work in teaching and likely no seeing Earth. If you didn’t have me you’d be fine.”

“Ha!” Sorcha mocked. “Without you I’d be on Rura Penthe. Without a doubt. And not just for Titan Station. I wouldn’t have made it that far. Remember the time I was about fifteen I found two guys throwing a Human around?”

Alesia nodded. “You bloodied them pretty bad.”

“And if you hadn’t have stepped in I would have ended up breaking a few bones or worse. I was so angry I totally forgot about the man I was supposed to be rescuing.”

“It’s not just about that though Sorcha.” Alesia turned and glanced down to see their destination coming into view. “I remember how I felt when you scared off that bird. I felt safe. Truly, properly safe. Before that I was scared a lot. You scared me. Your mum scared me. Even Loona scared me because she was just so big. But you made me feel safe.” She turned back and looked up to the underside of her friend’s chin. Sorcha was flying and watching the displays but she was still listening. “I wanted to be with you all the time not just because I liked you and we had fun but because I felt safe. And I hated that you got to go to school and I couldn’t go with you. I remember crying a lot and telling my mom how unfair it was. So I did all I could do and I worked and I worked to keep pace with you, or did my best to…”

“That’s ridiculous Lessy, you’re just as smart as I am.” Sorcha didn’t take her eyes on off the windscreen.

“No I’m not. I’m pretty clever but you’re in another league. I just…the fear of being found boring by you, that I’d be ditched by you for more interesting, less dependent people spurred me on. I knew if you were going to take me with you wherever you went that I’d have to be as equal with you as possible.”

The shuttle touched down and Sorcha quickly engaged the land locks, unstrapped her seat and dropped to her knees and looked Lessy in the eye.

“You should have said to me. I’ve never felt like this friendship was off balance, or that you were a burden. I hated school. I hated that you weren’t with me…”

“I know, I know.” Alesia stood and walked to her friend’s face. “I was just young and a bit oversensitive. It’s a little insulting to you to think of you like that. You’d never abandon me. I know it now but I should have known it then.”

Sorcha kept quiet as her friend stroked her cheek.

“You’ve allowed me to live my life in a Titan world with the same freedoms of a Titan. Now it’s time for me to show you what it’s like to be a Human in a Titan world.”

“Is that why we’re here?” Sorcha asked. “To use a holosuite?”

“It is.”

“I’ve used programs by my Dad. I’ve seen you like you see me. I don’t know what difference this will make.” Sorcha said.

“You’ve not used this program. This was commissioned by the Avalonian Government as part of an outreach program. To allow Titans to experience what life was like for the people we rescued. Manto Dande-Kramer wrote it. She spoke to dozens of people, from multiple backgrounds to get their stories. She wrote a fully true to life, adaptable simulation designed to shock.” Alesia looked up to Sorcha, a little afraid. “I don’t know what you’ll find in there.”

“Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

Alesia smiled knowingly and shook her head. “I dunno Sorch…You’ve gotten lost in holographics before. I don’t want it to happen again. You want to know and I feel obliged to help you. But I just want you to swear you’ll keep control.”

“I have to know Lessy…”

“You can’t though. That’s not your fault. I can’t know either. No matter how much my mom told me about how she grew up, I can never know.”

“But I have to try and understand. It’s an insult to these people not to try.”

“I think it’d be insulting to try to know when we can’t. But it’s your choice. If you’re determined then we’ll go ahead. There’s no safeties on this program so I’m giving one thing that they don’t have. It’s my one condition for doing this.” Alesia said nervously.

“What’s that?”

“A safe word.” Alesia said. “Say ‘Gyfjon’ and the program will end, ok?”

Sorcha nodded. “Gyfjon, got it.”

“Just swear to me you’ll keep control. You’ll use the safe word.” Alesia looked up nervously to her friend.

“I swear Lessy.”

“Ok, you won’t need anything.” Alesia lifted a bag and put it over her shoulder. “Let’s get going.”