C: Ingenious Ingenuous

It was slow. Painfully slow. Rafaela couldn't repress the yawn that was trying to escape as she stared at the overly simplified and uninformative progress bar. Sometimes it seemed to get stuck and stopped moving at all.

Brennant, the mad genius who had patched the old core up enough to get it this far, declared suddenly, "It's probably a failure."

"It hasn't given any errors though," Bellamy pointed out.

It didn't matter that she couldn't read the language that the old core used, it was obvious to all of them, because the only display was the annoyingly uninformative bar and the color change that was creeping across it at a snail's pace. Which was an inaccurate turn of phrase, because they had snails on SkyWater station, and they moved a lot faster than the progress bar.

Brennant shook his head. "Shouldn't take this long. Even for a really old system. It's probably hanging up on something, and then trying to recover, before finally moving on, and hanging up on whatever it is again." The piratical core engineer looked at Rafaela and added, "But it's still really interesting. If you let me keep it, I'll just give you the copy of the system that I offered to sell you earlier."

"I don't think…" Bellamy began warily.

Rafaela interrupted hopefully, "Whether or not this succeeds then, if I leave the broken core with you, can you discount your work and send me whatever data can be recovered from it later? It's supposed to contain copies of communications from my grandparents."

Brennant hesitated for long enough that Rafaela wondered if asking for a discount had been too much. "Sure," he agreed finally. But he held up a finger and added, "If you also give me a translation module for the language it's using."

"Um…" Rafaela replied blankly. She tapped her head and said doubtfully, "I think my mom made something like that for the King, but all I have is what's in my head."

Bellamy and the core engineer both stared at her for a moment, but then Brennant muttered something and tapped at one of the display panels that he'd been using earlier. He worked at it for a full fifteen minutes before he turned back to her and said, "Okay, then go through this and give it the translations into that language for all of these words that you know. Try to pick the meaning that matches the usage in the example sentence."

Rafaela stared at the display. The first word was 'the'. The interface was ugly. She looked at the man she'd been calling a mad genius. "Did you just…" she hesitated.

"It'll just run through a standard dictionary in order of common usage," he explained. "I'm going to go get something to eat and hit the fresher." He glanced at Bellamy and warned them both, "Don't touch stuff."

"Okay," Rafaela agreed. Bellamy nodded.

--

When the progress bar finally completed, the new experimental core rebooted, and announced almost instantly in her mother's language, that it should be attached to the hardware that it was intended to interface with before it completed its system launch.

"Huh," the genius core engineer commented when Rafaela repeated its message. "Maybe it actually succeeded."

"We haven't replaced the old nodes yet," Rafaela said with dismay.

"Are they broken?" he asked.

"No, I mean, not as far as I know. They just aren't designed to connect to a modern core," she explained. "I have the system mapped for the replacement though."

"Adapters are easy enough, and the system should already be set up to use the existing nodes. You're going to need that map and will probably still run into problems when you have to replace an old node though, because I can tell you right now, nobody's writing mods or updates for this system," he warned.

"Can you build compatible nodes?" Rafaela asked with interest.

He shook his head, but then shrugged. "Maybe, but it'll cost you."

--

Rafaela and Bellamy slept while Schmidt assembled the adapters according to the design the genius core builder had whipped up after only a few minutes of inspection.

It felt like she'd only slept for a couple of minutes instead of hours when Schmidt woke her for the installation. The installation went faster than removing the old core had, and Rafaela pointed at the shining clamps questioningly.

"Fixed 'em up while you were translating that dictionary," Schmidt said complacently.

They started the system and watched the elderly beyonder display panel hopefully. A loading bar like the one from the system transfer appeared, and Rafaela sighed. She jumped a moment later when the ship spoke.

"System calibrating. Only the authorized scout pilot should be aboard during bio calibration," a neutral voice stated in her mother's language.

Rafaela translated its words quickly.

The ship system complained, "Language not in archives."

Schmidt made sure that she had everything she needed, and said cheerfully, "Then I'll leave you to your ship Cinderella."

Rafaela waited until the hatch had closed behind him to mutter, "I hope it isn't going to space me when it realizes that I don't have any authorization."

The ship repeated its complaint in several other ancient languages, and Rafaela interrupted it nervously, "I can speak English, but the technicians can't."

"Give your authorization code to confirm your identity as the authorized scout pilot," the ship system demanded.

Rafaela stood silently, sorting through all of the memories of her mother and the notes that she'd left behind, for long enough that a human would have complained or decided that something was wrong. The ship waited patiently. She couldn't find anything in her memory library that seemed likely.

She closed her eyes and wondered if the mad genius could hack the system, or if she should give up now and take the copy he'd offered. A fuzzy memory from when she'd been small enough to walk around under the table, something that wasn't part of her library, the sound of her mother laughing.

"You have to learn to say your numbers in order Ella Ella, or you'll never be able to become a pilot."

"One two three four five six seven eight nine ten," Rafaela recited. No one would make that the authorization that would let someone take control of…

"Authorization confirmed. Please enter the medical pod for calibration," the ship system announced calmly.

Rafaela couldn't help turning to look at the device that had held her mother in hibernation for untold years, and wondering if it was a trap. It would be a simple way to hold someone who had given an incorrect code until security could arrive.

"Is the calibration on the medical… pod complete? It might be, I don't know, low on supplies?" she asked nervously. Some of the things on its supply list weren't available in this system, or at least had no obvious equivalent.

"Pod diagnostics confirm low supplies of some medicines. Only minor injuries can be treated until it is restocked. All scanners are functional," the system assured her. "Does the pilot detect possible damage to the medical pod that diagnostics are unable to report?"

That was a lot of information. "No… I think it even had its seals replaced about ten years ago."

"Noted," the ship system said agreeably.

After a moment Rafaela took a deep breath and stepped into the medical pod. She swallowed nervously as it closed around her. It was so much smaller than the modern cylinders on SkyWater station.

And then it stabbed her in the arm.