Time slowed to a crawl. Like a watched pot the seconds seemed to warp, simultaneously dragging out and rushing toward the inevitable. Dae found that she could hardly sit still. Every molecule of her screaming that this wasn't right. That she had to do something. At first she had hoped to ride out the detonation safe in Henry. He had felt cramped, claustrophobic even in a way that he hadn't been before.

Eventually Dae dragged herself out into the open air, her eyes automatically going to look at the burning wreckage that was the ship. Smoke billowed upwards, heavy and foreboding wrapping and twisting around itself like a tiny maelstrom. It looked out of place against the soft blue of the sky.

"It both fits and doesn't fit." She muttered to herself.

"Elaborate." Xander immediately pinged back.

"You shouldn't be asking questions like that." Dae pointed out a nervous flutter going off in her stomach. Karen, who was now Xander, had been acting off ever since the green light incident the day before. "You're not booted to be a social model right now." She added almost accusingly.

"The social model is being extrapolated and integrated into this system to combat your extended absence from other sentient beings." Xander rattled off.

"That's not supposed to be a function of the PDA." She muttered, pulling out her little screen to drag up the general settings. For a moment the screen glitched, small streaks of green flashing quickly before it settled back into the menu. All of the normal customization options were greyed out, with a small white explanation shining at the top.

This model has been rebooted in Survival Mode. If this is unneeded please visit or contact Tech Supervisor Clemmets on deck 62 or at intranet extension #788 for the process to be reversed.

"You have got to be kidding me." She hissed in disgust tapping at the screen to no avail.

"This is not a joke."

"I know." She sighed, hooking her PDA screen back to her side. "I suppose I should be happy about that. Having someone to talk to."

"Your tone indicates you are not pleased."

"Yeah, well…." She huffed and threw herself backwards, feeling the top hatch dig sharply into her back as she did so. "I never liked the social models if I'm being honest. They creeped me out."

There was a long stretch of silence. In the distance something cracked off of the Aurora and fell smoking into the sea.

"Why?"

"I don't know." Dae forced herself to look away from the wreckage for a moment to look to the teeming life just under the surface of the water. "I guess, the people who liked the personality sims always got way too into it. They'd upload the personality of their favorite celebrity. They'd allow the visual mods to be put in place and suddenly….it was like they couldn't see the rest of the people around them. The real people. Social models are supposed to read you, everything about you to adapt and become as likeable as possible. They work to always say the right thing to make you like them more. It feels…. wrong."

"Is that not how human friendships work?"

"No!" Dae huffed before sighing and tracking a peeper as it jumped out of the water. "Well, maybe. But not mine. I'm not going to change who I am just to suit someone's needs, and I wouldn't want someone else to warp their own personality just to make me like them better. You either get along or you don't. End of story."

"That is an interesting ideology."

"Thanks."

Dae hated that some part of her felt better, being able to speak to something that spoke back. Another part hated that she was jumping to readily on some synthetic form of human interaction like she was ravenous for it. It was demeaning in a way. Showing her just how quickly she had deteriorated on the hellhole of a planet.

"So, I need to find Officer Keen and the rest of the survivors before the Sunbeam gets here. I can't be sure that they heard the broadcast. So…. after…." She swallowed and looked to the Aurora. Flickers of brighter fire licked out the sides of the ship now sending flashes of light scattering over the water. Dae would have considered it a spectacular sight if it's implications weren't so gruesome. "After the explosion, when it's safe to travel again. I have to find Officer Keen."

"The coordinates given were corrupted." Xander reminded her quickly.

"Yeah, but maybe we can…. figure out which way they headed by seeing where the broadcast came from."

"Perhaps."

A crack, loud as thunder, came from the Aurora. Even from Henry Dae could feel the sudden charge in the air, like a storm moments before the sky breaks.

"Emergency: A quantum detonation has occurred in the Aurora's drive core."

Xander warned its voice pitching deeper. The air nearly began to vibrate, as the fires suddenly increased, the flashing of the flames looking closer to strobe lights than actual fire. "The reactor will reach a super critical state in T- 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4-4-" Xander's voice fluctuated. "3, 2-2, 1."

The world exploded. The sound was louder than anything she had expected and she found herself scrambling backwards as the ship erupted into a fireball. Light seemed to warp around the explosion site, a myriad of colors bending and shimmering as the visible wall of the shockwave quickly moved to overtake Henry and Dae. The shockwave itself felt like a punch to the gut, and she found herself knocked backwards and off of Henry, splashing into the water below. Water hit her face full on, crawling up her nose and down her throat for a long moment. Dae burst upward, quickly breaching the surface and dragging air into her already burning lungs and nose. She spluttered paddling while wiping the stinging salt from her eyes.

The suit seemed to be malfunctioning for a moment. The gauges all fluctuating wildly before finally settling on by one back to what they had been.

"Karen…. I mean Xander, are you okay?" She asked dragging herself back to the ladder rungs on Henry's side so that she could pull herself back up and onto the top hatch.

"Systems were briefly interrupted by the quantum detonation. All functions nominal."

"Good." She huffed wrapping her arms around her middle. "That was…. awful." She shivered looking to the Aurora, who only seemed to be burning more after the explosion.

"Current objective: Find Officer Keen."

"What if people were in there?" She muttered in horror.

"Displaying Officer Keen's last broadcast point." A little blue marker popped up, steady among the waves. "Food and Water rations recommended for this voyage."

"R-right." She muttered. "I think I have some…" All she could imagine was what an explosion like that would do to a body if they were inside of it. She could almost imagine the searing all-encompassing flash of pain as it obliterated everything.

"Keen's last broadcast mentioned dry land." Xander plowed on through her horror. "If tracking fails, the land should be one and a half-kilometers west of the crash zone."

Dae glanced in that direction, but saw nothing. No hint of land anywhere.

"I don't see any land." She said straining to see further. "Well, if all else fails we can just head in that direction. Okay," she said trying to shake herself off, "let's go find those survivors!"