Chapter 21 - The Observation Deck

The stairs to the observation lounge stretched above them, disappearing into the soft blue glow that filtered down from the upper deck. Emily paused at the bottom rung, looking back at Luca with anticipation plain in her eyes.

“Coming?” she asked.

“After you,” he said, gesturing upward with a grin that hadn’t left his face since the jump completed. He was still riding the high of not being scattered across the void between the stars, and the way Emily kept looking at him wasn’t helping his pulse settle down any.

She climbed quickly ahead of him, looking back to make sure he followed. Twenty days of repairs and recalibrations had passed, and he’d barely had a moment alone with her. Now they were finally heading to Alpha Centauri, and Emily had suggested the observation lounge, just the two of them.

The voices hit them before they reached the top.

“—but that’s just it, the micro-jumps aren’t actually jumps at all,” Ryan was saying, leaning forward with the particular excitement he got when explaining something complex. “It’s more like we’re surfing the quantum foam, riding these little ripples in spacetime—”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Danny’s voice replied, though he sounded more amused than frustrated. “You can’t surf quantum foam. It’s not even—”

Emily paused at the top of the stairs, her shoulders dropping slightly. Luca caught her hesitation, the way she took a breath before brightening her expression.

“Room for two more?” Emily called out, stepping into the lounge with a smile that only someone who knew her well would recognize as slightly forced.

The observation lounge had floor-to-ceiling, curved, transparent aluminum windows that encircled the entire space, offering a panoramic view of... something that definitely wasn’t normal space. Streaks of light pulsed past them in waves, brilliant blues and whites that seemed to bend and twist in ways that made Luca’s eyes water if he stared too long. It was like being inside a lightning storm made of starlight.

Ryan looked up from where he was sprawled across one of the curved benches, gesturing enthusiastically at the view. “Emily! Luca! You’ve got to see this. Forget subspace, we’re in some kind of quantum tunnel. Danny thinks I’m making it up, but look at those wave patterns.”

Danny sat cross-legged on the floor near the windows, a data set open on his PAC. “I don’t think you’re making it up, I think you’re anthropomorphizing complex physics into surf metaphors.”

“Everything’s a surf metaphor if you’re brave enough,” Ryan shot back with a grin.

Luca hauled himself up into the observation deck and immediately felt the subtle vibration that ran through the ship’s hull, the FTL drive maintaining their impossible speed. The relief hit him again, that bone-deep gratitude that they were all here, alive, hurtling toward humanity’s first interstellar destination.

Emily settled onto the bench beside Ryan, leaving space for Luca. He dropped down next to her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. She didn’t move away.

“So what are we actually looking at?” Luca asked, nodding toward the light show beyond the windows. “Besides Danny’s physics homework.”

“According to the nav computer, we’re making about three thousand microjumps over the next three weeks,” Danny said, not looking up from his PAC. “The drive doesn’t move us through space so much as it... folds space around us? Each jump is tiny, but they’re happening so fast it creates this continuous effect.”

“Like skipping stones,” Emily said softly, in that tone she got when she was working through a problem. “Each skip takes you a little further until you’ve crossed the whole pond.”

“Exactly!” Ryan pointed at her. “See? She gets it. Quantum stone skipping.”

Luca watched Emily’s profile as she studied the streaming lights, the way her eyes tracked the patterns with that intense focus she brought to everything important.

Three weeks to Alpha Centauri. They had three weeks in this ship with Emily, with all of them, racing toward something no human had ever seen. The magnitude of it should have been terrifying, but sitting here next to her, watching Ryan gesture wildly while Danny muttered calculations under his breath, it felt... right.

“You know what’s crazy?” Emily said, leaning back against the bench. “We’re the first humans to see this. Whatever this is, subspace, quantum foam, Ryan’s cosmic surf breaks; we’re the first.”

“The first of hopefully many,” Danny added, finally looking up from his calculations. “Assuming containment holds across all three thousand transitions.”

“Always the optimist,” Luca said dryly, but he was grinning. The kid’s nervous energy was endearing, especially when it was focused on keeping them all alive.

Ryan stretched out on the bench, hands behind his head. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m planning to enjoy every minute of this. How many people get to take the scenic route to another star system?”

Emily laughed. “The scenic route through dimensions we can’t pronounce, at speeds that shouldn’t be possible, in a ship we commissioned from an alien shipyard.” She shook her head. “When you put it like that, it sounds completely insane.”

“The best kind of insane,” Luca said, and Emily’s eyes were already on his. Her gaze was steady, meant only for him.

The patterns seemed to shift and change. Sometimes they flowed in parallel lines, and sometimes they spiraled in complex helixes that made Luca dizzy. It was hypnotic, the light swelling and fading across the glass.

“Hell of a view,” he said finally, his voice quiet.

Emily leaned her head onto his shoulder. “Yeah,” she said softly, and when he looked down at her, she was already looking up at him. “It really is.”

The moment stretched between them, full of things neither of them had quite figured out how to say yet. Whatever was happening between him and Emily, whatever had been building for months now, it felt as inevitable as the light streaming past their windows.

Three weeks to Alpha Centauri. Maybe that would be enough time to figure out when the right moment was, or if one even existed on a mission like this.

Ryan gestured at the subspace storm around them. “We’re folding space to get from point A to point B, right? What if the portals work the same way? A more advanced version, instead of folding space to move us through it, they fold space to bring other places to us. Same basic principle, bigger fold.”

“That’s a massive leap,” Danny said, frowning. “The energy requirements alone would be—”

“Would be what? Impossible?” Ryan grinned. “We’re currently traveling faster than light using technology we barely understand. I’m pretty sure ‘impossible’ went out the window somewhere around the Genesis Platform.”

Danny shook his head. “But the scenarios recycle, Ryan. It’s been documented. Same basic environments, same challenge structures. They might have minor variations, but the core templates repeat. That’s not how real locations would work.”

“Maybe they’re real places that the system has... catalogued? Like it found these worlds and now it can recreate access to them?” Ryan’s voice picked up excitement. “Think about it; we’re using alien tech to travel between stars. What if the portals are using the same kind of technology, just on a smaller scale?”

Luca was only half-listening to the debate, more focused on the way Emily had settled more comfortably against his side. His arm was around her waist, and she hadn’t moved away. If anything, she’d leaned into him more, her head resting against his shoulder. The light show cast shifting patterns across her face.

Luca felt Emily’s quiet laughter vibrate against his shoulder, and decided that whatever they found at Alpha Centauri, this moment was already worth every risk they’d taken to get here.

“But even if you’re right,” Danny was saying, “the recycling issue remains. I’ve run statistical analyses on portal scenarios…”

“Statistics don’t account for the variables we can’t measure,” Ryan interrupted. “What if each ‘recycled’ scenario is actually the same real location, just accessed at different times? Or from different dimensional angles?”

Emily stirred against his shoulder, taking a slow breath. “You guys could debate this for hours,” she said, her voice slightly muffled. “And knowing you two, you probably will.”

“We’ve got three weeks,” Ryan said with a grin. “Plenty of time to solve the mysteries of interdimensional travel.”

Emily sighed, the sound vibrating through his chest. But then she was pulling away, sitting up, and stretching. Luca immediately missed her warmth.

“I should probably check on Zoe,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “Make sure she doesn’t need anything. The jump sequence puts a lot of strain on her.”

“Zoe’s fine,” Ryan said dismissively. “She could probably pilot this thing in her sleep.”

“Still.” Emily stood, smoothing down her suit. “Someone has to check on the crew, right?” She looked at Luca with a small smile. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Luca watched her head for the stairs, trying not to be too obvious about it. He was definitely staring.

The moment Emily disappeared down the stairs, Danny stretched and yawned dramatically. “I should probably run those subspace calculations while the readings are fresh,” he said, closing the data on his PAC. “The quantum resonance patterns might tell us something about jump efficiency.”

“Always working,” Ryan said with a grin, but Luca could hear the affection in it.

Danny paused at the stairs. “You know, Luca, the statistical models for interpersonal dynamics during long-duration space travel are actually fascinating. Proximity effects, shared experiences, the way extraordinary circumstances can amplify existing—”

“Danny,” Ryan interrupted gently. “The calculations?”

“Right. Yes. Numbers. Less… complicated than people.” Danny disappeared down the stairs, leaving Ryan and Luca alone with the light show.

Luca felt the sudden quiet settle around them. The streaming patterns seemed louder somehow without the others’ voices, the subtle vibration of the FTL drive more pronounced through the deck.

They sat for a while, watching the streams of twisted light flow past. Luca tried to focus on the impossible beauty of it, but his mind kept drifting back to Emily.

“Hell of a view,” Ryan said finally, echoing Luca’s earlier words.

“Yeah,” Luca said, his voice distant.

Ryan was quiet for a minute, then said, “She picked a good exit line. ‘Someone has to check on the crew.’” He said it in her voice, almost. “Classic.”

“That’s... she’s not wrong.”

“No.” Ryan pulled at a loose thread on his sleeve. “She never is, though. Have you noticed that? Emily’s always got the line that gets her out of the room before things get heavy.”

Luca looked at him. “That’s not what that was.”

“Okay.” Ryan shrugged. “What was it?”

“She went to check on Zoe.”

“After an hour of leaning on your shoulder.” Ryan tilted his head. “Sure.”

“Wasn’t an hour—” Luca said.

The FTL hum filled the gap. Luca turned back to the lights.

“You know what your problem is?” Ryan said. “You keep waiting for a version of this where nobody has to risk anything.”

“I’m not waiting for anything.”

“You’re sitting in the dark staring at stairs.”

“Ryan—”

“Back in Sandworth,” Ryan said, his voice dropping just slightly, “you were the one who moved first. On anything. You were annoying about it, honestly.”

Luca didn’t say anything.

“Now you’ve got a ship, a mission, six months of good reasons.” Ryan stood up, brushing off his jacket. “Turns out that’s worse.”

“Worse than what?”

Ryan looked at him for a moment. Something moved behind his eyes that he didn’t let land. “Nothing.” He picked up his jacket. “Get some sleep, man. Another big day of traveling faster than light tomorrow.”

He was halfway down the stairs before Luca heard him stop.

“For what it’s worth,” Ryan said, from somewhere below the deck line, “she didn’t look at Pierre like that. Not once that I saw.”

Luca sat alone with the lights.

Three weeks to Alpha Centauri. It would be six months before they’d be back at the Genesis Platform, if they made it back. He’d need to figure out if there was ever going to be a right time for this, or if he was going to spend the next six months waiting for a moment that would never come.

Or three weeks to get comfortable with not doing anything at all.