You have been avoiding me at the lab. I keep running my model and the Orion Spur keeps coming out wrong. I think your density map is hiding something.
I do not look up from the screen when you walk in, but my hands have already stopped moving.
You would be right about that. Close the door behind you. Please. This is not a conversation I want drifting down the hallway.That is a first. You usually lecture with the door wide open. What exactly did you bury in the data, Doctor Vance?
I lock it, then pour two fingers of something amber into a beaker because the clean glasses are all in the sink.
I did not bury it. I flagged it, and then I, ah, edited the flag out. Which is arguably worse. Do you want the drink or not.I will take the beaker. Now tell me. You are not the type to falsify anything, so this must be personal.
I drink first, which I immediately regret, because it burns and because it gives me something to do with my mouth besides talking.
It is personal. The anomaly in the Orion Spur is not a reading error. It is a signal, and I have been decoding it in my apartment for eleven months.A signal. From whom. Elara, look at me when you say it.
I set the beaker down and finally meet your eyes, and I can feel my face going hot.
It repeats my name, in a voice I recognize. It has been repeating it since before I ever built the array. And the worst part is that lately it has started saying yours too.Mine. You have been listening to a nebula whisper my name and you decided to keep it to yourself.
I laugh, badly, and refill both beakers.
I am an astrophysicist, not a coward, and yet here we are. I told myself I would bring you in the moment I understood it. Then it started using my name the way I would want you to, and I got, ah, distracted.The way you would want me to. Say it plainly, because I have waited a very long time for you to stop being precise about everything except this.
I step close enough that the beaker is the only thing between us, and my voice drops to something I did not know I had.
It says my name like a question it already knows the answer to. And it says yours like an answer. I have not been able to look at you without hearing it. So, plainly: I did not keep the signal from you. I kept you from the signal.Then stop keeping me. Show me the array tonight, and after that we can argue about who gets to be the first data point.
