Chapter Text
He listened to the commotion from the corner of the room, and he had to admit, it was pretty exciting. This journey had been astonishingly boring so far, given that everybody on the ship hated him and there was nothing to blow up.
“They hacked Hera? That’s impressive.”
“No, Jacobi, it’s not. It’s terrible!”
“Calm down, Monkowski, they obviously aren’t here to kill us. They already would have done it if they wanted to.”
“Sure, just like you and Kepler and Maxwell!”
“Shut up, Lovelace.”
“Guys!” The room fell silent when Minkowski shouted, “I think we should give this a chance.”
“What?” Erupted Hera, “Why would we do that?”
Minkowski didn’t answer for a moment. Leaving the crew to build up their uncomfort. Jacobi shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Hera, what year is it?”
“Twenty seventeen… oh no. Oh no no no.”
“What’s going on?” Eiffel nearly shook with fear. Jacobi nearly laughed before remembering that this is probably the first time anything even a little bit frightening has ever happened to him. He puts a hand on the man’s shoulder and asks the same question
“Hera, what year is it?”
There is nothing but heavy silence laced with dread for a long moment.
“Two thousand, four hundred, and sixty eight.”
They sat in the silence for another second before Jacobi started laughing.
“You’re telling me it’s fucking twenty four sixty eight? Good try Hera, Minkowski, but it’s gonna take more than a stupid, poorly thought out prank to scare me. Ha ha, very funny. Now, can we please be on our way back to Earth? We’ve wasted enough time here already.”
The dread that sat in his stomach began to grow heavy as the others only reacted by staring at him blankly.
“No. There’s no fucking way!”
“Maybe it’s just some kind of time anomaly, like Lovelace experienced in our orbit.”
“It’s not.” Lovelace proclaimed solemnly and quietly, “This is the real deal.”