Entry 34

“Blaue! Bring un shier raus!” Ven shouted in German at seemingly no one. John let go of me, though I held onto his hand just in case my legs gave out on me.

“Alls wϋrde ich auf deinen Befehl warten, um daz su machen,” a definitely female voice retorted. Since I did not understand her words or Ven’s response, I simply looked about the chamber we seemed to have escaped into.

It seemed to be a storage area. A few metallic boxes were scattered here and there. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all the same dreary gray color and seemed to not come to a corner anywhere, as if the walls simply curved gently into the floor and ceiling. Ven stood in the middle, glaring at one of the walls severely while speaking rapidly in German to a disembodied female voice. I wondered if this gray room was part of his ship, and if the female was the pilot.

My heart was still thudding a million miles an hour, so I moved to sit on one of the metallic boxes. Before I could rest my feet, Ven suddenly said, “Carlee!” I jumped to my feet, feeling slightly guilty as if sitting on a box was somehow wrong.

“We don’t want to sit down here,” Ven continued. “Follow me. If you’re tired, I’ll take you to the room where you will be staying.”

“Is this your ship?” I asked, unimpressed with what I had seen so far.

“Yes,” Ven said, pride filling his voice. He smiled at me, which stunned me completely. His smile made him twice as handsome as normal. It was the first time I had seen him smile. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Your ship is a person?” I responded, baffled.

“Blaue! Komm her. Wir haben Geste,” Ven exclaimed.

“Guests! I love guests!” the feminine voice spoke in English for the first time as the air between us and Ven shimmered. The shimmer solidified into a tall, lovely woman. She had unearthly beautiful looks and seemed fit enough to run a marathon. Her hair was long, thick, and pale blue, matching her pale blue eyes. Her skin was extremely pale, almost albino, and she wore a form fitting outfit the exact same shade of blue as her hair and eyes. All in all, she looked very fair and blue.

“Carlee,” Ven said smiling brightly at the apparition. “This is my ship, Der Blaue Stern. Blaue, this is our guest, Carlee Earhart.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Carlee,” the woman said with a bow in my direction. Her light eyes flickered to John. “This must be your android.”

“I am John Earhart,” John agreed, analyzing the woman with his dark blue eyes.

“Oh, an android,” the woman laughed, glancing back at Ven with a mischievous glint in her light eyes. “This is going to be a most fun trip.” Ven frowned at her in response. The woman made a face at him and then turned back to me.

“I’m confused,” I admitted. “How is she your ship?”

“It is confusing. Ven forgets that,” the woman said. “I am the Artificial Cognizant of this ship, Der Blaue Stern. I am essentially the ship’s software, and I am inseparable from the actual ship itself. A ship’s Artificial Cognizant is an integral system, and without me, this ship cannot function. I am the most important system on this ship.”

“She’s rather arrogant about her position,” Ven pointed out, smiling again. The woman ignored him.

“You may call me Blaue,” she continued. “It’s what Ven calls me. It really is a pleasure to meet you. It’s so nice to have guests on board.” She smiled brightly at both John and me.

“Guest,” Ven corrected. “We have one guest. So Carlee, would you like a tour of the ship?”

“Should we not be, I don’t know, in the cockpit flying away from this place as if our life depends on it?” I asked, uncertain that we were as safe as Ven’s relaxed manner seemed to indicate we were.

“Do not fret, Carlee,” Blaue said. “The moment the hatch was safely closed I took you safely out of the star system. I believe the anthropologists’ security network is trying to follow us, but Ven and I are veterans at this sort of thing. I have plotted a course in hyperspace that backtracks quite a few times and takes us close to a few gravitational anomalies. They will never be able to track us. We are quite safe.”

“That’s my girl,” Ven said with a proud smile for the woman. She smiled back as if his praise was the highest in the world. I stared at them both, completely confused and baffled. But we had escaped, and I guessed that was all that really mattered.