8

Demi waited. She waited a little longer while Friss shifted his weight upon the captain's chair causing the Repli-leather to creak, filling the awkward silence. He began to say something and stopped. He tried again and the words he almost said almost formed into something resembling a sound. He stopped again, raising a finger, lowering it, frowning, humming in a thoughtful manner before sitting back in the seat once more, accompanied by another awkward creak of the Repli-leather.

"I don't get it." He turned to Lap as the Planeian rustled in his ear. Friss frowned again. "No, three-dimensions aren't a 'hoax'. But this ... I just don't get it. How many dimensions do you say there are?"

"I'm not saying there are multiple-dimensions!" Demi gripped the laser pointer in her hand and tried to remain calm. She had tried to explain this four times already and, each time, the explanation, simplified beyond all reasonable tolerances, remained out of Friss' mental reach. "I'm saying it was a theory, long, long ago. Well, not even a theory, really. More of an advanced hypothesis. They only called it 'String theory' to make themselves sound important and clever."

"And this 'Ball of string theory' explained the universe?" He rolled his eyes, nudging Lap. "And, apparently, involved lots of dimensions that no-one could actually see? Sounds like religion to me."

Demi turned back to the view screen, where she had set up some pretty pictures to take Friss' mind off the incredibly complex mathematics that she had set in unobtrusive places so as not to scare the infantile captain. She couldn't make it any more simple and, to be fair, she didn't really have that good a grasp on it all herself. This was the province of her sister and brother, Hemi and Percival Quaver-Tempura. The two people she absolutely could not consult. They could explain all this with ease.

"No. No, it didn't explain the universe. It was an attempt at unifying macro and quantum gravity and only ended up revealing that physicists were paid far too much money to sit around and have a big joke at academia's expense." Of course, that explanation made Friss snort a barely disguised laugh. "It was all rubbish, but the mathematics were incredibly, counter-intuitively accurate. It's that mathematics that Imblibdor has used to encrypt their locks. It's brilliant, really."

"In twelve dimensions? Or, possibly, twenty-five?" Friss tossed an empty can of Water Plus at the console and, somehow, it hit the button to switch off the view screen. He pumped a fist in the air. "I don't care. Can you break the lock? I want my ship back and I want it back now! Well, as soon as we reach the Imblibdor system. But then I'll want it back now!"

Lap moved to the console and picked up the Water Plus can, crushing it flat with one two-dimensional hand. That seemed to please them and a crinkling sigh emitted from the orifice Demi had decided was Lap's mouth. She didn't know what to say. Her implant, an artefact smuggled from a backward planet with a population of humans that guarded their privacy, and their technology, with a grip so tight she doubted any of them had ever used a toilet, had limitations.

It could feed information directly into her brain. Any information. But it couldn't give her the knowledge and experience to utilise it correctly. She could download the plans to any space ship, know the location of every nut, bolt and shoddy piece of welding, but it couldn't teach her how to maintain it, or fly it, or keep it clean. The same was true of mathematics. Demi was clever, but even she couldn't make head nor tail of the calculations required unless she learned how to do it. Simply knowing the equations meant little.

Hemi and Percival, however, understood it. Ancient physics was a hobby of theirs. They played with mathematics like this for fun. The problem remained that, though Demi had grown up with them, lived her best years with them and had, on occasion, played vicious pranks on them, they could now pass her on any street and not even recognise their sister. Unless they had seen the news and even then they would only see some psychotic mass-murderer, not the girl they once knew as their sister.

"I can do it." She hoped she sounded confident because she felt as far from confident as anyone could possibly feel. In fact, were she to calculate a distance between herself and confident, she would need even more complicated mathematics than that that now caused her lack of confidence. "But I'd need to make a call."

"Excellent! Knock yourself out! Not literally, of course. How can you talk to anyone if you've made yourself unconscious and possibly given yourself a concussion? It was a metaphor. If you didn't know." Friss slapped the arms of the captain's seat and jumped to his feet, about to leave the bridge. He paused and turned back to Demi. "You won't call the authorities, will you? That would be ... unfortunate. I'll leave Lap with you. Just in case. It's not that I don't trust, I don't, but that's not the point. The point is, I really don't trust you."

With an exaggerated wink and a thumbs-up, Friss left the bridge, leaving Lap staring at Demi. She didn't doubt that, no matter how friendly Lap appeared, or had treated her so far, they would kill her in an instant if Friss asked them to. Lap rustled at her, dropping the crushed can of Water Plus into the recycling bin before folding their arms behind their back. They stared at Demi and she felt certain that the intent was to make her feel terrified and uncomfortable. It worked very well.

Under the unwavering gaze of Lap, Demi moved to the communications and DJ console and began to perform a search for her brother and sister. She considered opening up the Mega-Com to Gal-Net, but worried that Lap would notice and consider it some kind of murderable offence. She would, eventually, need to connect to Gal-Net to attack the Imblibdor locks. Right now, she preferred not to have the Planeian crush her like that can of Water Plus.

The search brought up the names of her brother and sister, still living on the same planet where their mother and father had lived their entire lives. Where their family, for generations, had lived their entire lives. Demi had never wanted to die on the same planet where she had been born and brought up. She couldn't think of anything more pitiful. An entire galaxy to explore. New species to meet. So much to see and do and she couldn't imagine staying on one planet for ever. She never could and no-one in her family had ever understood.

Hemi and Percival almost understood, but would then opine about how wonderful the pearlescent sunsets were, how the purple sunlight would reflect from the metallic tendrils of the stone-eating Muffler Weed plants. How the dogs would wheel and circle among the vitreous clouds, trying not to suffer too many lacerations. Home, to them. A prison for Demi. At least, until she had spent time in real prisons. She knew the difference now.

Demi saw the ripple in the air and realised that Lap had reached over her shoulder, pressing the 'call' button that she had, apparently, stared at for far too long for the Planeian's liking. Or, perhaps, they knew she needed that little nudge to go ahead and speak to people she knew intimately, but didn't know her in the slightest. Not anymore. Demi didn't know whether to thank Lap or curse at them, so she settled for a quiet seethe and a light touch to the receding two-dimensional hand.

"Hello! Oh, I don't know you. I was expecting ... never mind. Hello?" Percival fastened the bathrobe after greeting the incoming call with his arms out wide, a cocktail glass in either hand which he quickly dropped, the Repli-glass tinkling as they smashed. "How can I help you?"

"Hello." Demi's mouth worked but she wasn't entirely certain her brain did. Words failed her. They didn't just fail her, they sat there staring after only signing their name on the exam paper. Words. She needed them. "I'm ... I'm ... my name is ..."

"Pers? Tell Pashmina to hurry up and arrive. The family are getting antsy." Another face appeared on the screen and that caused Demi to continue failing to find words that she desperately needed. "That's not Pashmina! Oh! You didn't open the call with your ... I'm sorry about that. He hasn't seen his wife in ... well, far too long. How can we help you?"

They looked healthy. Healthy enough, at least, though the disorder they both had showed no outward signs. Everything bad about their medical problems happened on the inside. On the outside, Demi's brother and sister looked exactly as they always had. Older, for certain, but no different. Demi tried to turn her head aside to wipe the tears from her eyes and saw Lap watching. They didn't even rustle at her, only turning their head to look at the view screen. They were right. Demi had no time for letting her emotions get in the way. She had to suck it up and talk.

"Hi. Hello. Great to see you ... I mean, to meet you. I'm ... Lap Lodka and I have it on good authority that you two know a thing or two about ancient, obsolete physics, with a working understanding of the accompanying mathematics?" Again, Demi glanced towards Lap and she felt comforted by the folding of their head, in an approximation of a nod, and their hand on her shoulder. "I was wondering what your thoughts would be about using String Theory mathematics as a basis for multi-dimensional encryption on, say, locking mechanisms? I, we can pay."

Even though the authorities had never managed to find, let alone retrieve, all the money Demi had stolen to pay for the medical care of her brother and sister, Demi still could access it. In hundreds of different accounts under as many different names, scattered around bank planets and virtual safety deposit boxes throughout the galaxy, Demi had access to more than enough money to persuade anyone to do almost anything. Also, it would help out her family even more.

"Nonsense! We don't play around with ancient physics for money. It's a passion! Money would only sully it." Intrigued, Percival stepped closer to his own view screen. "Tell me more."

Demi opened her mouth to begin explaining her problem, only for her brother's badly tied bathrobe to fall open, revealing parts of him, again, that Demi hadn't wanted to see as children, let alone now. She could wait for him to get dressed.