Emote

“I am only Eridian here.”

My mouth hangs open. “You’re the only person on that huge ship?!”

He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “♫♩♪♫♩♪♫ ♫♪ ♩♪♫ ♫♪♫♪♩ ♫♪♩♪ ♫♩ ♪ ♫♩♪ ♫ ♩♪♫♩♪ ♫♩♪ ♫.”

Complete nonsense. Did my kludged-together translation software fail? I check it out. No, it’s working fine. I examine the waveforms. They seem similar to the ones I’d seen before. But they’re lower. Come to think of it, that whole sentence seemed lower in pitch than anything Rocky has ever said before. I select the whole segment in the software’s recording history and bump it up an octave. The octave is a universal thing, not specific to humans. It means doubling the frequency of every note.

The computer immediately translates the result. “Original crew was twenty-three. Now is only me.”

That octave-drop…I think it’s emotion.

***

Chapter 12