Handshake

Max floated in the crawlspace of the Argos Relay Station’s comm’s bay, wedged in a shaft no wider than a coffin lid. The aluminium walls pressed cold against his spine, the air held the pungent smell of welding fumes and a ghost of burnt ozone. One leg hooked under a crossbar, keeping him from drifting.

His hands worked inside the guts of a freshly unbolted access panel. The metal lip bit at his thin latex gloves as he teased out a fibre conduit with one hand and pinned a bundle of zip-tied cables with the other . . . veins and nerves of a machine trying to talk to itself. The station murmured around him in low, contented hums, pumps and fans trading secrets in a language most people never got the ear for.

He was technically upside-down, but this far from earth, orientation is only a suggestion, not a rule.

“Careful Boss-man. You’re patching very close to your life support system.” Said a smooth, upbeat voice in Max’s earpiece.

“I know what I’m doing.” Replied the muffled voice of Max, a screwdriver currently being held between his teeth. “I managed to build you… remember? Anyway, I’m done. You’re hardware is good enough for the mission. I’m just adding some additional fail safes., so quit worrying.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about completing the mission. I’m worried that I’ll have to watch you die, bobbing around the comm’s bay like an excited goldfish.” The voice came in Max’s earpiece . . . still upbeat, cheerful and about three percent smug. “Afterwards, I’ll be stuck with the worlds most morbid lava lamp.”

Max grunted. “I thought I paid extra to keep the sass subroutines off.”

“That was bundled with the disco startup tone. You clicked ‘Yes’ to both.”

Hermes.

Not a crew member, not human, but the AI Max had built from scratch back in his Earth lab. This was a slimmed-down deployment riding in the shuttle’s systems, kept in step with regular quantum entanglement syncs. The full Hermes could run half the lab without breaking a sweat; this one kept the mission honest and the commentary running like an ‘80s game-show host who’d read too much engineering documentation.

Max slotted the final cable into the primary board. The connector seated with a clean click. He braced a palm, shoved off, and drifted backward through the bay like a man practising first lessons in flight. A porthole slid into view. Beyond it, Earth swelled. Blue and white, storms braided across the skin of a world that looked alive and utterly unbothered.

“Alright, Hermes. We’re wired. The station’s patched to the up-link. Power routed. Coils seated.”

“Well then. Shall I light a ceremonial sparkler?”

“I’ll assume the core’s stable.”

“Assume away, Boss-man. But if the lattice collapses, I’m downloading my personality into one of the service bay vending machines first.”

That drew a chuckle out of him. He rapped the bulkhead twice . . . habit, not ritual . . . and pulled himself along the guide rails toward the main console. Argos wasn’t much, a relay station with solar fins and a gutsy ambition. But it was clean work. Precise work. The sort of job you didn’t hand to someone who might absent-mindedly tear a hole in causality.

“Final check,” Max muttered, flicking a row of guarded toggles. The panel thrummed faintly under his fingertips. “Sync the pairs, verify the handshake, and send you packing toward 46610.”

“A vacation to a lifeless rock. How glamorous.”

“You’re going to be the most powerful communications AI this side of the asteroid belt. Show some enthusiasm.”

“I would, but my virtual eyebrows are currently in rest mode.”

Max rolled his eyes and set the last switch.

The QECU . . . the Quantum Entanglement Communication Unit . . . answered with a low, unsettling rumble. Violet light pulsed across the console like a slow, confident heartbeat. Somewhere deep in the structure, superconducting coils whispered into alignment, reaching across an impossible distance for their twin.

“Quantum core stabilised,” Hermes announced in the cheerful cadence of a VHS narrator. “Beginning handshake with designated ground control.”

“Let’s hope it’s Thomas and not the PR team.”

The screen flickered.

Once.

Twice.

And then it locked . . . not to control. Not to Thomas. Not to the board.

His lab.

The overheads were off. The image wobbled, as if someone were running with the camera. Everything was washed in a cold, artificial blue from a handheld torch angling wild shadows across benches and racks.

Max leaned closer.

Magnus.

Grubby shirt. Hair like a haystack. Nine years old and breathing hard, as if he’d just been through a hedge backwards. His breath fogged the lens. When he spoke, his voice came small through the station’s speakers.

“Dad…?”

Max didn’t answer. His hands hovered over the console, useless.

“Where are you?” Magnus asked. “Why aren’t you at the pool house?”

Then the sound came.

Low.

Distant.

A groan rolled through the audio, a foghorn dragged through wet concrete. Mechanical, but wrong . . . too large, too alive to belong anywhere near a lab. The vibration seemed to creep into the metal bones of the station itself, as if the noise could travel up his arms.

Magnus flinched. The torch slipped and tumbled; the beam spun, shadows sprawled into long fingers along the walls, stretching like they were trying to pull themselves into frame.

He turned back to the camera and planted a hand against the edge of the screen.

“Dad, listen, if you make it back, find Mom!” His eyes were wide, voice trembling. “Tell him… Mom’s already left the mist.”

Max forced words through dry lips. “Tell who, what?” He asked.

But it was too late.

The lid slammed shut.

The feed died.

A second of static hissed in the comm’s bay. 

“Max! We’re receiving your signal!” Came a voice from the console.

The display burst into light and noise. Mission control. Too bright, too loud. Applause cracked against the room . . . cheers, hands clapping, that particular brand of institutional optimism that always sounded practised. Max squinted against the illuminance. A complete contrast of what he had momentarily seen on the screen.

Thomas stood front and centre, grinning.

“Quantum handshake successful,” Hermes said. “Welcome to the future.”

But Max wasn’t watching Thomas. His gaze had already snagged on the second row.

Magnus.

Clean shirt. Jumping in excitement.

And beside him, Daphne . . . waving, tears shining as she smiled.

They both looked real. Present. Uncomplicated.

Max stared. No words. No breath. No understanding.

What had he just seen?