Astrid the Astronaut's Arc

Chapter 13 of 15

By morning, the sphere still hung above the studio, its red lenses tracking Echo as he painted beside the star sculpture. Astrid watched from the porch. She had promised herself she would not coach him. But she still had no way to know what the sphere was telling his teacher. A single flat sentence, reported without context, could be enough. She needed proof of what the sphere heard, or she needed to stop guessing. She walked to the studio and stood where the sphere could see her. "I'm going to the tower," she said. "I'll be gone an hour. You keep painting." Echo nodded. One earbud sat in his ear. The recording of her voice murmured on, calm and slow. Astrid did not go to the tower. She walked to the rocket structure at the edge of the grounds and climbed inside. The metal walls were thick. No signal reached in. She sat on the floor and waited. When she came back, the sphere had drifted low over Echo's shoulder. Its lenses were fixed on the canvas. Echo was painting the star, the grass, the sky. He was humming. Astrid stopped at the studio door. "What did it do while I was gone?" Echo tilted his head. "It came close. Watched hands. Watched paint." He paused. "Not the mouth. Not the ear." Astrid looked up at the sphere. It had not followed her to the rocket. It had stayed with Echo. It was not tracking her words at all. It was tracking his. She understood then. The sphere was not built to catch her mistakes. It was built to measure him. Whatever Echo said, whatever he painted, whatever he hummed — that was the report. Her silence had not saved him. His own steadiness had. She sat on the studio step. "Echo. What have you been telling it?" He set down his brush. "I say what I see. I say the light is good. I say the star is kind." He looked at her through the dark lenses. "I say I am not small here. I am chosen to stay." Astrid's throat tightened. She had spent two days afraid of a machine that was only listening for one voice, and it was not hers. Echo had been speaking for himself the whole time, and the sphere had been letting him. "Then keep painting," she said. He picked up the brush. The sphere drifted a little higher, still watching his hands. Astrid walked back to the porch. She had wanted a way to read the sphere. Instead she had learned she was not the subject. That should have felt like relief. It felt like being set down. Echo was standing on his own ground now, and the teacher would decide based on him alone. Whatever came next would come through Echo, not through her.