Chapter 6:
Uninvited Guest
SIX’S EVA-00 TYPE-F ALLEGORICA had been broadcasting its signature once every thirty minutes, like a lost child shouting for its parents. Six sent her signal in all directions, since she couldn’t tell where the Earth was. They couldn’t travel very far and had a low chance of being recognized even if they were received.
It was possible that the Earth lay on the other side of the moon. But given the time of day and the activation logs of her graviton floaters, and taking into account the moon’s irregular orbit and size, Six had not been knocked all the way to the dark side.
Formerly, the moon’s rotation was so slow as to virtually guarantee a view of the Earth no matter what time it was. Now, the moon rotated faster than a cat could dart its eyes.
Six gave up on trying to orient herself and instead began calculating the Earth’s coordinates. There were bound to be discrepancies, of course. Although the Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica was kitted out similarly to the Eva-02 Allegorica, its observation equipment and navigation systems weren’t made for space operations.
Rei Six was beginning to fear she’d been shipwrecked in space.
Beep-beep! The Type-N robot chirped cheerfully to her. Beep-beep!
Six ignored it and continued her calculations.
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
“Shut up!” Six yelled at the little rice cooker and banged the controls.
The robot’s liquid crystal display lit up. <<Excuse me?>>
“Huh?!”
The voice didn’t belong to Six’s Type-N robot, that was for sure. The plug’s internal mechanisms fired up again, and the sound migrated from the robot to the console’s hydrospeaker. She didn’t want the sound to override any important incoming transmissions. Six didn’t immediately realize that the call was coming from outside. She looked to the corner of her sub-display, where a robot’s ID code and transmission coordinates had appeared, telling her that the message was coming from a different robot…the one formerly belonging to Rei Cinq. This was the same robot that had gone missing some time ago.
“No way!”
Six could be excused for her surprise. The last time she’d seen this particular Type-N bot was back in Shinji’s watermelon patch. Crimson A1, the Asuka/Eva synthesis, had flung it into outer space. Its signal was weak and barely reached her even with the reduced atmosphere, but it was there. This robot had responded to Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica’s calls to Hakone.
The Type-N’s trajectory was closing in on them, but it showed no signs of stopping once it got there. Six’s display showed that the robot was currently 5,600 kilometers away from them and moving at a speed of thirty kilometers per second. A significant distance on a planetary scale, but considering the robot could have been lost in any part of space, it was nothing short of miraculous that they were practically rubbing shoulders.
“Why does its trajectory curve slightly every time I send a signal?”
Six reactivated the Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica’s graviton floaters without a hitch. Reaching the Type-N wasn’t her only goal. She would use her gravitons to pinpoint nearby heavenly bodies to help her triangulate the Earth’s location…assuming there was still an Earth on the other side of the moon. Six launched herself, resolving to retrieve her rice-cooker-shaped friend.