500. Day 2

"So, you have a jump engine?", said Timany.

"We do", said Esther, her voice sound was vibrating, like if it was passing through the blades of a fan inside of her throat. "But it's useless like this".

"What do you mean 'Useless'?" asked Timany, his left had grabbed a phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and started to flip through menus.

"Useless as in it has no use", she replied, her eyes now focused outside of the window to the passing cars, this was not her place, she wanted to leave as soon as it was possible.

"I know the definition of useless, Esther, I want to know what you mean by it".

"have you seen those cars on the street?"

"yes?", Timany raised one eyebrow as asking, are you going nuts already?, but she had a point to make. "Well, if you go to a junkyard and pull out a car engine out of one and bring it to your house, what use does it has?"

Timany started to understand, "none", he said, its a lot of metal but it doesn't have any use without the rest of the car, its just an engine.

"Its just an engine" she said as if reading his mind, "if you don't have the rest of the ship its useless, sure its the most important part, if you don't take into consideration that we don't have a steering computer, we have no galactic map, we have no hull, we have no strong restriction field generators, we have nothing that will make us safe to jump. I can turn the engine on, sure, but then it will just 'plop' out of this petty planet toward who knows where, and we will be stuck here, for, ever". She looked at him, her eyes where watering, her lips where trembling, "I hate this place Timany".

"I know" he answered, and he did, this place, this 'Earth' was an awful place, but at least they had computers and they could buy things on-line, going outside and talking to people was out of the question, for one, Timany was about three meters tall and covered on feathers, for two, half of Esther was made out of metal and cables, at least if she covered with clothes she resembled a human female long enough for no one to question it. And if people looked at her hand she could just say they where prosthetic hands, that they where, but that would mean she had to talk, and nothing good would come out of that. "I know, this place sucks" he continued, "but we are here and we are alive, wasn't that the whole point? dieing out there in the cold of space, or having a chance on a forgotten corner of the galaxy, we had the choice", she looked at him at this and frowned at him, "fun choices" she said, fun fucking choices, Timany though.

Both stared out the window of the derelict office rooms they had been habiting for the last two months since their ship crashed 1000km from here, they had run as fast as they could when they landed, humans would have gone to the crash site as soon as they could, they knew that, leaving the premises was only the most logical of the steps, just now Timany learned that before going Esther had stolen a Jump Engine from the dying ship, now they had a chance of doing something, but what.

"what can we do then?" he asked her, she looked from the window to him and smiled.

"Well, mister Timany, what we can do now is... Build a damn ship"

Timany smiled at her, if anyone in this forgotten corner of the universe knew how to build a new ship from scrap, it was her.

"I see, that will do it then"