In a dream the day after, she visited a world barren like the desert, yet accented with pale, vine-like lichen. It seemed to be a reunion of some kind or another; she was not exactly sure. Her family was there, as nonchalant as if they had only stepped away for a day-trip, and so were Mack and Daniel. The celebration went on around her even as some faceless spacesuits beckoned for her to board a maintenance ship. It was warm and dusty outside, yet they wore full suits and their helmets were fogged up from the inside, so that she could not see their faces. Everyone was talking and enjoying themselves and did not notice her departure. When she had boarded the ship, the astronauts vanished and the ship became nothing but an empty metal shell, without furniture or decoration. She rapped her knuckles raw trying to make enough noise for someone to hear her, but no-one did. The ship took off, and she watched as her friends and family below her shrank into nothing, until at once they transformed into beams of light that shot upwards like meteors, streaking off in different directions as the ship carried her further and further away.

After breakfast and feeding Lloyd, Sarah visited each room, reliving the memories deposited there. It was a silly sort of luxury she permitted herself, like the luxury of running in the halls, but somehow it helped everything to make more sense. As she sat in the library, the conversations that she shared just a day ago echoed in her mind, joining with those of last month and the month before in a connected chain all the way back to the founding of the colony. Although a wistful smile perched upon her features, the memories made her feel full, buoyant, and somehow complete. Finally she entered the VRC room. The clock on the unit read 10:07, and she sighed; it was still too early. She went to dull the expectant tearing feeling by perusing the freebies she had received. She would call Merlianne later and read the black card later still.