Chapter 27 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Voices in the Night

Artificial rain fell lightly on the glass roof of the Day Deck when Khe Lam arrived. The periodic irrigation system of the Old Garden neighborhood was operating on a night cycle, creating a steady popping sound that she rarely had the opportunity to fully listen to because she usually only visited during the day. Bui Dac Sinh sat in front of the factory door, not doing anything, just looking out into the dark space between the old pipelines, holding a cup of tea that had long since cooled.

"I'm coming again," he said, without turning around, as if he had sensed her footsteps from afar. "This late."

"I can't sleep." Khe Lam replied, sitting down on the steps next to him. "We found a new code. 228-R. Same year as Night of Broken Roots."

He didn't answer right away, just took a sip of cold tea, his face etched with deep wrinkles under the weak yellow light of the workshop. A long silence passed, long enough for Khe Lam to think he would refuse again like always, but then he put down his teacup, and began to speak, his voice slow as if opening a door that had been locked for so long that the hinges squeaked in pain.

"He was twenty-three years old that year," he said. "Just spent five years in Ky Dinh Floor, working in the water recycling system maintenance team, on the night shift. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday — not because I tried to remember, but because there are nights that just stick to one's memory, no matter how much one wants to forget."

Khe Lam sat still, not daring to breathe loudly, afraid that even a small sound would be enough to interrupt the flow of memories.

"Around midnight, the ship's internal radio system, which was only used for emergency announcements or recitations from the Sea Route Sutra during the Destination Ceremony, suddenly turned on unexpectedly in the middle of the hour." He continued, his eyes far away as if seeing an old scene again. "It wasn't the familiar announcer's voice. Another voice, trembling but steadfast, said that the ship's true destination had been changed generations ago, that the people had a right to know the truth, that the Council had lied to them for nearly two hundred years. The voice lasted less than three minutes before being cut off mid-sentence, but those three minutes were enough for the entire Root Layer to wake up."

"Do you hear who it is?" Khe Lam asked, her voice was so soft that it was almost just a breath.

"I'm not sure who spoke on the radio. There was a lot of noise in the voice." Bui Dac Sinh replied. "But you know who stood to lead the crowd that gathered in the Machine Lobby right after that — the place with the largest speaker board in the central maintenance area, where people could gather in the largest number without leaving the Root Floor. Dinh Khac Bat, the night shift chief engineer of his team at that time, stood on an empty parts box, shouting for the Council to come out and answer in front of all the residents. He wasn't the only one standing there."

"Who else?" She asked, even though she already guessed the answer, her heart pounding in her chest.

Bui Dac Sinh looked at her, his eyes filled with an old pain, and in that moment, Khe Lam thought he was about to say the name she had been waiting for many days. But he just shook his head slowly.

"It's not the right time, little girl," he said. "It's not because I don't believe you. It's because once I say it, I'll have to tell the rest, and the rest is the part I can't face again, right now, in the middle of the night, just with the two of us. Let me tell the part I can tell."

She nodded, swallowed her disappointment, and waited.

"The crowd grew, perhaps a few hundred people within an hour, mostly night shift workers like me, curious, confused, some genuinely angry. People started talking, asking questions loudly, a few shouted slogans demanding to hear the Council's explanation directly. There was no violence, child, I want you to remember that — no one in that crowd held a weapon, no one destroyed anything. It was just a crowd that wanted to hear the truth." really, standing in the middle of a noisy machine hall, under cold industrial lights.""

His voice became lower, and Khe Lam realized his old hand was shaking slightly on his knee.

"Then the Guards came. Not a few men, but a full squad, armed as if preparing for a real riot, not an unarmed mob. They sealed off both ends of the Engine Hall before anyone could react. He stood at the edge of the crowd, near a side exit, and that's the only reason he's alive to tell you this story today."

"What happened then?" Khe Lam asked, even though she was afraid of the answer.

"Chaotic." He replied, briefly, as if that single word was too much to bear in further detail. "I don't want to tell you all about what I saw that night, little girl, not to you, not today. Just know that when it was all over, many people were arrested, some injured, and some I never saw again—not at my old place of work, not in my old neighborhood, not anywhere on this ship that I frequented for the rest of my life."

"Including Dinh Khac Bat?" she asked.

"Official records say he died that night, while resisting the Guards." Bui Dac Sinh said, his voice carrying an undisguised skepticism. "He was not present to witness that moment, so he cannot confirm whether it was right or wrong. But he knew one thing: the next morning, the entire ship received a notice that last night there had been a leak of reactor coolant, forcing the evacuation and temporary blockade of the Main Engine Hall area for safe handling. Not a word about the radio station, about the crowd, about the Guard. He stood there, listening to that announcement coming from the same speaker that had sounded the night before, when the voice shouted for the truth, and he understood then that he had just witnessed something that was not allowed to exist in this ship's official memory."

Khe Lam sat quietly, letting his words sink in, imagining the scene so clearly that she could almost hear the screams, the footsteps of the Guards, the loudspeakers broadcasting the false announcement the next morning—a truth nipped in the bud, then replaced by a technical lie so neat that no one bothered to question it for nineteen years.

"I know what you want to ask next." Bui Dac Sinh said, when she still hadn't spoken. "About Lam Vinh Chi."

Hearing that name come out of his mouth, even if it was just repeating a question she hadn't yet asked, made Khe Lam's whole body cold.

"Do you know her?" She asked, her voice shaking.

"I know." He replied, that was it, without adding any details, his eyes avoided looking at her for the first time during the conversation. "But tonight, I don't have the strength to say more, little girl. I'm old, and there are memories that get heavier as I get older instead of lighter. Give me more time. I promise, when I'm ready, you'll be the first person I tell everything, without hiding anything anymore."

Khe Lam wanted to ask more questions, wanted to shake him, wanted to force him to speak immediately, but looking into the red eyes of the old mechanic, she held back, understanding that there were doors that, even slightly open, still needed time to open completely without breaking the hinges.

"I will wait," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder, a rare gesture of comfort she gave him after so many years of receiving his protection.

He nodded, said nothing more, just looked out into the dark space where artificial rain still fell steadily on the old pipelines, as if looking back at a Machine Hall nineteen years ago, where the screams of people thirsting for the truth still echoed somewhere in his memory, never truly silent, even though the outside world had forced it to be silent a long time ago.

Khe Lam left the workshop that night with a strange feeling, both relieved because she was finally closer to the truth, and heavier than ever because she realized that the truth was not just numbers or coordinates in the Primeval Core, but also the screams of hundreds of people in a noisy machine hall, faces she would never know, whose fates had been erased from the collective memory of the entire ship by a false message. And among those anonymous faces, there could be the face of her own mother.

On the way back, she passed by the same area that used to be called the Machine Hall, which was now just a small equipment transfer station, divided into many storage compartments after some renovation many years ago for which she never knew the real reason. She stood for a moment in the empty hallway, trying to imagine the old shape of the hall, trying to hear in the steady hum of the machines some echo of the scream nineteen years ago, but only the familiar mechanical silence responded, as if this space itself had learned to forget.