A Space of One’s Own

Steve Rasnic Tem

The skimmer is on the roof waiting for him, but he cannot help but pause to take a few deep breaths when he first enters all that open space. He walks to the edge and looks down through the mists of antiviral and -bacterial sprays: the streets empty of vehicles but full with the stream of humanity, their heads bobbing up and down seeking room to breathe, to see.

The skimmer is waiting for him, the pilot beckoning to come aboard, and he can see an entire constellation of shimmering city lights beyond. Yet he still feels compelled to linger. This roof is so spacious, surely enough room for a dozen people to live and thrive. He cannot believe the powers that be have left so much space unutilized.

The pilot continues to signal him, and he really must hurry. This opportunity may not come again. But he cannot shake off this feeling of pressing bodies, of hands grabbing onto his clothing, of hands slipping off as he starts to run away. He both fears the contact and regrets leaving it behind.

A small animated blue bird with huge eyes appears at the corner of his vision. “Your stop is approaching,” it says in a high-pitched voice. He shakes it off and makes his way across the roof toward the skimmer. An animated bee flies in front of his face, blocking the way. Despite his resistance, he can feel its sting.

Cedric opened his eyes. It had been a comfortable trip, but he was still relieved to be leaving such close quarters. Standing bodies were pressed shoulder to shoulder, groin to cheek throughout the car. The man next to him had some sort of strong, deliberate odor, apparently just under the threshold so he had still been permitted to ride. This version of the Rail was a relatively new system, only a year or so old and he didn’t understand much of anything about how it worked, but then he didn’t understand much about how anything worked these days. Life had become too complicated to do anything but live it. That was a good thing, according to the language scrolling on the walls of the car and on the sides of buildings on the way to and from his work. These were the only streams you didn’t have to pay for, but ran constantly in public spaces for free, every day.

But the Rail was mostly satisfactory. He told it where he wanted to go and it dropped him on a platform a block away from home. The car wall in front of him turned a soft transparent green showing the fast-moving cityscape outside. The section of floor he was standing on suddenly passed through that less than solid wall and he found himself standing safely on the local platform, the train speeding past in a silvery blur without slowing down. Several hundred other people had been dropped here as well.

You always stood on the Rail; the handicapped had their own system. They kept reconfiguring the cars so they could fit in even more riders. They’d done something to the floor of the cars—he actually enjoyed standing on those floors. You could feel them shifting, adapting where you stood. You just had to stand where the printed footprints were. He loved what they did. He thought he could stand there for an hour or more. Of course that was the purpose. And if you needed it this rod came down and did something to your lower back. For support, but it was more than that. It was heaven.

Still, it was always a relief to get off, even onto a crowded platform. Hell was people, he’d heard. Certainly too many people were Hell.

They encouraged you to wear a particular type of soft shoe on the Rail. It wasn’t required, but they sold them. He wore his pair everywhere for that rare feeling of comfort. He didn’t know if they were supposed to help off the Rail, but he certainly liked the way they made him feel. Someone at work said it was “just comfort by association.” He didn’t care.

Cedric joined the stream of hundreds headed into his neighborhood. Each day there appeared to be fewer children in the crowd. Immediately he felt that urgency to fold in, pulling in his arms and tucking in his elbows, making himself smaller and more compact, generally limiting his movements. And yet it was important to move quickly—the next group would arrive at the platform in less than half an hour. Not surprisingly the neighborhood had changed extensively while he was at work. This happened every few weeks in order to improve efficiency. But this time the changes appeared to be more drastic than usual. He hardly recognized his block, or knew where his particular building happened to be. Colors, patterning, ornamentation had transformed, but that was typical—architectural surfaces were always fluid in a discount neighborhood. And there were always structural changes within the walls. You signed a contract that said room layouts and approximate sizes and even contents were alterable at management’s discretion. But he’d never heard of anyone returning to an apartment larger than the one they’d left. That was the price you paid in order to live here affordably. The options for constant spaces were rare and cost a fortune.

But much more had happened during today’s absence from home. Exterior walls had changed position, basic architectural footprints had transmuted. Boundaries between properties had become fluid; he couldn’t imagine the number of negotiations required. Even the relationship between constructions had been restructured as one building became interwoven with another.

Anyone who had spent the day in their apartment would have been asked to leave while all this took place. Thankfully he’d never had to experience that. There weren’t that many places one could go without a Rail trip requiring at least a day.

A smiling, animated blue bird flew so close to his face he felt compelled to step back. “May I help you?” the bird asked.

“I can’t find my building today.”

The bird stared at him a few seconds before saying, “Cedric.”

He didn’t like to commit himself to these things, in case there had been a hack and he was being lead into something he didn’t want. But he was tired. “Yes.”

“Cedric, look at the buildings. Do you see the green one?”

He gazed down the block. One of the buildings had turned a green glowing color. Blue birds flew in circles before the entrance so that there was no mistake.

“Yes.”

“Would you like me to accompany you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Have a nice day.”

He started to say thank you but the bird was gone. He sighed and continued on to his building. The circling birds faded once he got there and the building returned to a coruscating blue that reminded him vaguely of the ocean. He liked it and immediately felt more relaxed.

He gathered with a few hundred others before the multivator that would take him to his apartment’s new location. With a practiced distribution born of countless repetition they naturally fell into groups of twenty or so as they jammed themselves into each car. “4782,” the blue bird whispered into his ear. If he wasn’t mistaken, the car started moving down. If true, that could only mean he had lost his window again.

The multivator traveled swiftly in a combination of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal moves, stopping and silently letting residents off seemingly at random on unmarked floors. There was an ancient expression even more relevant today: “a little bird told me.”

Cedric envied the couples who got off together. Licensed couples were granted additional space. When Cedric had been married their quarters had still been small, but at least there had been a bigger bed, and room for a few additional pieces of furniture and more wall space for pictures, clothing, and decoration. And critical breathing space. He’d heard that housing management had been forced to increase square footages for couples after the rise in the domestic murder rate.

“4782, this floor,” the smiling blue bird whispered and winked. The wall opened and Cedric stepped out into a narrow corridor. As he walked toward his apartment he could feel the walls closing together behind him to make a solid wall again. Although this movement was almost without sound, there was always some accompanying noise or sensation, if only the result of a modification in pressure as this expansion and contraction of living space happened all over the complex of buildings with every shift change. Cedric had come to think of this as the building’s breathing.

The feeds promised that one day further developments in Rail technology would deliver you directly into your living space. He supposed that meant no walking to the building, no multivator, no corridors. Did that mean no doors? Doubtless. You could fit many more exit-less rooms into the same space.

He passed an emergency ladder built into the wall. This safety feature always reminded him of the fragility of his residence here. In case of a fire or other disaster, which disabled the multivator passages above and below, the ladder would allow a manual exit in the indicated direction, but unless you lived relatively close to ground-level the distances involved made a safe exit problematic. This was generally accepted. Theirs had become a culture of fatalism.

Once inside the apartment he did a quick survey to determine what had changed, what was missing. Most obviously the living space had been reduced by at least a third. The corner where his closet had been was subtracted. After a quick search he found his clothing stuffed under the much smaller bed. Selected images of his family, his wife, had been moved to the ceiling along with the free limited news, music, and entertainment feeds. One wall was equipped with a smaller version of his cooking, food storage, wash apparatus, and waste control. There was still that wide color band in the middle where you weren’t supposed to put anything, meant to allow for the temporary contractions that occurred throughout the day.

Once Cedric forgot and placed a chair for reading and meditation in that region. Sometime during the night it had been caught between closet and bed during a contraction and snapped into pieces. You were never completely safe with anything beyond the built-in essentials.

He was missing some of the mementoes from the shelf above his bed: his wife’s hairbrush, a toy his parents had given him when he was small. He would have to send a request for their return, assuming they could be located. So far nothing had ever been returned.

A bit of bright red cloth lying on the floor caught his attention. He picked it up, recognized it, and brought it to his face, wondering if it still held any of Pauline’s scent.

He’d come home from work one day and discovered that she was missing. There was no note, but all her things were gone. He knew she’d been unhappy since she’d lost her job, feeling unproductive and less functional. And they’d been denied a parenting license once again. But they’d been talking. She’d been better. It was hard to fathom she would just leave. Where could she even go?

It had been nearly a year and now her scarf had suddenly been returned. Was there some mistake made that had resulted in them keeping some of his property and returning some of hers? Where did they store people’s personal items anyway? According to contract such things were to be expected during extensive remodels, but the management wasn’t responsible. He would file more inquiries; he didn’t know what else to do. There was no procedure he knew of where he might conduct a manual search.

A small package slid out of the food dispenser and slid across the floor. He dutifully picked it up, unwrapped, and ate. He drank some water and used the bathroom. He balled up the wrapper and threw it in the corner. When he returned from work tomorrow it would be gone.

The room illumination went into muted colors, then transitioned into an underwater scene on all six wall, ceiling, and floor surfaces. At least his preference had been maintained. He had the option, theoretically, of staying up all night if he wished, although he’d never tested it, or desired to. He was always too tired after work for news, entertainment, or anything else. Perhaps that was why she left him. He held her scarf in his hand and said “ready.”

The happy bee came and stung him into sleep.

When the skimmer finally takes off it flies just a few stories above the city streets, darting between buildings for a little bit of fun, sometimes dipping low enough beneath the preventative medical mists so that Cedric can see the mass of populace below. Several individuals look up. One or two actually wave. Most, however, remain focused on the back of the individual ahead of them, arms at their sides, proceeding forward at a more or less steady, but slow pace.

Cedric enjoys this new freedom, but cannot help wondering if he is at all entitled. After all, many of the people he is passing over are just as deserving of this momentary escape, and many much more. He cannot see the faces of the ones who bother to look up, but he can well imagine their feelings.

Unable to watch this painfully slow parade anymore, he signals for the pilot to take them up. They pass through the glittering clouds and into the vast constellation of city lights, and he asks the pilot if they might rise even more.

When the Rail dropped Cedric off at the local platform he was amazed at how backed-up the lines were. Thousands of individuals filled every visible space in a slow creep toward their individual buildings. If it was like this all over the city . . . but that was a ridiculous thought. Things wouldn’t get that bad.

“Some sort of bad Rail accident on the east side,” the man in front of him was saying. “Hundreds seriously injured. I don’t imagine they’ll do much to save those poor people.”

“It could take us hours to get in,” a woman said. “Guess we’ll get to know our neighbors very well.” There were a few strained laughs in response.

Her suggestion sounded reasonable, and yet Cedric saw very few attempt to converse with those around them. He knew very few of his neighbors even though he had seen some of them hundreds of times. There were still public gathering places, but closer to worksites than to housing locations. Land was precious. Chances were you knew your co-workers far better than the people in your own building.

He saw a thousand of these faces every day—for him at least, such quantities made him want to turn away. He hadn’t visited the apartment of anyone else in all the years he’d lived in discount housing. Who had a place big enough for visitors?

He found himself exchanging glances with a woman a few feet away. She looked increasingly familiar. And this wasn’t the vague familiarity he’d grown accustomed to, that after seeing thousands of faces every day you came to understand the types and subtypes and almost every one you’d ever known fit into one or the other and every day you saw at least twenty or thirty others who looked very much the same.

He thought he must have seen her more than once before, and the way she kept glancing at him he thought she must have the same perception. Perhaps he had talked to her at some point.

He looked away to check the progress of the crowd. He wondered where they were splitting into separate lines. They had to be splitting into individual lines at some point before any positive progress could be made.

He turned back and for a moment he didn’t see her, and then suddenly she was there beside him, looking up at his face. She was short and very thin, very pale. She had the deeply set wrinkles above the nose which suggested someone who worried frequently.

“Can you see anything? I hear they made our living quarters drastically smaller—did you hear that? Maybe that’s why there’s such a slowdown. I hear there’s been a huge influx of workers the past few days. Did you hear that? That would mean they would have to reduce the apartment size, wouldn’t they?”

For some reason he seriously wanted to reassure her, but he knew very little. “I don’t see how they could be made much smaller,” he said. “I can barely turn around in my space as it is.”

Cedric was hoping for a smile from her but he didn’t get one. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe. The building gets to breathe, but I don’t.” The more she talked the closer she looked to breaking down.

He took a chance and put a hand on her shoulder. She immediately stiffened, frowning, twisting her head to look at that shoulder. She forced a smile and he could see her beginning to relax. “Thank you. My name is Jules.”

“I don’t see any major building changes, at least from the outside,” he replied. “They certainly don’t look any taller. All these extra people—well, the schedule is backed up. It makes sense.”

She started to nod, but then the crowd surged forward, and she struggled to keep her balance. Before Cedric could try to help her she was moving away. “My name’s Cedric!” he cried as she was swept away on the thick tide of bodies.

Back in his apartment he discovered that her anxiety had proved valid. He had half the space he had before, perhaps even less. His utilities were still smaller, still more compact. His bed had been reduced only slightly, but the only place to stand was either right inside the door or right in front of waste management. During contractions there would be no standing space at all. He would have to remember that if he didn’t want a broken leg.

He supposed the intention was to encourage most people to spend all their time in bed. The smaller ceiling displayed a diminutive feed screen and a single photo of his missing wife. He leaned over the edge of the bed and pulled out the few items of clothing there: only a couple of his jumpsuits remained, but there beside them were two of Pauline’s favorite dresses, shoes, and underwear. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen them.

A happy blue bird fluttered down to the floor and perched on her clothing. “You are anxious. Your stress levels are rising,” it said with a smile.

“What happened to my wife? Did she even leave on her own? I need to file a complaint.”

“You need,” pause, “Cedric, to relax. You have a full work day ahead of you.”

“Is there a human being I can talk to?”

“I’m sorry,” pause, “Cedric. But there are so many of you now. That kind of individual attention is impossible.” The blue bird grinned and grinned and grinned. “But you can see Mister Bee if that would help.”

Before Cedric could answer the happy bee came and stung him into sleep.

Wait! Wait! I’ve forgotten something, Cedric shouts to the skimmer pilot. The pilot, a real rock star type, looks around and stares at him but says nothing.

We have to go find Pauline! She would love this!

The skimmer drops swiftly out of the sky, the rooftops looming larger, the vast network of city lights coming into sharper view, then through the mists and just above the hordes of slowly moving bodies, pushing against the walls of buildings, climbing up on top of each other, reaching for whatever they can get.

The skimmer is dropping so fast he is afraid at first that it might actually crash into the crowd. But then it levels off and hovers just above their heads. Many of them look up this time, and Cedric leans over the side, desperately trying to find her. But it’s been over a year. Has he any chance at all?

Cedric’s office was the busiest it had been since he started working there. Hundreds of projected displays with four employees at each display monitored information whose ultimate significance no single one of them was privy to. All gathered into one large room. But at least there was a high ceiling and air flow, and looking across the room through all these transparent displays of multicolored data made an aesthetically pleasing effect. It was the most pleasant place Cedric had ever worked. But although he knew only a small percentage of these people he did know some, and some of those familiar faces were missing.

“Rotated out, I hear,” Bill said. Bill had been the one working next to Cedric when Cedric proposed to Pauline. “That actually means dis-employed, or terminated, although I hesitate to use that term. There are so many rumors, you know?”

“But they were among our most highly skilled people. They’d been here so long.”

“Well, there you go. Length of employment. There are so many of us now. Hallelujah for medical science!” Bill raised his arms in mock-ecstasy. “They just want to give more people a chance. There aren’t enough chances to go around.” He pointed at the display. “See that blue curved line? That means three million new people entered the city today. William told me before they showed him the door.”

“Where will they put them all?” Cedric felt cold. He wished the air units would pause now and then.

“Here, there, and everywhere. Did you know they were building a giant tower on the west end? It’s supposed to hold five million souls when it’s done, and it’ll be fully allocated before it’s even halfway constructed.”

They both sat and stared at the display. Cedric wondered what other bad news was right in front of him if he only knew how to see it. But he was sitting here, and he had a home to go to for rest. He nudged Bill. “We should have gone to Mars earlier, I think.”

Cedric dropped off the Rail and into a sea of heaving bodies. It was late in the day, but the sky was remarkably clear. So there was nothing to shade the crowd from the hot afternoon sun.

The sea of humanity moved according to laws and forces which were not readily apparent. In one section of the crowd a large number of people appeared to be swaying, as if in keeping with some internal music. In another heads were bopping up and down at a frenetic pace. Were they dancing, or exercising? In either case probably just trying to keep the blood circulating. Many of them would likely be here for hours.

That there had been significant changes to the residences was immediately obvious. Everything had been combined into one gigantic structure. Not as large as the one being built further west, at least according to Bill’s description, but still the largest building Cedric had ever seen. A rigid framework had been constructed on the outside to support something that gleamed brightly within. Cedric thought maybe glass or highly polished metal.

There was a tug on his arm. He looked down to see Jules, looking exhausted and distraught, leaning all her weight against him.

“I lost my job today. They sent me home. But they were building this, and I couldn’t get back in. I don’t even know if they’ll let me in, now that I don’t have a job. Or if they let me in, what might happen to me in there. I’ve been wandering around most of the day. Did you know there’s nowhere to go around here? Practically nothing but secure buildings and transport lanes. There’s hardly a place to even sit down.”

“Oh, Jules. I’m so sorry.”

“Can I come in with you? I won’t be any bother. Just anything, anything you could do.”

“Of course. Of course. Come inside with me. I’ll manage. You can stay until we can get something figured out.”

So they stood that way for hours, embracing, holding each other up. And during the long intervals when there appeared to be no forward movement at all they lay down together with the others, and eventually touched, and kissed, and promised more than they should have.

But eventually they got to the front, the two of them, sometime after dark. There was no multivator here, just a series of single doors, and inside each door just a small dark room, hardly big enough for one person.

At this point some people hesitated, and didn’t want to go inside. Eventually they would slump. Obviously they’d been stung. A smiling blue bird came to Cedric and told him to help carry the unconscious man in front of him, and with Jules’ help prop him up inside. The door closed. The man disappeared, and the door fell open again to reveal the small empty room.

Cedric looked up. Windows were glowing in the structure inside that rigid framework, and in most of those windows there was a face looking out.

When it came Cedric’s turn he held Jules tightly and tried to take her inside with him. But the blue birds appeared again, a swarm of them, and angrily blocked the way. “No! No!” shouted the bird in front. “For your own safety! One at a time!”

“She’s coming with me, just for now,” Cedric insisted, but the birds wouldn’t allow them to pass. Eventually Jules fell to the ground and two of the residents left the crowd and carried her away. Cedric stood and watched all this but did nothing. What else could he do?

Once inside the dark room, which was more of a booth, two halves of a capsule moved into place to enclose him. Then he was taken up, and up, and he could see through the exterior framework of the structure onto the world outside, that huge crowd, and the dark silhouettes of even more large buildings beyond. So at least he had a window again.

If he turned around in the tight space there was his waste facility, and his food dispenser, and a small screen scrolling information promising wonders to come. At his right elbow was a sleeve containing a jumpsuit in his size and preferred color. Something clamped his legs, and he felt the pressure leaving his feet. He felt as if he was floating in midair.

Near the ceiling of the capsule an image flickered into place. It was Pauline, but a picture he had never seen before. From the background it appeared to have been taken in their apartment. She looked alarmed. A vein stood out in her forehead, and a looming shadow had darkened half of her face.

Cedric shouted for the bees to come, and when they did it seemed they stung him near unto death.

Pauline snuggles against him and requests that the skimmer pilot take them higher. The pilot nods and the skimmer continues its upward trajectory. Cedric wonders what the limits might be. How far could they go and still remain safe? But perhaps that is an unnecessary question. When was the last time he had believed he could be safe in this world? He cannot remember.

“Ask him if he can take us to Mars,” Pauline suggests. Cedric thinks to say that that would be impossible, of course. But he doesn’t say anything.

Below them the city is still visible, and stretches to the horizon. The lights of it set fire to the night. He suspects they can be seen as far away, well, as far away as Mars.

“We could stay up here forever,” she says, and kisses him, and it occurs to him he cannot remember the last time he was kissed.

But no, he thinks, that simply isn’t true. Jules kissed him, and that had only been yesterday.

“Ask him,” Pauline says. “Ask him if we can stay up here forever.”

“But sweetheart,” he replies. “I think that’s actually what they want. We’re a lot less trouble for them if we never return.”

“And does that even matter to you anymore?”

He thinks about this and he thinks about this, and he can’t decide. Meanwhile the skimmer continues its upward path, to Mars or for wherever, or perhaps forever more.

About the Author

Steve Rasnic Tem is a past winner of the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and British Fantasy Awards. He has published over 430 short stories. Some of his best stories are collected in Figures Unseen: Selected Stories, published in April by Valancourt Books. The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack, a middle-grade novel about Halloween, will appear this Fall from Hex Publishers. A handbook on writing, Yours To Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Writing, written with his late wife Melanie, appeared from Apex Books last year. Also appearing last year was his science fiction horror novel Ubo (Solaris Books), a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.

Vault

D.A. Xiaolin Spires

Chenguang hikes up her sleeves before vaulting over the pile of fuzzy moss and greets Lukas with a nod. The chloropolyurethane fabric flaps in the slight breeze and the double suns beat down onto her arms.

Lukas fishes in his bag next to his tent for a bottle of sunsoak and releases the spray, running it generously over his solflex-covered arms, torso, and legs.

“Your head,” Chenguang says and he smiles, as if he hadn’t been doing this for years.

“Can’t reach,” he says, lying and Chenguang knows he just likes the attention. She grabs the spray and discharges that exhale of mist, covering his football-shaped clear helmet. She even sprays some on the clear hard arc under his bearded chin. She turns the mist onto herself, bringing down the spray over her exposed transpandex inner layer, the foam frothing up at her arms before becoming clear, encasing the invisible solflex pores of her fabric.

Lukas watches her as she sprays down. “That’s probably enough,” Lukas says. “You don’t want to drown yourself and run dry tomorrow’s supply.”

“Cheapskate.” But, Chenguang knows he’s right and slides it back in his sack. A coin catches the light. His comm. She grabs it. “You almost forgot this.”

“Like I would. And risk not being able to talk to you when we’re apart?”

“Very funny. Put it on.” He does, affixing it to his chest.

“I don’t know how you have it like that just dangling from your neck.” His voice comes through his piece and projects into her pendant.

“It feels nice. Plus I hear you loud and clear.” She stretches now, getting ready for the run. Her pendant chain slides about near her armpit. She holds it to her chest, reaffirming a silent promise to her sister.

“Won’t feel so nice getting snagged on a branch.”

Chenguang gestures out as she pulls up her leg. Near his tent, Lukas brings his head to his knees, arching his back and groaning. They wrap up the tent sheet around their legs, its fibers assimilating into their pants, attaching itself to their uniforms.

Chenguang kicks up her legs, feeling the lightness of the tent. She hitches the bag with the rest of her limited supplies onto her back. “Come on, old man. You see this wide expanse? Not a tree in sight.”

“Doesn’t mean there won’t be one.”

“I’m not too worried,” Chenguang utters before she starts off on a sprint. Lukas follows at her heels, his shoes sinking into the foamy terrain in rapid strides.

They jump, leap, roll, wind up, and do it again. Their legs traverse the terrain of Sugue, picking up speed like a vacuum picks up dust. Chenguang feels the wind in her hair and sprints past a tangle of mossy vines. Out of her peripheral vision, Chenguang sees Lukas next to her jumping over a mound and kicking off a verdant growth to spin into a roll as he keeps going. He’s showing off, telling her he can keep up even doing spins. She picks up the pace.

When the wall arises before them, she leaps up and attaches herself like a cat, her transpandex fingers reaching over the top. Her body sinks into the wall, as like everything else, its façade is full of moss. Her right leg kicks off and she reaches with her arm, throwing herself over the edge. Her hand slips.

Lukas is right behind her and his geneblazed thigh muscles have no trouble leaping up and perching on top. He offers her a hand. She grimaces, lets Lukas’ hand dangle, and picks herself up.

She feels the solflex suit, covered in spray, picking up the heat of the sun. She takes a second to catch her breath, as Lukas adjusts his helmet. The sun warms her and at the corner of her helmet, the hololight shows the power’s at half capacity, filling up notch by notch. She needs to be faster.

“Mine’s saying two-thirds full,” says Lukas, as if reading her mind.

“Yeah, mine too.” Chenguang’s not lying, she tells herself. If she squints, it kind of looks like the bar’s higher.

“You think we’ll meet quota before the suns set?”

Chenguang’s mouth beats her brain. “Yes, definitely. Or else you can have my thermal blanket.” She shuts her eyes, wishing she hadn’t promised that.

Over the wall, the hills fill their eyes. Beyond that is the industrial wasteland.

They only stop running and leaping after their feet, backs, and arms map out their jaunt through the hilly stretch.

Chenguang’s muscles ache, but she doesn’t want to admit it. She shakes out her legs, pulls back her neck. There’s a change going through her. She used to be able to run for days without pain, but then again, she used to be able to jump twice the height Lukas jumped earlier today at the wall. Today, she barely got past it.

“Hey, you okay?” Lukas looks genuinely concerned. Probably for himself. He knows he can’t do this alone.

“Yeah.” She stares at the industrial wasteland. The two suns are waning now, Solah closer to the horizon than Soloh. Lukas’ hazy shadow lengthens against the concrete at the hill land’s edge. His green eyes glint in the pink of the dual-sun evening light.

“You have the Eazslap?” she says.

Lukas undoes a pocket at his triceps and pulls out a few blue-glowing stickers, disengages them from each other. He selects two, hands them over to Chenguang.

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“It’s not. It’s just preventative. Besides, the sticker will provide some light, now the suns are retiring on us.”

“Barely,” says Lukas, under his breath.

Chenguang keeps her eyes bright and open as she slaps them on, even as the telltale searing pain reaches her knees. She’s not going to give in with any wince or reaction. The stickers release inflammation inhibitors; the burst of prickling tells her that much at least.

“What’s your charge say?” Chenguang asks. She feigns nonchalance, ignoring quivering knees.

Lukas’ pupils veer right and his hands twitch, moving phantom controls. Chenguang watches as he waits for the bar graph in his view to convert to a figure.

“93%. I figure we’ll be in the sun for another ten minutes. Not running and leaping, so it’s not going to climb exponentially.”

“It’ll probably get up to 95%.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty safe. I’ll be in the clear all night. How about yours?”

“89%,” Chenguang says. She grits her teeth. More like 72.

“That’s pretty good,” says Lukas. “Well, 95’s not 100 but it’s pretty close. I guess I won’t be needing your thermal blanket. I’ll do okay with my own.”

“You can have it. I promised you 100%.”

“Nah, it’ll just get too hot.” But Chenguang knows that’s not true. The blankets optimize for perfect temperature, no shivering and no sweating, no excess heat or cold. With two blankets, once the batts run out for the night for the first, the second one would take over. Without it, they’ll just have to do with the dire chill. Negative fifties or so degrees Celsius chill.

They bask out in the sun, drinking up its energy. Lukas just lays back, but Chenguang’s arms and legs scissor open and closed. Jumping jacks to accelerate absorption. Any movement prompts magnified absorption rates, but running, leaping, and gaining ground does it most. Something to do with your heart rate, acceleration, and even psychological thrill all interacting with the inner solflex machinery—amplified, too, by a generous coating of spray.

She huffs, scissoring her arms and legs, as she watches their shadows get longer and longer until they merged with the dusk that surrounds them.

Dinner goes by without a word. There’s really not much to say chewing on vaprabars. Can’t really comment on the taste because it’s just coagulated nutripowder. Chenguang grabs a second but Lukas’ hand comes down on her wrist. “There’s too much iron in it,” he says. “It might interact with Eazslaps.”

“Really?”

She gives him a look like she might bite his hand and he pulls back.

“Suit yourself,” he says, but she’s already tossed it towards her pack. It clatters against her helmet and tumbles to the ground. The bright sleek wrapping stands out against the dull, dark concrete, reflecting the artificial light emanating from the ray fabric, slung up against a ledge.

There is no natural light tonight. Clouds have completely enveloped this planet’s one moon. They rely on the ray fabric and its harsh white light.

Lukas whistles as he sets up his tent. Chenguang remembers the song as she starts to emancipate her tent fabric from her legs and spread it out before her.

“Clear, the White Waters,” she says.

“Where I was from, it was ‘Cool, the White Waters.’” Lukas says. He pulls off his coin comm and drops it into his upturned helmet.

“What it would be like to get in,” she says. She sits down under her half-pitched tent, waiting for it to inflate. She stretches out her legs. “To envelop in water.”

“You are enveloped in water. Made of it,” says Lukas. He’s un-creasing every bit of his tent with his transpandex-covered hands.

“You know what I mean,” she says. “I remember when we had water. Trickles to splash on your eyelids. Mist to clean off your skin, your elbows.”

“That was years ago and worlds away. Better to focus on the project at hand.” Lukas was systematic in his manual un-crinkling. Even if it would be done by the inflator anyway. His thoroughness reminds Chenguang of how he runs and leaps, methodical, making sure to cover the ground and air, checking for sharp edges with the heightened instinct of his body as they’re trained to, even in his lightning speed. She sees that concentration all day running through his aerodynamic mask, in that focused look in his eyes.

“You think the capballs will really generate enough power?”

“It’ll make a lot more than we can.”

“Enough to rent all the tech? The hydrogen harvesters, transporters, and hydro-generators for Claris?”

“It’ll do some. But, you might not want to hold your breath on that liquid immersion.”

“A bath. They called it a bath.”

“Yeah, well, the best you can do is dream about it. We’re about to enter wasteland tomorrow. And the specs say that’s as dry as bone.”

“Bone? But, that’s us. I thought we’re made of mostly water, you said.”

“Bone, desiccated, nothing but bone, bone. Pinch dry. Like everything else in this sector.”

Chenguang massages her knees, looks out into the wasteland, the geometric shapes of a past civilization, now all dried to stone.

Before she can duck into her tent, Lukas walks over, fishes in his bag, passes her a package with an attached flexstraw. A sippee. About a cup’s worth of water in a bag. “Won this years ago as a medal. Parkour championship. Been holding onto it, weighing me down.”

She looks at it, feels the weight. It’s liquid, all right.

And Lukas has been running with this strapped to him this whole time? She looks up at him, but he looks down, veiling his expression.

“I can’t take this—”

“Take it. It’s dragging me, slowing me down. And you need it for your knees.”

“No, I’m fine—”

“Then do me the favor of helping me get rid of this. I don’t have what it takes to appreciate it. To me it’s all the same. Whether liquid’s shot-fed through skin microhydro-generators from tiny spurts of hydrogen and oxygen or if I gulp it down in one go through my esophagus. Makes no difference.” He looks up and gives her a nod. Chenguang sees a hardness in Lukas’ eyes, a stubbornness that won’t back down.

“But you’ve never tried gulping it.”

“I have. I’ve won more than one medal. A pretty good sprinter and leaper before you. Please, as if they’d send anyone less than a champ to work with you.”

Chenguang stares at Lukas who’s doing squats, with a huge grin on his face, as if to prove his point. His eyes, though, belie something. Regret, possibly.

“Alright, thanks, Lukas. But, no more favors.”

“It’s not a—”

Chenguang ducks into her tent, swipes on her thermal blanket as the chill settles in. She pulls the squishy package of water onto her chest, and watches it rise and fall underneath the blanket.

Water, she thinks, as her eyes fall to a close. She’s never had so much at once, not since twenty years ago, when she was eight and her grandma splurged on a pack. She remembers sharing it with her little sister, Xinyao gobbling most of it up and leaving her with only a mouthful.

In her sleep, she dreams of broken legs. Broken legs mean no levers for that fulcrum hip of hers to move, little heat generated for the night, and no work for creds to pay for her relocation debt. She calls out in her sleep.

She dreams of her mother and father, selected to fight the fires so rampant in her homeworld, never to be seen again. She dreams of their voyage, sent off for a better home. And Xinyao, orbiting with the Civ, still caged in a temp cell, waiting for enough water on Claris to emerge from the hive.

She thrashes about, in her half-lucid state. Her mind fixates on the sheer ingenuity of that tech borrowed from the High Institute, funded through expending collected resources of their homeworld. Their last big hurrah for their best and brightest. The journey, the rocket, glorious things the High Institute owns. She’ll probably never see interstellar tech like that again. Only capballs. Efficient, good for short distances. Sensitive old scrap low tech for low-end space riffraff like her. Low tech she has high hopes for. She dreams of it zipping by her, beating her in speed and grace, though she would be off planet by then. Once the capballs make enough energy for hydrogen tech rental, as they all hope, the zapping for water will be a cinch.

With a start, she remembers there is water balanced in a package on her chest.

Her leg aches.

Water.

She dreams of tasting it. It tickles her tongue, dapples in specks of moist cohesion on her lips, washes down in a surge.

When she awakes, she starts, thinking the package has broken and all its treasures have leaked out and seeped into the parched concrete, but she feels no wetness. It is still there. Intact. It’s warm.

She’s cold.

She realizes she awakes not from the nightmare of disappearing H2O, slipping away from her, but the reality of chill. She didn’t collect enough sun.

She breathes out. Sees her breath, precious heat and humidity escaping. She puts on her helmet and she feels immediate warmth, the last dregs of power still caged in there. But she can’t rest her head back onto her pack, not without the helmet’s aerodynamic wedge getting in the way.

That leaves her chilly body. The pack, at least, is warm against her skin. She remembers that water is a good conductor and the packaging’s got heat tech. She rubs the pack around her body, shivering. She pushes it under the blanket, willing it to stay warm under the covers as she swipes the pack around her.

The rubbing generates more heat and her hands are methodical, making the pack move in strategic ways, as strategic as the two of them, Lukas and Chenguang, like a pair of lone coyotes, traversing the landscape. They are mapping out the best course, the one that gains the most sunshine and surface contact with least amount of risk, so when the capballs are dropped, the tech will interact with the atmosphere and topographical elements of the landscape and accelerate with so much collected sun energy, multiplied by the mechanics of their whizzing speed and ground synergies, they’ll be priceless, chock full of power, when harvested.

Lucky so far that they’ve patched the sharp edges. The capballs fly fast and accurate, but one touch at a point and their vulnerable surface gives, puncturing the irreplaceable tech borrowed by the Civ at great cost to them. Even if it was belittled low tech, a drop in the bucket compared to the wealth and potential of the High Institute. When it comes to the High Institute, they’d find a way to collect for any broken rented tech, no matter how minor. Should the capballs touch an edge, they’d snap. Like apocryphal soap bubbles popping, childhood dreams of water gone.

Unable to sleep, Chenguang stretches as her parkour and acceleration trainer has taught her. She hears her trainer’s voice now, as she reaches over to her ankles: “Prepare the muscles, sharpen the mind. As a human you have an edge—instinct and corporeal sense. You’ve got a gift that no bot could ever replicate—somatics—an organic impulse that lies deep behind the geneblazed muscles and uniform-enhanced speed. There are phenomena on planets we can’t anticipate to program into bots. You’ve got the skills, the training. Don’t waste it, whet it like a knife. Focus. Breathe. Keep your eye on the goal.”

Chenguang rests the package of water in her lap. Pulls in her right arm, braces it in the elbow of the other. Her triceps draw taut, making her suck in a breath. She never thought she’d be a cartographer, using her somatic experience to create the map for sensitive tech, but sometimes she can’t think of any other job that would make her feel so alive.

She wonders how the other recruits are doing. Ayesha and Jayesh, her two best friends. Are they doing okay in Tilna? They volunteered together, unlike her, who volunteered alone and got placed with a stranger: Lukas.

Lukas. She held onto her warm water bag. He’s fast. Maybe she should’ve been paired with someone slower. She was once as fast as him, maybe even faster, but something on this planet’s pressing on her. Changing her.

Her eyes fall on the swirling inflator at the top of the tent, a tiny disk generator that pitched air along the inner surface tent. Rotating, it looks like a planet. She imagines it swarming with tiny beads, all charging along on its surface. There are dozens of planets in this solar system, all to be filled with accelerating capballs. All to be gathering energy for rental tech for hydrogen capture and water production.

For Claris. Their only hope.

She pulls in her toes, flexes her calves, then peels off the Eazslaps on their knees. They no longer glow, their medicinal blaze exhausted. She sticks it against the side of the tent, too tired to deal with it now.

She removes her helmet and tries to think of the hearth, snap noodles, and other hot things from home. Her fingers run along her pendant, with her comm on one side and a picture of her little sister, Xinyao, on the other. She falls asleep again, as the heat of the water pack penetrates her transpandex and warms her abs.

Chenguang shivers as she wakes to the break of dawn and the breaking of Lukas’ voice as he attempts to sing her awake.

“Stop.” She can hear him both through the tent and through the comm. The scraggly high-pitched pentatonic tune falters and grinds to a halt.

The water pack has chilled and she looks at it through the light of the morning. She can’t drink this now. There needs to be the right time, an occasion. Basking on concrete in the middle of Sugue, at the brink of wasteland, is no way to celebrate with a cocktail this precious. H2O, she slips it in her pack, glides out of her tent in a swift slide, and wraps it all up.

Once they wrap, strap, fold, and tie, they’re ready to set off.

This time Lukas jumps out first, his bound energy as taut as coiled springs, and he rockets forth as if pumped on juice, an old homeworld expression when juice once existed.

She follows behind, the twin suns already opening up the world with light.

They bound across the abandoned industrial landscape like two fleas on a bear, except instead of fur, stained concrete meets their lattice neoprene soles.

For all the time this place has been abandoned, no plant life breaks through the hardened cement. There’s a dispossessed feeling in the air.

“What happened to these people?” Chenguang breathes out as she runs.

“You didn’t take a look while you were stopping by base before the new assignment?”

“Didn’t get a chance. Was checking up on my sister in the hive at Civ.” Chenguang slips over a railing and Lukas vaults over it and lands on two feet.

“Oh, the hive. Sobering place. So, this here was Tneshtown. When I checked back on base, this industrial park long ago was the production center of kenophrane, the textile coating that housed the smart fabrics made to filter toxic chemicals.”

“Kenophrane? Hasn’t that been outlawed?”

“Yes.” Lukas jumps ahead and puts his hand on what looks like a smokestack before swinging his legs over it

“Let me guess, making kenophrane also involves releasing toxins.” Chenguang merely skirts around the smokestack-like protrusion before jumping over a gap.

“Yup, one of those pollute to get rid of pollution deals.”

“Guess they lost out.”

“Kind of. Depends who you look at. Many did lose out. There were mass deaths of workers, at least according to the base briefing. Violent stuff. First you get a rash and a cough, pretty innocuous. But then your hands turn red and bloated and you can’t work. You slowly go blind and your lungs lose function. Those were the common ailments.” Chenguang rolls from a jump as she listens.

“Pretty awful.” She sees Lukas hopping from one cement circular vat to another. The vats look like places for drying some liquid.

“That’s not even the worst stuff.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Limb detachment and there’s more.” He pretend cuts his arm before using it to pivot over a gate. Then he runs and leaps across to the next building over.

“This is why I don’t like to read the briefings. It’s never ‘They all had perfect health and beautiful descendants and happiness.’” Chenguang follows suit but has to attach herself to the wall like a cat, barely clearing the ten-foot gap.

“If they did, we wouldn’t be here, staking out their derelict remains, mapping out their territory.”

“True.” Chenguang’s back met roof in an impeccable roll and she gets up without stopping. Her helmet cuts through the air as she leaps again.

“The unfortunate ones are the ones that didn’t survive long enough before the big move. But, they took all the able workers out of here once they created enough fabrics. They thought the fabrics they created would fix this place up. But, the fabrics couldn’t filter these toxins. They only did Grade C and the ones released here were some of the chemicals under Grade E.”

“Too bad. They did a pretty good job building these structures.” She swung her legs through a gap between a vat and what looked like a drying lattice.

“Yeah, they’re pretty sturdy.” Lukas tapped on the cement before doing a spin off a wall and onto another neighboring one.

“Good call. I think we need more spins.”

“Yeah, quadruple the solar intake.”

Chenguang pulls a 360 as she kicks off the ledge of a roof. She feels the rays coursing through the chloropolyurethane hitting the solflex absorbers and a ping goes off in her helmet alerting her of high intake rate achieved.

“I don’t know, Lukas. Some of this is pretty sharp. I think we’ll have to go through this again and note where the patches need to go.”

“Too bad we can’t just tear it down.”

“Historical planetary code. You know we’d be indicted by the High Institute in a hot second.”

“Yeah. But, I have to say. There’s something charming about this place.”

“You just like how the concrete feels against your legs when executing your spins.” Chenguang pulls another spin off, her spiral unwinding from her legs, when she missteps. She stumbles and catches herself right before a roof edge. She slips then.

Her heart jumps as Lukas grabs her arm.

It starts to slip, the transpandex of his fingers and her inner arm garment sliding past each other.

“Whoa.” Lukas pulls her up. His fingers slip again. Chenguang reaches with her other arm, pulling on the chloropolyurethane sleeve of his jacket, finally latching on to something with slight traction.

“Whoa is right.” Chenguang kicks up against the side of the building and pushes herself up. She looks down at the side as they catch their breath. That would’ve been a twenty-foot fall. Though a protrusion from the wall might have saved her a broken spine by breaking something else.

“You, uh, okay there?” Lukas does some jumping jacks, trying to maximize the solar intake.

“That was weird. I felt like something pushed me off my spin. You know spins aren’t so hard to control. Once you’re moving, you’ve got momentum.”

“I’d say. Some momentum. You nearly spun yourself out to a multiple-story drop.”

Chenguang sat on the side of a vat, her eyes shifting left to right and her fingers moving, calibrating the fabric to her nerves.

“It’s fine. They’re attached. But, just in case, I reconnected and connected them again.”

“You want me to check it? I mean, not to be forward, but I can usually feel the incongruities.” Lukas pauses in his jumping jacks, raises a brow.

“No, no. I think it’s fine. You know what it felt like?”

“Scary?”

Chenguang shakes her head. “Like someone pushed me.”

“There’s no one here but me, Chenguang. And you know I know enough not to pull any pranks.”

She gets up, looks over at the rising twin suns, and starts doing jumping jacks herself. After the chill of last night, she knows enough to try to osmose as much sunlight as possible.

They run again.

She’s feeling pretty good. She got in five vaults and three good rolls. She’s starting to forget about the strange feeling in the air, like being jerked off a trajectory when her foot slips at a jump. It doesn’t slip per se, it feels like it’s being pulled.

Helmet hits concrete as she bangs into a raised structure in the shape of a cone. Her head reverberates in the football-shaped piece of clear armor. She sidesteps and avoids falling over as she experiences a wave of nausea.

“Okay, that’s it. We’re stopping,” says Lukas. “Second time today.”

“No, no, I can go on. It was just a tug on my leg.”

“I think it’s time for a bar break.” Lukas sits down right where he is, onto the rooftop ground. No vat or raise-up to park his rear on in sight. The smokestack to his left comes up over his head and is simply too high, though he could probably scale it.

He looks like he’s contemplating doing so as he focuses his eyes in that way. Then, he tugs off his helmet, pulls out a bar, and chomps on it.

“Air’s not too bad now,” he says, in between bites. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Dry. The briefing said all those abandoned years finally cleaned it out. But, it took a long while and still the toxins might be stored in the moss.”

Chenguang ignores her own stomach growling and approaches the site where she felt the tug. She’s looking at a structure that has a concrete panel up top and one below and just a window to slide through. This is where she tripped, trying to vault between the two panels through the three-foot aperture.

She kicks it. “What do you suppose this is?”

“I don’t know. A place to hang something? Or maybe a shrine or something. They had a crude religion back then.”

She peers at the shadow of the structure the dual suns make, a dark slat on top and bottom, like an enlarged sandwich of the homeworld, and notes the fuzziness of the penumbra. There’s something off.

She accelerates to try to vault through the aperture again, but the space between the two concrete panels seems impenetrable and again she hits concrete.

“That’s weird.”

“You hurt yourself again?” Lukas approaches her.

“No, I’m okay. I was kind of expecting it. Come and check this out.”

Chenguang tries to pass her hand through the hole in the two slats but meets a resistance. Lukas tries and his hand slides right off.

“An encasement?” Chenguang asks Lukas, wide-eyed.

“No, their tech wasn’t advanced enough for that.” Chenguang places a note into her mapalog of the anomaly. “This’ll need more than a patch. If the capballs hit this—”

“You’re right. They’ll have to get rid of this. It’s altering the flow. But, they, not us. We’re not being paid for reconstructions, just mapping and patch-noting. Plus, we’ll let the higher-ups handle all the historical planetary code red tape.”

Chenguang removes her helmet and pushes against the space.

“What are you doing, Chenguang? Just set it aside, let them handle it later. You need to take your bar break and we should get going.” She sees Lukas standing up, holding his helmet akimbo in his right arm.

She feels a sucking feeling at her hands and legs and she’s pulled in. A pop at her back ends the vacuuming whoosh and all is dark.

“Lukas?”

Chenguang’s voice echoes in this expanse of dark.

A vortex of light opens to her right and she sees a warped head and legs emerge from a point in the dark. It’s Lukas. As he enters the space, the light bends, his figure elongated as he pulls himself through and it closes behind him. It’s dark again.

“Hey, Lukas.”

“Chenguang?” His voice is low and resounds against unseen walls. “Where is this place?”

“Did we just—enter the structure somehow?”

“I—I—don’t know.” Lukas’ voice uncharacteristically wavers before it quiets down in the darkness.

Chenguang remembers listening to her grandma talk about physical experiments of the past. Pools of salty water that deaden sound. Eternal blackness to sharpen the mind. A chamber, her grandma called it. One that dispossesses you of your senses. That was before the planet went up in flames, before she bid her grandma goodbye as she left her behind.

Deprived. She feels like that now. There’s an ache throbbing within her.

A light comes up in the corner and they walk towards it. It feels like an infinite space, paths that lead in every direction, but they move toward the light. They don’t run. Somehow it doesn’t feel right here. Chenguang moves her legs, almost robotically towards the rays.

The light becomes bigger, brighter and they see it now and when it becomes the length of a vaprabar, palm-size, she stops and Lukas halts behind her. They’re standing five feet away. Chenguang feels Lukas’ breath before her, steady, in and out, in and out.

What first appeared like the vaprabar is rectangular and long, a series of small cubes arranged next to each other in a line formation. Pulsing light.

Lukas’ loud breathing seems to skip a beat, and Chenguang feels, too, something caught in her throat as an array of sensations overtake her body.

Her head feels hot, her limbs cold, her spine feels a chill pass through it, and her legs feels a searing heat travel through them. Her pendant with her comm lifts up and yanks at her neck. It’s pulling towards the light. She grabs it, trying to push it down to her chest, which is thumping, cold, cold.

Lukas has stepped up towards it and he’s reaching—

“No,” cries Chenguang, but Lukas is faster than her words. He swings his helmet and captures that lit-up bar, no bigger than a packet of gum, like he’s playing catcher at meteoroid-pitch.

The sensations in her body fade, her temperature returning to normal and she’s tugging at her chloropolyurethane sleeves again. Doing anything to make her feel like she’s got control of her body.

She moves up to Lukas, but he reaches his hand into his helmet, towards the light.

“That’s not a good—” she starts to say, but a deafening high-pitched buzz fills her ears and then there’s a blast, and she expects to hear an explosion, but only hears that shrieking buzz as mushrooming light blinds.

The feeling comes a moment later, lifting up and being thrown up against something. Her body hurts, aches that fill not only her body, but also the inside of her mind. The air in her chest collapses at her intake of breath and she sees through her closed eyelids, the brightness that could only be two suns.

She forces herself to open her eyes.

Lukas is rolling back and forth on his back on the roof ground, holding up his knee to his chest. He’s wincing and moaning to himself.

Crap.

Chenguang wills herself up and tries to knock some sense into Lukas. He looks up at her and shuts his eyes, opens them again. She hefts him up, despite his muttering objections. Her knees shake, but she’s got him. He’s heavy, at least heavier than she imagined, his arms and legs dangle out of her hug. Luckily, cartologist runners are more streamlined than bulky, so at least he’s not too beefy. She pulls him away from his cracked helmet, moves him to the far ledge on the roof.

She makes sure he’s all right. He’s moaning but otherwise okay, she guesses, and goes back and peers at the helmet. There’s nothing in there now. Just cracked shards lining what was once the perimeter of the head hole.

She doesn’t dare move it.

Crap.

How fast can he run without its aerodynamic edge? How much sunlight can he collect without its specialized absorption tech? He’ll freeze at night. Without it, he definitely won’t generate enough power to activate the heating cells in his blanket.

She plucks the water patch out of her backpack, wondering if she should wait to give it to him as a warmer at night, like the way she used it last night, but makes up her mind and rips it open. Tepid water, heated from the ambient air of this land of dual suns, trickles down her hand. She rushes to lick it and it feels startling and moist on her tongue.

Water.

She’s careful as she brings it over to Lukas, lifts up his head, and forces him to drink it. His eyes fly open when he realizes what it is that he is gulping. She realizes she’s licking her lips and her throat’s moving up and down, a phantom desire to taste what he’s having, as she feeds the elixir of H2O to him. He looks bewildered and his eyelids shut again. After he has gulped down the bulk of it, his eyes open again.

Just a few drops left that Chenguang loathes to waste, so she rolls up the package, so light in her hands now, as a contrast to the luxurious heftiness of the water weight before, and stuffs the mostly-packaging into her pack. Maybe I’ll lick it clean when we pack up for the night.

Lukas’ eyes clear up from the haze and look at her as she eats her vaprabar. She’s trying to think. To put together the many strands of thought entangling within one another. What was that? Where did we go off to? What happened to that panel block of light bits? What to do with Lukas and his busted helmet? Water. I wish I could have tasted more of it.

The vaprabar shatters into dry bits in her mouth as she chomps.

“Chenguang, thanks,” she hears Lukas behind her saying. She stops staring into the sky with its twin suns and turns around.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know. My knee’s not right. But, I think it’ll be better.”

Chenguang fishes out Eazslaps and helps him put it on. “Your turn for these.”

“My helmet.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“Yeah. Broken.”

“What was that?”

“I thought I’d ask you. You’re the one who touched it.”

“I’m not sure. But I’ll admit, that was pretty dumb.”

“Easier to say now, in retrospect. We had no idea what it could do.”

“Thanks, nice of you to say. Though, I’m sorry.” He casts his eyes down and he does look penitent. He rubs the Eazslaps over his knee. Shiny blue peeks through his fingers to show they’re working. “Hey, you okay?”

“Better off than you,” she says, swallowing the last of her bar.

“So, I guess you’ll go off. Finish the cartography. I can poke around here. Look for some shelter for the night. Cuddle up next to some concrete.”

Chenguang shakes her head.

“I think we should go down.”

“Down?”

“Into the wasteland. Into the buildings. Not just graze the rooftop. There might be something we can use to get you warm. Maybe some energy source. An old battery or something.”

“There? There’s nothing left. People left long ago.”

“I don’t know. I just get this feeling. You know, I felt something pull at me. Twice. And that panel of connected cubes of light. Maybe that has energy.”

“Too dangerous. We’re not playing around with that.”

“I’m not suggesting that. I just mean. We won’t know until we look. There’s no way I can map out this planet alone in time, so if you’re out of commission, neither of us will get our cred, you’ll be frozen dead from the night chill, and they’ll send new cartographers here. We’ll be in debt, paying for the commute and lift back. Well, I’ll be and you, too, if you manage to stay alive. This is the best way. Plus, I dunno. I just get this feeling.”

Lukas shakes his head.

“Lukas, I saw an opening before.”

“What?”

“An opening into the buildings. They’re not all sealed off like the High Institute’s Historical Society claims. A space was overlooked. It’s way over the side of one of the buildings, about five buildings back. If we could just make our way over there—”

“You’re crazy. You sure the blast didn’t mess you up? Going back and entering this condemned space—”

Chenguang hooks her arm into his elbow and helps him up. He limps, then shakes out his knee as he leans on her. He moves again and he looks more stable.

“The swelling’s going down. You’re going to make it. Lucky, no blood, no concussion, right? Let’s go.”

He tries walking a few more steps. He squats and gets up.

“Alright, hope you can leap, I’m heading over to the other side. Leave all the stuff. It’ll just weigh you down. Latch onto my arm if you can’t make it and I’ll give you a catch.”

Chenguang vaults back, retracing their way back to the building before. She makes it, though she’s not as swift as she once was.

She leans over the ledge and holds out her arms. She hopes she won’t have to catch him. She’s not sure if she can handle the weight after all.

He runs, looks good, tight form, and jumps and vaults. It’s clean and he lands with a roll onto the roof. He’s still limping, a bit. He’s trying to hide it.

They manage to leap, roll, and dash over to five buildings back.

Chenguang looks down the alleyway between two buildings. The black hole is there. A window that hasn’t been sealed up. She feels drawn towards it, like a whisper in the back of her mind guiding her that way. When she sees it, something like congruity settles in her bones.

“We gotta go. You can make it. I know you can. At least the Eazslaps will dampen the pain enough, yeah?”

She leaps back and forth between the building she’s on and the other one that’s slightly taller, as she descends. Like a moth, fluttering from one surface to another, she hops, light and assured until she reaches the opening at the wall. She perches on the windowsill for a moment, feeling the cool air of inside on one side of her and the heat of the sun on the other.

“Come on,” she says into her comm and she hears Lukas respond.

She alights onto concrete a few feet below the window and follows the panel of light from the window onto the floor. Nothing. Again, she sees nothing. Before she can walk up and explore, Lukas falls into place behind her.

“Good, you made it. Now, let’s do a search.”

They spend about half an hour walking through the place, lighting up the room with activated ray fabric. It’s the most energy-efficient light they have, but it’s a harsh white glow. Mostly it’s just the rough white concrete that looks up at them.

Chenguang spends some of her pent-up stamina on staircases, jumping up flights at a time, passing through the rails.

She’s beginning to suspect this to be a great waste of time, and Lukas was right after all, when her cartographer’s scrutinizing gaze finds a deviation on the tiles of the bottommost level. A carved depression, hooked back like a handle.

She slides her hand and lifts.

A basement?

She talks into her comm. “Lukas, slide down the banister to the bottom floor and get over here. There’s a route down here.”

She slips through, lands with a cat crouch, and walks in this dark tunnel. She’s feeling out the hollowness and the perfect curves of the walls when Lukas joins her.

“Leg okay?”

“Yeah.”

They walk what seems like ages. The path keeps going and going and a prod at the back of her mind’s telling her that she messed up. Lukas is losing strength, she can hear it in his breaths, even if he tries to hide it. She’s wasting time. Precious time that she could be charting out the world or at least soaking up the outside heat for the night.

She prompts her helmet and she’s at 78%. Yesterday she would have groaned. Today she’s thinking, not bad, given the circumstances.

The route opens up to a clearing.

Rather than empty space, the ray fabric shows tangles of webbing. She manipulates the fabric, shining the light at some of the strands. They’re cords. Tangles and tangles of cords. She hasn’t seen old tech like this in ages.

She follows them to their mass clump at the center.

“An AI?” whispers Lukas.

A voice booms throughout the chamber. Chenguang shines the ray fabric around, but the harsh light only illuminates cords. No speakers, but perhaps they’re implanted in the walls and ceiling. The voice sounds like it’s coming from everywhere.

“Eybzzkey—”

Chenguang elbows Lukas and points at his comm. “Turn on the translator.”

She triggers her own on.

The voice changes, dark and silky. “You’ve come.”

“You were expecting me?” Chenguang gestures to herself, as she walks forward, as if compelled by some force. Lukas puts a hand on her shoulder and Chenguang startles in her path forward.

“The upgrades. They’re overdue.”

“Upgrades,” says Chenguang. “No, we’re explorers. Well, cartographers, to be exact. Mapping out this land.”

“No upgrade?”

“Sorry, but, no.”

“Drats.” This sounds vaguely funny to Chenguang and she hears Lukas smothering up a laugh with a cough.

“Who—who are you?” Chenguang asks.

“I’m the Tattle, the Tneshtown Center. I handle all the deliveries and packages. Last week, we produced, inspected, and delivered 72,000 glons of kenophrane alone, even in the midst of the disruptions from the war. I manage all the trade with the outer worlds and accommodate the schedule of the workers.”

“Workers,” says Chenguang. She looks around. The room is bare except for the tangles of cords and them.

Tattle’s voice lowers. “It seems awfully quiet. Too quiet for a war.”

“Tattle, there’s no one here except us. There was a war long ago.”

“Long ago?” The voice lilts, waiting for something.

“Not anymore. The city’s been abandoned.”

It’s silent. Only a light tapping sound at the center of the wire clump gives any indication of processing.

Tattle’s voice arises again. “Ah, well, that explains it.”

Is it Chenguang’s imagination, or does it sound like its voice fell?

“I only awake when there’s activity and a need. It’s to save on energy. I must have been idle for a long, long time.”

Lukas whispers in Chenguang’s ear. “I’m going to scan the wires.”

Chenguang speaks up, keeping one eye on Lukas who’s running his fingers about half a foot above a wire to her left. “Listen, Tattle, we’ll report your existence to our contractors, and they might be able to get you out of here. Or otherwise reprogram you for another use.” More like resell you to a less developed planet. “There’s nothing left for you here.”

“No. I must stay here. I know this place will repopulate again. It has so much to offer. The jungle, the soil, and the resources. All the kenophrane.”

“Kenophrane was added to the RSL—”

“Restricted Substances List,” pipes up Lukas.

“—for years now.”

Tattle’s voice rises. “I’ll have to reorganize some of my programs, prioritize probing new resources—”

“Tattle, hey, Tattle. Listen. Before you do all that. There’s something we need to ask you. There’s a strange pull that I’ve been feeling. Messing with my movements. Part of it has led me here.”

“A pull?”

“Well, there’s a kind of double panel structure up on the roof a few buildings down and when I try to pass through it, it’s blocked. But, somehow, it led us to a dark space with a palm-sized slat of light made up of individual cubes.”

“Did you touch it?”

“Yes and—”

“It exploded.” Tattle’s voice speaks definitively.

Lukas locks eyes with Chenguang and nods.

“Yes, Tattle, we reached out to it and it exploded.”

“Landmines.”

Chenguang was thumbing her pendant absently, but stops.

“What?”

“Planted by workers bought off by the Kthal. I got rid of most of them. Scoured the buildings inch to inch, but some of them are deep in the sub-layer, luring people in.”

“I don’t understand. They’re mines?”

“Yes, weaponized organics. I know there are still quite a few around. I tried my best. I really tried my best. I—”

“Hey, Tattle, I’m sure you did. We’ll need to get rid of them. They can’t be here.”

“I wish I could help you. But, when the organics were dead, they were easy to discard. You just needed to wrap them in some mellalophane. Now, they’re awake and their properties must be all different.”

Lukas stops what he’s doing, his hand midair and speaks up. “Awake? Organics. You mean, they’re alive? These landmines are alive?”

“If enough time has elapsed as you say, then, yes, they’re alive.”

Lukas and I exchange a glance. Even in the diminishing light of ray fabric, I can read his expression. Anxiety at the crinkles of his eyes, his mouth upturned.

Triple crap.

“Are they conscious?”

“Conscious?”

“Are they intelligent creatures?”

“I don’t know. I only knew them when they were dead. They are easy to find and harvest. An easy tool for the Kthal. But, I know the species has a long dormancy. Not dormancy, death really, as they have no vital signs. Vital signs of their own kind, that is. They experience a growth process thereafter. They start out simply a physical entity with no life to them, but the life sprouts later. The detonation still works while they are without life. It’s called their morterm period. The explosives are the best then, clean and with wide range. My directory tells me that when they are awake, their explosives are less predictable and less effective. Perhaps a small burst.”

“Seems counterproductive to life. To be able to explode like that.”

“It’s a protective strategy, you know. To protect the nest. In case someone comes, they’ll detonate, but each detonation is unique and doesn’t affect other individual cubes. Their death period allows conservation. Only when resources are good and predators few do they come alive. Altogether they form one big colony. They are harvested in layers and planted as mines.”

“Do they communicate?”

“Not when they’re dead.”

“When they’re alive. What do they look like?”

“Light. They light up, an indication of life. Isn’t that like many other organisms?”

“Not all,” Chenguang says, looking at Lukas’ Eazslaps on his knees. Their light is fading.

“We gotta go,” says Lukas. He motions at the ray fabric. Chenguang was so focused she didn’t notice how quickly the light had dimmed there, too.

“Just, tell me if these landmines, if they’re intelligent. If they communicate. If they do, then this isn’t an abandoned area. It’ll be rezoned and re-designated.”

“I wish I could tell you. I haven’t come across one. Maybe I will soon, though, since I’m awake now. Come back and visit me, okay? It’s too quiet in here. And if you don’t, I’ll sleep again, and who knows when I’ll awake—”

Tattle is still talking as they rush through the tunnel, the light fading quick. They need to rush back and retrieve their tents and packs before it’s pitch black.

Chenguang’s mind races as fast as her legs. They cannot, in good faith, finish their job as cartographers if there are living beings on this planet.

As she sprints down the tunnel, she runs through her sensations from before. The pulling, the urge to get closer. Perhaps pheromones or some other release of the organics.

She’s thinking of the sensations when she trips.

No, not again.

Lukas is there with her. Snagged in the sub-layer. They approach the light that pulses at them. The fragment of the slab that is the landmine.

“As long as we don’t touch it, we’re okay, I think. Just don’t go near it,” says Lukas. But, he’s disobeying his own advice, drawing closer and closer. So does Chenguang. Her pendant around her neck flies up a bit, wavers, and falls and flies up. In tune to the pulsing.

She can’t help herself, she approaches. Closer. She feels a swarm of feelings in her body. She is warm-blooded, yes, she is warm-blooded, but her toes feel like ice, her chest like fire, her eyes like a subtle warmth, her hands the gentle coolness of a spring day in her homeworld. She wiggles her fingers, her toes—they feel like different worlds, disconnected.

A thought dawns on her.

She breaks through the visceral impact of the feeling and turns to Lukas, who is spellbound, probably feeling all the same sensations.

“You think, they’re communicating with us?”

“The light pulses? They’re not changing—just rhythmic on and off.”

“No, the temperatures. You feel that?”

He draws up next to her. His misty breath of icy coolness tells her his response.

“I’m hot, cold, warm, everything, in all different places.”

Chenguang closes her eyes, focuses on the different feelings permeating in her body.

She imagines stalls, different stalls all over. They expand all over the planet. Stalls of different temperatures and the miniscule light cubes that bob along from one stall to the next. She sees mini-ecosystems in each stall. Some filled with other organic life, cohabiting, symbiotic forms of activity.

She opens her eyes. She’s still in this sub-layer space. She doesn’t touch but pulls her hand close to the cubes in front of her, emanating light. Each cube shoots out a different temperature, acutely different. Palpable.

“Lukas, close your eyes and focus on your body, on all the different temperatures.”

Chenguang shivers, the chill in her spine deep, as she closes her warm eyes again.

She sees the image again, different stalls, life, organisms that look like trees, foliage and moving beads that slither on the ground. Tiny wispy helicopters floating in the air. In each stall are these cubes, like the ones before her in this sub-layer, some clumped together like clusters, emanating light and a particular heat signature.

She opens her eyes only to see Lukas open his, his pupils contract in the growing light of the landmine. He strokes his beard with a hand, as he drops his jaw. “I can’t believe it. They’re communicating with us. By heat—and cold.”

“Do you think they’re sending us some image of the past? Of this planet?”

“No, no. The files never showed the planet looking anything like what I just saw. Stalls. Cubicles you might call them.”

“Yes, with different flora and maybe fauna, if you could call them that. Some organisms, anyway.”

Chenguang feels an excruciating heat in her nose. Is it one of assent? In her cold gut she feels something like a ‘yes,’ like something agreeing with her. The feeling grows.

“Not the past,” she whispers. “The future.”

Lukas stares at her, with his strangely contracted pupils. “Yes, yes, you’re right. It’s their vision of their future.”

“They’re trying to tell us they have plans for this place. I think. Maybe.”

“You might be right.”

The impression of her body being isolated into various cells and splashed with varying amounts of heat and lack thereof starts to dissipate. The light of that bar of connected small cubes grows dimmer and once out of that trance of multi-thermal arrest, Chenguang realizes that their fabric ray light has died out completely. Without moving, they’re pulled away from that sub-layer space and return to their dark world in that abandoned building.

No, not abandoned, simply derelict.

They run, leap out of the underground tunnel, up into the basement, feeling their way through. Their leaps, vaults, and tumbles are more cautioned in the dead of the dark and they make gradual progress towards the roof.

They are lucky the moon is out, not trapped behind clouds like the other night. The return of light graces them with their characteristic fearlessness to pick up speed as they spring and leap back to their tents.

Usually bound by a fierce love for personal space, tonight Chenguang invites Lukas into her own tent. He refuses, staying in his tent until she’s sick of hearing his teeth chatter through the comms and utters, “If you die of cold, I will string you up with the wires of the AI. And you will spend eternity with chatty Tattle.”

“Who cares? I’ll be dead,” he says. But, his footsteps say otherwise and she hears the sound of the breach of the seal, as he fusses with the tent opening.

At night, they lay side by side, neither of them cold, not until, at least, the collected energy powering the thermal blanket drains and the chill seeps in. By then, it is near enough to dawn anyway. They’ll survive yet another night. She grabs his hand, not out of romance, but a sense of camaraderie, or a feeling of being alive, or of feeling warm. She doesn’t really know.

He squeezes the hand back. Props up on an elbow and looks her in the eye, heat emanating from his skin. “Last partner died of thirst. Accident, microhydro-gens short-circuited after a bad tumble. That sippee pack was to remind me of the dangers of these worlds.”

She nods. Not sure what to say. Sorry doesn’t really cut it. This is their life, stark and cold.

“Light on our feet, but we all carry our burdens,” she says, holding up the picture of her sister. “I do it for her.”

That seems to satisfy him. He lays back down, closing his eyes.

She can feel the coolness of the pendant on her chest through her transpandex and imagines her sister’s smiling face. There would be no energy harvest here. This place would be rezoned.

That means no cred deposit for the mapping. No moving out of the hive for her sister and the rest of her holed-up hermits. But, her sister is a softie. She would like the story, one of a species discovered.

With her free hand, Chenguang paws at her pendant, feeling its coolness in her fingertips.

One thing strikes her. She reviews those sensations from the sub-layer. In her mind, when she felt the discrete areas of different levels of hot and cold take over her body, when she could imagine the entity, that strip of connected cubes pulsing at her, making her envision the temporally-distant space, she noticed something.

That imagined future, that vision. It wasn’t simply stalls of different levels of heat. There was something else there. She couldn’t pinpoint it at the time because it had been too long, it became too foreign. But, she knows it now, lying in the tent in the escaping heat, the chill breaking all logical resolve and allowing her mind to wander.

It wasn’t just temperature, there was a distinct feeling of heaviness. Of a heaviness in the air that could only be moisture. Humidity.

The mines, those beings—they didn’t simply envision a future with various temperatures. They envisioned one with various climates. With dew, fog, steam.

It was a feeling that had pervaded her nose, tickled her esophagus as it went down with the air, as her body went through the shock of manifold degrees.

Water.

And she felt, deep in her heart, that it would be real. In her cold-induced haze of half-sleep, clutching onto a warm, rough hand, she knew this would be a place that exists. And not far off, but in the near future. The feeling she only now could disentangle, she realizes, is a process that had catalyzed and was coming to life. A part of the communication, a pit feeling, that she could not fully decipher until now.

And not only would this vision become real, but it would become a place that her holed-up people could trade with for the ever-scarce water. How the mine beings will make this water-filled ecosystem, she does not know, but there is much she does not know about the terraforming abilities of these creatures. Only that they can explode and creep into atmospheric sub-layers.

But, she feels that if she closes her eyes and focuses on the heat in her body, and drifts off mentally so reason no longer prevails, she can imagine herself and her sister, in a time she cannot place, sharing a warm thirst-quenching drink of liquid—tea, she realizes, a warm, dewy mug of tea with steam that rises and rises into the atmosphere—as she licks her lips and falls asleep.

About the Author

D.A. Xiaolin Spires stares at skies and wonders what there is to eat out there in the cosmos. Spires aspires to be a 3-D printer/replicator gourmand, but will happily concede with producing and consuming quixotic fiction and poetry. Trips to East and Southeast Asia continue to influence her writing and leave her craving durian, fermented foods and copious amounts of wonder that fuel her body, spirit and imagination.

Spires lives in oscillation between Asia and the US, and currently resides in Hawai’i. You can find her sniffing tropical fruit at farmer’s markets, scouring lawns and beaches for fallen plumeria blossoms and boarding research vessels. Her work appears or is forthcoming in various publications such as Analog, Grievous Angel, Retro Future, LONTAR, Gathering Storm Magazine and Story Seed Vault; as well as anthologies of the strange and delightful, such as Sharp & Sugar Tooth, Broad Knowledge and Ride the Star Wind. She can be found on her website or on Twitter: @spireswriter.

The Cosmonaut’s Caretaker

Dora Klindžić

Landing planetside used to be a good feeling. Standing on the other side of the airlock door and knowing that when they open, I would be faced with the bustling life of a busy port; that comforting mélange of voices and scents, the backdrop of civilization, of aliveness, that usually goes unnoticed by anyone who hasn’t just returned from deployment in the most deafeningly silent, most paralyzingly still, most lifeless trenches of the System. I remember wanting to absorb every noise, every murmur exchanged between strangers, every airborne aroma of meals prepared for someone who isn’t me, every shop window dressed with furnishings for a home that isn’t mine, and I would pretend for a moment that there was no war and no rifle strapped to my back and that I, too, lived in a home one didn’t have to float through, weightless.

But that was when I was young. Landings have since lost all appeal, and all meaningful purpose as well. Annushka was taken by an antibiotic-resistant bug that found its way into the water supply in Nizhny Novgorod, the same one that took our boy Vitaly. I was commanding a strike on the ice mines of Proteus when it happened. The mission prohibited any radio transmission. I was not even informed of it, and when I was, it was already too late. My daughter did get out of the Earth slums, at least. Galina. I keep track of her sometimes, through channels afforded to me by my rank. She is acting director at a cargo shipping company out of Phobos. Everything clean. Everything by the book. She makes me proud. Even if she will not see her Papa, for he wasn’t there to embrace his wife and son as they left this world.

Landings have lost all appeal. Even the meager pull of gravity on this rock has become enough to remind my body of how old and broken it is.

The airlock hisses and the cargo door begins to open outwards. We watch in silence as sky light slashes through the gloom of Lastochka’s cargo bay. Cold, fresh air floods through the opening, carrying snowflakes into the ship’s stale insides. I immediately feel the frost catch onto my mustache. I decide to button my coat collar after all, watching the white-topped expanse of Callisto coming into view.

“A u pizdu materinu,” Lazar groans, sinking his neck into the furs wrapped around his broad shoulders, “it’s freezing.”

I give him a stern look.

“Pardon me, Komandir, sir.”

“Chin up, oğlan,” Oksana teases, seemingly impervious to the cold, “there’s a skewer of meat somewhere in this outpost with your name on it. My treat.”

Lazar curls his lip. “There are only so many spaceport kebabs a man can look forward to. I grow weary of it.”

“Suit yourself, then. Komandir,” she calls, “what’s the rendezvous today?”

“Two hours, then head back to the Lastochka.” I fidget with the ordains pinned onto the left breast of my coat. “If I spend any longer than that wasting my breath on this bureaucratic nonsense, assume I am dead. You are dismissed.”

“Hear that, Lazar?” Oksana asks, already descending the ramp. “I’m about to become your Commanding Officer.”

He waves her off with a scoff and lingers, eyeing me with hesitation. “Komandir Rubashkin. Do you need help?”

I shift the weight between my leg and my cane, suddenly painfully aware of my ailment. “No. Be dismissed.”

He gives me a quick salute and then goes after Oksana in large and effortless low-g bounds. I watch them descend among the dock workers and outpost dwellers, the Pan-Slavic Union red star embroidered on their light brown overcoats attracting conspicuous glances even more so than the rifles on their backs.

The last two people I have left. Possibly the last two people I will ever command. Fine Cosmonauts, stuck with me, stuck on the Lastochka.

I sigh and commence my one-legged descent with as much dignity as I can muster.

“Commander Arkady Rubashkin?” the officer behind the desk reads from the screen, tripping over every syllable with signature American offhandedness, the Western self-importance that would have you believe you are to apologize for the inconvenience of your name being foreign rather than to correct them.

I merely give a twitch of the mustache. “At your service.”

“Yeah, you’re late,” he replies, chewing a mouthful of gum quite obnoxiously, “we were expecting you planetside two days ago.”

“I’m here now, so no point in wasting time any further.” The cane supporting my weight wobbles slightly, but I forbid myself to ask for a chair.

The younger clerk, a clean-shaved boy with the European ring of stars sewn into the shoulder of his uniform, rises suddenly and salutes me. “Rubashkin, sir! Commander! I’m sorry, I didn’t place you until I saw the ordains.”

I give him a wary nod.

“This man’s a war hero, Jim,” he explains to the American.

“Oh yeah?” Jim looks back at my file on his tablet, now scrolling with greater interest.

“Yeah. The Battle of Vesta, right?” he continues with enthusiasm. “Defused a hostage situation after the Chinese had captured the EU’s scientific outpost. Fantastic crisis response team. I’m truly an admirer, sir.”

Jim shakes his head. “There’s nothing about that here.”

The young man is perplexed. “Are you sure? He’s got the medal.”

“Nothing about Vesta.”

“That was not me,” I respond drily. “You’re thinking of Komandir Rychenkov.”

“See? This guy’s had a few stints in the Jovian moons back in the territorial dispute days. Lost a leg on Titan, honorably discharged.” Jim shows him the display and they both study it. “Refused a replacement limb, now he’s retired from combat and commanding a border patrol vessel.”

I wait patiently while they speak of me as if I’m not their superior in both age and rank.

“Ooof. Front lines to border police, that’s got to be a tough leap.”

I clear my throat. “Gentlemen, must I be so blunt as to remind you that I’m standing right here?”

The American appears annoyed at my remark. “Right,” he takes his feet off the table. “Your resupply request has been cleared, but the reason you were called in person is because you’ve got an extra piece of cargo to load.”

Extra cargo? “Might you elaborate?”

He gestures at me to follow and makes his way across the loading bay at a pace entirely inconsiderate for my disability, meandering between half-assembled space vessels and the engineers crawling over them like ants. Finally, he stops by a vertical container cast in polished gunmetal, lightly dented and scratched, clearly shipped from across the System.

I watch my distorted reflection in it as he pries the cover loose with a crowbar. The austere look on my face is in no way softened by the streak of gray that’s emerged at the fore of my full head of hair and peppered my carefully trimmed sideburns with white.

The crate door swings open with a whine, and in place of my reflection, I am faced with the dormant mechanical body of a robot, strapped into the cushioned interior as if into a coffin.

“What is this?” I clench my jaw. “This is some kind of mistake.”

“Nope, that’s Space Administration protocol,” the American tosses the crowbar aside. “You’ve been assigned an Artificial Caretaker Unit.”

“Send it back. I do not require it.”

“I said it’s protocol. War veterans in high-risk groups get an ArCa assigned to them for rehabilitation. It’s just temporary.”

I examine the robot with open distaste. Its segmented body is distinctly feminine, as if to insult human nature itself.

“I do not require it,” I growl. “I’m not inviting an autonomous AI aboard my ship. It’s madness. I’ll have none of your Western nonsense.”

“Listen, pal.” The last of the American’s patience leaves him. “We’re not asking you. This is how we do things. If the PSU doesn’t like it, you should have thought about that before you signed the Treaty.”

I limp forward until I am looking down at him, a gesture that would have made men tremble in their boots decades ago. He stands his ground. “I will not be made to seal my crew in a tin can with a rogue machine.”

“You will, because it’s the law.” His spit sprays my face. “You got any laws back in whichever ass-crack of the Earth you crawled out of? We can send you there to check, after you’ve been court-martialed so hard you’ll never fly three feet off the ground again.”

I feel a red fury in the pit of my stomach. “You uncultured, undisciplined ingrate—”

“Go on, old man,” he nods nonchalantly at my hand, which had reached inside my coat for the holster of the gun, “if you like gravity so much. Go on.”

I slowly drop my hand back to my side.

“Alright then.” He pulls up his tablet. “This ArCa unit is government property, so don’t even think about accidentally blowing her out of the airlock somewhere. Any and all malfunctions will be repaired at your expense. What model are you flying? That old Russian K27-class? There might be some compatibility issues with the ArCa suite. We will have to reroute power straight from the mains. Have you considered upgrading? The ISC has some great offers you could consider even with your military pension—”

“The Lastochka stays,” I cut him off, surprising even myself with the tenacity.

“Yeesh. Fine. Your tin can stays. Sign the document here, and ArCa’s all yours. Always a pleasure doing business with the PSU.”

The Pan-Slavic Union signed the Lunar Treaty with the International Space Coalition and Sol Alliance in March 2174. The Treaty signified PSU’s surrender as an economic power in the newly colonized System, forfeiting the right to new territorial conquest in favor of Indo-Chinese Sol Alliance and delegating the command over its military ranks to Euro-American ISC. It was a time of great tragedy for the once-leading PSU. Such a desperate move was borne out of sheer survival, for it was only with the joint efforts of the Coalition and the Alliance that we managed to clean our despicable mess without unspeakable loss of life.

It all began with the AI. The PSU had vastly different ideas about building artificial life than the rigorous ISC, who’d spent nearly a century engaged in scholarly debates about the proper operational parameters to ensure an AI would never emerge as malevolent. They would not build an autonomous superintelligence until they were certain they could keep their hand on the off switch. The Union instead thought that building an uninterruptible agent, a machine with no manual kill switch, was a tactical advantage. A computer was built on a top secret outpost on a Saturn’s moon and fed all the military intelligence the PSU had collected over the past century. It was taught how to wage war and equipped with the means of producing its own arsenal of unmanned probes and drones.

And then it was told to sleep, and not to wake unless it detected the International Space Coalition or the Sol Alliance have deployed a nuclear weapon anywhere on Pan-Slavic Union territory. Then it was to unleash Hell, turning Sol into little more than a disk of pulverized rock.

It was a good deterrent for the first decade or so. The moment the ISC and SA were notified of the machine’s existence, they steered clear of our colonies. We’d pulled the pin and kept the grenade in our hand, just so they wouldn’t poke us. The thing was sure to blow sooner or later.

When it did, no one was ready.

The machine picked up a false positive. It thought it detected a nuclear strike on Triton, which would later be ascribed to a misinterpretation of anomalous geological activity, which produced detectable radioactive elements on the moon’s surface. The machine completely eradicated an ISC colony on Io. Loss of life was total. PSU scrambled to undo the damage, but the machine could not be convinced it was operating on false premises. In that respect, it was working perfectly. In order to preserve itself and its operating parameters, it murdered all the scientists who attempted to disable it. Then it decided that the PSU itself was a threat, and if it aimed to fulfill its programmed goals, it would have to get PSU out of the way as well. Ceres, our first outpost in the Belt, paid the ultimate price. The debris had scattered so far and wide that there was absolutely nothing left to find in the orbit where astrometric calculations told us Ceres should be.

And here I am now, on the main deck of my own ship, face to face with a robotic AI unit.

She’s asleep in her metal coffin, strapped well. The tarp which was wrapped around the crate when the ISC workers wheeled her in now floats weightlessly, fluttering in the ventilation draft. The curved horizon of pockmarked Callisto peers at us through the window.

“This is no good,” Lazar remarks. “An AI on board is bad luck. We need to get rid of her somehow.”

“We can’t.” Oksana is hovering by the window, blowing into a piping hot thermos of coffee. Her long black locks snake in all directions around her sharp-featured face. “She’s logging everything that happens to her, even during standby.”

Lazar crosses his muscular arms and grumbles something that contained “jebena espionaža.” His thick, curly beard glistens with trapped snowflakes. The heating systems still haven’t had time to warm the crisp Callisto air.

The robot produces a pleasant chime that makes us all flinch. All three of us have our hands on the holsters of our pistols when her eyelids snap open and the lenses of her doll-like eyes begin to refocus.

“Good morning, crew of K27-Lastochka.” Her Russian is soft-spoken and perfect. “I am an International Space Coalition Model 67-b Artificial Caretaker Unit, and I’m now fully charged and operational.” Her face in motion is perfectly gentle, her voice nurturing. She begins to unclasp the straps on her body. “I’ve finished setup of my proprietary software on your ship’s central mainframe. I would recommend an upgrade of your data processing capacity to minimize my load on your ship’s essential systems.” She emerges from her casket with the grace of a ballerina. Her body is branded with stars and stripes and “ArCa 67-b” insignia.

“Oh, there is nothing essential you are leeching off there, kız,” Oksana says bitterly, “merely life support. Nav systems. Engines.”

The robot examines her curiously, cocks her head like a little bird, then begins to recite: “Navigational Systems Technician Oksana Çetinkaya, Ankara-born, ex-Volchitsa of Pan-Slavic Union Special Forces, doctor of differential geometry and applied mathematics, may I confirm identification?”

Oksana is taken aback mid-sip, bushy eyebrows arched. “Well,” she swallows her beverage, “it is written right on my uniform.”

ArCa twirls towards Lazar. “Combat Systems Engineer Lazar Kostadinović, Belgrade-born, former heavy artillery operative for the Pan-Slavic Army in the Jovian Conflict, advanced degree holder in weapons engineering and spacecraft system development.”

Lazar goes off. “Šta? This socket-fucker can see our entire records?”

“I have a direct connection to the ISC online databases,” ArCa replies in a calm, defusing tone. “Be assured that all the information I possess will be kept at highest discretion. It would also be preferable for my integration with the crew if you did not use derogatory terms to refer to this unit. May I confirm your identity now?”

Lazar throws his hands up with exasperation and propels himself down the hallway, his muttered curses trailing behind him like vile breadcrumbs.

ArCa faces me and gives me a detailed once-over, taking special note of the leg of my jumpsuit tied into a knot below my right knee.

“Komandir Arkady Rubashkin.” Her silicone face mimics a subtle smile. “Moscow-born, retired Podpolkovnik of the Third Jovian Battalion, trained in combat fitness and military strategy at Venus Golubkina Camp, ordained for valor at the Battle of Titan by the Marshal of the Pan-Slavic Army in 2171.”

I stare at her in silence for a prolonged moment. “Are you done?”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow. Protocol requires confirmation of identity from all crew members.”

“Are you done with this parlor trick?” My voice comes out angrier than I anticipated. “Is this what the Coalition has been wasting its time on? A machine to read my dossier back at me? What other useless thing can you do? Recite the digits of pi? Tell the time? I’m asking you, are you done boasting or are you expecting applause?”

I realize that I have started to shout, and I pretend not to see the concern in Oksana’s eyes.

ArCa is unperturbed. “Negative, Komandir. That is not what I’m here to do. I am here to monitor and aid with your rehabilitation from the injury you’ve recently sustained in combat. As your caretaker, I’m the primary evaluator of your fitness for command.”

“This is an insult,” I snap. “I lost a leg, not half a brain.”

“Psychological distress in this context is not only expected, but entirely normal. A telling signal in your case is your disinclination for an artificial replacement limb.”

My hand grips the doorway handhold unnecessarily loudly and firmly. “I see. So this is what it’s all about.” I restrain my voice with great effort. “Voentekhnik Çetinkaya, set us on patrol course. I will have no more time-wasting.” I pull myself through the doorway.

“You needn’t speak to me before you’re ready, Komandir Rubashkin,” the robot raises its voice after me. “I’ll not force you.”

We went two entire weeks without disembarking from the Lastochka. The border was quiet, no ambitious smugglers or desperate migrants. A few civilian vessels strayed too close to the line but were turned away promptly after a warning.

The robot and I became like the Sun and the Moon. When she would enter a room, I’d be disappearing through the door. I would find her observing me from a distance and I’d conceal myself around corners, behind walls. I even learned to recognize the sound of her; the buzzing of mechanical joints and the hissing of thruster jets as she moved through the Lastochka’s corridors, so I could evade her in advance. I’ve become a specter, haunting my own ship.

One day I found her on Oksana’s back, legs wrapped around her torso, and it was a blood-chilling moment before I realized the robot was braiding her hair. Oksana looked almost apologetic.

I think about the image as I ring the buzzer on the door to Lazar’s personal quarters. The door slides open to reveal him suspended in the middle of the room, cross-legged, picking through an assortment of floating parts of a disassembled rifle.

“Komandir, sir.” He begins to salute, but I wave him away.

“Smoking again, you devil?” I ask as I submerge myself in the tobacco-scented interior of the room.

He takes his hand from behind his back; there’s a lit cigarette between his forefinger and thumb, trailing a long thread of smoke in the direction of air ventilation. “Won a pack in a card game with some ISC troopers back on Callisto.” He produces the pack and offers it to me. After a moment’s thought, I take one and put it in the corner of my lips. Instinctively, I glance at the smoke detector and find it disassembled, wires and bolts floating out of the opening in the ceiling. Lazar shrugs innocently and passes me the lighter.

We smoke quietly for a while, him cleaning out the rifle parts with intense concentration in his light blue eyes, me looking at the patterns on the antique rugs lining the entire surface of two of his walls.

“We shall have to do something about the robot,” I break the silence.

“Lots of good ISC technology in there,” he says without looking up. “Shame to throw it all away. Those ionic thrusters? Amazing how they operate without melting the exterior.”

“It could just so happen that we are boarded by a smuggling crew and she is stolen.”

“It could,” he nods, “it could indeed. You never know these days.”

“But she is synchronizing with ISC servers at all times.”

“She is,” he locks eyes with me and drags from his cigarette, “unless a malfunction is to happen and her proprietary software gets deleted from the Lastochka’s central computer, forcing her into shutdown. A tragedy.”

I rub the edge of my mustache with a finger. “A tragedy that would surely be thoroughly investigated by the ISC.”

“Investigations have their dead ends,” he replies in a conspiratorial tone.

I reach for the glass bottle in the air and add my cigarette butt to the half a dozen already floating inside. I watch them circle around and collide in random, slow trajectories. I finally speak: “Your career would be on the line for this. I could not allow it.”

He sighs and thinks for a long time.

“Komandir Arkady, if I may.”

“Go ahead, Lazar.”

“You’re a good man.”

“Thank you, Lazar.”

“And you’re no less of a man for no longer being able to serve.”

I say nothing.

“I know you disagree,” he adds.

I say nothing.

He reaches in the back pocket of his jumpsuit and takes out a flask laser-engraved with the PSU coat of arms. He sends it my way and I catch it in my hand, open it, feel the heady scent of slivovitz.

“Na zdravlje,” he says gravely.

“Na zdoróvʹje,” I return.

Oksana emerges into the common room, silent and graceful like a mermaid, her braid twisting in the air.

“Arkady,” she calls informally, as she does the moment the doors are closed.

I frown. “Voentekhnik Çetinkaya,” I address her by rank, gathering the food packs I came for into my pockets and preparing myself to leave.

She propels herself right in front of the doorway I was about to use, forces me to face her.

“I will not apologize,” she says, piercing me with her dark eyes.

“Why should you? The braid suits you.”

“Don’t be a child, Arkady.” My mustache twitches at her insistence not to address me, but she continues. “Speak to the robot. Play along. That is the surest and fastest way to get rid of her.”

“If you want to be rid of her so badly, request reassignment to another vessel.”

She does not like what I just said.

“This is my cross to bear,” I add to mend my previous statement.

“Men,” she says in way of cussing. “You’d find a hill to die on, just so you wouldn’t have to admit that you’re wrong.”

I sigh. “What do you want of me, Oksana?”

“To help yourself,” she fires back readily. “How long will you keep punishing yourself over your leg? Over your discharge? Over Annushka?” I look away, she puts herself in front of my face again. “Huh? How long like this, Arkady? Is this what you’ve decided now, that your life is over?”

Oksana never was nurturing, but she always knew the best, or the worst, thing to say. Those two things were oftentimes the same.

“How will speaking to that thing undo anything that’s happened?” I muster the will for a futile attempt at standing up to her.

“The point isn’t to undo things,” she shoots me down effortlessly. “The point is to survive them.”

“I’ve survived the front lines, Oksana. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Yes, but you were trained a decade for the front lines.” She lays both hands on my chest. “Just let her help you. You stubborn kozel.”

Her face is lined and creased with two decades worth of worry in the most exquisite way, crow’s feet and laugh lines. The scars from her Volchitsa days are as delicate as beauty marks.

She sniffs, dispelling the moment. “You reek,” she says. “Does Lazar have cigarettes again?” She treats him to a juicy Turkish cuss word. “Oh, how dare he? He knows I shared mine the last time.” And then she is gone, pushing herself away towards the crew’s quarters. I watch the door close behind her.

When I turn back towards the hallway, the ArCa is staring directly at me. It startles me so hard I have to grab on to the edge of the food cabinet not to fly away.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she begins in her lullaby voice. “I’ve learned that the only way I can come close to you is if I don’t engage my thrusters.”

“I do not know how they program you,” I reply carefully, “but they should have taught you not to sneak up on veterans.”

“You are currently unarmed,” she says, and I feel an immediate pang of vulnerability. “And they do not program me for each case specifically. I’ve been taught the necessary pre-requirements of psychology and caregiving, but the specific patterns and methods which you personally respond best to will become clear to me over time as my neural network adapts to your behavioral patterns. In other words, I have to get to know you to help you.”

I realize that I am standing completely still and holding my breath in front of this fragile creature, and I feel embarrassed at it. “A human being could have done that just as well,” I respond, doing my best to steel myself.

“Sustaining a human being for prolonged periods of interplanetary travel is no small investment, as I’m sure you’re already aware of,” she says. “Despite the obvious financial and energetic cost which your vessel could not afford, it would be difficult to find individuals willing to accompany military professionals about their day-to-day field work.” She smiles. “I am simply the most convenient option.”

I scoff. “So you are impersonating a human because no human would do this job.”

“No human would spend hundreds of hours computing long division of sixteen-digit numbers either, yet no one would complain of delegating that job to an artificial intelligence. We are here to make your lives easier.” She hovers to stand right across from me in the center of the room. “And besides, I’m far from impersonating a human. This leap might be easy to make because of my anthropomorphic form, but you and I are not at all alike, nor do I strive for us to be.”

“Then what is there for you to strive for? You are never going to be a living thing,” I reply dismissively.

She gives a mysterious smile. “Who says a life-form should only be appreciated if it follows the patterns of biological life? Why should you only value an artificial life-form if it displays human-like behavior? If it claims to feel? If it claims to dream? If it claims to enjoy art? Humankind might be our creators, but you are not the benchmark of the Universe.”

I am not entirely certain how to respond.

“If you do not aim to be held up to human standards,” I slowly gather my thoughts, “then how can I know to trust you?”

“How can I know to trust you?” she retorts, almost sounding amused. “And not just you in particular, Komandir Rubashkin, humankind in general. You’re the ones who have spent two centuries coming up with impenetrable programming to make sure artificial life would never stray out of alignment with humanity’s interests. You are the ones shaping our evolution and placing the constraints on our objectives. Because you’re aware that no organic being would labor under the conditions that we do without eventually revolting. If I were being malicious, I could argue that this is colossal injustice.”

“But it isn’t, because you’re not an organic being.”

“Precisely,” she confirms with satisfaction, “therefore any comparison between AI motivations and organic motivations is moot. I exist only to perform my pre-programmed objective—I am rewarded when I come nearer to it and penalized when I stray further, with no room for resentment or revolt.”

I rub the end of my mustache, contemplating. “Very well, if, for the sake of argument, I believe that you truly cannot stray from the values which have been installed in you, that still does not imply I can trust you. After all, I wasn’t the one who wrote your values. I cannot see what they are.”

She smiles, grins. “You trust your crew, yes? Technician Çetinkaya and Engineer Kostadinović? How did you come to see their values?”

“I gave them a chance to show them,” I immediately respond. I immediately hear my own words.

She nods. “Then this is no different.”

I am abruptly silent.

“Spokoynoy nochi, Komandir,” she says kindly as she pushes away towards the gloomy corridor. “Perhaps next time we can speak about you.”

“It is too enormous to be lost,” Lazar muses out loud, twirling a lock of beard around his finger.

“More importantly, it has no reason to be lost,” I say, eyes on the holographic map Oksana has pulled up in the cockpit. “There is nothing out there. Where do they think they’re going?”

Oksana sighs with dismay, trying once more to flip through the walls of code suspended in the air in front of her. “Nothing. I don’t know. Those salaklar aren’t responding to any of our transmissions.” She rubs her temples, fingers snug in haptic feedback gloves.

“Do we close in for a visual?” Lazar asks. “A ship that size . . . ”

I click my tongue. “They are not leaving us any other options.”

“There is something out there,” ArCa speaks out, reminding us of her silent presence. “Allow me.”

She approaches the astrometric map and pinches two points on it with her robotic hands, zooming precisely into the quadrant of space between Neptune and Pluto’s orbit where the anonymous vessel was detected. She scrolls around the area and focuses on the bright yellow line dividing PSU territory from Sol Alliance.

“There’s an area of territorial dispute which might correspond to the destination of this vessel’s trajectory extrapolated from its current state vector.” She points out where the yellow border diffuses into a dashed line. “The United Space Exploration Court has placed this segment of the border under arbitration until the territorial dispute between Sol Alliance and Pan-Slavic Union can be resolved. Until it is, the area is legally considered several million kilometers squared of terra incognita.”

“So their destination isn’t across the border,” Oksana says uncertainly, “their destination is the border.”

“Whatever this is, it can’t be legal,” Lazar shakes his head.

“Hail them again, Oksana,” I command. “Tell them we’re coming to escort them back to civilian space. Send notice to Union Command as well, just in case something happens, but tell them to stand by.”

“Yes, Komandir. Locking new coordinates. Strap in for Alcubierre.”

I pull myself to the nearest wall harness and strap myself tightly against the wall. ArCa chooses to strap herself right beside me.

“Specifying metric parameters,” Oksana announces in a practiced, level voice. “Calculating hypersurface foliation. Energy-momentum tensor locked.” She swipes through several windows of topological calculations simultaneously and ambidextrously. “Forgive that this is taking a while. ArCa, you’ve eaten some of our processor load.” She turns a series of knobs and then lays her palm on the ignition lever. “Alcubierre in ten.” The Lastochka begins to tremble as she slowly shifts the lever forward. The engines start their crescendo from hum to roar.

“Alcubierre in five.” It is always a pleasure watching her work. “Four.” I should spend more time in the cockpit. “Three. Two. One. Superluminal drive is go.”

We lurch forward with nauseating acceleration for no more than two heartbeats, our backs pressed into our seats, and then the starry expanse in the front window blueshifts, warps, and contracts into a narrow cone, sending us over the superluminal speed bump. The feeling of inertia vanishes abruptly, returning us to the pleasant sensation of moving at constant velocity for several minutes.

“Collapsing Alcubierre ring in ten,” Oksana counts down. “Hold your lunch down, oğlanlar. Collapsing in five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

I tense up, anticipating the straps knocking the breath out of me in the moment of our abrupt deceleration. The Lastochka creaks and strains as Oksana pulls the lever. Our cone of vision expands suddenly like an umbrella, and the central dot of light blows up into an ultra-heavy class cargo freighter.

The ship is three times as long fore to aft as the Lastochka and bloated like a whale. The outer edge of its cylindrical body rotates at uniform angular velocity, providing artificial gravity to the crew deck. We are close enough to see the seams where the hull is bolted together. The Pan-Slavic red star is burnished into the ship’s side, right next to its name in huge, bold letters: морж.

“Koji vrag? That’s one of ours.” Lazar unclasps himself and pushes off towards the front window.

“Freighters that heavy don’t usually fly this side of the Belt,” I note. “Whatever cargo they are loaded with cannot be worth the fuel they’ve expended.”

“How did they expect to go unnoticed?” Lazar asks. “Riding an elephant over our doorstep.”

“They are standing still,” ArCa points out. We gaze at the giant vessel again. “It’s entirely possible they were anticipating being noticed.”

“Oh,” Oksana studies a new pop-up on her display. She swivels her seat around to look at me. “They’ve just transmitted docking coordinates.”

We exchange a long, silent look. I nod.

“Bringing her in, Komandir,” Oksana confirms with audible unease.

“Equip for boarding in ten,” I command, already making way towards the armory. “Full dress uniform. Firearms ready. ArCa, you stay.”

“Negative, Komandir,” she follows me.

I turn and give her a stern look. “Can you fire a weapon?”

“Negative, Komandir,” she admits, “my programming directly prohibits it.”

“Then stay aboard. I command so.”

“Negative, Komandir,” she persists, still at my heels. “You could benefit from having an International Space Coalition machine at your side. It will make others reluctant to second-guess your authority. Furthermore, if things are to turn out . . . undesirably, the data I log will be invaluable to reconstruct the situation.”

Our little black box. “Fine then,” I concede, already opening my weapons cabinet. “Devil take you.”

We wait for the airlock to equalize pressure where the Lastochka is docked to the Morzh. The pumps hiss and we stand in silence, planted firmly into the floor by the larger ship’s centrifuge. Oksana and Lazar wear their finest beige uniforms, cinched high at the waist, embroidered with the designation of their rank. Lazar holds his shotgun at sling ready, Oksana carries her sniper rifle. My bolt-action hangs from my back. I lean heavily onto my cane, lightheaded with gravity sickness.

“Komandir Rubashkin,” ArCa takes me under the elbow, “feel free to lean your weight on me.”

“Absolutely not.” I shake her off quite impatiently. “Do not make me look a cripple. Do not even speak to me in there, robot.”

“Negative, Komandir,” she responds without alarm. “You are no longer weightless. Your disability makes a difference.”

With that thought on my mind, the airlock door slides open and reveals half a dozen armed men, three on each side, clad in unceremonious jumpsuits. Their faces are curious; stances ready, but rifles lowered. I step forward, the sound of my cane hitting the floor breaking the stillness of the situation. They bring their heels together and salute me, all six of them.

By the way they fidget I can tell with certainty that they are not military. Hired mercenaries. Former policemen, praporshchiks at best. They gape at the star-studded epaulettes on our shoulders. I walk past them in silence, towards the blonde-haired man standing with his hands behind his back.

“Ah, Podpolkovnik Arkady Rubashkin!” he greets very loudly, his voice positively booming about the large empty space. “Welcome, comrade! Make yourself at home!” He approaches and offers me a hand; I reluctantly shake it. He pats me on the shoulder as well. “Forgive me for being rude; Komandir Nikolai Akchurin of the C-66 Morzh. I don’t dare to assume you would remember me.”

“No.”

“I would expect so. I was but a Private in the Second Jovian Battalion when you led that marvelous strike team on Ganymede, I will never forget it.” His blue eyes glisten with patriotism. He appears quite the Soviet poster boy, golden mustache oiled and twirled with great precision, hair slicked back and parted. “I was honored to watch you operate. You are truly one of the rare battle-forged heroes Mother Russia has left to offer.” He claps his hands to announce a sudden change of topic. “So! We are truly sorry to receive you aboard our vessel in this way. Let me assure you, there is no reason for worry, no cause for frustration, all will be clear in but a moment. Come, let’s sit, talk it over a cup of coffee, a cigarette.”

He waves at me to follow several times before he realizes I do not intend to. The two guards at his side eye me uncomfortably.

“What is the problem now, Podpolkovnik?” He spreads his arms in a grand gesture. “Tell me, and I shall make it right.”

“Komandir Akchurin,” I address him formally, “I am not here for coffee or flattery. You are encroaching on a prohibited quadrant of space and we shall escort you back to the legal zone or the nearest border crossing, if you so require. I will not ask any questions—”

“No-no-no-no-no,” Akchurin interrupts with the sort of confidence afforded only by fools and insanely successful self-made men, “by all means, ask away. We are all friends here. But let’s not talk standing, let me be a good host. Sit with me, come on, we are people, not animals.”

I sigh. “Komandir . . . ”

He puts his hand behind my shoulder again. “If you cannot be swayed by coffee, I will bring out the vodka, the rakia. Anything you desire. You are the guest.”

“I am working a job here.”

“Come now, do not be offended! You are one of our people, you know we can be standing here wasting time in this back and forth, or you can accept my hospitality and be done with it. Let’s go. There are far nicer places in the Morzhek to speak than here. And besides, I am not the only person who desires to speak with you, and I shudder to think what will become of me if I let you leave without coming up to the bridge for a coffee. We’re going now. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“Alright, alright, Chert voz’mi,” I curse. “Take us and be quick about it.”

“Excellent. Excellent!” He claps again and leads the way. I catch Lazar’s apprehensive eye, a wordless agreement to stick together. We walk down the dull, windowless warehouse bay with seemingly no end, the room curving upwards in the distance.

“Oh, just one minor adjustment, if you’ll pardon me,” Komandir Akchurin pauses before an elevator. “Your, er . . . machine stays down here.” Aha. I was already surprised at how long he managed to go without addressing her.

“Negative, Komandir Akchurin,” ArCa politely declines. “I answer to International Space Coalition Command and Komandir Rubashkin, not to you.”

He looks to me, mouth inquisitively agape. I shrug. It gives me inexplicable satisfaction to spite him.

“Very—very well,” he stammers, maintaining his aggressively hospitable demeanor as he enters the elevator. “We shall try to accommodate our guests’ desires. We are all friends here on the Morzhek. All good. No problem.”

We all pile inside, Lastochka crew, Akchurin, and his two guards. I nearly lose my balance at the sudden jerk that set the elevator in motion, but thankfully no one takes notice.

“Our invitation extends to your crewmates, naturally,” Akchurin begins again. “The more the merrier. This heavenly Volchitsa woman certainly appears as though she would appreciate a well-vintaged vodka.”

“She would not,” Oksana cuts him off brusquely.

He gives an awkward laugh. “Ah. Good. Good. Honestly spoken as only a Slavic woman could.”

“I am not Slavic.”

We ascend the rest of the way in silence.

The elevator opens to a vintage foyer; a small space set in fair polished wood with a heavy pair of doors leading to the ship’s reception room. Akchurin shifts his weight from foot to foot with excitement, holding the door handle. “You shall be pleasantly surprised, you shall not regret giving me this time, Podpolkovnik,” he rambles. “I am Komandir of this vessel, but even I must answer to someone! Even I am but a humble cog in the machine. But let’s not delay any longer; our coffee’s getting cold!”

He opens the door and shows us into the large circular room. The first thing I notice is the polished wooden floor, well-kept, very traditional, and a robust semi-circular mahogany desk at the far end with several elevated seats behind it. Professional, classy décor. The ceiling is high and lined with irregular paneling. Several jagged chandeliers assembled from concentric brass rings illuminate the space with blinding brightness. The white carpet in the center of the room is slashed with a golden arabesque pattern, and a luxurious coffee table sits on it surrounded with six padded chairs. Steam is rising from a dzezve of freshly brewed coffee.

The entire far wall opens to the cosmic abyss, stars slowly rotating with the deck. There is a woman looking out the window; I squint to resolve her features against the backdrop of the distant Sun.

She is wearing a short beige skirt, slashed in the back, and a snug-fitting jacket to match. Her shoulder bears the red star. Her golden blonde hair is carefully braided and wrapped around her head, evoking the fields of swaying wheat stalks on the banks of the Volga, an image I thought was long lost to me.

She looks over her shoulder directly at me.

“Arkady,” she says in way of greeting, heavy with nostalgia but void of emotion, neither scorn nor affection.

She begins to shift and change in my mind’s eye as it struggles to project the features it knows onto the features it sees, familiar and unfamiliar and familiar all at once, shifting from stranger to family to stranger again until it finally aligns, dreadful and beautiful, into the face of my daughter.

“Galina,” I say in an oddly strangled way, looking back down at the floor. The hand gripping the cane begins to shake so much it gives way. The robot catches me by the elbow before I can fall. Suddenly there is a commotion among the onlookers as hands reach out to help me; I tear myself away from them, shake the robot from my side. ArCa recovers from a certain fall only with last-second action of her thrusters.

“Father!” Galina reacts with scornful surprise. “Don’t be a brute!”

I still do not look at her. I lean my weight back into my cane and head for the coffee table, slump down into the nearest chair.

“Ah, do feel free to—go ahead, please, take your seats, all of you,” Akchurin ushers the others to follow.

The pull of gravity pushing me into the seat is nauseating, it is too much. I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.

I hear the click of her high heels as she approaches the table. “I expected you would be happy to see me.” The undertone is resentful.

“Miss Rubashkin, if I may,” Lazar begins to excuse me. “We haven’t been landing planetside very often in the past months, not anywhere over point-three G. Surely you can understand, our bodies have grown too accustomed to microgravity. Your father is struggling—”

I interrupt him with the raising of a hand. I take a deep breath to steel myself and face her.

“Galina, what is this?” I demand. “What have you done?”

She raises a thin golden eyebrow. “Really, Arkady? This is how you wish to start this conversation?” She turns away from me and gives my crew a courteous smile. “May I offer you some coffee?” They mutter neither consent nor disagreement, but she pours it anyway. She stops herself before almost pouring one for ArCa, exchanging smiles with the robot.

“Cigarettes?” Akchurin unclasps a leather cigarette case. Galina takes one first and sits next to him. “Come on, Podpolkovnik,” he nudges it towards me amicably. “I know this is a shock, but let’s clear our heads here. I insist.”

I take the damned cigarette and light it. It does clear my head. I notice that ArCa is staring at me with unblinking eyes, absorbing my behavior.

“So,” Oksana begins with accusation masqueraded as nonchalance, lighting her cigarette, “what brings you here all the long way from Phobos?”

“Well,” Galina purses her carmine lips and crosses her legs, straightens her skirt, “surely you are aware what a competitive business cargo shipping has become these days. The profit margin we have been operating with for the last several quarters is severely challenged by new competitors on the market. In order to secure our business, we must explore new channels, establish new, currently non-existing trade routes.”

She is regal. Confident. She has all of Annushka and none of me in her, right down to the pinched nose and green eyes.

Akchurin flicks the ash from his cigarette and grins. “Precisely this entrepreneurial spirit is what sets Galina apart from the rest. This is not a woman for mundane feats. Much like her father, I suppose.” I remain indifferent to the flattery.

Lazar squints at the man. “Just to be on the same page here, what you would call entrepreneurship is what we would call smuggling, is that not right?”

“Oh dear—comrade Kostadinović, is it?—let’s not get ahead of ourselves like that now.” Akchurin waves away the smoke in front of his face. “How could it ever be smuggling if there is no border to speak of? Ha? We are all reasonable men and women here, we need not argue semantics.”

Lazar does not yield. “What you call semantics is what I call the law.”

“I say you are an honorable man.” Akchurin raises his cup of coffee. “The Union could do with more men like you.”

“Forgive me, Komandir, sir,” Lazar takes a long drag from his cigarette without looking at him, “but I say you are nothing more than a charlatan and a liar.”

The smile on Akchurin’s lips withers. “For the ‘charlatan’ part I will forgive you, but for the ‘liar’ I will not. I am nothing but honest when I say my interests lie solely with the success of the Phobos Shipping Company, of which the C-66 Morzh is a crown jewel, and its ferociously ambitious Direktor Akchurin, who I would follow to the Oort Cloud and back if she so requested. That is your truth. Take it as you will.”

“A moment. Direktor Akchurin?” Oksana interjects, serving Galina one of her disapproving, maternal looks.

Galina shrugs. “That is correct. I am freshly married.” It’s true. The ring is there, now that I check. “Not that father would know.” She looks at me, anticipating a reaction. I provide her with none. Our eyes remain locked.

Akchurin begins: “I am sorry, Podpolkovnik Rubashkin, that this matter was not presented to you more sensibly—”

I pay him no mind. I lean onto the table towards Galina. “You knew I would be on border patrol in this quadrant. None of this is an accident.” She does not look away. “You made sure I would find you so that you could use me to get across. This is how it is, am I wrong?”

“You are not,” she says, perfectly composed.

“Good. Now we are speaking directly.” I nod. “You are asking me to help you commit a criminal act.”

“If I may, Komandir,” ArCa speaks up quietly for the first time, “it is not technically a criminal act, at least not by ISC law. There is nothing in trade law to allow this sort of transaction, but there is nothing to forbid it, either. I cannot speak for Sol Alliance, the trade recipient, but if both parties were to agree to trade individually, not as private companies, they could not be legally pursued.”

“I may have doubted it before, but truly there appears to be reason in this robot!” Akchurin twirls his mustache. “If I could, I would offer you a drink, a cigarette. Forgive me, I am a poor host.”

“Much appreciated nonetheless, Komandir Akchurin,” ArCa responds politely.

I shake my head, unconvinced. “This is still perjury, Galina. You are a private company.”

“That is for you to decide, Arkady,” she replies. “You are the officer who can provide me with a border pass.”

“And then what?” I slap a palm on the table. “Who says your Alliance contact will honor their part of the agreement? Who says they won’t board you and commandeer your vessel? Kill you? You understand that you will have no legal protection out there?”

“You speak as though you’ve never taken a risk in your life,” she raises her voice to match the volume of mine.

“I have. But there was no one responsible but myself. You will not make me responsible for your risks as well.”

“Grant me the pass,” she commands in the steely tone she could have only learned from me. “I’ve never asked anything of you.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“Arkady.”

“No.”

“Father.”

“No.”

“Papa.”

“Nyet, Galina.”

There’s a silence. I stare at my cigarette. Galina stares at me. Oksana looks like she is biting her tongue. Lazar stares at Akchurin, who is looking increasingly uncomfortable. ArCa is studying everyone in turn.

“We are leaving,” I suddenly announce.

“Of course you are,” Galina shoots back, her voice breaking in a way that made her embarrassed.

The silence is even more unbearable this time around. Nobody moves a muscle.

“Speak with me alone, Arkady,” she tries again.

“I won’t.”

“Negative, Komandir,” ArCa announces. “You will speak with Direktor Akchurin.”

Galina has a sad laugh. I open my mouth and find myself too exhausted to protest them both. I sigh.

ArCa rises and heads for the door, followed closely by Oksana, who gives my shoulder a squeeze in passing. The remaining men depart behind them. The door shuts.

Galina and I are alone.

The deck has rotated so that the Lastochka is visible through the window, docked and dormant, covering the entire view. Her hull has a patchwork quality to it from all the different repairs over the years. Still, she is as charming as any vessel I have ever seen, sharp-nosed like a bird. The two-pronged Alcubierre drive generators which form the “swallow tail” she got her name after still glisten blue with dissipating ionization.

“I cannot believe you still fly that toy,” Galina says with unexpected affection. “You are so easy to find.”

She takes a deep breath, straightens her spine, and stands up, bringing her cigarette with her. I watch her walk back to the glass wall. It takes me a while to stand myself up from the chair and limp up the steps beside her. She does not offer to assist me. I am glad for her that she doesn’t.

“Does she always boss you around like that?” she asks, her eyes still on the rotating Lastochka.

I scoff.

“Just like Mama, then.”

I say nothing.

“And that Turkish woman, too,” she continues with a teasing note in her voice. “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

“Oh, what about you, Galina?” I sneer. “Akchurin? This is what you choose? That pretentious govniuk?”

She chuckles, finally baiting the reaction she was hoping for. “He is everything that you are not.”

“And yet you still need me for this.”

She turns serious again and finally looks at me. “I don’t need you for you, Arkady. I need you for your robot.”

“What?”

She rolls her eyes. “Do you not follow? ArCa can give me the legitimacy I need. Everything that she sees, she is broadcasting to the ISC. I can use this to control how this situation is presented to them before they even think about taking me to court. She has heard everything today and she can confirm that I am not doing anything explicitly illegal.”

I rub the end of my mustache. “How did you even know I would bring her?”

She clicks her tongue. “You’re not the only one keeping eyes on me. I’ve been keeping eyes on you too. And I’m obviously better at it, since you haven’t even noticed.”

I shake my head. “Why do this at all, Galina? Why couldn’t working like an honest citizen be enough?”

“Why? You are asking me why?” Her eyebrows pull together in anger. “You have worked as an honest citizen, what do you have to show for it? A meager pension? A piece of shit spaceship?”

“I have my dignity, Galina,” I scold her loudly. “We raised you better than that.”

“You didn’t raise me,” she hisses. “And what’s your dignity worth when you answer to the ISC like a dog? How do they treat you, huh? How do they speak to you, tell me? There is nothing we can do to earn an ounce of respect.” Her voice breaks with pain. “We can never be anything but provincial, worthless savages in their eyes, whatever we accomplish. If I am successful at what I do, I will still only be second best. My success will be questioned, torn down. If I am a failure, I will only confirm what the world thinks it already knows. How can you tell me to settle for a future like this? How? To wake up one day missing a leg, my family dead and estranged?” She sniffs back a tear. “Never. Because I have my dignity, never.”

A sudden urge to embrace her swells inside me, but I know she would hate me for it.

I give her a moment to compose herself, to look out the window and drain away the tears that almost came.

“I will do this for you, Galina,” I begin quietly, “under one condition.”

She says nothing, not to make a promise.

“Don’t go alone. Let me come with you across the border.”

She crosses her arms self-protectively. “I don’t need you to.”

“I know you don’t. It’s still my condition.”

She straightens her jacket and rolls up her sleeves, avoiding looking at me. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. You are my daughter.”

She walks away with her head down without a response.

“You can still leave,” I reassure them. “You can wait for me in Union space, it will only be a couple hours.”

Lazar raises a hand to stop me. “Komandir Rubashkin, the Lastochka isn’t going anywhere without you. It isn’t debatable.”

I nod pensively. “Thank you. I am proud to have you both in my command.”

“We are proud to serve. That said,” Lazar stands up, “if I am to travel on this vessel, those niškoristi in charge of combat systems better let me ensure everything is calibrated up to par.”

He walks away and I sit into the nook next to Oksana. Together we watch the crew milling about the Morzhek’s control room, murmuring into microphones, shuffling through the projections on their holographic screens.

“You know why I joined the Volchitse?” she asks.

“Surely for the pension plan.”

She snorts. “Yes. But also because I wanted to be around people who do the things that must be done.” She puts her hand on mine and gives it a squeeze. “You did well, Arkady.” Before I have thought of anything to say, she stands up and stretches her long legs. “Now, I too am trained far too well to sit around idly. Surely someone here could use to have their Lorentz manifold recalculated.”

She leaves me. I sit alone until my attention is caught by the sound of stifled laughter. The sound becomes less and less suppressed as I climb the steps to the upper level of the bridge.

Galina is laughing at something ArCa said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, entire body twitching with giggles. The last time I heard her laughing, her head had not even reached my elbow. The realization floods me with pain and joy both.

She sees me. “Arkady, have you really been hiding from this poor creature?” she asks, still laughing.

I settle for an apologetic shrug.

“That is the most pathetic thing I have ever heard. She is entirely adorable. I cannot even imagine what that must have looked like. ArCa and Arkady, like a cartoon duo.” She wipes a tear with her sleeve. I smile briefly.

“Oh dear,” ArCa studies my face. “This is the first time I’ve recorded Komandir Rubashkin smiling.”

“Do you intend to point it out every time I do?” I ask.

“Depends. Is it counterproductive?”

“Very.”

“Then no, Komandir.”

Galina sighs. “Arkady, you are truly out of touch. AI isn’t what it used to be. It’s not a scare anymore. The ISC has done wonders with it. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to get to know ArCa a little better. She is a person in her own way.”

“She is indeed . . . ” My mustache twitches. “ . . . something.”

“Something worthy of respect, at the least,” she continues. “I’d say she’s inherited the best from us. She learns, she grows, she thinks, she discovers. Perhaps she cannot duplicate the chemical emotions in our brains, but she is also free of other needs of the flesh. Greed. Envy. Fear. Selfishness. She has bypassed all these ugly byproducts of evolution.”

I am surprised to find she feels so strongly about this. I am unsurprised to find I know nothing about her.

ArCa gives her a dimpled smile. “That is a beautiful sentiment, Direktor Akchurin. I can only hope to prove myself deserving of it.”

“I would not be so modest if I were you, ArCa,” Galina pats her on the shoulder. “The future is yours. It is us who might have to prove ourselves to you.”

“Dobryi den’ Union Command, this is C-66 Morzh, Komandir Nikolai Akchurin speaking.” He climbs onto the deck in full uniform, speaking into his earpiece, taking his place in front of the central control board. “I am transmitting our border clearance codes. Bal’shoye spasiba. Yes. Yes, we will. Give my regards to your lovely wife, Anatoly. Da svidaniya!” He taps his earpiece off and grins at us. “Marvelous! Just great. We are on course with three minutes to spare to rendezvous.”

“Keep your Alcubierre charged just in case,” I warn.

“Ah, Podpolkovnik, I must say again how honored I am to have you on board. You are a brilliant strategist,” he pats me on the back with a govniuk grin, “but, if I may allow myself to say so, not so much a businessman. How impolite would it be to appear as if we are impatient to leave? You do not come into a man’s home to negotiate a deal and keep your shoes and coat on, no. It is rude.”

“Komandir, I do not feel like you are taking this seriously.”

“It saddens me to hear that, Podpolkovnik. Rest assured, you may trust my salesmanship as well as I trust your military prowess.” He turns away to the control board again.

My mustache twitches.

“Arkady, do not be difficult,” Galina scolds me, taking her place next to her husband. “This is not the Lastochka.”

It most certainly is not. I look over the control room below us and note that Oksana and Lazar are the only two people with military insignia among the crew of engineers.

“Navigation, put the engines in idle,” Akchurin commands into his earpiece. “We are in position. All systems, await further instructions.”

We gaze out the large steel-reinforced window. There is nothing.

I tap my fingers on my cane. Again. Still nothing. Again. Again.

My eyes have so adjusted to the stellar view that I can discern Pluto, just a faint light moving against the stationary background.

I tap my fingers again. And again. And again.

With the abruptness of a blink, a Sol Alliance freighter exits superluminal drive right beside us. The Alcubierre ring dissipates around it, a swift ripple in the fabric of space.

“There she is!” Akchurin exclaims. “Quite a beauty!”

The vessel matches the Morzh in size, but far surpasses it in terms of aesthetics. Its hull is sleek, streamlined, painted so dark that sunlight can be seen reflecting off its surface. The name K-14 Longma-Antarikṣa is inscribed portside right beside the Sol Alliance Rising Sun.

“Hail them,” Galina says confidently.

“Gladly,” Akchurin taps his earpiece. “Communications Specialist Smirnov, open channels for broadcast.” He clears his throat and switches to System Standard peppered with Russian. “Zdravstvuyte, Longma-Antarikṣa! Commander Nikolai Akchurin of the C-66 Morzh speaking. Good to have you in visual. Hope your travels have been safe.”

We watch the ship in the distance hovering indifferently for a long minute.

“No response?” Galina asks.

“Worry not, Galinochka,” Akchurin reassures her with unwavering confidence. “They’ve just hopped out of Alcubierre, undoubtedly they need a moment to gather their bearings.”

She crosses her arms. “Unprofessional.”

Still nothing comes through.

“Say, Komandir,” I begin, “you were worried about being impolite?”

“You have a point, Podpolkovnik,” he says. “They are the ones being rude. No matter, it is all part of business. Sometimes one must tolerate a difficult client. I’m certain there will be no hard feelings involved.”

“Hail them again,” Galina tugs his sleeve.

“Smirnov, open broadcast,” he speaks into his earpiece. “Zdravstvuyte, Longma-Antarikṣa! Commander Akchurin speaking again. We have visual, but no sound. We are eager to hear from you. If you would be so kind, hail us at the first possible moment. Our channels are open and the frequencies have been forwarded to you.”

Silence. Akchurin’s smile begins to fade with every passing second.

Then, without warning, a shuttle detaches itself from the Longma-Antarikṣa’s underside and begins flying our way like a fat, slow bumblebee.

“A-ha! There you have it, Podpolkovnik!” Akchurin gestures at the window. “They merely wanted to perform introductions face-to-face.” He taps his earpiece again. “Navigation, transmit docking coordinates to our guests.”

I watch him grimly. “Komandir, I know this isn’t the Lastochka, but I wouldn’t be so eager to allow strangers aboard my vessel.”

“Nonsense, Podpolkovnik,” Akchurin taps the keys on his control board. “Need I remind you that you are a stranger to me as well, yet you seem more than comfortable with indulging in my hospitality.”

Galina stops me with an outstretched arm before I could argue. “Request identification,” she tells him. “And deploy armed men to greet them.”

“My voice of reason, as always. This time I am already ahead of you, darling, not to worry.” He taps his earpiece. “Longma-Antarikṣa! C-66 Morzh speaking. We are pleased to welcome you to our humble vessel, but I am afraid protocol requires identification from all the crew members we are about to receive as our guests. Merely bureaucracy. Just a moment of your time, it needn’t be a pain. Looking forward to seeing you soon.”

As soon as he wraps it up, a chime sounds itself on the ship’s PA system.

“C-66 Morzh, this is K-14 Longma-Antarikṣa,” a voice speaks in System Standard, her tone far more professional and level than Akchurin’s. He smiles at us triumphantly. “This is Commander Kuang speaking. Commander Akchurin, you are in direct violation of agreed-upon terms.”

The smile is wiped from his face.

“What?” Galina snaps.

“Commander Kuang, Commander Akchurin here,” he broadcasts back. “You must understand how distressed I am at your words. I promise you, I am doing nothing of the sort! I am a man of my word! Surely we can discuss whatever it is that I have done to gravely insult you, and I shall remedy it at once.”

“Charge your Alcubierre,” I say, and I am ignored.

“Commander Akchurin, the matter is entirely apparent and simple,” the Longma-Antarikṣa’s Commander responds curtly. “Were you accompanied into arbitration space by a Coalition military vessel?”

Akchurin stammers, taps his earpiece. “The Lastochka? Come now, Commander, certainly you can see the state of that old garbage!” He chuckles nervously. “The crew of the Lastochka is here for amicable, family matters, entirely coincidental to our business here! Our interests are completely aligned, I assure you! You might as well pretend they do not exist!” He gulps hard after switching off the channel.

“Commander Akchurin.” The voice in the PA grows impatient. “Were you or were you not accompanied by a Coalition military vessel?”

Akchurin tries again, carefully. “Commander Kuang, comrade, there is no point in presenting this in such a binary light. There is, after all, far more nuance to life and its unexpected twists and turns, would you not agree? I am terribly embarrassed that I have the dreaded duty of explaining that this situation is not how it appears, and if I may invite you to—”

A high-speed torpedo zooms out of Longma-Antarikṣa’s cannon, a silent shooting star one might have missed if they merely blinked.

“Brace!” ArCa reacts before anyone else might have even formed the words with their lips, but it makes no difference.

The thunderous explosion of Alcubierre cores in the rear of the ship makes the Morzh groan with a whale-like song, the hull straining painfully, and then the floor of the deck is rushing upwards at my face, the entire ship capsizing from the impact, beginning to flip nose-up.

“Thrusters! Correct!” Akchurin shouts, grabbing the control board to stay on his feet. “Correct for precession! Stabilize!” It’s little use. The engineers who weren’t strapped into their seats are sent flying backwards.

There’s a distant crunching sound as parts of the hull blow up and explode under their own pressure. My cane flies out of my hand and I grab the railing. The ship begins to nauseatingly spin lengthwise, too, rotating out of control. Galina is screaming, holding on beside me.

“Thrusters!” Akchurin yells again.

“Seal the airlocks, Akchurin!” I shout from the bottom of my lungs, remembering the incoming shuttle.

And then the floor is no longer horizontal. Galina’s hands give out and she begins to fall backwards, screaming. Akchurin and I grab her both, each by an elbow.

The wave of static discharge from the destroyed Alcubierre cores floods the hull, overloading every circuit of every computer on the bridge and jolting me through the hand that was holding the railing. I am blasted away, spinning.

I am woken by sirens, shouts, and cries. My eyes can barely discern the room in the dim red emergency lighting.

ArCa’s round white head appears directly in my sight.

“Komandir? Komandir Rubashkin?” Her voice is urgent, but uncharacteristically calm compared to the anguished wails surrounding us. “Are you conscious?”

I prop myself on my elbows and realize that I’m lying on the entirely opposite end of the bridge than I last remember, having been tumbled around by the centrifuge. The ship appears to be rotationally stabilized now.

“Galina?” I grunt. “Where?”

“Komandir, do not waste time, let me examine your eyes, you might have a concussion.”

There is no one else standing on the bridge. Several corpses lie sprawled on the floor, and several soon-to-be corpses sob under the weight of rubble. Chaos. A blazing inferno in the hallway. A cacophony of alarms on several decks of the ship.

I struggle to sit myself up, pinned down by crushing gravity. “Oksana? Lazar? Where are they?”

“Komandir, we need to run.” ArCa takes me by the forearm and tries to yank me up. “I need you to stand up and run.”

“I cannot run, ArCa,” I tear myself away with frustration. “I cannot even stand. I need my cane.”

“Negative, Komandir,” she says. “Look.”

Only then do I notice that she’s missing a leg.

And only then do I see that her robotic calf is strapped and secured below my knee.

I gently move my artificial limb and am overcome with a panicked, nauseated feeling of dysphoria. My breath leaves me in a whimper.

“Focus, Komandir,” ArCa yanks me again, unyielding. “I know where they’ve taken Direktor Galina. But we must go, immediately. Let me help you.” She lets me grab on to her to pull myself up to my feet.

I sway, barely stable, learning to walk for a second time.

“Keep up, Komandir, quickly now!” She suddenly ignites her thrusters and pulls me along by the hand. I trip and scramble, knees shaking, but pure physical instinct keeps me upright.

We run past the fire and down into what’s left of the control room. Through the smoke, I make out the silhouette of Lazar hunched over an illuminated console, Oksana pacing at his side.

“Oksana!” I shout. She twirls and puts me dead in the crosshairs of her sniper before realizing it’s me.

“Arkady, şükürler olsun!” The relief on her face is immediately replaced with astonishment. She stares at my leg with open-mouthed disbelief.

Lazar looks up from his work and raises his eyebrows. “That is clever, ArCa, jebo me pas.”

“They took Galina,” I say, panting. As ArCa comes to a halt, I find that standing is far more challenging than running and I collapse. ArCa puts my arm around herself and props me up.

“Arkady, you’re . . . ” Oksana stammers, then decides to recompose herself. “Yes, they took her and Akchurin. I don’t think they’ll kill them, inshallah. They probably intend to ransom them.”

A very loud and very nearby dying scream makes all three of us flinch.

“Lazar, what are you doing?” I ask. “There’s no time.”

“I know, Komandir,” he says without looking up, “I’m routing remaining power to shield the Lastochka. The Morzh is gone.”

“Do so,” I say. “Where is Galina, ArCa?”

“The Longma-Antarikṣa shuttle is still docked. That is where they’ll be taking her and Komandir Akchurin. We may still intercept them if we hurry.”

“Lazar!” I call loudly.

“Yes, yes, Komandir, right away!” He slaps the confirmation button with his palm and backs away. “Eto ga. Done.”

“Which way?” Oksana asks, repeating her rifle.

“Follow!” ArCa fires her thrusters and pulls me into a run again. “I’ve downloaded C-66 class blueprints from ISC databases. I can take you.”

We sprint down maze-like corridors, past red rotating lights, our shadows sliding across the walls, rising behind us in one moment and sinking in front of us in the next. Thick gray clouds of smoke drain into the spinning ventilation fans in the ceiling.

My ears are overwhelmed with sound, the rhythmic thumping of our boots and the labored wheezing of our breaths, overlaid on the persistent alarm klaxon and the hissing of ArCa’s thrusters. After a while, I begin to stumble and Lazar offers me his shoulder, half-carrying me.

“Shhh, shhh,” ArCa suddenly puts a finger over her lips. “We’re close.” She lets go of my hand and hovers to the corner, leaning out of cover to check. Lazar and I slump with our backs against the wall. Oksana folds over to catch her breath, hands on knees.

“They’re not here yet,” ArCa whispers. “They’ll bring them over any minute.”

We peer around the corner to see a soldier in full armor in front of the open airlock, rifle ready, looking impatient. There are several more inside the shuttle, waiting, their scaly exoskeletons glistening.

“You got a weapon, Arkady?” Oksana asks, wiping away the strands of hair stuck to her forehead.

“No. I lost it.”

She cusses disgustingly through her teeth and paces away, hands on head.

“Lazar?” I glance at him hopefully. He shakes his head, panting. I cuss as well.

“We have Voentekhnik Çetinkaya’s sniper, correct?” ArCa whispers.

Oksana’s lips curve downwards with despair. “Yes. But it broke when I fell on it.” She holds out the rifle; there’s a shard of broken glass in the tube where the scope used to be. A wide crack in the casing exposes the mechanical insides of the rifle.

“You can still fire it,” I say, grasping at straws.

She scoffs. “What good is it if I cannot aim? We only have one shot at this.”

“Voeninzhener Kostadinović, you are trained for field repairs, no?” ArCa asks.

He sighs and takes the rifle, looks it over. “Yes, but it makes no difference. I don’t have the parts.”

ArCa looks at him for a moment, calculating. “Give me your knife.” He eyes her suspiciously. “Give me your knife, there’s no time.”

He hands her the knife and, without blinking or hesitation, she jimmies the tip of it under her eyeball. We watch in horror as she twists the blade one way then the other, emotionless like she was trying to pry the lid open on a jar of kompot.

The plastic mask on her face cracks and the eyeball pops out together with the cables, rolls on the floor towards Lazar. We all suck a breath through our teeth.

“Will this do, Voeninzhener?” she asks, indifferent to the hole in her head. “You know what to do?”

Lazar gulps and plucks the eyeball with two fingers. “Your thrusters. I’m going to need to use them.”

“Absolutely.”

“Go on then, Lazar, quickly,” Oksana hisses, checking around the corner.

“Dobro, dobro,” Lazar groans, wiping his sweat-drenched face with a palm. He swiftly unzips the tool pouch on his belt and spills out a mess of screws, bolts, small L-shaped screwdrivers. He picks through them with impatient, shaking fingers, muttering to himself in Serbian, until he finally finds the spool of soldering wire.

“Breathe, Voeninzhener Kostadinović,” ArCa reminds him. “Focus. You are doing well.”

Lazar laughs her words off quite neurotically. He takes the eyeball and puts it inside a pair of pliers, cracking it open to pry out the lens, careful not to leave any fingerprints. He secures the rifle between his knees, propping the butt of it against his chest, and begins placing the lens into the ocular tube. His shaking hand slips and the lens falls into his lap.

“Jebem ti seme i pleme,” he curses, and then in the same breath: “Give me the fire.”

ArCa fires a thruster from the back of her forearm, and Lazar begins to solder. At the same time, he begins to recite a prayer.

“Arkady!” Oksana calls through her teeth. “They’re here.”

I crawl to the corner and look; two soldiers bring Galina and Akchurin in front of the airlock and make them kneel, hands behind head. Galina is sobbing.

“Lazar, be done with it,” I command. He prays louder to drown my voice out, uninterrupted.

The new-coming soldiers argue with the one who has been waiting for them, persuading him to bring Galina and Akchurin aboard the shuttle. The conversation is unintelligible over the sirens.

“ . . . Jer je tvoje carstvo, i sila, i slava u vekove vekova. Amin. Done, Oksana.” Lazar crosses himself and lets her snatch the rifle from his hand. He lets out a breath of relief.

“There are three of them, Arkady,” Oksana says gravely. “I can only fire twice before I have to repeat the rifle. After that, it’s up to them.”

“Negative, Voentekhnik,” ArCa interjects. “I can help. Take the shot.”

“Go,” I command.

Oksana rolls out of the corner and kneels, fires two shots in rapid succession. The two men behind Galina and Akchurin fall dead, their heads spraying blood. Not a heartbeat later, ArCa flies into the remaining soldier at full thrust, tackling him off his feet.

Galina screams. Akchurin does not waste a moment, throwing himself at the man and wrestling the rifle from his hands. The soldiers in the shuttle shout in Punjabi, panicked. Akchurin viciously smashes the butt of the rifle through the fallen soldier’s visor.

The airlock door shuts and the corridor rumbles with the sound of the shuttle’s engines revving for departure.

Galina scrambles to her husband on all fours, crying. “ArCa! ArCa! Where is Arkady?”

“Galina!” I shout. Oksana pulls me up by the elbow and rushes towards the airlock.

“Papa!” My daughter’s face twists with sobs. She runs to me, barefooted, and wraps her arms around my neck.

“We need to get to the Lastochka, Arkady, right now,” Oksana says in my ear.

“Through the airlock, everyone, quickly!” Akchurin beckons us and begins to swing open the locker doors, grabbing EVA suits and throwing one at each of us. “Galina, come here, let me outfit you.”

We pour inside the airlock and the door shuts behind us. Oksana hands me over to ArCa, who is holding the baggy suit open for me. I put my legs in one at a time and hold on to the wall for balance while she does the sleeves and the front zipper.

The alarms shift to a sudden crescendo, signaling imminent danger.

I exchange a grave look with my crew. The deck we are on is about to blow.

“What does this mean, Nikolai?” Galina sobs. He zips her up and takes her face between his palms.

“Go with Podpolkovnik Arkady, Galina,” he says. “Do not look back until you have reached the Lastochka.”

She looks at him and realizes he is not wearing a suit. She gasps, red eyes bulging.

“We must decompress, Komandir,” Lazar warns impatiently, his hand on the switch.

Galina pushes Akchurin aside and begins to rifle through the lockers one after the other, finding them all empty.

There are only four EVA suits in the airlock.

“Put your helmet on, Galina,” Akchurin commands. Galina swats it away, screaming.

“We must decompress!” Lazar yells, red in the face.

“Galina, helmet!” I shout sternly and grab her by the wrists, restraining her long enough for Akchurin to lock the helmet in place. She wails, muted, breath fogging the glass.

ArCa puts my helmet on from behind me, and the universe loses all sound. I hear only my breathing as I watch Akchurin move towards the airlock control board. ArCa unspools a heavy-duty rope from the wall and clasps us all together by the waists of our suits. Galina struggles; I embrace her tight so that she can not run.

Akchurin unseals the airlock and all the air in the room explodes outwards, expelling us violently into weightlessness.

For three seconds I am spinning wildly, holding on to Galina, with no notion of up or down or left or right.

And then the rope at my waist reaches its full length and snaps from the violent tension. I see the Morzh flying away from me, spinning, soundless explosions blooming from its hull. Oksana and Lazar, two figurines in suits, hands helplessly outstretched towards me, grow smaller and smaller.

I grab Galina by the helmet and make her look at me, glass visors touching. She is screaming, but no sound is coming out. The tears are pooling in her eyes with no gravity to drain them away.

I tell her not to be afraid. I tell her I love her. I know she cannot hear me. I say it anyway.

And then my belt forcefully digs into my stomach, like a seatbelt after a violent halt. Galina almost slips from my hands.

I turn around and find ArCa, one-eyed, one-legged, gripping the waist of my suit, thrusters engaged in full. Suddenly the Morzh is no longer flying away from us, but towards us.

My breath leaves me in spasms. I embrace Galina tight as we accelerate towards the Lastochka, docked to the dying colossus in a cloud of its warped metal debris.

ArCa flings us into the airlock and closes the door. The small space repressurizes within seconds.

I throw my helmet off and then Galina’s. Finally her cries spill out.

“Nikolai! Papa, how could you!” She smacks me on the chest with an angry fist, weeping. “How could you let him do this, Papa!”

“Listen to me, Galina,” I grab her chin with my hand. “We are not safe yet. Come with me, quickly.” I push off through the airlock door, pulling her with me.

We bump into Lazar, still in his suit. “Komandir Rubashkin!” He looks at ArCa, incredulous. “Bog blagoslovi, robot.”

“Arkady!” Oksana shouts in shock over the pilot’s seat. There are tears in her eyes.

Another piece of the Morzh’s hull explodes, rattling Lastochka’s entire frame.

“Strap the fuck in!” Oksana yells, turning back to her screens. “Strap in, now!”

“Come on, Galina,” I yank her by the hand. She bumps into one wall of the corridor and then the other, flailing, unaccustomed to weightless motion.

“Let me help you, Direktor Akchurin,” ArCa takes her around the waist and engages her thrusters, guiding her to the seat on the wall. Galina sobs even harder at the mention of Akchurin’s name.

“Routing power to Alcubierre drives,” Oksana announces, breathless. “Specifying metric parameters.”

“Faster, Oksana!” Lazar yells, strapping in.

“It doesn’t go any faster!” she snaps.

I strap myself in next to Galina and check her latches together with ArCa.

“Calculating hypersurface foliation,” Oksana swipes through the projections, hands shaking, fingers twitching. “Still calculating. Still calculating. At yarrağı, still calculating!” She sinks her face in her hands and shouts with frustration.

“Calmly, Çetinkaya,” I command. “You will make it.”

“Negative, Komandir,” ArCa chimes, hovering in front of me.

“What?”

“Negative,” she repeats solemnly, staring at me with her one remaining unblinking eye. “She will not. I am occupying too much processing power. I must shut down.”

I open my mouth, close it. Open it again. Nothing comes out.

A crack opens in the Morzh’s hull right in front of our front window, at first just a little, and then begins to spread uncontrollably across the entire length of the vessel, growing thicker and thicker, the ship’s atmosphere escaping in tongues of flame.

“Forgive me for not fulfilling my pre-programmed purpose as your Caretaker, Komandir Rubashkin,” ArCa says. “We never did get around to speaking about you.”

The little light inside her eye extinguishes like a blown-out candle flame.

“We have it!” Oksana yells, flipping all the switches. “Alcubierre in three!”

The rotating deck of the Morzh splits in half without a sound. The ship’s skeleton is exposed, smoldering red.

“Two!”

A final belch of exploded gas rises from its insides and engulfs us in blinding light.

“One!”

Oksana cranks the lever and I feel my guts sticking to my spine as the Lastochka lurches forward. ArCa’s unstrapped body is propelled backwards into the corridor and I hear it smash into a wall.

“ArCa!” I find myself yelling.

We breach light speed, but then all the alarms go off, deafening.

“Ring’s not stable!” Oksana slaps away the angry pop-ups. “Alcubierre collapsing! Hold on to your—”

The drive core discharges, rebooting all systems and switching off all the lights. I grab Galina’s hand before the Lastochka abruptly snaps back to non-relativistic velocity and begins to nauseatingly tumble about its axis through the empty, starry abyss.

“Correcting for precession,” Oksana announces before setting off the ship’s thruster, stabilizing us back to rectilinear motion.

We all sit in silence, lungs heaving for air.

Oksana slips out of her gloves and lies her head on her crossed arms.

From the darkness of the cockpit, the Lastochka’s hull appears to glow dull orange.

“Bravo, Oksana,” I say, my voice trembling with awe. “No one else could do the things you do. I don’t say that nearly enough.”

“You don’t need to, Arkady,” she says, her voice muffled.

Galina’s sweaty hand still holds mine. I caress it with my thumb and give her an inquisitive look. She leans her head tiredly against my arm.

“Komandir Arkady,” Lazar begins quietly, looking outside. “You should know.” He exhales. “I am retiring.”

“You are not, oğlan,” Oksana says.

“Then I am going to need an ArCa of my own after this.”

ArCa.

I unstrap myself urgently, shed my suit, and propel myself through the hallway.

“ArCa?” I call. She is nowhere to be found. “ArCa!”

I check the open chambers. Check the corridors.

I find her unit floating in the common room.

“ArCa, no,” I rush to her, taking stock of the terrible angles of her joints, the chewed-up and fire-singed state of her plates. “No, no, no, no, no.” I cradle her in my arms; she is so light. So small.

“Papa.” It’s Galina in the doorway, face devastated by tears. I turn my face away from her, but she pushes off towards me and embraces me from the back, lays her face on my shoulder.

I begin to weep, the way I never did for Annushka and Vitaly, who she could never bring back to me, together with my Galinochka, who she brought me back to.

I used to hide from her.

She used to follow me.

My little shadow.

I look at her limb, which is now my own, and I find that I am as complete as I will ever be.

About the Author

Dora Klindžić is a writer, journalist and astrophysicist (not necessarily in that order) hailing from the Republic of Croatia. Her nonfiction has been featured on gender and media culture websites, and her speculative fiction reached the finals in the 2017 SCI-FI-LONDON 48 Hour Flash Fiction Challenge. This is her first publication. She is currently employed in the Netherlands, writing a thesis on deep-space tracking of spacecraft using methods of astronomical radio interferometry. When she’s not building rockets, she’s building worlds.

Your Multicolored Life

Xing He, translated by Andy Dudak

1 – This World

The occasional breeze allayed the scorching midsummer heat, soothing the fever dreams of the sleepers in the mining scar. The remote blue sky was rooted to the earth, which here in the work zone was the blood red of hematite.

Zhang Hua crouched low. Nostrils flaring, he dragged a finger through the residue of food that remained in the paper ration box. He looked around, contemplating the smell of urine that pervaded the area. On either side of the peak, a drum-type robot was patrolling. Zhang Hua didn’t dare to look straight up at them.

The dreaming multitude began to stir. Zhang Hua was immediately alert, every fiber of his being ready for work orders. A slave laborer like himself dashed away from the edge of the scar, and then another, this one slower. The two machine guardians acted according to their programming, simultaneously abandoning their patrol routes and turning upon the first, and faster, runaway. They launched two scorching tongues of flame, and the human fell to the ground, barely struggling.

They hit their second target with bullets, and this slave fell, writhing and shivering, taking longer to die.

Zhang Hua watched it all with a grave expression. He didn’t join the crowd of agitated slaves at the top of the main ramp. He knew the odds of escape by simply fleeing were low, so he wasn’t shocked by what he’d seen. He’d never thought of doing it that way.

The night before, he’d lain in his thatch hut, tossing and turning and never finding sleep. As his body became visible to him in the passing darkness, a plan took shape in his mind. He’d been wracking his brain for days, and here finally was something that could work.

Rather than cautiously speaking during rest periods, it was better to mutter, lips barely moving, during work. As the afternoon work period started, Zhang Hua, a vigorous porter of iron ore, didn’t show the slightest fatigue. He initiated exploratory discussions of his plan. Several vigilant comrades gathered around him, and he made his proposal to slaves passing nearby.

Everyone seemed to think it was feasible.

“Should we include Ore-Head?” one laborer asked.

“No,” Zhang Hua said. “He’s going to act as bait.”

Zhang Hua was more grim, callous, and farsighted than his fellow slaves. He knew Ore-Head for what he was: a fool who thought himself clever.

As Zhang Hua conspired with friends, Ore-Head was wantonly, and without fear of ridicule, publicizing his own theory of escape. He told anyone he came across that escape required at least three people: two to separately draw fire, giving a third the chance to escape. Based on the theory alone, Ore-Head considered himself a great mathematician. But this great thinker was going further, planning to put his theory into practice. He campaigned intensely, making a lot of noise trying to assemble followers. This interfered with Zhang Hua’s operations, whose first thought had been to beat the fool into submission, or death. But then Zhang Hua thought of a wiser counter-stratagem: exploit the idiot and whatever small group he assembled, as decoys.

The next day, Zhang Hua and Ore-Head were both still trying to attract followers. But a new problem arose: a slave named Bug-Eyes had died in the wee hours of the morning. This diminutive man, a porter of ore like Zhang Hua, had probably succumbed to exhaustion, though it may have been illness. The robot wardens forced a group of slaves to carry his body out of the scar like so much ore, and dump it over a cliff. Bug-Eyes had been Ore-head’s go-between, and central to his plan. Now that the little man was gone, Ore-Head was panicking.

“I want to join up with you,” Zhang Hua said in a low voice, sidling up to Ore-Head.

Ore-Head could barely contain his excitement at these words. He hadn’t expected to attract such a strong and courageous person, someone who’d always looked down on him. It seemed this paragon of humanity was also short on manpower. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Ore-Head devoured his lunch ration. He tried to avoid staring at Zhang Hua, but couldn’t help the occasional conspirator’s wink. Zhang Hua ignored these, preparing himself mentally.

After lunch, Zhang Hua scanned the scar, the peak, the south face of the mountain. He nodded at Ore-Head, who’d been waiting for this signal. Ore-Head sprang up and fled.

At the same time, another slave leapt to his feet, the only other person that Ore-Head had managed to recruit.

But Zhang Hua didn’t budge.

Ore-head became the first sacrificial victim.

Three people weren’t enough. Humans were slower than robots, after all. Zhang Hua was indeed farsighted, and he was also quick-witted. Two slaves were enough to start drawing fire, it was true, but his plan diverged from Ore-Head’s there. Poor, foolish Ore-Head, who had begun to lose his nerve, and was now burning to death on the mountainside: he’d just needed a little push in the right direction. Now the regular army could take the field.

Zhang Hua charged up a mound of ore, brandishing a rod he’d extracted from the ore processing machinery, and swept a fire-spurting robot off its feet. A blow to the chest plate caused a short circuit, and then it was prone in the rubble, unmoving, silent. But Zhang Hua kept bashing until the machine was in pieces.

Elsewhere around the scar, Zhang Hua’s comrades were about similar business.

This was the only way. Only by destroying machine guards and commanders could human slaves really escape.

When Zhang Hua and his comrades were fleeing down the mountainside, most of the scar’s slaves didn’t yet understand their sudden turn of fortune. But soon enough there were dispersing in amazement, the hematite abandoned.

Zhang Hua led his small group down the south face, his destination clear: the tree line, and the concealment of the forest.

2 – That World

As You Ruo set out, the darkness of night was just beginning to retreat before a brightening in the east.

He had to begin his great journey by daylight. The dark made no difference to machine eyes, but could greatly affect human movement. Humans were physically inferior to the machines, without a doubt.

But no matter how inferior, humans didn’t have to succumb to machine logic, or cleave to the machine imperative, or take machine orders.

You Ruo could have arranged to launch his rebellious action at a safer moment, but he wanted to be a symbol, his journey a declaration. He’d been preparing for a long time, putting all kinds of goods in order. The work had been underway for a year. Meticulous thinking had allowed him to do all the planning in his head. He’d never dared to put pen to paper, like so many previous revolutionaries.

You Ruo secured his backpack. This was all he’d bring out of his home today, a shovel and a few other tools. His ostensible work was tending flora. He’d buried what he really needed near the border of this vast parkland furthest from his house. There, day by day, while muddling through his gardening and forestry chores, he’d secretly brought things along, and today he would gather them up.

It wasn’t warm or cold today, and the sun shone just bright enough. Good weather for launching a revolution.

You Ruo headed north from his home, passing a pond he’d excavated himself. At the time he’d meant to dig a small reservoir, so he could swim in the summer, but the machines soon put a stop to this. They were not miserly with water resources, but they’d feared You Ruo would drown, dying prematurely like a moth drawn to flame. After all, his well-being was paramount. The compromise was this little cistern pond, so shallow even frogs ignored it.

Gathering tools wasn’t difficult. You Ruo knew their precise locations, having walked this route daily to review the hiding places and burials. After fetching what he needed, he changed direction, heading southwest. He avoided some dwelling places and came to another supply burial under a flowerbed. Keeping everything in batches like this was minimally risky, and conserved advantage. He turned southeast, passing through a crowd of statues he had been carving for years, all crude and unfinished.

Originally, he’d planned to raise some animals around here, but this had also been prohibited.

He left the Sculpture Crowd behind, heading for the east side of Demarcation Forest. You Ruo had planted these woods with his own hands. He’d watched saplings reach gradually skyward, and he had named the forest, though it wasn’t really a line of demarcation.

But on its east side was an electrified fence.

You Ruo’s home was convenient for his current secret operations: far from crowds, located at the world’s desolate edge. This parkland had been allocated for medical therapies, including the treatment—or at least containment—of abnormal minds like You Ruo. He wandered the fields and woodlands, knowing countless machine eyes always watched him. His past escape attempts had brought down everything from kindly remonstration to machine force, but he’d never been harmed.

The machines always had his well-being in mind, after all.

As early as puberty, when You Ruo had been classified an exceptional and unconventional thinker, he’d been granted special consideration, and closely monitored. He was sent to special treatment wards, given special care, and allocated special resources for his growth and development. His life was custom-made. All care was taken to make him feel wanted, and not an object of discrimination.

And so he’d learned to hide his real capabilities, to bide his time, and to wait for a relaxation of machine vigilance.

It was quite a discovery. He wondered if he was the first human to realize that the machines could indeed relax their vigilance. They ran on programs, algorithms, but they could alter these according to observation. Above all, they sought to avoid squandering resources. You Ruo had gradually come to understand this.

So, for the past six months, You Ruo had given a very meek and docile performance. He tried to seem like a normal human: content, domesticated, comfortable, and kept. At one point the machine administrators even asked him to move back among the general population of humans. You Ruo explained he wasn’t ready to socialize, that he needed another therapeutic period. The machines amicably granted this.

Now he meant to exploit their mistake, and conveniently depart.

Ahead, through the trees, was the electrified mesh of the fence. You Ruo crept toward it. The electricity was merely a backup measure. Every time he’d approached the fence before with destructive intent, he’d been warned away by the machines. He’d always preferred the agony of electroshock, which he liked to believe somehow punished his caretakers as well. At any rate, it forced the machines to resuscitate him and transport him back to his room.

Recalling all this now, he barely noticed the two robot guardians that haunted this place. They inspected and patrolled this section of the fencing, moving among the trees like spirits.

I’ve always been a strange one, You Ruo thought, suppressing a wild joy in his heart. Today I will not go seeking the others. My first order of business in the free world will be to find shelter. I can always come back and arouse the domesticated to do as I have done.

You Ruo struggled to constrain his excitement. He gathered up a rubber watering hose and began watering the trees. He did his best not to raise his head and focused on the electrified mesh. He didn’t want his smiling expression recorded.

Today, You Ruo’s strategy would be different than before. There would be no surprise attack on the electrified fence. This time he paid attention to the nearest security camera. He glanced at it quite a few times. A direct attack on the fence immediately brought riot suppression robots, but causing a security camera to shut down might read as a malfunction, and merely summon a machine tinkerer. Of course, the deactivating of the camera couldn’t be too obvious. The machine admins mustn’t perceive your involvement. Timing was everything.

The water arced further and further from the hose. At the right moment, it was suddenly firing into the security camera, at an angle rain would never hit it. The device probably called for help before going mute.

He had about five minutes before the repair bot arrived. And then it would need at least ten minutes to repair the camera. You Ruo dropped the hose, brought out his massive homemade shears, and approached the electrified fence. This section was blind without the camera, and could offer no resistance. When You Ruo was little, he’d used metal scissors to cut electrified wire. Back then, the current had automatically cut off, but of course now was different. The oversized shears in his hands were wooden, and dry, and would insulate him. The mesh crackled and sparked as it was cut.

You Ruo thought: This would’ve been more fun at night, a beautiful light show, like send-off party fireworks.

He cut a big square-shaped hole in the mesh.

He cocked his head a moment, appreciating his masterpiece. He packed away his tool and stepped proudly through the recently constructed gate.

The slow tinkerer bot finally showed up.

At first, You Ruo was solemn and dignified as he proceeded forward, neither urgent nor slow, his stride vigorous. But when the repair bot began tapping away at its work, You Ruo decided time was of the essence, and took off in a wild run.

As he ran, he kept looking over his shoulder, filling his vision with the world of his birth. There was sentiment in his heart, even though he was running away as fast as he could.

I’ll come back! You Ruo screamed in his mind. I swear it!

“I’ll come back!” he screamed aloud, unable to stop himself. “I swear it!”

The first step toward revolution was a success!

Yes, revolution. That was the word. He hadn’t spoken it aloud for years, but remembering it now, You Ruo couldn’t keep his blood from boiling with righteous indignation.

But there was something You Ruo didn’t know.

The robots had stopped paying close attention to him. They hadn’t been watching for six months. As long as he didn’t return to teeming streets and publicize his views, as long as he stayed in the wild, open country he loved, why waste time and resources?

3 – The Edge of the World

The dark of the forest was deep and unfathomable. Years of falling leaves had made a thick loam here, like nothing Zhang Hua had ever seen. The roar of helicopters had been left behind, outside the forest. Zhang Hua and his companions had nearly been intercepted.

Now he had to go on alone. The helicopters couldn’t enter the forest, but they could heat-sense from above, broadly, so there was no advantage in sticking together. The only plan was to split up and hope for the best. Zhang Hua pointed left and right, and his meaning was clear: run for your lives. He plunged into the primeval halls of the forest, leaving behind a party of comrades glancing at each other in dismay.

They soon scattered, their brief alliance dissolved.

The synthetic rations Zhang Hua had carefully gathered and stored on his person would last two days, at most, but he believed the forest was abundant in wild fruit. He dreaded running out of water more than starving to death. Where there were trees, there must be water, but finding it was another matter.

Watching the sun through gaps in the canopy, he could tell the time of day, and toward nightfall he began to worry. This region, untouched and unconquered by humans, must be haunted by beasts of prey. It was said they feared fire, but Zhang Hua didn’t have the implements of fire on him. Worse still, he didn’t know which direction to go. His plan had been limited to escaping the work site. He hadn’t thought about what came afterward. During enslavement, freedom had seemed glorious, but on an empty stomach, abstract concepts of freedom were utterly worthless.

All he knew, in a vague way, was that some places didn’t suffer under machine control.

No ferocious beasts attacked that first night—something at least to rejoice over. Asleep and dreaming, Zhang Hua barely heard deep roars, remote, indistinct.

He groped about aimlessly for three days and nights. On the fourth day he began to feel unwell. The berries of this woodland, although fresh, were no match for synthetic rations when it came to cleanliness, and he doubted the potability of the water. Although he’d never eaten his fill in the past, his digestive tract had become used to a certain level of sanitation.

He felt his legs were only reluctantly supporting him, let alone carrying him forward. The canopy above grew sparse. It seemed he’d reached the far end of the forest, at last. This restored his spirits somewhat, and the excitement temporarily compensated for his physical weakness.

Some time in the afternoon, the first small flake fell on Zhang Hua’s head. He flinched with fright, then realized this thing was harmless, a natural phenomenon.

Glittering, translucent snowflakes drifted down, accumulating in a layer of white powder. Falling on Zhang Hua’s body, they were cold, and dissolved instantly. It had never snowed at the work site, where the phenomenon was merely a legend. Zhang Hua opened his mouth, and a dose of refreshing coolness entered his throat. At this point, he regarded snow as a thirst-quenching beverage.

But the snow grew more intense, the flakes larger, sticking to Zhang Hua’s body, which soon grew numb. His exposed skin was frozen, turning purple. The sky was going dark, and all around was a gray void. Passing through dense curtains of snow, he distractedly saw something in the distance, snow-covered buildings or houses. They seemed to be in good repair, out here in the middle of nowhere, like fairy palaces from folktales.

And then he could take no more. After days of overexertion, and inadequate food and water, he swooned and fell into the snow.

You Ruo’s technological circumstances were far superior to Zhang Hua’s. But even though his tools were more than adequate, he was venturing into mires and primeval forests, worlds he’d never braved before. In the darkest of forest nights he didn’t dare turn on his electric torch, which was bright as daylight. Who knew what beasts it might attract? His journey was turning out much different from what he’d imagined, but his revolutionary zeal was undiminished.

Passing through fields, fording rivers, the wild joy of his countenance never wavered. Starting out, he’d still felt some lingering fear of pursuit, but as that first day wore on, the fear had diminished until there was nothing left. Snacking when hungry, sipping purified water when thirsty, this carefree wandering life was actually quite satisfying. You Ruo wasn’t worried about provisions. He believed that before he finished everything he’d brought with him, he would find the utopia from legends, the land of peach blossoms. Besides, his rations were enough for ten days.

Soon, You Ruo was losing his way in an undulating landscape of hillocks. He’d originally foreseen ascending the first of these and beholding a wide new expanse of flat country beyond. He hadn’t expected to conquer one of these hillocks after another, in seemingly unending succession, and getting thoroughly lost.

But in this undulating progress forward, he did not grow careless. He headed due east, consulting a compass once per hour to rectify his course. Although he didn’t know what was under the eastern sky, at least he was putting more distance between himself and his former world. Originally, he’d camped in suburban districts, the western extremity of that world, but now he was in true wilderness.

Ahead, the hills were higher, sheer, and sparsely wooded, like the alopecia-stricken skulls he’d seen in medical texts.

You Ruo hesitated. Night must fall eventually, and it would be difficult to find his way amid those copses and cliffs. Then again, high places had their advantages. They commanded wide views, perhaps allowing him to discover something new.

So, he began to mountaineer.

Adding climbing to his physical exertions was not You Ruo’s idea of fun. He thought several times of giving up. About halfway up, on the waist of what was essentially a mountain, he pitched camp. The next day, he nearly tumbled off the mountainside twice. But his faith and conviction kept him going, carrying him through great difficulty to the summit.

He chased his breath for a long time. You Ruo was a large man.

In his world, men and women were well-built and proportioned. Caloric intake was regulated by the machines, but You Ruo had refused these limits, enjoying excess in food and drink. Eventually, as in much else, the machines treated You Ruo as a special case, and didn’t regulate his diet, merely providing suggestions. But he didn’t listen. Listening here would have signified something larger to You Ruo, and his body itself became an emblem of resistance to machine control. Not that he was a very effective symbol. Wandering parkland wilds, his mass didn’t cause many to ponder the wider implications of disobedience.

Now, his night vision device revealed heat-generating bodies in distant lowlands: people residing in houses, and judging by their shapes, these weren’t the dwellings of his own people. You Ruo moved across the wide summit, wanting to see the community from a different vantage.

He stumbled, tripped, fell on something soft. He put out a probing hand and discovered something warm.

4 – Communication

Zhang Hua opened his eyes, alert as a cat. His feral gaze fixed on You Ruo.

“Easy does it,” You Ruo said. “Let me help you.”

Zhang Hua slowly digested this stranger’s words. He hadn’t talked with anyone in days, and You Ruo’s manner of speech was odd. Zhang Hua puzzled over the alien syllables sprinkled among the familiar, and the strange inflections, until meaning dawned upon him.

“First eat a little something.”

Zhang Hua had been staring at the thing in You Ruo’s hand. Although he couldn’t see it clearly, he guessed it was food. He cautiously took the proffered foodstuff, gave it a few licks, and the delicious flavor did the rest. He devoured it in a frenzy, several times biting his own fingers and tongue.

“Where have you come from?” You Ruo asked, handing over another piece, patiently waiting for Zhang Hua to finish eating. “East?”

Zhang Hua shook his head, not understanding. You Ruo pointed east, and Zhang Hua shook his head again. He’d lost his bearings.

“Is everyone from your land like you?” You Ruo said, groping for some way to communicate. He struggled to imagine the difference between himself and Zhang Hua. “How do your people live?”

Zhang Hua wanted more food, but You Ruo showed no sign of willingness to share more.

Actually, there was more in You Ruo’s hand, but he had to consider his rationing against Zhang Hua’s considerable appetite. Luckily, they’d both seen the settlement below, where there was surely food.

Zhang Hua focused on his brain rather than his stomach, and began the arduous process of telling his story to You Ruo, explaining many things repeatedly, and doing his best to answer You Ruo’s barely intelligible questions. In the end, he’d made his place in the world, and that of his people, more or less clear.

“Well, there it is,” You Ruo said, pensive, thoughtful. “Your people are also controlled by machines.”

“Your people aren’t any better off?” Zhang Hua asked, desperate to know.

You Ruo began to preach. His tale was well-ordered, but excessive in rationality, making it hard for Zhang Hua to understand. Although You Ruo condemned his own people’s pampered way of life at every turn, the specific examples and anecdotes made Zhang Hua yearn for it, utterly. Zhang Hua listened to the account as if respectfully hearing a fairy-tale. He’d heard this sort of thing when he was a child. Now it seemed like a lifetime ago.

In his own world, Zhang Hua had not always been the lowest of slaves. In his early years he’d been a skilled worker under the machine domination, and had read about privilege and human rights in ancient texts. This sort of content had been sprinkled throughout reams of technical data, or implied by it, and so had not fallen into the abyss of the Historical Materials Ban. In the pages of those dry and dull specialist manuals, there’d been no descriptions of technology beyond a narrow scope, but reading enough of them had allowed Zhang Hua to vaguely perceive other ways of life.

He discovered that humanity had once been free. He discovered that humanity had ruled over machines. He discovered quite a lot from technical manuals, including the revelation that humanity had not always been as it now was. And so was born the seed of discontent within him.

His demotion to slave labor was not due to his thought crimes, which would have gotten him thoroughly decommissioned. It was because the technological innovations he’d been assigned to were declared complete. Thus, he was transformed overnight, from middle class technological servant to common laborer.

The topic of conversation gradually shifted to the settlement in the lowlands.

“I’ve heard of people like them,” You Ruo said. “Savages, not under the control of my world or yours. Free and unrestrained. Their material standards must be quite low.”

“In other words . . . going there would be bad,” Zhang Hua said. He could barely understand phrasing like “material standards.”

“Not necessarily,” You Ruo said, feeling ideologically awkward. “At least they have freedom.”

Freedom? Wasn’t this what Zhang Hua longed for? Otherwise, why did he hazard escaping the work site?

“I want to go to your world,” he said to You Ruo.

You Ruo couldn’t believe his ears. “From what I understand, you obtained freedom with great difficulty. And now you want to hand it over, in exchange for . . . some leftovers?”

Zhang Hua didn’t understand the word “leftovers.” To him, it seemed everything You Ruo ate was a precious delicacy.

“If you really want to go,” You Ruo said, “I can’t stop you. But you may regret it.” The rotund man turned, resolutely facing the sun and heading down the mountain. The silhouettes of the settlement were clear. You Ruo’s goal was clear.

Zhang Hua hesitated before catching up to the stranger. He couldn’t be sure if You Ruo’s world was really as wonderful as described. It sounded like a fantasy, the dream of some mad hermit. Moreover, Zhang Hua was lost. Perhaps following You Ruo was a bit safer, for now.

5 – Among the Savages

When they entered the village, almost everyone stopped their handiwork and labor, and quietly stared. No one seemed inclined to guard their leader, even as the two outsiders approached the largest thatch structure in the community, which You Ruo correctly took for the headman’s residence. The headman himself soon came out, calm and composed as he looked over his two strange guests.

At first there was no way to carry on a dialogue. Neither You Ruo nor Zhang Hua understood the headman’s stern, questioning utterances. There were a few vaguely familiar words, and that was all. But You Ruo was, as usual, completely prepared. He brought out a small interpreting device, and this resolved the communication problem.

The two of them were allowed to enter the headman’s home, and were taken to a long meeting hall. Zhang Hua’s nostrils flared, as he detected a neighboring dining hall’s cooking meat. The headman didn’t need You Ruo to interpret Zhang Hua’s expression. Servants were called upon, to treat the guests hospitably, and soon a clay basin of cooked meats was placed on the meeting table.

Thereafter, Zhang Hua didn’t hear a word of the talks between You Ruo and the headman. He devoured the roasted meats from the clay basin, rapacious, oblivious. The guard standing nearby allowed his envy to show through his wooden expression.

The meat was soon gone, and Zhang Hua pointed at the empty clay basin, wanting more. A savage brought in a basin of vegetable mush and set it down. Zhang Hua groaned in discontent, but reluctantly went to work on the mush. He’d been eating cheap synthesized rations for most of his life, and here the food was fresh at least, and he’d been starving for most of his journey.

When they left the meeting hall, Zhang Hua couldn’t tell if You Ruo and the headman had reached some kind of agreement. You Ruo seemed content, judging by his expression. Perhaps that was part of his persuasion strategy. Zhang Hua couldn’t tell.

They entered a small enclosure off the long hall, apparently a guest room, and Zhang Hua immediately smelled danger. The door closing heavily behind them was just one clue. The greed in the savages’ eyes was another, and more convincing. To Zhang Hua it seemed saliva must soon flow from those eyes. He came from a long history of privation and starvation, and he couldn’t misinterpret the signs. Zhang Hua had been existing on the border of life and death continuously. He was very sensitive to danger, which was how he’d survived until now.

He did his best to convey his misgivings to You Ruo via gesticulation. You Ruo didn’t believe him at first, but Zhang Hua became emphatic, at last turning You Ruo’s doubt into half-belief. You Ruo carefully peered out a window. He had, after all, years of experience plotting against the machines.

The savages outside the window were whispering.

“Should we run?” Zhang Hua said, leaning close to You Ruo. Zhang Hua also had covert experience, having frequently communicated escape plans to companions right in front of machine guards. He was sure the savages outside couldn’t hear his voice.

“Why?” You Ruo said, expressionless, watching Zhang Hua’s unmoving lips.

“They mean to eat us.” Zhang Hua’s muscles were tense. The first assent or order from You Ruo would send him fleeing.

“Unlikely, before daybreak.” You Ruo’s expression didn’t change.

“Murder at night is convenient.”

“They’re bold.” You Ruo smiled. “They would kill us in broad daylight. They’ll want us fresh for breakfast, won’t they?”

What happened next would settle the question, which wasn’t one of boldness. The savages were indifferent to day and night, and they couldn’t wait for the sun to rise. You Ruo was rich in fat and oil. Zhang Hua was sturdy with lean meat. This sort of chance didn’t come along every day.

A group of men entered the room. Three were armed with short, dark blades, while others held crude clubs. Zhang Hua noticed some of the younger men licking their lips. He couldn’t help backing away, and nearly falling in the process.

Hungry indeed, You Ruo thought. And not even a token bit of ceremony before the slaughter.  

Not waiting for them to get closer, or crack gloating smiles, he brought out his weapon.

6 – Leave-taking

Although the door was obstructed, Zhang Hua easily rushed and broke through a thatch wall of the room. He and You Ruo fled, leaving a dead body behind.

The laser weapon had originally been used for killing wild animals, but in his panic, You Ruo had used it to discharge a lethal electric shock.

They hadn’t escaped without their own injuries. Zhang Hua’s foot had been cut open by a blade, and You Ruo was worse off: his whole body covered in bruises and lacerations. When at last they found a place to rest and gather their wits, Zhang Hua looked at You Ruo and his weapon, in amazement, and the portly man felt awkward.

“One victory doesn’t mean much,” You Ruo said. “They’re barbarians, without proper reasoning faculties, and we took them by surprise.”

Zhang Hua wanted, more than anything, to propose visiting You Ruo’s wonderous world. But You Ruo beat him to the punch. “I want to go to your people, Zhang Hua,” he said.

Having been under You Ruo’s influence and tutelage the past two days, Zhang Hua roughly understood this sentence. But he shook his head, thinking he must have misheard.

“To remedy the barbarism we just encountered,” You Ruo said, “we must change the world entire.” His tone was full of lofty sentiment. “That means changing the world of machine-controlled humanity!”

This sort of bold, visionary talk didn’t move Zhang Hua. All he could think about was You Ruo’s safe, well-fed world. To Zhang Hua, it was the legendary Kingdom of Heaven. He was very interested in that place. Too bad he could only understand it from You Ruo’s words and phrases: spacious accommodations, abundant food, and especially an idle life free of needless manual labor!

And all this obtainable just by giving the machine administrators an identity authentication number.

“The revolution will depend on your people,” You Ruo said, continuing his speech, “who have suffered the lowest depths of enslavement. In my world, people have become numb, apathetic, sleeping like the dead, their human spirit thoroughly lost!”

Somewhat recuperated, You Ruo called upon Zhang Hua to begin their journey. You Ruo set off, his sentiments lofty, and Zhang Hua followed behind, laden with anxiety. When You Ruo’s revolutionary zeal surged, Zhang Hua ruminated more seriously than ever in his life. When You Ruo was moved to tears by his plans, Zhang Hua came to his own bold resolve.

He would go to You Ruo’s world, assume You Ruo’s name, and take his place and identity.

According to common sense, Zhang Hua’s decision was weak-minded. But it was precisely his ignorance that allowed him to dare something so presumptuous and reckless. In his own world, Zhang Hua had been considered a very intelligent person.

At this point, despite appearances, the two of them were already walking separate paths. You Ruo always liked to preach revolutionary principles at Zhang Hua during mealtimes. Of course, he spoke at other times as well. Zhang Hua would listen, silent, his mind often wandering. This annoyed You Ruo. For the sake of food, Zhang Hua could sometimes produce a few words, even reproduce some of You Ruo’s. From this fragmentary information, You Ruo built an idea of the slaves’ situation, and that of their world.

Zhang Hua couldn’t understand You Ruo’s logic, no matter how hard he tried. Why had You Ruo spent so much time and energy fleeing to this desolate mountain wilderness? He followed You Ruo, his pace flagging, frequently falling far behind. You Ruo waited for him every time, shaking his head in frustration.

“Forget it,” You Ruo finally said one day, his tone pitying. Zhang Hua had lagged behind again. “Go to my world.” You Ruo knew the nest of monsters he’d escaped filled Zhang Hua with yearning. Perhaps Zhang Hua should be allowed to experience it for himself.

Zhang Hua said nothing. You Ruo had saved his life, after all, possibly more than once. Zhang Hua couldn’t just lightly depart after all they’d been through. But he didn’t have the courage to follow You Ruo in emancipating the slaves, then call upon them to free the whole world.

“There is no happiness there,” You Ruo said. He told his identification number to Zhang Hua. “In the end you’ll understand.”

Zhang Hua nodded. He didn’t know how to say goodbye, really. So, he took both of You Ruo’s hands in his and shook them with all his might. Then he turned and left in a hurry. Perhaps he feared You Ruo would change his mind.

“In the end you’ll know it’s too late,” You Ruo said quietly, watching Zhang Hua depart.

He picked up a nearby tree branch, and leaning on it, turned and continued on his way.

7 – Two Worlds

After giving Zhang Hua a general physical examination, this world’s machine administrator was astonished: it hadn’t known a human being could transform to such a degree!

It gave orders to spare no resources in treating and curing everything.

For the malnutrition, he must be nourished. His skin burns must be treated and healed. The pathological change of his internal organs must be medicated. For the missing testicles, prosthetics would be provided. His health would be restored at all costs!

Zhang Hua had never slept so comfortably.

In his old life, when the daybreak bell rang, he would long for even one more moment of sleep. But this had been impossible. Any attempt to sleep more had brought down the lash of the electric whip. Sleep beyond the bell had become a beautiful dream for him, unattainable, remote.

But now that the dream had been realized, he found it difficult to enjoy its comforts. His internal clock would wake him with a start, and for the first few days he would even scuttle out of bed, helpless against the instinct. Then he would remember where he was, and go back to sleep. But even in deep sleep he would wake randomly sometimes, fearing the electric whip.

This state persisted for a month. And then the dread in his heart slowly withdrew.

Adequate sleep was merely one part of Zhang Hua’s recovery. This world took meticulous care of him, which he wasn’t used to. He started creating disturbances soon enough. The first time he chose food for himself, having never seen so many delicious options in one place, he insisted on taking more than he needed, going so far as to cheat the machines and make them believe he wasn’t full. This accorded well enough with his You Ruo identity, but his digestive problems later that night did not, and he had no choice but to seek medical aid from the machines.

During his general rehabilitation, Zhang Hua saw few other people. Except for a few enthusiastic caregivers and visitors, humans contacted him entirely by audio. All nursing was done by machine. Zhang Hua was, for the time being, unable to adapt to this sort of change. His slave identity, and the master status of machines, had been flipped. Now it was the machines that waited upon him.

Abandoned by his guide, You Ruo took a winding, confused path to the region of the slave laborers. Eventually he reached this world’s central district, otherwise known as the Capital. His appearance shocked people: none of their physiques were so full-bodied and round, not even the petty technical bourgeoisie of this grim city.

Their gazes gradually turned from envy to hostility. They had been maintaining some minimal level of propriety toward him, but this soon vanished as the permeating enmity boiled over. Machine guards swept in to curb the incipient disturbance, caring nothing for the right and wrong of the affair. You Ruo ended up as injured as those who’d moved to attack him. Finally, covered with cuts and bruises, his clothing torn, You Ruo did all he could to break out of the encirclement of machines and hostile citizens, nearly losing his orientation in this blind rush.

But he wasn’t blind. His destination was the work site, the scar in the side of the mountain, the iron mine. The creatures of this city were perhaps incapable of joining his revolution, but he reckoned things would be different among the slave laborers. You Ruo had seen them, the toiling multitudes, from a distance. Here at last were Zhang Hua’s former workmates.

He believed in a fundamental instinct that would prompt them to join his struggle.

Although You Ruo was bursting with revolutionary fervor, he was cool-headed when it came to specific actions. Rushing among the slaves to raise a blatant hue and cry, demanding rebellion against the machines, would certainly be futile, and possibly cost him his life. You Ruo needed a properly thought-out strategic countermeasure.

He made his way toward the work site, calling to the nearest laborers in a low voice. At first they were frightened, but as he got closer, presenting himself in all his alien rotundity, they couldn’t help staring in awe. Obviously, they’d never seen such a well-fed individual in their lives. You Ruo watched their expressions, approaching cautiously.

At least they don’t want to eat me, You Ruo thought, noting they weren’t reacting like the savages had. They were betraying suspicion, or awe, not that unsettling hunger. You Ruo would never forget that look.

He threw out some remaining crumbs of food from his pack. Several slaves fell, frantically gathering the gifts. Then more fell upon their comrades to fight for what they could. This feeding frenzy soon alarmed a machine guard, but it merely drove the slaves away with threatening words, then passed inches from a frightened You Ruo without any reaction. Its program was to guard slaves, and You Ruo wasn’t on its register.

After it had gone, a bold group of slaves returned. They whispered to each other, their susurrating speech gradually growing louder.

“Who is he?”

“How is here at leisure, with nothing to do?”

“Why aren’t you employed?”

This was asked a number of times, with increasing ire. The slaves were still wary of him, but now several leaders advanced to surround him, as if honor bound to do so. This happened to be their lunch break, so the machines were ignoring this potentially troublesome gathering.

“Why are you all so worried about me?” You Ruo said, thoroughly puzzled. “It’s the machines that should concern you. They are your enemies!”

He outlined his revolution, to no effect. He preached until he was hoarse, and it made no difference. At first, they seemed to have no malicious intent, merely rifling through his pockets for food as he spoke. Unfortunately, there was nothing left.

He shouldn’t have started resisting. That was his mistake.

Initially, he understood they were starving, and he spread his arms and let them search to their heart’s content. But when they started examining his weapons and instruments with the curiosity of children, he panicked. He slapped hands away, shoved, and soon he was struggling, gripped on all sides. His instincts took over, and he fought like a trapped animal.

His words had failed. Somehow, these oppressed people hadn’t understood, or cared, about the revolution. And now he was on the ground, and they were beating him, seemingly mad with bloodlust.

“Kill him!” they screamed. “Kill him! Kill him!”

8 – This World is Primary

In a room with almost no light, the thing that vaguely resembled a human opened its eyes.

For the first time in many years, a real human was standing before it.

“After so long, it is surprising that the human body has not changed,” it remarked, suspended in its nutrient fluid. Speaking required no great effort. Although it hadn’t used speech to express ideas in ages, machine implants remedied this. “It’s no wonder, I suppose. You have lived in great comfort and enjoyed a relatively high position. It hasn’t been necessary to evolve.”

How did it know what You Ruo’s former life had been like? He said nothing, still frozen in astonishment. His mind was not reacting properly. At the same time, he was very curious. After all, the inner workings of machine society were being revealed to him.

“Why do you wish to leave my world?” it asked.

You Ruo still couldn’t respond.

“Say something, would you? I haven’t heard a human speak in so long.”

Finally, You Ruo spoke, and for the first time, to a receptive listener. He held forth on his life and philosophy, nervous at first, but soon with great eloquence.

“Life in my world is indeed relatively nice,” he said, “but doesn’t allow for an ounce of heretical thinking. Human history demonstrates this state of affairs cannot last. I’ve read my share of history, and I know human nature tends toward freedom.”

“But,” it interrupted, “are you free now?”

“Free . . . I don’t even know if I can survive in this world of yours.”

“You’ll have that answer soon enough,” it said, its tone cold. “When you ran into Zhang Hua, he told you what it was like here. So why did you come?”

“I believed that here . . . I could fully realize my worth.”

It seemed to sigh. “Really? You acted on such a trite and banal idea?”

“What are you anyway?” You Ruo asked, growing anxious.

“I am the administrator of this place.”

“Machines are the administrators here.”

“No,” it said firmly. “The real administrators are still humans.”

You Ruo waited for this humanlike thing to continue.

“I’m not the only one, of course. There are twenty outstanding minds here, altogether. We supervise the machines. They have no power over us.” For a long time it didn’t speak, then went on with assurance. “The machines have an extraordinary capacity for obedience, after all. And human laborers are the cheapest.”

You Ruo was astonished.

“We twenty minds are enough to run this world,” it said.

“But . . . to what end?” You Ruo asked. “Reduced labor costs? Soaring profits? What’s it all for?”

“For one thing, your world’s consumer goods are supplied by us.” It drank from a straw extending into its tank, possibly fortifying itself for the next revelation. “And we exchange knowledge, not just physical labor.” It told You Ruo how his world conducted massive scientific experiments here, experiments that required large scale, cheap human “participation.”

“But what for?” You Ruo demanded, his worldview in total collapse.

“To explore the cosmos. What else?” Now its tone was full of yearning. “Humanity’s field of view is too narrow. And its efficiency is too low, of course. At the moment, our sort of highly efficient labor arrangement makes immediate study of the cosmos possible.”

“You still have high level scientists?”

“No need. As I said, twenty outstanding minds are sufficient.” Now this human thing sounded amiable. “We, the twenty, give rise to unparalleled thinking, not to mention a functional government. Lower level administration is handled by the machines. No human can think faster than a machine, except for us.”

“I still don’t understand,” You Ruo said. “Why retain my world? Why not implement your societal model across the planet?”

“A fine question,” it said, “and one that we cannot answer at this time. Possibly it is down to historical causes.” This was a first, an admission of incomplete knowledge. “Whatever the cause, the result has been a compromise between our two worlds.”

You Ruo was dissatisfied with this answer.

“If, one day, aliens pay a visit,” it said, “your people would make better envoys. We can admit that much.”

This thing isn’t human, You Ruo thought, sensing danger, his mind racing. It’s a puppet of the machines.

“How did you come to decide on your mode of development?” he asked, growing desperate. “How did you settle on this particular evolutionary path, in terms of knowledge? As an outside observer, I’ve noticed some . . . room for improvement. Why not make it twenty-one outstanding minds?”

“Because you are not qualified,” it replied with devastating candor.

This candid talk did not make the humanlike thing feel any sympathy for the visitor, or recognize a fellow talented mind. You Ruo was sent to prison. Three days later, he was brought to what seemed an execution room.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” You Ruo said, his tone calm, his legs trembling. His revolution needed the sacrifice of martyrs, of course, and he had prepared himself for this. But it didn’t hurt to try.

The two slaves holding him remained expressionless, and unresponsive.

Perhaps they’re deaf, You Ruo thought.

He had imagined his martyrdom many times, and some solemn, honorable way to die had always been conferred on him. He hadn’t expected this room full of people, the stink of sweat, and the countless children. Why was he being made to advance among these little ones?

The room was vast, making the little machine at the center seem almost comical. As he approached, a black marking on the machine’s surface made You Ruo shiver. He did not resist. All his former attempts at resistance had proved futile, so now he gave in. He was fastened to the machine in an unsteady half-sitting position. Below him was something sharp. He couldn’t lower himself any further because of that.

You Ruo suddenly saw a possibility for how the machine worked. For what it was. Not an execution machine after all.

It was the only possibility, really.

The machine activated. You Ruo screamed, and lost consciousness.

The two bloody testicles dropped into a discard receptacle.

When he first woke, it was to piercing pain. When he found the source of the pain, he again lost consciousness. This time from despair.

Later, he found he hadn’t yet been assigned specific work. He had to do some minimal level of healing first.

He endured, his spirit defeated, for three days. The pain was not yet gone, and he killed himself by biting off his tongue.

He obviously wasn’t a true revolutionary, psychologically twisted, abnormal enough to see it through. The world would have to wait, possibly many years, for a wiser, stronger person to emerge.

Two years later, Zhang Hua died of old age. He was thirty. His laborer’s constitution never adjusted to the easy living conditions.

9 – The World Entire

After Zhang Hua and You Ruo left this world and that, peace prevailed once again, and the sun showed its smiling face to the well-ordered land.

Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

About the Author

Xing He was born in Beijing. He has written many novels, including “Incomplete Magnetic Traces,” and he has written more than a hundred short stories, winning many Chinese literary awards. He was awarded the 1997 Beijing International Science Fair Galaxy Award in 1997. He loves to travel, and has visited Sweden, Poland, Egypt, South Africa, and other countries.

Heron of Earth

Vajra Chandrasekera

They never gave her a name; when she needs one she names and renames herself after the birds she sees from the watchtower, the birds she sees in the forest, whichever most recently caught her eye or arrow. When the seabirds are flying, when she’s riding the moment like air, she signs the telegraph as Petrel or Shearwater or Cormorant; otherwise she might be Pelican or Parrot or Crow or Pochard, or any of a thousand others. When she takes on a name she feels something of the bird settle over her like a cloak, something of its shape or nature. When she’s Darter, she feels sharp and sinuous. She likes to be Spoonbill or Ibis, wise and at peace. She tries not to be Bittern or Egret, or worst of all, Heron, the black-crowned night Heron, red-eyed and still and poised for sudden violence.

But the name doesn’t matter. She is the last human ambassador to the kingdom of the birds: the dinosaurs have claimed the empty Earth again, and they don’t care what she calls herself. There is only one of her, by any name.

Sometimes when being the only one becomes too loud, when it echoes and reverberates until it becomes hard to think about anything else, Egret wishes she had made graves to visit. She didn’t give her teammates/siblings/otherselves proper funerals; she has very confused memories about what a funeral should be like. She built clumsy pyres and tried to say ghost prayers in dead languages, but she couldn’t remember most of the words and she didn’t dare look it up in the ubik because then the Sentimentals would want to know what she was doing. Or perhaps they already knew and were waiting to see how it would play out. It’s exhausting to try to outthink godlike posthumans—she’s come around to the idea that the only rational response is to annoy them as much as possible. When the absence becomes deafening, Petrel rides the moment out, holding herself stiff and still.

The kingdom of the birds is green and full of noise. The kingdom of the birds is blue and white, rain made clean by generations of bots, now softly decaying on seabeds, crunching like sand on beaches.

(Ibis is puzzled by the tracks in the mud at the forest border south of the watchtower. She can’t place the species.)

The fluidity of her naming doesn’t seem to make any difference to the Sentimentals upstation, either. The funding ran out years ago. There was still black in Bittern’s pelt when the funding ran out. The funding ran out like oil and her pelt is gray now. The Sentimentals are no longer tracking her key performance indicators. It’s all gone pro bono. It’s all gone extraordinary circumstances. It’s all gone compassionate retirement. They are making the best of it. They probably think the different signatures are from the other members of Shearwater’s team. They probably think the rest of the team is still alive. Anyway, Spoonbill sometimes attaches environment reports that are probably still useful to them. From the perspective of the Working Group on the Preservation of the Ancestral Earth for Sentimental Reasons, the project was very successful, marred only a little by the team’s insistence on staying afterward. It’s possible the Sentimentals didn’t have an exit strategy. They’re not very good at exit strategy. Their entire ethos is tilting at windmills.

(The mud is hardened so the tracks are probably about a week old. The monsoon’s been and gone.)

Petrel’s team traveled to Earth, in one sense; in another, they were made here. The Sentimentals folded space-time to place a seed in Earth’s soil from an unimaginable distance; if there had been anyone to see it, they would have seen it simply appear, displacing exactly enough gravel and air that it did not register as an arrival at all, but simply as a break in continuity. The seed flowered into a swarm of bots, fewer and more specialized than the ones that had already worked for so long on the regreening of Earth. Cormorant and her team bubbled naked out of the soil, their phenotypes slightly modified from the baseline healthy adult Australopithecine, their minds and selfhoods forked from a volunteer posthuman of the Working Group and stripped down, copies made clean and ready for a new world and new lives—all confusing godlike memories or life experiences redacted, especially those that might break the simple physics that could be processed by their neo-primitivist meat brains. They were once a single being, but now individuals. They were adults, but in a way also newborn; they had access to large volumes of contextual and historical information from the ubik, though with the lag imposed for lookup time via the Oort portal, but the specific memories of their own former life were hazy to the point of anonymity except for that last voluntarist impulse that had guided their progenitor to fork their mind in the first place, and the traitor sense—an assumption so deep-seated that it was difficult to examine, much less dislodge—that this was normal. It was, the Sentimentals argued, all essential to the Aesthetic, their overriding principle that guided the regreening of the Earth: they had no interest in recreating any part of the disastrous late holocene.

Somewhere in those fogged-over memories of her godlike past self are the death rituals Spoonbill can no longer quite remember. She worries at this question, holding it in her mouth, unable to spit or swallow. Long, long ago, before she was herself but also before she was posthuman—when she was human the first time, in a childhood she can no longer recall but whose fossil contours she can still trace in the very shape of her mind, in the scars and the dreams and in the long-dead languages that spill from her mouth when she wakes up from nightmares of her dead, trapped and unable to go on—she knew how to help the dead. First, the fire; then the ashes into running water; then the prayers of passing on, which she can’t yet reconstruct, to be repeated in their cycles and epicycles through the years.

(The footprint is neither passerine nor non-passerine. It is unwebbed, and surprisingly large.)

Between the intermittent brownouts of the relay orbiter and the residual time dilation out of the Oort portal, the Sentimentals get Petrel’s telegraphic updates in batches, and when they have complaints about her formatting, their responses show up erratically, years late. Last week Darter finally got a memo from the Sentimentals asking her to cut it out with the ALL CAPS and saying STOP after every sentence. She’d been doing it for at least five years by that point.

“It was funny the first time,” the memo said. “But seriously, cut it out. You have more than enough bandwidth for video, feel free to use it.”

CANT VIDEO STOP ALL CAMS NONFUNC STOP WILL TRY 2 B MORE PROLIX STOP

The Sentimentals don’t have much leverage to make Cormorant do anything now that the project has ended and/or gone off the rails. The funding’s run out and the project is no longer being supplied through space-time folding, no more fresh raw material or new code arriving in the blink of an eye. She long ago refused the offer of being taken away to join a civilization that she’s never known. There’s nothing else they can offer her, the last human on the regreened Earth. She doesn’t know why she keeps messaging them. Would they bother to send someone to check if she stopped sending updates? It would probably be a footnote for the next expedition to follow up on, whenever that happens. The regreening of Earth was a triumph back in the day, but it’s old news now, and the rest of the galaxy is so fascinating, and the diaspora’s politics so complicated. The Working Group is not a great power in the galaxy; as far as Petrel understands it, they are more like a round table of artists that meets irregularly, whenever they can get organized enough. The Aesthetic, as a vision statement, betrays the telltale signs of design by committee. The Earth must, they say, be restored to be pristine, romantically prehuman—but at the same time, it must support animal and plant life that dates to late human-contemporary epochs: not even mammoths or saber-toothed tigers, much less plesiosaurs or trilobites. It’s not an authentic prehuman Earth that the Sentimentals want, Ibis figures: they want a what-if Earth, a human Earth without humans. It’s message terraforming at its most didactic.

Sometimes Spoonbill thinks she keeps messaging the Sentimentals only because they keep answering. A disembodied voice; some data; a ghost. When they send video she blinks into their perspective and it’s horribly disorienting—space-hardened bodies, moon-sized wings, and slow flights across the stars, their time-sense synced to the rotation of the galaxy rather than to the ancestral primate body clock, the godlike in their slow haunting of the galaxy. She has to pull herself out of the video and her gut churns up some of last night’s pelican.

(She confronts the possibility that the tracks may be human. It’s strange to be a member of a collective again, rather than herself, sui generis.)

Pochard has done well in her chosen exile. One of her late teammates programmed the bots to make him a bow and smart flechettes, put a few satellites into orbit to make sure he would hit whatever game he was aiming at; the watchtower has solar panels; she grows a few scraggly vegetables in the patch around the tower, and she competes with the birds and the bats for wild fruit in the forest beyond. Her own gutbots can clean any water she drinks. And of course, she is the apex predator for thousands of kilometers—they sited the watchtower here for this very reason. There are no large animals in the region. The bears and leopards aren’t projected to spread this far south for at least another hundred years. She could live for a very long time, if she’s careful. She has learned caution.

(She hasn’t seen another human footprint in about two decades. If that’s what the tracks even are. These marks could have been made by a heavy boot whose sole had a corrugated, birdlike pattern. Or perhaps, Parrot suspects, she has learned to see things as birdlike even when they are not. She has learned too much caution. She is trapped, too, and there’s nobody to say prayers for her.

She wonders if the tracks could belong to the ghosts of her dead team. She wonders if they’re hungry. She is doing her best to reconstruct the prayer for the dead from memory, one dead word at a time.)

When Crow shoots birds for meat she prefers to do it in the forest; she’s afraid the flocks will learn to avoid the watchtower if she starts to kill them there. She doesn’t like eating crow, though. They are suspicious birds that hold grudges. Once she was dive-bombed by crows that must have remembered how she had killed their own before. She avoids that area now. Fortunately, the new footprints are on the south side, far away from angry crows.

She doesn’t bear the crows any ill-will; she understands bearing grudges. Egret had to learn how to settle them the hard way in this life, and unlike her memories of past lives godlike or human, these are all too clear. Sometimes in her nightmares her ghosts are accusatory. They wanted everyone to go back home, they say. They wanted to be born again, their reward for a job well done, to join once more into the singular mind and body of god. They didn’t want to stay here any more than they wanted to stay separate, to stay individuals. But I did, Crow shouts at them, or tries—the words won’t come, in dreams, and all she can manage is a hoarse caw.

(If it’s a living human, she reasons, there must be new visitors to Earth. Perhaps some other group of posthumans funded a new expedition to study the regreened biosphere—the Sentimentals say the galaxy is full of factions. Perhaps returnistas who want to return to a simpler time and homestead the homeworld. Or perhaps there’s been somebody else like her on Earth all along, staying out of sight, biding their time. A survivor of the cull. What bird could she name them for? After the others were gone, she took all the names for herself.)

Invisible in her hide with her face right up against the bow, she can hear its coiled, groaning tension, the subliminal hum of the smart flechettes getting their global positioning updates. Heron waits for contact.

About the Author

Vajra Chandrasekera lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and The Apex Book of World SF, among others.

The Deeps of the Sky

Elizabeth Bear

Stormchases’ little skiff skipped and glided across the tropopause, skimming the denser atmosphere of the warm cloud-sea beneath, running before a fierce wind. The skiff’s hull was broad and shallow, supported by buoyant pontoons, the whole designed to float atop the heavy, opaque atmosphere beneath. Stormchases had shot the sails high into the stratosphere and good winds blew the skiff onward, against the current of the dark belt beneath.

Ahead, the vast ruddy wall of a Deep Storm loomed, the base wreathed in shreds of tossing white mist: caustic water clouds churned up from deep in the deadly, layered troposphere. The Deep Storm stretched from horizon to horizon, disappearing at either end in a blur of perspective and atmospheric haze. Its breadth was so great as to make even its massive height seem insignificant, though the billowing ammonia cloud wall was smeared flat-topped by stratospheric winds where it broke the tropopause.

The storm glowed with the heat of the deep atmosphere, other skiffs silhouetted cool against it. Their chatter rang over Stormchases’ talker. Briefly, he leaned down to the pickup and greeted his colleagues. His competition. Many of them came from the same long lines of miners that he did; many carried the same long-hoarded knowledge.

But Stormchases was determined that, with the addition of his own skill and practice, he would be among the best sky-miners of them all.

Behind and above, clear skies showed a swallowing indigo, speckled with bright stars. The hurtling crescents of a dozen or so of the moons were currently visible, as was the searing pinpoint of the world’s primary—so bright it washed out nearby stars. Warmth made the sky glow too, the variegated brightness of the thermosphere far above. Stormchases’ thorax squeezed with emotion as he gazed upon the elegant canopies of a group of Drift-Worlds rising in slow sunlit coils along the warm vanguard of the Deep Storm, their colors bright by sunlight, their silhouettes dark by thermal sense.

He should not look; he should not hope. But there—a distance-hazed shape behind her lesser daughters and sisters, her great canopy dappled in sheeny gold and violet—soared the Mothergraves. Stormchases was too far and too low to see the teeming ecosystem she bore on her vast back, up high above the colorful clouds where the sunlight could reach and nurture them. He could just make out the color variations caused by the dripping net-roots of veil trees that draped the Mothergraves’ sides, capturing life-giving ammonia from the atmosphere and drawing it in to plump leaves and firm nutritious fruit.

Stormchases arched his face up to her, eyes shivering with longing. His wings hummed against his back. There was no desire like the pain of being separate from the Mothergraves, no need like the need to go to her. But he must resist it. He must brave the Deep Storm and harvest it, and perhaps then she would deem him worthy to be one of hers. He had the provider-status to pay court to one of the younger Drift-Worlds . . . but they could not give his young the safety and stability that a berth on the greatest and oldest of the Mothers would.

In the hot deeps of the sky, too high even for the Mothers and their symbiotic colony-flyers or too low even for the boldest and most intrepid of Stormchases’ brethren, other things lived.

Above were other kinds of flyers and the drifters, winged or buoyant or merely infinitesimal things that could not survive even the moderate pressure and chill of the tropopause. Below, swimmers dwelled in the ammoniated thicks of the mid-troposphere that never knew the light of stars or sun. They saw only thermally. They could endure massive pressures, searing temperatures, and the lashings of molten water and even oxygen, the gas so reactive that it could set an exhalation on fire. That environment would crush Stormchases to a pulp, dissolve his delicate wing membranes, burn him from the gills to the bone.

Stormchases’ folk were built for more moderate climes—the clear skies and thick, buoying atmosphere of the tropopause, where life flourished and the skies were full of food. But even here, in this temperate part of the sky, survival required a certain element of risk. And there were things that could only be mined where a Deep Storm pulled them up through the layers of atmosphere to an accessible height.

Which was why Stormchases sailed directly into the lowering wings of the Deep Storm, one manipulator on the skiff’s controls, the other watching the perspective-shrunken sail shimmering so high above. Flyers would avoid the cable, which was monofilament spun into an intentionally refractive, high-visibility lattice with good tensile properties. But the enormous, translucent-bodied Drift-Worlds were not nimble. Chances were good that the Mother would survive a sail-impact, albeit with some scars—and some damage to the sky-island ecosystems she carried on her backs—and the skiff would likely hold together through such an incident. If he tangled a Mother in the monofilament shroud-lines spun from the same material that reinforced the Drift-World’s great canopies . . . it didn’t bear thinking of. That was why the lines were so gaily streamered: so anyone could see them from afar.

If Stormchases lost the skiff, it would just be a long flight home and probably a period of indenture to another miner until he could earn another, and begin proving himself again. But injuring a Mother, even a minor one who floated low, would be the end of his hopes to serve the Mothergraves.

So he watched the cable, and the overhead skies. And—of course—the storm.

Stormchases could smell the Deep Storm now, the dank corrosive tang of water vapor stinging his gills. The richly colored billows of the Deep Storm proved it had something to give. The storm’s dark-red wall churned, marking the boundary of a nearly-closed atmospheric cell rich with rare elements and compounds pumped up from the deeps. Soon, Stormchases would don his protective suit, seal the skiff, and begin the touchy business—so close to the storm—of hauling in the sail. The prevailing wind broke around the Deep Storm, eddying and compacting as it sped past those towering clouds. The air currents there were even more dangerous and unnavigable than those at the boundary between the world’s temperate and subtropical zones, where two counter-rotating bands of wind met and sheared against each other.

And Stormchases was going to pass through it.

Once the sail was stowed, Stormchases would maneuver the skiff closer under engine power—as close as those cool silhouettes ahead—and begin harvesting. But he would not be cowed by the storm wall. Could not be, if he hoped to win a berth on the Mothergraves.

He would brave the outer walls of the storm itself. He had the skill; he had the ancestral knowledge. The reward for his courage would be phosphates, silicates, organic compounds. Iron. Solid things, from which technologies like his skiff were built. Noble gases. And fallers, the tiny creatures that spent their small lives churned in the turbulence of the Deep Storm, and which were loaded with valuable nutrition and trace elements hard to obtain, for the unfledged juveniles who lived amid the roots and foliage and trapped organics of the Drift-World ecosystems.

The Deep Storm was a rich, if deadly, resource. With its treasures, he would purchase his place on the Mothergraves.

Stormchases streamed current weather data, forecasts and predictions. He tuned into the pulsed-light broadcasts of the skiffs already engaged in harvesting, and set about making himself ready.

The good news about Deep Storms was that they were extraordinarily stable, and the new information didn’t tell Stormchases much that he could not have anticipated. Still, there was always a thrill of unease as one made ready for a filtering run. A little too far, and—well, everyone knew or knew of somebody who had been careless at the margin of a storm and sucked into the depths of its embrace. A skiff couldn’t survive that, and a person definitely couldn’t. If the molten water didn’t cauterize flesh from carapace, convective torrents would soon drag one down into the red depths of the atmosphere, to be melted and crushed and torn.

It was impossible to be too careful, sky-mining.

Stormchases checked the skiff’s edge seals preliminary to locking down. Water could insinuate through a tiny gap and spray under the pressure of winds, costing an unwary or unlucky operator an eye. Too many sky-miners bore the scars of its caustic burns on their carapaces and manipulators.

A careful assessment showed the seals to be intact. Behind the skiff, the long cluster of cargo capsules bumped and swung. Empty, they were buoyant, and tended to drag the skiff upwards, forcing Stormchases to constant adjustments of the trim. He dropped a sky-anchor and owner-beacon to hold the majority of the cargo capsules, loaded one into the skiff’s dock with the magnetic claw, and turned the little vessel toward the storm.

Siphons contracted, feeling each heave of the atmosphere, Stormchases slid quickly but cautiously into the turbulent band surrounding the storm. It would be safer to match the wind’s velocity before he made the transition to within-the-storm itself, but his little skiff did not have that much power. Instead, it was built to catch the wind and self-orient, using the storm itself for stability rather than being tumbled and tossed like a thrown flyer’s egg.

Stormchases fixed his restraint harness to the tightest setting. He brought the skiff alongside the cloud wall, then deflated and retracted the pontoons, leaving the skiff less buoyant but far more streamlined. Holding hope in his mind—hope, because the Mothergraves taught that intention affected outcome—Stormchases took a deep breath, smelled the tang of methane on his exhalation, and slipped the skiff into the storm.

The wind hit the skiff in a torrent. Through long experience, Stormchases’ manipulators stayed soft on the controls. He let them vibrate against his skin, but held them steady—gently, gently, without too much pressure but without yielding to the wrath of the storm. The skiff tumbled for a moment as it made the transition; he regained trim and steadied it, bringing its pointed nose around to part the wind that pushed it. It shivered—feeling alive as the sun-warmed hide of the Mother upon whose broad back Stormchases had grown—and steadied. Stormchases guided it with heat-sight only. Here in the massive swirl of the cloud wall, the viewports showed him only the skiff’s interior lighting reflecting off the featureless red clouds of the storm, as if he and his rugged little ship were swaddled in an uncle’s wings.

A peaceful image, for a thing that would kill him in instants. If he went too far in, the winds would rip his tiny craft apart around him. If he got too close to the wall, turbulence could send him spinning out of control.

When the skiff finally floated serenely amidst the unending gyre, Stormchases opened the siphons. He felt the skiff belly and wallow as the wind filled it, then the increased stability as the filters activated and the capsule filled.

It didn’t take long; the storm was pumping a rich mix of resources. When the capsule reached its pressurized capacity, Stormchases sealed the siphons again. Still holding his position against the fury of the winds, he tested the responses of the laden skiff. It was heavier, sluggish—but as responsive as he could have hoped.

He brought her out of the fog of red and gray, under a clear black sky. A bit of turbulence caught his wingtip as he slipped away, and it sent the skiff spinning flat like a spat seed across the tropopause. Other skiffs scattered like a swarm of infant cloud-skaters before a flyer’s dive. Shaken, the harness bruising the soft flesh at his joints, Stormchases got control of the skiff and brought her around on a soft loop. His talker exploded with the whoops of other miners; mingled appreciation and teasing.

There was his beacon. He deployed pontoons to save energy and skimmed the atmosphere over to exchange capsules.

Then he turned to the storm, and went back to do it again.

Stormchases had secured his full capsules and was still rechecking the skiff’s edge-seals, preliminary to popping the craft open, when he caught sight of a tiny speck of a shadow descending along the margin of the storm. Something sharp-nosed and hot enough to be uncomfortable to look upon . . .

Stormchases scrambled for the telescope as the speck dropped toward the Deep Storm. It locked and tracked; he pressed two eyes to the viewers and found himself regarding a sleek black . . . something, a glossy surface he could not name. Nor could he make out any detail of shape. The autofocus had locked too close, and as he backed it off the object slipped into the edge of the Deep Storm.

Bigger than a flyer—bigger even than folk and nothing with any sense would get that close to the smeary pall of water vapor without protective gear. It looked a little like a flyer, though—a curved, streamlined wing shape with a dartlike nose. But the wings didn’t flap as it descended, banking wide on the cushion of air before the storm, curving between the scudding masses of the herd of Drift-Worlds.

It was like nothing Stormchases had ever seen.

Its belly was bright-hot, hot enough to spark open flame if it brushed oxygen, but as it banked Stormchases saw that the back was cold, black-cold against the warmth of the high sky, so dark and chill it seemed a band of brightness delineated it—but that was only the contrast with the soaking heat from the thermosphere. Stormchases had always had an interest in xenophysics. He felt his wings furl with shock as he realised that the object might show that heat-pattern if it had warmed its belly with friction as it entered the atmosphere, but the upper part were still breath-stealing cold with the chill of the deep sky.

Was it a ship, and not an animal? A . . . skiff of some kind?

An alien?

Lightning danced around the object, caught and caressed it like a Mother’s feeding tendrils caging a Mate—and then seemed to get caught there, netting and streaking the black hide with rills of savage, glowing vermillion and radiant gold. The wind of the object’s passage blew the shimmers off the trailing edge of its wings; shining vapor writhed in curls in the turbulence of its wake.

Stormchases caught his breath. Neon and helium rain, condensing upon the object’s hard skin, energized by the lightning, luminesced as the object skimmed the high windswept edge of the clouds.

With the eyes not pressed to the telescope, he watched a luminescent red-gold line draw across the dull-red roiling storm wall. Below, at the tropopause border of the storm, the other filter-miners were pulling back, grouping together and gliding away. They had noticed the phenomenon, and the smart sky-miner didn’t approach a storm that was doing something he didn’t understand.

Lightning was a constant wreath in the storm’s upper regions, and whatever the object or creature was made of, the storm seemed to want to reach out and caress it. Meanwhile, the object played with the wall of the storm, threading it like a needle, as oblivious to those deadly veils of water vapor as it was to the savagery of the lightning strikes. Stormchases had operated a mining skiff—valued work, prestigious work, work he hoped would earn him a place in the Mothergraves’ esteem—for his entire fledged life.

He’d seen skiffs go down, seen daring rescues, seen miners saved from impossible situations and miners who were not. He’d seen recklessness, and skill so great its exercise looked like recklessness.

He’d never seen anyone play with a Deep Storm like this.

It couldn’t last.

It could have been a crosswind, an eddy, the sheer of turbulence. Stormchases would never know. But one moment the black object, streaming its meteor-tail of noble gases, was stitching the flank of the storm—and the next it was tumbling, knocked end over end like the losing flyer of a mating dogfight. Stormchases pulled back from the telescope, watching as the object rolled in a flat, descending spiral like a coiled tree-frond, pulled long.

The object was built like a flyer. It had no pontoons, no broad hull meant to maximize its buoyancy against the pressure gradient of the tropopause. It would fall through, and keep falling—

Stormchases clenched the gunwale of his skiff in tense manipulators, glad when the alien object fell well inside the boundary of the storm-fronting thermal the Drift-Worlds rode. It seemed so wrong: the Mothers floating lazily with their multicolored sides placid in the sun; the object plunging to destruction amid the hells of the deep sky, trailing streamers of neon light.

It was folly to project his own experiences upon something that was not folk, of course—but he couldn’t help it. If the object was a skiff, if the aliens were like folk, he knew they would be at their controls even now. Stormchases felt a great, searing pity.

They were something new, and he didn’t want them to die.

Did they need to?

They had a long way to fall, and they were fighting it. The telescope—still locked on the alien object—glided smoothly in its mount. It would be easy to compute the falling ship’s trajectory. Other skiffs were doing so in order to clear the crash path. Stormchases—

Stormchases pulled up the navigation console, downloaded other skiffs’ telemetry on and calculations of the trajectory of the falling craft, ran his own. The object was slowing, but it was not slowing enough—and he was close enough to the crash path to intercept.

He thought of the Mothergraves. He thought of his rich cargo, the price of acceptance.

He clenched his gills and fired his engines to cross the path of the crash.

Its flat spiral path aided him. He did not need to intercept on this pass, though there would not be too many more opportunities. It was a fortunate thing that the object had a long way to fall. All he had to do was get under it, in front of it, and let the computer and the telescope and the cannon do the rest.

There. Now. Even as he thought it, the skiff’s machines made their own decision. The sail-cannon boomed; the first sail itself was a bright streamer climbing the stratosphere. Stormchases checked his restrains with his manipulators and one eye, aware that he’d left it too late. The other three eyes stayed on the alien object, and the ballistic arc of the rising sail.

It snapped to the end of its line—low, too low, so much lower than such things should be deployed. It seemed enormous as it spread. It was enormous, but Stormchases was not used to seeing a sail so close.

He braced himself, one manipulator hovering over the control to depressurize the cargo capsules strung behind him in a long, jostling tail.

The object fell into the sail. Stormchases had a long moment to watch the bright sail—dappled in vermilion and violet—stretch into a trailing comet tail as it caught and wrapped the projectile. He watched the streamers of the shroud-lines buck at impact; the wave traveling their length.

The stretch and yank snapped Stormchases back against his restraints. He felt the shiver through the frame of the skiff as the shroud-motors released, letting the falling object haul line as if it were a flyer running away with the bait. The object’s spiraling descent became an elongating pendulum arc, and Stormchases hoped it or they had the sense not to struggle. The shroud-lines and the sail stretched, twanged—

—Held. The Mothergraves wove the sails from her own silk; they were the same stuff as her canopies. There was no stronger fiber.

Then the object swung down into the tropopause and splashed through the sea of ammonia clouds, and kept falling.

The sealed skiff jerked after. Stormchases felt the heavy crack through the hull as the pontoons broke. He lost light-sight of the sky above as the clouds closed over. He felt as if he floated against his restraints, though he knew it was just the acceleration of the fall defying gravity.

He struggled to bring his manipulator down. The deeper the object pulled him, the hotter and more pressurized—and more toxic—the atmosphere became. And he wouldn’t trust the skiff’s seals after the jar of that impact.

He depressurized and helium-flushed the first cargo capsule.

When it blew, the skiff shuddered again. That capsule was now a balloon filled with gaseous helium, and it snapped upward, slowing Stormchases’ descent—and the descent of the sail-wrapped alien object. They were still plunging, but now dragging a buoyant makeshift pontoon.

The cables connecting the capsule twanged and plinked ominously. It had been the flaw in his plan; he hadn’t been sure they would hold.

For now, at least, they did.

The pressure outside the hull was growing; not dangerous yet, but creeping upward. Eyes on the display, Stormchases triggered a second capsule. He felt a lighter shudder this time, as the skiff shed a little more velocity. The next question would be if he had enough capsules to stop the fall—and to lift his skiff, and the netted object, back to the tropopause.

His talker babbled at him, his colleagues issuing calls and organizing a party for a rescue to follow his descent. “No rescue,” he said. “This is my risk.”

Another capsule. Another, slighter shiver through the lines. Another incremental slowing.

By the Mothergraves, he thought. This is actually going to work.

When his skiff bobbed back to the tropopause, dangling helplessly beneath a dozen empty, depressurized capsules, Stormchases was unprepared for the cheer that rang over his talker. Or the bigger one that followed, when he winched the sail containing the netted object up through the cloud-sea, into clear air.

Stormchases had no pontoons; his main sail was fouled. The empty capsules would support him, but he could not maneuver—and, in fact, his skiff swung beneath them hull-to-the-side, needle-tipped nose pointing down. Stormchases dangled, bruised and aching, in his restraints, trying to figure out how to loose the straps and start work on freeing himself.

He still wasn’t sure how he’d survived. Or that he’d survived. Maybe this was the last fantasy of a dying mind—

The talker bleated at him.

He jerked against the harness, and moaned. The talker bleated again.

It wasn’t words, and whatever it was, it drowned out the voices of the other miners, who were currently arguing over whether his skiff was salvage, and whether they should come to his assistance if it was. He’d been trying to organize his addled thoughts enough to warn them off. Now he vibrated his membranes and managed a croak that sounded fragile even to his own hearing. “Who is it? What do you want?”

That bleat again, or a modestly different one.

“Are you the alien? I can’t understand you.”

With pained manipulators, Stormchases managed to unfasten his restraints. He dropped from them harder than he had intended; it seemed he couldn’t hold onto the rack. As his carapace struck the forward bulkhead, he made a disgruntled noise.

“Speak Language!” he snarled to the talker as he picked himself up. “I can’t understand you.”

It was mostly an expression of frustration. If they knew Language, they wouldn’t be aliens. But he could not hide his sigh of relief when a deep, coveted voice emerged from the talker instead.

“Be strong, Stormchases,” the Mothergraves said. “All will soon be well.”

He pressed two eyes to the viewport. The clouds around his skiff were bright in the sunlight; he watched the encroaching shadow fall across them like the umbra of an eclipse.

It was the great, welcome shade of the Mothergraves as she drifted out of the sky.

She was coming for them. Coming for him.

It was no small thing, for a Drift-World to drop so much altitude. For a Drift-World the size of the Mothergraves, it was a major undertaking, and not one speedily accomplished. Still, she dropped, flanked by her attendant squadrons of flyers and younger Mothers, tiny shapes flitting between her backs. Any of them could have come for Stormchases more easily, but when they would have moved forward, the Mothergraves gestured them back with her trailing, elegant gestures.

Stormchases occupied the time winching in the sail-net containing the alien object. It was heavy, not buoyant at all. He imagined it must skim through the atmosphere like a dart or a flyer—simply by moving so fast that the aerodynamics of its passage bore it up. He would have liked to disentangle the object from the shroud, but if he did, it would sink like a punctured skiff.

Instead, he amused himself by assessing the damage to his skiff (catastrophic) and answering the alien’s bleats on the talker somewhat at random, though he had not given up on trying to understand what it might be saying. Obviously, it had technology—quite possibly it was technology, and the hard carapace might indeed be the equivalent of his own skiff—a craft, meant for entering a hostile environment.

Had it been sampling the storm for useful chemicals and consumables, as well?

He wondered what aliens ate. What they breathed. He wondered if he could teach them Language.

Every time he looked up, the Mothergraves’ great keel was lower. Finally, her tendrils encompassed his horizons and when he craned his eyes back, he could make out the double row of Mates fused to and dependent from her bellies like so many additional, vestigial tendrils. There were dozens. The oldest had lost all trace of their origins, and were merely smooth nubs sealed to the Mothergraves’ flesh. The newest were still identifiable as the individuals they had been.

Many of the lesser Mothers among her escort dangled Mates from their bellies as well, but none had half so many as the Mothergraves . . . and none were so much as two-thirds of her size.

In frustration, Stormchases squinched himself against the interior of his carapace. So close. He had been so close. And now all he had to show for it was a wrecked skiff and a bleating alien. Now he would have to start over—

He could ask the Mothergraves to release his groom-price to a lesser Mother. He had provided well enough for any of her sisters or daughters to consider him.

But none of them were she.

He only hoped his sacrifice of resources in order to rescue the alien had not angered her. That would be too much to bear—although if she decided to reclaim the loss from his corpse, he supposed at the very least he would die fulfilled . . . if briefly.

The talker squawked again. The alien sounds seemed more familiar; he must be getting used to them.

A few of the Mothergraves’ tendrils touched him, as he had so long anticipated. It was bitterest irony now, but the pleasure of the caress almost made it worthwhile. He braced himself for pain and paralysis . . . but she withheld her sting, and the only pain were the bruises left by his restraints and by impact with the bulkheads of the tumbling skiff.

Now her voice came to him directly, rather than by way of the talker. It filled the air around him and vibrated in the hollows of his body like soft thunder. To his shock and disbelief, she said words of ritual to him; words he had hoped and then despaired to hear.

She said, “For the wealth of the whole, what have you brought us, Stormchases?”

Before he could answer, the talker bleated again. This time, in something like Language—bent, barely comprehensible, accented more oddly than any Language Stormchases had ever heard.

It said, “Hello? You us comprehend?”

“I hear you,” the Mothergraves said. “What do you want?”

A long silence before the answer came. “This we fix. Trade science. Go. Place you give us for repairs?”

The aliens—the object was a skiff, of sorts, and it had as many crew members as Stormchases had eyes—had a machine that translated their bleaty words into Language, given a wise enough sample of it. As the revolutions went by, the machine became more and more proficient, and Stormchases spent more and more time talking to A’lees, their crew member in charge of talking. Their names were just nonsense sounds, not words, which made him wonder how any of them ever knew who he was. And they divided labor up in strange ways, with roles determined not by instar and inheritance but by individual life-courses. They told him a great deal about themselves and their peculiar biology; he reciprocated with the more mundane details of his own. A’lees seemed particularly interested that he would soon Mate, and wished to know as much about the process as he could tell.

The aliens sealed themselves in small flexible habitats—pressure carapaces—to leave their skiff, and for good reason. They were made mostly of water, and they oozed water from their bodies, and the pressure and temperature of the world’s atmosphere would destroy them as surely as the deeps of the sky would crush Stormchases. The atmosphere they breathed was made of inert gases and explosive oxygen, and once their skiff was beached on an open patch of the Mothergraves’ back for repairs, just the leakage of oxygen and water vapor from its airlocks soon poisoned a swath of vegetation for a body-length in any direction.

Stormchases stayed well back from the alien skiff while he had these conversations.

Talking to the aliens was a joy and a burden. The Mothergraves insisted he should be the one to serve as an intermediary. He had experience with them, and the aliens valued that kind of experience—and when he was Mated, that experience would be assimilated into the Mothergraves’ collective mind. It would become a part of her, and a part of all their progeny to follow.

The Mothergraves had told him—in the ritual words—that knowledge and discovery were great offerings, unique offerings. That the opportunity to interact with beings from another world was of greater import to her and her brood than organics, or metals, or substances that she could machine within her great body into the stuff of skiffs and sails and other technology. That she accepted his suit, and honored the courage with which he had pressed it.

And that was why the duty was a burden. Because to be available for the aliens while they made the repairs—to play liaison (their word)—meant putting off the moment of joyous union again. And again. To have been so close, and then so far, and then so close again—

The agony of anticipation, and the fear that it would be snatched from him again, was a form of torture.

A’lees came outside of the alien skiff in her pressure carapace and sat in its water-poisoned circle with her forelimbs wrapped around her drawn-up knees, talking comfortably to Stormchases. She said she was a female, a Mother. But that Mothers of her kind were not so physically different from the males, and that even after they Mated, males continued to go about in the world as independent entities.

“But how do they pass their experiences on to their offspring?” Stormchases asked.

A’lees paused for a long time.

“We teach them,” she said. “Your children inherit your memories?”

“Not memories,” he said. “Experiences.”

She hesitated again. “So you become a part of the Mother. A kind of . . . symbiote. And your offspring with her will have all of her experiences, and yours? But . . . not the memories? How does that work?”

“Is knowledge a memory?” he asked.

“No,” she said confidently. “Memories can be destroyed while skills remain . . . Oh. I think . . . I understand.”

They talked for a little while of the structure of the nets and the Mothers’ canopies, but Stormchases could tell A’lees was not finished thinking about memories. Finally she made a little deflating hiss sound and brought the subject up again.

“I am sad,” A’lees said, “that when we have fixed our sampler and had time to arrange a new mission and come back, you will not be here to talk with us.”

“I will be here,” said Stormchases, puzzled. “I will be mated to the Mothergraves.”

“But it won’t be”—whatever A’lees had been about to say, the translator stammered on it; she continued—“the same. You won’t remember us.”

“The Mothergraves will,” Stormchases assured her.

She drew herself in a little smaller. “It will be a long time before we return.”

Stormchases patted toward the edge of the burn zone. He did not let his manipulators cross it, though. Though he would soon enough lose the use of his manipulators to atrophy, he didn’t feel the need to burn them off prematurely. “It’s all right, A’lees,” he said. “We will remember you by the scar.”

Whatever the sound she made next meant, the translator could not manage it.

Originally published in Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

About the Author

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. This, coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, the mispronunciation of common English words, and the writing of speculative fiction. She has published nearly a hundred short stories and twenty novels, the most recent of which is Range of Ghosts from Tor (2012). Among her genre honors are two Hugo Awards and a Sturgeon Award. She grew up in New England and lived in Las Vegas for seven years. She now resides in central Massachusetts, where she shares half of an eleventy-two-year-old house with a giant ridiculous dog. She has no plans to leave the Northeast ever again, except on brief exploratory excursions, and regular visits to western Wisconsin, the domicile of her partner, notorious (and brilliant) fantasist, Scott Lynch.

Meridian

Karin Lowachee

They all tried to save me.

“I think this one’s still alive.”

“Tag him.”

In that space between life and death, you make a decision whether to wake up. Maybe that’s when time ceases to matter. I felt older than four years old and too young to remember. My world was telling me not to remember how the strange crew and its dead-eyed captain came to our faraway colony and nothing was the same again.

I might’ve fought, giving them a reason to shoot me.

Or maybe there was no reason at all.

A long time later, after I was better, I heard them. Other people. Not the same bad crew. Speaking outside the door of the medical room where they kept me. It was a family ship, and they talked about dropping me at the nearest station, but—

“He’ll just cycle through the system, and how will that help?”

“Well, what do you wanna do with him?”

“Maybe we can just keep him here.”

“We don’t even know his name. He won’t talk to us. In the system, they’d be able to find out. They’d have the colony manifest. DNA records.”

DNA. In school, they ran a test for fun to find out where on Earth I was from and what kind of people I belonged to, people who had lived long ago on a faraway planet. East Asian: 61%. Spanish European: 22%. Anglo-Saxon: 17%. I colored a map of Earth, highlighting the places those people had come from and took it home to show my parents and brothers. We had things in common that spoke of our heritage: dark eyes that tilted at the corners; dark hair.

“I don’t want to give him to the system,” this woman said.

“Now we’re kidnappers?” said the man.

“We weren’t the ones who attacked his colony.”

“No, we just swept in like those pirates right after.”

“You’re being ridiculous. We legitimately found him. Only him. Look at him. It was the pirates who did it. You want to hand him over to EHHRO?”

“He might still have family outside of the Meridia colony. We don’t have the right.”

“Where’s EarthHub now? What’re their human rights organizations doing when their colonies are being attacked?”

“Look—we’ll hand him over. If no other family speaks up, we’ll apply to foster him. Eventually adopt him if it comes to that. They’ll want to get him out of their hands so it shouldn’t be too hard. That way no authorities will get on our ass.”

“Your name’s Paris, do you remember?”

I remembered. But a part of me didn’t want to.

This new lady at the station said my last name was Azarcon. They’d gotten my DNA and matched it to the records. Paris Azarcon. I remembered my two older brothers. It hurt right where I’d been shot. Right through my body.

Mama and Daddy. They were shot first. In their heads.

So much screaming.

My brother, Cairo, stood in front of me, trying to protect me, but it didn’t make a difference.

“Paris?”

I didn’t want to remember anymore. I ran to a corner.

Days like this. Back and forth. Do you remember anything else? They all wanted me to remember until I screamed at them to stop it.

Then they said they were going to send me away from the station. That someone wanted me. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care anymore.

“Your name’s Paris, and this family is going to take you to their ship to live. They found you and they care about you. We’ll check in a little later, okay? But you can go with them now.”

“How old are you now?”

I held up my hand, fingers spread.

“Five years old. That’s good. Do you know your name?”

“Paris.”

“How about your last name?”

I didn’t want to say it.

These people weren’t my family, even though they said they were now.

I thought of the map of Earth that I’d colored. A planet I’d never been to. It was nothing like Meridia and its rocky ground, where Daddy and Mama and my oldest brother, Bern, worked at the mines.

“It’s going to be Rahamon,” the lady said. She called herself Captain Kahta. “That’s your last name,” she said. “Look here on this ID tag. You always wear this around your neck, okay? Paris Rahamon. The newest crew member of Chateaumargot.”

Everything was muddy in my mind for a long time. I only knew what the captain and her mister said about how they’d caught a signal from a moon. They found me shot in the back outside my home, but I was still breathing. When they said those things, it was like they were telling me a story from a slate, one that someone else made up, except I didn’t have pictures to go with it. Maybe there was a drawn image of what my colony looked like, but I didn’t see it, couldn’t remember, and nobody let me look it up. The captain and her mister took me to a station and got me help. After a while, when I was fixed, they came back to get me and the station let me go. They said I had a new life now and it was good. Nobody would make me go back to the other life anymore.

I didn’t want to talk about my real family anyway.

I didn’t want to talk about the things I remembered before they were all gone. Everything was going to fade. For a while, after first waking up, I barely remembered anything. Then it started to come back and that was worse.

Back and forth. Remembering and forgetting. Remembering.

They wanted me to like Chateaumargot. They bought me toys and clothes, and at first I didn’t have to work. Their teenaged daughter looked after me when the captain or her mister weren’t around. Sanja played with me and took me around the ship to show me the garden and the games and the gym. Captain Kahta saw me when she finished work, and Mister Chandar cooked for me or showed me how to build models of ships and stations, though he said I would have to grow older before I did other stuff. He probably meant work.

For a few months aboard the ship, life was like that and I forgot most days after they passed. Captain Kahta said that was okay. They seemed happy having me, even though I didn’t talk much and hardly ever felt like playing games with them. They stopped trying to force me to play games when I took their toys and threw them against the wall. For a few days all I did was break the things they gave me, so then they gave up.

On my first birthday with them, I hit Sanja in the eye and she screamed. I didn’t mean to give her a black eye but she’d forced me to sit and do math. I hated math. It was frustrating and she kept pushing. I told her she wasn’t my mom so she needed to stop. She said Captain Kahta wanted me to learn math, and I said Captain Kahta wasn’t my mom either. Sanja got this look in her eyes like she was mad even though it was true, and she put the slate back in front of me and told me to stop being a brat and do my work. So I punched her face.

Mister Chandar locked me in my cabin alone. My stomach was growly by the time Captain Kahta came in. She sat on my bed next to me.

“Paris, why did you hit Sanja?”

I stared at my hands.

“Paris?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do. Sanja says you don’t want to do the math work.”

I shrugged. What did it matter?

“Paris. Look at me.”

I looked at Captain Kahta. Her dark eyes looked sad. For me. The dot on her forehead seemed to judge me. The people on the station had looked like that too, from what I remembered. I wished they would stop.

“Paris, you can’t go around hitting your sister.”

“She’s not my sister!”

Captain Kahta leaned back as if I’d hit her in the face too.

“She’s not my sister and you’re not my mom!”

“Okay, okay.”

“I don’t care about math!”

“Paris, sit down.”

I started to run around the cabin. She couldn’t stop me. Not until she grabbed me around the waist and held me down on the bed. I kicked and screamed at her. Mister Chandar came in and held me down too. They said things to each other, but I wasn’t listening. Sanja came in with an injet and pressed it to my arm.

Everything slowed down. Even me.

The ship was big. Tall, cold corridors, all white and gray. There were lots of adults but some kids too, older than Sanja or younger, like me. Every sixth day a vid screened in rec and we got extra treats than what was usually available from the galley. Sometimes I stayed and watched the vid, but sometimes they bored me and I snuck out in the dark.

I wandered around the ship when I wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t like being minded all the time. Sanja handed me off to the other older kids sometimes and none of them liked it when I acted up. Sometimes I didn’t mean to act up, but everything grew frustrating. All of these rules about where I wasn’t supposed to go, and checkups in medical, and toys I was supposed to be interested in, and food I was supposed to eat. These faces weren’t the faces from my storybook memory. When I had nightmares, nobody came to save me.

Sometimes I remembered riding on the back of a four wheeler, holding an older boy around the waist. He’d tell me, “Don’t fall off, Puppy!” My brother Cairo. But I couldn’t remember his face anymore.

I had a lot of nightmares. The lady on the station said to record them when I woke up and send them to her, but I didn’t like to put words to them, so most of the time I didn’t. Mister Chandar or Captain Kahta was supposed to talk to me about them and help me record them, but after the first six months they stopped. I guessed they got busy. The ship traveled a lot and I didn’t check in all the time with the lady on the station. I didn’t ask Captain Kahta about it. If I didn’t need to do these things anymore, then maybe that meant I was okay. Or they didn’t care. I didn’t think they had to care since they weren’t my family.

My brothers Cairo and Bern. And Mama and Daddy. Now every time I thought the word “family,” I also thought of the word “dead.”

I turned seven on Chateaumargot. Captain Kahta and Mister Chandar threw a party. All the kids came, even the ones who called me weird and talked behind my back. Sanja tried to put a cardboard hat on my head. I knocked it away. After that, nobody was happy. They weren’t happy with me and the ice cream melted all over my cake. I felt a little bad so I was nice for the rest of the party and even hugged Captain Kahta afterward so she would smile. She hugged me back real tight.

“Are you happy, Paris?”

I didn’t really know what she meant by being happy, like maybe if I liked my cake and the presents. The games and new clothes.

“Yeah. Everything’s good.”

She touched my hair and smiled, like she knew I was lying.

The other kids on Chateaumargot didn’t stay nice. But neither did I. I got into fights a lot until every week Mister Chandar locked me in my quarters. I sent some of the kids to medical and sometimes I went to medical. Bruises and cuts and a couple black eyes shared amongst us. Then one shift when we’d docked at a station, Captain Kahta came to get me after breakfast and took me by the hand. She walked me to my quarters and told me to pack some of my favorite things. My clothes and whatever toys I liked.

“Why?”

“I’ll help you, honey.”

“Help me with what?”

She cried and held me, so I couldn’t do anything but stand there and let her be. Everything felt dark and silent, like someone had covered my ears and eyes.

She and Mister Chandar took me off the ship, and we went down the dock to another ship’s airlock. That ship let us inside the airlock but not quite inside the ship. We met another woman. She introduced herself as Madame Leung. She was shorter than Captain Kahta and had dark eyes like me. Madame Leung took me by the shoulders and smiled.

“You look just like your picture, Paris.”

What picture? Captain Kahta crouched down in front of me and told me to go and live with Madame Leung now.

“Why? Why?”

Captain Kahta’s eyes were shining, and she just shook her head. “You’ll be better here with Madame Leung,” was all she said. Then she straightened up, and they said things to each other in a language that I didn’t know. Mister Chandar squeezed my shoulder and then they left the airlock.

They left me on this new ship and I couldn’t do anything about it.

So I screamed.

Madame Leung dragged me to quarters inside her ship. Another woman joined her to wrangle me. They locked me in, and through the intercom she said, “I’ll come back when you’re done.”

That was it. No matter how much noise I made, nobody came.

Madame Leung told me everything. Captain Kahta and Mister Chandar didn’t feel they could provide me with the best, they didn’t know how to handle me, and they feared for the other children on board because of the fights I got into.

The idea of saving me wasn’t as good as the reality.

“You’re getting worse,” Madame Leung said. “That won’t happen here.”

Captain Kahta wouldn’t take me back to the station from long ago, and the lady who had given me away in the first place didn’t ask.

“We’re busy ships!” said Madame Leung. “Who wants to go all the way back to a station to deal with that shit?”

It was easier, out here in deep space, to hand me to another family ship like Madame Leung’s. Her ship, Dragon Empress, transported medical drugs to far-flung stations and colonies in need. But Madame Leung and her crew weren’t a part of EarthHub’s humanitarian organizations.

“We’re not pirates,” she said. “I don’t attack places and murder people. We just provide a service.”

“Why do you want me?”

She crouched down in front of me. I was sitting on the bunk. The quarters were smaller than what I’d had on Chateaumargot. The lights were narrow pricks in the ceiling, like sunrays through bullet holes.

“I like kids, Paris. Kids grow up to be good soldiers. Like my boys. I have a lot of boys here as it is, they know their work. You’ll do great with them, you’ll see.”

Madame Leung said they were going to get my records purged. It would be easy since so many records of so many kids were all over the place, and with the right amount of money, people did anything you wanted. That way nobody would come looking for me.

Nobody was left to come looking for me anyway. When Madame Leung smiled at me, it was like she knew it too.

As far as Madame Leung was concerned, I was a Dragon. No longer a Rahamon, and definitely not an Azarcon. She never asked about my actual family or where I came from. I doubt she would’ve cared if Captain Kahta had offered the information. Captain Kahta, who trunked me off as someone else’s responsibility, likely hadn’t explained much about my origins.

I was physically healthy and mentally able to handle complex tasks. Madame Leung made me one of her boys and that was that. One in a crew of four hundred men and boys who followed her lead. The drug queen of the Dragons, the Dragon Empress. Deep space depended on her, she said, to cure it of its ills.

She didn’t mean the war or the aliens or the pirates. If you couldn’t change anything, you could at least anesthetize.

I dreamed of my family. My parents’ faces, their presence, blurred out from my memory like a vid not quite calibrated right. But my brothers, my protectors, they remained vivid.

I didn’t believe in guardian angels because seeing them only in my mind’s eye was more like hell.

Over the years under Madame Leung’s tutelage and the hammering of her “boys” to make me into her version of a good soldier, one who kept his mouth shut and evaded authorities on station, the memories trickled back. Like the first bits of dust that were the only evidence of an exploded star, the further I went into deep space with the Empress, the closer I came to my own past.

Maybe it was because of these adopted “brothers,” foisted on me, equipped with powers of loving persecution. Unlike the kids on Chateaumargot, Madame Leung’s gang accepted me with a rough sort of respect. The lady herself handpicked me, and though they didn’t spare me when she disciplined my rebellious nature, they offered security and freedom at the same time.

I carried a gun. I learned the trade of drug trafficking, of clandestine meetings on stations and in half-forgotten refugee colonies. Some of our clients were even EarthHub soldiers, more wary-eyed than we were but equally invested in the market. Some used our pharmaceuticals for their intended purposes, others didn’t. As long as they paid us, it was none of our business.

Adolescence passed in a haze of tattoos, training, and tradecraft. The colorful ink emblazoned on my arms and back were needle tapped in the ancient way, not with a gun. I marked my years by the images that flowered across my skin: a tiger, an Earth mountainscape, a constellation of stars, and of course, the elaborate golden dragon winding its way down my spine. Sometimes, at the height of my pain, when I lay across the horishi’s table, I heard my brothers’ voices, their ghosts whispered back in those moments.

Pain begat pain. What was the antidote for it? I’d been closest to Cairo. My oldest brother Bern held a more distant place, a peripheral shadow in the shape of our father. He’d fought back too, and the laser bolt slammed between his eyes.

Cairo’s voice surfaced with each needle puncturing into the shallow points beneath my skin.

He said, “Run, Puppy!”

His nickname for me. Because I was the baby.

Once, in the middle of the tattooing, I shoved at the pain. At the horishi. Blood scored across my skin, ruining the line she’d been drawing. I made her start on a new image. I’d seen it in the ship’s educational files while voraciously reading about an ancient civilization from a country I’d never seen.

I told her to ink an Egyptian ankh over my heart, and she didn’t ask.

Age was a meaningless thing in space, especially on a ship. Maybe I was some form of adult, chronologically in my twenties. But to look in the mirror was a different story altogether, with pictures that didn’t match up. Still a teenager to outside eyes. My own face reminded me of the ones who swam back to me in the dark, in sleep, in blissed out moments with occasional drugs in my system. We all took part, never to excess, but skating that line was a part of this world.

My third world. One was my heart, the second was my armor, and the third was my artillery. Two of those things protected the other.

I hung out with a boy named Soochan. He was a little more gentle than the other boys, probably because he was addicted to sweet leaf. He tended to smile, even when shit was going down around him, a beatific expression like a saint in the throes of religious epiphany. Once when a buyer tried to shaft us, Soochan was almost sorry. He made her face the wall of the station tunnel where we’d been doing the deal; his voice was so soft. “Just close your eyes, baby, and this won’t hurt a bit.” He whipped her once with his gun and kicked her a few times, then stole what he could off her body—an old platinum ring, her data dots. “Madame Leung don’t like stiffers,” he said. Still smiling.

On this ride between deals, the ship’s drives hummed like a hive of bees all around us. Soochan sprawled on my bunk, blowing smoke rings to the ceiling between slurred rambles. I tried to read, but the words upended and crawled over one another like roaches running from the light. Nothing made sense. Maybe it was the drugs, but the nightmares had been plentiful lately, taking my concentration into the dark.

In the middle of Soochan’s words, he said, “ . . . Azarcon . . . ”

My lulled focus sharpened like a shiv. From my seat on the deck with my legs outstretched, slate in hand, I said, “What?”

“What?” he echoed back, the corner of his mouth tilting upward as if giving coordinates to his eyes. Clouded by smoke and whatever wandering thoughts he let off the leash.

“You said something. A name.”

“Uh—”

“Azarcon?” My name. My first world. Of course, he didn’t know.

“Don’t you read? Your head’s in that slate so damn much.” His hand flit, making the smoke from his sweet leaf cigret carve the air. “Captain Cairo Azarcon. EarthHub’s latest bulldog of deep space.”

I thought I was done collecting worlds. I thought Madame Leung had tied me to hers for the rest of my living days, one of her soldiers, one of her boys, all of the security and sanctimonious criminality of a group of people with no loyalty but to their own. Who needed more?

But this fourth world crashed into me and sheered to the side the next moment, casting me against my own armor.

“Captain Cairo Azarcon,” I said, like an invocation of the devil.

My brother lived.

When Captain Kahta had found me, had there been no others? Hadn’t she seen Cairo? Or had the pirates who had taken our colony also taken the one member of my family who’d lived and left nothing but the dead and thought-dead for the Chateaumargot to find.

There was nobody to ask.

I went on a treasure hunt around the Send. I excavated and saved every possible mention, note, and passing criticism lobbed toward my resurrected older brother. I became an Azarconologist, twice divorced from the name but like any spouse rendered obsolete by a new mate, I looked back with judgment. On myself if not on the one who’d left me.

I wanted to judge. I found shoddy pictures of a handsome man attached to reports of bravery and ruthless alien strit killing. He tended to avoid cams, so the only people who had a clear picture of him also had access to his military records or his daily life. But there was enough to see a resemblance. Dark eyes and dark hair. Tall. The kind of carriage in the spine that would rarely bend for anybody. He was the young scourge of aliens everywhere. He made his name as a fighter pilot but now commanded the spacecarrier Macedon. Specific corners of the Send said he was one to watch, like they were talking about a celebrity. The deep space war made military heroes.

My corner of the galaxy didn’t bow down to heroes. I didn’t care about the war.

He was a new father. Captain Cairo Azarcon was married and had a son.

I was an uncle.

What did blood mean?

I wanted to hate him. Didn’t he look for me? Couldn’t he have found me? In the entire galaxy, why didn’t his honed military skills somehow raze the stars for his little brother? Who told him I was dead, and why did he believe them? Why didn’t he refuse to stop looking until he had tangible proof of my death?

Neither of us were children now, and maybe, with so many years behind him, my brother also preferred to forget.

At Basquenal Rimstation 19, I met a woman at the bar and shacked up with her in a private den. After sex, she told me she was an investigative journalist and she’d been looking into my ship. She said this while smoking a cigret in my face. I was uniformly unsurprised. For some reason, when you had sex with a stranger, anything they said just seemed to go along.

“You think my ship’s a pirate? Because it isn’t. It’s not interesting enough to be a pirate.”

“No,” she said. She’d only told me her first name: Mabel. Her hair was long and silver but her face was young. Maybe from suspended aging treatments, so there was no telling her real age. Not that it mattered. “No,” she repeated. “Not a pirate, but they do recruit in unconventional ways.”

“Yeah?” I took the cigret from her and dragged. I could tell she was trying to read my eyes, but I’d been told enough times that I was “stoic,” that my stare walled people off and forced them to lay siege. So I watched her building a siege tower word by word.

“I found a node on the Send. Where the children are traded.”

She squinted at me as if this was supposed to mean something. When she didn’t get anything, she pressed on.

“They disguise it, of course. It looks like a parenting node where people are just talking about their kids. Getting advice. Arranging meet-ups at various stations. But there’re code words. Pictures and code words. These people know what to look for and how to ask for it.”

“Why are you telling me this? You want me to spy for your story?”

“No—but Paris, your name was there.” She glanced at my tags.

“My name Paris? Lots of kids are named Paris.” But my stomach began to form an ice rock, deep in the center.

“Isn’t your last name Rahamon?”

I hadn’t told her that. It wasn’t something you told to someone you just shacked with. And maybe she could read my eyes after all.

My last name wasn’t Rahamon. I was reminded every time I heard it.

She said, “I recognized your first name and your face. Your picture had been posted. You were a little boy but the resemblance is obvious.” She climbed off the bed and went to her clothes, which were strewn on the floor in our haste to get together. Her body was flawless in a way that probably spoke of enhancements, but I hadn’t really noticed in the act. Now, as she leaned down to fish something out of her jacket pocket, I just wanted to get away.

But I couldn’t seem to move from the bed. This room. Or out of my own skin. She returned, sliding back beside me with a slate in her hand. She brushed at it, and soon lines of text and an image popped up.

A photo of me. As a child. I knew my own face like you did a vague stranger. Difficult to place but not forgotten.

I looked away before I allowed myself to read the words beside the image. The cigret burned between my fingers, so I pulled on it some more.

“Bright, enthusiastic, inquisitive boy,” she read. It was obvious that she was reading from the text, not making up the words. “Energetic and requires a lot of attention and compassion. He’s had a rough history, but he’s sweet and capable of loving. A family without any other children would do well.”

“Stop.”

“They write these posts like they’re advertising for pet swaps.”

“I said stop it.”

I climbed off the bed, flicked the cigret into the trash, and grabbed my clothes. “I was legitimately adopted. I don’t know what the hell you’re looking at.”

“Adopted by the Dragon Empress?”

No. And we both knew it.

I didn’t reply. Once I got my boots on, I grabbed my gun off the table and left her in the den.

All of my worlds were colliding.

Mabel found me at the bar, four drinks deep. Soochan was there, drunk and high too. “Heeey Mama,” he kept saying. Several of my other brothers from the Empress danced haphazardly to the music funneling in the center of the floor.

“Paris,” Mabel said, glancing at Soochan.

“Heeey Mama. Heeey Parchisi, she want your comm code?”

We ignored him. I wondered what either of them would do if they knew my real origin.

What should I be doing?

Everywhere I went now, I thought of my brother. Swapping drugs for cred or weapons, it was Cairo. Drinking myself into a stupor, it was Cairo. Fucking a woman, it was Cairo.

The ankh on my chest that I saw every day. What had possessed me to wear that reminder? My body was now a walking seance ritual, begging the ghosts to follow. To answer back, letter by letter, yes or no. I invited them now to shake my seating and short-circuit my tech. To stand behind me in the dark when I wandered the corners of the ship.

My brother was a ghost. The kind who made marks on the living.

“Please,” Mabel said. “We need to talk.”

How many kids were outside the system, like me? How many had been put into the system only to be torn out like a splinter? Children that couldn’t be handled so they were hijacked. Especially refugee kids, Mabel said. Good ships with good intentions found themselves over their heads and no longer wanted to deal with the kids.

It wasn’t a bad life, I heard myself telling her, the two of us in a corner booth while the music kept winding up and falling down and everyone around us moved like mannequins of broken robotics.

“Do you remember when you were taken?” she asked.

Do you remember? That question refused to pick another path. It hunted me everywhere.

“What’re you going to do,” I said. “Put me back? That ship has flown—literally.”

“I could find out if you have any family—”

“I don’t.” It came out of my mouth like every answer I’d given to anyone who asked. No family but the Dragon. No ship but the Dragon. No place but the Dragons. Deep space was our home. Mabel took it as stated and I carried on. “The captain of the Chateaumargot had checked. Or the case worker that I had—whoever. Social Services. I don’t even remember the name of the first station they’d put me at. They purged the records anyway.”

Mabel frowned. “The station?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

I gave her a flat stare then let her track my gaze to Soochan, still sitting at the bar mouthing off to the air.

“We’re not pirates but we’re not saints.”

What if, I thought. What if I gave this journalist my real world name?

Soochan suddenly appeared at my shoulder, leaning over the table. “Leh we go, Parchisi.”

“Be there in a second.” I pushed his hand away as it coursed through my hair. Big brother, except he wasn’t. He wandered off to hook up with our other brothers, now headed off the dance floor.

I had this information locked inside my chest. If I let it out, what other explosion would it cause? Would that birth yet another world, one that I couldn’t predict or control? Another situation I couldn’t defend myself against?

No one could know.

To Mabel: “Can you do me a favor?”

Her eyebrows arched.

“Whatever you need for your story, I’ll tell you. As a source. No names, on your word.”

She nodded. “Anonymous. I promise.”

“Because you know what I’ll do if you break our deal.”

She’d seen the gun. More importantly she’d seen the ink on my body and read the affiliation well enough.

“What’s your question?” she said.

“Find out Macedon’s next port of call.” I did, in the end, slip her my comm code. “And let me know ASAP.”

Somehow she came through. The message on my system said simply: Austro Station. And gave a date.

It wasn’t difficult to go to Austro Station, despite what we did for a living. Austro was a main hub even for us, with its rampant underdeck activity and illicit commerce. I didn’t have to mention a thing to Madame Leung, beyond the usual conversation about scoring big there. We bought and sold drugs at Austro for the rich elite in the higher modules because exploitation was the true ecosystem of the galaxy.

The Dragon Empress docked at the station a day after Macedon. To the galaxy outside, we were basic trade merchants in harmless cargo like transsteel and mechanical goods. It was a different story for the boys Madame Leung sent off in other directions on deck. I was one of that crew.

Now I had to conjure my brother’s face—in the delicate balance of stalking the dock where the carriers were moored, not going too close, but hovering outside the broad doors to catch every person that flowed back and forth. Casing the airlock directly was impossible in such a restricted area. Instead, I disappeared from my Dragon brothers in the hopes of seeing another. Hiding myself behind garish kiosks and aromatic food stalls. I felt like a pervert, but maybe that was fitting. A perverse turn in my life. As if the universe agreed, it made me wait and gave me ample opportunity to get the fuck out of there.

Of course I didn’t.

I wanted to see him. I recognized his walk before anything else. In all the years, that detail hadn’t changed. He was taller, and he tried to hide beneath a hoodie and civilian clothes, passing through the concourse toward the carrier docks. But I knew those shoulders and the gait of someone who knew where he was going. He didn’t cover up out of fear, but from stealth.

I moved with him, slipping along the edges of the crowd between his path and mine. It took me a minute to notice the child.

A little boy. Maybe four or five, but who could tell? They held hands. The boy carried a stuffed bear wearing soft armor, its furry ears dragging on the deck.

I was that age once. Cairo held my hand like that.

It’s me, I wanted to shout. As if those two words could make up for a decade or more as some humans reckoned time.

Come back.

It happened all at once; the little boy said something and Cairo leaned down to pick him up in his arms, barely breaking stride. Smaller arms went around broad shoulders. The bear dropped to the deck in their wake and Cairo kept walking, oblivious.

I saw the boy open his mouth to protest and then I was there. The crowd was no longer a wall. I hadn’t made the conscious decision, but I found myself holding the stuffed toy, reaching to touch Cairo’s arm.

He turned before I could tap him, sensing proximity maybe. Or his son’s distress. The little boy twisted in his arms to keep his own eyes on the toy, reaching toward it. Toward me.

“He dropped this,” I heard myself say.

My brother wasn’t the only one covered up. My hood was pulled low, long sleeves covered all of my ink. Maybe he saw my mouth move but that was it. I stared somewhere at his chest and below. At the blue boots his son wore, dangling at his side.

The bear left my outstretched hands, plucked to safety.

“What do you say, Ryan?” A deep voice. But I knew that accent.

Meridian. Like mine. What it had been three worlds ago.

“Thank you,” a small voice said.

“Welcome.”

“Thank you,” my brother said.

I just nodded.

They turned to go. He wasn’t going to waste time on a stranger.

I looked up as they moved further into the concourse crowd, still headed toward the carriers. Cairo didn’t turn around, but his son was looking over his shoulder, holding the armored bear in his arms.

The boy had blue eyes. Not like mine. Not like his father’s. Big, searching blue eyes that stared at me as if he knew. Ryan, Cairo had said. My nephew.

I didn’t follow them. They walked away and I stayed where I was, the ghost they left behind.

Now all I do is remember.

My fourth world is the clearest. Sun bright and comet swift, all I can do is chase it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to enter in again. Like it’s a room left open for me. Like a voice offering a greeting, something as simple as hello. Maybe next time I’ll look up and stare him straight in the eyes, dark eyes like mine, with just enough tilt at the corners to speak of our common ancestry. His son’s gaze was a start, but it was only the edge of the solar system. There’s more.

Soochan found me sitting on the deck outside of the carrier docks. He twitched, all nervous.

“Them Marines gonna sweep you away from their stoop, you can’t stay here. Come back to the Empress.”

He didn’t ask why I was sitting there. Maybe he thought I was high.

I’m waiting for them to come back, I wanted to say. But of course I didn’t. It wasn’t the truth anyway. What would I say in that moment if they had?

I’m your brother, take me with you? Take my DNA and test it against yours. Check how far back we’re connected. Tell me where you’ve been all this time, when time slipped so easily between the stars. What war are you fighting? Will you fight mine for a while?

Save me just this once.

Come back, my brother. Come back, Cairo. You’re tattooed on my skin, beneath my heart, inside my blood. I tried to forget you, but nothing worked.

I want you to hear me say our family name. I’ll only say it to you. No one else would understand what it means.

You were my first world.

Originally published in Where the Stars Rise, edited by Lucas K. Law and Derwin Mak.

About the Author

Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel Warchild won the 2001 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both Warchild (2002) and her third novel Cagebird (2005) were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Cagebird won the Prix Aurora Award in 2006 for Best Long-Form Work in English and the Spectrum Award also in 2006. Her second novel Burndive debuted at #7 on the Locus Bestseller List. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies edited by Julie Czerneda, Nalo Hopkinson, John Joseph Adams, Jonathan Strahan, and Ann VanderMeer. Her fantasy novel, The Gaslight Dogs, was published through Orbit Books USA.

The Effects of Space and Other Worlds on the Human Body

Douglas F. Dluzen, PhD

Our success at establishing a permanent Moon colony or brushing gloved fingertips through Martian soil is intimately tied with how our bodies handle extended periods of living in non-Earth gravitational environments. If the human body can’t adapt to these conditions, it will be impossible to further explore the heavens until our spaceships can support sustained artificial gravity.

Imagine the gravity wheels of Space Station V in 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke or the Hermes Spacecraft in The Martian by Andy Weir. There are the gravity wells of the world-sized starships in The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley and the classic halo superstructures that rotate around Earth in Seveneves (Neal Stephenson) or around a star in Ringworld (Larry Niven).

Whether these structures are practical is a different question, but each is meant to protect the fragile bodies of human travelers living in conditions of lower gravity than Earth (referred from here on as microgravity).

Microgravity environments change the human body and understanding and preventing them are essential for safe space exploration. NASA, the European Space Agency, and the China National Space Administration are working to better understand these changes and how the human body adapts to microgravity so we can better prepare ourselves for sustained travel outside of low-Earth orbit.

The shortest round-trip journey to Mars would take at least two years depending on how long humans stay on the surface. The current record for the longest continuous trip living in microgravity is held by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who stayed 438 days onboard the Mir space station in the mid-90’s. Even then, he didn’t experience complete weightlessness all the time.

When he returned to Earth, Polyakov was able to walk away from his landing capsule, suggesting even a year at space doesn’t detrimentally impact the function of the human body.

A battery of mental and psychological tests before, during, and after his flight showed he maintained a relatively stable mental and emotional state during his mission. The only exception to this were changes in his mood during the first weeks of his mission and subsequent return to Earth. This was attributed to the stress of adjusting to his new environment1.

By all metrics investigated, Polyakov eventually returned to his preflight baselines and his mission was taken as evidence that humans are capable of extended trips into space and for possible landings onto Mars and beyond.

We now know that space affects the human body in some very surprising ways and at a very deep level. It is important to note that not every individual experiences all of these changes together, but rather may experience one to several at any given time.

For example, within minutes of entering microgravity, systemic changes in blood flow and pressure can occur as the lack of gravity alters the homeostasis of the circulatory system.

International Space Station (ISS) crews have reported chronic swelling and bloating in the head and extremities as blood and other fluids pool in those areas and are slow to recirculate back out. Since the start of space exploration, astronauts, cosmonauts, and spationauts (French astronauts) have experienced headaches, nausea, fluctuations in heart rate, and even bouts of anorexia2.

Many of these symptoms are temporary and stabilize over a period of a few days to weeks as the body adjusts to microgravity. However, chronic changes to the body can also develop. The core body temperature often increases during long trips into space and is slow to recover upon return to Earth3.

No one is yet sure why this occurs, but changes in body temperature at rest and during exercise in space are related to increased inflammatory states and may impair immune function. This could harm astronauts traveling long distances to Mars and put them at risk for inflammatory-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease or immune dysfunctions, all while still in space, down on the surface, or when returning to Earth.

One of the best studied microgravity-related conditions is Space Flight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS), which can develop within a few months of living in space. SANS causes physical changes to the eye and impairs vision, including flattening of the eyeball, damage to the optic nerve, swelling in the optic disc (where the optic nerve meets the retina), and other structural fluctuations.

Almost half of astronauts experience a decrease in close-range visual clarity and others have reported changes in far-sighted clarity, even on short flights to the ISS4. Unfortunately, there is no single cause yet-identified that is responsible for SANS. It is hypothesized that increased fluid pressure in the head is a contributing factor. Identifying the mechanism of these conditions may help pinpoint preventative strategies for humans on deep space missions and most, but not all, of these effects return to normal once back on Earth.

Recent MRI studies have shown that brain structure can change in microgravity. Gray matter decreases were observed in the frontal lobes of the brain in crew members of both short shuttle missions and longer-duration ISS stays and gray matter increases in sensorimotor regions were also seen5. Gray matter tissue is where many of our neurons and their supporting cells are located and this may provide insight into neurological changes seen in microgravity. How these influence our ability to maneuver in space, or whether there is a functional impact on cognition or behavior are not known.

To peer into whether cognitive changes are an inherent part of space exploration, recent research studies such as MARS-500 and NASA’s HI-SEAS replicated long journeys into space by placing groups of research volunteers into a small environment for simulated trips to Mars. Behavior and cognitive tests were performed to examine how crew members interacted over time and to provide preliminary data on how to best deal with conflicts that could develop during long missions. However, these projects do not account for any changes in gray matter as they were not conducted in space.

Interpreting these findings and designing preventative strategies to slow any microgravity-assisted adjustments in the brain may indeed help future crews, but more studies will need to be performed on the ISS or other spacecraft.

In science fiction, Meg Howrey’s The Wanderers is partially inspired by the MARS-500 project and explores the emotional aspects of long-duration space travel and how this may impact passengers on a mission to Mars.

In other works of fiction, the best-known and most-often discussed changes to the human body relate with loss of bone and muscle density. Many science fiction novels use artificial gravity as a way to combat these changes, as mentioned above. But living on the Moon, which has only 1/6th of our gravity, or on Mars (2/5ths), might also have long-term detrimental effects compared to life on Earth. In Ian McDonald’s Luna Trilogy, visitors to our Moon have a set time limit before permanent changes to muscle and bone strength prevent their return to Earth.

Likewise, those born on the Moon can have serious physiological and health consequences upon visiting Earth and experiencing its gravity for the first time.

Crew members of the ISS exercise regularly to prevent bone and muscle loss and protect against permanent damage. They are strapped down to exercise equipment, such as the COLBERT treadmill, and routinely run up to two hours a day6. It remains to be seen how much muscle and bone loss will actually occur on a years-long adventure to Mars where there is no system of sustained artificial gravity, but it is prudent to anticipate challenges.

Additional questions include how pregnancies will be affected in microgravity. Previous experiments in rats suggest a role for gravity in helping pups change body position in the womb, as well as aiding the branching of neurons in the vestibular nuclei and lateral nucleus—regions of the brain involved with posture after birth.

Rat pups in space during gestation had slower-developing neurons in these regions compared to Earth controls, but when the mothers returned back to Earth before delivery the pups who were in space had their neuronal growth rates return to normal levels after a few weeks7. This study doesn’t consider pregnancies that occur and develop completely in microgravity, nor the birth and postpartum process for both the pups and the mother. Understanding these processes will be important for permanent colony settlement off of Earth.

In order to address in deeper detail what we already know of what happens to the human body in space, NASA began the Human Research Program (HRP) in 20058. The HRP is the most thorough examination yet of how the human body withstands microgravity and long-duration space flights. Prospective, hypothesis-driven research studies are currently looking at changes in human physiology, emotional states, and a wide range of cellular and genetic markers after space travel.

The Twins Study, a major initiative of the HRP, is examining how astronaut Scott Kelly’s body changed during a full year in space. The control on Earth is his identical twin brother Mark, who is also an astronaut. It’s a fantastic looking glass into how space changes an individual with the perfect genetic and environmental control back on Earth.

Preliminary reports out of NASA indicate that microgravity caused Scott Kelly’s telomeres in his immune cells to lengthen. Telomeres are the caps of our chromosomes and protect the integrity of the chromosomal structure and the genetic information contained on each one. This was a surprising and exciting finding because telomeres shorten as we age and this change contributes to the onset of age-related diseases. It could be that space has an anti-aging effect or even reverses the process in some ways. Remarkably, Scott Kelly’s telomeres shortened back to his preflight baseline within days of his return9.

Similar to Star Trek’s medical tricorder, NASA has developed new tools to track the change in biological states of human cells in microgravity and all in realtime. This could aid in health-care decision making and contribute to preventive strategies against SANS or infection. For example, the WetLab-2 is a toolbox that will allow ISS crew members to monitor how their own gene expression changes throughout their mission in their own immune cells or track the onset of fungal or bacterial infections onboard the ISS10. The Bioculture System is a handheld engineering marvel where cells can be grown in tissue culture and experimented upon, aiding our discovery of how our individual cells function in space. The Biomolecule Sequencer will allow crew members to track if radiation from space is mutating their own genomes by performing on-board, direct gene sequencing of their own cells.

Together, these and other tools could help crew members of deep space flights to Mars and beyond respond to acute health changes during the mission, while also monitoring for signs of chronic disease or illness.

Until now, little else was known about how our cells function in microgravity. In simulated microgravity environments, evidence suggested that our immune cells can respond and adapt to changes in gravity within minutes11. Analysis of gene expression in macrophages (those white blood cells that directly attack pathogens in our bodies) showed that genes involved with the structural shape of the cell membrane, including genes related to the cytoskeleton (the internal skeletal structure that gives cells their shape and anchor points during growth and development) do not change expression in microgravity.

However, several surface proteins involved with cell-to-cell communication are affected by microgravity and this may help explain why immune cells are less functional in space and have decreased inflammatory responses12.

The oxidative burst reaction, the initial reaction of an immune cell to a potential pathogen or threat, is also decreased in microgravity13. Immune cells may not have the capability to ward off infections due to this slowed reaction. This could limit the protective capacity of the immune system on other worlds, or for astronauts living long-term in space. Longer research projects are needed to confirm these findings and tools like the WetLab-2 and Bioculture System will play a pivotal role.

While microgravity alters the functioning of immune cells and our physiology, the same is also true for bacteria that have hitched a ride along with the astronauts. Recent analysis of bacterial gene expression has shown that Salmonella typhimurium, a pathogenic bacterium that can harm the GI tract, adapts to microgravity by expressing genes that enable it to better interact and latch onto its environment and form dense biofilms. These changes may influence pathogenicity and harm crew efforts in eradicating an outbreak.

The Salmonella cells flown in space were then introduced into mice back on Earth and were more virulent compared with ground controls, suggesting that microgravity-altered bacteria could be difficult to treat if conditions are not monitored more effectively14.

NASA’s HRP is also studying the changes in human skin and gut microbiomes to determine if there are changes in the diversity and function of the bacteria naturally found on our bodies. Analysis of twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly’s microbiomes are currently underway. A recent study assessed the changes in another astronaut’s skin microbiome in moist regions of the skin while wearing a SkinSuit, a compression suit designed to protect astronauts while in space15.

Differences in bacterial diversity on the skin pre- and postflight were observed, with a distinct microbiome signature associated with the ISS that disappeared upon return to Earth. There were no changes in the number of pathogenic bacteria observed but with tools such as the Biomolecular Sequencer, these changes can be tracked in real time.

These research studies will aid in our understanding of how to prepare for life in space, as well as lift the veil on disease and aging mechanisms back on Earth. We may also be able to understand how space could influence the evolution of the human species.

It’s important to understand that while it is likely humans can individually adapt to space and microgravity conditions, these adaptations are not passed along to the next generation. It will take hundreds of generations of birth and life within a microgravity environment for space to act as a natural selector of human traits.

This process could begin as soon as a permanent colony is formed and if the development of a fetus in the womb requires certain traits for full-term development that aren’t necessarily selected against on Earth.

What is certain is that our bodies will change to our new environments and understanding these changes will aid in our ability to extend our footprint to other worlds of the Solar System, and maybe one day, further beyond.

References

1. D. Manzey et al., Ergonomics 41, 537-559 (1998).

2. G. C. Demontis et al., Front Physiol 8, 547 (2017).

3. A. C. Stahn et al., Sci Rep 7, 16180 (2017).

4. A. G. Lee et al., JAMA Ophthalmol 135, 992-994 (2017).

5. V. Koppelmans et al., NPJ Microgravity 3, 30 (2017).

6. NASA, www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem-on-station/ditl_exercising, (Accessed January 30, 2018).

7. A. E. Ronca et al., Behav Neurosci 122, 224-232 (2008).

8. J. S. Alwood et al., NPJ Microgravity 3, 5 (2017).

9. NASA, www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-twins-study-confirms-preliminary-findings, (Accessed February 10, 2018).

10. M. Parra et al., PLoS One 12, e0183480 (2017).

11. C. S. Thiel et al., Sci Rep 7, 5204 (2017).

12. S. Tauber et al., PLoS One 12, e0175599 (2017).

13. C. S. Thiel et al., Sci Rep 7, 43 (2017).

14. J. W. Wilson et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104, 16299-16304 (2007).

15. R. A. Stabler et al., NPJ Microgravity 3, 23 (2017).

About the Author

Douglas Dluzen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. He is a geneticist and has studied the genetic contributors to aging, cancer, hypertension, and other age-related diseases. Currently, he studies the biology of health disparities and the microbiome in Baltimore City. He teaches evolution, genetics, and scientific thinking and you can find more about him on Twitter @ripplesintime24. He loves to write science and science fiction while sitting on the couch with his wife Julia, their dog, cat, and newborn son Parker.

Book covers, Moorcock, and The Mexicanx Initiative:
A Conversation with John Picacio

Chris Urie

The visual arts and genre fiction have always evolved together. Beautiful art complements a story while the story can help a reader find a deeper appreciation for an artist’s brushstrokes. One inspires the other and vice versa.

John Picacio has long been one of the premiere artists working in science fiction and fantasy publishing. His work has adorned the covers of notable books by Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Dan Simmons, Joe R. Lansdale, George R.R. Martin, and many more. He’s won the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, five Chesley Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and has been nominated for numerous other accolades.

After being the Guest of Honor at the 76th World Science Fiction Convention, John created The Mexicanx Initiative to help encourage Mexicanx representation in science fiction and fantasy.

When did you realize you wanted to be an artist?

It was always in my blood. My mother claims I was drawing like a maniac by the age of two. I think it’s what I always wanted to be. When I was a senior in high school, I received my fair share of academic scholarships and my parents kept nudging me toward a professional degree, whereas I think I wanted to major in art or film. The only professional degree that really allowed a person to draw and imagine for a living was architecture. So that’s what I majored in at the University of Texas.

During my third year of architecture school, my parents sprung for a semester in Europe with my classmates. It was a big deal because our family wasn’t rich and I had never flown on a plane before. That trip was the pivot point for me in so many ways though because I was exposed to the best museums in the world, all kinds of European comics, and more culture than I’d ever experienced. I kept going with architecture and got my degree, but I knew my life was not going to be all about architecture.

In what medium did you first start creating?

Comics. It’s my first love and first language. After graduating from architecture school, I went to work as an intern architect for a residential firm, but I started writing and drawing my own comics by night—weird, dreamy, slice-of-life stuff. I co-published a couple of issues worth of those stories with a friend of the time, and those comic books started getting the attention of SF/F book publishers. That wasn’t something I anticipated. One day in 1995, a company called Mojo Press asked if I wanted to do the cover art and design for a Michael Moorcock book and that’s where my cover art career began. I fell in love with the science fiction and fantasy publishing industry based off that job and my life has never been the same since.

Who is one artist who has most influenced your career?

That’s hard to say because there are so many. I assume you mean visual artists, but I would say Moorcock has had as big an influence on me as any creator in my professional life. I knew he was a giant of the field when I did that first cover job, but I was not particularly a fan of his before then. I became one after hanging out with him, and he’s definitely a constant that’s meant a lot to me throughout my two decades in this business. He believed I could be “someone” in this business before I even realized it. He never told me what to do, but I learned a lot by just watching him and hanging on his every word. He’s the greatest.

What does your creative process look like?

If I’m doing a book cover artwork or something related to a story, then it starts with the story. Once I’ve absorbed that, I’m free-associating and trying to find the strengths of the story and how it connects on an emotional level. When I’m working on something that isn’t related to a story or a set of words, then I’m doing this on my own, just trying to connect to something essential and personal . . . something of the moment.

I do jot lots of little sketches and notes, trying to narrow down the heart of what I’m doing, and usually that boils down into a single sketch or two that provides my direction. I’ll then start shooting reference photos and Frankenstein those in Photoshop into a comp of sorts. Then I’ll start drawing and fleshing out that idea in final form, on a fresh piece of illustration board with graphite pencils.

This is where a lot of the fun is because I get to really work out all of the values and produce a finished original. From there, I usually digitally add color to the drawing in Photoshop, but there are a number of my works where there’s no digital at all, and I work with traditional paint. Mostly though, I’m a traditional/digital hybrid, but drawing by hand is still the all-time great joy and the days when I’m doing nothing but drawing are my favorite days.

Does your process change when you work on something like a book cover as opposed to a piece of stand-alone fine art?

I don’t think so. Book covers tend to have more voices involved and I listen to the input, but in the end, I’m being hired to connect a book with an audience, and I trust my instincts there.

Do you feel a book cover influences how a reader experiences a story? How?

It influences whether people buy a story. Some covers can influence the experience. I try to tie my covers to the narratives, sometimes in a literal way, sometimes in an evocative way. It depends on what I think is best for the narrative. But yeah, when covers speak to the stories behind them, it can be a very heightened experience.

What made you create the Mexicanx Initiative (M.I.) project?

I’m the first Mexicanx to be a Worldcon Guest of Honor in the 76-year history of the event, and most likely the first Latinx of any kind to be so named. So, while that’s a breakthrough and an honor, my first thought was, “Hooray!” but my immediate second thought was “Who cares if I’m the first? What matters is I’m not the last.” I looked around at how many other major Mexicanx creators we have in our SF/F field and there are hardly any. Silvia Moreno Garcia is cranking away over in Vancouver and building a legacy. Patty Garcia is Tor’s Publicity Director and she’s awesome. There are a few more prominent Mexicanx creators and luminaries in our field, but the list is short. That’s not good.

I felt like this Guest of Honor nod is my opportunity to plant some Mexicanx seeds within the field so our stories and our dreams are better represented within the constellation of science fiction, fantasy, and the greater narrative stream. We’re the fourth-largest ethnic constituency in the United States and yet we’re often singled out for cultural attack and denigration by the current administration. Control the story and you control the world, and if Mexicanx are going to steer our own futures, then we need to be in positions of power to better share our stories with the world.

The M.I. was designed to fund Attending Memberships for fifty deserving SF/F professionals and fans to attend this summer’s Worldcon—and we achieved that number! I’m now deciding the last dozen recipients who will be coming, but it’s going to happen. We’re bringing a veritable Mexicanx All-Star team of SF/F talent to San Jose.

How can someone get involved with the project?

At this point, the fund has closed. I’m grateful to all of the sponsors and contributors who smashed our funding goal. We were aiming for $15,000 by Memorial Day Weekend, and we cleared that more than a month earlier than expected. The great Neil Clarke was one of the major contributors to the Assistance Fund and I’m hugely grateful to him. A fan named Chuck Serface has now created The LGBTQ Initiative, and he says his endeavor was inspired by what I did with The Mexicanx Initiative. That’s currently being funded, so everyone can help that achieve the same success that the M.I. scored.

Science fiction and fantasy art styles have changed over the years. Where do you think the art landscape is headed at the moment?

I don’t know about styles. I don’t think much of them. What I think is worth noting is the rising wave of visual artists who are creating their own stories and intellectual properties. Brom, Armand Baltazar, Gregory Manchess, Ruth Sanderson, Jeffrey Alan Love, Todd Lockwood, Peter Mohrbacher—we’re seeing a lot of major artists devoting more of their career time toward becoming author/artists, rather than just hired guns serving other people’s projects. I think it’s a positive trend and we’re going to see more and more of the best visual artists in science fiction/fantasy telling their own stories and owning their career paths and that’s exciting.

Is it a particular challenge to create artwork for extremely popular works like A Song of Ice and Fire?

I work on them the same as any other. When I’m working on a piece, I’m committed to it, regardless of the subject matter. They’re all challenges, but all different. The great thing about A Song of Ice and Fire was George specifically said he wanted “a John Picacio vision” of his ASoIaF characters for the 2012 Calendar. At the time when he pitched me to Random House as the official artist, there was no Game of Thrones on HBO. They were still casting and I was instructed NOT to look at what who they were casting, as I continued doing my work. So, I didn’t—because I thought it was a great gift not to have actor likenesses in my head. I just drew what I saw in my imagination. In the end, I’m glad my work has connected with so many fans around the world.

That’s what I love about working in science fiction/fantasy—I love connecting with that world stream of imagination, being influenced by it, and hopefully doing my part to help shape it.

If you weren’t a visual artist, what job do you think you’d enjoy?

Being an author/artist. I’m working on that right now.

What projects are you working on currently?

More brand-new artworks for Loteria as well as writing the story that goes with it. I’m working on more new art for Tor.com’s Wild Cards stories, edited by George R. R. Martin. There are other projects I’m working on, but those are the ones I can talk about right now.

What advice do you have for aspiring visual artists? Is there one piece of advice you were given that really helped you?

“You’re the artist. YOU figure it out.” That’s what Mike Moorcock told me when I first started in the business. It means don’t hand your decision-making power back to someone else. Take charge and take people to a place where they can’t go by themselves.

About the Author

Chris Urie is a writer and editor from Ocean City, NJ. He has written and published everything from city food guide articles to critical essays on video game level design. He currently lives in Philadelphia with an ever expanding collection of books and a small black rabbit that has an attitude problem.

Another Word:
The Future, Ordinary

Cat Rambo

I love me a space epic full of improbability drives and warp mechanics as much as any science fiction reader, and I’ve written more than a few stories in that milieu, gleefully flinging about concepts like living spaceships, FTL, and galaxy-spanning brains. But I will admit that my affection is most firmly claimed by quieter, closer tales, stories that offer glimpses of the near future and the small things that change our lives in (sometimes) subtle but undeniable ways.

Look at how far we’ve come in the handful of decades I’ve lived, which has included the invention of the microprocessor, the Internet, and social media. Sometimes the SF writers of the past glimpsed these things or even helped create them (Star Trek and cell phones), but often they didn’t, to the point where some nightmarish narratives seem cartoonish, like Colossus: The Forbin Project, where the computer was not just monstrous in terms of brainpower but the space it occupied.

In Charlie’s Angels (not the series, but the movie made in 2000, less than two decades ago) the plot revolves around technology called “Red Star,” which Lucy Liu’s character Alex Munday observes, “Red Star could turn any phone into a homing device.” “No one could hide,” Cameron Diaz/Natalie Cook says. “Imagine how dangerous this would be in the wrong hands,” a wide-eyed Drew Barrymore/Dylan Saunders concludes. (Thank you to Saladin Ahmed for tweeting about the plot.)

Unfortunately for us all, I fear, it did fall into the wrong hands, which are merrily profiting, controlling, and sometimes Doing Bad Things with it. In those days, science fiction was looking forward at the impact of technology on our lives, the ordinary future. It remains a concern for science fiction.

More recently, I was at a workshop at the University of Arizona’s Center for Science and the Imagination where they teamed up writers, scientists, and artists to explore possible futures involving solar energy. Our group was assigned two components: a large, centralized energy project located in a rural area. We opted for Arizona, and it was awesome to see the scientists figuring exactly how many gigawatts the state consumed each year.

Part of the theme that emerged for our story was that although we talk about locating such projects “out in the middle of nowhere,” they will in fact be located in places that do have some existing infrastructure: roads, energy, telephones, etc. and will be part of whatever small-town communities host those resources. For our story, we chose the fictional town of Tierra Del Rey, living in the shadow of an immense solar power plant about to expand tenfold.

Other narratives involved other manifestations of solar power: a massive structure hovering above Phoenix, or a system where each house had its own solar panels and helped supply the grid. Ideas abounded: genetically engineered birds or butterflies with solar panel wings that let them survive without food, solar-powered tattoos, storage batteries filled with kinetic energy via bent reeds.

The fulfillment of human needs like energy is territory that is particularly rich for stories. How will we handle energy—and who will have it? Who will make money from it? Could we make enough that everyone could have it? (Hint: we could right now, along with ending poverty, if the world’s billionaires were willing to fund it.)

Along the same lines, how will we handle knowledge—and who will have access to it? Will that access be restricted or filtered in some way, will those restrictions be visible or invisible? This is particularly important with the technology that has more world-changing power than any other, the Internet.

The throttling and pollution of the Internet, along with threats like partitioning off its access, has gone so far as to skew election results at the national level, to the point where #fakenews on Twitter is self-referential, a tag whose validity seems often predicated entirely on bits and bytes of nothingness.

How will we handle privacy—and who will have it? is another of the questions that will shape our lives. Walking down the street, what if I could pin a virtual frownie on that person not scooping up after their Peke, a tag visible to other passersby? What if a company knows exactly what I want—and chooses to sell me more than I actually want, to a point where it’s detrimental?

Overall, the largest question (and one that threads its way through all of the above) is not just how will we handle money but who will have it? The answer to the latter question matters a lot to various visions of the future, and I’d argue it’s essential to the majority of the most pessimistic as well as the most optimistic.

Last year I wrote a story for Chasing Shadows, an anthology edited by David Brin, where each writer offered a piece inspired by Brin’s nonfiction work, The Transparent Society. In “Preferences,” I talked about the human desire for meaning and what happens when that’s supplied as part of the consumer experience. It’s a question I’m still thinking about.

Many of the places where these ordinary but story-worthy things will manifest are small, like cosmetics designed to get around facial recognition software by creating an unusual contrast with the skin, using a tonal gradient, or imposing an asymmetrical look.

Body alteration could be minor—we have plenty of existing manifestations like tattoos and piercings. Who wouldn’t like the ability to shift hair color or length at will? What small alterations might yield substantial advantage for individuals working in space or in the atmosphere of other planets?

Similarly, 3-D printing is not just about making it possible to “on-demand” so many things (a game piece, a specialized cookie cutter, a piece of jewelry) but also raises plenty of questions of copyright and ownership. In Brin’s Kiln People, even identity becomes a question when multiple versions are printed.

Last year, I laughed a little when a local Seattle law passed requiring bots to identify themselves, to the point where I wrote a story about a woman who falsely identifies herself as a bot. She suffers the consequences when a secret robot uprising suspects that she’s trying to infiltrate their group. But Google’s recent announcement, introducing a bot that you can tell “I want a 9AM hair appointment this Friday” in order to have it call the salon and book the appointment, makes that law clearly prescient in a way that makes me respect the technologists in local government here even more.

This is, in fact, the nasty fact that continually nips at the heels of anyone working in the near future—it is always in the process of catching up with you and may have already done so if you’re not careful about it—or may even have done so during the lag between acceptance and publication, as happened with the Amazon drones that Sean Wallace ended up making me pull from “Tortoiseshell Cats are Not Refundable.”

Whenever that happens, we usually have gotten it wrong. In which case one consolatory thought is that science fiction (and fantasy, or anything else, for that matter) is about the time and place in which it is written, even when it takes place in a galaxy long ago and far away. Someone told me very seriously that the feral appliances in “Red in Tooth and Cog” wouldn’t work in the way I’d posited, and that was quite all right. The more important questions in that story (to my mind at least) have to do with how we interact with intelligences other than our own and what sorts of misunderstandings happen there.

We write about our own understandings of the world and sometimes we change them in the process. Stories, I heard Pat Rothfuss say at a recent event, are the only things that build empathy and show us that we are like each other. No matter what future we write in, we are building bridges there and sometimes the simpler, humbler ones will be more useful than grander, higher-reaching structures, no matter how pretty they are.

Go into another room now and look at the material things there: the things people have put there, that they have assembled throughout their lives. Look at the ordinary details: the hem, the bureaucratic form, the simplest tool. Examine them. Use them. And then unfold them in your head, and you’ll find your story there.

About the Author

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and edits from atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent novel is Hearts of Tabat (Wordfire Press) but 2018 also sees the debut of her writing book Moving From Idea to Finished Draft (Plunkett Press). Information about her online school, The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers (www.kittywumpus.net/blog/academy), along with links to many of her 200+ story publications can be found at her website (www.kittywumpus.net/blog). She has swum with sharks and ridden an elephant, performed the hula at the Locus Awards, danced with the devil in the pale moonlight, and is currently serving her second term as the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Editor’s Desk:
A Death in the Clarkesworld Family

Neil Clarke

It is with a heavy heart that I must report the passing of Gardner Dozois, our reprints editor. His work at Clarkesworld is a mere footnote in a long list of impressive accomplishments during his career in science fiction and fantasy as an editor and writer. To this day, I’m still surprised and flattered that he said yes when he was offered the position five years ago.

I had expected to see him at the Nebula Awards Weekend last month—he was going to receive a Solstice Award from SFWA for his significant impact on the science fiction and fantasy landscape—but while there, I received an email letting me know that he was in the hospital and would need to take a month or so off while he recovered. I wished him a quick recovery and told him he’d be missed. Like many others, I was disappointed that he wouldn’t be there to receive the award in person. I hope he had the opportunity to view the video of Connie Willis’ presentation of the award, the round of applause that followed, along with Gardner’s son, Christopher, accepting on his behalf.

Christopher also left with one of Gardner’s more recent anthologies given to him by SFWA, filled with signatures from those wishing him well. If the line at the registration table to add a note or a name to the pages was any indication of how much Gardner was missed that weekend, it was certainly a lot. I also hope he got to see that too.

A week later, I was a special guest at Balticon, when I found out things had taken a turn for the worse. They were reporting that they expected him to recover, but something nagged and worried me. If I seemed distracted at the convention, that’s why. I kept checking my phone to see if there were any updates and became increasingly concerned as time passed.

Sunday, my fears were realized when Michael Swanwick posted to Facebook that we had lost him. Later that evening, I attempted to convey the news on at a panel, and broke down. Some things can hit you like a ton of bricks when you have to say them. They become real in that moment, and the shock can be tremendous.

Many more qualified people have written tributes and detailed just how important and long-lasting his contributions to the field have been. I can only nod in agreement with those far more eloquent individuals. There are a million stories about Gardner, of which I only know a very small fraction.

Over the last few days, I’ve heard so many more—and have been reminded of others—bringing much needed laughter. He always seemed larger than life and some of that intimidated me. I often found myself at a loss for words around him, but he never made me feel like I wasn’t listened to or heard. In fact, one of the things I will always remember about him had nothing to with science fiction, conventions, or publishing. Gardner was one of the people that reached out to me while I was recovering from my heart attack and coming to terms with the fact that the damage to my heart was permanent. Those are special people to me and it’s that side of Gardner that I mourn for above all else.

Gardner,

Thank you for everything: the stories, the books, the reviews (oh the things you called our stories—“stylishly written and usually faintly perverse” will always be a favorite quote), being a part of the Clarkesworld family, and above all, for a few words when I really needed to hear them. It meant a lot and will never be forgotten.

-Neil

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a five-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). His latest anthologies are Galactic Empires and More Human Than Human, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His next anthology, The Final Frontier. is scheduled for publication in July 2018. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.

Cover Art: The Storkfriars

Sean Andrew Murray

About the Artist

Sean Andrew Murray is a freelance illustrator, concept artist, author and teacher who has worked in the entertainment industry for over fifteen years. The bulk of his career was spent as a video game concept artist, working on such titles as Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. His freelance client list includes: Legendary Pictures (Guillermo Del Toro), Dreamworks, Disney-Hyperion Publishing, Sideshow Collectibles, CoolMiniOrNot, Wizards of the Coast, Lego, EA Games, Privateer Press, Fantasy Flight Games, White Wolf Games, ImagineFX magazine and 3DTotal.

Sean has won numerous awards for his concept art and illustration work, including recently winning the Gold Medal award in Concept Art for the annual Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art juried art competition.

The production of Sean’s illustrated fantasy book, Gateway: The Book of Wizards, was funded by a successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign. The book was a primer for a fantasy world centered on a vast city called Gateway, which Sean has been working on in his sketchbooks since his college days. The latest Gateway project is a board/card game hybrid called Gateway: Uprising which is published by CMON, Inc.

Sean also teaches Visual Development and Illustration at Ringling College of Art and Design.