by Anna Gaffey
Or maybe the chip’s a piece of shit, like the light, like the station. The odds aren’t long . . . He shaved dry and pulled on his last clean station uniform, then dug around in the dim untidiness of his quarters for his expeditionary gear. Satchels shouldered, he poked his head out into the deserted crew corridor.
With all forty of the transferring crew gone back to Earth two days earlier, Selas Station was near vacant, and spookily, gloriously quiet. For the first time since Jake had arrived two years ago, he could breathe and fill his lungs without feeling claustrophobic. It was nice to step out of his quarters without bumping into other crew—Mick Boxhill with his winnings from whatever latest card party he’d engineered, or a hollow-eyed, triumphant Kai Murakami stumbling home after a Science labs all-nighter, or the graveyard shift cargo crew doing their morning calisthenics.
Normally their station personnel transfers were simultaneous, in with the new and out with the old on the same transport. But bureaucratic fuckups happened. This time, apparently, some waystation idiot had lost the transfer codes. Jake didn’t mind. In fact, if he knew who the little gene-fuse was, he’d have thanked him. Until the transfer came in at 20:00, they were running Selas Station’s primary functions with a skeleton crew of eight from the operations control on Level 3: no mess crew, no cargo bay or lab techs, and no one up early except Mick and Katherine Lindy, the Indefatigable Zombie Doctor. Perhaps that was what had glitched his chip: the unnatural stillness.
He got into Delta Lift and pressed the location for the mess hall. The lift locations panel groaned at him, and Jake slapped it out of habit. “Heart, what’s the problem?”
The monitor chimed merrily, but otherwise did not respond. The lift doors shot open again to reveal the crew corridor he’d just left.
“Real helpful. Thanks.” Jake yawned and stepped out again. If the main computer wouldn’t even acknowledge, the lift probably needed a whole mess of realigning and relinking and rewiring, and there was no damn way he was going there, especially not before breakfast. He pushed the call button for Alpha Lift.
Little Selas Station was a decrepit junker, a fussy recommission-cum-peripheral Science project spinning serenely around its planetary namesake. Originally constructed back in 2120, it’d served as a Class A-Bernoulli Science station with an Old American-Russian crew of thirty trained scientists, administrators, and security officers. Upon reclamation one hundred twenty-two years later, it was a mystery, a spook story, a floating wreck with a clockwork orbit and just enough salvageable hardware to make it worth recommissioning. After a prolonged skirmish about ownership among Science, Defense, and the Historical Society, Science won out.
Science had staffed the place with whoever would take the post, which meant most positions were filled involuntarily, with shit-starters or unlucky folk on the wrong side of someone. Must possess multiple Course strengths, the job postings ran. Programming and minor construction skills desired. Apart from a small handful, most people in the dozen years since recommission stayed only until their contract expired or they could wangle a transfer, and then they hightailed it back to Earth, citing headaches and strange dreams and even some melodramatic garbage about seeing ghostly ancient crewmembers in the mess hall late at night.
Jake was Selas’ first felon. Given all the monitoring and attention to his good progress, he’d probably serve as the first ripple of a wave. The Gov Board would love to have an established dumping ground for semi-undesirables.
But despite the compulsory posting, he loved the station, and Selas, even if the feeling wasn’t mutual. Viewscreens flickered in and out. The internal/external paneling and polymerine glass windows frequently cracked due to strain and old age. Just last week the upper docking ring had to be closed to shipping traffic, thanks to a rotting hank of memory gem connections. She was a spinning cylindrical jigsaw puzzle with decomposing pieces that failed faster than they could be replaced, even with the help of the high-tech Heart main computer and the gently-coerced contractual specs and techs Science sent them every other quarter.
Jake still loved it: loved every stupid, crumbling corner of the thing. It had seven levels: infirmary and medlab, then science on the top two levels, ops on 3, crew and Astrometrics on 4, more crew space on 5, and cargo bays and common areas for brief stopovers on Levels 6 and 7. And it was in a good location—four months out, far enough to be considered remote and severely limit streaming communications with Earth, close enough to refuel the deep space freighters with routes unfriendly to the main network of auto-refueling satellites. And the crew was making it better with each new repair. When they’d replaced something major like the outer paneling, or when he’d helped reinstall the containment field shelter and they watched, hovering in space, as the blue protective haze unfurled in a shimmering mantle over their home, he’d felt a surge of something too powerful to be mere pride, something almost paternal. Nat Ticonti would say he was projecting his love for Earth onto the nearest available substitute, but Nat was almost always wrong about everything.
He wasn’t alone in his love for the station. He knew Mick felt the same way he did, and Lindy, and almost all the senior staff and longtimers who’d been there on multiple contracts. Maybe it was infectious. Certainly the longer he stayed, the stronger the feeling became. If it had felt out of control, it would’ve bothered him, but it didn’t. It was enveloping and pliant, a feeling of gentle synergy, of welcome. Fixing up the station felt like the highest tribute he could pay.
What the hell was taking so long with the lift? They had reprogrammed Alpha just last month.
As if they heard his thoughts, Alpha Lift’s doors whispered open. In the corner hunched Mei Chen, her legs drawn up to her chest, her feathery black head disordered and resting on her knees.
“Morning, Mei. What’s the matter, forget your boost?”
Mei made a hollow indeterminate noise, muffled by her knees. Small, strongly-built, and absentminded, Mei Chen was half anomaly, half kindred spirit. She spent a chunk of her contract piddling around in Astrophysics and the other part working cargo bay shifts with the rough-hewn security crew. Jake sidled in and assumed what he hoped was a safe distance by the locations panel. He pressed for Level 1. “Why the hell aren’t you in the infirmary?”
“I was going there,” Mei paused and gulped. “Until someone stopped the lift.”
“Ease, we’ll be there before you can—er… Never mind, I didn’t say it.” Mei obligingly held it in. The lift thrummed upward. After a moment, Jake prudently covered his nose and mouth. “Don’t breathe your infectious agents at me. What happened?”
She shook her head. “Old rations shipment. Yesterday. Something wrong with it. We were getting low on . . . beans in the mess, oh, my head. I incinerated it, so… The shipment. Not my head. Sorry if you wanted any . . . oh, god.”
There was a horrible retching noise. A second later, the lift doors slid open.
“That’s lovely.” Jake froze the doors and got an arm under Mei, who had apparently given up and stretched full out alongside the freshly deposited puddle. A chain spilled out from under her collar. The charm caught his eye: the cross-sickle-star of the Combined Belief system. Funny—he’d spent ages knocking around with her in the labs and playing endless hands of Go-Go Fishboots in their off-duty hours, and he hadn’t known she was religious. “Where are your gods now?”
“You’re looking at them,” she mumbled into the floor.
“No wonder I never got into the CB. Come on, up and out.”
Mei batted a hand at him. “Nah. Fine right here. Niiiice and cool.”
“Yeah, sure. C’mon now, let’s go hand you off to Lindy before you get puke all over the corridor, too.” He hoisted her up and out the door, and caught a glimpse of someone standing just out of sight at the end of the corridor. “Hey buddy, you want to give us a hand here?”
No response. Jake strained to look over Mei’s shivering shoulders. The corridor was empty. Odd. He could have sworn he’d seen someone standing
out there, someone in a grey uniform. And there were only the eight of them on board—
“Who’re you talking to?”
“Huh? No one, I guess. Thought I saw someone there.” It was close to All Hallows and Nat’s corresponding celebration. What could be more appropriate than Jake’s own first ghostly sighting? Even spirits felt the pull of Selas. It would be one of the original crew, if lore served; probably Chubaryan, the mission leader. More likely, Jake was still too close to nightmare-time and seeing things in the shadows as a result. Although he’d never before mistaken a shadow for an actual person. He felt Mei gulp convulsively, and he tightened his grip. “Sorry.”
“No problem, fine. Oh plaguing hells, standing up is bad. Just let me crawl.”
“That’ll take too long.” Jake hooked his arm more firmly under her. “I’ve got shit to do today. Few more steps.”
“Uh hmm, don’t you listen to those cargo bay kids. I say you’re not a bastard.”
“Thanks a bunch. They think everyone’s a bastard.”
“Mostly you, though. And you are, like that time you yelled at me, but you’re not, you know?”
“Lindy!” Jake hollered as they stumbled through the swinging doors and into infirmary processing. “Giddy vomitous delivery? Dropping off?”
Dr. Katherine Lindy, hair and eyes the color of slate, her perpetual wrinkled scowl firmly affixed, was elbow-deep in sterilizing solution and the infirmary scanner. Clambering to her feet, she marched toward them. “Tell me you did your boost, girl.”
“Last night, all clear,” Mei said, looking befuddled.
“Over there.” Lindy pointed at the nearest hospital bed, and Jake snapped to. The oldest member of Selas Station’s crew, Lindy possessed the enviable ability to make grown men and women leap when she twitched an eyebrow. He laid Mei down as best he could and checked the brass wall chrono. Still an hour before the mission shuttlepod was due to fire up. He started back toward the doors and was jerked to a halt by Lindy’s hand on his collar.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Jake pulled at her fingers. “The labs. The expedition, you know? I need to pick up more sample cases—what?”
Lindy was shaking her head. “No, no, no. Standard UW direct monitoring for post-plague influenza is twelve hours after antivirals and vaccination, Jeong. Even for the head of Science.” She released his collar and, after a moment’s consideration, straightened it. Then she turned away and rummaged through the nearest supply cart.
“I know that.” Jake leaned over her shoulder. “But—”
“What page was it?”
“Page 464A to be cited in Appendices QR2300A to—” He stopped himself. “Damn it. You did that on purpose.”
Lindy tapped her head. “Only way I know to shut you up voluntarily, son.”
Possible side effect number 18 of the ERPIC: in closed initial studies of successful insertions, the penitence implant chip had been shown to have mild influence on other portions of the brain’s limbic system, including but not limited to long- and short-term memory enhancement, long- and short-term memory loss, and hallucinations. The unlucky five percent experienced psychotic episodes, or the development of psychosis—Jake bit down hard on his lip to keep the whole chapter from escaping. Before the incident, his memory had been decent enough without assisted robotic recall. “Stick it in your skull and see how well you do. So what do you need, pokey tests before I go? Give me a shot already, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I told you. Twelve hours. We’re already on skeleton crew, and you know what Carmichael will say.”
“You’re joking. You’re joking, right?” Jake was dumbfounded. “But she’s fine. I mean, despite that gusher of puke.”
“It wasn’t a gusher,” Mei said, sitting up. “He’s right, though. I’m fine, Doc—” Her face greened, and she slowly eased herself back down again. “Gusher. That’s just gross.”
“Mmm, yes,” Lindy mused as she loaded a blue antiviral-KO combo vial into an injector. “You should really clean that up, Jake, since we won’t have any maintenance staff till later tonight.”
He bristled. “And you don’t know it’s post-Leech flu, you haven’t even sampled her yet. She’ll be fine in an hour, and that’ll put us back up to bare minimum crew count. Give me a six-hour postponement, at least.”
She gave him the hairy eyeball instead. “No. Twelve hours. Standard recuperation time. Anything else puts a patient and us in possible jeopardy. Take it up with Toby if you don’t like it.” She slapped the combo into Mei’s elbow port. “Ease, dear. Have you feeling better in no time. Just a little blood now, and then you can relax.”
Lindy took blood samples the way normal people blinked. Jake waited until she had filled her vials and then followed her into the tiny med lab. “This is completely excessive. She’ll be fine, and you know it. We could probably patch her and monitor while she does—what are you doing today, Mei, traffic control? You’ll be fine. Right? Stop ignoring me, Doc. I’ve been counting on this trip.”
“Not gonna happen, sweetheart.” Lindy clinked the vials together. “Toby, you awake yet?”
The general comm system thrummed, and Stationmaster Tobias Carmichael’s deep tones flooded the wave over the infirmary PA. “Unfortunately. What’s your situation?”
“Got a flu patient here.” Lindy loaded the sample incubator with a few judicious slaps. “Mei Chen’s having some, ahem, emanations.”
“Emanations.” Carmichael sounded amused. “Do we need a priest up there?”
“Do we have one?”
“No. But I’m sure Nat could do a credible impression.”
“Looks like post-plague flu. And Jeong’s giving me grief about his mission. I’ll set up a monitoring lockdown, make sure no one else is infected. Also, can we institute quarantine today? Refuels are fine, but no visiting traffic stops on the Commons level until we pass the twelve-hour mark.”
“Wait.” Jake joined the comm. “If ever there was a case for discretionary judgment, Carmichael, this is it. Damn it, Lindy, if I wait twelve hours, I’ll be stuck training newts the next few weeks—”
“That’s a negative, Jake,” Carmichael interrupted. “I’ve postponed you anyway. Shipping traffic levels have gone through the roof. You’re needed in Control. Once our new crew arrives tonight and gets settled properly, we can talk about rescheduling. That suit you, Lindy?”
“Suits me just fine,” Lindy said. “I’ll send him your way after inoc.”
She cut the connection and swept Jake a look of pure satisfaction. “There’s supposed to be a micrometeoroid shower tonight, isn’t there?”
“Ooh, fascinating, Doctor. Maybe I’ll go float off the port bow and see if I can catch any.”
She tugged up his sleeve. “Bitching about it won’t change my mind.”
“Maybe not, but it might make you feel bad.” At her skeptical eyebrow, Jake amended, “Or just me feel better. Ow, damn it.”
“Do suck it up, son, you’re a grown man.”
Grown man or not, a needle was a needle, and just because Jake had grown up with them didn’t mean that he had to enjoy them. Like the rest of his generation, he had the new Supported Human Immune System—a type of therapy and treatment, the shared creation of sixteen United Worlds Science geneticists that functioned with a combination of genetic engineering, smart gene implants, and biotech. Or more accurately, when it functioned properly. To preserve minimal function, everyone received daily boosters. It didn’t bear thinking what would happen if Leech ever came back.
Thirty-eight percent of Earth’s population had perished between 2132 and 2141, in the primary wave of the Leech virus. But the Domes begun during the crisis had been completed by the time Jake was born, and most of the survivors had retreated to live in relative peace, safety, and health within the huge glass and polymerine enclosures.
Dome life was standard now on Earth, except for the loners and the scavs and the hermits, those who chose to live outs
ide the Domes and the necessary . . . rigidity required to keep the community safe. The founding cadre of chemists, botanists, and pathologists who became United Worlds’ Science division controlled it all in the early days and still (barely) held all the Domes together now in one big worldwide network, under the United Worlds Governance Board. Technically, full-blown living outside the Dome was illegal. In reality, Dome dwellers and scavs lived and let live. There was no point in harassing a “doomed sect of misanthropes,” as the Gov Board had classified them. And they were doomed. It was rare to hear talk of an old scav. Their life expectancy was low and their numbers minimal, barely double the rate of Dome-defectors with stolen suits, who themselves lasted only slightly longer than those who went skin-bare in the new wilderness of the convalescing ecosystem. The devastation of man had allowed plenty of endangered flora and fauna to regain standing.
Inside, the Domes had regularly scheduled sunlight exposure, gardening exercises, and underground maintenance duty; they also had tagging, boosts, assiduous micro-decontamination, and a host of other inconveniences. Domes were paranoid by nature, with good reason. One cough could bring down a Dome. You could still go outside and get back in again, as long as you passed the decon clearance. If you didn’t . . . defection wasn’t the only way to become a scav. Or so Jake had heard.
Space was different, in ways Jake hadn’t expected. Stations had heavier decon regulations, especially ones that saw as many traffic control stopovers as Selas did. Space travel crews were required to boost twice daily. Compared to the typical civilian model, spacer arm ports were heavy duty, tough little implants like a soft socket surgically applied to the arm, the end pressing thousands of injection nodes into the flesh at the crook of your elbow. Jake rarely noticed his anymore, unless a sadistic insomniac doctor jabbed him in it with a 22-gauge sharp, as Lindy was wont to do.
Jake and his fellows were even more strictly regulated. In addition to the boosts and the micro-decon for pod trips, no one came or went without first enduring one of Lindy’s uncomfortably exacting physicals. There were daily contact logs, the testing drills, and emergency inoc kits. Even space relationships were supposed to be officially declared if they became physical (though that was probably the one rule Carmichael let slide every now and then, given his long tenure). Consequently, Selas was considered a near-monastery back on Earth, her inhabitants so randy they’d sleep with anyone who dropped by and bothered to disinfect.