by Alex Drozd
“Yeah,” Stuart replied.
“Only one more hover car ride, you know,” Brian teased his son. “Then you won’t have to put your life into one of those things’ hands again.” He laughed.
“I’m sure we’ll be coming back in a year or two,” Stuart muttered.
“So, you excited to start school again?” Cliff asked his nephew.
“Certification training,” Stuart said.
“Isn’t it still school, though?”
“I mean, I won’t be going to the education building anymore. That’s what we call school.”
“What he’s doing is vocational,” Brian chipped in. “He won’t have general education classes. He’ll be focused on programming once we’re home.”
“You know, you guys really do have short breaks. Don’t you start just a couple days after you get back?”
“Yeah,” Stuart sighed.
“Wow, too short.”
“Smaller worlds have to work harder,” Brian chipped in again. “It’s good for Stu, though, and he’ll be training for important work.”
“Big worlds work just as hard,” Cliff snorted. “Do you see the building we’re in right now?”
“And what’s your logic behind that?”
“More people, more things to do.”
“You’re wrong. The relationship between the amount of work there is to do and population isn’t linear. There’s a certain lower threshold you have to meet as far as variety of services go in a society. You need food, shelter, water, et cetera. Needing those things is independent of how many people you have. But if you have too few people, individuals have less time to specialize and have to cover a broader range of responsibilities, splitting up their focuses on meeting all of society’s needs. Rather, on a larger world, like this one, you have enough people—meaning more people specialized in performing all of your various functions—for your efficiency to be high enough that some people don’t even have to serve a function. Come on now, Cliff, what percent of the population is unemployed? But is it even a problem? I tell you, luxury is on the planets like Earth. Everything here is so streamlined there’s not much left for you to do.”
“Yeah?” Cliff asked, “And why not move out here, then? Janus is a rock. So are we, but at least we have trees.” He chuckled at his own joke. Stuart disliked him for that.
“There’s more life to live on a developing world. You get all of life’s aspects out there. It’s good for you. It builds men, the kind who are going to keep human civilization expanding.”
“What do you think, Stu?” Cliff asked. “Do you think your dad is on to something? Or do you think he’s just full of hot air? I think I know which one I’ve got in mind.”
“Stu prefers Janus. I know he does. Don’t you, Stu?”
Stuart nodded. “The sky’s too bright here.”
Cliff chuckled at that. “Well, more time for poetry and art where I’m from,” he said, leaning further back in his chair.
“Brenda has time.”
“Yeah, but she’s in a unique position.”
“I didn’t mind when Brian was just lecturing you, but I can’t pretend to be asleep when you’re talking about me.” Brenda sat up. “It’s too weird.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I was dreaming about your frontier worlds build character speech, so it was hard to tell when I actually woke up. You make that one a lot, you know.”
Brian chuckled at his wife. “Frontier worlds are good for the children. I’m glad we raised Stu on one. Aren’t you, Stu? You should send Jody out to Janus for a month or two, Cliff. There are off-world internships he could get into. You know, working on a frontier world lowers your family’s income tax. It’s in the law.”
“I know, I know,” Cliff laughed. “Speaking of him, where is Jody?”
The adults glanced around, all of their eyes eventually landing on Stuart.
“Stu?”
“I don’t know,” Stuart said, almost exasperated. It was getting old. Hadn’t they noticed that he and Jody hadn’t really interacted the whole trip?
“Well, I doubt he’s asleep,” Cliff said. “He stays up late. Hell, he probably would stay awake forever if I didn’t make him go to bed.” Cliff looked over at Stuart and grinned, “Don’t tell him I told you that. Bedtimes aren’t something to brag about if I remember being your age.”
“I think you’re right,” Stuart muttered.
“Why don’t you go hang out with him? Last night to see each other. Go on,” Cliff said.
Reluctantly, Stuart got up and left the main room, heading for the back of the apartment.
While by himself in the dark hallway, a deep fear washed over him. It happened every time he was alone, out of everyone’s sight. He worried reality would start glitching again, that his schizophrenic episodes, hallucinations, whatever they were, would attack him while no one was watching. It was an uncomfortable situation. Stuart hated being around people, but for now, it was better than being alone, though that might not have been the right word, technically.
Could he actually be alone? Were they always watching him?
He hadn’t seen the thin man since that encounter outside the MemoryBank. But he knew that didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t seen Alissa for almost a week when she appeared to drive him crazy.
Or was that just the PSFA? He still hadn’t settled that. That breakdown he had, the one he couldn’t quite picture clearly, was it due to PSFA, his hallucinations, or both? Or were his hallucinations a byproduct of the PSFA? Could it be that he had one of the most severe cases to ever arise?
He stopped at Jody’s door, hesitant to go in. He smiled to himself. What if Jody was in his room experiencing a similar crisis? What if he too saw images of people that walked and talked? What if they both saw Alissa? Jody had been quiet and brooding, just like his cousin; maybe it was so.
It could be that every person in the world dealt with it, and everyone was just too petrified to ever admit it out loud; the whole human race, seeing images of itself that weren’t there, each person dealing with it privately, too embarrassed to seek help. The turmoil nowhere to be seen, but everywhere nonetheless.
One of Jody’s could be behind me right now, he thought. If Jody were to look at me, he might see someone standing behind me, waiving at him from behind my shoulder. Someone only he could see, but he’d be there all the same, at least to Jody.
Stuart swatted behind himself aggressively.
He couldn’t wait to return to Janus.
After a few knocks on the door, Jody answered, scowling at his older cousin.
“What do you want?”
“We need to sit together for a few minutes. It’s the last night.”
“Leave me alone.”
“I want them to leave me alone. This is how that happens.”
“Fine.”
Jody turned away, walking back to his computer. He didn’t offer Stuart any particular seat.
“I was playing a game,” Jody said.
“Okay,” Stuart went to sit on the end of Jody’s bed. He pulled out his PortScreen to kill time.
“Are you happy to be leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“Right after lunch.”
“It takes a really long time to get back, huh?”
“I guess so. A hyperspace ship can take almost a week.”
“I’ve never been off Earth.”
“Okay.”
They were silent for a few minutes. Stuart browsed articles, swiping the screen on his wrist. Jody played his game, but he had to keep starting over. He wasn’t doing well.
“I wish they would stop talking about Mom so much,” Jody said.
“Yeah,” Stuart said.
“I don’t want to keep hearing about her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just let her be dead, I mean, I don’t know.” Jody was a bit stirred up, now, Stuart noticed. He r
egretted entering the room.
“The MemoryBank was weird,” Stuart said.
“Yeah, it really was,” Jody went on. “I wish we’d put her somewhere else.”
“They’re probably all the same. They’re stupid.”
There was the sound of movement from the living room. The adults were probably getting ready for bed. That meant it was time for Stuart to go as well.
“Well, I’m going to sleep,” Stuart said.
“Oh, goodnight,” Jody said.
Stuart got up and left his cousin’s room, heading for the guest room. Tomorrow, he and his family would be headed for the Earth spaceport. He dreaded that. There were more people there than anywhere else in the inhabited galaxy. Though the stars explored were few, travel between them was common. The starship they would be boarding tomorrow would probably be a mile long.
For some reason when he thought about the ship, he felt it, that same sense of dread, that feeling that something about the world was off. He could feel the glitch. He could see it everywhere he looked.
The last time he had felt it this strongly was when he had been seeing Alissa.
14
It was the day before their starship would be landing back on Janus. With the ship about to leave hyperspace and rejoin the ordinary dimensions of spacetime, its passengers collected themselves inside the lobby of the interstellar cruiser, eager to watch the stars pop back into view following the jump. While in hyperspace, all that could be seen was an infinite canvas of pitch black. It was the one thing about traveling that Stuart didn’t mind.
He followed his parents warily as they dragged him along with them. Hundreds of other families, couples, and vacation groups flowed down the halls of the starship with them, cramming together and bursting out into the cruiser’s lobby like a funnel. Stuart groaned inwardly, averse to so many people being around him. It was like being in the halls of the education building again—the one that, thankfully, he wouldn’t be returning to when he got back.
“Stop lagging behind, Stu,” Brenda said to him. She turned around to give him a scolding look. “Why are you being so slow?”
“I don’t want to see the stars,” he said.
“It’s the one good thing about being on this damn ship,” Brian said to him. “C’mon.”
They grabbed him by the shoulders and propelled him forward, as if they had forgotten he was legally an adult now. Maybe it’s because, on Janus, students still live with their parents during their Rank Zero, Stuart thought. They’ll stop seeing me as a child when I move out of their dwelling unit.
“How much longer is this going to take?” his mother said impatiently as she pushed forward. “My goodness there’s so many people. I want to get a good view.”
“Well, just about everyone onboard is out here, probably,” Brian said. “That’s seven thousand people, you know.” Of that, only a few dozen would be getting off at Janus. The rest would stay on, riding along to the next planet, some getting off there, some boarding, and some staying on for the next planet after that, the cruiser making circles around the inhabited galaxy.
“Almost all of them are going to get the chance to see this again,” Stuart said. “They should only let people getting off at Janus be in the lobby right now.”
“Hmmph,” Brian said. “Now there’s an idea. Good one, Stu.”
There were other reasons Stuart wanted fewer people around; it wasn’t just his crippling social anxiety. Amidst all those faces, those thousands and thousands of bodies milling about him on all sides, one of his hallucinations could be waiting for him, concealed in the immensity of the surrounding crowd. A cold chill swept over Stuart. The blood in his face began to feel heavy.
“Oh, finally. I can see the door to the lobby,” Brenda said. They pushed forward, people moving to the side as to not be swallowed up by Brian’s momentum as he bumbled along to the end of the hallway. The fat man has some advantages, I guess, Stuart thought.
They broke into the lobby, the wide, Atrium-like area, big enough to fit thousands. A hemispherical dome hung overhead, acting as a ceiling. Above them, the blanket of blackness lay. Hyperspace, where light did not ordinarily find itself; a void, one that they would be leaving soon.
“You took your PSFA medication, right?” Brenda asked, looking out at the window of the ship.
“Yes,” Stuart said.
“Oh, this is going to be beautiful.”
“It sure will,” his father nodded.
“This’ll be the fourth time we’ve seen it on this trip,” Stuart whined.
His parents ignored him, and they found their way to the center of the lobby. There was an elevated platform which had yet to fill up, and they climbed their way to the top, making their way to the railing on the edge of it. Stuart followed behind. Soon, they were all leaning against it, waiting for the stars to appear. The chattering of thousands of voices surrounded them on all sides.
“Good! We gotta good view,” Brian boomed, announcing to those nearby that a fat man was in the vicinity and his territory was not to be questioned. Stuart noticed a few of the people beside them shift over a few inches. This part of the railing was now claimed.
“How long do you think it will be?” Brenda asked.
“No idea. You know they never give us an accurate time,” Brian replied.
“I know. It’s just fun to guess.”
“What do you think, Stu?” Brian asked, turning to him. “Your mother wants an estimate.”
“Five minutes,” Stuart said without imagination.
“Five minutes it is,” Brian said. He looked at the time on his PortScreen, counting down. “Five minutes and about a day until we’re back home, everyone. Have you guys missed it?”
“I have,” Brenda said. “I wish it didn’t take a whole week to travel out, and another to come back. I miss our bed.”
“I bet we’d travel a lot more if they could find direct jumps from Earth to Janus. I think we all hate sitting on this thing for so long. What about you, Stu?”
“You know I don’t like it.”
“You don’t like anything,” his father chuckled.
“I can’t wait to start my new job,” Brenda said. “It’s going to be so exciting. And Stuart will be starting his Zero. Oh my goodness, we have so much to look forward to.”
“It’s going to be a new world when we get back. The Equity Measure went into effect just a couple of days ago.”
“How exciting.”
“Are we going to be making more or less?” Stuart asked.
His parents turned to look at him, bemused expressions on their faces.
“What?” Brian asked him.
“Will we have more money or less money now that the Equity Measure’s passed?” Stuart repeated.
“More of course—I mean, not much more, but...haven’t you been listening to me, Stu?” Brian asked.
“It’s all your father talked about with your uncle,” Brenda joked.
“All you’ve talked about is how people like Dwayne’s parents will make less,” Stuart said.
“My goodness, Stu,” Brian said. “You’re literally about to start job training, and you haven’t been curious enough to look this up yourself? How you’ll be paid for your role? What the hell do you do then when you’re on the computer?”
Stuart shrugged. “I mean if we’re all making the same, what does it matter? But it doesn’t sound like things will be all that different, anyways, if we’re only making a little more.”
“It won’t be that different at first, but in a few years we’ll have a stronger economy,” Brian said. “Extra money will stop going to some people just because they were successful wherever they emigrated from.” He then put his arm around his wife’s waist and smiled at her. “But there’ll be beautiful art all over the colony right away. We won’t have to wait for that.”
“Oh, stop,” his mother giggled. “That’s enough of that.”
They kissed each other a little too passionately for bei
ng out in public. Stuart turned away, repulsed, realizing that his own existence was due to a lot more than just that. It was the worst thought in the world.
A voice came from the lobby’s speakers, one that rang throughout the whole starship.
“We’ll be exiting hyperspace in one minute. Repeat, star field will be visible in one minute.”
The talking in the room grew a touch quieter as the voice spoke, and then it grew more excited when it went away. Some people clapped and cheered. Stuart rolled his eyes. You could see the stars on just about any planet if you looked up at night, he thought. What was so great about seeing them while out here?
“You ready, Stu?” his father boomed. “This is the last time we’ll see this before the trip’s over.”
“I guess,” Stuart sighed.
“Oh, I can’t wait,” Brenda squealed. “It’s always so pretty.”
As the seconds counted down to leaving hyperspace, an impression of trepidation swept over Stuart. They could be somewhere in this room, or, worse yet, they might appear when the cruiser jumped out of hyperspace. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen them yet, he wondered. They can’t reach me out here, away from ordinary spacetime, but once I’m back, they’ll come get me—they’ll try and talk to me and drive me crazy again. The stars will suddenly burst into view after the jump and everyone around me will scream in delight, but at the same time, to my eyes only, Alissa will pop back into view at the same moment as the stars, and I’ll scream in terror.
The voice came again through the speakers, counting down the last ten seconds. Stuart tensed up, worried the worst of his fears would come to fruition. The glitch came to the front of his mind. Alissa can disappear and reappear, just like those stars, he thought. This would be the perfect time for her to do so.
Instantly, without prior warning, save for the voice doing the countdown, the starship jumped. There was no change in sensation that came along with it—no jolt or feeling of discontinuity. Jumping from hyperspace to normal space, and vice versa, was completely seamless.
Everyone gasped as the star field came into view; a billion pinpoints of light shining for attention, some of them galaxies containing another few billion more. Stuart glanced around, indifferent to the sea of distant worlds that hung above him. He was just glad to see no sign of his hallucinatory friends.