by Anthology
The first time I met him, he got in my face, demanding to know where I got my “toys.” I was eight—the youngest in the pack of orphans running wild through the rig before the company got the injunction to enforce mandatory contraception for prisoners..
I didn’t talk much then, just collected scrap metal and plastic then cobbled everything together into silly sculptures and figurines. I’m pretty sure I stuttered when I explained this to Tokala. But he just grunted, and when I saw him again, he brought me some leftovers from the machine shop. Said when I got older he’d let me on the shop floor.
These days, he says once my vocational training is done, he’ll formally request me for a position. They’ll pay me peanuts, but maybe one day, one day, I’ll earn enough for my passage away from this place. But I’m not holding my breath.
I take out my latest project from the storage lockers lining the back wall. Tokala once asked me what it’s supposed to be. Told him I didn’t know, but that’s not true.
I lay everything out on a workbench. Overlapping metal and plastic feathers riveted together. Kept in segments to hide the truth. The light catches the silver and bronze rivets, the polished edges of the plastic. My chest constricts at the sight of my wings.
Dr. Veler says it’s healthy to have a creative outlet for all the emotions locked up inside. They need to get out, to be free. Let your mind soar, she told me once, and it will be easier to forget my prison. I haven’t told her about these. She’d probably say something like because I’m so secretive about them, I don’t know, I must have an unhealthy fixation on their symbolic nature or some crap like that.
There’s no winning with psychiatrists.
***
Dinner’s usually tinned military rations or rehydrated nutrition bars pressed into molds with a rotating array of sauces dumped over top. The convicts are kept busy enough it doesn’t matter so much what they eat, so long as they do. Orphans aren’t so lucky.
I take my tray and join a woman in an orange jumpsuit, ankles hobbled by magnetized shackles. She has brown hair going gray and a face that was once beautiful, now unremarkable. But a small smile changes all that when she sees me and slaps the plastic chair beside her.
“Zhen. How was school today?” Shima asks.
I scoff. The “school” is the minimum required by law since the mining company realized too late they’d be responsible for any offspring their penal workers had. Dr. Veler’s been giving me extra work to do for months so I’d have an easier time getting caught up if I ever left this place. Not that it matters now.
Shima chuckles into her water. “You should’ve seen it. I was called into the shift leader’s office today—”
“What was it this time?”
“Hey. What’s with you? I could’ve done something good. You ever think of that?”
I raise my eyebrows. Shima said what she did wasn’t so bad to warrant sterilization, same with many of the other convicts. That’s why she was given the opportunity to work off her sentence. But she never told me how much time she had left. I always assumed it was until her body finally quit on her.
Shima holds up her hands. “Fine. I’ve been a couple of seconds late with my timing on the line. Marty thinks it’s my joints, repetitive stress, whatever. Gotta appointment with the company doc tomorrow. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”
I take a bite of some sort of loaf covered in a thick yellow sauce with green specks.
“While I was in there, the foremen asks Marty to come to the observation room when his shift’s over. I give Marty a hard time about it—ask him what he’s done wrong. He tells me there’s been a research vessel in the area. To examine how Saturn affects Titan’s orbit or something.”
She leans toward me. “But get this. They refused the staff’s greetings and offer to socialize even though they’re moving through the area slow enough to stopover. Marty denied it, but I think he was disappointed—bet they’re starved for fresh faces.”
“Huh.”
Shima’s eyes twinkle despite the cafeteria’s tinny light. “Like a bunch of uptight scientists would have anything to do with the morons here. Ha!”
“Still, new faces couldn’t hurt.”
She nods. “Marty said after this the staff may need to reinvigorate the social life on the rig for ‘morale’ since our next shipment isn’t for another month.”
I roll my eyes.
“I know. Me and the others are still annoyed they busted up the gaming ring a few months ago.”
I push around the so-called food on my plate with my plastic fork. “But didn’t someone die?”
“What’s good for morale is different for us. And death ain’t so bad when you’re chained to the line.” Shima frowns into her cup.
I bite my lip. “Dr. Veler contacted my relatives on Earth to see if they’d sponsor my travel to one of the other colonies or something.” The words rush out of me. “Your parents are dead.”
Shima snorts. “I could’ve told you that.”
I blink up at her. “You knew?”
“Well, yeah. They’re my parents.”
And my grandparents, but I guess that’s never occurred to her. I shove back from the table.
She looks up. “What’s with you?”
I square my shoulders, electricity crackling under my skin. “Told Tokala I’d help him in the shop.”
Her eyes narrow, then she smiles. “You’re a good kid, Zhen.”
I don’t know what to say to that. We’ve never been close. We don’t talk about these kinds of things, so when she does act motherly—the times I can count on one hand—I freeze up, hyperaware of the awkwardness.
I settle on, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
***
Back to the machine shop. The only answer for today.
Tokala’s closed things up. But he gave me the override code within six months of first letting me onto the floor.
I get out my wings. I can’t ignore what they’re supposed to be. Not any longer. Dr. Veler said it herself. I need to find a way to fly from here, rise up from my past. I don’t care if my poor impulse control’s taking over or not.
When we learned in school that on Titan, people can fly, I started working on my wings. And I guess subconsciously I’ve been waiting for a reason to see if the rumors are true.
With the last rivet welded into place, my metal and plastic feathers in perfect order, I have my wings. I just need a subzero suit.
Those are kept in the maintenance bay. It’s not hard to bypass the door security—orphans learn to do that early on—and I grab the first suit I find. I get it on, seal it up tight, then fit the wings’ rubber and canvas straps over my shoulders. Like two halves of a heart, the wings run the length of each arm, the tips jingling against concrete floors as I make my way to the upper deck.
I stand on the railing. The thick atmosphere settles over me as door alarms protest. The other orphans—and the convicts—are always setting them off. I’ve got a few minutes at least to work up my courage before security comes. I stare into Titan’s haze.
There’s nothing here for me. I knew that for a while, but…now is the time to do something about it.
I jump off the railing, higher than I ever could’ve managed inside the rig. My heart stops as my ascent slows, and I tip forward into the sky.
The drag of the wings digs the straps into my shoulders almost immediately. Opening my arms wide, I hold them like that for a count of three, and wait for that fraught moment when I’ll know just how good my handiwork is.
The wings hold. I pump my arms, fly a few feet higher, and lean right to angle myself toward my future.
If the research vessel is here to monitor Saturn’s interaction with Titan, that makes it easy to navigate. I just have to aim for the yellow-orange disk eclipsing the sky. With luck, I’ll catch up to the ship before it gets too far.
The suit keeps out the cold—true. But the heat my body exerts to keep me aloft is thick inside the layers, slo
w to escape. Sweat pricks my eyes as I flap and glide and flap some more.
I fly around clouds of hydrocarbons when I can. Titan’s covered in them. Methane, ethane, tholins…it’s cold enough they behave like water on Earth—collecting in clouds, raining down on the surface, and then returning to the atmosphere where the process starts all over again.
A huge hydrocarbon pocket’s dead ahead, unavoidable. I take a deep breath and brace myself for the reduced visibility and increased drag as I sink into it.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. I hit something and nearly double over in pain. My eyes widen at a lifeless body in a pressurized suit just like mine, hovering in the cloud. There’s no telling how long the body’s been trapped here.
Oh god. There are more of them. Dozens…Too many helmets knocked aside, revealing ghostly pale faces, slightly bloated, eyes open or closed, blood staining their suits, slash marks cutting through the thick material along necks and wrists…The cold, the hydrocarbons, must slow the rate of decay.
Dinner claws its way back up my throat. I choke it back as I try to maneuver between the bodies. I can make out the company’s logo on some of the suits. Bodies usually get incinerated on the rig. But this…so many…The convict uprising?
I’ve pieced together enough of the history to know a team of convicts were assigned to repair a faulty exterior handling unit. A dangerous mission requiring self-propelled pressurized suits with safety lines tethering them to the rig. And now those suits are the very things keeping them in gruesome orbit around Titan.
Instead of repairs, the convicts cut the lines and tried to highjack control of the rig. The company security force fought them off. I’m not sure if tensions between the convicts and the rig staff will ever go away.
I should keep going, keep my head down and get out of here, but I’m looking for him. The one who gave me life and then made it worse.
A figure on the periphery demands my attention. There’s nothing special about it, except for the black hair, glossy dark just like mine. A sturdy build that’ll be mine in a few years.
Without thinking, I’m already banking to sweep around and take another look. I blink back sweat and something else as I stare into my father’s face.
He’s not scary, not in the way I expected from all the hushed tones in which he’s been mentioned over the years. I have his cheekbones and jaw but Shima’s lips and nose. His eyes are closed, relaxed, despite the iron-brown stain across his front.
But he’s still a stranger. And he can’t hold me back any longer. I won’t let him.
My stomach heaves. I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to find the research vessel. My only way out. With my wings, they can’t doubt my determination. I’ll prove myself useful. I’ll prove I am more.
A few flaps of my wings, and I escape the cloud.
I force myself to ignore the sick crusted to the inside of my helmet. I barely register the burn of my shoulders and pectorals. I only have eyes for the dark blip on the horizon. The research vessel.
If I had hesitated, if I hadn’t learned about it from Shima…No. I won’t think about that or the fact I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Tokala. But Dr. Veler will understand. At least she’ll try.
The bright lights urge me on. As I get closer I spy an observation deck where I can strip off my wings. Set down what I’ve been carrying so long. They can chain me to their machine shop if they want. I don’t care.
So long as the vessel leaves Titan’s orbit one day, that’s all that matters.
Jump Cut(Short story)
by Lauren C. Teffeau
The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography. Unlikely Story, Issue 11. February 2015.
Machine oil and carnauba wax scent the air as I go through my crosscheck. Drone cameras buzz and flash overhead. My hover bike—all gleaming chrome and hard-molded plastic—sits on blocks in the open-air stall as it charges. Beyond, the crowded arena rumbles, rippling into cheers as the other riders emerge from the locker room to check their gear one last time before the race.
A qualifying round, one of those free-for-alls where all you care about is crossing the finish line before anyone else. By any means possible.
I clench my fingers as another wave of cheers crashes around me. Sweat beads across my upper lip. No help for it. Time to queue up a vid-chain.
Closing my eyes, I use my neural implant to start the program. My heartbeat slows as the first clip slides past in the periphery of my vision. Lucio knows what settles my nerves—mostly scenery pans: lush forests, windswept fields, mountains majesty.
The knot in my stomach has almost loosened completely when someone slaps my shoulder. Gritting my teeth, I blink back the images. I find Ari giving me a lop-sided grin and nearly groan. “What do you want? It’s almost post time.” I brush past him and grab my riding gloves and helmet from the bench along the low wall separating my stall from his.
His grin deepens. “Oh, come on, Jack.” He waggles his bushy eyebrows. “Can’t you get excited for a race just once in your life?”
My stomach lurches in protest, and I momentarily refocus on the rolling countryside scrolling along the edges of my vision. Deep breaths. “You know how it is,” I say through my teeth.
Ari laughs and slaps my back again. “What? That the legendary Jack Deseronto nearly wets himself before each race?”
“Knock it off.”
“All right. All right. I’m just a bit amped.”
I snort. Ari’s always amped.
His gaze sharpens on me. “Sorry, man. I didn’t realize you’re already boosting. I forgot Lucio builds in a longer lead up for you.”
I attempt a shrug. “Helps me race on my own terms, you know?” I had a nasty spill a few months after going pro and never got over the gut-clenching terror of that moment.
Ari shakes his head. “All I know is you’re the only guy on the hover cross circuit who lets the carnage on the track get to him.”
“Can still beat you any day.”
He laughs and gives me a knowing look. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
“No, it’s okay.” And it is. There’s too much history between us for it not to be. We joined the tour four years ago, and we’re still here, now racing for the same sponsor. Though neither one of us have medalled recently. Tonight will be different though. I can feel it. Or maybe it’s just the chain.
I rub my face. “So what did you want?”
He glances at the other stalls, then leans in. “Got a new vid-chain for today. Marek approved it a few hours ago.”
“Really? Didn’t think Lucio liked rush jobs.”
“Doesn’t matter if Marek’s the one asking.” He winks. “Got a good feeling about this one. Keigo won’t have a chance—”
Screams drown out my response as Keigo Atori enters the arena, waving to the cameras. Cocky, after taking gold the last few tournaments. Keigo scans the other stalls, stopping when he finds me and Ari. He gives me a deferential nod, and I return it despite Ari’s elbow digging into my side.
Keigo turns his attention to his bike, and Ari sighs. “High and mighty bastard. He won’t last, you’ll see.”
“Cool it. You’re not doing my stomach any favors.”
Ari holds up his hands and backs away. “All right, grandpa.” He hops the wall separating his stall from mine.
I give him a sharp nod. “Good luck.”
Another grin. “I like you, Jack, but I like you better when I’m higher up on the podium.”
I just shake my head and put on my gloves. Then the helmet. The crowd noise is dampened, and with a blink I turn up the music that accompanies the chain. Thrash metal like always. The only stuff loud and unpleasant enough to drown everything else out.
Moments later, the lights flash overhead. Time to line up.
I kick my bike into gear. With a slight hum, it repulses from the blocks and hovers in the air. I have to fight the giddy breathless feeling I always get and just focus on the bike beneath me. The c
rowd roars as hover bikes and riders exit the stalls. Ari gives me a quick backwards wave as I maneuver my bike behind his and follow the procession up to the starting gate.
The referee stands before us, droning on about all the regulations we must comply with. No physical contact. No drifting outside course boundaries. No real-time mapping or course optimization applications running on our implants.
Sub-dermal devices aren’t prohibited in competition since practically everyone has them these days, but we’re limited in how they’re used—no messing with neurotransmitter levels for example. I guess it was only a matter of time before we figured out other ways to use the implants to enhance our performance.
At the gate, the sequences my implant chains together move beyond just scenery dressing. Transitions are more abrupt, the content more intense…subconsciously preparing me for the race.
As images flick past, with the lights from the course strobing around me, power throbs in my blood, commanding me to move…to blast my bike forward. To make something happen. The boost into chronostasis. I’m almost there.
That magical moment where everything slows down. Where I have all the time in the world to make split-second decisions. Only then will I be able to focus on the course with all its tight turns and jumps, mentally determine the sections where I can open the throttle or short a curve. Figure out how much lift my hover bike will get off the moguls, which ones I can safely sail over and still maintain my speed.
It’s pretty obvious when the boosts don’t work, but when they do…As long as you don’t seize up, can still speak when it’s all over, that’s a win. And I need one today.
I’m barely able to keep the boost at bay. Ari too, jittering on his bike beside me as the clock counts down. Time stops midway between ‘1’ and ‘Go’, and a dam breaks before my eyes. My bike twitches forward, and the world lights up around me.
We get out in front, take the first turn. Tanks rumbling, waves crashing, fireworks exploding…the images flash before my eyes and spur me on. The boost takes over, accompanied by a never-ending soundtrack of thumping bass, cymbals, and synthetic violins. My head aches with it.