Pheno understood one thing early—he needed more than one job to stay alive. Other aspects of Gressan servility eluded him: servile voting rights, payments for votes, and the possibility, in theory, of buying freedom. These perversities obsessed Pheno.
So Pheno starved for sixteen planetary rotations. After appeasing Klug’s demands while the sun arced, he lay on the stone floor under the building’s heating arrays in the corner of the Academy’s Floor 0 and thought. Pheno liked that spot because the other serviles kept their distance from fear the arrays would burn them. This happened if a body came too close, but Pheno kept low and flat to avoid seeing the need in the other serviles after they devoured the daily ration of whatever they had bought, scavenged, or stolen. He thought slowly but completely. At the end of sixteen rotations, when his mind withered in pain and he no longer moved fast enough to avoid Klug’s kicks, Pheno grasped three things: he knew nothing of how the universe worked, Klug would eventually kill him, and freedom was worth any cost.
Pheno reflected on those facts now. Had he misjudged anything? Overlooked a crucial minor detail? Had circumstances changed? School seemed an obvious place to begin searching for truth. His servile education had consisted of enduring burns on his palms from Klug’s stoking iron when caught rifling through waste bins for information until Ti’s questionable ethics and money unlocked learning. Enlightenment seemed worth the risk. Klug had failed to notice his second income from completing students’ assignments, so Pheno’s knowledge had grown over the seasons.
His master had warily, grudgingly consented to his third job, sparring with students training for martial arts tournaments. For twice the pay of cleaning labs, he fought students every other rotation. The instructors trained serviles sufficiently to provide a challenge to students but not enough to win or hurt their pupils. After serving Klug, Pheno would run to the training facility and watch the fighters’ exercises through a window. This worked for a handful of rotations until they caught him and blocked his view. He had seen enough to understand that fighters required strength, endurance, and flexibility. He guessed that repetition both perfected and transformed movement into instinct. These capabilities Pheno sought. He lacked the trainer’s equipment, so he improvised: climbing the sides of buildings, running on Klug’s errands, and swimming in the city’s reservoir—one of the few skills his parents had taught Pheno before selling him. He experimented, inventing new ways to train: weaving through crowded streets untouched by vehicles or passersby, balancing on one arm or leg until collapse, and fighting epic imaginary battles against lab stools. Pheno injured himself many times early on, including a serious shoulder injury that took a long time to heal. He had to hide these injuries from Klug lest his master strike the injured area for sport. The rest he learned in the ring, copying attacks and noting counters. Pain focused him, so he gained proficiency and ascended the ranks, fighting tougher opponents for more credits.
No one knew about his fourth job except the employer. Both he and his employer guarded his secret carefully because no master permitted their serviles to play in the Sigma Games.
“Pheno, you sleep now?” Eddientis’s translator spoke in a whisper.
“Eddientis?”
“Is Eddientis. Can you tell if nurse gone?”
“Sorry, I can’t lift my head. I don’t hear him.”
“I hear nothing of him also. I pretend sleep when he comes around because he all time lectures me on myself preserving.”
“I’m glad you’re still alive,” said Pheno.
Eddientis said nothing for a long time.
“Why did you hold me?” asked Eddientis.
“Because I wanted you to live.”
“Why?”
“You’re my friend,” said Pheno.
“You try to kill self for friend?” asked Eddientis.
“No, I—I hoped you would stop before I . . .”
“Pheno, I grabbed you to pull out of containment so you breathe.”
“But . . . you were turning off your containment field, attempting suicide.”
“At first, yes, but I taste your for me sorrow and anger, for you desperation and agony. I not want you to die; I stopped wanting to taste death, but you not let go. I scream name, and you tighten grip. Why?”
Pheno exhaled a sigh. “I thought you were trying to kill yourself. How was I supposed to know? If I let go to ask whether you still wanted to end your life, you could’ve dropped the field and died.” He shifted on the bed and stifled a cry. All of this for no reason; I should’ve let go.
“Thank you for feeding me death while I choose,” said Eddientis. “Death tastes horrible. No quick kills. Moment of dying tastes forever. I will never . . .”
I’m no hero. Pheno turned his head slowly, winced, and stopped at the pain. He looked hard right to see Eddientis. Wide straps bound the Ertryd from mantle to tentacle. Its containment field bulged in the gaps. The anachronism of sea life trussed to a bed forced a reluctant, slightly bitter chuckle, which rippled pain through his rib cage. “You look ridiculous,” Pheno whispered through the spasms.
“I am knowing this.” Eddientis deflated slightly and rolled a tentacle up and over his bindings to rub under an unblinking eye the size of a meal plate. Nurse Butria spoke to someone in the next room and Eddientis quickly tucked the tentacle beneath the straps.
“Why don’t you tell him you no longer want to die?” asked Pheno.
“Current bends Serria frond one way,” said Eddientis.
Nurse Butria’s and another’s voice rose to smash each other. They argued about checking the list of approved visitors. The other’s voice sounded like . . . Ti. She demanded a review of the names. Upon further inspection, the nurse shifted from irritation and dismissal to disbelief and embarrassment. Ti tread upon Nurse Butria’s ego with a curt command for privacy on her way in. Classic Ti. No one suspects you hacked the place if you act like you own it.
Ti strode to the only occupied beds in the infirmary. “Honestly, you’d think a girl could see the boy she saved without having to compromise ludicrously feeble security.” She shook her head.
“You saved me?” asked Pheno.
Ti looked at Eddientis. “You haven’t told him?”
Eddientis gurgled.
“Here’s how it went down. You saved Eddientis from himself—totally uncool Eddientis, by the way—then Eddientis saved you from yourself because, apparently, you’re too sacrificial. Eddientis tried to carry you off the roof, but our aquatic friend here fumbled the door lock because your blood slicked his suckers. Seriously, Eddientis, next time rinse them in your own fluid; I know its gross and all, but seriously. Thank my girl’s intuition that I looked for you first on the roof. You might have bled to death while Eddientis slimed the door latch. Needless, the whole situation freaked me out. I mean at first when I walked out, I thought, ‘Oooo, Pheno ripped off his clothes;’ but then I saw your skin shredded too, and I was like, ew! Totally gross.” Ti tossed her green locks and smirked. “The next time you’re naked before me, keep your skin on.”
Pheno blushed.
“Well?” asked Ti.
“What?” asked Pheno.
“I’m waiting for expressions of gratitude. I’m a big deal to you now. I held the door open that saved your life, Lab Boy.”
“Yes, sure, thank you Ti for, uh . . . opening the door.” Pheno attempted to sit up but again collapsed, panting, in pain. “Ti . . . can . . . I need . . . a favor.”
“What?”
“Will you—will you jack me into the lectures from here?”
Ti scoffed. “You must still be delirious.”
“Please, they’re keeping me here for four passings,” said Pheno.
“So?”
“Your essay on civilization’s purpose is due in two,” said Pheno.
Ti waved off the assignment. “I despise pointless acts because they’re pointless, but I’m willing to waste time for . . . I’ll record an argument myself.”
“But .
. .”
Ti crossed her arms and scowled. “But you’re really worried about the homework for Klept, Nono, Slidr, GearBoy, and Pit.”
“You forgot Princess,” said Eddientis.
“You knew they extorted . . . erhm . . . ‘scholastic services’ from Pheno?” Ti’s voice rose enough to cause Nurse Butria to look in with more curiosity than concern.
Eddientis shrugged his tentacles after Butria withdrew.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Eddientis?” Ti asked in a more constrained but no less strained voice.
“I refuse to aid cheaters.” Eddientis twisted his tentacles into a knot.
“I thought you knew,” said Pheno.
“Wha—how could you think I—No one uses me to blackmail anyone. Ever. You no longer work for those losers.”
“Ti, they’ll tell First Thinker about us. You’ll receive a reprimand, but they’ll take one of my eyes and cut my wages.”
For a moment, Ti’s verdant skin tinged yellow. “No one will accuse you.”
“How can you say that?” asked Pheno.
“Duh, I totally threatened them. Pit was the only one dense enough to challenge me.” Ti flexed her hand into a fist and relaxed then checked her nails. “Now he’s wanted in three systems for aiding his father’s smuggling.”
“Why you make him more dangerous with threat becoming real?” asked Eddientis.
Ti rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Like I can’t make his life worse.”
“Um, thanks again. I guess I’ll have a lot less work now.”
“A lot less unpaid work—our deal will resume if I’m wrong.”
“What do you mean ‘if you’re wrong?’” asked Pheno.
“Something weird happened just before the collision. I think it’s a big deal.” Ti unrolled her screen and held it over Pheno’s eyes. “Here, watch the replay.”
Pheno saw the exoplanet strike Ertryd causing the massive explosion he witnessed live then the screen blanked.
“It looks like what we saw before, so?” asked Pheno.
Ti sighed. “Pay attention, Pheno.”
Eddientis slipped out of his restraints and rolled to Pheno’s bedside.
“What do you see at this point?” Ti replayed a portion of the video.
“Well, there’s a glitch in the video but nothing beyond that.”
“That shiver is no glitch; I checked the bits in the stream. The schism, or whatever, actually happened.”
“How is that possible?” asked Pheno.
“What does it mean?” asked Eddientis.
“I don’t know. Look at this; see the Ertryd Ocean drawn up into a mongo wave by the exoplanet’s gravity? Watch the shadow on that wave before and after the shiver.”
“It moved!” said Pheno.
“Exactly, and there are only two ways to move a shadow: shift the light source or the object casting the shadow. So to move the wave’s shadow, the sun, Ertryd, or the exoplanet would have to jump to a different spot like right away.”
“Impossible,” said Eddientis.
“That’s what I thought, but the image is uncorrupted. You saw the shadow jump.”
“What does this mean?” asked Pheno.
“It gets freakier. Eddientis, how deep was the Ertryd Ocean?” asked Ti.
“Oh, I am guessing thousands of tentacle spans. We have . . . had liquid a lot.”
“Right, lots and lots of water and no dry land. Look what happens to Ertryd when the gravity wave forms.”
Pheno shrugged. “So land appears.”
“Why?” asked Ti.
“I’m guessing the exoplanet pulling all the water into a wave is wrong,” said Pheno.
“Right, land—the sea floor—appears because the exoplanet draws all the water into the wave, but the wave rises less than a thousand Ertryd spans from the surface. Do you get it?”
Neither Eddientis nor Pheno nodded.
“There was a lot less water on Ertryd than Eddientis remembers or that the planetary survey data recorded in the Core archive six cycles ago.”
“Maybe you measure wave height wrong,” said Eddientis.
“I checked my calcs; they’re flawless, natch. One more thing, look at the ending,” said Ti.
“The feed just ends,” said Pheno.
“In the middle of the biggest cosmic event in ten thousand cycles. Really? I checked the other probes, thinking I might have been detected and booted. Every probe outside of the Galactic Fleet’s feeds shut off at exactly the same point.”
“What do the Fleet probes show?” asked Pheno.
Ti shook her head. “I can’t crack their perimeter with my current assets.”
Pheno whistled.
Ti nodded. “Heavy.”
Pheno glanced at Eddientis. One of its glassy eyes focused intently on Ti. Clearly, it wanted answers. Pheno thought of only two: some boring technical reason created the stream issues or the destruction of Ertryd had been badly faked. The latter seemed outrageous in scope and purpose and a dangerous hope for Eddientis.
“There’s another way to change a shadow’s appearance—move the observation point,” said Pheno.
“Yes, yes,” said Ti, staring at her screen, “but I doubt that happened. No engine in the galaxy can move a probe that quickly.”
“Right,” said Pheno. Her quick dismissal irked him. With everyone else’s idiotic comments, Ti responded with a blank, slightly bored look, but each of Pheno’s attempts to impress her evoked an “I almost tolerate you” response. Why does she pay me to do her schoolwork?
“What happened?” asked Eddientis.
Ti looked up from her screen. “I don’t know, and that bothers me.”
“So what,” said Pheno. “Ertryd is a fireball now. A messed up stream of its destruction makes no difference. Only the living matter now.” Pheno shifted his eyes to Eddientis then back to Ti; she seemed oblivious to everything off-screen.
Chapter 2
“Do you get it?” asked Ti. “It’s like the whole universe disappeared after the collision. Something’s wrong.”
Pheno yawned without covering his mouth. “Maybe the quantum gateways came down for maintenance.”
“They NEVER close; and when they do, they reopen within fractions of a millisecond.”
Pheno shook his head.
“What?” asked Ti.
“Almost nothing,” said Pheno.
“You’re starting to sound like Eddientis.”
Eddientis flourished its tentacles dramatically and rolled backwards in its containment sphere, bumping into a stack of data cubes filling a corner of Ti’s quarters and spilling onto her table. “Why you wound me?”
“You’re right, Eddientis. Forgive my insult.” Ti bowed with a downward swoop of the arms in the traditional apology of her home world.
Pheno watched Ti move. He liked how her body flowed—smooth yet solid—like molten metal. From the streams Ti had shown him of her planet, grace appeared endemic to Trelians. That made her movement no less fetching.
Pheno coughed and stood knocking one of Ti’s sit cubes backwards. “Yes, well, you know I enjoy your mockery, but I must return to my . . . uh, place. The excuse of delivering linens only favors a servile in student’s quarters for a brief moment.”
He moved to the door, careful to step over the discarded meal containers of unknown age. He accepted mess in a life focused beyond order, but touching the remnants would gag him. Ti’s Trelian diet of plants and insects leaned more toward bugs. Crusted yellow-green innards caked the edges of some containers, while a leg or antenna spilled out of others. He thought he glimpsed a detached wing stuck to the bottom of her foot. A couple seasons ago, she had insisted he try one of her planet’s delicacies, a six-legged thing with a crunchy shell. Something about avoiding starvation if he would just pick up the food and eat it. His refusal had incited an epic struggle of wills and eventually a tussle that he ultimately lost when she surprised him with a kiss, delivering the morsel on her tongue. The . . . thing ja
mmed in his mouth tasted better than he had imagined—not great, just better than trash. At first, Pheno refused this new food until the darkest of rotations when the martial artists docked his pay for beating a sparring opponent who addressed Pheno as “servile” instead of using his name or when Klug lost both his and his servile’s pay to the Chancetaker. But he was no longer a child and he trained harder now—not just to protect himself from tougher fighters but also for another reason that eluded words and felt a lot like fear. He needed more to eat than he could afford, so Pheno turned to her type of food crawling under the heating arrays in the corner of Floor 0. The sensation of wriggling legs in his mouth still roiled his stomach. Not enough to accept Ti’s charity—he had won that battle—but enough to be dangerous for a hungry servile.
“Are you serious?” Ti looked at her wall. “Klug’s either already passed out by now or too drunk to care. No one else notices. Stay, Pheno. We must figure this out. Something’s wrong; I need your help.”
Pheno threw up his arms. “Sorry, I’ve got to . . .”
Ti raised her eyelids. Eddientis stared curiously.
“Um . . . work.” Pheno whispered the word.
“What work?” Ti’s brow furrowed. “Klug’s out, my schoolwork’s done, and no one spars this late.”
“That’s it; that’s exactly what I’m doing or something; I don’t know; I’m a servile—they don’t tell me what or why, just where and when.”
Dense Space Page 2