Nucleation

by Kimberly Unger

  Ted’s actual funeral had been private, family only, a distinction for which Helen did not qualify under Ted’s mother’s strict adherence to Homesteader cultural code. Helen was consigned to attend the company-sponsored wake instead. She sat somewhere between offended and relieved. She wasn’t sure she’d have been able to hold it together if she’d had to face his family.

  The upstairs room was filled with OPs and NAVs. Ted’s memorial brought out pros not only from Far Reaches. but from competitors as well. The event had been opened to any registered OP or NAV. She recognized people from Animus and Beyond Blue, Distant Sun and Kitterhammer in the crowd. Every person in the room was someone Ted had connected with. The space was somberly lit, the usual sparkle and gloss toned down, visible only in the shadows. The life was just waiting to come roaring back in once the mourners departed.

  HR had churned through Ted’s personnel files and contacted friends and family to put together a carousel of images displayed on the wall. As his current OP, Helen had been asked to add her thoughts to the video eulogies that played out between the images from Ted’s life. She’d come up with a half dozen ways to pay tribute. Her original plan had been recording from the Mortuary or that really shitty VietFusion restaurant that he dragged everyone to. Some place where Ted was recognized on sight. Each attempt made her a bit more miserable and anxious than the last. She’d finally recorded her thoughts in the privacy of her flat the night before, and handed them off to be included. They hadn’t shown up on the wall display yet and Helen wasn’t entirely sure how she would feel when they did. She took another sip of her well-garnished soda water and singled out Ray, Ted’s youngest brother. Already painfully honest, and now well on his way to a hangover, Ray had cornered the last person Helen wanted to meet up with.

  Catherine Beauchamp was nearly a head shorter than Helen, and had ensured she drew everyone’s attention with a pouf of aqua-blue hair that argued with the olive undertones of her skin. She had been hired when BrightWinds had gone bankrupt and their assets snapped up by Far Reaches. The younger OP’s romantic relationship with Ted had been under the radar. Helen wagered only she and one or two others had known, and the whole thing had ended badly. Helen didn’t know all the details. As close as she and Ted had been, romantic entanglements were always off limits. She knew that Beauchamp had blacklisted him as a NAV, she would not work him with under any circumstances, and Ted had returned the favor.

  It can’t have been that bad a breakup if she’s here to say goodbye.

  Ray was gesturing his way through the story of Ted’s attempt to launch a series of model rockets from the top of the town Crèche, pantomiming with broad gestures that threatened to split the seams of his only dress shirt. Helen smiled. The motivations changed every time, but the outcome always involved a very contrite Ted helping build indoor playgrounds for the Crèche kids in the neighboring towns. As Ted’s close friend, she knew the truth of the story. Ted’s strict family unit had handed down the community service as a punishment. Ted always said it was the best punishment he’d been forced to endure.

  A quick read on Ray’s limited audience of Beauchamp and still-stranded-at-Animus Migos showed the kind of polite expression used to conceal boredom.

  If she can’t handle Ray, it’s no wonder she and Ted didn’t last. Meeting that family must have been an eye-opener for Beauchamp.

  “Helen!” Ray enveloped her in a boozy bear hug, which Helen returned with equal enthusiasm. Ray was Ted’s family touchstone, the sibling who’d stayed close when Ted had left the family compound. “Helen, this whole thing fucking sucks.”

  Helen hugged him a little bit harder. “I’m so sorry, Ray. How’s your mom doing?”

  “As well as can be expected. She always hoped he’d come back to the family businesses. I think she’s as sorry about the death of that idea as she is about Teddy himself.”

  Helen grimaced. Ted had always joked that his people skills were due to navigating the pitfalls of his tightly wound family. Ray had, by all Helen’s observances, gone the absolute opposite route and thrown himself into the role of black sheep with gusto.

  “Well, she’ll need time to grieve.” Helen tactfully disentangled herself from his embrace, careful not to knock either of them off balance. He was staggering from the booze, she from the unfamiliar shoes.

  “Yes, she will.” Ray knocked back the last of the drink in his glass, rattling the ice cubes for effect. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to top this baby off. Can I get you one?”

  Helen held up her full glass in reply. “I’m covered.”

  “Somehow I never figured you for a fruit-and-parasol kind of drinker.” Ray grinned in passing. A couple of the group peeled off to go with him, leaving Helen alone with Beauchamp and Migos.

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees.

  “What I don’t get . . .” Migos began abruptly, speaking more to Beauchamp than Helen at first. He was a head taller than Helen, brown hair either greasy or styled, she couldn’t tell which, eyes rimmed red either from crying or alcohol, and only slightly less wobbly than Ray had been. Helen recognized the belligerent tone, braced herself for the next words. Migos had been Ted’s partner for two years before his tendency towards day drinking had forced Animus to swap in Helen as Ted’s partner for the Ferguson’s Asteroid mission. He’d never gotten over it. “What I don’t get is how this could happen to a NAV. What I DON’T GET is how this could happen to a NAV like Ted.”

  Helen remained silent. She expected some resentment from Migos. She’d stolen his NAV. Ferguson’s had made her and Ted a team, the kind of team that had brought in job offers from top-of-the-line operations. But the open hostility was new. As long as Far Reaches was investigating the circumstances around Ted’s death, she couldn’t say anything to defend him, or herself for that matter. All her conversations had been full of vague platitudes and personal stories, no one able to ask the questions or get the answers.

  “The NAV is supposed to be the safe job.” Migos was just getting started. “The NAV’s supposed to be looking out for the OP. So exactly what the hell did you do out there to get Ted killed?”

  Helen’s politic silence became stunned silence. The seed of doubt in the back of her mind echoed Migos’ statement. She hadn’t been expecting outright blame.

  Migos leaned closer, looking her in the eyes. He hadn’t been drinking, not like Ray had. He was stone-cold sober, the wobble just an act to cover his words. Just over his shoulder, Beauchamp smirked.

  So she put him up to this? Here? The idea of Beauchamp instigating a fistfight at a memorial was crass and disgusting, but her expression left Helen with little doubt. Yet while Beauchamp might be the instigator, Migos was the more immediate problem.

  “Theodore was the best goddamn NAV in the business. If you think you’re going to stay senior OP without him, you’re sorely mistaken.” The angry OP punctuated the announcement with a stubby finger, stopping an inch from actually poking Helen in the sternum.

  Helen let her gaze travel slowly from the accusatory finger up until she returned Migos’ watery stare. It took a moment for her anger to catch up, to bolster her tone.

  “What happened to Ted is not on me,” she said firmly, enunciating each word carefully. Not that she believed it, but making sure Migos believed it meant one less source of gossip she’d have to deal with.

  “An accident? What kind of accident kills a NAV? You ran into a problem on your little special project, shunted the primary load from the entanglement Feed, and cooked Ted’s fucking brain.” His index finger completed its action, jabbed her squarely in the chest. “You know it and I’m gonna make sure everyone else knows it too,” he huffed, building up steam for the rant he’d been waiting to deliver.

  “That’s enough out of you, Migos.” Beauchamp stepped in smoothly, like she’d finally recognized where this was going. “Enough conspiracies already.” She dir
ected her non-apology to Helen as she steered him out of the conversation. “Forgive Migos; he’s been driving moles for the past two shifts.”

  “Fine, but the truth will come out,” Migos muttered. He allowed himself to be led away.

  Beauchamp cast an insincere smile over her shoulder. The damage had been done.

  Is that really the rumor going around? Helen scanned the other fifty or so faces in the room. Ted had been the social butterfly; the size of the crowd at his memorial showed just how many people he’d intersected with meaningfully. That I threw Ted under the bus to save myself? She recognized about half of them, was on speaking terms with most of them. She collected herself, put Migos’ words out of her head, took another sip of her drink, and moved towards another knot of Ted’s friends.

  The Wall of Shame expanded as the event moved on, now interspersing highlights and embarrassments from Ted’s ten-year career among the eulogies and the photographs projected on the far wall. There were a few incidents on there that even Helen had been unaware of, a few pictures of girlfriends and boyfriends that Helen hadn’t known. The goal was to give everyone a sense of the whole person, even the parts of their life you hadn’t been there for.

  It was humanizing in a way Ted would’ve appreciated.

  Helen kept an eye on the wall as she met up with friends and coworkers. Some came just for a few minutes to pay their respects, some came to take full advantage of the bar and the company-sponsored ride home. Helen stayed until the very end. By the time Keller found her, she’d switched from club soda to something stronger.

  “Hey, Helen. Time to wrap up.”

  Keller took the seat next to her, ice clattering in the bottom of his own glass. Helen startled out of her reverie. She’d been staring at the wall when the projector shut off and the images vanished.

  “They didn’t show it,” she said quietly.

  “Didn’t show what?” The lights in the empty corners of the room switched off, darkness marching towards the seats she and Keller occupied. The dim threw his white, embroidered shirt into sharp relief against his skin.

  “The eulogy. They asked me to record a few words about Ted, but they never put them up there.” She waved her hand at the screen.

  “Maybe you just missed it. There were a lot of distractions. Did you see they practically had to carry Ray out?”

  “Nope. They just didn’t use it. I even saw Beauchamp’s pop up twice. And now I feel like I messed up the chance to say goodbye properly.”

  “I’m sure it was just an oversight. I’ll look into it if it will make you feel any better,” Keller said reassuringly. A member of the catering staff came over and collected Keller’s glass, a not-so-subtle reminder that their event was over and they needed to leave. Keller gave him a thumbs-up.

  Helen sighed, wrung out from all the talking and comforting. The alcohol was starting to make her head spin.

  “No. The opportunity is gone,” she said. “Did you hear Migos?”

  “What, that lunatic theory about shifting the Feed resistances or whatever garbage that was? There’s a reason he’s always on mole duty, you know. Don’t listen to him.”

  “Yeah.” Helen resignedly got to her feet, wobbled a little as she rebalanced on the fancy, unfamiliar shoes with too high a lift. “Thing is, Keller, he’s not wrong. This should never have happened to a NAV, and especially not Ted.” She took a long look around the detritus of the wake. “I need to get back out there, I need an answer for this . . .” she grasped for words, “. . . complete and total fuckup.”

  “We’re working on it,” Keller said uncomfortably.

  “Not fast enough, Keller. I’m going home. Any of the company cars still hanging around?”

  “Should be. If not, I’ll put you in a rideshare on the company card.”

  “Perfect.”

  They made their way up to the front of the restaurant where there were still a few mourners gathered. All less sad now, all well liquored up.

  “I didn’t see Ivester there,” Helen said. “Did he stop by?”

  Keller shook his head. “No, he didn’t want to be a distraction. Ted’s mother invited him to pay his respects at the funeral earlier, so I suspect he’s recovering from that . . .”

  “That was nice of her,” Helen said, surprised.

  “She read him the riot act, from what I hear. You know how Ted’s family was,” Keller said sourly. He showed his company ID to the first waiting car and Helen eased gratefully into the back seat.

  “You coming too?” she asked Keller. He shook his head.

  “I’m headed back home to Ethan and the kids. Everything is on hold on Line Drive so I’m taking a day. I’ll see you day after.”

  “I will be there,” Helen replied in a monotone.

  “Only you could make that sound like a valid threat,” Keller returned and shut the car door.

  Helen leaned into the seat fabric as the car took off. She had to get back out to the Golfball to figure out what had killed Ted.

  And if it kills you too?

  Helen didn’t bother with an answer to that.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The elevator to the top floors of Far Reaches took longer than Helen was expecting. The walls of the elevator were blank except for a couple of tech-deco details and a single screen that displayed company announcements. The music piped in was almost loud enough to cover the whisper of the vacuum as the capsule slid upwards.

  While Flight Ops sat in the windowless depths of the sub-basements, Helen’s new position was much closer to the clouds. The windows that lined the corridor to the Analysis lab provided a long view of the glittering, ever-changing mass of Launch City at first sunrise. In one of the observation alcoves, Helen pressed her cheek to the clear crystal panels. With a little effort, she could catch a glimpse of a strip of sidewalk twenty stories below. The rooftop patio at Wade’s was just at the outer range of her view. Launch City was a perpetual work in progress. Built out in concentric rings from the ruins of the colony’s original spaceport, the City had slowly consumed the suburbs where Helen had grown up. Tamer cousins of the eenies that built the Golfball could collapse a structure and replace it within days. The skyline, for Helen at least, was rarely the same twice. Most of her work life took place between Flight Ops, in the basements, and the ground floor. Getting a top-down view of the City, plus a moment to appreciate it, was a rare thing.

  Hope the labs don’t have windows or nobody’s going to get anything done. With a touch of regret, she peeled herself away. Her shifts as an operator always seemed to fall right between the day/night cycle. Sunrises and sunsets weren’t things she got to appreciate on a regular basis, but her new schedule almost seemed to be designed around them. Helen resolved to take advantage of it while she was waiting to be reinstated.

  When she arrived, she discovered that the Analysis lab was, in essence, one very large virtual space. Helen paused a moment outside the door to don the thick-framed Insight glasses she’d been issued. She was aware that Far Reaches’ teams were spread all over the globe, so projects could run around the clock as time zone dovetailed into time zone. That meant half the people in the lab could be there virtually, visible only through the goggles. Glasses, Helen corrected herself.

  She walked through the door, the glasses shook hands with James the AI, and the room opened to her. The black-painted walls erupted into color and motion and the drab grey furnishings took on a sense of style and improbability. Helen stopped, absorbing the complex constellation of numbers and simulations that covered every available surface in a room that was designed to be all available surface.

  “Helen, glad you could join us.” The voice was the only actual sound in the room. The rest of the chimes and clicks and whistles, Helen realized, were being piped in through the frames of the glasses. It felt a bit like operating a waldo, since she was seeing through a different set of ey
es, but here in a shared virtual space the visual noise was even more pervasive. It was more like being in a crowded cafeteria than a cockpit. That’s going to take some getting used to.

  The owner of the voice was a trim younger man, roughly the same height as Keller, dark skin pale from too many hours indoors. The tattoos on his face were highlighted in Far Reaches blue, the Insight inviting Helen to dig into their meaning. She declined.

  “Thank you,” Helen returned cautiously. “Is this all for Line Drive?” She gestured to encompass the room and its virtual content.

  He grinned, teeth sharp and even between sienna-colored lips.

  “Absolutely. I’m the only team member here on-site today, but we’ve also got Rachel on the other side of the planet in Emergent Seoul and Torbin’s off-planet right now on Kilwa Station.”

  He indicated a half-dozen ghostly forms standing against the wall, skeletal steel frameworks covered in fabric to give the Insight something to paint a body onto. Each unit waited to be waldoed by an analyst from a distant office space when needed. “Time difference means it’s just you and me right now, but we all have overlapping shifts, so you will meet them both between today and tomorrow.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Dougal Monroe, sorry, usually the Insight takes care of introductions.” The young man’s handshake was cold, like he’d just been holding a glass of ice water. Helen disentangled her grip quickly. “You’ve got a desk over here, but we do ask that you limit personal items because when the team is in full swing, stuff gets knocked over. Go stow your stuff if you brought any and we’ll get started.”

  Helen moved over to the “desk” indicated, an island of plain grey to the side of the room’s chaotic center. It was more of a pedestal really, about chest height, stacked with drawers until it flared out into an Insight touchscreen surface at the top. The largest drawer at the bottom opened with push and she dropped the bag with her lunch and personal fobs into it. Everything work-related would respond to the NFC chip in her wrist.