The apartment looked exactly like it had the day she’d left for her last assignment. Her furniture was positioned normally, the art monitors were displaying her favorite paintings, and even the robe she’d left thrown across the sofa was in exactly the same position that it had been when she left. Never mind that an hour ago all her possessions had been packed in a storage crate and tucked away somewhere in the depths of the station; the staging bots had arranged everything to perfection, making it seem like she just left the suite yesterday. It was an illusion, to be sure, but a comforting illusion, and she stood in the doorway for a minute, letting the familiarity of the place seep into her, soothing her spirit. All other things might change—had changed—but this, her territory, remained constant.
She adjusted the wall color to a soothing blue and walked over to the shelf unit where her colonial artifacts were displayed. A statue of a six-armed god from Hadrian Four, a fertility carving from Acer Six, a scarf of New Tuscan silk that changed color in response to her emotion . . . there was an item from every Variant race she had helped rescue from Isolation, given to her by grateful peoples. What she had no mementos from were the colonies that had failed to adapt when Earth first cut off contact with them, or—far worse—had destroyed themselves when their Hausman mutations began to surface. The only living colonies the outriders ever found were those whose inhabitants had made their peace with the concept of mass mutation, and whose gene pool had stabilized to reflect a few dominant traits. Everywhere else there was only emptiness, alien landscapes that had long since swallowed up the bones of Earth’s abandoned children.
Reaching into her bag, Ru took out the one keepsake of Tully’s that she had claimed as a memento. It was an opulent glass phallus with a rainbow of colors swirling in its depths and a series of hash-marks etched around the base. She knew that each mark represented an intimate encounter between her partner and some newly discovered class of Variant. Xenophilia was his secret pleasure and his weakness, and ultimately it had cost him his life.
I will never forget you, she promised his spirit.
In the washroom she took a good look at herself for the first time. There was a small purple bruise marking each place where a stim suit contact had been attached, but otherwise she looked much the same as she had before stasis. Her color was healthy, her olive skin smooth and taut, her muscles weak but not atrophied. Apparently the stim suit had done its job maintaining her physical state. Her copper-brown hair was a disheveled mess, the short bob crusted with bits of dried gel from the suit, but that was only to be expected. Rebirth was messy.
She took a hot shower, reveling in the wasted water—a luxury one didn’t have on small ships—then headed into the bedroom unit that the bots had connected to the suite and stretched out on the bed, wearing nothing but her headset. Soothing smells wafted into the room, triggered by her weight on the mattress. Post-stasis weariness enveloped her like a warm cocoon.
Home.
She reached up a hand to her headset, hesitated a moment, then turned it on. Might as well get this over with. Shutting her eyes, she imagined she could feel her brainware detecting the headset’s presence, checking its credentials, and establishing the necessary protocols. That, too, was an illusion. The processor that perched spider-like inside her brain was no more detectable to her conscious senses than her natural brain matter was.
A field of twinkling stars appeared as the headset tested its visual programming. Then those disappeared, and bright white letters on a field of midnight blue took their place.
WELCOME BACK, RU GAYA.
THERE ARE 102,345 UPDATES AWAITING DOWNLOAD.
YOU HAVE 1,395,092 UNREAD MESSAGES.
ACTION?
With a groan she turned over on her side, and she was asleep before the headset asked again.
Any act intended to compromise the integrity of a space station should be considered not only an assault upon that station, but an offense against humanity itself. The perpetrator should find in us no leniency, no sympathy, and no refuge. In this all the outworlds are united, Common Law and Independent alike, for humanity cannot colonize deep space unless the structures that protect human life are considered sacrosanct.
ELIMANI SINJARA
Beyond Barriers: Ten Principles of Governance That Transcend Political Boundaries
HARMONY NODE
TRIDAC STATION
MICAH WAS drawing with pencil and paper. It would have been more efficient to use a stylus and screen, but he took pleasure in the exotic sensations that the ancient tools engendered. The subtle vibrations in his fingers as the tip of his pencil rubbed across the paper, leaving behind a trail of microscopic grit. The heady sense of waste as he destroyed what had once been part of a living tree, for nothing more than a momentary indulgence. Primitive, perverse pleasure. He could imagine his distant human ancestors sitting around a fire on the plains of Terran Africa, writing just the same way.
Never mind that the ‘paper’ was really plastic and he’d had to pay an arm and a leg to have it textured properly. Or that he’d positioned a graphics screen underneath the paper to record the pattern of his pencil strokes, so if he erased a detail—itself a messy process that drove the cleaning bots crazy—a copy of the original would remain in storage. It was the illusion that mattered.
He was deep into his work when a monster suddenly appeared. It was an ugly, ill-proportioned creature with the wings of a dragon, the legs of a horse, and three reptilian heads that spurted fire as they writhed against the lighting panels in the ceiling. The flesh was translucent, so Micah could still see his work schedule displayed on the screen behind it. That only added to its ugliness.
He calmly took note of the monster, then returned to his work. “What do you want, Ron?” He visualized the icon that would transmit the sound of his words to the person who had sent him the image. “I’m busy.”
The monster resolved into a human shape, flat and cartoon-like but recognizable. “How did you know it was me?”
“Because you’re the only one who sends me visuals without getting permission first. What’s up?”
“I was checking to see if you were in. I’ll stop by.”
Micah opened his mouth to respond, but before he could make a sound the image disappeared.
That was odd.
Ron Demeter normally preferred to stay in his studio, relying upon netted images to communicate. If he was willing to actually leave his room and walk down three whole corridors and a staircase just to talk to Micah, something important must be up. Curious, Micah put his pencil aside in its velvet-lined collector-edition case and waited. It did feel good to take a break; his hand was getting cramped from having to control the pressure on the ancient writing instrument. Did early Terran writers have some kind of special exercise regimen for their hands to prevent such discomfort? He would have to research it.