Mari knew that the hardest part of getting her space walking certification wouldn’t be the test – it was all the space walking she’d have to do after she passed. While going outside wasn’t a primary part of her job, occasionally technology needed a glorified ape to help do its job.
Lee, the technical engineer, spoke through Mari’s earpiece. “You should be coming up on the ruptured panel to your left now. There.”
Mari stopped her thrusters. Without Lee’s voice, all she could hear through the silence was her own echoing breathing, the hollow thud of her tether pulling taut as she anchored several meters from her target, the rustling of her suit as she landed in position and pulled off the exterior panel. To her relief, it was on one of the interior hex structures, so she was in a gap surrounded by other hexes instead of teetering on the awning edge of space. She hadn’t been sent out into the open void yet.
She released the repair bot, which floated in front of the panel and deployed a variety of lasers and surgical thingamabobs with such speed that they blurred before her eyes.
She leaned on her back along the panel. This part was way above her pay grade.
All things considered, the gig wasn’t so bad. She wasn’t where she wanted to be forever, but it was a first step – one that she’d fought for tooth and nail to climb. Her position was a redundancy, as were most technical human jobs these days. Almost obsolete, but not quite. Hell, most of the work being performed by Lee was pattern recognition and activating macros at this point.
Mari had apparently become comfortable enough in space for her mind to wander. Granted, the only thing she had to ponder beyond the void these last few weeks was single anonymous sexual encounter that had left her physically aching for more on a daily basis.
She hadn’t matched with that person again. She could tell because no one had quite the same touch, the same demands that her body reveled in filling. She’d looked into the terms and conditions of the program – participants could opt into weighing their encounters to make repeats more likely, or even petition for consent to set up repeat dates or uncover contact details beyond the virtual.
Clearly, her match had yet to opt into her again.
Or maybe he’d opted out from her completely.
The idea that encounter hadn’t been as searingly erotic to her partner as it had been to her was unnerving, to say the least. Mari was no blushing virgin – she’d had plenty of encounters of various… flavors. Nothing had affected her like this.
Surely that type of intensity couldn’t be one-sided, right?
Had her partner felt nothing? Or worse, had he been repulsed by her somehow?
Mari had logged in every night since then, just for a browse. Mostly she exited the encounters when she realized she hadn’t found the right match. Once she saw a whole encounter to completion just because she was bored and needed help falling asleep.
She sighed out loud without realizing it.
Lee’s voice came through her helmet. “Long night?”
Mari chuckled. She kept forgetting that she was on third shift. At first, she’d set her daytime settings the same as the rest of the station. Once she realized the actual time of day had much less meaning out here, she’d adjusted her personal settings so that her apartment’s light projections matched her inverted work-sleep schedule. The moment she made the switch, she entered a new temporal world that operated alongside first and second shifts – rarely brushing shoulders with either but existing as a sort of alternate universe underfoot, just as vibrant. “Sorry. I just feel a little restless.”
“I get it, man,” Lee said. “It’s been a while, but I remember when I first got out here. I felt like a hamster in a tube. Like the walls would expand if I could just run around enough.”
Mari laughed. Their shifts didn’t always line up, but she always appreciated her time with Lee for helping her feel less alone. “Well, did it work?”
It was Lee’s turn to chuckle. As the technical engineer started to respond, another voice cut her off the line and addressed Mari through her helmet. “This is InfoSec. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Mari straightened and braced herself against the structure at her back.
“We have reports of an unauthorized operator in your sector but we can’t pin their exact location. Do you have visual confirmation on anyone else out there with you?”
“Roger that. Looking now for visual confirmation.” Mari double-checked her magnetic boots before she stood up for a better look over the area, her lifetime of training and fieldwork kicking in as naturally as breathing, her new purpose overriding the vertigo of standing up.
“Still looking.” She couldn’t see anyone but she also couldn’t see far past the plane of the panel she was standing. After taking a bracing breath to steady herself, she extended her safety tether three meters and jumped up. And she was off, floating, looking “down.”
Every cell inside of her body screamed the farther up she got from the panel, but she stifled the urge to let the sound escape. Three meters, five meters. She scanned the area with her helmet to distract herself from the existential dread. Ten meters.
That was enough.
“Negative. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else out here.”
“Thank you,” InfoSec replied. “Please stop your current task and come inside to report to your manager immediately.”
Well, that sounded serious as all hell. And delivered with as much humor and humanity as a rock. A rock that she felt in her stomach. Something wasn’t right and she did not want to get caught in whatever was happening with the unauthorized so-and-so.
“Absolutely,” she answered in earnest. “I’ll be right there–”
She accidentally extended her tether instead of reeling herself in just as she hit her thrusters, sending her even farther out into the space above her. She began to flail, could see herself panicking as if she were watching someone else out in the field losing their shit, knowing what was coming and unable to stop it. She scrambled to remember the emergency protocols but instead of stopping her tether, she pressed the control to release her tether completely.
“Augh!” Mari let out a sound of pure horror as she begun to spin out, the panel revolving rapidly over and across her field of view.
Another voice chimed in through her helmet. “Halt your course and return to your point of dispatch immediately.”
“I’m trying!” Mari cried out. “I can’t–”
She was cut off, again, this time by another body slamming into her and knocking the wind out of her lungs. The person intercepting her clipped Mari to their tether and towed her unceremoniously back to the airlock.
Mari gasped the entire way, first for air then from the adrenaline. By the time they emerged through the airlock and into the station corridor, Mari was hyperventilating, her limbs trembling as she removed her helmet. She popped open an emergency panel next to the airlock controls and picked up a syringe, setting it for mild sedation. Before she could press it against the exposed skin at her neck, someone grabbed her arm.
She resisted, her vision tunneling. “I need this.”
“The medics are coming.” She recognized this as the first voice that had interrupted her session with Lee. The deeper voice.
Then the second voice broke through the din. Firm. Feminine. Authoritative. Unassailable. “Let her have it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the grip around Mari’s arm loosened. She pressed the cool syringe to her neck, which let out an almost imperceptible hiss that she could hear because all of her senses had been tuned up to a hundred, electrified and overwrought. Just like how she could still feel the imprint of the hand around her arm.
The solution in the syringe acted quickly. Within moments a wave of calm washed over her like stepping into the shade from under an oppressive sky. She breathed deeply and slumped down the wall to the floor.
Mari looked up to match faces to voices, except she couldn’t hear what the two were saying a few steps from her, their lips blurred over. One was from InfoSec, the other from Admin based on the badges at their chest and the social profiles that popped up on Mari’s smart contacts. They’d muted themselves to everyone except their encrypted channel, which had been one of the more disconcerting cultural shocks for Mari.
She kept forgetting that people could private channel their conversations and many people did, in fact – in elevators, corridors, transit, and cafeterias. The ability to mute was a modern convenience that made total sense especially when, in space, you generally only had as much space as you needed and not a meter cubed of atmosphere more.
But how on Earth did you get to know your neighbors when you weren’t in each other’s business all the time? Otherwise you just lived parallel lives overlaid atop each other.
From where Mari came from, the ability to mute just felt like everyone had something to hide. An invisible social wall all the more fortified to her, all the more difficult to get through. All the more alien. Except who was the alien – her or them?
The woman – the second voice – addressed her first this time.
“Hello, Mx. Lastname. My name is Yasbel Irphanov. I am the Administrator of this Sector. This is Andre Lukaski, head of Information Security here on the Hex. We have some questions to ask you. You will be assigned an Alliance representative for a session on the record as soon as you feel well enough.”
Andre. The name clicked into place as she took another look at him. Ah, yes – the first of her disappointments since she came out here. Nothing in his expression gave away the hint that he remembered her. That might be for the best, considering the brief but intense fantasies she once harbored for him.
None of which came to mind now as he stared her down.
He didn’t bother muting himself as he turned to the Administrator. “We caught her at the scene and she tried to flee. It’s absolutely imperative that we question her as soon as possible.”
She shot him a look that was enough to shut down any further discussion. Andre pressed his lips into a hard line as he took one last look at Mari and turned to pace down the hall.
The Admin nodded to the field operative who’d intercepted Mari outside. “Please make her comfortable in one of the conference rooms.” She held Mari’s gaze, her own transparent yet revealing nothing, like looking through the window of a house only to see through another window on the far wall to the outside again. “We’ll get started as soon as you’re ready.”
Mari shrugged. What was she going to do waiting in a conference room? She’d like to end this detour as soon as possible herself. Get back to the plan that had her taking on quality control shifts by next month and manager shifts by six months. She wasn’t quite sure where she wanted to go after that, but she at least wanted options.
“I’m ready now.” She reached out and the operative gave her a hand to her feet. “I don’t know if I have much useful information for y’all, but I’m happy to help and get back to the grind, you know?”
Andre stopped short and glanced back over his shoulder at her. She ignored both of their looks and followed the Admin down the hall, wondering when she’d stop inspiring such an annoying combination of fascination and curiosity. She’d let “y’all” slip again – it was just so deeply ingrained in her speech. “You know” was another giveaway. Extraneous words upon which only the stereotypically indulgent Earther would waste their breath. An ironic cliche, considering y’all was a top-tier contraction in Mari’s mind.
Her drawl probably didn’t help. She couldn’t hear much of a difference in her own “accent” until Eli had pointed out examples to Mari at her own insistence. She did her best to tone it down, but trying to condition her mouth to make the “right” shapes instead had so far been an humiliating endeavor she didn’t feel like revisiting.
Sometimes she wanted to lean into her vowels even more. Just roll them around her mouth like tapioca pearls sprinkled with the occasional consonant, the way some of her cousins talked. Really throw off the Spacers. Make them have to interpret her for a change.
But not now. Now seemed like a good time to cooperate.
Which was no problem, after all. She had nothing to hide.
“First off, I was not running away,” she started once they’d settled in the conference room and her freely assigned Alliance representative had joined them through holo. The room was softer than Mari had expected, furnished with couches instead of hard chairs. Andre chose to lean on the arm of one of the couches, which positioned him to be taller than everyone else.
Still, the Administrator commanded the room, sitting across from Mari, despite wearing an Alliance uniform not much different than the one Mari wore herself. Only the name tag pinned to her chest gave away the Admin’s superior position, along with the tooltip that popped up on Mari’s contacts to see her social profile. The Admin’s silver hair was pulled back in a high, unadorned ponytail. Though her posture was straight, she moved with disconcerting fluidity, compelling attention only when she wanted it.
Mari’s representative – dressed in civilian clothes, with rainbow hair and many piercings – spoke next. “You don’t have to make any statements right now. I recommend sticking as closely as possible to answering their questions and moving on. You may also refuse to answer.”
Andre crossed his arms. “What were you doing if not fleeing?”
Mari barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. Fleeing. What an absurd word. She’d seen fleeing, more times in her life than she liked, to be perfectly honest – fleeing the likes of which she suspected this Spacer could only imagine through a holo. Fleeing with barely what you can carry on your back, while you left your heart behind.
It was Mari’s turn to cross her arms as she looked away. She was not proud of this next part. “I… panicked. This is only my fifth spacewalk. I pressed all the wrong buttons. I’m really glad you all”– she made sure to enunciate both syllables– “caught me, by the way. Thanks to the field op for that. But I have nothing to do with this unauthorized whoever you’re after.”
Her representative checked her again, lightly. “Remember to stick to the questions.”
“I know what they’re going to ask me.” Mari also knew it was better to stop, but she’d had enough of feeling singled out and now she was being singled out and interrogated. “And I can tell you that Lee’s and my task was authorized and scheduled ahead of time.”
“That is incorrect,” said the Admin.
Mari started losing steam. “What do you mean?”
“There is no record of your spacewalk today in the system.”
“That’s impossible. What did Lee say?”
“We’re here to find out what you have to say about it,” Andre said.
Mari stifled a groan and gathered her composure against this new information. Also, did he really have to be here? When she spoke next, she did so with the most standard accent she could manage.
“The system assigned me this spacewalk today just like it assigned the first four. I assume a work order was placed and Lee and I were chosen because we were next in the pool.”
She stopped there, heeding her representative’s advice.
The Admin focused on her with a thoughtful gaze. “Why did you come out here? Take this job?”
Mari waited for her rep to nod before answering. Her daily work was so mind-numbing that the answer to that question had become hazy. “I wanted to try something new.”
“And you chose a data hex?” the Admin continued, drilling quietly into Mari’s life with surgical precision, her words echoing the questions Mari had started asking herself recently.
It occurred to Mari that the Admin may have already been briefed on her records. “It was the best choice out of not that many. Because of my inexperience,” she added, to remind them why she’d launched herself into space without her safety tether.
Her situation was looking bleaker by the minute. Even she realized that her excuse sounded lame as hell.
“Is this the kind of thing that goes on my citizen record?” she asked.
“Only your own private records, but you can request for them to be deleted five years after the inquiry ends as a whole,” her rep answered. “Your session won’t become a part of the public record unless you’re officially charged with violation of Alliance law.”
“Am I being charged?”
“Not yet,” was the answer. “You may be detained for up to one hour until they must charge you or let you go.”
Detained? Mari’s head started to spin.
“Can you explain,” Andre interjected, “the Earth Collective?”
Now Mari was truly baffled. “The little old ladies who like to play bridge and trade rocks and crystals in the evenings?”
Her rep signaled for her to stand down. “Can you be more specific?” she asked her questioners.
The Admin stood, all of them watching as she paced slowly around the low, wide table at the center of the room. “The Earth Collective is an organization that funds and orchestrates technology destruction campaigns across modern human life.”
Mari almost laughed but caught herself. “It’s a what now?”
The Admin continued, her tempo unbroken. “They deal in credits and other unauthorized currencies primarily through the rocks and crystals you mentioned along with crosses, and crescents, and evil eyes, and all other types of idolatry. In some counties like yours, they sponsor seasonal festivals and local events, like bridge nights.”
Mari was ready for this detour to be over by now.
But she knew what the Admin was going to say next, could mouth the words as they were spoken. “Your mother, Mx. Lastname, is an Elder in your local Earth Collective community council.”
Her mother – with whom, let’s be real, Mari had her differences – a threat to modern human life across the system? The same middle aged lady who’d officially raised fifteen children and unofficially several more, who looked up birth charts for all of her children’s significant others, who organized vegan potlucks for the new adoptions on the block? The one who taught all of them how to stay connected to both their feelings and to “Mother Earth” through the shifting seasons and stars?
Also the one who notoriously distrusted and resisted any and all use of “frivolous new tech” under her roof. A number of her children had pushed back on this boundary, including Mari, but it was her house, her rules.
Mari did not like the picture this was all forming. “My family has nothing to do with any of this. And you’re wrong. The Earth Collective is just spiritual stuff. Community stuff. You can read a tarot deck but people know the difference between what’s real and what’s not. It’s like playing a holo or watching a sim. You buy in because it’s fun, even if it’s just pretend.”
“Until it stops being pretend,” said the Admin, her words hanging in the air. “For some, it’s never pretend. Or it’s just a tool, a means to an end.”
Mari swayed in her seat, hit by a wave of exhaustion. It was all too big. Nothing she said was translating. And she was all out of adrenaline. Sure, there were crazies – out in the hills. Maybe even one of her cousins, a few degrees removed. There were too many to keep track of, and honestly? She didn’t want to know.
“I would like to leave now,” she muttered. “Am I being detained or whatever?”
Everyone looked to the Admin.
“You will be put on administrative leave while we continue this investigation,” she said with the finality of a gong. “Full pay, with no record on your employee file.”
Mari’s heart sank. The data hex was a stepping stone – she had no intention of lingering here longer than she had to. One day, once the Hex was practically automated with a minimal crew of redundant humans, Eli would leave, moving on to grander projects. Or she’d go to live somewhere more interesting, and Mari wouldn’t blame her. Except that would mean losing her only friend. The only person who’d felt like home, like family, since she’d come out to space. The only person tethering her to… anything.
But she was too tired to fight right now.
Mari was free to go. On her way out of the room, she could see Andre biting back his commentary. Which was just as well, because she had no interest in hearing it.
Previous Part
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