by Neil Clarke
Most people never think about their debt. They drop a veil over the dash and live long, happy, ignorant lives, never caring about their billable rate and never knowing whether or not they siphoned off the efforts of others. But for some of us, that debt counter becomes an obsession.
An obsession and ultimately an albatross, chained around our necks.
I dreamed about an independent habitat with abundant space and unlimited horizons. And I wasn’t the only one. When we looked, there it was, floating around the atmosphere.
Was it dangerous? Sure. But a few firms provide services to risk takers and they’re always eager for new clients. The crews that shuttle ice climbers to the poles delivered us to the skin of a very large whale. I made the first cut myself.
Solving the problems of life was exhilarating—air, food, water, warmth. We were explorers, just like the mountain climbers of old, ascending the highest peaks wearing nothing but animal hides. Like the first humans. Revolutionary.
Our success attracted others, and our population grew. We colonized new whales and once we got settled, our problems became more mundane. I have a little patience for administrative details, but the burden soon became agonizing. Unending meetings to chew over our collective agreements, measuring and accounting and debits and credits and assigning value to everyone’s time. This was exactly what we’d escaped. Little more than one year in the clouds, and we were reinventing all the old problems from scratch.
Nobody needs that.
I stood right in the middle of the rumpus room inside the creature I’d cut into with my own hands and gave an impassioned speech about the nature of freedom and independence, and reminded them all of the reasons we’d left. If they wanted their value micro-accounted, they could go right back down belowground.
I thought it was a good speech, but apparently not. When it came to a vote, I was the only one blocking consensus.
I believe—hand-to-heart—if they’d only listened to me and did what I said everything would have been fine and everyone would have been happy.
But some people can never really be happy unless they’re making other people miserable. They claimed I was trying to use my seniority, skills, and experience as a lever to exert political force. I’d become a menace. And when they told me I had to submit to psychological management, I left.
Turned out we’d brought the albatross along with us, after all.
When Jane pinged me a few days later, I was doing the same thing as millions down belowground—watching a newly-arrived arts delegation process down the beanstalk and marveling at their dramatic clothing and prosthetics.
I pinged her back right away. Even though I knew she would probably needle me about my past, I didn’t hesitate. I missed having Ricci and Jane in my head, and life was a bit lonely without them. Also, I was eager to meet her. I wasn’t the only one; the whole crew was burning with curiosity about Ricci’s pretty friend.
When Jane’s fake melted into reality, she was dressed in a shiny black party gown. Long dark hair pouffed over her shoulders, held off her face with little spider clips that gathered the locks into tufts. Her chair was a spider model too, with eight delicate ruby and onyx legs that cradled her torso.
“Hi, Doc,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, finally. I’m a friend of Ricci’s. I think you know that, though.”
A friend. Not a therapist, peer counselor, or emotional health consultant. That was odd. And then it dawned on me: Jane had been donating her time ever since Ricci joined us. She probably wanted to formalize her contract, start racking up the billable hours.
When I glanced through her metadata, and my heart began to hammer. Jane’s rate was sky high.
“We can’t float your rate,” I blurted. “Not now. Maybe eventually. But we’d have to find another revenue stream.”
Jane’s head jerked back and her gaze narrowed.
“That’s not why I pinged you,” she said. “I don’t care about staying bill-able—I never did. All I want to do is help people.”
I released a silent sigh of relief. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to say hi and ask how Ricci’s getting along.”
“Ricci’s fine. Nothing to worry about.” I always get gruff around beautiful women.
She brightened. “She’s fitting in with you all?”
“Yeah. One of the crew. She’s great. I love her.” I bit my lip and quickly added, “I mean we all like her. Even Vula, and she’s picky.”
I blushed. Badly. Jane noticed, and a gentle smile touched the corners of her mouth. But she was a kind soul and changed the subject.
“I’ve been wondering something, Doc. Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”
I scrubbed my hands over my face in embarrassment and nodded.
She wheeled her chair a bit closer and tilted toward me. “Do you know what gave you the idea to move to the surface? I mean originally, before you’d ever started looking into the possibility.”
“Have you read Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage?’ I asked. “You must have.”
“No.” She looked confused, like I was changing the subject.
“You should. Here.”
I tossed her a multi-bookmark compilation. Back down belowground, I’d given them out like candy at a crèche party. She could puzzle through the diction of the ancient original or read it in any number of translations, listen to a variety of audio versions and dramatic readings, or watch any of the hundreds of entertainment docs it had inspired. I’d seen them all.
“This is really old. Why did you think I’d know it?” She flipped to the summary. “Oh, I see. One of the characters is named is Jane.”
“Read it. It explains everything.”
“I will. But maybe you could tell me what to look for?” Her smile made me forget all about my embarrassment.
“It’s about what humans need to be happy. Sure, we evolved to live in complex interdependent social groups, but before that, we were nomads, pursuing resource opportunities in an open, sparsely populated landscape. That means for some people, solitude and independence are primary values.”
She nodded, and I could see she was trying hard to understand.
“Down belowground, when I was figuring all this out, I tried working with a therapist. When I told him this, he said, ‘We also evolved to suffer and die from violence, disease, and famine. Do you miss that, too?’”
Jane laughed. “I hope you fired him. So one book inspired all this?”
“It’s not just a book. It’s a way of life. The freedom to explore wide open spaces, to come together with like-minded others and form loose knit communities based on mutual aid, and to know that every morning you’ll wake up looking at an endless horizon.”
“These horizons aren’t big enough?” She waved at the surrounding virtual space, a default grid with dappled patterns, as if a directional light source were shining through gently fluttering leaves.
“For some, maybe. For me, pretending isn’t enough.”
“I’ll read it. It sounds very …” She pursed her lips, looking for the right word. “Romantic.”
I started to blush again, so I made an excuse and dropped the connection before I made a fool of myself. Then I drifted down to the rumpus room and stripped off my goggles and breather.
“Whoa,” Bouche said. “Doc, what’s wrong?”
Eleanora turned from the extruder to look at me, then fumbled her caffeine bulb and squirted liquid across her cheek.
“Wow.” She wiped the liquid up with her sleeve. “I’ve never seen you look dreamy before. What happened?”
I’m in love, I thought.
“Jane pinged me,” I said instead.
Bouche called the whole crew. They came at a run. Even Vula.
In a small hab, any crumb of gossip can become legendary. I made them beg for the story, then drew it out as long as I could.
“Can you ask her to ping me?” Eddy asked Ricci when I was done.
&nbs
p; “I would chat with her for more than a couple minutes, unlike Doc,” said Treasure.
Chara grinned lasciviously. “Can I lurk?”
The whole crew in one room, awake and actually talking to each other was something Ricci hadn’t seen before, much less all of us howling with laughter and gossiping about her friend. She looked profoundly unsettled. Vula bounced over to the extruder, filled a bulb with her favorite social lubricant, and tossed it to Ricci.
“Tell us everything about Jane,” Chara said. Treasure waggled her tongue.
“It’s not like that.” Ricci frowned. “She’s a friend.”
“Good,” they chorused, and collapsed back onto the netting, giggling.
“I’ve been meaning to ask—why do you use that hand-held thing to talk to her, anyway?” Chara said. “I’ve never even seen one of those before.”
Ricci shook her head.
“Come on, Ricci. There’s no privacy here,” Vula said. “You know that. Don’t go stiff on us.”
Ricci joined us in the netting before answering. When she picked a spot beside me, my pulse fluttered in my throat.
“Jane’s a peer counselor.” She squeezed a sip from the bulb and grimaced at the taste. “The hand-held screen is one of her strategies. Having it around reminds me to keep working on my goals.”
“Why do you need peer counseling?” asked Chara.
“Because I …” Ricci looked from face to face, big brown eyes serious. Everyone quieted down. “I was unhappy. Listen, I’ve been talking with some people from the other whale crews. They’ve been having problems for a while now, and it’s getting worse.”
She fired a stack of bookmarks into the middle of the room. Everyone began riffling through them, except me.
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“Don’t you want to know what’s going on, Doc?” asked Chara.
I folded my arms and scowled in the general direction of the extruder.
“No,” I said flatly. “I don’t give a shit about them.”
“Well, you better,” Vula said. “Because if it’s happening to them, it could happen to us. Look.”
She fired a feed from a remote sensing drone into the middle of the room. A group of whales had gathered a hundred meters above a slushy depression between a pair of high ridges. They weren’t feeding, just drifting around aimlessly, dangerously close to each other. When they got close to each other, they unfurled their petals and brushed them along each other’s skin.
As we watched, two whales collided. Their bladders bubbled out like a crechie’s squeeze toy until it looked like they would burst. Seeing the two massive creatures collide like that was so upsetting, I actually reached into the feed and tried to push them apart. Embarrassing.
“Come on Doc, tell us what’s happening,” said Vula.
“I don’t know.” I tucked my hands into my armpits as if I was cold.
“We should go help,” said Eddy. “At least we could assist with the evac if they need to bail.”
I shook my head. “It could be dangerous.”
Everyone laughed at that. People who aren’t comfortable with risk don’t roam the atmosphere.
“It might be a disease,” I added, “We should stay as far away as we can. We don’t want to catch it.”
Treasure pulled a face at me. “You’re getting old.”
I grabbed my breather and goggles and bounded toward the hatch.
“Come on Doc, take a guess,” Ricci said.
“More observation would be required before I’d be comfortable advancing a theory,” I said stiffly. “I can only offer conjecture.”
“Go ahead, conjecture away,” said Vula.
I took a moment to collect myself, and then turned and addressed the crew with professorial gravity.
“It’s possible the other crews haven’t been maintaining the interventions that ensure their whales don’t move into reproductive maturity.”
“You’re saying the whales are horny?” said Bouche.
“They look horny,” said Treasure.
“They’re fascinated with each other,” said Vula.
Vula had put her finger on exactly the thing that was bothering me. Whales don’t congregate. They don’t interact socially. They certainly don’t mate.
“I’d guess the applicable pseudoneural tissue has regenerated, perhaps incompletely, and their behavior is confused.”
Ricci gestured at the feed, where three whales collided, dragging their petals across each other’s bulging skin. “This isn’t going to happen to us?”
“No, I said. “Definitely not. Don’t worry. Unlike the others, I’ve been keeping on top of the situation.”
“But how can you be sure?” And then realization dawned over Ricci’s face. “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
She launched herself from the netting and bounced toward me. “Why didn’t you share the information? Keeping it secret is just cruel.”
I backed toward the hatch. “It’s not my responsibility to save the others from their stupid mistakes.”
“We need to tell them how to fix it. Maybe they can save themselves.”
“Tell them whatever you want.” I excavated my private notes from lock-down, and fired them into the middle of the room. “I think their best option would be to abandon their whales and find new ones.”
“That would take months,” Vula said. “Nineteen whales. More than two hundred people.”
“Then they should start now.” I turned to leave.
“Wait.” Ricci looked around at the crew. “We have to go help. Right?” I gripped the edge of the hatch. The electrostatic membrane licked at my fingertips.
“Yeah, I want to go,” Bouche said. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t, Doc.”
“I want to go,” said Treasure.
“Me too,” Chara chimed in. Eddy and Eleanora both nodded.
Vula pulled down her goggles and launched herself out of the netting. “Whales fucking? What are we waiting for? I’ll start fabbing some media drones.”
With all seven of them eager for adventure, our quiet, comfortable little world didn’t stand a chance. We’re not the only humans on the surface. Not quite. Near the south pole a gang of religious hermits live in a deep ice cave, making alcohol the old way using yeast-based fermentation. It’s no better than the extruded version, but some of the habs take pity on them so the hermits can fund their power and feedstock.
Every so often one of the hermits gives up and calls for evac. When that happens, the bored crew of a cargo ship zips down to rescue them. Those same ships bring us supplies and new crew. They also shuttle adventurers and researchers around the planet, but mostly they sit idle, tethered halfway up the beanstalk.
The ships are beautiful—sleek, fast, and elegant. As for us, when we need to change our position, it’s not quite so efficient. Or fast.
When Ricci found me in the rumpus room, I’d already fabbed my gloves and face mask, and I was watching the last few centimeters of a thick pair of protective coveralls chug through the output.
“I told the other crews you’d be happy to take a look at the regenerated tissue and recommend a solution, but they refused,” she said. “They don’t like you, do they?”
I yanked the coveralls out of the extruder.
“No, and I don’t like them either.” I stalked to the hatch.
“Can I tag along, Doc?” she asked.
“You’re lucky I don’t pack you into a body bag and tag you for evac.”
“I’m really sorry, Doc. I should have asked you before offering your help. When I get an idea in my head, tend to just run with it.”
She was all smiles and dimples, with her goggles on her forehead pushing her hair up in spikes and her breather swinging around her neck. A person who looks like that can get away with anything.
“This is your idea,” I said. “Only fair you get your hands dirty.”
I fabbed her a set
of protective clothing and we helped each other suit up. We took a quick detour to slather appetite suppressant gel on the appropriate hormonal bundle, and then waddled up the long dorsal sinus, arms out for balance. The sinus walls clicked and the long cavity bent around us, but soon the appetite suppressant took hold and we were nearly stationary, dozing gently in the clouds.
On either side towered the main float bladders—clear multi-chambered organs rippling with rainbows across their honeycomb-patterned surfaces. Feeder organs pulsed between the bladder walls. The feeders are dark pink at the base, but the color fades as they branch into sprawling networks of tubules reaching through the skin, grasping hydrogen and channeling it into the bladders.
At the head of the dorsal sinus, a tall, slot-shaped orifice give us access to the neuronal cavity. I shrugged my equipment bag off my shoulder, showed Ricci how to secure her face mask over her breather, and climbed in.
With the masks on, to talk we had to ping each other. I was still a bit angry so no chit-chat, business only. I handed her the laser scalpel.
Cut right here. I sliced the blade of my gloved hand vertically down the milky surface of the protective tissue. See these scars? I pointed at the gray metallic stripes on either side of the imaginary line I’d drawn. Stay away from them. Just cut straight in between.
Ricci backed away a few steps. I don’t think I’m qualified to do this.
You’ve been qualified to draw a line since you were a crechie. When she began to protest again, I cut her off. This was your idea, remember?
Her hands shook, but the line was straight enough. The pouch deflated, draping over the skeleton of the carbon fiber struts I’d installed way back in the beginning. I pulled Ricci inside and closed the incision behind us with squirts of temporary adhesive. The wound wept drops of fluid that rapidly boiled off, leaving a sticky pink sap-like crust across the iridescent interior surface.
