The Initiative: Book One of the Jannah Cycle

by D. Brumbley

  He was quiet after that, both because he wasn’t sure how to answer it and because the one answer that did come to mind wasn’t one he knew anyone wanted to hear. There were worse things in life than being incapable of getting pregnant. Like getting pregnant repeatedly only to miscarry the baby every single time before twelve weeks. “If you decide to go, I’m sure as soon as you walk in the door, they’ll go over you with some kind of scan and tell you everything you never wanted to know about what’s going on with every system in your body. I doubt they’re gonna be taking anyone along who’s not a potential parent. Wouldn’t make sense in a new world like that.”

  “I know. I didn’t figure they would actually accept me if all that bloodwork upfront didn’t tell them what they needed to know. It’s just weird, you know? I mean, it’s not like I’ve been trying real hard, but there have been plenty of chances for it to happen. Maybe I wasn’t ever meant to be with any of those guys anyway. My dad’s never liked a single one I’ve been with.”

  “For the record, neither have I.” He said as he cracked his own beer and took a sip, while it was still cold. “Some have been worse to watch than others. It wasn’t so bad when you actually seemed halfway happy with them. But lately…that hasn’t seemed to happen as much.”

  Anna gave all her attention to the beer. “I don’t want any of them. Not permanently. I’m not interested in any of them and I’m tired of pretending like I should be, just for the sake of procreation. It’s almost too bad. I fucking love sex, but with the wrong person it’s a gamble every time.”

  “True enough. I swear, I sat at home and seethed that whole month after you told me you slept with Warren at that party he threw at his place. As your best friend, I can’t say I’ve ever particularly looked forward to going to your wedding, but I did not want to go watch you walk down the aisle to be Warren’s lucky number seventh wife.” He didn’t bother hiding his disgust at the thought of the man, but it was a commonly-held opinion. Warren was the second-wealthiest man in the district, behind Logan himself, but the differences between the two men were vast. Warren partied regularly and made no secret out of the fact that any woman who got pregnant with his child was welcome to move into his mansion and be one of his wives. Even if the life he provided was comfortable, he was a notorious asshole to every such woman who came along, and never bothered to be much of a father to the children he sired on them.

  “Well, he’s attractive, and once I get drunk enough, I don’t discriminate. He has a decent penis, I was surprised.” She laughed even though she knew he didn’t want to know about Warren’s penis. “I’m a freak and you know it. My curiosity gets the best of me. If I sleep around and I’m known for it, guys don’t get as freaked out about my experimental nature. They certainly don’t complain when my experience comes in handy.”

  “Yeah, I know, I’ve met you.” He took a long sip of his beer, suddenly wishing it was something stronger for that particular conversation. He settled back in his chair to enjoy the rest of his breakfast and hide the fact that his jeans were suddenly a size too tight. “But I’ve never thought your curiosity has gotten the best of you. Your curiosity is the best of you. Sexually, all I know is secondhand, obviously, but just in everything, you’re always up in the world’s face asking questions. Pissed off our teachers, sure, but you get shit done.” He shrugged with another sip. “You also get every man for a hundred kilometers excited as soon as you step into a room, on account of what you spent all of our last year in school learning how to do, by reputation, better than any other woman who’s ever lived.”

  That made her laugh loudly, since that was a larger reputation than she realized she had created for herself. “Ever lived? That might be an exaggeration.” Anna wasn’t as active as she had once been in her sex life, but she was certain she could please any man who was interested if she wanted to. “That was a crazy year. Too bad you were already taken, huh?” She attempted to make it sound as teasing as she could, but the whole reason she had jumped into her sex adventure was because Logan had started dating Melanie. One drunk night he told her that he thought Melanie was ‘the one’ and instead of getting depressed that she would never have her best friend, she decided to fully jump into lots of sex. Thanks to medical marvels that had eradicated nearly all sexually transmitted diseases, she had come out of it physically unscathed. Emotionally? Not so much.

  “It really is. Just too bad.” He laughed along with her, since that was all they’d ever done, joke about the other person’s experience and move on with life. “And I doubt it’s an exaggeration. If you were ever to find out some other woman was better than you in anything, you’d be all over her to pry out trade secrets. I can’t imagine sex would be any different.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be all over her. Tried that a few times, didn’t work for me. But you are right, I would want to know her secrets.” Anna looked over at him, hesitating, then went back to work. “Can I ask you something you probably don’t want to answer?”

  “I’m more scared that you asked if you could ask instead of just asking.” He took another bite from his plate and got back up to stand at the console with her, since it was easier to hear her when he was close by. The harvesters were effective, but they were also incredibly loud, even at two hundred meters in the air. “But yeah, sure, go ahead.”

  “Do you think you’ll get married again someday?” She looked over at him and certainly didn’t move away when he moved closer. “I know it’s only been a little more than a year. I just mean eventually.”

  From the look on his face, she was right, it wasn’t a question he wanted to answer. He kept working as he thought about it, but eventually just leaned on the console. “I don’t know. There was…” he hesitated, which wasn’t like Logan. He wasn’t one to stall a conversation, didn’t get flustered, didn’t stutter. The fact that any subject could make that otherwise was a testament to just how difficult it was for him to talk about it. “When we were going to Doc Weber, after every…time…she ran every kind of test she could think of. Started trying to crack vampire jokes about how much blood she took from us to do blood work and send it off to this lab or that lab across the planet. It came back…after the fifth loss, just a month before the sixth, that there was some kind of undefined factor in my genes that, when combined with hers, was creating fetuses that would force an immune response. And once they knew what they were looking for, they could tell the response had gotten stronger in each blood sample they had taken from her. They told us that since there was no genetic therapy for it, not even a name for it, and it wasn’t caught early on, there was no way she would ever carry a child to term. Not mine or anyone else’s.”

  It was more about his late wife than he had ever said to anyone, as far as Anna knew, since Melanie’s suicide, and it was an explanation that underscored everything about the way her best friend had been living his life for the past year. “So I really don’t know. What I want hasn’t changed. Probably never will. But I’m not going to put someone else through that. Liam just decided he’s going to whore himself around as much as possible and if anyone he sleeps with miscarries even once, he’s never gonna get near them again, just keep going until he finds one that sticks. I’m…not going to do that.”

  Anna reached out and ran her hand down his bare arm. She wanted to comfort him, but she also just wanted to touch him, even if it was selfish of her in his vulnerable moment. “I wished so many times that I could have helped you when I could tell you were struggling, even though I didn’t always know why. And I can’t imagine what Melanie went through. I just wish she would have realized that even without babies, she was with a man worth sticking around for. That she was still loved.” Anna knew if she had been the one to actually capture Logan, she never would have let him go. Anna thought at times that she was broken since she hadn’t ever been pregnant, but marrying someone like Logan would have made her happy. Children or not. Children weren’t everything, even if they were a priority for most. Humankind on Earth n
eeded lots of procreation, after all, but Anna didn’t need it.

  He nodded without looking at her or moving away from her touch. “She spent…a lot of her time wishing for the world to be different. Even asked me what I thought about going to space once, turning Orbital. I didn’t really think through why she was asking the question when I gave her my answer. Stupid of me.” Time since Melanie’s death had given him lots and lots of opportunity to think back on every single mistake he’d ever made in his relationship with her, and dwell on each one until each misstep was a possible cause of the catastrophe that had eventually come to pass. “She just…I don’t know. I feel like I had to accept the way things are after Mom and Dad died, and I just kept moving from there. But some people never do. Some people can’t. It’s just not in their programming, because it’s not supposed to be. The world isn’t supposed to be like this, half a life to live and half of what’s left over spent worrying about how short it is.”

  “I know. It makes me angry to think about all the life we should be living. It’s part of the reason why I want to go to Jannah. Maybe my family can be saved from dying so young.” She hoped that her family would be able to join her on Jannah eventually. Anna didn’t let go of his arm, and she wanted to move closer to him, though she just remained content with touching his arm at the moment. “I just want to see you happy again.”

  He managed to give a quiet smile and move his arm to put it around her shoulders, holding her in against him in a friendly embrace as they both looked out over the control screens at the massive machines humming away below. “Happy is just as broad a range as any other feeling, I think. There’s lots of different kinds. Right now, happy is thirty-four harvester machines that are actually doing their job, good weather, good breakfast, good beer, and good company. Hopefully a good harvest too, in…fourteen hours and seventeen minutes, if all goes well.” He was impressed that the work was going to be done that quickly, but he had been working to tweak the machines all summer to improve their efficiency, after all.

  “Fourteen hours, huh? That’s a long time to be shirtless.” She teased as she attempted to poke his side, but she couldn’t do it easily with his arm around her, so she just ended up running her hand down his skin. “Are you going to get cold? I know I would be in trouble if I went fourteen hours without a shirt.”

  “If you go fourteen hours without a shirt, you’re not gonna be in trouble. You’ll be trouble yourself.” He shook his head. “I’m alright, though. I didn’t see the point if I was just gonna be hanging out up here all day watching the machines and watching the stations go by.” He nodded up to the sky where one was just cresting the horizon, barely visible in the distance as little more than a speck. Once right overhead, they looked like far-distant snowflakes about the size of one of his fingernails when stretched out at arm’s length, but so far in the distance it just looked like a shimmering white and silver dot coming up over the world.

  Anna didn’t pull away from his embrace as she looked up at the station above them, since she liked being pressed into his side and feeling his arm around her shoulders. “I still don’t know what to do about Jannah. I applied because I wanted to get away.” She didn’t say that it was to get away from him, especially because she didn’t actually want that. Certainly not right now. “If I do go, would you consider coming with me? It wouldn’t be so daunting with someone I know. Someone I care about.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be.” He looked down at her under his arm and moved his hand up over her shoulder, just to hold her in close. “I’d rather be there with you than anyone else. Certainly over a bunch of strangers from around the world. And I feel like I could make a difference up there. Help build something new, get the place ready so people don’t have to be dying for half their lives anymore.”

  “There’s a meeting, I’m sure you remember, in St. Louis. It’s supposed to be a discussion-forum type thing before we’re due to report.” Anna was trying to focus on Jannah instead of the way his hand felt on her shoulder, but it wasn’t working. He hadn’t allowed her to be close to him in a long time. “Do you want to go with me?”

  “That’s a good idea. I was gonna blow it off completely, but it’d be good to know a few more details before we decide to sign on to this thing or not.” He knew he should let go of her, but she was making no move to get away from him. Keeping her close felt too good to just let the moment end. “If you think you can go nine hours with me in a car without killing me. Might be harder than you think.”

  “Nine hours in a car? The last time I…” Yeah, he didn’t need to know how she usually handled road trips with men. “I can handle it, I think. You’re my best friend.” She needed that reminder more than he did, she was sure.

  He turned his back on the controls, the fields, the noisy harvesters below, the sky, and the station that was quickly making its way across the cloudless field of blue. His arm fell from around her shoulders, but the way he was standing, his arm was still braced on the controls near her waist. He wanted to reach out and hold her against him, but he wasn’t sure what would happen if he took that kind of step. It could make things weird between them forever. But then again, what he was about to say also had that possibility, and he didn’t let that stop him from saying it.

  “I’ve heard from different articles that they’ve got a program up there in orbit that takes people and matches them with whoever seems most appropriate. Not just randomly, either, but some really deep in-depth cyber-dating predictive modeling shit. Has something like a ninety-two percent success rate of producing marriages of longer than ten years. It wasn’t in the brochure, but I imagine as scientific as they’re trying to be about Jannah, they’d match us both off to some stranger as soon as we get up there. I have to say, I’m not looking forward to that part.”

  Anna looked up into his eyes after he turned toward her, and she wanted to step into him and hold herself against him. What would it be like to be the one on the receiving end of Logan’s romantic attention? “I don’t know how I feel about that, but I think I’d rather choose to be with someone than to be paired up by some algorithm.” Anna did reach out to touch his hand with her fingers. “I don’t care about some stupid program. I care about being with someone who matters to me.”

  “I think I’d prefer that too.” He said without allowing himself to think about it, though he froze completely afterward. What was happening? Was she actually interested in him? She’d been beating him up since they were in elementary school and he’d been giving her shit for her taste in boyfriends since she picked up the very first one.

  There were reasons why he had kept his distance from her, reasons why they had just remained friends for so long. He didn’t want to ruin what they had, the friendship that had been so important to them both. But if he said anything else, did anything at all, then there was a chance they would do exactly that.

  Even frozen as the rest of him was, though, he moved his hand to take hers.

  That was an innocent thing, right? Friends could touch each other that way and not worry about it later.

  Right?

  “I…think it would be…” he gripped her hand tighter, looking for the right word, but he was cut off mid-sentence by both their phones going off at the same time across the platform, chiming out a shrill claxon that broke his concentration completely and had him looking away from her to see what the hell was going on.

  All it said across the front of either device was EMERGENCY, with no other details specified. “What the hell kind of emergency could be happening? It’s calm as a cave out here, can’t be any kind of tornado warning.”

  Anna wanted the warning to be some kind of malfunction. She didn’t want to lose the moment, but it was already lost. She moved away from him to look out over the fields for anything out of the ordinary, but it looked calm and peaceful around them.

  Until she looked up.

  Anna had to squint, but there was definitely something going on in the sky. “What is that?”

>   Logan had checked his phone to see if there were any more details to be had, but he looked up when she said something. As he approached the edge of the platform with her, his eyes got steadily wider as the fireball in the sky got larger and larger.

  He could see the station that had been coming overhead just beyond it, incredibly small at such a distance, but visibly spinning in ways that the stations were absolutely not supposed to spin. And not only was it spinning, one of its six arms was missing.

  “That’s incoming.” He had been watching the fireball in confusion, wondering why it was nothing more than a growing sphere of light in the sky when normally meteors formed trails of fire behind them. A few seconds told him the reason it was getting larger and not longer was because it was coming straight for them. “Holy shit, that’s incoming!” He gave a shout as a delayed reaction, and grabbed Anna by her arms and pulled her away from the edge.

  He had barely enough time to throw her to the floor and cover her body with his own before they saw and felt the impact. The tower shook beneath them as if a giant had kicked it.

  Through the screened bottom half of the deck beneath the control panels, they could both see pillars of fire assaulting the ground in furious falls kilometers away to the west as they huddled against the floor. Some pieces of debris fell faster than others, and the fires on the ground were too far away to interfere with the sight of an entire station arm cutting down in a firestorm toward the plains. It hit like a giant dagger before cracking apart under the shattering force of the impact, and fell in a thousand pieces to the ground as if in slow motion.

  Only when they had seen the entire arm beginning to break apart and the hail of broken pieces turned to a light drizzle of devastation did the sound and full force of the impact finally reach them through the air. It assaulted the tower like a hundred sonic booms, hitting the morning stillness like a sledgehammer to the face. It left their ears ringing and set the tower swaying dangerously, but Logan held Anna in a vice grip through it all.