by D. Brumbley
Mercury smiled at the simple action and she leaned in to give him a gentle kiss. “I’m sure they don’t. I’m sure they don’t realize what they have, or maybe they even see it as desolate or lonely. No one really thinks about what they have until they’re faced with something very different. Like this.” She continued to look around and she wondered all sorts of things as they moved slowly toward the Consortium’s facility. “I wonder if there is a river or a lake around here. Haven’t you always wondered what water looks like here? So much water in one place?”
“I always thought skinny-dipping sounded like a lot of fun.” He grinned at the idea, but shook his head as he squeezed her hand. “I don’t know if there is or not, but I doubt our schedule will give us much time to find out. The rest of the Initiates should start arriving in about half an hour, and it’s gonna take most of the afternoon to get them all processed.” He looked up past Mercury as he said it, looking out over the Waste and the lone road that led up to the Consortium facility, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. “It does make me wonder what we’d find if we could just run off across the world. Swim in a river somewhere, see a beach, climb a mountain, who knows?”
“I wouldn’t want to linger too long, though. I’m not interested in catching CV, and it only takes about a week to fully set into your body and start causing microscopic destruction. Tiny bits of damage every day until your body shuts down in your thirties and forties.” She shook her head, but she was still admiring the landscape. “All the more reason to figure out how to eradicate it. There is no reason for all of this to go to waste.”
“The more I learn about what happened back then, the less I think reason had to do with it.” The wind picked up a little as they walked through the grass, and the sudden gust stopped Orion in his tracks. He closed his eyes just to appreciate the feel of it. The instincts he had honed as a pilot told his senses that there was unimaginable power running through the atmosphere all around them, just to push such a volume of air. The chaos of currents that he knew were there above and around them unseen, the spinning of an entire planet that could generate that kind of force…
“When I was a kid,” he started quietly, then had to raise his voice because of the wind. “When I was a kid, I tried to imagine Earth like just another Station, only a hell of a lot bigger than the others and a lot more complicated. But it was a place where people live, which is in constant motion, drawing energy from the sun, providing nutrition and life to those who live on it…it sounded like a Station to me, so that was how I made it make sense.” He shook his head and looked around again. “Nothing people build is ever gonna come close to this. Not if our species lasts a million years and colonizes a thousand Jannahs.”
“Well, I would like to think Jannah is something like this. I would like to think that it is beautiful and windy and vast.” She watched him as he enjoyed the wind, the way he reached out as though he could grab it, the look of awe on his face, it only made her fall in love with him even more. “You are so cute to watch.”
He opened his eyes and looked down at her after that comment, and gave her a playful glare. “That might be the first time anyone’s ever called me cute. I kinda went from lanky and awkward straight to hot at some point in puberty, so I think I skipped cute.” He squeezed her hand and spun her around once whimsically in the middle of the breeze. “Also, of the two of us, I thought we determined I was the one who liked to watch?”
“Hey, I can watch you if I want. I like watching my husband.” She smiled as he twirled her a few more times, and she giggled as he pulled her close. “Come on, Awkward and Lanky, I need to go get instructions about what they need me to do.”
Once they got inside (strange concepts to deal with, inside and outside) the Consortium facility, things felt a great deal more like home, but Orion couldn’t find anything particularly comforting about that fact. The world adhered closely to the colors he had been accustomed to his entire life, steel and stone and glass. Dark, neutral colors covered everything with the exception of carefully-placed panels of brilliant color and very little artistic substance hanging around the main gathering area of the center. The building was primarily a shipping depot, or had been until it had fallen out of use a few decades earlier. It had since been renovated as an orbital hub for passenger transport, but saw very little use. Some pieces of furniture were still under drop-cloths and there were parts of the building that obviously hadn’t seen use in some time. Crewmen from their shuttle were already at work with some of their ground-dwelling counterparts to set up screening partitions off to one side of the large room, and everyone quickly received instructions on how to access processing protocols on their communicators. The Initiative had received a hundred and nineteen affirmative responses from the midwest district’s invited applicants, with forty-six negatives and two hundred and ninety-seven outstanding with no response.
Orion gawked at the numbers for a moment once he saw what they were going to be working with. Nearly five hundred people from across the continent offered a place on Jannah, and they were only forecasting to process half of them? Maybe even fewer? “I hope for their sake most of the undecided get their heads on straight and come along.” He said in a low, irritated voice as he strapped his communicator onto his arm so that he could use it easily as he worked, getting some chairs out of storage racks and set in place around the room for people to wait for liftoff. Nearly everyone in Orbit would kill to take the spots that the Earthlings so casually ignored.
“I’m not surprised, actually.” Mercury was looking over her instructions and the supply list that outlined what she would have available to work with and a few patient charts. Simplified charts, of course, for her current purpose, but she still needed to know a few things about a patient before attending them. “A lot of Earthlings don’t trust the Consortium. They would rather take their ‘safe’ life, short as it is, and keep that than take a risk.”
“Well that’s a damn shame, then.” Carl said nearby, reviewing his own instructions, which were mostly geared toward him keeping watch on the security of the place in the event of some kind of hostility toward their proceedings though none was expected. There were half a dozen of Carl’s caliber there with them, spreading out slowly over the rest of the space, but none were quite on Carl’s level when it came to height and obvious strength. “Nothing happens for people who aren’t willing to take some risk once in a while. Especially when there’s something like this sitting in front of you.” Carl shook his head, clearly not as conflicted about their objectives as some of the other crew members.
Orion gave Mercury a sympathetic look as Carl adjusted the body armor and several weapons on his body. The armor he wore was subtle, and he looked like he could have been wearing an overly-complicated flight suit, but Orion knew different. A man like Carl, in the gear he was wearing, would be an unstoppable force against most situations Orion’s mind could conjure. “Well, let’s hope Earth surprises you today and you can go back to being a bright and shiny optimist along with the rest of us.”
Carl laughed and clicked a baton into place at the back of his belt, shaking his head at Orion. “Not fucking likely, buddy, but nice try.”
“Do you think she’ll be here?” Mercury wondered with a playful grin, since they had speculated several times what Carl’s match might be like. It was hard to imagine what kind of woman could handle such a beast of a man. “Maybe she’s from Earth. Your match.”
Carl’s head snapped up at that, since that wasn’t an option he had really considered previously. They had talked about maybe some nerd from one of the data stations, maybe another security officer from a different station (that conversation had involved many iterations of Carl theorizing about what it would be like to be with a ‘warrior woman,’ usually with a wicked leer on his face) or maybe a scientist like Mercury who would keep Carl humble with how much intelligent she was. All Carl cared about was, in his words, not completely fucking things up within five minutes of meeting her, whoever
she was. “You think? I would’ve thought they would, you know, pair things up more or less along orbital/earthbound lines, you know? Reduce the possibility of inheriting some kind of susceptibility to CV? Or does it not work like that?”
“I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t mix things up, especially if they are that concerned with genetic diversity. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about CV. That’s why I’m here. Once they have their first round, they can’t pass it after 48 hours. It will take about a month to eradicate it from their bodies, but as long as you don’t sleep with her in the first two days, she can’t pass it on to you. Anyway, even if you couldn’t keep it in your pants, you could get a treatment too and it would wipe it right out of you in one treatment. They’ve been exposed to it since their conception. It takes longer for them.” Mercury knew she probably gave him more information than he cared for, but he did ask.
Carl looked momentarily worried, but then he shook it off and finished with his check of his gear. “They’re not gonna put me with somebody from down here. Nobody down here could handle me.”
Orion looked back and forth between Carl and Mercury as an idea clicked in place. “You feel like putting some action on that?” Orion had his own weapon for the purposes of the flight, but checking the handgun was a quick process for him, he made sure it wasn’t actually chambered and the safety was securely on. “You’ve got about a fifty-fifty on being matched with somebody Earthbound instead of Orbital. If you’re so convinced you won’t get paired with anyone down here, put a price tag on it.”
Carl took the challenge in stride and beamed right back at Orion as he crossed his arms. The man couldn’t help put put up a defensive stance. He was always in intimidation mode. “I get paired with somebody from down here, I’ll build your house on Jannah.” Carl scoffed, then reconsidered. “Half your house. I’ll go in on it with you. I get paired to somebody back home, you help me build mine. Ours. Mine and hers.”
“I’m gonna make sure we design a big fucking house, then.” Orion agreed, and shook Carl’s hand on it to seal the deal, and both of them looked supremely confident as they puffed out their chests at each other.
Mercury couldn’t help the laughter that escaped her lips and then she shook her head at the two best friends together. “You two are too much. Always trying to one-up each other. I need to get to work.” She grabbed Orion’s hand and hauled him into a fiery kiss to yank him away from the testosterone-fest. She needed a ‘see you later’ kiss before she went to work. “Try not to get into too much trouble? I don’t want you to get locked up into some Earth prison. Then where would I be?”
“Hey, do I look like somebody who just gets into trouble like that?” Orion gave her a confident nod with a knowing smirk as she released him from the kiss. He watched her backside as she walked away, sexy even in a jumpsuit. Their first batch of Earth-colleagues had started to trickle in to be processed, so they all needed to get to work. No one was actually due there until later that day, but Orion could understand people being over-eager about the process more easily than he could understand people passing up the chance altogether.
* * * * *
Kazuo couldn’t bring himself to get out of the car immediately as they drove up to the Consortium facility, even though it was obvious they were one of the first people to arrive. Their trip had only been a three-hour drive, and their parents hadn’t wanted the two of them to be late for the first day of the rest of humanity’s existence. He managed, for the thousandth time just that morning, to suppress a shudder at the pain he had almost gotten accustomed to feeling as a constant companion in his life. Most of the time he even managed to hide it from his sister, though he sometimes wondered if she just permitted him to think that. “Haha,” Kazuo said quietly, unable to quite bring himself to look at his mother in the front seat, “what happens if they change their mind about accepting us? Or one of us? The last physical they drew was last year at the application. They don’t know. . . what if they change their mind?”
“They won’t change their minds.” His mother reassured him sharply, but she didn’t look back at her children. “They had too many from Earth decline their acceptance, and too many that may not show up at all. They need bodies more than they can afford to be picky.” She finally forced herself to look back at her children with a reluctant sigh. “And we have been informed that they’re only doing blood draws today to test for pregnancy and to match you up with an acceptance and your file. So they’re only testing females today. Nothing more. You’ll be fine.”
“They’ll know eventually.” Kazuo said in the same low voice that he felt like he’d been speaking in for months. He gave a final sigh, though, since he wasn’t going to speak against his parents. He was anxious and he hoped it didn’t show too obviously. “I’m sure you’re right about their treatments. It’ll be alright. That’s why we’re all here, right? To make things better?” He saw the people inside the building working, and he couldn’t think of any reason to delay any longer. They had arrived, and they had said their goodbyes more formally and completely back at home in St. Louis. There was no reason to delay things. “Just…don’t drive home until after launch, please? Just in case?”
Their mother nodded and promised silently that they would stay until after the launch. Aiko, as usual, was quiet during the whole exchange but she felt comfortable to speak to her brother once they were out of the car and the doors were closed. “You don’t have to be worried. We have each other to depend on.”
Especially walking together as they were, it was obvious that Kazuo and Aiko were siblings. As people of Japanese descent, they already stood out in any crowd they were in, but Kazuo had gotten accustomed to that since childhood. The Crisis had taken a disproportionate toll on Eastern Asia compared to the rest of the world, and the years that followed had only barely been kinder. Their features marked them as a rarity that most people in the world went their entire lives without meeting personally, and their parents had already confirmed that the two of them would be the only people of Japanese descent participating in the first wave of the Initiative. It was something that had Kazuo feeling both honored and even more nervous at the same time. “If they do a complete scan, they’re going to leave me behind, Aiko.” He said as his fist tightened in his pocket, clenching against a surge of pain in his chest that thankfully passed quickly. “I would, if I was them.”
“Hush.” Aiko said as she dug into her pocket and then pulled out a couple of tiny blue capsules. “Take these. I made them.” He paused when she put the pills into his hand, but she kept talking. “They’re made from a Jannah/Earth herbal hybrid, so the medication won’t be recognized on their scans and they’ll have to claim a technical failure and toss any blood samples if they take them. They can take a handprint to prove your validity. And they’ll help with the pain without making you high. I made sure.”
He took the pills and only examined them briefly before he popped them in his mouth. She could have told him they were from Neptune and he would have trusted her word on it. She was the best at what she did, and Kazuo had no reason to disbelieve anything she told him. Especially about her medical creations. “I hope they don’t scan some of your cargo too closely. They might think you’re trying to come along and poison everybody.” He managed a weak smile as he looked at her and the bag she was carrying. Initiates had only been permitted to take so much with them, but he knew most of the contents in her bag had to do with her work. That was just the way she was.
“I’m a botanist and pharmacist. At most they’ll think I’m a crazy health nut with all of my herbs and plants.” She wasn’t worried. Her plants were the reason she had gotten accepted in the first place, after all. “And who says I’m not trying to poison anyone?” Aiko didn’t have any plans of injuring anyone, but she hadn’t shown up unprepared to protect herself and her brother.
“Shush. You’re gonna get us arrested.” He was smiling again by the time they reached the doors, and he held them open for her wit
h a last look back at their parents, waiting in the car as they had promised they would. He waved, then turned away without waiting for them to wave back. He and Aiko knew what was expected. It was up to them to get it done.
Aiko looked around at the empty space inside the building and sighed as they walked up to the desk to sign in. The sheer quantity of security inside was distracting. “They sure are paranoid.”
Kazuo just gave her a sarcastic look. “Says the woman who packed cyanide powder in her carry-on?”
“Well, guns aren’t going to protect anyone from being poisoned.” She reasoned as she sat down next to her brother to wait. “Anyway, have you seen the size of some of those guards? Good god. They don’t need guns, their orbital growth hormones have done enough.”
“If that’s all it was.” Kazuo said suspiciously as he eyed a few of them. He and Aiko were small people to begin with, Aiko nearly head and shoulders short of two meters and Kazuo only a few centimeters taller, but the men who were guarding the place looked like they could have eaten him and his sister both for breakfast. At least, that was his impression before another huge specimen of Orbital humanity came past the desk toward them. He was easily the largest human being Kazuo had ever seen in his life, and he flinched a little just by instinct at the first sight of him.
The huge man looked around the waiting room and flashed what looked like a ready and open smile. “Silly question, I’m guessing, but I have to make sure. Kazuo and Aiko Tanaka?” He read their names off the tablet in his hand smoothly, and with the right accent to their names, strangely enough, then looked back up at the two of them with the same welcoming grin to wait for confirmation.
