“Wait…” the first man spoke again, clearly surprised. “That wasn’t just propaganda?”
“I wish,” Ciangi said with a snort. “If it was, Higgens would have a few more fingers, Gonzales would still have her eye, and my flawless complexion wouldn’t have been compromised by a dozen or so burn scars from shrapnel.”
“I lost my hair,” Bahn nearly whispered, his hand running across his shaved head.
“Yeah, and Bahn lost his hair!”
“I…I don’t know what to think about that. I just assumed a lot of it were tall-tales to excuse your extended absences from society, which we now know was your imprisonment.”
“Well, they’re probably all true,” Gonzales said. “Now, as much as I love talking about me when the occasion demands it, let’s turn back to our idea of hijacking the serial-scrubber. I vote we have people play smugglers, and the rest of us set up an ambush, while Mimi makes sure to encase this guy in…well, herself, so he doesn’t accidentally get shot and we end up at square negative ten.”
“…that’s a thing too?”
I nodded. “Mimi has literally saved us from an explosion that way before.”
“Huh,” the one named Lim muttered to herself. “She’s like cheat codes IRL.”
“Let’s say we go with this crazy kidnapping plan and contact them.” Babel said, his hands signing quickly. “Where are we going to have this sale? Inviting them on this ship would be a dead giveaway and they’d turn us in faster than lightspeed. I may not be some master tactician, but I’m pretty sure the most successful way to pull of the caper you’re suggesting is not having your targets know you’re a fake before you even make contact.”
“Good point,” Gonzales said. “We’ll just have to do it somewhere else then.”
“Like where?” Babel continued. “You want us to lasso a meteor? I understand the miraculous seems pretty mundane to you, but try to bring things down to the level us regular mortals can understand.”
I wasn’t quite sure how he said it without sounding completely rude. There was a sort of…dry charm or wit to him that I would never be able to replicate. Maybe it was the way he moved his face so strangely. Maybe it was how his hands gestured. Either way, it was kinda fun to see Gonzales meet her match—even if it was an incredibly stressful situation.
“As much as I love the idea of strapping a saddle on a comet and telling it what to do, I think we could do with something more practical.” Gonzales looked to the thin girl, who was perched on top of a chair. “Lim, can you do a scan of this sector of space? Find if there’s any civilian-free zones we can do this shindig in without having to worry about the gov showing up.”
The slighter hacker girl saluted. “Sure, give me about ten minutes.” She busied herself with her holopad in her lap and we all waited, a sense of excitement in the air. “Ah! I got it! There’s an abandoned colony just a few hours’ journey from here. No feds would go there because it’s off the support system and completely stripped of resources. I believe it used to be called the Voss Colony.”
“Yes! That’s what I like to hear!” someone said excitedly. I couldn’t tell who it was, their tone hardly audible over the ringing in my ears. “And are there any sort of plans we can access without alerting anyone that there might be some suspicious activity there?”
“You won’t need to do that,” I murmured, my own voice sounding so incredibly strange.
I could feel Gonzales’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t meet them. My mind was going down a path I usually closed off to myself, walking a line of reminiscence that was not welcome.
“Why’s that, Higgens?”
“Because I was born there,” I answered flatly. “Voss Colony is where I grew up.”
3
The Prodigal Son Returns
I breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, in and out, but no matter how much I tried to focus on my inhales and exhales, my mind refused to be quiet.
I had never thought I would see my home colony again. I had left it behind to pursue my education on a passing space station, and I never looked back. Even when I finished all my certs and ended up on an outer rim colony that was in even worse condition, I was never once tempted to go back to where I was raised.
What was even more surprising was how much it was already affecting me. Bile rose bitterly in my dry mouth, and my heart was thundering away without reserve. Sure, I hadn’t had the greatest time on Voss, but it wasn’t the worst. I had always thought of it as an unpleasantness that no longer bothered me. But as I waited for our pod to touch down, I realized it still bothered me very much.
“Initiating landing protocols now,” Gonzales said from the front. Of course, our whole gang went down together in one of the pods. It was the first time all of us had been truly united in what felt like forever, and I was sure none of us wanted to be apart for long.
Voss Colony may have been where I grew up, but none of those colonists had been my family. No, my family was surrounding me now, and I would never stop being grateful for them.
“Do you know why they abandoned this place?” Eske asked from behind me, her eyes staring at me from behind her new and improved goggles.
“No,” I answered after a beat. “I didn’t even know that they had abandoned it.”
“Really? Nobody told you? It feels like something your family or friends would mention.”
“Perhaps they would, but I never had either of those on Voss anyway.”
“Oh…” I practically heard the realization in her mind. “Sorry. I’m just… Family is a big part of my culture. I always assume that it is just as much for everyone else, but that is not the case.”
“No, it’s not.”
I liked Eske, I did, and I could tell that she was just trying to understand what was so foreign to her, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I moved to the other side of the pod, staring out one of the tiny windows as if I could see something through the smog and dust.
I couldn’t, of course. At least that much hadn’t changed. A few moments later, a thud sounded and the ship rattled then sighed as we landed.
“Alright. Everyone make sure they have their breathers on. The nuclear core of the atmosphere processer is still working, but the air filter and oxygen system is definitely not.”
“Aye, aye.”
We all put on our necessary equipment and then the door was opening, revealing the small city that had once been my whole world.
Before the door completely opened, and all that was visible was the perma-gray that described Voss so well, I felt a hand slip into mine. Looking to my side, I saw Mimi there, gazing up at me with a sort of confidence and assurance that I certainly needed.
What had I ever done to deserve such an amazing person by my side? How silly my inner meltdown must have seemed after everything that she had survived, but I couldn’t find a hint of judgement in any of her features. She truly cared for me as no one else had.
That thought bolstered me, and I took a deep breath. Holding it within me for seven seconds, I then let it out and walked into the gray soup.
It was just how I remembered. The ground was a strange mix of grit and sludge, depending on where you stepped, and each movement of the foot resulted in a sort of nauseating sucking sound. I hadn’t even noticed it when I was younger, it had always been a part of the background noise of my life, but the moment I had first escaped to a station I had marveled at the quiet.
And then there was the gray horizon in the distance, the only drops of color being the slight touch of blue—not from beautiful sky but from helium gas being burned off the planet’s crust by the sun.
Wait, no, that wasn’t entirely true. There were looming shadows, stained black by soot and grime. The buildings of the colony cast long shadows that crept into my mind. Wraithful reminders of everything I had left behind.
Gross.
“Well, you lead the way, Higgens.” Gonzales said, the last one off our little ship. “Where’s the best place to set up our headqu
arters, considering we had to hide our ship behind a different planet so we wouldn’t get detected.”
“We’re going to want to go to the testing center. It’s connected to the med area, the comms, and the community center. That will be the best place to organize and even get some leverage if we do end up in a shoot-out.”
“I don’t know this ‘if’ you’re all talking about. There’s only one way a confrontation with these kinds of people ends, and it certainly isn’t with a please or thank you.”
“Hey, I’m not sure when we just assumed that violence was necessary for every situation,” I replied confusedly.
Gonzales shot me a look. “Since when hasn’t violence been our solution for every situation?”
“I dunno,” I supplied, not wanting to start a fight. “We took over an entire abandoned research station without hurting anyone.”
“Oh, yeah… I wonder how those guys are doing. I guess they wouldn’t exactly send a Christmas card.”
“It’s not like any of us have an address.” Ciangi sighed wistfully. “I miss my mansion.”
“I miss my home and all of my brothers and sisters,” Mimi murmured, almost to herself.
Gonzales snorted. “Oh, okay. Well, that puts things into perspective and I feel like a spoiled brat now.”
“That is not what I—”
“Don’t worry about it, fearless leader. After our last stint in prison, I think my sarcasm meter isn’t functioning at peak performance.”
The shapeshifter beside me nodded. “I see. I’m sure we all need some time to return to normal.”
“Too bad time is the one thing we always seem so short on,” Eske murmured, looking around and taking everything in. I assumed she was also logging scans with her new goggles. Apparently, they had a whole slew of new functions, but she hadn’t had much time to explore them since Gonzales had handed them to her.
I stayed out of the conversation, however, focusing on one foot in front of the other. I felt like I was walking through a graveyard, except what was buried here was all the memories and choices that made up old Higgens. The maintenance worker who never believed in himself. Who thought he deserved the terrible treatment from Giomatti, and that he was stupid, and unworthy of friends. This was the place that had created the little voice in the back of my head that told me I wasn’t ever good enough.
I had come so far, and I didn’t want to let this environment ruin all my growth. I was still Higgens, but I was better, and working toward being the best I could be.
“We’re here,” I said, pointing to the large building in front of us.
It was funny; when I was a child, the central building of the colony had seemed so impressively huge. Now…it was just large. I guess I had gained quite a bit of perspective since I had last left this place.
Suddenly, all our comms buzzed. “Team B has landed. Can you guys update your location? Apparently, the high levels of radiation, helium, and neon are making our auto-trackers a bit shaky.”
“Ugh, how much do you want to bet that that seems insignificant now, but will come back to bite us in the butt later?” Ciangi grumbled.
“I think it would be best if we do not gamble,” Bahn answered. “Considering that particular vice is what got us in this mess in the first place.”
“What do you mean— Oh, right. Scammer-scrubber guy is indebted because of his gambling thing. I was totally paying attention.”
“Honestly, when those military types start talking, I just kind of tune them out too.”
“…you know you guys are still live on comms, right?”
“Well, now I do,” Gonzales said with a shrug. “Plugging in our location now. I’ll see y’all soon.”
She clicked off her comm, as did the rest of us, and we kept on trudging.
The roof of part of what was once the front entrance had caved in, leaving a decrepit sort of haunted house feel. What had once been solid, reinforced, plasticine-alloy windows were now all cracked and dirty. I would like to have said plants were overgrowing it, but there wasn’t a living thing in sight. Not bugs, not plants. Nothing. Just the skeletal infrastructure of my past life.
“I gotta say… Seeing this place kinda makes me understand why you were how you were when we first met.” Ciangi said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, shoving the door open only to have it fall off its hinges.
“I mean… I know that this place is kinda falling apart, but you know how you can kinda pick up on the feel of a space? Well, this feels cold. And unhappy. There’s a sort of bitterness to the walls.”
“And here I thought you were a scientist, not a poet.” Eske ribbed.
“Hey, a girl can moonlight when she wants.”
We picked our way through the first room, which was full of desks and shattered equipment. This had once been the intake room, where the farmers and scientists would drop off samples for other scientists to test and log. It was supposed to help us better understand space and our planet so we could continue to improve our environment, but eventually, we just kinda ran out of money and most of our testing went into how we could maximize our profits.
It still seemed weird to me that money even mattered when we were all just trying to survive together, and it was in Earth’s best interest if we were successful, but maybe I just didn’t understand capitalism. There were a lot of things that I didn’t understand.
“This way,” I said, heading toward the stairs. I was sure the others were weirded out by the thought of such structures within an official building, but we couldn’t waste the energy or resources to have hover-lifts going twenty-four/seven. “Up to the comm center. It overlooked most of the colony.”
I kept going, noting that there was hardly even any dust. I supposed you needed living things to make dust, and there wasn’t much of that here.
“How long has this place been abandoned?” I asked. “Were we able to look that up at all?”
“Yeah, I got some peripheral info,” Ciangi said. “About four years ago.”
“Wow, all this decay in just four years?” Eske murmured in wonderment. “If you asked me, I would have guessed this place has been abandoned for generations.”
“It was already falling apart when I lived here,” I said, coming to another set of doors and pushing them open. “I left when I was sixteen. I’m sure there was a lot more degradation after I left.”
“That is awfully young…”
I shrugged. “They accepted me at the space station for a vocational program, so I took the first ticket they paid for. Now, I’m very glad I did.”
Gonzales didn’t seem to buy my nonchalance. “You have a very interesting past all tucked up inside of you, don’t you?”
“Yes, I have not heard of such things,” Mimi said, clearly a bit miffed. “In all the nights we have stayed up talking, why has none of this ever come up?”
Gonzales made a gagging sound. “Alright, lovebirds, we can leave the tales of your clandestine affair between the two of you.”
Ciangi came up beside her friend and ribbed her with her elbow. “Green is not a good color for you,” she muttered, but I didn’t quite understand the reference.
Whatever it meant, I let it drop, as we had reached the comm center. It was just how I remembered it, a circular room atop the rest of the building, the windows all looking out across the landscape, showing buildings and farmland alike.
Except now it was going to be dead. All dead.
“Good job, Higgens,” Gonzales said, patting me on the back. “This will be a great place to set things up. Now, show of hands, who here wants to be on the traps team, and who wants to be on the fortification team?”
4
Déjà No
“The tricky part of this reinforcement thing is that we don’t want any of the reinforcements to be visible at all. These guys will be professionals with a keen eye, and if they see something new or shiny, or something that doesn’t fit, it’ll blow our plan sky-high.”
I liste
ned as the leader of the ‘reinforcement team’ talked. He was the same man who had been giving orders when we were first rescued, and as far as I could tell, he was sort of Gonzales’s second-in-command on the rebellion side of things.
Where did that leave us, though? Normally, I would consider Mimi our leader, with Gonzales and I being her opposite hands. But now…things were different. Our group may have been one of the triggers of this rebellion, but it was clear that we weren’t the sole decision-makers anymore.
“Alien and engineer, I’ll have you take the old community center. I want the eastern wall completely barricaded.”
“It’s Mimi and Higgens,” I corrected. “Unless we’re going to start calling everyone Human. And I’m not an engineer. Yet.”
“Alright then, Mimic and Higgens, get to it. I trust you don’t need directions.”
I gave a little nod and we headed off. I got the distinct feeling that the man wasn’t trying to be rude, just that he was ex-military and was used to things going a certain way. That way was very different from how Mimi and I liked to do things.
My eyes were everywhere as we walked along, and Mimi didn’t miss it. “What are you thinking of?”
“Just memories,” I answered honestly.
Her hand slid into mine, and I felt her squeeze my fingers. “Tell me them? You know all of mine. You were there when this version of me was born yet I know so little of you.”
“That’s because I’m not that person anymore, and it doesn’t matter.”
“I understand that, but I believe it was a human who once said our past is the path that leads us to who we will be. If you’d share it with me, I’d like to know the journey you took to be the man I love.”
How could I resist a request like that? And it was true, I knew everything about Mimi. She didn’t have a single secret from me, why should I have them from her?
Mimic Changes the World Page 2
