by H. A. Swain
No it’s not, I argued. Maybe he can see us with his bionic eyes.
He doesn’t have bionic eyes, toidi. And he’s probably been deep-spaced by now. That’s what happens to ExploroBots when their work is done, you know. The people on the Moon just cut them loose from their tethers and let them float away. He kicked a soggy bag of trash that burst into a slurry. Whatever’s left of him is cosmic junk by now.
Back on the street, we hear voices. Quasar and I crawl closer to the half wall to get a better look. Although it makes me nervous, I want to see what’s going on in case Castor gets in trouble. I zoom in with my Glaz to watch the Yoobie girl and my brother standing in a yellow circle of the AutoPod’s lights. She’s gorgeous, of course. Trying to appear as authentically human as humanly possible. Her hair is long and flowing, dyed in variations of brown and gold to bring out the warmth of her sun-kissed skin. Her clothes are spun from plant material, marking her as über wealthy. Her family must have bought into AlphaZonia long ago, then watched their universal basic income grow with each subsequent generation. And since RayNay DeShoppingCart took over ten years ago, the corporate city is more profitable for its citizens than ever.
From his knapsack, Castor extracts long, thin tweezers and a small black box. The Yoobie girl leans forward eagerly, stretching her neck to watch my brother with bright blue eyes engineered to resemble the sky. With the precision of a surgeon, he plucks a tiny silver ball, the size of a seed, from the box. He holds it up, and her eyes glow brighter. She lifts up her chin so Castor can insert the tweezers deep into her right nostril.
Slowly, delicately, he pushes them higher and higher into her nose, then says, “Now.”
She sniffs and steps back to wait, eyes closed, until a few seconds later, she swoons. Her face melts into a sloppy mask of rapturous delight as her whole body relaxes. While she stands, in momentary ecstasy as the dopamine regulator deep in her brain pumps harder, Castor presses a thumb-sized scanner just above her right ear.
“Shit,” I say aloud and stand up straight. “Shit, shit, shit.” I didn’t know he was going to hack her data packet.
She’s too deep into her reverie to notice. When he’s done, she dances in the moonlight, arms and legs slowly gliding through the air as if she’s underwater.
I scramble over the wall to pull Castor out of here, but another set of headlights creeps slowly across the tower of the abandoned church. “Castor, watch out!” I shout, and jump back inside the garden.
He spins, sees the lights, and runs.
UMA JEMISON
MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY
“TOLD YOU, OOM!” Kep says aloud after Fornax disappears. “Classic Fornax hologram visit.”
“And here I thought we were special,” I say with a sigh. All around us, everyone stretches and talks about what they’re doing for Leap Day tomorrow and where they’re going for the month of Sol.
“Guess you’ll have to wait to meet her in person at the LWA ceremony,” I tell Kep.
Micra spins around and asks, “Did you hear the news? I’m going to be Dr. Fornax’s personal intern during Sol. I get to go everywhere with her for twenty-eight days.”
“Poor Fornax,” I mutter.
But Kepler says, “Congratulations. That’s great for your career scaffold.”
I send him a mind scribble of me barfing. The guy is way too nice.
“What are you doing for Sol?” Micra asks while angling her body away from me just enough so I know she’s only addressing Kepler.
He shrugs. “Nothing special. A few days of SimuSkiing on the surface, hitting TourEsa casinos with some guys, then lying around at a SimuBeach.”
“Aiming high, as usual,” I joke, but I have to admit, I wish I could be more like Kepler. He has the perpetual calm of a person who assumes everything will work out fine. My mother says that attitude is the province of the privileged and that people like us always have to worry.
“I’m sure Kepler has a perfectly good reason for his request,” Micra snaps.
“I do,” says Kep.
Micra purses her lips and lifts her eyebrows as if to say, Told you!
“A body at rest stays at rest, and I’m the embodiment of inertia,” he says.
“Excellent reasoning.” I smirk at her.
“Thank you,” he says. Then he adds, “Uma’s going to Earth.”
“For good?” Micra says. Cassio and Alma snicker beside her.
“Maybe,” I say, and Kepler’s eyes bug out. “Earth is a fascinating place.”
“Only if you’re an Earthling,” Micra says it like an insult, then quickly turns away. Cassio and Alma make no effort to hide their cackles.
Before I can create any kind of evil mind scribble showing Micra, Cassio, and Alma’s joint demise, Deimos, our cohort supervisor, takes over the Stream, and we’re all cut off from one another.
“Okay, Cohort 54,” Deimos says. “I know you’re all excited Leap Day is tomorrow, but we still have work to do today.”
Like everyone whose grandparents were the first humans here, Deimos has the slightly fetal look of the Third Gen off-planet evolution, with a shrunken nasal cavity and large eyes. I called them Baby People when my family first arrived from Earth and found them freakish to look at. Now my face is the one that surprises me each time I see my reflection.
“This is your last lab assessment,” he says. “The one you’ve all been waiting for. It’s ExploroBot time!”
Everyone bursts with excitement. Even Gemini sits up, blinking and wiping spittle from the corner of his mouth. “I’m so pumped for this!” he shouts loud enough for us to hear on the other side of the auditorium.
I look at Kepler and whisper, “Am I the only person in the room who thinks this will suck?”
“I doubt the ExploroBots are too excited about it,” he whispers back.
Then we both settle in for the narrated ExploroBot history lesson that fills our Streams.
The ExploroBot project has been the keystone of MUSC expansion for the past two decades, the narrator says over a holo vid of our colony’s history that’s been drilled into our minds since we were small. From the first inhabited inflatable pods on the Moon’s surface in MUSC Year 1 to the warren of underground lava tube bunkers the colony used for fifteen years, we’ve been expanding and making life better on the Moon.
To truly advance our colony, we needed more sophisticated domiciles and labs, yet clearly, inhabitants of MUSC were far too valuable to risk on dangerous exterior construction projects.
I huff. The underlying premise that a MUSC life is more valuable than an Earth life gets under my skin like an antiviral nanobot.
Despite the brilliant minds and advanced technology here at MUSC, no AI robot that we can build is as dexterous and nimble as the masterpiece of the human body. The human hand alone is one of the most complex and amazing feats of engineering in the known universe.
I look down at my hands and wonder what they’ll be used for once I get my LWA. Cleaning space toilets? No. CleanerBots do that.
Finally, in MUSC Year 65, a breakthrough in the area of brain-to-brain interface enabled us to combine resources from Earth with the incredible mental talent here at MUSC.
I lean close to Kep and whisper, “Did you know that an Earth girl named Zaniah Nashira invented that BBI? She was a scholarship kid just like me, but then she disappeared when she was fifteen and was never heard from again.”
Kep puts his lips so close to my ear that it tickles when he says, “You’ve told me about her at least ten million times.”
“So you were listening,” I say.
Kep rolls his eyes.
Images of early ExploroBots fill the Stream. I squirm in my seat and offer Kep an alternate narration. “Here at MUSC, we stick brain-dead Earth soldiers inside a protective exoskeleton, tether them to our station, and control them with our minds!”
He shakes his head, but fights a smile.
“I bet half of these morons are hoping for an LWA plac
ement in the ExploroBot lab,” I whisper.
“And this surprises you because…” He waggles his head, waiting for me to see the folly of my thinking.
I sigh. “It doesn’t,” I admit. “Or at least it shouldn’t.” The truth is, most MUSCies see Zero Gens like me as barely human, so there’s no way kids in my cohort will recognize the humanity of a brain-dead soldier shipped up to us from Earth to do our dirty work.
And so the ExploroBot program was born! the narrator proclaims with far too much enthusiasm. This incredible combination of MUSC minds and Earth bodies has allowed us to construct our state-of-the-art SkyLabs and domiciles and is the reason we continue to expand today!
An image of our station anchored to the surface of the Moon comes into view. Six hinged legs, symmetrically arranged around a baseplate, hold us in place. A long elevator shaft from the surface lifts us to the sky, where we continually rotate around a stationary core that gathers sunrays on our multifaceted surface. This image of my spinning adopted home triggers a vague memory from my childhood of brightly colored plastic pinwheels poking up from compacted dirt on Earth under a bright blue sky.
Darshan, where did this occur? I ask my cyber assistant to comb the archives of my memory for the image.
The former town of Hesperia, located in the Wastelands of Earth, he says, but that doesn’t mean much to me. I can’t contextualize the image except to say it makes me feel happy. Still, I blink on it to save so I can look at it again later.
We are on the cusp of new horizons, expanding our home so all MUSCies can live in comfort on three new stations with state-of-the-art labs that will enable us to launch our species beyond the Moon.
The new stations, in various states of completion, come into view. The legs and shaft of one are done. On another, ExploroBots install the solar panels. The third is nearly complete and will be in rotation soon. Everyone in my cohort hopes they’ll be assigned to domiciles in the newest station, but I don’t really care. I’d be just as happy to stay in this one, close to my mom.
Now it’s your turn to see if dedicating your life to the ExploroBot program could be right for you!
“Who in their right mind would want this for an LWA?” I ask out loud just as the montage ends and our Streams are returned to our control.
People gape at me from every direction. I shrink in my seat.
“For your information,” Micra turns to me and huffs, “the ExploroBot program is the preeminent breeding ground for some of best research that’s occurred on MUSC in the past two decades. Anyone who doesn’t want an ExploroBot LWA is a vacuum brain.”
“What can I say?” I tell her. “My heart belongs to microbiology!” I press both hands over my chest in an overly dramatic gesture just to annoy her. Then I flash her a smile. My big horsey teeth make her cringe.
“Gross!” She shakes her head, dumbfounded as usual by how far off from normal I am. “What’s there to love about bacteria and viruses?”
“For one thing, they’re beautiful,” I say, which elicits an indignant snort from all three girls in front of me. “And also,” I say gravely, narrowing my eyes, “they can be deadly.”
“Oh, please,” says Micra as she turns away.
I can’t let it go. I lean forward, elbows on knees so I can get closer to her ear. “You know, Micra, it’s not a meteor that’ll wipe out this Moon Utilitarian Survival Colony,” I tell her out loud because she would never accept thotz from me. “It’ll be an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny, little strand of killer DNA, because at the end of the day, we’re all just fragile skin bags of water trying to survive in the hostility of space.”
“Just when I think you can’t get any weirder…” she says.
Why do you let her get to you? Kep thotz me.
I sit back hard. Who says she gets to me?
Kep rolls his eyes.
“Okay!” Deimos claps his hands to get our attention. “Just for fun, since it’s our last day, let’s go in random order. First up…” He blinks to retrieve information. “Gemini Chen-Ning.”
Gemini literally jumps up from his seat, pumping his fist, shouting, “Yes!”
Deimos blinks again. “Cassiopeia Noether.”
She squeals and hugs Micra as if she’s won the Miss Universe contest.
One last blink, and he says, “And Uma Jemison.”
“Ah, gad!” I slump down and swallow the bile in my throat.
Lucky you, Kep thotz.
“Shut up,” I whisper as I climb over him.
As I make my way down to the stage, life-size holos of three ExploroBots tethered to the SkyLab appear so everyone can see. Behind each one, a three-quarter Earth zooms by as our entire colony spins. I might be the only person here who finds this view beautiful … and nauseating. I have to look away. Since I wasn’t born on MUSC, I’m supersensitive to the gravity-induced rotation when I see the spinning stars and distant planets outside our station.
Cassio and Gemini each place themselves in front of a holo and focus in to establish a connection on their Streams, but mine won’t work.
“Um … Deimos,” I say quietly. “Psst. Deimos.” I wave my hand. He looks at me, annoyed. “I need a … you know, an external device or something.” I point to my headset, which is too primitive to connect to the ExploroBot feed.
“Right, yeah, sorry. I forgot.” He forages through an equipment cart at the side of the stage. “You’ll have to wear this over your device.” He holds out the mesh hood with tiny probes as if it were a contagion. A ripple of twitters and snorts goes through my cohort as I put on the hood that will connect my thoughts to the CPU implanted in an ExploroBot’s brain.
I can barely look at the bot’s holo in front of me. Knowing that the being beneath the silver and white exoskeleton was once a sentient human makes me physically ill. The darkened faceplate only makes it worse. I want so badly to see this person’s eyes.
“In this simulation,” Deimos says aloud for everyone to hear, “your job is to repair a radiation shield on the exterior face of our new SkyLab 2. Remember what you learned in your tutorials. First, assess the problem in front of you, then think step-by-step through a solution. If your thought process is detailed and clear enough, the brain-to-brain interface will send your action signals to the CPU embedded in your ExploroBot’s brain. The more you can convince your brain that your body is doing the action, the more likely your ExploroBot will react.”
I try.
I really, really try.
I focus on my bot, working to block out the spinning sky behind him, her, it? That only makes my stomach churn and my head swim more. Hand to tool belt. Hand to tool belt, I think over and over, trying to feel my arm lifting, elbow bending, fingers reaching for the wrench on the ExB’s hip without actually moving my own limbs. But my mind is clouded with visions of who this person might have been on Earth.
Had I not won a scholarship to MUSC when I was five, it could have been my mother or my father forced to fight in the never-ending Water Wars. One of them could have been blown apart, then put back together inside these suits and sold off to MUSC so that my family could survive down below. Instead, we had to come all the way up here for my dad to die in the one place we were supposed to be safe.
“Uma, come on,” Deimos says. He stands beside me. “You haven’t even gotten your wrench out of the tool belt yet.”
“I’m trying,” I tell him, but I can feel myself getting queasier and queasier as I watch my bot float aimlessly in the rotating blur. I glance at Cassio’s ExB. She’s at least three steps ahead of me, already removing the damaged radiation shingle. On the other side, Gemini’s ExB is turned upside down, but still drilling a new shingle into place with no problem.
“Think about it!” Deimos says. “Reach your hand into the tool belt.”
“I … I … I…” My stomach starts to heave. “I think I’m going to barf!”
I rip the hood off my head, rocket up the stairs, and dart out of the auditorium doors.
TALITHA
NEVA
ALPHAZONIA, EARTH
“DAMN IT, CASTOR! What did you do?” I demand when he jumps the wall to crouch beside Quasar and me in the shadows of the church. Overhead, lights sweep by, illuminating the broken stained-glass windows.
“It’ll all be fine,” he pants. “But we should get out of here.”
“You think!” I say.
“Wolflo em.” He grabs my hand, and, as always, I follow him, just like he asks.
We run across the garden, bent-kneed and hunched like the PredatorBots that guard the aqueducts up north. Quasar stays close behind. When we pop out on the sidewalk on the other side of the garden, an automated transportation shuttle pulls up to the curb. We both stop short, crash into each other, then plaster ourselves against the side of the building so we won’t be seen.
Ahead of us, the shuttle bus idles beside a long line of tired ReConstruction workers, washed out and gray like ghosts of past inhabitants of this city.
“I didn’t know they’d gotten this far,” I whisper, and scan the streets, because if ReConstruction workers are here, then SecuriBots are not far behind.
Castor clicks his scanner into his TouchCuff to upload the Yoobie girl’s data packet to his device while I watch the workers board the shuttle. Once he has the data, he shoves the scanner back into his bag. I hold my breath until the last worker, a woman about our mother’s age, clomps down the aisle and drops into a seat, exhausted. She appears to fall asleep the moment her forehead touches the window.
I shudder. Being on a bus like that is the other way people like us get inside this city. The difference is, they go back to the Wastelands every night, while we stay here, carving out a life in the shadows.
“Jack-a-Pod!” Castor says.
“No, please, Castor! Don’t do that—”
But it’s too late. The Yoobie girl’s AutoPod screeches around the corner at the far end of the block.
“Come on.” Castor grabs me again. “Run!”
“I hate when you hijack Pods!” I say as we bolt away from the church and waiting bus.
“Hello, Cristela Wong Holtzmann,” the Pod says as we scramble inside. “Where would you like to go?”
