SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Lelato spread her hands wide to take in the city, and said, "There will be time to grow."

Originally published in The Immortality Chronicles, part of the Future Chronicles anthology series, curated by Samuel Peralta

Space is a misnomer. If humans weren’t blind to it, they’d see that space is full, teeming with enormous creatures that float and skim through the blackness in the same way that phytoplankton fill the warm waters of Earth’s oceans. I don’t know why humans can’t see them. I see them all.

Even now, they glide and wheel past me, translucent, blinking, some bright and disc shaped, others pale with whip-like appendages that lash the darkness. I can see the stars through them. They move away and then return to hover. I know they see me as I stand here at the port window. They’re curious; not only about me, but about the ship that confines me.

The ship is my prison.

I am a convict aboard the Lonecross ; a crew of ten also shares my fate. We are all sentenced to death, but a small, bright hope holds their hearts and minds—a hope for freedom, for an extension of breath and length of days. Their hope is my certainty, but they don’t know that. What we all know is this: their death is kept at bay for as long as possible by my isolation. My immediate company would be fatal to them all.

These are interesting times, full of ironies and paradoxes. The aristocracy has found itself with too much prosperity and too little desire to dirty its hands when dealing with commoners. It’s grown an odd skin of politeness that insists on humanely dealing with its worst dregs, so as not to offend the offenders. This is nothing new; I’ve seen it played out over and over through the years. The people in power change, the justifications change, but underneath the masks, the faces are always the same.

As for the worst lawbreakers, those deserving death, the benevolent method of dealing with them arrived later. A hundred years ago, eyes turned to space and desire to break free of Earth grew. The death penalty was abolished. In its place: a one-in-a-million chance at winning the lottery of the disgraced. Criminals were cajoled into volunteerism, that they might contribute something to give their hopeless, pathetic lives meaning.

These make up the crew of the Lonecross . They’re trained and made useful, then launched into space on a one-way journey, put to work whether they like it or not, for the good of a society that has cast them out like trash into the abyss of space. They’d like to believe they’re explorers of our vast galaxy, but in reality, they’re only maintenance workers on a vessel programmed to observe, record, send back information as it searches for new worlds that might be habitable. They forget about death—until fate snips the final threads of their existence by one cause or another.

But always dangling before their noses is the small hope that they will find that new world where second chances wait to embrace them.

And what of those who deserve the worst death, but are unable to die? Who cannot be killed no matter what torture is inflicted upon them? There is only one such soul on this ship. And I am locked away, isolated. My movements and activities are quietly documented by a computer’s cold eye for the duration of my so-called humane journey. I am the only prisoner ever to meet that description in the past nine hundred years.

I’ve never understood very clearly what sort of monitoring is done, what sort of notes are collected about me, or even why. I imagine some scientists at home want to know my end, if there is one. It’s always best to be mindful of one’s enemies and keep a careful eye on their whereabouts.

And so I remain alone, or almost alone, monitored like the stars and planets along our course. I don’t mind. I’m quite used to it by now. One crewman keeps me company, albeit by voice only. The pulsating diatoms of space keep me company. So does the life maturing inside me.

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I’m on that other ship, the Prospect , where I first met my fate. I can almost feel the dizzying rise and fall of its bulk as it succumbs to the troughs and peaks of waves. I smell the pungent tang of salt and ocean decay. I hear the creak and whine of the hull, the thump of wind filling its sails. I close my eyes and I am almost there, where it all began.

I’d lived in London all my life. My name was Kate then; I’d just turned eighteen, straining at the fetters of drudgery and poverty in my overcrowded family home, eager for escape, for the freedom of adventure. It arrived in the form of an advertisement. Brides were wanted in the New World; women who were strong of bone and mind and lean of soul, because one had to be of that disposition to survive life in Virginia, let alone the journey there by ship. I felt qualified on all points. And so, without my father’s blessing, I responded to the advertisement. Soon I received a letter from The Virginia Company of London accepting my application and granting my fare to a new world. My mother and father did not say good-bye. I never looked back.

The journey was horrendous. I became so sick I truly thought I would see death before I saw land again. Halfway through the voyage, during a particularly sadistic storm, I considered pitching myself overboard and letting the sea swallow me. I didn’t think I could take any more. I hadn’t eaten in days because the mere thought of food made me retch. I was weak and feverish.

Then the sea calmed. The passengers embraced the relief it brought and slept. But I couldn’t sleep.

After twisting and turning in my bed, I’d had a brief, disturbing dream: a man had kidnapped me, stripped me naked and tied me to a bed spread-eagled, where he proceeded to probe my body with a glowing instrument. When he looked into my eyes, I felt a burning sensation at the back of my head. I was terrified, but finally he untied me and said, “You’ll do.”

I woke in a sweat, and realized my fever had finally broken. I rose and made my way to the deck for some night air, hoping it would bring calm to my frantic heart.

On deck, the ship rocked gently in the small swell of the sea. There was no moon, but the stars were so bright and numerous, I thought it might be possible to touch them. I stared out across the dark surface of the water. It was then I noticed a strange glow in its depths.

“Time to eat, Kata,” says Ruhan through a speaker in my door. His voice startles me from my thoughts. He calls me by my name, and he’s the only one. I know the others only by combinations of numbers and letters. Ruhan is CR7. I’m CK3, and in my files I’m told I have a suffix: 22, which means I’m extremely dangerous. The crew isn’t allowed to talk to me, although I’ve heard their voices from time to time. They’ve whispered through the speaker: “Hey, CK3, what you got going on in there?” or, “suck my dick, bitch.” Ruhan was no different at first, when he sought me out twenty years ago. But there was something about him that caught my attention. His snide remarks quickly gave way to curiosity; then as time went on, to friendship.

Ruhan fills me in on the goings-on of the crew. I never ask, but he talks as if I want to know. He told me once that I’m the subject of many discussions among the men. They wonder what I am, and why so much effort has been made to send me away and keep me separated. Why didn’t the judges make a special ruling in my case? Why didn’t they humanely euthanize me?

I never say anything. They don’t need to know. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Regardless, Ruhan talks to me. I think he feels sorry for me. Perhaps it’s because I’m the only female on-board. Or he’s simply curious. I never ask him why. I’m grateful for his friendship.