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

Anders gazed out of the tiny window as the spacecraft booted up. He noticed a couple of figures in the distance, sprinting towards them. He leaned forward and squinted in the gloom. The two androids from before were galloping across the tarmac at frightening speeds, a trio of human security guards sprinting behind them.

And they were all clutching pulse rifles. One of the androids even had a railgun, slapping in a clip.

He suddenly felt light-headed, his vision swimming. No. This couldn’t be happening. He’d come so close. He’d—

The sudden movement of the spacecraft jolted him back to the present. The guards were screaming now, waving their arms, turning the heads of everyone around them. But the spacecraft had already pushed off the ground, slowly accelerating through the air. He seemed to be the only one who’d noticed them. The other passengers and crew were completely oblivious. The guards on the ground tried to shout out, but the scream of the engine drowned them out. He gripped the sides of his armchair and tried to calm his frantic heart as the spacecraft glided over the city, the frantic figures becoming smaller and smaller. He leaned back in his seat, breathing hard. That had been so, so close.

But he’d made it.

His ears popped as the ship reached space and booted up the warp drive, sending shivers down his spine, lights dimming above. The floor began to rumble, pulling him back into his seat picking up speed and winking out of existence.

Crossed Genres Magazine. Runaway Theme, Issue 16. April 2014.

“And how did that make you feel, Zhen?” Dr. Veler asks in that soothing monotone of hers.

I know every inch of her office on the upper level of the rig. The metal desk she primly sits behind, legs crossed at the ankles. Motivational posters in flimsy plastic frames. The eternal orange-tinted gloaming beyond the window. When the hydrocarbon clouds part, I can sometimes make out the rig’s shadow as it drifts over Titan’s frozen, craggy surface.

I look down at my work boots. Droplets of grease fleck the toe box. “Dunno. I mean the training’s all right, but I’d rather be in the machine shop.”

Dr. Veler taps something into her touch screen. “You feel safe there? The machine shop?”

Safe? That’s a strange term for it. But then again she’s always twisting around my words. “I like being there when I’m not in class, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why’s that?”

“What else is there for someone like me?”

Dr. Veler eyes me over her screen. “You’re angry.”

“What? No. I’m…” I look down at my hands, white-knuckled and knotted together. My chest heaves with each breath.

“We’ve talked before about your attitude.”

My head snaps up. “But I’m not…like him.”

“That’s why we have these sessions. To keep it that way.” She holds my gaze, then turns back to her touch screen. “You’ll be seventeen next month. You can be something more than your parents, Zhen, but you have to want it.”

I cross my arms. Usually, I don’t totally hate my sessions with Dr. Veler. When we first met, she told me she believed in nurture versus nature—otherwise she wouldn’t have signed on for such an unglamorous position with a remote mining facility. She seems like she actually cares. Although her line of questioning makes me want to cut things short today. But if I bail, she’ll say it’s just another example of the genetic heritage inside me we’ve been working so hard to keep subdued.

Dr. Veler drums her fingers on the desk in time to my heartbeat. “Let’s return to your vocational training. Your company trainer’s been pleased with your aptitude.”

I stare at the ceiling. Rig staff members take turns babysitting me and the other kids in a converted meeting room every day. When they run out of things to teach us, they farms us out to a vocational trainer for part of the school day to see what position on the rig we’ll be best suited for once we’re old enough to legally do the work. The company never planned for us to be here, they’re certainly not paying to ship us back to Earth, so they may as well find a use for us.

Win-win. Not.

Dr. Veler sighs, setting aside her touch screen. “At your request, I contacted your extended family.” She pauses, like she always does when she’s trying to come up with just the right words. “Your mother’s parents are dead, and your father’s…well, they disowned him before he was even sentenced here.”

Technically, I’m an orphan of Titan. But I know who my mother is—she just can’t claim me because she’ll always be a prisoner of the system. She told me once my father was another prisoner—they’d meet during shift changes and one thing led to another. That wasn’t so shocking. After all, every kid on the righas a similar story. But when she said my father was killed during the convict uprising on the rig a few years back, that was different. It meant I had to go to weekly meetings with Dr. Veler on top of my classes.

I lift a shoulder at the news. It was a long shot. Dr. Veler hoped to convince my relatives to give me seed money for a transport that could take me to one of the Martian colonies—if not Earth itself—where there’d be more education and employment opportunities. After all, I can’t help who my parents are. I don’t deserve to be shackled to the same fate. But no one seems to care that me and the other orphans are rotting out here.

“I’m sorry, Zhen,” Dr. Veler says.

“Are we done?”

She blinks away the hurt quickly, her professional self once more. “Next week, at our usual time.”

I should call it a day and rest up for my morning shift with the company trainer. But a live current hums underneath my skin, leaving me itchy and raw. Dr. Veler says whenever I feel one of these moods coming on it’s best to distract myself with something else. My father’s poor impulse control forever hanging over me.

It’s not like I can go outside. I’ve read enough Earth books to know what I’m missing. No green. No wide-open spaces.

I’ve been outside once, away from the rig’s artificial gravity field. Had to bundle up in a pressurized suit insulated to guard against the subzero temperatures. What surprised me most was the way the atmospheric pressure weighed down my body even as my steps buoyed me up thanks to the moon’s low gravity.

An odd combination one of the engineers told us makes it possible for the rig to hover above Titan’s icy surface. She winked and then said that the high pressure and low grav made even human flight possible. Not that there’s anywhere to go.

I settle on the machine shop—no matter what Dr. Veler thinks about that choice.

Tokala greets me as I suit up and get my goggles and gloves into place. Crunch times when they need stuff machined fast, I’ll pitch in, but mostly I work on my own projects. Tokala’s had some of them mounted to walls around the rig—says they brighten up the place. Not sure I believe that, but if it means I can keep working down here, that’s fine with me.

The first time I met him, he got in my face, demanding to know where I got my “toys.” I was eight—the youngest in the pack of orphans running wild through the rig before the company got the injunction to enforce mandatory contraception for prisoners..

I didn’t talk much then, just collected scrap metal and plastic then cobbled everything together into silly sculptures and figurines. I’m pretty sure I stuttered when I explained this to Tokala. But he just grunted, and when I saw him again, he brought me some leftovers from the machine shop. Said when I got older he’d let me on the shop floor.