by Rob Ashcom
Connection Lost
The words blink on, red above the flattened connection bars in my peripheral vision. My heart skips a beat or two. She’d disappeared—true—but I could still find her. Just gimme five seconds, and I’d figure out how to map her location. Now our connection is gone? What the hell?! The wifi could be down… or she could be dead… and the wifi is just never down.
GOOD ODOR, is the last thing the stupid translator sent.
Fuckinggoddamn.
I’m gonna be late for my meeting with Gita at our new apartment. Yikes! Am I totally insecure and worrying that this awesome person—Redemption’s freakin’ environmental designer, no less—won’t want to be my roommate if I’ve really lost Nala? Well . . . yes. Obviously.
When I turned fifteen three days ago, I chose Redemption Station as the guardian of my welfare instead of my mom. But really, I chose Gita. Today I only had to move us in, and I’m clearly fucking that up.
So what’re you gonna do about it, Carl? Hmmm?
I can’t ask anybody for help. At least not yet. The people I see around Redemption’s fancy upholstered Spoke lounge look too comfortable to be bothered—or they’re obviously going somewhere.
This is your Station! You’re one of them, I encourage myself. Less than three days now, but still . . . rights and privileges, ya know.
“Station,” I ask the air, “do you know where my dog is?”
HELLO, CARLOTTA MABO, the Station silently prints through my visual implant. YOUR COMPANION ANIMAL EXITED THE SPOKE ELEVATOR THREE MINUTES AGO. THERE ARE WIFI OUTAGES IN THAT AREA. WOULD YOU LIKE TO ESCALATE THIS TO SEARCH AND RESCUE?
“No!” I snap. I’d literally die of embarrassment. Then I moderate my tone as Head Mother Sheila often suggested. “I’ll find her.”
With a pounding heart, rolling an empty dog crate, I drag my butt back to the elevators.
This lounge is halfway down the Spoke where my heart could adjust to having weight again . . . and let Nala stick her head out of her crate.
For the last hour since we left my Mom’s bolo habitat spinning at a half-gee and caught a zero-gee ride to Redemption, she’s been crying about the confinement and the oxygen level. As a good dog-mom, I can’t just turn off the messages, and they stack up like a bored text thread from a squirmy child.
HUNGRY.
REQUEST: CHECK OXYGEN SENSORS.
SAD.
SAD.
SAD.
REQUEST: CHECK OXYGEN SENSORS.
HUNGRY.
HUNGRY.
HUNGRY.
She wears me down. In the halfway lounge, I crack the seal on her pressurized crate and tell her to chill out. But then she looks so cute and scared and wise peeking out of the open lid that I get a big, warm Everything Is Gonna Be Okay feeling and I chill out instead.
It’s official! I’m an emancipated minor on the way to my first apartment with one of the first dogs Redemption Station has ever seen. I feel like Caesar marching downhill into Rome with her dog by her side. A few vertebrae had loosened up with the zero-gee transit. I lean back over the couch to pop them back into place.
And then the box is empty, and she’s just gone.
“Nala?! Come, Nala. NALA, COME!” I half-shout. I’m not actually shouting ‘cause I’m too embarrassed. People immediately turn and stare at me anyhow.
I try whispering, “Come, Nala. Come, Nala,” over our link, which is more socially-acceptable for a Spoke lounge. And that’s when our connection status falls to zero bars, and my heart stops beating.
At the elevator bank, I choose the express elevator that everyone else is avoiding. I’ve never taken one. The doors close after me a little too quickly, and the elevator pauses dramatically.
Then I’m falling. Accelerating. Screaming, “Waaaaaahhhhhhhh!”
I’m used to zero, half, or full gravity in designated locations, but falling is still falling. And falling from medium to high gravity keeps the feeling of acceleration fresh and terrifying.
“Aaaaahhhhh!”
Long windows flash by showing the interior of the Drum nicely greening up, where Gita’s big design is taking hold. I float up off the elevator floor, and that startles me enough to shut up and drag myself down onto the padded bench before the express elevator slows us down hard, BUMP, and then eases to a stop at the Spokebase—all smooth as hell like nothing happened.
The elevator was a good distraction, but Nala’s silence is really scaring me. I’ve got no idea where to go next. Then ding! my map updates as the doors open. The Station captured a few pings from her location. Now I know which way to turn at least.
Exiting the elevator, I look up and around without thinking and have to stagger to keep my balance. For a minute, I just stare at the ground to keep everything from spinning. Gravity has doubled my usual weight—two whole Carlottas—and this space is clearly too gigantic to be safe. People are staring at the girl with the medusa braids. I can feel it. Hiding behind the curtain of my hair, I blink on the time and a map. We still have forty-three minutes to meet up with Gita. We’re in the right general area. I may be experiencing some agorophobia, but I can handle it. Now I need a dog!
My directions say LEFT.
The blue arrow on my map walks me ten meters past the express elevator to a regular elevator. I push the down button and wait, wait, wait. Finally, the elevator arrives, and I enter cautiously, punching G for the ground floor—the floor of the Station’s open O’Neill Cylinder area.
This elevator ride, at least, is short and normal. Then the doors open on the Ground Floor and whoo! The air comes in warm and moist. Thick. Smelly. Like dirt and shit.
Connection Lost
Fucksticks! This time, I force myself to stop and listen for half a turn and not just freak out about our lack of connectivity.
The deck outside the elevator is filthy in a way Head Mother Sheila would say is from the Devil—then she’d check for surveillance, looking up and grabbing at her crucifix necklace. In a space habitat, it’s a reflex that dirty equals dangerous. When you live on filtered air, it’s pretty simple. Now we’re cultivating the stuff thanks to Gita, the Mother of Dirt.
I’m looking out at a crossroads. Our indoor ring, with its housing, labs, and greenhouses, feeds our dirty outdoor Drum, and this is one of the places they connect. The ceiling is shockingly high. The room’s full of very large machines, which I brilliantly deduce are for moving dirt around. There’s one open portal, wide enough you could drive these giant machines through it. From this angle, I can’t see much out there, but it’s bright.
The air’s different the moment the elevator doors open—and not just because of the manure thing. It makes the little danger hairs on the back of my neck and forearms prickle because the air pressure is going up and down slightly. Is this what it’s like to have a breeze? Holy crap!
Then I hear claws on cement, and Nala comes skittering through the open portal, running with her tongue hanging out in a way that makes me think she’s playing. There’s a small, dark-haired boy pounding along behind her who does not look like he’s playing.
“Catch-the-dog, catch-the-dog, catch-the-dog!” he calls out.
The elevator doors close behind me with a thump as I step out into the cavernous room. Nala skitters up to me and stops, wagging her tail and her whole body in excitement. And then about five things all happen at the same time:
- A crowd of adults comes running in after the boy.
- Their leader, a muscular, bald, red-faced man with neck tattoos, yells at us in what sounds like Klingon, but is probably Russian-adjacent.
- The boy who had been chasing Nala is now standing nearby, panting, looking at these people and me, his light brown face scrunched up in fear.
- A small, silvery Mylar blimp that could fit in Nala’s dog box motors through the open portal after the people. Ding! My implant says Connection Max.
- Nala’s translator reconnects with me, showing her last few stored messages: WHERE YOU? SMELL DIRT. THIS BOY. HELLO, CARL.
Kneeling on the dirty deck, I let Nala lick my face shamelessly while I rub both hands through her fur. I barely care that my nice yellow suit liner is getting dirty knees.
“You shouldn’t run away,” I say—making sure my implant is transmitting to her.
YOU SLOW. I LOVE YOU.
Oh my god, DOGS!
“Lady, you gotta go!” the boy says between panting breaths. “Leon is a bad man.”
The new connectivity shows me nothing about this boy. And it should—a metadata text bubble you can see over his head, whether he’d opt to show anything in it or not. Mine might say: Carlotta Mabo – Have you seen my dog? When I face the angry man—actually turn in his direction—I see the same lack of data bubble, and I guess my mouth kinda falls open.
Strangers!
The tattooed man—Leon—sees my surprise and turns and shouts something at the random assortment of adults. They quickly grab the little blimp before it can escape, and rip it into pieces, then carefully stomp on the pieces. Connectivity once again falls to zero, and now I know it’s not an accident.
Leon is at my side all too suddenly. In my space.
“You come with us,” he says, grabbing my arm and walking away.
He almost dislocates my shoulder before I understand I’m a prisoner and have to follow. Of course I am. He knows that I know they’re non-residents.
Nala growls in a deep, angry sound. I wonder what she’s saying. I’m probably in shock because I should be thinking more about my own situation. And yes, my heart’s trip, trip, tripping faster, while my thoughts seem to slow down like they’re caught in sticky syrup.
“That’s not your dog,” Leon says to the boy who now holds Nala by the collar. It seems like an unnecessarily mean thing to say. “Keep it out of the room while we do this.”
They have a secret doorway behind a jumble of gear.
Nala starts barking the minute I go through that doorway, and the boy keeps her back. Leon drags me down a short corridor into another equipment bay and then releases my arm. This area is super-clean compared to the last one, except around the edges, where these people look to be camping. It smells more like the rest of our space station. More electronics, less manure than the previous room.
In the center, all by itself, we approach a raft of silvery metal packed with odd-shaped lumps of gear that shine in the overhead lights. A Station tablet is stuck to it—blinking red. I’ve seen this silver-coated Santa’s sleigh in a history book somewhere.
The other adults follow us to the center of the room and the raft thing. I can hear Nala still barking.
“No more interruptions!” Leon yells at us all. I’m not the only one who flinches. “It’s almost scheduled time. Do this, and we go home. That is the deal.”
I know I’m in shock, but between my mother and the ex-nuns, I’ve had a lot of arm-jerking and worse. Now it’s dawning on me that I’ve been kidnapped and I’m engaged in a real-ass adventure. I look at the contents of the tablet screen. One big confirmation dialog . . . and it’s pretty bad.
AMMP nuclear auto-destruct initiated: CANCEL | CONFIRM.
Before, I was worried about finding Nala and what Gita might think of me; now I’m imagining a nuclear auto-destruct process that could blow a hole in the hull of Redemption. Everything, everything, EVERYTHING we do is meant to keep the fucking vacuum out there and the good life in here!
Connection Max
Even without a communications blimp, the Station is determined to restore services in the middle of all this drama.
BITE INTERROGATIVE? BITE INTERROGATIVE? BITE INTERROGATIVE? from Nala prints across my vision. Bark, bark, bark continues in the next room. I hope she hasn’t bitten that kid.
Distractions! Just one thing is important right now . . . maybe two things.
“HIT CANCEL!” I shout at full volume, seeing spit flying through the air. And, “NO BITE, Nala!”
Nala stops barking. Everyone around the silvery sled turns and looks at me. That’s all they do. They look like normal people, too, besides Leon. I’m jumping out of my own skin, every one of my internal alarm bells going off. The facts are so confusing. Why would anyone do this? How can there be strangers in Redemption Station? What the hell is an Automated Mining and Manufacturing Platform doing inside the Station?
A story from TV months ago: Gita sent out a self-destruct message to any remaining AMMP platforms to get them talking, and then canceled the command as they reported back. Yikes! This AMMP sure as shit wasn’t supposed to be here, un-canceled.
Rule #1 of The Doctrine says health and safety come first. Everybody knows that. Every resident—including Nala—has to do what they can for Rule #1. Bite interrogative, indeed.
“When I hit CONFIRM,” Leon says, ignoring my outburst, “nuclear battery will start ten minute countdown. We cancel at nine minutes. Nine minutes is all they want. Looks like Station has a bomb. And we get the berth back home.”
“Home,” replies a rough chorus of voices in different accents. It’s weird. They already look like home to me—and healthier than a fair number of folks back in my mom’s Curtisville neighborhood.
My brain must be thawing. I just remembered that Gita shared a secret with me last year before she left to go with Josh and the Diplomatic Corps to hunt pirates. “Don’t just say Station or whatever if you’re really in trouble,” she had said. “Ask for Sam and tell her Gita sent you. And never talk about this.”
I cover my face with my hands, doing my fake crying act. Behind the curtain of my braids and my hands, I whisper as quietly as I can enunciate, “Sam? Gita said you could help me, and right now we’re all fucked!”
I’M SAM. TELL ME WHAT YOU NEED, CARLOTTA. The text floats silently in front of me.
“What’s the default self-destruct time for one of Mr. Gaynor’s AMMP platforms?”
ONE MINUTE.
Fuuuuuuck. That’s what I thought. Leon is frighteningly misinformed if he thinks they have nine minutes.
“Is it stoppable, reversible, whatever?!”
IT IS NOT. TIME TO EXPLAIN, CARL. QUICK!
“I—”
Connection Lost
“—fudge!”
I abandon my crying act and stand up straight. I need some kind of game plan, but my brain is mush. I just want my dog. With my fingers in my mouth, I rip out a whistle that might cause a heart attack in anyone who remembers the shriek of a pressure leak.
Nala’s barking down the hall turns manic. Claws on the aluminum door scrabble continuously like she’s digging through. I’d worry about her if I weren’t so worried about ALL OF US!
The scrabbling from the dark hallway startles them more than the whistle. It’s a classic horror movie setup, and Nala’s the monster. I mean, when’s the last time they even saw a dog? And Leon stares at the door with a look I already recognize as a new dog owner—the angry man is afraid of dogs.
I see my opening and take it. Three steps to Leon’s side at the silver sled, and he never notices. He’s fixated on the hallway and the sound of Nala digging through the metal door. The tablet screen has two rectangles big enough for gloved hands labeled CANCEL and CONFIRM. I can see a warped reflection of myself in the shiny side of the AMMP. I touch the tablet firmly with long, dark fingers attached to a tall Black girl. The confirmation dialog disappears.
Leon turns and notices that the tablet is just a transparent slab of acrylic now. His instant reaction is to reach out and grab me by both arms and growl at me.
“Whadija do?!”
His fingers hurt. I’m off the ground and dangling helplessly. His red face is terrifying. Much worse than anything Sheila, the Head Mother, could conjure. I was done.
His hands are ripped off me as something brownish-yellow flies past. Leon lands on his back with Nala standing on his chest. My barely medium-sized mutt dog has him pinned down, snarling in his face—her bright pink lips stretched back to show every millimeter of her sharp, white teeth. Even I’m a little scared of her.
Wisely, Leon remains still, but his face scrunches up like a baby, shying away from the dog, and that shininess in his eyes is tears, tears, tears!
Then Nala stops snarling all at once and closes her mouth. Something outside the room, beyond the stunned boy in the doorway, has caught her attention. Those wolfish ears are adjusting their angles, and her black nose is visibly wiggling.
BEST ODOR. FOLLOW ME, the translator sends. BIRD!
When I look past the message, she’s already escaped. I guess my priorities have changed—at least I’m not worried about being embarrassed anymore—so I ask for help.
“Sam? I’m requesting search and rescue for my dog Nala, out in the Drum. Also, there’s an AMMP platform here; I just stopped from going nuclear. And this scary guy named Leon. And these people he was bullying. And a boy. It’s a lot. I can stay on the line and talk you through it.”
THANKS, CARL. THAT IS A LOT. ARE YOU CURRENTLY IN DANGER?
“I don’t think so, but maybe you can tell Gita we’ll be a little late? And not mention why?”
I WILL PASS ON YOUR MESSAGE. PRIVACY IS MY DEFAULT SETTING WITH RESIDENTS’ INFORMATION.
“Thanks, Sam,” I reply.
“Thank you for letting her in,” I say to the boy, walking past him, down the corridor to the first equipment bay. I’m coming back for this boy after I find Nala.
Then, after all that shitshow—Carlotta’s Fire Swamp of obstacles getting to this place—stepping out into the open space of the Drum instantly erases the half-hour for me.
Until three days ago, when I became an official resident after an epic battle with a treadmill fitness test, I would have described myself as a girl from Curtisville with its half-gee bolo habitats—leftovers outside Redemption Station, one step up from squatting. I’d spent my whole life inside small rooms, in small habitats, and I’d never been out in the Drum.
That’s my dirty little secret I kept from Gita. I just acted cool, but I didn’t know. I didn’t understand how small my world was, or what it would feel like to have an open space pull at you, almost like the vacuum itself.
And there it is… now I’m crying. Happy tears mixed with tears of relief. It’s the fresh wind and Gita’s jeweled fucking birds flying by—startlingly close as I step outside the open portal. Thousands of ducks, flapping wildly, banking around in impossible, synchronized patterns. THROUGH THE AIR! The incredible, noisy, rushing sound of their quacking is as shocking as everything else today.
I’m completely outside now. Open space as far as I can see into a hazy distance 20-something kilometers away, the side of the Drum curving up overhead. It’s all completely epic. The distances are tugging at me like there’s more to discover and bigger things to imagine for resident Carlotta Mabo.
HERE GOOD, Nala messages my implant. She double-barks a new happy sound I can hear nearby—a blue dot in my visual map for her position.
With time to still make our appointment, I go get my dog.
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