Chapter Text
“Aha!” Willie said with satisfaction, leaning against the open door of Luke’s quarters. “I found you.”
“I wasn’t hiding,” Luke pointed out, spinning himself in lazy circles in his desk chair. “Hey, can you find me a map?”
“A map of what?”
Luke bit his lip as Willie sat on the couch. “The ventilation system. From here to the storage area on East Texas.”
Willie raised an eyebrow. “And why exactly am I finding you this map?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is if you want my help.”
Luke let out a loud groan. “Willie, what is the point of you being the youngest astronaut in the Genesis program if you won’t use your access codes to help me out?”
“The point is to stay in the program and not be sent home,” Willie replied, rising to his feet. “Trust me, Mars is better than what I left on Earth. Harrison is looking for you, by the way.”
Luke followed Willie into the hallway. “Yeah, okay. Hey, your hair is coming loose there.”
“Where?”
“Turn around, I’ll get it for you.”
Luke tucked the strand of hair back in place with his right hand, using his left to lift Willie’s tablet from his belt and slide it into his pocket. Willie grinned in thanks, apparently none the wiser as he left to continue his work for the day.
Luke settled back in at his desk, tapping at the screen. Willie’s access code wasn’t difficult to guess – the birthday of his favorite skater back on Earth. Luke had spent many evenings in the two years Willie had been at the settlement watching old videos of Tony Hawk performances.
Willie had full access to the system, something about him being one of the data engineers, so it was a matter of a few taps of Luke’s fingers to find the file system he needed.
Please enter mission number
Luke switched to his secondary monitor, bringing up a familiar video file.
“We are running out of time,” Mr. Carter, the head of the Genesis program, announced to a room full of media representatives.
“And Mother Nature doesn’t negotiate,” Luke said in a slightly mocking voice, setting the video to move at double speed. “Blah blah settlement, blah blah water, blah blah.”
Luke paused the video on a familiar face. Emily Patterson, her green eyes full of hope as she addressed the representatives with her wide smile.
“Sorry if we don’t have time for a lot of questions,” she said into the microphone. “You know what it’s like, the night before a big trip.”
“Hey, Mom,” Luke said softly.
Luke had grown up on stories of his brave mother – Emily Patterson, renowned astronaut, ready to take on the stars because the world wasn’t enough. The first woman to sign up for four years on Mars, because it seemed exciting. A legend, gone too soon.
He didn’t know if he was allowed to feel sad – he didn’t remember his mom. The scientists who did and told him stories told him she died quickly after naming Luke, as though that was meant to comfort him. Luke didn’t know if it helped or not, but he did know he wanted to know more.
Hence the current mission.
Luke zoomed the frame in on the suits the astronauts were wearing. “RPP-95.”
He scrambled to write it down, but before he could enter it into the hacked database a message popped up on his screen from Harrison.
Uh oh. Busted.
“To be continued,” he promised his monitor. Spinning in his chair, he scrambled to find a clean jumpsuit amongst the mess on the ground – piles of clothes, junk food from various scientists who had felt sorry for him in the moment, tablets containing schoolbooks he was meant to study so that he could get his diploma (which Luke privately felt was an exercise in futility – why did he need a diploma when he lived on Mars?) Set carefully to one side in a clear patch of desk sat his two most treasured possessions – carbon fiber frames that were activated with the push of a button. The first formed a violin, the second an electric guitar, both powered through Wi-Fi.
They had been gifts when Luke turned thirteen. Apparently, someone at NASA had heard about their greatest secret having an affinity for music and felt bad for him. Luke was sure Harrison, who’d been there two years already, thought he would lose interest in them after a few weeks but that was not the case. Luke had kept up to practice with both in every spare moment he had. He scoured the internet for sheet music and showed up religiously to every lesson Harrison offered for them – it was the only school lesson he never tried to skip.
Luke found a clean jumpsuit and pulled it on as he ran out of the room. Right down the hallway, straight through the atrium, left to the labs, and finally into the irrigation room where he should have been for the past half hour, checking on the system.
“Harrison is looking for you,” Fuego told him with a smirk. Luke cursed under his breath – she had to have seen him running in. He grabbed the nearest microscope and peered into it as though fascinated.
“Luke?”
He looked up and gave his teacher what he hoped was a winning smile. “Hi, Miss Harrison.”
She wrinkled an amused eyebrow. “Hello, Luke. You’re late.”
Luke gestured at the microscope. “I was just so fascinated, you know? Like, have you seen this?”
Harrison’s eyebrow stayed in place. “It works better if you turn it on.”
Luke registered the black screen next to him at the same time he heard Fuego choke on a laugh. His face began to flush. “Right.”
Harrison took pity and gestured. “The irrigator on 23 is blocked, could you get on that please?”
Manual labor was one of Luke’s least favorite tasks, but it beat some of the botany things he’d had to do. He could happily go the rest of his life without ever smelling fertilizer from the European Federation again.
“By the way,” Harrison said as she started to check the taps on her side of the room, “I can’t get hold of Willie. What have you done with his tablet this time?”
Luke felt his face twist. “Are you checking up on me?”
“I’m checking up on Willie.”
“Yeah, who checks up on me.”
Luke could almost hear Harrison rolling her eyes. “He’s got more important jobs on the settlement than just babysitting you, Luke. We did have him flown up here for a reason.”
Luke turned to shoot her a grin. “You mean you didn’t recruit one of the brightest minds in advanced robotics and have him flown into space at an astronomical cost solely so that I could have a friend? I am hurt, Mrs. Harrison. Wounded, truly. Also, 23 should be clear.”
Hey, he might not like physical labor, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at it.
“Really?” Harrison asked. Luke lifted the tap up, about to show her, but was instead hit by a stream of cold water.
“Hey!” he spluttered through laughter. Harrison grinned and threw him a towel.
“Good work, Luke. Get on 17 next.”
Luke obediently picked up his screwdriver and moved to the new system while Harrison checked his tap.
“This is good,” she complimented, throwing a smile at Luke over her shoulder. “We’ll make you indispensable, you'll see.”
Luke felt his answering smile slip. Harrison was quick to notice.
“Luke? What’s wrong?”
He sighed. “I know you mean it as a joke, but… how can I be indispensable if no one knows I exist?”
She didn’t have an answer for him.
“Okay, you little irritation,” Luke muttered at his monitor, bringing up the plans. “Let’s see what you have for me.”
The East Texas Ventilation System wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Granted, it wouldn’t exactly be easy to get in, but Luke had spent his entire life in the settlement – he knew a few places where he could get in and out without being caught on camera. It was just a matter of finding one of those places close enough to a system entrance.
“There,” he breathed.
The entrance was easy to find – near the cafeteria Luke had discovered a blind spot where the corner was out of view of the five hallway cameras. He pried a panel open, slipped into the hollow space and silently shut it again.
The space was surprisingly noisy, the machines regulating the oxygen flow into the settlement bulkier than he thought they would be. Luke had seen documentaries praising the newer machines for taking up less space and thought to himself that it would have been interesting to see how bulky the settlement would have been with the beginner machines.
The ventilation covers were flimsy at best, though Luke did have to squeeze to enter the storage room. He smirked to himself – side effects of an early crush on Willie may include unnecessarily working out to develop impressive arms. Thankfully that ship had sailed and the two of them were comfortably friends, though Luke still believed no one could ever have prettier hair than Willie.
“Which locker?” he murmured, looking between them. Emily’s number had been on her suit – Luke strained to remember it. “0210 RPP.”
He thought it was interesting that she’d happened to get his birthday as her number. A premonition of sorts?
Emily’s locker was in the middle of the batch. It was a matter of ease to hack the keypad and get access to the container, though he waited until he’d made it back to his quarters before popping the top open. He sat in front of it, eating a sleeve of Oreos a South African astronaut had left behind the month before.
The first item in the container – an oversized blue hoodie without sleeves. Luke considered it with amusement for a moment before brushing off his hands and setting it aside. What was the point of a hoodie without sleeves?
Just underneath it was a wooden ring, symbols carved into it and stained in dark relief. Luke looked at it with interest, sliding it onto his own bare left hand. It sat comfortably around his ring finger. Luke rather liked the look of it – maybe he would ask Harrison if they could send up another one with the next batch of things from Earth.
Then again, after the lecture he got on the cost of sending items up when he requested a blank journal to write in, maybe not. Though in his defense, he didn’t think ‘no one can read your handwriting anyways, Luke’ was a good enough reason to deny that request.
A… stick?
Nope, that was a USB. Luke found the break in the fake wood and separated the two pieces. This had potential. He could feel himself starting to vibrate as he entered the file system.
“A video,” Luke breathed. “Play file.”
It wasn’t great quality, but Luke could get the gist of it. The camera was panning over sand to show a man sitting facing the ocean. He had a towel around his shoulders and was seemingly unaware of the person approaching him until she grabbed the towel and ran.
He got the camera, but she got possession of the towel. Luke watched a much younger version of his mother run up stairs to a balcony before throwing the towel back down, to the amused shouts of the man.
“Pause,” Luke said in a half-broken voice. The image paused the frame with Emily holding the man close, an arm over his shoulder. The two of them smiled at the camera.
Luke searched for similarities in the man’s face. Was this his father he was staring at, this man with short dark hair and brown eyes? He looked kind. He looked at Emily with love.
Was… was this man still alive on Earth?
Luke noticed a memo blinking in the top corner of the frame. “Read memo.”
A memory. A house. It’ll wait for your return, and so will I.
“Print.”
Willie entered as the printer spewed out the image. “Hey man, are you good?”
Luke shoved the photo under his tablet. “Yeah. Oh, hey, sorry about your tablet. I don’t know how it got mixed up in my stuff.”
Willie raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh. Sure, you don’t.”
Willie picked up the slim device. Luke quietly panicked – what if Willie looked up and saw the video screen? Luke wasn’t meant to have access to Emily’s things until he turned 18.
A loud pinging came from the screen, familiar and thrilling all at once. This was another secret Willie couldn’t know about – it violated every rule Luke had been raised on. The rule where his existence was kept a secret.
“Here man,” he said, shoving the lifted tablet at his friend. “I have things to do, and I’m guessing you do too?”
Willie raised an amused eyebrow. “What’s the rush, Patterson? Got something you don’t want me to see?”
Luke picked the first excuse he could think of. “I want to try a new concerto on the violin, but there are some notes I don’t think I’ll get. Last time you threatened to throw me in the airlock to see how well I’d play with a suit on.”
Willie cringed. “Yeah, okay, not my finest moment. I’ll see you for dinner?”
Luke nodded. “Bye.”
Willie exited, thankfully shutting Luke’s door behind him. Luke sprinted to the computer. “Please don’t hang up, please don’t hang up…”
RESTRICTED COMMUNICATION
JULIE
ACCESS CODE REQUIRED:
“The code, the code,” Luke hummed, reaching for his tablet. “What was the – there!”
250695
Luke pulled a plain black hoodie on to mask the Genesis symbol on his chest, reaching back to tap on the model of Earth on his desk. Two taps on North America and the connection was established.
Julie.