Chapter Text
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
–Clarke's Third Law
EARTH. THE FUTURE.
“If it isn’t Charlie Spring. What can I do for you today?” Mr. Lange glanced up from his holo for a moment and beckoned Charlie into his office.
Charlie entered and walked five steps until he stood directly opposite Lange’s wide desk.
“I’d like to request a transfer, sir,” Charlie said.
“A transfer? You’ve been here at Truham Tech, what, two years?”
Apprenticeship starting at fifteen. Top of his class for three years. Four more years putting in advanced level work on a team of four hundred entry level designers.
“Seven, sir.”
“Has it been that long?” Lange gestured and pinched at the holo, squinting into the air until it delivered an answer that Charlie couldn’t see. “I’ll be. You’re right.”
Charlie resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The only thing Lange was more infamous for than his team’s unprecedented uptime was his absolute disinterest in any single individual who made up that team. That Lange even remembered Charlie’s name was probably due to the biometric recognition tech in his office's door frame.
“Well,” Lange twisted his wrist and swiped. “Hmm. You’ve done well here. Head of Team, multiple commendations. Oh! You spearheaded that custom augment environment over in Kent, well done.”
“What teenager hasn’t wanted to watch their school burn down?” Charlie snarked.
Charlie had been proud of that project. The carefully placed projector nodes. The invisible optic filament that spider webbed through classrooms and foundation. The 4D graphics. His day to day job was mostly just your standard network installation and maintenance. But that—that had been art. Even his notoriously cynical sister Tori had appreciated it.
"Current openings please," Lange spoke to his comm. "Qualmatch Spring, Charles Francis."
Lange’s eyes narrowed as he skimmed listings, his right hand palm out, ring finger flicking. “Europe is saturated. We have some openings related to your skill set in the panAsian market. It would be a lateral move, but after a year or two of network bolstering, I’m sure you’d be able to get to the next level…”
Charlie took a deep breath. “I’ve been hoping to go a bit less…local, sir.”
Lange’s hand slammed into a fist, and he made eye contact with Charlie for only the second time since he’d walked in the door.
“Your employment record doesn’t reflect offworld interest?”
“Circumstances have…changed,” Charlie winced.
A deep blue hallway that rippled like an underwater filter had been applied. Charlie, alone and insignificant. A bug in the code. Not even a bug in the code. Something so small it didn’t even merit fixing.
“Hmm,” Lange hummed. His fist opened again, all his fingers flicking rapidly now. “Your physicals are in order. You’ll have to do a basic psych screen, of course–”
Charlie attempted to keep his face impassive.
“--but it’s nothing like the old days where any deviation kept someone bound planetside. New Australia not withstanding.” Lange arched an eyebrow at the mention of the early penal colony. Then he folded his hands in his lap and looked Charlie directly in the eye again.
“Mr. Spring. You pass the screen, and I’ll write you a glowing endorsement. It doesn’t matter to me either way. And you’re sure this is what you want?”
Charlie thought of Ben’s angular face, his luminous eyes. His resolve hardened.
“Yes sir. I’m sure.”
“Well then,” Mr. Lange said, and rotated his hand so that a giant orb of blue, brown and green, covered in white wisps appeared above the desk between him and Charlie. “Let me be the first to introduce you to the up and coming planet Hamlet.”
***
In his stark white apartment later that night, Charlie sat on his bed and flicked through channels, trying to decide what filter he wanted to apply. A bench beside a riverwalk. A room full of kittens, their weight heavy and real on your thighs. A club full of dancing people, rainbow lights pinwheeling over glittering cheekbones and bare shoulders.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
Charlie had rented a spot in this complex knowing it was a full holographic environment. Every wall linked with filament, every doorway a node. It billed itself as full modern glamour, a million different living situations at your fingertips for one low, low monthly cost. It had seemed novel and exciting, exactly where a newly independent tech sector employee should live.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
He rejected the comfortable posters and bookshelves of his teenage bedroom, his favorite rocky beach on a sunny day. Nighttime cityscapes were trending. Someone had designed a new neon scaffold for the Eiffel Tower that was tuned to your serotonin profile.
Flick. Flick. Flick
He could control everything. He could hack in the pets he’d never been allowed as a child. Make the food storage cabinet appear and disappear at will. Play the drums until the walls appeared to rattle without disturbing a soul.
It was every possibility in the world, ready to be overlaid on a grid of nothing.
Finally, he accessed his private cloud. Pulled up a sliver of the augment he had designed. The ceiling went grey, thick white clusters drifting and falling. The apartment became hushed, the outside sound dampened.
It was his best work. Even the air smelled different, sharp and metallic. Only the warmth of his fingertips was evidence that what surrounded him was nothing but a holovi.
He laid on his back in his bed and fell asleep with the illusion of snowflakes collecting on his eyelashes.
***
A list of the people Charlie will miss on earth, in descending order:
- His older sister, Tori. She’s a sarcastic pain in the ass, but she knows the perfect way to heat up a frozen pizza - lowest rack, convection on, so the crust comes out crisp and dark while the cheese on top stays gooey. She keeps enough soft drinks in reserve to sustain a family of four through a two week water emergency, even though she lives alone most of the time.
- His younger brother Olly. He’s apprenticing on Siberian maglevs and only comes back to the UK every three months or so. Each time his curls are wilder, his beard is thicker, and he cooks something that includes beets, or mammoth, or both.
- His friend and coworker, Aled, who writes flawless code and has no particular cooking skills whatsoever. Aled should have been the one to be going out to explore the universe, but instead they’re going to be stuck on all the Truham projects that Charlie’s abandoning due to his spur-of-the-moment fuck-you to his city, country, planet, solar system. (Everything.)
- His other friend and coworker, Caroline, a graphics artist who sings along to whatever’s in her earbuds on public transport. She taught Charlie how to perfectly smudge eyeliner and designed the tattoo that starts at his hip and extends to cover the scars on his upper thigh.
- His dad, he supposes.
- His mum, except not really.
- No one else.
- Not even a little.
###
Six weeks later
###
“Two centuries of interstellar travel. You’d think they’d have figured out a better way of getting people into space than exploding us there, but nope.”
The man who had spoken was about Charlie's age and tall. Extremely tall. Two meters at least, a stretched out piece of cabling topped with a knit beanie. His black hair flipped out over his ears with the curve of a gull’s wing. Nearly as soon as he'd finished his sentence, he switched his attention from the giant ascent rocket towering 500 meters distant across the rocky plain to Charlie, who was sitting on the ground near his feet.
“I’m sorry. Was that–was that meant for me?” Charlie blinked.
The train to the launch site in Kazakhstan had been an overnight journey, and Charlie had barely slept. The boarding queue hadn't moved an inch in five minutes, and sitting down had seemed reasonable until a moment ago, when he realized he was alongside his future colleagues.
Charlie got to his feet, brushing dusty beige soil from the seat of his trousers.
The man shifted his small personal belonging duffel to his other shoulder. “Well. I suppose it was technically just an observation, but it’s always better to observe in groups. Multiple angles. More options in editing. I’m Tao Xu. Cinematography.”
The man–Tao–held out a hand.
“Charlie Spring,” Charlie held out his palm in kind and accepted a quick slap. “Software engineering, mostly.”
Tao inclined his head to the brown-skinned woman to his left. “Elle Argent. Graphic artist.”
“Hey! I think I can manage my own introductions, Tao.” She spoke with warm-hearted familiarity. “Nice to meet you, Charlie.” Another slap.
“So. Um. Is this your first time portal traveling?” Charlie asked tentatively.
“You think this asshole got that tall in earth gravity?” Elle rolled her eyes. “He’s born and bred Martian.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to port to get to Mars!” Tao said.
“Point. But you do have to take an ascent rocket,” Elle replied.
“I hate ascent rockets. Three hours of barf city,” Tao puffed out his cheeks.
Charlie swallowed.
“Tao! You’re scaring Charlie,” Elle admonished. “I take it that it’s your first time?” Her dark eyes were kind behind gold rimmed glasses.
“Yeah,” Charlie breathed, looking at the rocket that rose like a skyscraper on the launchpad 500 meters away. “Are they always this intimidating?”
“When Truham’s sending three dozen of their best and brightest to do a full install on a new planet? Yeah, pretty much,” Tao said. “What office are you from?”
“London,” Charlie said.
“So! That’s why we haven’t met before. I’m Los Angeles, and Elle’s Cairo. But we both started in Cairo, and this was the best way for us to get a matched placement so…boom! Explosion city.”
A matched placement?. Charlie glanced between the pair, who were smiling affectionately at each other.
“Are you two…” Charlie gestured between them. “...dating?”
Elle pressed her lips together, her eyes merry. Tao let out a massive laugh. “I completely destroyed every chance of that the first time she saw my erotic dance moves.”
“Martians move weird!” Elle butted in. “You’re made of rubber bands!”
“Exceptionally desirable rubber bands,” Tao began to swivel his hips.
Charlie glanced quickly between the two. Tao, with his arms over his head. Elle covering her face with one hand while she hit at Tao’s shimmying chest with the other.
“Oh my god, just stop it already!” Elle laughed. “We’re trying to make friends, not frighten off everyone we’ll be stuck with for the next two to four weeks of travel!”
“Okay, okay!” Charlie said. “Not dating, got it!” They were the right kind of odd, and he liked their dynamic. It reminded him of the way he and Tori used to needle each other when they were little and still living at home.
The queue shuffled forwards a few meters. It seemed that they were finally being ushered to board. Charlie’s heart leapt into his throat and he looked down at his knuckles. He was actually doing this. He started tapping his right thumb against his fingertips. Index, middle, ring, pinky, pinky, ring, middle, index. He did it four times in quick succession.
“Hey,” Elle leaned over to Charlie again. “It’s gonna be okay. Assuming we haven’t scared you off completely, sit by us on the ascent rocket. I swear there’s only a 50/50 chance that Tao will vomit on you.”
“I take offense to that! They give you bags!” Tao defended loudly.
“Then why do you always miss?”
“That was one time, and you continue to never let me live it down!”
Tao’s voice was consistently twenty decibels louder than it needed to be. Was that Martian, too? Thin atmosphere?
Charlie pressed his lips together. This was still going to be terrifying. But at least it was going to be entertaining.
***
A list of what Charlie is bringing to Hamlet with his 2.5 kg personal item allowance:
- The copy of the complete works of Homer printed on featherstock (168 g)
- Four plaid shirts, varying fabric types and weights (839 g)
- Two pairs of skinny denim jeans (1 black, 1 dark blue) (491 g)
- A brand new pair of Chuck Taylor high tops (816 g)
- Extra shoelaces (4 g)
- The toffee coloured stuffed dog he has slept with since he was a baby (70 g)
- The set of 5a drumsticks he has used since he was thirteen (96 grams)
A list of what he hopes to leave behind:
- The weight of the world
***
No one barfed on Charlie in the ascent rocket, or waiting for the transport at the orbital station, or when loading into the transport.
On the transport, he and Tao and Elle each had their own private berths. A cubicle a meter wide and two meters long. A fiberglass door that closed but didn’t lock. A 50 cm wide closet. Two seats facing each other that converted to a bed and a tabletop that folded down over the seats. No windows. A sheet of highly reflective mylar for a mirror. Toilet facilities shared by the twelve others in the aft private rooms.
All of the resources on the ship were allocated to silly things like “propulsion” and “life support,” which meant that it was the first time in almost seven years that Charlie had absolutely no assigned work to complete. After landing, they’d be stuck with crushing thirty hour days to get the new data centre up and running, and Charlie intended to take full advantage of the down time.
The most cumbersome aspect of portal travel was getting to one. The three friends spent most of their time in the common area, playing with the collection of vintage board games, yelling when unexpected decelerations meant that cotton candy coloured pieces of paper representing old fashioned “money” occasionally floated into the air without warning.
“Fuck! I was winning!” Tao yelled.
“No, I was winning, because I clearly had more money!” Charlie snatched at the rectangular pieces of paper drifting in front of him.
“No, the winner is the superior business person, and that’s me!” Tao insisted, shaking the floating strands of hair out of his face.
“No, I’m the superior business person, seeing as I have more money!” Charlie’s fist managed to secure a cluster of bills, and he waved them at Tao.
“That’s because you know all the cheats!”
“How can I know all the cheats, we literally just discovered the game a week ago when we boarded!”
“You are unnaturally skilled at manipulating archaic economic systems! Elle! Please back me up that owning all four railroads is a blatant anti-trust violation!”
The g-forces chose that moment to kick back in, and all of the green and red polyethylene houses, as well as the tiny top hat, thimble, and scottie dog clattered loudly as they fell back to the deck.
“I’m beginning to understand why whoever brought this with their personal item allowance left it behind,” Elle rolled her eyes.
Please secure yourself and your belongings the intercom blared in thirty seconds too late. Portal insertion will occur in t-minus 500 seconds. Repeat message. Secure yourself and your belongings. Portal insertion countdown initiating.
Holos in the centre of each cluster in the lounge lit up with bright green numbers. Tao and Elle scrambled to shove all of the game pieces back in their zippered case.
“You ready, Charlie?” Elle asked. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I promise this is the fun part.”
His hand was still clutched in hers when the countdown reached zero.
***
A list of what Charlie knows about interstellar portals:
- The first one was discovered between Earth and Mars in 2061, at the same time the first Martian colony was being established
- They have no gravity and no mass
- They are invisible to the naked eye, infrared light, and radio waves
- No one knows where they came from
- There are at least four of them in Earth’s solar system alone
- They are about to carry him twenty seven light years across the galaxy
***
Charlie has heard traveling through portals compared to skipping stones across the surface of a lake. Take one ship with a flat face and a curved edge. Ensure you have the right mass. Calculate the right trajectory. Apply the right angle of entry. Make sure there is no crosswind. No ducks gliding over the surface. No fish making ripples underneath.
Good aim will take you through seven solar systems. Excellent aim will take you through twelve. Ptolemy VI made it sixty-five skips before communication dropped. For all anyone knew, it was still skipping across the galaxies, a perfect throw caught in an endless loop.
Pray you’ve picked the right ship. The right solar conditions. Curl your fingers. Close your eyes. Let go.
***
Two skip sequences and three weeks later, the transport achieved a stable orbit around Hamlet. On the observation deck, individual comms started buzzing with incoming alerts as they picked up transmissions from the orbital station’s network.
Finally! Can’t believe we’ve missed a month of the Baking Show.
Praise be! Da’s finally out of stasis!
Check out the new mod pack for Mantlecraft! You can build pressure sensors from garnet now.
And everywhere, people were hugging and groaning as they read the official company transmissions announcing their planetside housing assignments.
“Oseman!” Tao and Elle blurted simultaneously. Their delighted faces reflected each other’s excitement.
“What’s yours, Charlie?” Elle turned towards him.
“Um,” Charlie said, scrolling frantically. A message from Tori: “Enjoy your existential crisis. Write at least annually.” From Olly: A memetic image of four mammoths with DON’T FORGET ME in bold type. Profile alerts about his favorite shows, favorite bands, favorite authors.
Nothing else.
“Is it normal not to have gotten my housing assignment yet?”
“I’m sure there’s just a mixup,” Elle said gently. “We’ll ask at the hub once we get into the orbital station. It’s not like Lange’s going to ship you halfway across the galaxy without a housing placement.”
**
“You must be shitting me,” Charlie said, his mouth hanging open.
“Sorry,” the woman sitting at the hub’s desk in the orbital station said. Her vowels were long and stretched out. Saaaahryyyyyy. “Equipment delay. Only 90% of the housing units for this team have been completed. Gonna (Guuuuuuhhhhnaaaaaa) be at least seventy more rotations until they’re complete.”
Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sol time, please.”
She sighed, like doing math for extraterrestrials was beyond her. Charlie calculated quickly in his head. 30 hour days times 70, divided by 24, divided by seven…
“Twelve and a half weeks? I’m not going to have housing for twelve and a half weeks?”
“Didna say that.”
Tao nudged him. “You can sleep on the couch at my place.”
The woman snorts, “Oh, naaaaa, we dunna have couches. Truham’s pods have hammocks. Very comfortable, lightweight. Hamlet is a zero net destruction world. No deep-crust mining, minimal harvesting of local resources. Took ‘em two generations to agree to network installation. We have to ship everything in from offworld. Delays.”
She shrugged, like it happened all the time.
Charlie’s mind was still catching up. “Wait, you said that I’m not going to have to wait twelve and a half weeks for housing? Where am I going to live?”
“I’ve got some placements with the locals. Tight quarters, but four rigid walls and a shared lavatory. Running water. Not too rustic.”
Charlie groaned inwardly.
“Have fun living with the aliens,” Tao whispered.
***
A list of quotes celebrating momentous human achievements:
- “Mr Watson. Come here. I want to see you.” (Alexander Graham Bell, upon invention of the telephone)
- “That’s one small step for [a] man. One giant leap for mankind.” (Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon)
- “When humans lay aside our differences, there is no limit to how far we can go.” (Cai Liwei, first human on Mars)
- “Holy shit, that’s Alpha Centauri.” (Nataly Cerna, Captain of the Ptolemy I, the first human crewed ship to travel through a portal)
***
As far as famous utterances went, Charlie’s first words on Hamlet weren’t ones for the history books.
“Oh my god, what is that smell?” He stopped himself from pulling the collar of this t-shirt up over his nose and mouth as he exited the transport.
“That, my earthling friend, is the smell of agriculture,” Tao said from directly behind Charlie. He rested his hands on Charlie’s shoulders and aligned his head right next to Charlie’s as he stepped out. He was probably imagining where he’d place the cameras to capture the low slung stone buildings, the amber light. “They actually raise the native fauna for their byproducts here. No synth. No CellAg.”
“Does it always smell like a latrine malfunctioned?” Charlie blinked rapidly to dispel the liquid spewing from his tear ducts.
“We’re probably just downwind of a compost facility,” Elle said from the hatch. “Budge up, you’re holding up the line. Some of us are excited about experiencing actual nature instead of recirculated tank air for the first time in–” Her face contorted as she caught her first whiff of the air. “--for fuck’s sake, that is terrible.”
***
Charlie looked again at the (paper!) map that he’d been provided by the welcoming agent. A shuttle had taken the rest of the incoming team to Truham housing.--“You’re sure you don’t want us to wait with you, Charlie?” Elle had said. “Don’t worry. I’m fine,” he had replied–but at least thirty minutes had passed, and the two other immigrants without company housing had already been whisked off by their local hosts.
Well. He had a map. It had been ages since he’d run anywhere. He clutched at his foot and stretched his quad, then rolled his neck. Took a few experimental bounces. Hamlet’s gravity was 0.8 earth gravity, and the ground felt buoyant, like walking across a sprung floor.
He looked at the position of the star in the sky. At the map. At the dusty yellow path below his feet.
He inhaled deeply.
He ran.
***
Charlie didn’t know what he was expecting for his final destination. A log cabin. A longhouse. A yurt. Any of the other disparate and locally sourced housing types he’d passed on his run to his accommodations. Instead, he stood in front of what looked like a spec schematic of standard modular colonial housing: a series of domes with rigid aluminum hex frames wrapped in reinforced fabric panels.
Unlike a schematic, though, these domes were covered in images. Geometric repeating patterns, swirls of pastel leaves and flowers, faded handprint outlines like paleolithic cave paintings all covered the external surfaces. The art was childlike and whimsical and achingly permanent, not like the blank and empty canvases of Earth walls. The K-class star in the sky had a different tone than earth’s sun, and the buildings glowed in the yellow and amber light.
The person who stepped out from behind one of those buildings was just as perfectly lit.
“Hi,” he said to Charlie. He was about Charlie’s age, not too far into young adulthood, with reddish-gold hair that captured and enhanced the star’s rays. He offered a smile that was higher on the right side than the left. Charlie felt something in his torso flip.
“Hi,” Charlie said back.
“I saw you run in. You’re really fast.” The native brushed his hair back from where it had fallen across his forehead. His arms were thick and muscled beneath a plain white shirt with sleeves that were tightly cuffed across his biceps.
Charlie was grateful he was already red and sweating from his run, because he felt more blood flood his face.
“Thank you?” Charlie said awkwardly. “Do you know if this is Building B25?”
The man’s brown eyes crinkled. “Oh! You must be our new boarder!”
Had Charlie imagined the split second of concern that had flashed across the other man’s face? Probably. His gaze now was steady and focused, like he was capturing all Charlie’s features for a 3d map.
“That obvious, huh?” Charlie smiled nervously back. The reflective silver of the personal belonging pack strapped across his shoulders didn’t exactly blend into the natural-toned landscape.
“It’s okay. You’ll be right at home in no time. We’re right over there.” The man started walking, and gestured at Charlie to follow, then paused and turned to face Charlie again.
“Oh! I’m an idiot. I’m Nick. Nick Nelson. I’ll be one of your podmates.” He extended his hand. Charlie slowly reached out to touch Nick’s fingertips. The brief brush felt like going through a portal all over again.
“Charlie Spring. But you probably already know that.”
Nick smiled again, broad and unfiltered. “C’mon, Charlie Spring. Let me show you where you’ll be spending the next 70 rotas.”
For the first time since leaving the solar system, Charlie’s chest expanded with something like hope.