Simple Comfort in the Act of Being
Leah inspects a new ship and envisions her future.
Above the planet Izra, between two stars that always seem to be setting, sits an old ship, a fresh start, and a new home.
Previously: Leah and V had a bit of a disagreement after a new ship came through the wormhole, and V’s realization of what Leah was planning to do. But Leah was able to explain, and now she just has some paperwork to sign…
As soon as the airlock decompressed, Leah pushed herself forward to fly towards the doors of the cargo ship on the other side. She used her crutches to knock on the door once but then just floated there in zero, waiting, illuminated by the soft white lights flashing on either side of the door, trying to ignore the fact that the smallest bit of space debris could perforate the docking tunnel at any time and suck her out into the void.
The docking tunnel from Aspiration was transparent enough that she could see the little tug Ita-san had been piloting below and to the left, the cockpit empty. She knew Ita-san had climbed up into the cargo ship as soon as she had made a connection between the cargo carrier and Aspiration. The airlock doors on the cargo ship were grimy, covered in bits of rust from the water in people’s breath as they moved cargo in and out through docking tunnels just like this one. She reached up to touch it and pulled away a long, thin piece of rust shaped like an L that crumpled in her hand. She rubbed her hands together and pushed the bits away. The docking tunnel had no vacuum chute, so she made a mental note to purge the tunnel later on so the rust would fly out into space. She hoped that wasn’t accidentally causing more space debris that would eventually destroy docking tunnels just like this one. She didn’t like polluting space, but it was better than leaving it floating in artiatmo for some hapless idiot (most likely her) to breathe in.
A click came from the other side of the airlock doors and then opened, revealing a woman in a spacesuit with her helmet off. She was Yamato (as almost everyone who worked for Sōzō LLC was) with shaggy black hair and thin wisps of facial hair on her upper lip and chin. Her forehead and cheeks were covered in small, red splotches of acne.
“Ah, fuck!” Ita-san said, as soon as she saw Leah floating in the docking tunnel, jolting back as if she’d seen a ghost. “How long have you been there?”
“Only a couple minutes,” Leah said and pushed off the side of the docking tunnel with her crutch, starting her momentum deeper into the cargo carrier.
Ita-san put her arm across the opening. “Hold on, eager beaver.”
Leah scrambled to stop her momentum before running into the other woman’s arm.
Ita-san pulled a clipboard from the holster at her side, and Leah tried to stop herself from rolling her eyes. There were two aspects of purchasing ships from Sōzō corporation that she did not appreciate: analog processes and inane bureaucracy. Just glancing at the clipboard, she could already see with the vague, polysyllabic words, that it represented both.
Leah crossed her arms. “I’m not signing that until I get to look at the ship.”
“Oh this?” Ita-san asked, holding up the clipboard with a fox’s sly grin. “This isn’t ownership papers. This is just the insurance paperwork that says you aren’t going to sue us if you come into the ship and immediately fall over dead.”
Leah snorted and reached out her hands, gesturing for the clipboard so her crutches clanked together. “Like I’d get anywhere suing Sōzō anyway.”
Ita-san handed it over, the smug look still on her face. She was different from the one time Leah had met her in person before, more relaxed, sure of herself. It made sense. This was her natural habitat.
Leah scanned through the document on the clipboard. She understood about half of the words printed on it, but the designation on the Sōzō paperwork matched the ship she’d bought: Cargo Carrier (CC) 24601. When the sale had been finalized, she’d known she would rename it to the Valjean from that old musical Dad loved. She took the small pen attached to the clipboard and scrawled her name carelessly across the bottom. Ita-san took the clipboard back and moved to the side, letting Leah float into the ship.
“Okay, you have fifteen minutes to explore,” she said. “Then, you have to sign the transfer papers.” Leah moved passed Ita-san as the Sōzō employee squinted down at her signature. Leah guessed her name wasn’t even legible, not that it really mattered. She could have made a giant X on the contract for all Sōzō would care. All that really mattered was that the credits were good in her account.
Ita-san pressed some sort of adhesive that immediately dried the ink and covered it in plastic, before setting the clipboard back into the holster on her hip. The only purpose of a holster like that was to hold a clipboard, if Leah had to guess.
She pushed herself through the airlock. It was much larger than the one for the Aspiration, which made sense because it was dedicated to pure cargo, rather than the partial colonial purpose of Aspiration. Through the airlock, she entered into a wide, empty room that had once been filled with hundreds of empty cargo containers and now was filled with nothing except for a collection of satellites, a bit bigger than a dog, that seemed to hover in the air, as if they couldn’t quite decide if they wanted to drop or not.
She glanced passed them, squinting up to the ceiling and the lights which faded out into darkness far above her. She’d been on the ship before, but she couldn’t remember seeing the top. Was it just that Ita-san only kept this one area illuminated? “Just out of curiosity. What would happen if I chose not to buy the ship?”
“You’d be charged the standard rate for making me drag this heap of junk halfway across the KU. A hundred thousand credits at least,” Ita-san said. She floated up beside her, and gestured with a pen at the satellites. “Those are the drones that came with the purchase. Don’t know if they work. You’ll have to look ‘em over yourself.”
Leah shrugged without looking away from the tunneling darkness. “I expect that if Sōzō gave me functional equipment, it would only be on accident.”
Ita-san chuckled. “That’s probably true.” She moved a bit further ahead of the new owner, almost to the edge of the cargo area, and Leah finally directed her attention to the woman.
Ita-san pointed up to a section of the wall that seemed to stick out, like a wayward brick in a wall pulled out halfway. “You remember that? The crew deck?”
Leah nodded.
Ita-san went on as if she hadn’t responded. “Crew quarters, access to engineering, navigation, mainframe, bridge, you name it.”
Leah nodded, tracking her eyes along the walls towards it. “How many in the usual crew?”
Ita-san squinted over at her. “Don’t you have that in the paperwork we sent you?”
Leah shrugged without looking at her. “Amuse me.”
Ita-san pulled her clipboard and glanced down at it, flipping a page to get the ship specifications. “Three or four. Cramped quarters.” She flipped another page. “It’s got a standard anti-matter/matter reactor, but it’s down right now. Any energy it’s getting is coming from the tug. It should work once you get some fuel in it, though, along with replenishing artiatmo and maintaining artigrav.”
“Why don’t we have artigrav on right now, then?” Leah said, gesturing at the fact they were floating a couple meters above the ground. She’d expected at least artigrav to be on. That was why she’d brought her crutches.
“Because that would cost money and energy,” Ita-san said, slowly, as if Leah was a child. “Sōzō is happy to sell this berth to you, but don’t expect them to be doing you any favors.”
Leah narrowed her eyes. “Not sure I want to buy something that might be broken.”
Ita-san shrugged. “Your choice. You will have to pay me the standard rate for a Sōzō contractor for every minute over fifteen that I’m here, though.”
“I don’t remember that being in the purchasing and delivery contract.”
“It wasn’t,” Ita-san said with a smile. “It was in the one you just signed.”
“Jesus Christ,” Leah said under her breath and set a timer for ten minutes on her mobile console. She glanced over at the satellites briefly before deciding that she’d looked them over pretty thoroughly the first time she’d seen the ship. She really needed to get a sense for the state of the crew deck; she hadn’t been able to see them the first time. She pushed off the ground with her crutches, towards the jutting brick of the deck, floating up through the air for at least a minute before she felt herself slowing. She was still only halfway there. She glanced below to where she’d left Ita-san, hovering a meter or so above the ground.
“C’mon,” Leah said, gesturing for the woman to join her. “I assume you have to let me in.”
Ita-san rolled her eyes, but followed, and Leah grabbed a rung from a nearby ladder, her crutch clattering against the metal. She closed her eyes as she pushed herself higher, letting her arms fall to her sides. The air from the artiatmo rushing against her face was warm and rustled the loose fabric of her coverall, a flag flying in wind. With her eyes closed, she imagined she was swimming, though in truth it felt nothing like the two or three times she’d been in the Borealis Ocean back home. It just felt empty, like nothing.
Her flight ended, and she opened her eyes to see she’d planned it right: she floated directly across from the crew deck. It was painted bright orange so that people moving cargo within the hold couldn’t miss it. There was a long glass window, showing the inside of a mess where the three or four crew members had been able to sit and look out onto the cargo within the hold, if they so choose.
The steel on the outside of the crew deck was scuffed from cargo containers jostling through the ship movement. Through the window, which she guessed was scratch resistant, she could see lockers for crew’s personal belongings and a short mess table just barely big enough for two people to sit at. There was a microwave and a half-size fridge. She guessed that they even ate in shifts. She guessed that they had pre-packaged meals that they heated to lukewarm or lava-hot in the microwave; there was no other temperature that a microwave could adequately achieve. She didn’t have to guess that the ship was not built for comfort.
She closed her eyes, hanging before the crew deck, waiting for Ita-san to join her, and pulled up the images she kept polished in her mind like precious jewels. There would be shops and homes filling the cargo bay, artiatmo fans running all night long to keep air fresh and flowing. They’d make long metal walkways that acted as different floors with ladders to move between them, at least four of them; there was enough space in this cargo hold. She’d retrofit the cargo elevator with buttons, like she’d seen in the elevators from VR histories, and they could stop at each one.
There would be homes painted in bright colors and filled with music and laughter and people, all sorts of people from different homes and different places across the KU, all come there, to Rainbow Station, for a common purpose. Along the walkways, children laughed and ran, their parents calling out warnings or reminders. Above the shops, flags and drying clothes would flutter from the bodies passing and the fake wind of artiatmo.
In the mornings, she would sit at the mess table and look out through the window to the place she’d built through cobbled together ship skeletons and pure determination. She’d drink her coffee before the station woke, when it was merely sleeping. She’d build this dream with her own two hands and sweat and tears. She would make a place for people like her, for people to rest and refuel and live. Here, people would not have to pay for the privilege of air. Here, they could find simple comfort in the act of being.
She smiled and opened her eyes.
Commentary on this episode for paying subscribers will be released this Monday.
Credits:
ZK Hardy as principal writer, editor, and audio editor.
Emily Westland as editor and producer.
Jamie Philips as design consultant.
Original art provided by Sabina Lewis.
Original music for audio recording and podcast by Ryan A. Mahoney.