If, on the other side of the infinite unknown, Earth retains galaxy-spanning travel capabilities, Earth’s citizens seem to be in no rush to use them. Nobody ever came for us. We are a world to ourselves now, severed from history, slowly shifting beyond recognition.
After the Cataclysm, our ancestors sought a threefold solution. For the sun’s brutal heat, the dayfolk escaped to a colony beneath the earth, deliberately far enough from the magma pockets to draw on them as needed without simply being flambéed alive. But a few layers of sand and stone weren’t enough to protect us from the radiation, and it took the most precious thing we had: the extended reach of memory. In response, we developed a new metal, uniquely equipped to resist radiation. And for our rapidly fading memories, we created a neurological implant to serve as extended storage: the Morpheus chip, now mandatory for all dayfolk.
It’s the only reason any of us know who we are.
It takes careful application of both the Daylands’ heat and lingering radiation to craft Pagonian plate, the new metal that forms the exoskeleton of our colony, interweaves with the armor we wear to venture out, and more. The layer on mechs is the thinnest, since every mech—including Aspect—is powered by the radiation itself.
Since only mechs can craft Pagonian plate at a reasonable speed, it’s a painstaking process, the mechs risking damage by the environment or its predators whenever they venture beyond the colony. So our underground home grows, but slowly. I’ve never been surprised by a new hallway or additional room. I know this place’s layout as surely as if it were programmed.
Ednit waits for me after six halls, two left turns, a right, a U-turn, and a ride down one of our reliably chugging escalators. My mother, Chloe, stands beside him, comically tall and pale beside the squat brown doctor. I hear her talking before she notices my approach.
“She needs to focus on her studies, Ednit, and her health. I’m tired of her endlessly tinkering with that mech. A hobby is one thing, but not at the expense of her well-being—”
I see the moment Chloe spots me. Her lips press into a tight pale line, her jaw setting firmly, locked. Meanwhile, Ednit’s expression betrays no emotion.
“Kori.” Quiet and dutiful as ever, Ednit doesn’t even tell me off for arriving inefficiently late, the last specks of sand in the upper hourglass reduced to flickering pixels on my comms tablet display. “Good to see you well.”
“Ednit.” I incline my head in greeting. Despite my resentment for these overly frequent medical appointments, a smile stubbornly spreads across my face.
It’s impossible to dislike Ednit. He’s only doing his job, and he’s beneath my mother’s sway as surely as I am—as surely as everyone in the colony is. And frankly, with the rest of my spare moments occupied by either fiddling with Aspect or attending to my academic studies (for fear of parental retribution), I don’t have many people close to me. Certainly nobody who has known me even half as long as Ednit. Certainly notboys.
Chloe has always been adamant about keeping boys away from me, since she “knows what they think about” and I “deserve so much better.”
I’ve been getting lectures about denying “the pull” (usually stated with her fingers curled into actual quotation marks) to boys for as long as I can remember.
The joke’s on Chloe, really—I feelthe pullall the time anyway. My heart skipped when bulky gym rat Brett slid his thigh close to mine and asked if I’d ever attend “real school” and sit with him, as surely as my breath caught when Hyrra from the mechanics division demonstrated how to oil a malfunctioning mech and I couldn’t take my gaze off the deft movements of her hands. But in both instances, I promptly tripped over something (a fallen homework sheet with Brett and a discarded wire with Hyrra) and spat out a distinctly unladylike four-letter word through the pain.
Nopullhas a stronger hold on me than gravity. Chloe has nothing to worry about.
Chloe nudges her shoulder into mine, almost playful. The unexpected tenderness brings me back to the moment, but deep down, I know she’s all business. Passionless isn’t just her default—it’s her only setting. “You have the merchandise?”
Normally, given the sensitive nature of my assignments, she wouldn’t dare mention them in front of anyone else, but Ednit is practically her left hand, far more pliable and obedient than her right (which would be me). I’m not surprised he knows everything. Probably knows more than I do.
“Of course.” I slide the Morpheus sphere out of its compartment at my waist, before pressing it firmly into Chloe’s waiting hands. “One memory, fresh from the Morpheus Market. That’ll be thirty-five credits.”
I’m joking (mostly), and she knows it (probably), but Chloe sighs, “I raised you, Kori,” and slides the sphere into her own hip pouch.
I’ve never been paid for these monarchy-sanctioned memory-smuggling runs, unless, of course, you ask her. My mother will gladly list everything she’s ever done for me, presumably starting with my conception and including every moment of parental obligation sincethen, from clean bedsheets to healthy meals to a monarchical inheritance I never asked for.
With the Morpheus sphere handled, Chloe turns her attention back to Ednit. “I know I don’t have to tell you to take good care of my daughter.”
“You don’t,” Ednit says, “and yet you do.”
She laughs at that; it’s a high, thin noise, fragile from disuse. There are so few people who can easily joke with my mother. Most of the time, I’m not one of them.
“Come,” Ednit says, waving me forward with one white-gloved hand, and I follow, leaving my mother blessedly behind.
There’s a pregnant pause. My boots click on the synthetic floor, while Ednit’s surgical booties squeak and shuffle.
“She worries,” Ednit says.
“She does.”
We walk to the examination room in silence, for which I’m grateful. It’s a compact cubicle of a room, made even more claustrophobic by Ednit’s tendency to collect more medical posters than he has actual wall space. They overlap all over the wall—a diagram of a human knee here, an analysis of how mech anatomy was inspired by evolution’s work on our own kind there—interspersed with punny science cartoons that only a middle-aged doctor would find funny.That’ll only cost you an arm and a leg, one doodled doctor says, holding up prototype replacements for both after an apparent amputation surgery.
The cool-white countertops feature assorted medical devices, both for human bodies (a stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff, a thermometer) and our mechanical alterations (namely, assorted probes and prods for installed Morpheus chips).
I leap up to the familiar exam table in a single deft movement; as a little girl, I once needed a stool or a helpful lift. At least, I think so. When I think about my childhood for too long, it starts to get fuzzy, like static on a comms tablet, like staring out into the Daylands without a helmet’s visor to dull the glare.
