It’s impossible to really memorize a route through the Morpheus Market; the ecosystem of buying and selling is practically a living organism. Every time we visit, vendors have shifted, maybe merged, maybe swallowed up smaller ones in a power grab, maybe begun actively fighting over a particular corner of shop space. But despite the everchanging layout, I travel like a heatshot rifle bolt, straight and true, to the elevators—undeterred by the haphazard pressing, pushing, pulling of so many bodies.
Eventually, we reach the booth where Chloe’s vendor is waiting.
“Echo,” I say, by way of greeting.
It’s a clever code name. What is a memory, really, but an echo of a person?
“Monarch.” Echo inclines their head, having obviously been expecting me.
I can’t help but grin at the moniker, which is why I chose it in the first place. Even black markets have unspoken rules. If you want to sell, trade, or buy a memory, you need a licensed alias. Mine is Monarch, ostensibly like one of the orange-winged creatures native to the former Earthside world; it’s also a pun for obvious reasons, me being the heiress of the Daylands and all.
I’d love to blame Aspect for my terrible sense of humor, but the nickname precedes them. I’m just like this.
I have only the most basic details for my first impression of this seller: a narrow set of pinched, birdlike shoulders; arms akimbo as if in a confused first flight; a voice high and clipped, even through the mask’s filtering.
I slide Chloe’s provided memory from my waist pocket. I could’ve snooped on this sphere, too, I suppose, but I haven’t bothered investigating Chloe’s trade materials in ages. They’re always the same self-referentialsnippets: The architecture of Chloe’s quarters when she first assumed the throne. The settlement’s meeting chamber, as seen from the dais from which she gives her speeches. An agonizingly slow, panning shot of her jewelry, or her library, or her damn crown, which she only ever wears for the most painfully dramatic formal appearances.
Everyone wants to know how the queen of the Daylands—the last celebrity on our far-flung, interstellar settlement—lives.Might as well monetize it, Chloe says. But I gag when I think about it, recoiling as if from curdled soup. She’s nothing special, really. It’s all gilded trappings for an ordinary woman.
And her ordinary daughter, who will be expected to uphold the illusory legacy.
Echo climbs onto an overturned crate, rifling through another container somewhere above us. Spare Morpheus spheres clatter and roll across the floor. Aspect winces, repeating, “Mess, mess, mess,” in a low whisper.
Great. The mech 100 percent has anxiety, courtesy of yours truly.
With a self-satisfied snort, Echo careens off the crate, sphere in hand. We authorize each other’s code names as users via voice commands, so that the respective spheres can now be verbally opened by their new owners, and exchange the goods wordlessly, barely a nod passing between us.
Aspect tugs at my elbow. “MESSAGES—FOR KORI—”
I swallow a scream. “I know, Aspect. I know.”
Chloe’s memory in hand, we slide back into the crowd. Aspect’s unwieldy tension always spikes in a throng, hence the death grip on my hand, the low hum they emit like a radio tuned to a dead channel.
But I love the untamed collision of people that is the Morpheus Market’s open floor. I wish I could slow down and enjoy it, rather than feel my heart climb into my throat as I slip between buyers and sellers, struggling to maintain speed. Here, body to body, sharing subterranean air, legs tangling together like so many rogue vines, voices fighting for territory like so many wild beasts … Here, I am simply part ofthe everyone. A code name, a passing breeze of a girl, unburdened, unnamed, all expectation revoked.
Here in the Morpheus Market, I could be anyone.
But if I don’t get back to my starship now, what I’m going to be is royally screwed. And swamped with unnecessary math homework.
Aspect and I all but sprint to the exit lift. It’s a compact cylindrical chamber, barely large enough for both of us, almost akin to an escape pod—but instead of ejecting us into the world below, it projects us rapidly toward the realm above. We rise, lightning fast, to the surface from which we came. If there’s a memory in the market that could activate self-awareness in my metal bestie, it’s farther away with every passing instant, and my stomach churns, nearly sick, at the nagging thought.
My ears clog from the lift’s rapid ascent; I force a yawn to clear the eardrums. “Goodbye, Monarch,” the lift’s automated voice intones as the lift doors slide open, reintroducing us to Pagomènos proper.
Despite the planet’s light being much gentler in the Passage than in the Daylands, it’s always a jarring transition from the artificial underground illumination of the Morpheus Market to the actual sun that defines our world. Tears wet my vision, and even Aspect, with their entirely mechanical visual processors, raises one hand to shield said processors from the brightness.
When my vision clears, the vastness of the Passage once again sprawls before me: Dunes rolling into still more dunes, viciously blown to and fro by the Passage’s wild winds. Assorted outcroppings of heavily worn sandstone. Chunks of wrecked starships from the Territory Wars, when the nightfolk attacked the dayfolk and were driven back across the Passage and into the shadows for good. Now-lost weaponry and tech blasted some kind of massive explosive that tore through everything in range and formed the wasteland: uneven rock formations, pieces of starships, and odd hills and dips throughout the landscape, amidst the unending sand.
The Morpheus Market is basically right on the planet’s terminator line, directly between the Daylands and Shadowlands. It’s a striking visual contrast depending on where I look. To the west, there’s even more blinding brightness where the Passage becomes the Daylands, the sky going from semi-twilight obscured by sand to a brutal, nearly cloudless crimson. To the east, after the beautiful miasma of reds, yellows, and purples that is the eternal sunset, the Shadowlands loom—a line of dark, jagged peaks, partially cloaked by cloud cover, their accumulated snow and ice chaotically lit by an unnatural blue glow. What animal life persists in the Passage is either heavily armored and hunkered down or simply underground like the Morpheus Market to escape the wind and sandstorms. I’m the only living creature I can perceive, as far as my eyes can see. Aspect’s hand in mine, though chilly and robotic, helps steady my breathing as the inescapable eeriness of the Passage again sets in.
A field of parked starships would quickly expose the Morpheus Market’s existence in the Passage, so visitors usually let their transports fly free until it’s time to depart. I tap the summoning signal on my helmet, just above my left ear, and my starship’s autopilot voice chirps just beside it: “COMMENCING RETRIEVAL.”
Charonwaits for me. It may have more scuffs and scratches than most, given my frequent Morpheus Market runs across the Passage, but thanks to my mother’s insistence that I focus on bettering myself instead of bonding with my peers, I have plenty of time alone with the ship to keep it spick-and-span. Its surface, battered as it is, gleams like a mirror. I’m sure it would reflect my mounting panic over my pending lateness if I weren’t wearing my mask.
Few dayfolk have access to one of the remaining Earthside starships. Most are collectively owned by branches of the settlement’s government, used for ferrying mechs out to do mining aboveground, offering classes of schoolchildren brief opportunities to see natural sunlight, or checking tech functionality like the sonic-wave deployments around the settlement that keep predators at bay. As the Daylands heiress,I’m one of the privileged few to have my own. And having this ship, my belovedCharon, may be one of the only “perks” inherent in being Chloe’s daughter that doesn’t feel more like a bedazzled set of shackles.
Charoncould be a standard-issue starship from when humans first settled this planet. It could be a military vehicle. It might have originally been intended for something as dramatic as ferrying diplomats or something as simple as delivering mail. Nobody actually knows what any of our remaining Earthside starships were first meant for. But to me,Charonis more like home than anything else in the actual dayfolk settlement.Charonis one place where, even if only for a brief moment, I’m out of my mother’s reach.
She tries to track me, of course. She hired a security detail at one point—five grizzled soldiers of varying genders, all very “cut to the chase” and “don’t make this harder than it has to be.” I tormented them with all manner of pranks until, one by one, they all abandoned their posts with such passionate exasperation that my mother decided hiring another security detail would be a total waste. My personal favorite prank remains when Aspect feigned a software glitch, in which they were forced to sing the same obnoxious song over and over and over, for multiple sleep cycles in a row. I nearly lost my own mind by the end of it, but I laughed so hard, I nearly peed myself at the increasingly pained expressions of my unwanted supervisors, all desperately trying to pretend they weren’t bothered.
