Short Fiction: Milwaukee 2045

My fingers are pretty cold. I’m doing a good job today; the shift bar on my goggles gets fuller every time I look. I’m on a big streak. Ten more days til I level up.

Another housing comes down the line. I pick it up and do my checks. It’s smooth, shiny, silver. There are no cracks, no chips. It’s the same thick all the way through, far as I can see. I turn it on its side and the threads are slanting the right way. I put it down, OK it on my tablet and send it down the line.

The air is biting my neck. My winter suit is heavy but the hood is a bit too wide. It makes holes around my goggles and I can feel the cold air sliding in past my cheeks. The shift bar is almost full and turning deep purple. The guys on my podcast are really funny. If I turn up the volume enough it doesn’t bother me.

I heard at level six you go to another room that’s warm and you get to look at rotary units. I’ll be good at those. I heard there’s a few more checks but I’m really good at the ones I do. At night, sometimes I watch videos of them putting together the whole cutter. I used to be really good at the pirate game but I was so good and I got bored. I had my own pirate ship but I didn’t like telling the other pirates what to do. So I don’t play it anymore. I don’t like the shows I get. Ale said he liked this one about soldiers on dragons when he was in level six, but he messed up too much and he’s in level five with me again.

I do two more pieces before the music plays over my podcast and I’m done with my shift. Keep it up, Mateo! You’re on a roll! The ninja rolls across my tablet. Right before he rolls off the screen he gives me a thumbs up.

The walk back isn’t that bad anymore. When I started level five it used to make me really tired. I get into the back of the line to the dorm; it moves pretty fast and when I make it through the doors, I get hit with a blast of hot air that makes me realize how cold I was. Everyone’s taking off their goggles and hoods in line over to the cubbies. It’s warm enough in here that we can take off our big work suits and just wear sweats. I fold my suit in half, tuck the sleeves in, fold it in half again. Into the bin and I slide the bin into my cubby.

My cubby is next to Rene’s and he’s putting his suit into the bin too. He doesn’t fold it like I do. I say bro, I was on such a big streak today! I did so many housings and I did them so fast. I’m gonna be level six soon I can feel it. He doesn’t say anything and he looks sad so I say what’s wrong? He said he keeps messing up and he’s going to lose level five soon. I tell him he needs to look more at the threads, it’s always the threads when they’re wrong.

The sedan slides silently into the garage bay and I sit down in the back seat. It’s plush, sumptuous dark brown leather, indented underneath me so it wraps around my sides, cradling me. I switch on my glasses and I don’t even feel the car leave the garage. I can barely sense the acceleration as it pulls onto the highway. I’m already at work, looking through depth maps of four new asteroids. The model is suggesting a few different deployment plans to get a mining crew on them but everyone knows the model’s plans are pro forma and overconfident. We got data back from the first batch of physical trips last week and the news is mixed. We used the info from a few sample drillings to recalibrate our model, and my four asteroids came back as the four with the highest expected mass of platinum. One of them looks like it has a pretty sizeable palladium vein to boot. It’s near Saturn, hidden until now by a Trojan orbit. It’d take a little under a year to get there from the moon right now. I send the two most reasonable two mining plans to Ell, my manager.

The car deposits me neatly at my office bay. I step out into a well-lit concrete hangar painted white. Dozens of scientists disembark from their cars, pulling on jackets for the short journey to the heated elevators at the end of the bay. Nobody talks in the elevator. We’re all swiping around in our glasses spaces, each other inhabitant of the elevator a moving backdrop. The elevator opens onto floor 12. I almost step out onto the familiar tan carpet before I remember that my new office is two floors up.

The elevator stops again and it’s my turn to get off. The plan is open, serene. The long oak tables are about half occupied with people gesturing away, presenting in hushed tones to invisible audiences. The elevator door faces a panoramic floor-to-ceiling window. The park on the city’s edge is quiet, and the lake is flat in the early morning light. In the distance, hulking factory buildings line the shore, rising out of the water like foothills.

I get a response from Ell approving the deployment but limiting it to exploratory scale. She’s high enough up that the scheduler will automatically divert a mining crew headed that way. The moon fuel depot’s been up and running for three years; it embarks a new batch of autominers every month. Making the fuel out of ice up there cuts the resource cost by around a third, but we’re running out of platinum and cobalt on Earth. Once we can scale up manufacturing out there we’ll really be in business. I say ‘we’, even though I know I’ll die on Earth. I used to hope I’d rise high enough in the ranks to be a hab scientist, but the field gets ten times more competitive at each step and I’ve risen to the level of my incompetence. It’s not so bad to be in the preterite, anyway. The weather here’s gentle and the company owns the whole state. Refugees aren’t employees except when they get hired. No, we’ll be comfortable in our townhouse; our neighbors are friendly and the yard is big enough for barbeques. I just hope the standards keep relaxing so Macy can make it on board.

Nobody understands the lengths I’ll go to. They never have, complacent in their boardrooms at their heavy old desks. They understand options theory perfectly well until it comes time to bet on themselves. At the end, they all chose the certainty of mortality because the curve there is dense.

It’s time. I’m bored of waiting. My body is strong. My mind is strong. My heart, the heart of a teenage Olympian, pumps hyperoxygenated blood to my limbs thirty-five times a minute. I can hear the waves crashing on the beach as I lift the weight above my head. My shoulders are trembling with the force I can channel through them. The sky is aflare, casting International Orange across the pavilion.

I run back along the sand; four miles home, so I’ll be done before dark.

I have no fantasies about the colony. The hardest work will be done by the time we arrive, but even in the best case it will take the rest of my life to make a home there. There will be challenges we can’t anticipate. Things will break down and I will use my strength to till the earth. I will plant trees whose shade I will never enjoy. I will not be Joshua, but I will be Moses.

Carolina is waiting. A cool breeze fills the room, but her eyes radiate warmth across the kitchen counter. The attendant, a slight, shrinking woman, places our glasses on the counter. We finish the sea-green, foamy glass in two gulps. I walk around the counter and hold Carolina’s hands in mine. I want this for eternity; I want to breathe in of her so deeply it expels an uncertain future from my solar plexus. But the world beyond won’t let me.

Another assistant tells us it’s time. We walk, hand in hand, into the living room, where the beds are already made up. The equipment is tucked underneath unobtrusively; just two tubes dangle from the head. I hold Carolina tight. We part, just for a moment. We’ll wake up together tomorrow. I lie back. My blood is strong; the nurses have no trouble placing the IVs in my arm.

The world closes over me. I pass backward through the bed and into sleep. When I wake, I will be a god.