After burning through a long shift, I slink into Deck Three’s small bar to take the edge off. Didn’t bother to invite a friend. Need some alone time. More than that — I need to get the hell off this stinking rock. I’m sick of the grind of the production lines, sick of life here.
I settle and stare at the adverts. They pop up fast: a new mushroom liqueur, a restaurant on Deck Seven I’ve sworn never to visit again, a four-year trip across the Solar System on a ship called The Rambler.
That one, it stirs a yearning in me.
A person behind me starts talking, the softness of her voice unable to mask its authority. “You’re eyeing what they threw on the wall.”
I don’t recognize her, and I thought I knew every one of the colony’s 2,000 inhabitants. She’s older, with a sharpness to her features, and her eyes have a piercing quality, like she can see right through any bullshit— can see right through my bullshit.
“You’re probably thinking, ‘Yeah, why not see everything the Solar System has to offer? I deserve it.’ And you know what? You do.”
She knocks her drink down, the expensive rye that most people take with syrup and water, but she’s having it straight, which I can’t help but admire. She motions the barbot for another and sends one of what I’m drinking my way. I turn my chair to face her.
She ticks off the attractions like she wrote the advert herself. “Diving into Jupiter’s storms. Touching down on a Venusian platform. Spelunking in Enceladus’ ice caves. Marvelling at Europa’s oceans. Visiting that cloistered artist colony hiding in Mercury’s shadow. Breathing the unique scents of Ceres’ ag domes. And the crown jewel: a fly-by of our home planet, Mother Earth — but only a glance, because they won’t let any of us down any more.”
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She spins her cup on the table, metal dancing on metal, and my heart races as I want to respond yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I want off this pitiful little rock to see all that and more.
“So much in the system that isn’t on this out-of-the-way colony bouncing around the Belt, the hub of a thousand mining operations. So much out there,” she waves her hand, “calling to be seen, heard, felt. Maybe you’ve got a bit saved up. You’re young enough to make anything work.”
“You a recruiter?”
She shakes her head. “I made that run four times, two as captain. You can believe they deliver. Every stop, every site — awesome in the truest sense. But what do you think, of everyone I ferried around, how many came away changed for the better by the trip’s end?”
She sips her drink, I sip mine, the burn of low-grade rum stinging my throat. “Half?” I offer, thinking it generous, but not by much.
She smiles, this captain of a Star Liner. “Not even one in a hundred. They return from each site, checking off an item on their list. And in between, people are who they are. By trip’s end, they’re tired and cranky and desperate to get away from each other. There’s no real enlightenment at seeing the System, no more than what you can find here.”
I sit up and lean towards her and, in a half-pleading voice, say, “Something in you must have changed?”
“Not from the sites. I tell you, this colony is as good as it gets. Your gardens and societies. Lot of trade and people and ideas come through this corner of the system, for those who can see.”
“You must not be from here,” I say, too quickly; a joke I’ve used before.
