Eddie turns on the mic.
“It’s your favourite unlicensed radio host, Gideon Blue, floating above you at an undisclosed location 400 kilometres up in the stratosphere. As always, I’m playing my favourite retro-Century hits hoping that they become your favourite retro-Century hits. Just like I hope I can make Earth your favourite planet, too.
“Oh, Earth’s so overrated. It’s polluted. It’s problematic. I get it. That desire to start fresh. Untainted. So many of us plan to get out and get up onto the first shuttle that’ll take us. We fly to every corner of the Innie System. Some of us wait for the launch dates to line up to take the straight shot and spend a whole year in space to get to the Big Jup, where it’s all supposedly happening. The latest and greatest. Even when they get there, they’re looking past that. Nothing but stars in their eyes.
“But can I get you high-flyers out here with me to look back at her, just for a minute?
“Doesn’t she look beautiful? Don’t think I can ever get tired of this view. Sure, my accommodation’s crap. Folks Earthbound think they got it bad in the habitat towers in the remaining cities, but up here I can stretch out my arms and touch both walls. You don’t know how good you have it! But the view up here? That I’d never trade.
“Right now, I can see three layers of cloud cover as I float across the equator. Soft smears like polycotton synth. Those bright pebble clouds packed tight together like I imagine river rocks must have looked. Smog trade winds are there, of course, but I try to find beauty in the contrast. Below them, water a colour of blue that gives me a lump in my throat circles beaten-gold savannahs, mountains chiaroscuro with sunlight, and that shock of green still clinging on wherever it can.
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“Coming to space doesn’t make you feel small, but it will humble you. You know that old saying, where everyone should have to work a service job so people understand what it’s like? I think they ought to have to go to space, to look at her, see her for themselves so they can understand … what we all need to understand.
“Sorry, folks. That was heavy! Let’s take some listener questions.
“Why haven’t you been caught and the broadcast shut down? Oof, big fan there, I guess. You don’t have to listen.
“You do know it’s not actually radio, right? I do. Your Blue Boy is something of an expert in telecommunications and security. The whole reason you don’t get video is to keep the data sizes small and fast, so I can skip around Planet E’s SatNet before anyone catches on to me. Besides, radio just sounds sexy.
“Here’s another: How did I get my job upstairs? Luck, my friends. And my good luck meant someone else’s bad luck. That’s how this Capital-C game goes, isn’t it? Sanitation isn’t glamorous, but it’s a job everywhere. Bringing music to the unlicensed airwaves is my side hustle, my joy. Maybe it’s yours, too.
“Your Blue Boy is heading over to the dark side now. Planet Earth turns slowly but turn she does. Look at all those gold threads connecting everyone together. We’re always reaching out, aren’t we? Even when it’s darkest.
“I hope those of us out here in the great big beyond spare a thought for our scuffed little blue pearl. She’s no marble. She’s something rarer. With some spit and care, she’ll shine again.
“Time for our last song of the broadcast before the wrong people catch on to me. Back at 21.00 hours, listeners.”
Eddie sits back from the console, takes a drink of his triple-filtered water because he hasn’t been able to afford instant coffee for three weeks, and presses play.
The century-old song, warm and textured like a knitted sweater, fills his single-room apartment cube. Eddie knows that the digital remasters are supposedly perfect, but he imagines the crackle of a record needle — something he’s only seen in bootleg archive footage — as another instrument alongside the piano, the drums and the singer’s voice. It’s cliched, choosing that song. He knows it. He also doesn’t care.
Outside, haze obscures the habitat tower lights. He hadn’t been lucky, in the ordinary way a lot of people still on Earth hadn’t been lucky. He keeps applying but the jobs aren’t planet-bound anymore. He’s tried not to let it make him bitter, like the coffee he can’t afford but wants anyway. Not much blue to see outside his window, day or night, but it’s out there. He just knows it.
Eddie spins his chair slow and mouths the words, “And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time …”
