Somewhere Interesting

I sit in my rack, boots sitting beside me, one standing straight, the other with the calf lolling over. Feet clad in a layer of artificial cotton flex slightly as I look at them. It's warm with the curtain closed, and quiet.

I skim through the pages of the ships network, network caches from a dozen worlds. I'm going to be mad at myself later for just sitting like this rather than going to a bar, watching media or anything else I might be doing. I'm not even looking at anything in particular, just scrolling through random websites, my brain turned to low.

Docking complete. You may debark. The message across my vision on the ship's AR network engages. I didn't even notice we were docking until now. It saves me from guilt though. Instead I can pull my boots on over my thigh highs and drop out of the rack to the deck. The ship has gradually been turning its gravity up to Surface's slightly higher normal. Part of me worries that I'll end up shattering the boots heels or driving them up into my heels like punji stakes but somehow this fails to come about. A quick hand gesture summons my duffle and I begin to walk down towards the off load ramp.

There's not many people getting off here. The kind of people who take the racks on an old tramp freighter are not often those who stop at Surface. I get a few looks as I pass. I haven't exactly made many friends here. I haven't exactly spoken to many people here. I ignore them and walk out into the ships main section, gravity dropping off to nothing as I leave the spin section and grab a handle, heading down towards the star port. Out the airlock gravity returns and I'm pulling myself up through the hatch, grabbing my case as it meets the gravity zone and yanking it thorugh. The station smells funny. Something has been put in the ventilation systems to scrub the usual stink space stations have. Probably something imported from nearby Oceania.

Natives and locals scurry around and its suddenly full of noise and bustle. Heja move through the crowd like giants through the ocean in some ancient monster movie. . . if those monsters had been supermodel hot. I look around once, then keep walking, concentrating on not bumping into anyone. Glowing lines of AR lead me to the down station, where a tiny young woman is supervising a drone as it lets people through the turnstile. She smiles at me, then looks crestfallen my eyes pass over her.

Say something. Say something. "Uh, hello." I stop, then step to one side so not to block the people behind.

"Uh, hi." She smiles. "Welcome uh, to Surface? Are you um... are you okay?"

"I'm fine. When I get to the bottom can I get a taxi to my hostel right away?"

"Uh, sure." She looks at me worried. "You're Tempesti though right? Is it safe for you to sleep in a posthuman structure."

"Probably?" I feel an intense need to leave suddenly "I'm going now." Turn and walk away.

It started with an advert. Some friends of mine had taken me out to the Londenium Cinema on Landing, taken me out to get me away from my flat where I showed heavy signs of just sitting. There'd been an advert for Surface. Tourism, finding yourself, posthuman structures. My friends girlfriend had said "You should do that." And then I'd said "Okay." Maybe she was joking.

And so I am here. I step onto a train down, sit on a seat and don't look out, eventually playing a game on my implant to pass the time. The train clicks down and we're out into the sunlight. Then I'm in a small aircraft flying South at high speed. Then I'm landing amid gleaming spires of glowing not diamond, their polished exteriors dusted with snow turned to icy slush by the heat of the sun. I vaguely look at the massive flow of waterfall ahead, the floating towers. The floating tower I'm on. For a moment I consider walking to the edge, climbing up on the rail and diving off to see what's down below, blocked by the carbon.

I don't though. Instead I go to the hostel, passing groups of tourists and locals who give me odd looks all the way, press my palm against the scanner and walk inside, into my room. Boots off, one calf flopping over, the other more or less straight. Sit down on the bed. Think of eating. Don't. Eyes Closed. Sleep.

I ran the numbers and I think we can do it. We just need sufficient heat to melt the snow. There's enough liquid there to flood the subway system definitely. I raise a hand to gesture to the AR display next to me, spun with crystals and angles that defy geometry as I know it.

An unreal haze hangs around everything, my commanders face looking up is outlined in spinning complexities I can't quite read but draw my eyes in. Okay, but where are we going to get the heat from?

Easy. Crack open the fusion reactor up here, and you'll get an absolute mass of ionized gas, superheated coolant and transfer medium. That goes down onto the snow. That goes down into the subway. It kind of sucks for the locals but it'll suck much more for us if we have to storm...

Flickering tunnels, EU soldiers and drones, weapons pointed. So clear in my imagination. Villains from the cartoons I used to draw.

Alright. Get the fire battalion on the phone. No point in waiting around.

I key my phone icon, now a thing of infinite complexity that's pulling me in. . . and then the complexity grows, and grows, and grows and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa