When We Get Home

“When we get home,” Lofi says, “I’m going to write a screenflip about all of this.”

“You and the rest of the Pioneers,” Makky says, and laughs.

She is not wrong. Everyone on the colony fleet seems to have authorial aspirations, bright-eyed and eager to document the first bumps and bruises of humanity meeting the universe. Oh yes. They have made it.

They call the new settlement Elysium, which must once have meant something to someone, somewhere, because the people leading the trip are never careless with their branding, and the future starts rising up with a hazy gold glow round the edges.

Humanity is out of the galaxy, and kicking ass. Hooray.

Lofi has so much to tell everyone when they get home.

1

“When we get home,” Makky says dreamily, stretching out in her rest pod and waving a painfully loud polka-dot coffee mug in the air. A nutristraw droops from one corner of her mouth like a grotesque failure of experimental dentistry, and Lofi heroically resists the urge to flick it. “I’m going right down to OSX Donald’s and eating seventeen meat pops. Actually, forget that. I’m eating every one they have.”

“Not if I get there first,” Lofi replies, and Makky throws the adaptive pillow at her, nutristraw still dangling.

2

“And as to the Return,” the newscaster says, teeth flashing magnesium-bright into the camera, voice electronically modulated to exactly the right amount of poured-honey calm, “government agencies are hopeful departures can begin within a reasonable time frame, though we will be implementing a staggered process in which…”

Lofi switches off the newscast with an angry tap-tap-tap on the screen, a less-than-satisfying exit that requires scrolling through too many ads and staring directly into the tab-cam long enough to fool it into thinking she actually watched them.

“That’s what you said two months ago,” she snaps at the dark screen.

It does not reply.

Lofi sighs and switches to dictation software. Since it seems they will be out here for a while, she may as well get started on that screenflip. Maybe she can beat the rest of the would-be chroniclers to the punch.

3

“I can’t wait to get home and stop dealing with these stupid drills,” someone complains over the comms. The voice is metallic, reedy, distorted by bad signal transfer. “Honestly. Where do they get off waking us all up in the middle of the night and making us put on EVA suits just so they can check off liability codes…”

Lofi sighs and adjusts the polarization of her helmet.

She would be mad too, but Makky is a welder on the repair corps and so she knows. Knows about the rust in the rust-proof pipes. Knows about the stopgaps holding the recycler together. Knows how often debris shreds the solar array. Knows, in fact, that it is probably even worse than Makky lets on, but protective, silly, burn-speckled Makky would never want her to worry.

But Lofi is not stupid either.

She knows they are living on a temporary travel station only guaranteed to remain habitable for a year, and they are eight months past that deadline.

She laughs politely at the joke someone makes nearby. The couple beside her mutter to each other through their helmets.

Then the intercom announces that the evacuation drill is over, thank you and well done on not being an unnecessary casualty, please return to your quarters.

The residents of subsection X12 disperse like water sinking into soil.

Lofi trudges back to SX17. Their place. Her and Makky’s.

Maybe, when they get home, they will be able to afford a little rental with a greenhouse roof and a big fluffy dog called Goober.

When Makky gets back from the repair shift, exhausted and still wearing welding goggles, Lofi is asleep with a faint smile on her face.

4

“When we get home…” Makky begins.

“If we get home.”

There it is. The unspoken thing, outlined in language and thrown out into the universe. The possibility neither of them wants to acknowledge, suddenly made solid just by being named.

Neither speaks for a long, long time.

5

“When we get home,” Makky begins again later, draping herself over Lofi’s shoulders and sighing loudly. She smells of ozone and the stale condensed smell of someone who has spent thirteen hours inside an EVA suit, welding one more corner of the metal skeleton that will someday replace their crumbling “temporary” station.

Lofi wishes she could help. Suit up. Join the thousand other little ants building that future in orbit.

But all her training is in biochemistry, and they cannot afford the education module for a retrain. So she spends her days in the lab on the other station, monitoring computers and unpicking the molecular structure of alien fungi one microscopic step at a time.

“When we get…” Makky yawns. “Actually, you know what? The minute we’re done with this indebted station build, I’m throwing my EVA suit in the incinerator and becoming an accountant.”

“You wouldn’t last a day,” Lofi says, grinning. “You’d get bored and spend the whole time trying to build a better calculator.”

Makky sticks out her tongue. “They already invented the abacus. Besides, I’d get to wear my formal toolbelt.”

Lofi looks at Makky.

Makky looks back.

They both dissolve into helpless laughter.

6

“The question of when the Return will begin has been the central issue surrounding the recent elections, with the scheduled return trip to Earth delayed an unspecified time due to optimizations being performed on the FTL drive. Eden party leader Metric von Agowitz had this to say: if elected, we will dedicate ourselves to the quick and effective enactment of the Return Protocol…”

“Hey, Lolo,” Makky says. “Come look at this. They’re putting up listings for the housing lottery on the new station.”

Lofi peers over her shoulder.

Makky is taking a virtual tour of one of the new apartments, all bare chrome and empty space and the echoing look of a room that does not yet know the people who will live in it. Throw on a coat of spectrafilm. Add some deco screens. Put Makky’s ridiculous mug collection in that fold-up cupboard. A mushroom terrarium in that corner. A life.

“If we agree to stay for at least two years we can get a better number in the lottery,” Makky says slowly. “Practically guaranteed.”

Lofi hesitates.

Two years.

Another two years out here in Elysium, spinning above a strange planet in the light of an alien sun, far away from Earth.

Two years out here with Makky.

“How long do we have to decide?” she asks.

“Until next week, I think. Yeah. Next Thursday.”

“Okay,” Lofi says. “Let’s think about it. We’ll decide on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday,” Makky agrees.

7

On Monday, Lofi is waiting by the door when Makky gets back from the construction site. There are no more eighteen-hour days. The new station, officially Aerie ST5 but more commonly known as “the Egg,” gleams bright and finished in the blue-tinged light of the local star, and Makky has secured herself a tidy maintenance job in the hydroponics system.

She has promised Lofi compost. The good stuff. The mushrooms are going to be spoiled rotten.

“Heyyy,” Makky says, kissing her on the way in. “Thought you’d still be at the lab.”

“Let’s do it,” Lofi blurts out.

“Do what?”

“Stay.”

Makky stares at her, eyes deep reddish-brown and suddenly unreadable, and for one long moment Lofi thinks she is going to say no.

Then Makky whoops, hauls her into her arms, and spins her around in the little hallway like the two of them are binary stars caught in each other’s orbit.

Lofi realizes, all at once and for the first time, that she is already home.

8

“When we get home,” Lofi says later, leaning against the vast market window on the Egg and watching stars fail to twinkle through the vacuum beyond, “I’m taking a nap.”

Makky grins and turns back to the sales point, a hot pink and orange checked spill-proof low-grav mug in her hands and a shameless lowball offer already on her tongue.

It is going to clash terribly with the backsplash.

Lofi loves it anyway.