“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's not wrong. Everyone on the colony fleet seems to have authorial aspirations, bright eyed and eager as they document the first bumps and bruises of humanity meeting the universe. Oh, yes. They’ve made it.
They call the new settlement Elysium, which must have once 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's out of the galaxy, and kicking ass. Hooray!
She has so much to tell everyone when they get home.
“When we get home,” Makky says dreamily, stretching out in her rest pod and waving a painfully loud polka dot coffee mug in her direction. A nutristraw is sticking out one corner of her mouth like some 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 drooping comically from the corner of her mouth.
“And as to the Return,” the newscaster says, teeth flashing magnesium bright into the camera lens, 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 at least three ads and staring directly into the tab cam for long enough to fool it into thinking she'd actually watched them.
"That's what you said two months ago," she snaps at the smooth dark surface. It does not reply.
Lofi sighs, and switches to the dictation software. Since it seems they'll be out here for a while, she may as well get started on that screen flip. Maybe she can beat the rest of the would-be chroniclers to the punch ...
“I can't wait to get home and stop dealing with these stupid drills,” someone says. The voice is metallic, reedy, distorted by faulty signal transfer. “I mean, honestly. Where do they get off, waking us all up in the middle of the night and making us put on our EVA suits just so they can check off the liability codes...”
Lofi sighs, and adjusts the polarization of her helmet.
She'd be mad too, but Makky's a welder on the repair corp and so she knows. Knows about the rust in the rust-proof pipe system, the increasingly gappy stopgaps keeping the recycler pumping, the way the inevitable space debris of human settlement keeps damaging the solar panels--knows, in fact, that it's probably even worse but Makky--protective, silly, burn-speckled Makky--wouldn't want her to worry.
But Lofi isnt stupid either, and she also knows that they're living on a temporary travel station that's only guaranteed liveable for a year, and they're eight months past the dead line.
She laughs at the joke, and the couple next to her mutter to each other, faces blurred and unrecognizable behind their helmets.
A voice from the intercom announces that the evacuation drill is over, thank you and well done on not being an unnecessary and inconvenient casualty, please return to your sleeping quarters, and the residents of subsection x12 disperse like water sinking into soil, bubbles of exasperation and relief breaking the quickly ebbing surface.
Lofi sighs again, and clumps down the corridor to sx17. Her and Makky's place. Maybe when they get home they'll be able to afford a proper little rental, with a roof greenhouse and a big, fluffy dog called Goober...
When Makky gets back from the repair crew's "drill", exhausted and still wearing welding goggles, Lofi is asleep, a faint smile on her shadowed face.
“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 wants to acknowledge, real and there and solid enough to change the outcome of a moment, just by being. Wave particle duality, under observation.
Neither of them speak for a long, long time.
“When we get home,” Makky begins, draping herself over Lofi's shoulders and sighing loudly. She smells of ozone and the stale, condensed odour of someone who's spent the last thirteen hours in an EVA suit, welding a tiny corner of the metal skeleton that will someday replace their crumbling "temporary" station. Lofi wishes she could help, suit up and join the thousand other little ants scurrying about that slowly forming mass, but all her training is in biochemistry and they can't afford the education module. So instead she spends her hours in the lab on the other temporary station, monitoring the computers and undoing the molecular structure of alien fungi, piece by microscopic piece.
“When we get--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 replies, 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 be able to break out my formal toolbelt."
Lofi looks at Makky. Makky looks back, and they both explode into peals of laughter.
"The question "when will the Return 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, as proposed by Finch Founder and CEO Colorado Epps…and remember, the more votes you buy, the more you get, so don’t delay… "
"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's taking a virtual tour of one of the new apartments, all bare chrome and empty space and the hollow, echoing look of living rooms sans life. But throw on a coat of spectrafilm, some deco screens...Makky's collection of outrageously patterned mugs would fit nicely in that fold-up cupboard there and that corner would be perfect for her mushroom terraria...
“If we agree to stay for at least two years we can get a better number in the lottery,” Makky says, very 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, far away from home.
Two years, out here in Elysium, spinning above a strange planet and an alien sun, in a cosy little station apartment with Makky.
“How long do we have to decide?” she asks.
"Uh...til next week, I think. Yeah. Next Thursday."
"Okay," she says. "Let's think about it. We'll decide on Wednesday."
"Okay," Makky says. "Wednesday."
On Monday, Lofi’s waiting by the door when Makky gets back from the construction site. There are no more eighteen hour days; the new station—officially named the Aerie ST5, but known generally to the local colonists as “the Egg”-- gleams bright and finished in the blue-tinged light of their system’s star, and Makky’s nabbed herself a tidy gig maintaining the state-of-the-art hydroponics system in the new greenhouses. She’s promised Lofi compost. The good stuff. Her mushrooms are going to be spoiled rotten.
“Heyyy,” Makky says, kissing her as she comes in. “Thought you would still be at the lab.”
“Let’s do it,” Lofi blurts out.
“Do what?”
“Stay.”
Makky stares at her, eyes the deep reddish brown of ore rich earth and spices and completely unreadable, and for a moment Lofi thinks she’ll say no—but then she whoops loudly and hauls her into her arms and they spin around in the little hallway like binary stars caught in each other's orbits and Lofi is finally, finally home.
“When we get home,” Lofi says, leaning against the vast window that takes up one wall of the IRL market on the Egg and watching stars not twinkle through the non-atmosphere of deep space, “I’m taking a nap.”
Makky grins, and turns back to the sales point, a hot pink and orange checked spill-proof lo-grav mug in her hands and a shameless lowball offer on her tongue. It’ll clash amazingly with the backsplash.