“The ocean is the most terrifying thing in our world. 

Despite the constant alien invasions, super-powered samurai, and amoral corporations doing everything they can to cause chaos, nothing compares to the depths that the ocean goes to, to make itself hostile. Yet, the ocean is humanity’s lifeline, the most important asset to our survival. It leaves little doubt in my mind as to why the humans of the past worshiped it. 

Personally, it makes me rather anxious.”

* Silverheart, during a interview with Samulyfe, June 2050

***

Laying on the floor of my cabin in a pile of all my droll clothes, I hold a broken shard of bright, almost fluorescent green glass up to the dim light above me, marveling at the tiny fractures and miniscule imperfections that fill it. Originally, it had been a nice little vase that I was going to put into my room, but a month at sea had changed that. In hindsight, I think I like it better shattered anyway. 

I sigh, flipping the piece to see the other side and contemplating the beauty of what I'm holding. Whoever crafted this glass, some hundred and fifty years ago, before even the world wars had rocked Earth, probably had no clue of the cost of what they were making, no idea that uranium could kill them. Their art lasted, but who knows how long the artist had lived after making this? They shared a fate now, and something about that just tickles my heart.

As I lay distracted over my glass, I ignore a few noises I assume are someone talking nearby, but nearly jump out of my skin as a blur of a face appears through the glass. I hastily sit up, acknowledging the person in the ship’s uniform who had rudely entered my room, sighing as I turn my hearing implant back on. The figure’s voice is deep and masculine, and I can’t help but appreciate the bit of scratch that accompanies it. But I freeze when I hear what he has to say:

“We’re docking very soon, so get yourself packed and ready already. Your family is expecting you for dinner.”

The man grumbles a bit about my implants as he slams the door behind him, and I take a shaky breath. Family dinners are something that usually take me a week to work up the courage for, and now I have to go to one with an hour's notice? I hastily stuff my clothes and miscellaneous items into the duffle bag I use for trips, flip my implants off again, and rush out of my cabin towards the deck. As I step into the sun and feel the ocean wind, I can’t help but smile at the sight before me. 

Looming far above the ship I've spent the last month upon, New Houston's commune stretches nearly four hundred feet into the air, a long shadow stretching east over the ocean. I know it was converted from an old oil rig by some first gen samurai, their name escapes me, but it ended up stretching all the way to the ocean floor. 

Home.

A few figures brush past me as I stare up, and it takes about a minute for me to snap out of my daze to continue towards the bow of the ship. I'm rather excited to be home, despite the sudden family dinner, so as soon as the ship lurches to a stop, I can’t help but jump out and run across the dock towards the tower. The muffled sound of someone yelling at me causes a microsecond of hesitation, but the idea of being able to actually relax drowns them out enough that I continue forward.

Around a minute of jogging to get off the wet docks onto the central platform later, I hastily slip through a crowd, leaving the muffled voices behind me. I nearly knock an older fellow over as I stumble onto an exterior lift, panting as the door closes behind me. I really, really need to exercise more. 

Leaning against the side of the elevator, I take a few deep breaths to calm my heart as I look out over the central hub of my home, an unavoidable smile creeping across my face. The floating platform at the center of New Houston hosts a vibrant, lively marketplace, a place where you might find most anything. There had been a few pop-up markets that I found during the two weeks I’d spent in New New York, but being able to look across a market like this and not get hit by an incredibly intrusive flood of advertisements made my day. 

I flinch as the lift lurches to a stop, and with a bit of hesitation I step out onto my family’s balcony. When my grandfather bought this floor, he’d left a space all around our house to give himself an area for a garden, but he still hasn’t gotten around to it. In the end, reddish steel and gray concrete just ended up melding together into a rather dull, barren image.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I take a few steps forward, reach out for the door handle, and nearly jump when I hear my ear implants turning back on, a buttery smooth yet obviously artificial deep voice with a british accent immediately following, 

“Welcome home, young master.”

“U-urgh, yeah, t-thanks Jysli.” 

I groan about my stuttering to my grandfather’s personal AI even as Jysli turns them off again with another click and unlocks the front door. I awkwardly enter the main entrance of our house—well, I say entrance, but due to my mothers strange tastes regarding interior design, it rather resembled a classic high-end hotel lobby; a red velvet carpet is lined with gold leads down the middle, a few couches with the same design back against one wall, with an empty reception desk across from them. Three hallways led to different sections of the building, and I hastily rush towards the one to the right, hoping that I could get to my room before any stray family catches my presence. 

Unfortunately for me, I barely get halfway through the hallway before an all too familiar, muffled, nasal, sing-song voice from behind me causes me to freeze. I hurriedly turn my implant on, cursing myself for not getting out of sight fast enough.

I turn to see a figure whose appearance had been well ingrained into my memory by years of childhood stress.

“So, you’re home, Anthony. How was New New York?”

I continue walking, my mother’s voice and calling of my name causing a decent bit of anxiety to rise in my chest. 

“G-good.”

Not skipping a beat, she mercilessly follows up, my heart dropping at her words.

“I’m expecting you to talk all about it tonight okay dear? Relax for a bit, we’re having snook for dinner tonight, I even went down and picked it out myself!”

I inwardly cringe at the idea of eating fish, and a few steps later I finally reach my room, and with one swift motion I unlock the door to step inside and then immediately lock the door behind me. Beyond the shelves filled with interesting stuff lining my walls, I had a very barebones room, but my bed and desk were all I needed.

Sighing a breath of relief, I walk up to my desk and place my duffel down, slide my shoes off, and saunter over to one of my shelves to take one of my extra sterile glass containers off of it. I had collected a lot of different things through the years, mostly during my dives at the ruins of old coastal cities, and I displayed them here for, well, only me to see. Placing the uranium glass inside, I slot it between my black gems and alexandrite before dramatically flopping onto my bed and letting reality sink in. 

I was really home. 

All in all, New New York hadn’t been fun. The stress and anxiety of trying to make an impossible trade deal, had almost gotten to me. Something about handling the legal teams of corporations threatened me with panic attacks, but I'd managed to keep myself together. 

Well, I still failed to complete the deal in the end. Tonight's dinner was going to be the absolute worst. 

Uggggh. I wish I could just turn my implants off and sleep, but I’d for sure get yelled at regardless. My grandfather was super strict about the implants. There was sense to it—people needed to be able to hear the emergency alarms and sirens. But…the matter of my hypersensitivity and whether I got to rest with them turned off, had become messed up parental powerplays for some reason. 

I wish I knew why.

As exhaustion fills me, I reluctantly creak to my feet and slowly waddle over to my closet, hesitantly opening it. Inside, sitting beside the few clothes that I hadn’t deemed necessary for my trip, the single mirror I allow to be in my room sits in exile. Reaching over and pressing a small button on the side, the mirror illuminates its murky surface. Despite my slight hope of some surprise difference, the blurry image before me is exactly what I expect.

I can't remember when it started exactly, but some time after highschool I couldn’t recognize myself in a mirror anymore. I'd avoided mirrors for weeks…months, years, and when I looked again one day, my brain somehow scrambled the image into something unintelligible. It has been a strange experience, looking at myself like that, my body and face being twisted into a blurry mess that was not unlike someone had painted me and then immediately poured water onto the canvas.

Well. Regardless of a bad artist’s impression of me, I could still look down and see my body, though that tends to cause a bit of a different problem I hate exploring. 

It was of course, rather inconvenient at times, but something about the process makes my stomach churn with dread. Something is wrong, aside from it happening at all, and it bothers me deeply that I didn’t know exactly what. My father had suggested it might be some kind of virus when I first couldn’t see my face, but upgrading to a new retinal implant hadn’t done anything but make it worse. I have a few suspicions as to what it might be, but in the end all of them are rather too heavy for my perpetually exhausted brain. 

With a humph, I grab a fresh shirt and suit jacket then shut the closet, doing my best to banish the thoughts that had wormed their way to the forefront of my mind. I fail in the effort as I change, only managing to clear my thoughts when the cold metal of my bedroom door’s handle startles my brain onto a different track. 

I had something much worse to deal with now. How the hell was I going to convince my mother to let me not eat the fish?