Caliban Station’s centrifuge module had never looked more unremarkable, which Judas-12 thought was impressive considering it had been designed by people who valued utility over aesthetics with religious fervor. It was brushed steel and muted gray, punctuated only by holographic readouts and blinking LEDs. It was also loud—filled with the hum of life support systems, the rhythmic clanking of boots against the magnetic floor, and the occasional hiss of a pressure seal.
Judas leaned against a console that was busily running diagnostics on the mass driver. He’d set it up to compare telemetry logs from the last asteroid launch against stress readings from the rail segments. The console worked quietly, unfazed by his presence. Beside him, Samson’s voice piped in from his tablet, tethered to Judas’s belt.
“The fluctuation analysis is at 73%,” Samson reported. “At this rate, you’ll have time to complete the calibration before your next scheduled distraction.”
Judas smirked, pulling a ration bar from his pocket. “You’re not going to give me grief for slacking off?”
“Only if you call an interplanetary cultural exchange ‘slacking.’”
He took a bite of the ration bar, which tasted faintly of cardboard and fake cinnamon, and leaned back. The station’s comm system pinged softly, a light blinking to indicate the incoming signal. Judas glanced at it with mild disinterest.
“Is that him?” he asked.
“Yes. Transmission delay still holding at approximately fifteen minutes.”
Judas tapped the button to open the feed. The display flickered to life, showing the grainy image of a 3D-printed rover. It was a stubby little thing, its body covered in a patchwork of matte white plating, with a single armature sticking awkwardly out of one side. A small camera sat atop it, swiveling back and forth as though trying to get its bearings.
“Elijah, you look terrible,” Judas said, knowing the message wouldn’t reach Jupiter for another fifteen minutes.
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On Ganymede, Elijah-44 duo Ira sat cross-legged in his station quarters, the smooth, minimalist walls around him glowing with soft blue light. His Buddy, Ira, perched on a nearby console, quietly feeding telemetry data into the rover’s system.
Elijah chuckled as Judas’s voice came through, distorted slightly by the distance but clear enough. “Terrible? This rover is state-of-the-art. Your station couldn’t print something this efficient if you begged.”
“It looks like a coffee table with a webcam,” Judas shot back.
Elijah grinned, watching as the rover’s feed began transmitting Caliban Station’s centrifuge module back to him. The space was every bit as utilitarian as he’d imagined—drab, loud, and strangely cramped compared to the wide-open spaces he was used to on Ganymede. He couldn’t imagine working there for more than a day without going stir-crazy. The rover moved half on its own, half with his sense of guidance, trying to predict what Elijah would want to be looking at, ensuring there wasn't too much time where the video feed would be sitting staring at the wall for fifteen minutes.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Where’s your glamour, Judas?” Elijah asked, his voice now on a 15-minute journey back to Pluto. “Where’s your sense of pride in the workplace?”
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Judas laughed when Elijah’s response finally came through. “Glamour? This isn’t a mathematician’s playground, pal. This is a real station, for people who get their hands dirty.”
The rover’s camera swiveled, fixing its gaze on Judas. He knew Elijah wasn’t watching live, but it still felt like being observed. “Speaking of playgrounds, how’s life in the intellectual utopia?”
“Busy,” Elijah’s voice replied eventually. “We had a new cohort graduate last month—mostly engineers this time. Smart kids. I’m still verifying proofs on their training simulations. Do you know how many cryptographic applications use primes in the quintillion range?”
“No, and I don’t want to,” Judas replied, shaking his head. “Who cares if a number’s prime?”
“Everyone,” Elijah answered solemnly. “Without primes, your comms encryption would fall apart, your orbital trajectories would be riddled with errors, and your Buddy would lose all semblance of mathematical integrity.”
Judas waved a hand dismissively at Samson’s tablet. “Hear that, Samson? You’re hanging by a thread.”
Samson’s voice, cool and calm, chimed in. “I assure you, my stability is robust. However, I would appreciate fewer comments about mathematical fragility.”
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The rover trundled forward, its wheels making faint squeaks against the station’s floor. Judas stepped aside to give it room, watching as it stopped near a viewport. It was pointed directly at Pluto’s surface, which loomed impossibly large, its pale ice plains and shadowed craters dominating the scene.
“What do you think?” Judas asked. “Bigger than the math problems?”
Elijah’s reply eventually arrived, soft with awe. “Beautiful. I can’t imagine what it’s like to work in a place like that.”
Judas chuckled. “It’s cold, it’s quiet, and everything smells like recycled air. Pretty good, if you ask me.”
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The delay gave Judas time to think, which was never a good idea. He and Elijah weren’t so different—not in where they’d started, anyway. Both of them had been born, raised, and taught under systems designed to shape human potential into clean, efficient lines. They’d grown alongside their Buddies, molded by stations that prized precision and utility above all else. The difference was where they’d ended up.
Elijah had stayed in the comfort of his controlled environment, sharpening his mind on equations and proofs in a station dedicated to refinement and academic pursuit. Judas, by contrast, had chosen something messier—Caliban Station, where every task came with metal shavings under the fingernails and centripetal gravity wasn't a guarantee.
He hadn’t left because he hated the system he’d grown up in, but because he wanted to see what else there was. Now, elbow-deep in diagnostics and dodging the occasional asteroid shard, he sometimes wondered if “else” had been worth the trip.
“You still trying to wrap your head around unions?” Judas asked, leaning against the console, feeling the weight of his environment compared to Elijah’s.
“I’m trying,” Elijah’s voice replied eventually. “The idea of... collective negotiation is fascinating. But it seems inefficient.”
Judas rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”
“No, really,” Elijah continued. “If everyone is trained to optimize their work, why is negotiation necessary? Wouldn’t the system allocate resources optimally by default?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Judas muttered. “You ever seen a ‘system’ do anything optimally?”
When Elijah’s reply came, it was as thoughtful as always. “Perhaps not. But inefficiency doesn’t align with the way we were taught. We’re part of systems designed to function as wholes. Each individual is placed where they can contribute the most. Why wouldn’t that just... work?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the speeches,” Judas said. “But out here, it’s different. You think Management’s looking out for us? No. They’re looking at budgets, schedules, quotas. Not people.”
Elijah didn’t respond immediately, and Judas could almost see him frowning on the other end. It wasn’t a judgmental frown—it was the kind of frown someone had when they encountered an equation that didn’t balance.
“You’re saying the system can fail,” Elijah said finally, his voice tinged with curiosity. “But it’s designed not to.”
“Maybe where you are,” Judas answered.