Estimated oxygen time: 21:29:47

There was no sign that Diocletian were about to attack. One moment everything seemed fine, and the next Diocletian threw one blade at Third, flicking her wrist as it left her hand, twisting. The other jumped up at the exact same instant, his boots aimed at the ceiling.

Third just barely put her rifle in the path of the blade, blocking, but it shattered on impact into shrapnel, cutting her suit. I heard the whisper of escaping oxygen on comm, and her face twisted as she realized her suit had been punctured in multiple places. She pressed down on a cut on her forearm with her other hand and screamed, one syllable of fear and anger and unfairness, lamenting that she had just got here, that she didn’t want to leave, and that she was afraid of the place she was going to.

Diocletian descended on Third and struck, making sure his blade touched nothing but suit and soft flesh. The rest of Ctesibius opened fire, but they were surprised and confused. They really hadn’t believed this would happen.

Diocletian, on the other hand, seemed right in their element as they threw Third’s flailing body at the shooters, blocking their paths.

I fled back into the cave, my helmet bursting with wordless yelling. My boots lost traction and I found myself barely scraping the floor. I crashed against some shelves, knocking down unfinished machines, and pushed myself away, only to collide with another wall. I managed to stop my tumbling, and focused on going through the piles of makeshift tools to figure out what I could use. Diocletian were coming for me, I knew. They might just send me on my way, but if the rocket wasn’t strong enough to make the way back, they might just kill me out of spite. Who could predict the actions of people in this situation? Ctesibius’s First screamed, her voice clear inside my helmet, tortured by pain, fear, and regret. Why the hell didn’t she tell me where their ride was?

I picked up one half-built device after another, not understanding their function or whether they were even complete. Something that looked like a syringe, something that might have been a pneumatic hammer…how was I supposed to know which one to choose? It was hard to think, hard to breathe. Eventually I recognized the bubble Third had been working on, still full of gas and resting by the wall. I wrestled to get a hold of it, and finally opened the zipper. A gentle gust of gas blew against my hand as I opened it. Third said that she had finished it, right? I pulled the rocket out, peeling off the deflated bubble. It was much like the rocket Diocletian had given me.

I knew that it wouldn’t take me back to the civilian airlock, but maybe it would be enough to take me through the narrow entrance tunnel of the cave. The kill-switch was in here somewhere, and I hoped that Ctesibius would have had no reason, or time, to tamper with my escape.

All that was left now was making the way out. There was only one entrance, one exit. I had to make it through the tunnel. I picked up the rocket and hugged it close, my hands finding the familiar grips.

The radio was still loud with grunts, war cries, screams of terror and violence. Even shaking with fear a part of me realized that was the better option—if it had quieted down, I’d have been in real trouble.

I pressed myself against the wall and pushed as hard as I could towards the tunnel, switching on the rocket midway. Diocletian had First on her back against the floor; she was trying to push him off with her rifle, to block him, but he was sawing into her shoulder with the frozen metal. She looked at me, her eyes open wide and pleading, her face covered in sweat, grunting through her teeth. He turned, following her gaze, his eyes as dark and sharp as ever. She pulled a scalpel from her belt, taking advantage of the opening, and sliced the inside of his arm. He fell back in a spray of blood and air, but didn’t make a sound.

Ctesibius’s Second was swinging a torch—my torch—wildly, trying to scorch the other Diocletian with the violet-blue flame, his expression more animated than I have ever seen, bloodshot eyes wide open, clenched teeth barred.

Diocletian danced out of his reach, using Third’s body as a shield, letting the blade stick out from safety like a Roman soldier. She was equally animated and quick, but far more focused, practiced. She was blocking his exit—our exit—but it was too late for me to change course.

The movement of her eye, the recognition, came only an instant before she swung the sharp metal my way, reptillianly quick. I just barely managed to put the vessel between us, turning the rocket upwards in hope of shattering her blade, and just as quickly as she swung the weapon she pulled it away, protecting it from the impact, and I sailed past her unharmed.

Ctesibius’s Second leapt past the distracted Diocletian and made for the exit.

I burst out of the cave in a wild upward arc. Pointing the rocket up had me spinning around myself, and as hard as I tried I couldn’t get it under control, on the contrary—the more thrust I applied, the more I got turned around. By the time I figured out how to correct it I was already twisting too quickly to understand where I was going. The world was a spinning tapestry, spiraling around me, dark rock-gray and bright starlit-gray chasing each other until dark gray grew and grew, signifying that I was coming down fast.

In an uncharacteristic stroke of common sense, I kicked the rocket away from me, just a second before the impact came, knocking the air out of my lungs. The rocket crashed, breaking into a cloud of fragments. I bounced, rolling as I flew, managing to catch only glimpses of what was happening around me in the moments between impacts, trying unsuccessfully to turn myself to a position that would make the next impact less painful.

Finally, I came to a stop, lying on my back against the jagged rock. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe—just listened for any escaping oxygen, any alarms, any heavy breathing on comm from someone chasing me. It took my life support a moment to stop its soft whistles as the oxygen inside the suit rose to the highest level. The sky stood in front of me, the perfect immensity of light unmarred by an atmosphere, as I listened to the blessed silence interrupted only by my own heart beating in my ears. Most Ceresians never got to see this view, I realized. Most humans never will.

I allowed myself to take in a staggered breath, and silently thanked whoever designed the extra protection into my suit. If I’d been in one of the lowest-bidder-grade suits the residents of Last Day Town were given, I don’t think it would have held. Hell, mine wouldn’t have if I’d landed on a slightly sharper rock. I almost died, I thought, and the thought wasn’t that shocking anymore. It’s amazing how quickly we adapt.

I lay there a moment more and let my breathing calm down, my aching body recover. The timer was still counting down at the side of my visor, the numbers glaring at me, relentless. No time to rest while the clock’s ticking.

I rose to my feet slowly, examining the damage to my body. Everything hurt, but the aches were manageable, the kind you get from bruises, not fractures. Lucky, considering I’d landed on a patch of rock that had surprisingly thin layer of dust to soften the impact.

Not a patch, I realized as I inspected my surroundings, but a path, drawn where the bootsteps and rocket thrusts cleared away the dust, leading away from Ctesibius. The silhouette of the cliff stood against the stars. I figured the path led roughly south-east, where Ctesibius’s Second had pointed. I wondered for a moment if his escape had been successful before realizing how stupid that was. What kind of escape could he hope for, if he was still trapped in a bag that held only a couple of hours’ worth of oxygen?

And I’d find myself in the same situation if I didn’t manage to find a way back. I examined my options with a clarity I haven’t felt in years: Going back to Ctesibius’s cliff seemed dangerous; there would be no one there but Diocletian, and I wanted to be as far from them as possible. If Ctesibius escapes, I’ll finish my oxygen before I have a chance to find him. I could hide here in the darkness, but that wouldn’t get me back inside before my oxygen ran out.

I looked at the path stretching in front of me, all the way to the southernmost part of the crater. Right at the edge, where the inclined wall of the crater met the plain above, something glinted, reflecting the asteroid-light like glass. One visor would not have made a reflection large enough to see from so far away—it had to be something else, and from the way it was propped up just looking down at the crater, I got the distinct feeling that it was there to be seen, to beckon.

Pythia might still know something that I didn’t. I clung to that hope, and took the first leaping, aching step towards that climb.

#

Estimated oxygen time: 20:10:02

When I finally climbed out of the crater, reaching what felt like the top of a hundred-meter-tall wall, I grabbed the edge with both hands and threw myself over it, flying into a somersault that had me landing clumsily on my back. I lay there and watched my estimated oxygen time shorten with each breath.

The climb had proven surprisingly difficult, even in the almost-zero G, and wasted an unbelievable amount of time—first I’d tried climbing slowly, which turned out to be practically impossible without slipping down, then tried charging up the wall, which had taken at least dozen tries, each misstep sending me back all of the way down. Several times I’d found myself at the bottom of the cliff, exhausted and ready to give up. But what would I have done if I’d given up? Wait for either the oxygen to run out or Diocletian to space me?

Again and again the image of her one eye turning as she attempted to slash me had come up in my mind, haunting. There had been no hate in it, no rage burning uncontrollably, just a cold decision to kill, for whatever reason it was that Ctesibius failed to predict.

Eventually I’d found the rhythm of ascension, and managed to throw myself over the edge, my body even more sore than before. Presently something stood ahead of me in the darkness—the same reflective orb that I’d seen from below. It was standing on some sort of bulky pedestal, clearly man-made, thin and tall against the backdrop of faraway rocky ridges, but the sky frustratingly offered almost no light and I could make no sense of the silhouette. I was just getting up when I thought I heard something, out of place and strange—and so faint I wasn’t sure that I had not imagined it. I stood silent, holding my breath and waiting for my life support to quiet down. Finally, I heard it clearly—Singing. People singing. Two, I realized, harmonizing a slow, simple lament. What is it about people singing together, that brings so much comfort? Even a savage song like this. Is it that among people that sing together, no enmity can live? That if a harmony of one kind exists, others might as well?

I wanted to see them, to hear the song up close. I kicked off the rock and set off toward the glass orb.

By the time I reached the structure, the singing had stopped. An asteroid rose above the horizon, so large it seemed bigger than Ceres itself. It passed slowly above us, its sunlit surface filling a third of the sky, the reflected light turning the hills from a unified, dark mass to a horde of distinct cliffs and vast, wild plains; turning each crater into a bowl of shadow.

The man-made structure towered above me, so bright I could hardly look at it directly, but I still glimpsed what it was. A statue of a person, five meters tall, metal beams visible through the material that made the mock-suit it wore. Its pose was triumphant: one crudely-made hand hung over the sheet of glass, a thousand round shards glued together into something that resembled a visor fit for the helmet of a five-meter tall man, as if it was protecting his eyes from the light. It stood on top of a shuttle that must have crashed here a long time ago, a medium-sized vehicle meant to carry six people at most. Pythia… How many people had poured their final hours into this?

By the statue’s feet, two figures were sitting facing one another, holding hands and swaying from side to side. They were draped in suit material, formed into crude, hooded robes they wore over their suits, covering the shapes of their bodies and shrouding their helmets in darkness.

The singers started again, chanting in droning, meditative voices. They sang -

In the shadow of the world,

You see the true forms,

You are stripped of the lies

Of the story of your life,

In the shadow of the world,

You see its true form,

The shadow of your lies,

Is truth.

The shadow of my life,

Is you.

They stopped, still holding hands. One hood turned towards me, then the other. I stood beneath them, but it wasn’t like they were looking down at me, more like they were children sitting on a tree’s branches, not yet willing to come down.

“Don’t stop on my account,” I said. As long as they sang, I could almost forget everything else.

“You came just in time for the ending,” a feminine, relatively low voice answered, and one of the figures moved slightly. As my eyes adjusted, I saw she was a tall woman, and that something in her movements telegraphed lean strength, even under two layers of suit. They let go of each other’s hands and she turned to me fully, pulling off the hood and revealing a face seemingly built for stern expressions. Now, though, it carried a soft one. “Pythia welcome you,” she said.

“Nice suit,” said the other. He pulled off his hood as well and I saw the chubby face of a man, a puffy beard crowding the inside of his helmet. “Are you the visitor from the inside we heard about?” Both of their voices and faces had a tranquility to them—nothing like Diocletian and Ctesibius’s intensity, and softer than Anaxagoras’s nonchalant rudeness.

“Not sure that’s accurate, anymore.”

Her bright eyes showed understanding, while his dark ones squinted in confusion. “How so?”

“Visiting implies leaving.” I left it at that, waiting for the snarky remark that was sure to come.

“How unfortunate,” the woman said, her voice surprising me with its genuine sympathy.

“Yeah,” added the other. “That’s a fucked-up situation. What happened?” And I was filled with an awful sense of shame, that these people, who had less than a day left to live, were comforting me. Something in me softened, just a little.

“Does line Pythia have a rocket? I could trade you oxygen for it, for any kind of transportation…”

“Pythia don’t have anything but the robes on our backs, a confession chamber,” she gestured at the bent, scraped form of the shuttle, “and a beacon.” Her eyes rose to the statue above her. “What happened?”

I turned to her. “When I ran, Diocletian were attacking Ctesibius. One of Ctesibius might have escaped, but if not, the whole line is dead. Maybe one of Diocletian died, but either way, I think Diocletian made it, and it’s a matter of time until they’re here, either to give me a rocket or to finish me off. They tried to kill me, as I was running away. The state they were in… I’m not so sure you’re safe either.”

This time he did burst into laughter, and she smiled, chuckling. “No,” he said, “I don’t think we’re very safe here.”

“Come on,” she said as she saw my expression, her face an invitation, an inclusion. “You have to admit it’s a little funny.”

I didn’t. It wasn’t. “I’m not just talking about you, everything you do here…” I started to say, realizing halfway what I said wasn’t making any sense.

“Line Pythia was never afraid of dying. As people we waver, but the line never lost sight of what’s important.”

“And honestly,” the man added, “If I have to go, I’d rather it be a violent death, an abrupt punctuation and not a fade-out, lying in bed and whispering, ‘I love you’s. I mean, I’ve never even been in a fight!”

“Third,” the woman said, the single word not an admonishment, but guidance, pulling him back onto the right track.

“Shit, Second, sorry. Anyways, yes, it is a real tragedy,” he continued, “not just the people who had their last day needlessly cut short, and had to spend their time in senseless conflict, but that Diocletian broke the truce. I don’t know what Last Day Town will transform into, with either of the lines gone; with the order shaken.”

“Even if everything falls apart,” Second said, “a new equilibrium will form, in its own time. It happened once; it will happen again. Pythia remember. Unless they kill all of us, Pythia will remember this as well.”

“And if they do?”

Right under the statue’s foot, the shuttle door opened—or rather, was removed, as it had no hinges. A man stepped out, heavy-set and tall, holding a rocket in one hand. “You.” He turned to me. “You’re still here.” I recognized him too: Anaxagoras’s Third, the newcomer.

“The rocket,” I said before I could articulate anything more profound. “I need it to get back inside—”

“Diocletian is finally waging war,” the bearded man cut in, catching Anaxagoras’s attention. “They were fighting Ctesibius, and Anaxagoras might be next.”

“Fucking coldbloods!” The large man instantly turned north and whipped himself into a sprint, his movements full of fury and violence. “We knew it. I’ll break their fucking necks!”

“Wait!” I yelled after him while trying to propel myself forward, to grab on to him. “The rocket!”

Already in a crouch, he jumped into space, barely giving me a glance, and threw himself towards the crater’s edge, hugging the vehicle. I came to a stop and looked after him as he went, my skin covered in goosebumps.

Another man climbed out of the shuttle, wearing a robe, like the other Pythia, who were by now climbing down from the shuttle. He pulled back the hood, revealing a face that shone with brave acceptance, and looked around. Pythia’s Third landed beside him. “First! The visitor—”

First raised a hand, and Third fell silent. “Look,” he said, and I followed his gaze. Anaxagoras was flying in a wild spiral, coming down to the rock to kick off again, gaining even more speed before he dived into the crater. “See how beautiful he is. How full of meaning. Not empty; not confused. He knows exactly where to be, what to do. We should all pray to be so lucky.” He turned to me and examined my suit, my face, deep concentration in his green eyes. “Welcome, Visitor. Why did you come here?” There was genuine wonder in his voice.

As Anaxagoras and his rocket flew out of sight it dawned on me how hopeless it all was. Even if Diocletian did find me here, they might try to kill me again. Even if I did manage to get my hands on a rocket, Ctesibius didn’t think it would make much of a difference. The skipper was destroyed, and whatever ‘ride’ Ctesibius planned for me could practically be anywhere, whatever it was. What an idiot. Why had I come here? “I needed to know,” I said.

“You could have flown by.”

“There was a guy I was looking for. An activist, who was thrown out here just after he let us know what was going on. He said he had an informant, and I had to find out who that informant was.”

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His lips curled into the tiniest smile. Not gloating, but sharing in a familiar pain. “Did you?”

I glanced at the side of my visor display. “No; I must have been too late. I haven’t met anyone by that name. Maybe you’ve met Arik Rosen without even knowing it.”

He laughed, a natural sound, without bitterness. “You know that residents aren’t allowed to talk about their former lives outside of confession, right?”

“I heard. What’s so funny?” I turned to look at the others, who were failing to hide their amusement, like children. As much as Diocletian’s smugness angered me, and Ctesibius’s forced friendliness was off-putting, this natural, genuine laughter was somehow worse.

“As the head of Line Pythia, I would like to extend a hand to you, a Visitor to Last Day Town, and offer a confession. Would you agree to enter the chamber? You might understand the joke if you do.”

“First!” the tall woman grabbed his hand as soon as she finished descending beside him. “You have hardly minutes left—" she said and winced, as if belatedly realizing how rude she was being. “There’s no time. And Diocletian may have started a war. They already attacked Ctesibius. Is this really the time to entertain a visitor?” There was no trace of her former, compassionate demeanor.

He looked at the horizon for a moment, deliberating, and when he spoke he did so with resolute certainty. “You’re right. Third,” he gave his other hand to the man, who grabbed for it. “You should disappear for as many hours as you can spare, and come back after Diocletian’s blood lust has cooled. If they destabilize Last Day Town, it’s going to need Pythia more than ever. Second, I don’t think anyone is going to make it to the Recitation, so it’s better that you stay here, to comfort whomever comes to see Pythia. They’re going to need your help.” He stopped for a moment, as if going over the words again in his head, making sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. Or maybe he was just thinking about the minutes he had left. “Thank you for these final hours,” he said at last, giving each of them a long, piercing look. “It wouldn’t have been the same without you. Goodbye.”

“But First,” the bearded man said, his voice like a heartbroken child’s, “this is your time, and we wrote a poem. Won’t you listen to it?”

“Someone needs to take care of this deeply confused man. But then again, it isn’t right to let your poems go unheard. Visitor,” he turned to me, and the rest of Pythia followed. “Will you listen to these poems after I’m gone? You’ll be able to remember them, when I will not.”

“I can try,” I said, not yet grasping fully what I was committing to. We were all going to die here. This was the least that I could do.

They reluctantly let go of his hands as he turned from them to lift the broken shuttle door, and held it aside as if the hinges still worked, a semi-formal gesture as the two others stepped back, moving out of my way. I was about to enter when I saw something out of the corner of my eye that stopped me. Close now, I could see that the marks on the shuttle’s side weren’t scrapings made in a crash. They were letters, initials scratched into the metal in four neat lines. The rows went on and on, reaching the end of the shuttle and around it. Hundreds, maybe thousands of names. I hurried into the darkness of the shuttle to escape that image and its meaning.

The inside was relatively spacious for two people, but not comfortable. I caught glimpses of places where electronics and couches used to be. Nothing useful had been left untouched.

When he closed the door everything became perfectly dark, aside from the little lights on our faces from the numbers glowing on our own visor displays. A quiet followed—The noise I had hardly noticed in the background– the electrical hum from inside Ceres, and the distant roar of the stars themselves—went silent. I recalled something about the Faraday effect, how radio waves could be blocked if you encased something in metal, even just a net. Someone, at some point, had realized this broken shuttle was the closest thing they could find to a confession chamber.

I looked at Pythia’s First, the unhurried expression on his face. The last moments of his life, and possibly the last hours of the line—If you’d have asked me five hours ago, I would have told you that I can’t imagine a more dangerous person. But nothing in the way he moved, or in his voice, spoke of violence. Considering everything, I felt surprisingly safe, as if I could wait here for my own time to run out.

When he started talking, the atmosphere felt intimate, like we were nothing but voices floating in the dark, and I felt a faint nostalgia for the sleepovers I’d had as a child—just me and a good friend, contemplating the hard questions of life. “We don’t have much time,” he said, “but I have to know. What do you want from me? Who are you?”

“My name is Yossi.” Wait, did he just say ‘me’? Finally, I realized. “You’re him, aren’t you? Arik; Bar-Kochva?”

“I was,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Which one of our little resistance are you—Acher? Watchdog?”

“PaperTiger, actually.”

“PaperTiger, of all people,” he said and whistled. “I would’ve never expected you to get off your ass.” The remark would have been offensive anywhere else, but here, it barely pierced the surface. “Why did you come here, then? Do you want to die?”

“People are dying out here,” I said. “People are being thrown out, and we have to do whatever we can. Isn’t that what you wrote? If that means writing blogs, I’ll write a blog. If it means risking my life to get this information, I’ll risk my life to get it. The people inside need to know what’s going on out here.” I said the words, but I didn’t feel the pride that usually came with them.

“Is that the truth?” he asked.

“There isn’t time. These are your last moments.”

“Moments like any other; they aren’t special. Tell me, and I’ll tell you what you came here to hear. Will no one miss you if you died?”

Despite what he said, I felt an undeniable compulsion to obey dying wishes, to answer a dying man’s questions. “Not anymore. I had a wife.”

“Did she leave?”

“Yes.”

“Because of you?

“That’s a difficult question.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Were you fair to her?”

“No.”

His focus was intense, scrutinizing. Even in the darkness. “Were you cruel to her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know?”

Did I know I was mean to her; what kind of question was that? I didn’t have time to argue, I either understood what he meant, on a visceral level, or I didn’t. And I did. “I knew.”

“Is that why she left?”

“No. My son…” I wanted to look away, to find something to focus on, but there was only blackness; nothing to distract from the memories of a world that seemed so far away now.

“What happened?”

“He died.”

“Your fault?”

“No one had a clue—not even the professionals we talked to.”

“Don’t make excuses. Tell me what you know, in your deepest self, to be true. Was it your fault?”

I managed to nod, and then to whisper, “It was. God, it is.”

“So,” he said, with no judgment in his voice. “Did you come here to die?”

I clenched my teeth. “I don’t know.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I wanted to do something worth remembering. To be the guy you read about, that risked his life for something just because it was the right thing to do, and it actually made a difference.”

“And if you died?”

“What would it matter?” My voice rasped. My throat hurt, as if it were untrained in speaking truth. “Who would care?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. It didn’t sound like he pitied me. If he had, it would just have made me angrier. “I hope you’ll have found this helpful when you’re back inside.”

“I didn’t come here to get therapy.”

“No; you came to hear a story. This isn’t Pythia’s protocol, but I’m going to tell you one, and I hope you can find it in yourself to believe it.”

#

Arik Rosen isn’t scared to meet the informant, not exactly. It’s a state of mind he has cultivated, honed; a version of fear he can work with. To himself, he calls it the Flow. A willingness to accept things as they happen, a temporary remission from his addiction to trying to control the future. It is only when he stops planning that Arik feels alive, real. If it turns violent, let there be violence; if he’s caught and tortured, well, that’s just the way it is, sometimes.

He bets that this is a trap. He can’t believe it’ll go smoothly, without him being caught off guard; his intuition screams at him that there’s something he hadn’t figured out yet, some ace up a sleeve waiting to be drawn. But he’s too determined to let it go. Whatever trap ensnares him, he’ll deal with it, in time. So far, he always has.

He enters the hotel at the center of its rotation, where there is almost no gravity, and takes the elevator to the third floor, pushed slightly to one side by the Coriolis effect. The lower he gets, the stronger the gravity gets, but he enjoys the pressure of the floor against his joints, even if it worsens his limp. He walks down the hall, scanning for the right room, brushing his fingers against the soft, warmly colored carpet covering the walls. It is so spacious compared to the streets he’s used to walking it makes him agoraphobic—five people could walk side by side without their shoulders touching.

Finally, he spots the door number he was looking for. As he places his hand on the handle, he feels the Flow wavering, turning into ordinary fear. Leave now, he thinks, and you might still have your life. Stay, and this memory, of right now, might be the last thing you think of as you die, regret filling every pore of your miserable existence.

#

He chuckled, his teeth reflecting the violet glare from his oxygen timer.

#

He forces himself to swipe the card he received by courier that same day, and twists the knob open.

He expected the room to be luxurious, spacious, comfortable, with broad sofas and gold-tinted mirrors, every little thing testifying to good taste. But it is rustic, almost crude, like the inside of a cabin, made of wood or something that looks like wood. Everything is clean, yet somehow there is a calming, damp smell. In the window… first of all, there is a window. It’s not something Arik is used to seeing. The glass is divided into four panels by thin wood spars, and through it a shaft of golden light is falling diagonally into the room, its shape traced by motes of dust. Outside is a meadow or a park, green with trees scattered through the grounds, and perhaps even animals hidden among them.

Except there are no animals, there. There is no other side of the window. It is just a screen, albeit a sophisticated one. Arik is still surrounded by cold rock in all directions, like he always is. But it doesn’t feel like he is closed. It feels like he could just step out of the door and walk into the meadow, lie on the grass, bathe in the sunlight.

A man is sitting on the sofa, with his back to the door. His silver-blonde hair, or wig, is sprayed, and shaped like you’d think hair should look like if you’ve only seen hair once, from a distance. An IV drip is plugged to his arm, out of Arik’s sight, the bag black, opaque, and unmarked. A dark blue blazer lies over the sofa’s back. He is watching a fire, contained to a rectangular hole at the bottom of one wall. A real fire. A real fire-place. Arik had never seen one, and though it is more enchanting, more fascinating than he could have imagined, the waste makes him nauseous. The man turns around and raises his eyes to look at Arik.

The face is unmistakable—every kid would recognize it—but the expression is so informal, so every-day, it confuses Arik for a moment. His voice is also softer than Arik expected. Off the podium, when there’s no need to rile up the masses with a projection of decisiveness and vigor, he sounds like a reasonable guy. “Coffee?” the prime minister of Ceres offers. “There’s supposed to be tea here somewhere, but I’m not a tea person, myself.”

Arik can’t believe he was made to promise not to bring a recording device. Flow, he reminds himself. “Coffee’s good.”

“Great, great.” The prime minister, the fascist hatemonger who has pushed Arik’s home, his only home, on the path toward crumbling dystopia, walks to the counter, dragging the IV stand with him, and pours steaming hot black coffee into two cups. He brings them to the brown and gold wooden table, then sits back on the couch, gesturing for Arik to sit down in front of him. Arik doesn’t want to obey, but standing behind the man feels rude. He walks around the sofa to stand on the other side of the table.

“Sugar? Milk?” The prime minister asks, a pleasant smile on his face, like an indulgent uncle. Arik looks into the fire and considers kicking him in the teeth. Not to gain any advantage; not even to force the leader to avoid the cameras for a couple of days, until his face is fixed. No: Arik wants to kick the prime minister in the face because he deserves it, plain and simple. Because he destroyed so many lives, in such a deep, meaningful way. Beyond a murderer, beyond a rapist, the crime he committed has no name. Swallowing his own teeth wouldn’t be punishment enough; an execution wouldn’t be punishment enough. Both would be a step in the right direction, though.

But Arik isn’t a fool. Any violence on his part would actually benefit the bastard, who would use it as an excuse to roll out even harsher counter measures ‘for the safety of the people’.

He takes a deep breath and sits down. As expected, the sofa takes him in a perfect embrace. “No sugar or milk.” It’s bad manners, but he refuses to thank the man. “What the fuck are we doing here?” He keeps his voice calm, as he accepts the white porcelain mug, holding it correctly by the little handle.

The prime minister smiles, his teeth even whiter in person. “Straight to the point, eh? Good man. I want you to know that I’m going to be one hundred percent honest when I present you with information that is absolutely detrimental to this government.”

Flow, Arik reminds himself. Don’t freeze up. “This conversation is having the opposite effect, so far.”

The prime minister stops the process of dumping spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his coffee and looks up at Arik, his face pure indignation. “Oh, don’t be mad at me! I’m here to help you, even though I could have had you captured and executed. Doesn’t that get me some credit, at the very least? You weren’t even checked for weapons,” he raises his hands, one holding the mug and the other the spoon. “You could assassinate me if you wanted to. Doesn’t that trust entitle me to some respect?”

“One drop in an ocean,” Arik answers coldly. He holds the coffee in one hand but doesn’t sip. It has a sophisticated, delicate aroma, and he’s certain it would taste wonderful, which only makes him angrier. “Why are you here?”

“I’ll tell you, but only after you tell me. Why are you here?” He sips, making an exaggerated, delighted expression.

“Because getting this information is the only way I can put you in jail. And putting you in jail seems to be the only way to save Ceres. We’re in a state of decay, and you and your fucking… minions are perpetuating that decay to the point where it will destroy everything, even your own position, at some point. I am here,” he enunciates every word distinctly, more loudly than he intended, “to save my home.”

“No need to get angry. I feel the same way,” he says, looking mournful.

Is this a trick? “You do remember you almost single-handedly made things what they are?”

“Not my intention, my boy; not my intention at all.” He waves a hand and brings the cup to his lips with the other, nonchalantly, as if this is all a misunderstanding.

“You fucking changed and twisted every law you could, every human rights protection; you tossed out anyone who was brave enough to try and stop you, and you say that wasn’t your fucking intention?” Arik is standing, though he doesn’t remember deciding to rise to his feet. Kicking the prime minister doesn’t seem like a bad idea anymore.

“You have a point, I admit. But would you believe me if I said that I didn’t expect any of it to work? That when I ran, I expected to fail quickly, bringing my name back into the headlines and gaining some cost-free publicity, nothing more?” He sighs dramatically, unironically. “But my presence was too natural, my charisma too radiant. When I was elected, I thought I’d be impeached, or drop in the polls hard enough I’d have to resign. I broke the law on live stream! But the more reckless I became, the more obviously criminal, the more they cheered. Is it because I am truly brilliant when it comes to words, or that the populace is mad, and always has been mad, but no one talked to them like I have, no one understood them like I have?” He shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee, his eyes closed.

“I don’t see how any of that puts us in agreement,” Arik manages to say, somewhat off balance.

“You’re not the only one smart enough to see that we’re not heading uphill. I live within the machine; I see its cogs and levers. I know better than anyone how strongly it has stuck to the trajectory but, and this is an important but, I think you could still manage to stop it, if you’re smart.”

Arik keeps his balance. For any deception, there is a truth to cut through. “You are literally in the strongest position on this entire asteroid. Why don’t you stop it?”

“The strongest?” He shook his head. “You misunderstand: I am in the weakest position on this entire asteroid.”

Arik raises an eyebrow, thinking of the countless people who were thrown out of airlocks, the people living in fear who haven’t yet been thrown out. The people who haven’t yet realized they should be afraid. He says nothing.

“I wish I could quit,” the prime minister continues. “I wish I could take the stand and say: ‘Hey guys, it was funny and all, but I think we went too far’. But I can’t.”

“They’re threatening you. The shadow government. Is that it?”

“What?” The prime minister scoffs. “Absolutely not. There’s no such thing as a shadow government—just a bunch of house-broken clerks that do what I tell them while muttering under their breath that they can’t believe they’re taking orders from me. I agree with them, by the way.”

“What, then?”

The prime minister put his cup down, turning his full attention to Arik. “Can an anxious person know he’s anxious? Sure. Can a sociopath know he’s a sociopath? Most of the time. But what if someone suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder? Could they admit to themselves that their own mental faculties are lacking? The nature of the neurosis is that they couldn’t. But that’s the purpose of intellect—and me, I’m the biggest brain on this asteroid.” He winks at Arik. Arik recalls how the prime minister used that phrase at almost every rally, every speech. ‘Biggest brain on the asteroid’. Arik will never understand why people love him for it. In the age of space travel, living within a space colony, for the love of God, people hear a politician boast about his intelligence and simply take his word for it. “Big enough to bypass that kind of mental deadlock, and tell you things as they are. I wouldn’t think anyone on Ceres is so capable that they could become its leader without even wanting to, but I did. I don’t think many could manipulate the entire political system to their side so easily, but I have. And of those who could have tipped the scales like I did, I don’t think many would see that they are actually bringing ruin upon the colony, as well as themselves, like I have.”

Arik clenches and unclenches the muscles of his good leg. There’s something wrong about someone talking like that without getting some teeth broken.

“I always had an acute sense of where I was, mentally speaking.”

“Then why won’t you fucking step down?” Arik snaps. “If you’re so capable. Tell them that you realized you fucked up, and resign.”

“Not so simple. You’re the kind of person who can live their life, not giving a damn what anyone thinks, following their own moral compass. Look at you now, showing me how livid you are even when it serves no purpose; you wear your heart on your sleeve, and I respect that. I truly do; the world needs more people like you. But there are other people, like me, who have to rise to the top, to win the appreciation of their colleagues and underlings, no matter how beneath them said colleagues are. These people, winners, if you will, simply cannot back down, even when they realize they’re running off a cliff. I cannot even imagine what my party’s official line would be if I were to tell them I intend to resign, that our opposition was right all along. Their faces, if I told them I was quitting…” He shakes his head. “Not to mention that I couldn’t hope to keep scoring these,” he gently passes one hand over the tube running the drip into his other arm, “and then what? Grow old? Slowly weaker and stupider, until I died?” He waves both hands. “I cannot. I will not. And that’s where you come in.”

Arik has heard about the latest medical breakthroughs by Earth’s Sovereign, but he didn’t expect there to be such free trade between the Sovereign and Ceres. Arik takes a sip from the coffee, and it does taste wonderful, deep without being heavy. He wonders if it came from Earth along with the drips, and feels tainted by the proximity. “How much are you paying for it?” He gestures towards the drip with his free hand.

“It’s a gift, from the kindness of Earth’s Sovereign’s heart, if it has one. And what a great gift it is. Diamonds are a proof of effort, but what gift could be greater than giving a human being more time?”

“But… What’s in it for Earth?”

“Clever, isn’t it?” The prime minister smiles, like a predatory animal who’d caught the scent of another in a dark forest. “If you’re half as smart as I think you are, you’ll figure it out.”

Whatever that means, Arik does not yet understand, but he feels there’s a realization behind that flat statement, staggering in its scope. Focus, he reminds himself. Flow. “Why did you bring me here?”

“You need to take me down. Not assassinate me,” the prime minister says, one finger raised. “Obviously, that would do more harm than good—no: get something legal on me, or my appointees. Even if it’s immensely damning, my people could still pretend it’s another prosecution employed by an immoral opposition. As you may have noticed, I’ve done extensive groundwork on that narrative.”

“Get something? You’re here. I understand you’re too scared,” the word makes the prime minister wince, “of your supporters hating you to do something yourself, but we’re here, now. Tell me where to look, at the very least.”

“I assume you know, doing what you do, that no one’s getting sent to Earth.”

“Yes. You’re throwing people out to space, suit-less, to choke.” The old man’s pained expression gives Arik pause.

“Not suit-less. I wish it were that humane. But it is a constitutional law of Ceres that an airlock cannot be opened unless everyone inside has a functioning suit with at least twenty four hours of oxygen. It’s hard-wired into the machine. Tells you something about how founders thought, if you think about it, but the bottom line is that the computer simply won’t open the hatch otherwise.

“So what? It’s an open secret at this point that you’re executing so-called enemies of the states illegally, and your supporters don’t seem to be losing sleep over it.” Arik sounds bitter, even to himself. “So, what’s the difference?”

“With suit-less airlocking you get a quick, painless death. The moment the pressure drops you pass out and it’s over, everyone’s happy. But when people are left in their suits to wander around at the dark pole of Ceres while their oxygen runs out, it’s a form of psychological torture. A brilliant form of torture, born out of circumstance. Thing is, torture under state mandate is a breach of Ceresian rights.”

“And execution isn’t?”

“You misunderstand. The law is whatever people decide it is. If they don’t want the law upheld, it won’t be. What you need is something that would convict me not only in the eyes of the court, but in the eyes of the people as well. If the people saw, not heard, but actually saw, what we were doing to people, they would change their minds.”

“Why would they care?”

“If it were Martian refugees, for example, they wouldn’t care at all. That’s the reason I let them come in at all, so people will have someone to hate. But show them a Ceresian citizen, just like them, crying about how their human dignity was taken from them, and the people will go running for their pitchforks. Trust me when I say that nobody knows PR better than I do. And I’m telling you this would stick.”

“But it’s got nothing to do with you. You’re not the one throwing people out.”

The prime minister looks at him with such palpable disappointment that Arik, to his surprise, feels ashamed. “Not me, but it will put someone under me on low heat, and they will beg for a deal as soon as the cuffs touch their skin. They’ll sing louder and clearer than the birds of Earth ever did.” He looks out of the window, and Arik just manages to catch a glimpse of a blue and gray wing fluttering past.

“Do they have anything to sing about that we don’t know already?”

“Oh, don’t be naive,” the prime minister says. “When you see the snake’s tail peeking from the dirt, you can be damn certain there’s a whole lot more of it hidden underground.”

“Then why not just tell me yourself? Why have me get your underlings, so they’ll rat on you?”

“I gave you the loaded gun, my friend. I’m not going to shoot it for you.”