CHAPTER 20 - AND DON’T FORGET THE TOWEL
Kayden spent the rest of the evening talking to various freelance ship captains, of which there were many, about accommodations.
Eventually, the only cheap enough one with five free spots was found: Baatyr Kylbanov, at the helm of the starship 'Dagger of Wind III'. The Dagger was a hybrid cargo and passenger vessel, much smaller than the Celestial, and somewhat faster. As it was a very budget-class ship, the five would share their room with three more people.
Night was falling as everyone went up the tether to the docking spot, and got a good look at the Dagger from the outside. Pock-marked Whipple shield. Three well-worn engine nozzles, and three radiators that have clearly been welded back together after catastrophic failure. Propellant tanks from different manufacturers. Overall, it was short and stumpy, essentially a bunch of tanks with a few decks tucked in somewhere in the middle. The only ring was the ring of the Ugolnikov drive.
"Uhhh no gravity in warp?" he said, pointing to the ship. "What are we gonna do during the jump?"
"Suffer," Lai said.
Kayden gulped and floated along the ramp in zero-g. The captain himself, an elderly-looking man of North Asian heritage, greeted them while standing sideways on the wall. He wore an old, faded blue jumpsuit and a slightly crumpled service cap. "Quite the group we have here, huh?"
"Yeah. On a trip to see Earth."
"Ain't all it's cracked up to be, young lad. But maybe I'm jaded… so many prettier sights elsewhere in the Federation, and with actual room to breathe to boot. Not to mention alien civilizations… ah I'm digressing. Welcome aboard!"
Kayden nodded and continued into the sole bunk room. It was bare metal, with a bare metal floor, and no furnishing whatsoever. The two bunks, very close together, were more like four hospital or barrack cots, stacked on top of each other, and had plain white pillows and sheets attached to the mattress with sticky fasteners… that were at least clean, and had a pleasant freshly-washed smell. An occasionally-flickering light cast its bright, cold glow upon everything. The only other notable feature was a single door leading to the bathroom.
Three cots in the right bunk were occupied by a human woman, a human boy, and a weasel-like anthro-genemod. They were sleeping, so the group kept quiet as they went about their evening routine, then quickly fell asleep too, despite the uncomfortable cots. Ray took their spot above those three, while the other four took their spots on the other side of the room. The captain's words pinballed around in Kayden's head while he was in bed.
***
18 Feb 2230
When Kayden woke up, his back hurt from the now-present gravity settling him into an uncomfortable position overnight. To think that there would be about a week more in total spent in this tin can. He groaned as he pried off the mattress to reveal the luggage that was stowed away there, and got dressed.
There was no TV on the wall, so the only way to check the cameras was through an app. Not that there was much to see. Just stars, some planets that looked like slightly larger stars, and Tau Ceti itself. There was a reason no ships had windows: too much weight and especially structural weakness made them a liability, especially when modern screens looked essentially the same as windows, without the possibility of a microasteroid killing everyone in the room instantly. Whatever knee-jerk attitudes of 'I want to see it with my own eyes' existed before passenger space travel became commonplace have faded away over the many decades. High-end cruise starliners often had cupola modules, but this ship was to a cruise starliner as a shed was to a mansion. Even on the pad's screen, the planets barely moved at all while the stars stayed static. The only indication that the Dagger was in motion at all was the steady hum of the triple fusion drives.
It appeared that everyone else woke up before him.
"Good morning. You know," Kayden said to Lai, who was poking his head out and looking at him from the bed one level upwards, "remember what the captain said when we got on?"
"Yeaa."
"It made me think… I wish we had taken a more leisurely tour plan. More than two days. Would have been enough time to see more than one city and its immediate surroundings. Too late. Ah well, considering the rumored nano de-aging advances I might have four more centuries left in me. Can always come back."
"Ya made a mistake. Bashing yaself over it won't undo it so why stick that in your head?"
Kayden sighed. "You're right. Just something we humans do I guess."
"Ya all are weird," Lai said.
"You're weird too. But you're less weird than– nevermind."
An irritated hiss was heard from the bunk below him.
"Sorry!"
Kayden took a very long pause. "So, Lai, did you end up telling Amani? I kind of got too embroiled in this stuff to ask."
The relmai glanced at the three strangers, who were still in their beds, looking at their datapads, except that the child was now with the woman– likely his mother– and they watched some kind of cartoon together. Then he squinted and turned back to Kayden.
"Told him. I'd have told ya ibh he said anytdhing. Nodhing. No response. Quiet as a buokuwbou."
"Odd," Kayden said, a little disappointed.
His disappointment was quickly washed away by a tide of elation as he checked the news article and saw that Jonathan had been found innocent. Not only was the evidence of foul play received, but it proved enough to immediately let his uncle off the hook! He stood up, still on the bed, and shouted "YES! YES IT HAPPENED! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!"
THUMP!
Was the sound made after Kayden tumbled out of the cot and fell flat onto his face. As he sat back up, he noticed that the three strangers were looking at him like he completely lost his marbles. His fellow travelers were only slightly less confused. Thankfully, the acceleration was still low, and the fall didn't hurt as much as it could have.
"Are you okay, sir?" the mother said.
"Yeah I just… received good news I've waited weeks for?" He said, wiping off a slight nosebleed.
"I see."
"Iss it your uncle Jonathan's trial?" Nheka hissed aloud.
Kayden sighed. "...yes," he said, then turned to look her right in the W-pupiled eyes. If glares could kill, Nheka would have been reduced to subatomic particles then.
The mother raised an eyebrow.
"It's a long story okay?"
Muffled laughter was heard from one of the top bunks.
22 Feb 2230
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
It was morning, and a tinny voice was heard over an aging intercom in the corner of the room. "Hello passengers, this is your captain speaking, we're entering warp within thirty minutes, so uh I am legally obligated to remind you that if you have even mild warp sickness you should take HyperStabilizane or if you don't have any then turn on something loud over headphones and preferably look at a wholesome video or something in that vein. Good luck."
"I have a very bad feeling about this," Kayden said as he pulled out an extra-heavy-duty pair of headphones that he bought on Kāmohoaliʻi. They looked like something a radio operator in vintage fiction would wear, except much puffier and with more antennas than necessary.
"Ya trying to pick up ancient broadcasts bhrom Earth with that thing?" Lai said. "Like they depicted us doing, ya know. I don't need no stupid headphones. I wonder how the strong warp hallucinations interact with juuuust a minor dose…"
Kayden rolled his eyes and said. "Well, enjoy the colors then."
Soon, the warp drive kicked in with a very loud clang, and the lights went out for a full three seconds, while the gravity went out indefinitely. Kayden immediately felt like his brain was being pounded on from the inside, with screeching, unintelligible voices and lights darting across his vision. He managed to keep his composure by pressing his face right into his pad, which showed a video of a baby fox cuddling with a duck. Meanwhile, cheerful mirthwave music flooded his ears and nearly drowned out the eldritch screaming. He was afraid to even move as he remained in this state, huddled to this virtual anchor of reality.
Another screech, somewhat more mundane and coming from the bunk above, was heard, soon accompanied by the frantic rumbling of a certain someone digging through luggage, but not stopping and rather segueing into intense swearing in the relmai language.
"Idiot," Kayden thought.
Soon, the voices and the music were once again the only audible sounds. This was to be a fairly lengthy warp: fifteen hours of this hell. But it passed.
Kayden was half-asleep when, with another jolt and brief power outage, the voices stopped and the gravity came back as the engines started humming again. He took off the headphones and climbed up to check in on Lai.
The relmai was still alive, as Kayden expected, but had a nosebleed of dark, oily blood and was still shaking all over.
"So you found out, then. You're a genius, Lai. The next Ugolnikov," Kayden paused, then realized he was kicking his friend while he was down. "Seriously though, I hope you're okay. Sorry for everything."
Lai just covered his head with a blanket and tried to fall asleep as Kayden hugged him.
With a sigh, Kayden checked the cameras.
Here it was, Sol. Of course, from such a distance, it wasn't exactly distinguishable from any other star. Neptune must have been one of the somewhat large dots nearby. Somewhere behind was Pluto, with its immense astro-naval base. Somewhere near the star, invisible, was Earth. So close, and yet so far. But to think that in the early days of space travel, it took many decades to get to this point… and less than three centuries later, human civilization spread as far as it physically could until it ran into alien civilizations, friendly or not. Not that said civilizations prevented it from growing too much– the frontier was already difficult to govern.
Kayden then fell asleep too.
The next five days were spent being very, very bored. By the middle of the next day, the two groups, previously mostly having kept to themselves, had got to know each other. The woman was named Elise, the boy was Leopold, and the genemod's name was Caze.
The transit to Earth, the final leg of Kayden and co's journey, was occupied by mostly playing board and card games on the floor between the bunks, or experiencing eightfold multiplayer Simulacrum adventures… interspersed by looking at the emptiness where Earth was supposed to be.
Some days later, a beautiful pale blue dot winked into existence in place of the emptiness. Kayden felt a profound feeling of nostalgia even looking at this tiny speck. It resonated in his mind, sending waves of almost spiritual warmth through his entire being. Somewhere on this little, in the grand scheme of things insignificant, blue planet, the first creature of his species attained sapience hundreds of thousands of years ago. Less poetically, this is where his parents lived for a few years after moving here from the core, before moving to the frontier– though his grandparents spent most of their lives on the capital.
27 Feb 2230
And here it was. Earth. The cradle of humanity. The shining beacon of Terran civilization. The most diverse planet in the Oval. Home to more than ten billion humans, genemods, uplifts, aliens, and AIs. But mostly the former three categories.
Starships circled it like fireflies would circle a lamp at night, their torch drives bright as stars. Its oceans, all a rich shade of blue, and landmasses, ranging from green to yellow to white, were partially concealed by wispy white clouds and swirling cyclones. The Arctic and Antarctic, their fringes bright green; Africa, green in the north and center but yellow in the south; Americas, both various hues of green all over, except for gray coasts; Asia, all colors mixed together in a beautiful patchwork; Europe, mottled green and gray; Australia, mostly dark green with a blotch of yellow in the middle; Oceania… wait, where was Oceania again? Are maybe a dozen extant islands really a continent?
Its night side was spider-webbed with yellow city lights on land, and mottled with yellow dots in the sea. This was more city lights than Kayden had ever seen in his life. It must have been cramped in there…
The ship docked to an utterly immense spaceport, attached to somewhere in Central Africa. Hundreds of ships circled it, of a staggering variety of different classes and species of origin. It took a while for a spot to free up so the Dagger could rendezvous… but it did. The inside of the spaceport was as utilitarian as the one at Hephaestus. There were recreational areas in the two layers of the spinning ring, but Kayden didn't care.
"WE MADE IT! OH MY GOD WE MADE IT!!!"
Everyone scrambled towards the elevator down, and thankfully it was just about to depart as the five floated inside the last, cramped pod of a 'train' and were launched downwards.
The elevator was descending to a section of jungle fairly close, but not too close, to the coast. Soon, the city became visible. Kinshasa, in what was formerly the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but now was one of the five rotating capitals of the African Union. It was denser and more haphazard than any exoplanetary city, thanks to being much, much older, and was also utterly sprawling. By the time the buildings could be made out, there was not even a glimpse of jungle on the horizon. The buildings themselves were towering, sleek spires and prisms, in shape and composition resembling those of Kāmohoaliʻi… but between them were nestled some short, antique buildings, some dating back from before the Age of Protests.
Kayden and co hastily left the immense lobby. The human took a deep breath once on the street. Even here, in a megapolis, the air felt just as or more natural than on his homeworld, as compared to the garden worlds. It was very refreshing.
Everyone sat down on the closest bench, ornate and of real wood.
"Okay so I gave it a thought while on the ship… I gotta say something before we go make a plan for what to do in Kinshasa. Something important," Kayden said.
"What?" Lai said, tilting his head.
"I'm not coming back."
Nheka, Lai, Ray, and Tiik turned towards him. "What?!"
"Did I stutter? I'm not coming back."
"Bud why?" Tiik said.
"Because they are likely waiting for me on NA. I can't come back or I'll get poisoned, stabbed, or shot. I don't want to live my life in fear. But they probably don't know I'm here now. I'm staying here. Until the dust settles. Or forever. Whichever comes first." Kayden loudly tapped his foot.
"I do not want to sstay…" Nheka hissed, and Lai nodded. "Saaaaame."
"Well then you can go when the two weeks are over. Ray too when they feel like it. But I spent a while contemplating this and I'm not gonna come back. I'll use my UBI money to rent an apartment somewhere on the edge of town and live here. You could visit me later, it's not too long of a trip if you skim the edges."
"Are you going to just abandon your homeland?" Nheka asked.
Kayden wiped a tear off his face. "Yes. It's that or have my life abandoned from me. This was a mistake. I should have just let them go…"
Lai firmly planted a hand on his shoulder. "Ibh ya did, then ya would have your uncle end up in jail. Earth is nice. Don't worry about it!"
Kayden simply started crying, and all four of his friends embraced him in a tight hug.
EPILOGUE
27 Feb 2232
Kayden, now older and with slightly longer hair, was sitting at his computer, doing some boilerplate coding work for his personal game development project, his second one after his previous game released to critical acclaim and modest financial success, when the doorbell outside rang, or rather beeped repeatedly. Opening the door, he saw a chohjozra, two relmai, a vaguely feline full-body cyborg, a stocky human partial cyborg, an elf-like near-human, a black-furred semi-Lateral genemod, and his mother, standing there.
"...what? I… I didn't expect… is this some kind of hologram prank? What the…" Kayden then completely lost his composure and collapsed onto the floor, crying tears of joy.
The End