CHAPTER 13 - GOODBYE, ALACRITY!

26 Jan 2230

The next day was overall quite uneventful. After visiting the local landmarks one last time, Kayden was on a seaship ride with his group, in the early evening. It was a small, narrow vessel, the size of a yacht, completely white and with a flat, empty top deck surrounded by waist-height railings, with a small bridge that had a single, curved window. It was low to the water, and the briny, warm foam of the sea occasionally lashed across the deck, only to drain away in a few moments. The air was very fresh, the sky was clear, and the waters were calm. This was a very alien experience to Kayden– his home planet did not have any bodies of water large enough to set sail in… yet. The rocking made him a little queasy. There were a few other passengers, all humans, but overall it was not crowded. The cries, or rather lengthy wails, of large blue-and-pink seagull-like creatures with sickle-shaped beaks and massive, thin wings occasionally pierced the air, putting something of a damper on the atmosphere.

"So I never asked you before, Lai," Kayden said after a period of silence, leaning down against the railings and looking down into the clear gulf that seemed bottomless, "So I never asked before… What is the deal with you and Amani? I was a little afraid to ask but it’s been nagging me since like a week ago."

"Eeeeh?" the magenta relmai walked up to him.

"Like how did you end up knowing each other?"

Lai looked around. Nope, nobody was close enough to overhear the explanation that would soon ensue, what with the waves and the aforementioned annoying birds drowning out a lot of noise.

"Well then… it all started about… well about a bhew years ago? We had just moved to New Arizona. There, I bhirst spent a while in Mayisle. Gotta know a loooot obh people there. Then I moved to Upper Surwich, and also got to know a lot of people there," he noticed Kayden looking at him with a slightly exasperated expression on his face, "Aaaand, let me just get do the point. I became Amani’s friend during the end obh his tenure as benefactor of excavations under Green Mountain. We met in a–"

"Wait, what?" Kayden interrupted. "He’s connected to the excavation? Is that why he seems so… enthusiastic to help?"

"Yea."

"That makes sense. I just want to say. Thank you so much."

"Eeeeh? Don’t thank me. Thank him."

Kayden smiled. "It does seem like a very lucky coincidence."

***

Later that evening, the group was back in the motel room. The stalk of the space elevator, visible a good distance away in the haze, partially hidden by one of the sleek towers, seemed to beckon them.

Kayden went through everyone’s baggage and verified that nothing was forgotten. No, everything was in its place. They packed more food than before this time, to hopefully avoid having to eat spaceship food at all, perhaps with some fasting at the end of the journey leg.

After this, those three of the travelers who needed showers took them. After all, you needed to pay to use showers on spaceships, as it put strain on the life support system. Thus, it was necessary to perform such water-wasting activities planetside, where water was functionally infinite. Though Kayden was still a little conservative with water by habit, as on his homeworld it was still not something to be spent willy-nilly thanks to its aridity. But here, it was free.

***

As the cab of the space elevator went up, Kayden looked down at the city shrinking below him and sighed. His enjoyment of his stay here was a little soured by the flitter crash the other day, but overall it was pleasant enough.

The air on the station and the ship felt stale as Kayden and co went through the corridors to their cabin. It was also colder, and Nheka grumbled about it all the way.

"Well," Kayden said as he sat down on his bunk. "It’s gonna depart in two hours."

Lai and Tiik hugged and kissed, then muttered something to each other and parted ways, with Tiik leaving the room after waving goodbye.

Nheka put her coat back on, as the room was notably cold and dry by her standards, and even pulled a blanket over herself. Tiik eventually walked back in and sat down beside Lai as they quietly talked.

Kayden was pretty bored… and then he remembered one little thing he bought yesterday. He reached into his suitcase and took out a deck of cards. Very analog compared to most entertainment available, but a benefit of that was that, unlike sophisticated digital games, everyone could understand what to do. After all, Simulacrum with its human cultural assumptions wasn’t as fun for Nheka and, to a lesser extent, Lai and Tiik, compared to Kayden. Yet card games were abstract enough that any sapient being could play them just fine with no loss of enjoyment. After all, the logical faculties required to play them were simply natural consequences of sapience. This applied to many other abstract games too, from chess to go. Learning and even mastery of such games was equally possible for every non-eusocial species with sight, be they human, eight-legged alligator, or pink squirrel-wolf.

The teach of the game Kayden picked, a bluffing game from the early 2100s simply called ‘Falsify’, was pretty fast. The rules were rather simple, though the interactions with the jokers were a little confusing.

The game as played however, was, in simple words, a right mess. The two relmai were extremely easy to read, with their exaggerated emotions, and at one point Lai slammed his muzzle into his cards repeatedly. He was also clearly conspiring to share the win with Tiik, and backing him up. Nheka, in spite of her aversion to lying, was very capable once that was overcome, thanks to her beak not being very good at showing her emotional state… and that’s not even getting to Ray, who played in a cold, ruthless, and calculating manner, helped along by their mask-like head making for a constant poker face.

Kayden ended up being dead last in points, though he was sure Lai and Tiik would be if they were not constantly helping each other. Nheka was second place, and Ray was first by a wide margin. They seemed very smug about it.

They played several more rounds like this, with the standings not changing much. But everyone had fun, at least. Or, in Ray’s case, had some intellectual stimulation. Time went by fast… and then the announcement was made, interrupting a round right as Kayden was about to pull ahead in points for the first time. He swore under his breath as the gravity turned off and the furniture was rearranged once again, with Nheka’s help.

They managed to finish the final round in zero-g, with Kayden being third-to-last, only because Lai ragequit following an incident where he accidentally revealed his cards, leaving Tiik out to dry.

Watching the transit away from Alacrity, Kayden didn’t feel as sad as he did when the ship was leaving New Arizona. He just didn’t have as much attachment to the lush planet. It may have been prettier and livelier, but it was not his home.

***

The days went on. Two days to leave Eurydice, twelve more hours to enter Acheron…

27 Jan 2230

The ship was about to enter warp in three hours, and it was late evening according to the shipboard clock and the circadian rhythms of the passengers. The group was just off from a holoconcert in the rec room, which was specializing in soft-edge, a toned-down version of hard-edge, which was itself derived from relmai music, made palatable to humans. It was still… intense. Too fast and grating for Nheka, who waited out most of it in the hallway outside.

"It felt like ear torture…" she said as they walked down the dull gray corridor, after putting away her datapad.

Lai looked at her incredulously. "Nah, that shit was weaaaak. Like ambience. Back on Tama we listen to stuff bhive times more loud and biting than dhis for hours non-stop."

"Hours of that? Terrible… Not the time, however… I remember listening to eechbzekhceraa for days at a time…"

"Eech what?" Kayden said.

"It iss what we call much of our mussic… Essentially, it iss one tone or other protracted ssound, ssuch as a waterfall, interssperssed with the beating of a drum or, nowadayss, the sshrill beeping of a modulated sine wave…"

"And it lasts for days?"

"One ssong can, yess…"

"That sounds b…" Kayden paused for a split second, "...eautiful."

Nheka stared him in the eyes for a few moments, as if knowing full well what he really meant to say, but did not comment.

When they returned to their room, they went back to their usual routine of playing games and occasionally glancing out at the starfield visible on the viewscreen, static and unmoving…

29 Jan 2230

Kayden took the warp trip easier than the first time around. The voices were, of course, still present, yet they did not disturb him as much.

As soon as the bubble unraveled, placing the ship at the edge of Acheron, Kayden got a good look at the system. An orange dwarf, albeit a much dimmer one than Flamerider, nearly a red dwarf. The trip inwards would take less than a day, considering Cocytus’ distance from the star and thus relative proximity to the warp boundary.

Kayden checked his messages… and saw none from Saera. He got very worried about her, but ended up figuring that she got very busy again, or simply forgot.

After a few bored hours, the iceball that was their next destination came into direct view. It was white, blindingly so, with a few darker clouds. Some small blue lakes were barely visible if one was to squint, and in the center of them the red spots of active volcanoes. The night side was partially visible, and a very sparse, dim band of city lights was going across the equator, with some clumped around elsewhere, next to the rare volcanic lakes.

"People live here?" Nheka said with anguish in her voice. "Why?"

"Cocytus has oxygenated atmosphere caused by unicellular algae thriving in relatively warm volcanic bodies of water, where light may reach the otherwise-subglacial ocean. Native multicellular organisms unexist on Cocytus due to the planet’s youth and harsh conditions. Example: when planet reaches its apogee, the atmosphere cools below freezing point of CO2 for around a month, causing drysnowfall. Subglacial ocean is shallow, allowing exploitation of extraordinary concentration of metals which very rare elsewhere, even in asteroids, such as iridium and rhodium, amount of which outweighs difficulty of mining. High metal content and abundant energy also allow shipbuilding industry. Last, being a low-mass habitable system relatively away from other inhabited systems and helped by infrastructure, Acheron is a refueling depot," Ray explained.

Kayden nodded. "It’s spring there, but turn up the heating on your suit to maximum, Nheka! And pack extra batteries. Also, uh…" he glanced at her eight exposed feet and tail hand. "Do you have, like, booties?"

"No…"

"Damn. Well, they sell and offer for rent warm clothing at the depot, maybe I could find something for you. Gonna rent a good winter coat for myself there, I know they offer those for tourists. You know, like the people in the Antarctic towns wear on Earth."

Soon, the ship docked at the spaceport, which was quite large and had many various starships docked to it. After the usual routine customs check, the group followed to the lobby, which was actually quite brightly colored, with red swirls decorating the walls and orange circles and crosses dotting the floor.

"Well this place looks like home. A bit." Lai said, looking around. "Still not colorful enough."

Kayden immediately noticed that there were even more genemods there than at Alacrity… and mostly animal-hybrid ones with thick fur. They formed a solid three-fifths of the crowd there: from wolf-people to polar-bear-people. Understandable, given the environment. And even they wore warm clothing, though nothing compared to the humans, who were thoroughly wrapped in brightly-colored, puffy coats, jackets, hats, and goggles. Many of the genemods were noticeably much larger than the others, with extensive cybernetic enhancements and borderline-alien phenotypes not immediately recognizable as any real animal. Each of these Laterals, as they were called, had extra limbs or even extra heads. Kayden felt a little intimidated by them– who wouldn’t be?– but didn’t really pay them much attention.

Even without going down to the surface, the people clearly seemed more lively than on the warm, sunny jungle planet. Kayden was puzzled by this.

While the space elevator car went down, the planet’s surface became visible. Dunes, similar to those on Kayden’s homeland, yet made of snow rather than sand, rolled across the landscape surrounding the equatorial city, Permafrost. It was much smaller than Littlegulf and mostly consisted of an irregular grid of squat, rectangular, buildings with pyramidal roofs in all colors of the rainbow. It was early morning, and all the lights were on, illuminating the narrow streets with a soft yellow light that seemed cozy even from the outside. A few railways spread out from the settlement, going off into the vast cold desert.

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As soon as the doors opened in the depot, the group left alongside the usual commuters. It was decorated similarly to the spaceport’s lobby, with the walls slathered in abstract patterns in red, green, blue, and various intermediate colors. The gravity was the same as on New Arizona. It wasn’t as crowded here, and Kayden went to a secluded room in the corner with his friends. The only thing there was a huge vending machine that stocked winter clothes, all neatly vacuum-packed into small bags, at most forty centimeters in length, so easily compressible thanks to utilizing materials such as graphene aerogel as insulation. On its illuminated glass shelves were coats, pants, boots, mittens, hats, balaclavas, tail sleeves, tentacle sleeves… but no booties specifically for chohjozra. Each item had a buy price and a daily rent price, and could be selected using a keypad on the side of the vendor.

"Well," Kayden said. "What do we do now?" He glanced at Nheka.

Right as he was pacing around the room, trying to think of something, he heard the clang of a pair of mittens being dispensed. And another. And another. And another. In quick succession.

"Tiik, what are you–"

The white relmai made a ‘shush’ gesture, pointed to the ‘bought’ tag on all four bags, took out a small pocket knife from his robe, and slashed talon holes in all eight mittens. After glancing at the last, ninth limb, he dispensed a fifth pair and did the same to one of the mittens, putting the other in his suitcase.

"...are you sure we won’t get in trouble for this?" Kayden said as he watched Nheka put on all nine mittens.

"Why would we? Do you think there are glove rights activists around? I bought them, why would it matter?" Tiik said.

"Fair enough… why not boots for her four back feet though?"

"Boots won’t sit well on her feet. Human boots aren’t shaped right."

Kayden nodded, and everyone dressed in warm clothing, all rented. Kayden put on a yellow coat, blue pants, and high boots; the two relmai put on garish multicolored full-body coats with digitigrade boots; and Ray just turned on their internal heating to prevent cold damage to their batteries and joint lubrication. The four organics also put on balaclavas: in a happy coincidence the ones fitted for relmai happened to fit Nheka’s beak well enough with a bit of stretching. Even the puffy winter coats felt very, very light, due to being filled not with cotton but with the lightest possible solid.

The street outside was astonishingly, bone-chillingly cold, a sharp contrast to the well-heated depot. Nobody regretted dressing that well. The thermometer app on Kayden’s datapad showed a temperature of -58C. The sky was clear, bathed in the ethereal morning light. The streets were free of snow; wheeled street-sweeper-like robots patrolled the sidewalk, sweeping up every bit of snow often swept in by errant gusts of wind. The grid of the city was shifted between rows and columns in order to prevent the streets from becoming wind tunnels, but the incessant storm of the outside glacier was still occasionally felt even here in the center.

In spite of the weather, people walked on the sidewalk and cars drove past. This was simply life here, and Kayden guessed everyone got used to it being this way. The travelers’ motel was merely a short walk away so there was no need to take public transport. It was a building like any other from the outside, with light orange walls and a neon blue roof, with a flashing sign reading

Permafrost Municipal Motel

"Sort of an unimaginative name, huh?" Kayden said.

Ray immediately responded. "It is state-owned, like every business on Cocytus. Since its first settlement, planet was ruled by All-Cocytus Workers’ Coalition, a coalition of socialist and communist parties representing best interests of the mining unions. Everything about its development planned meticulously by a committee of sapients with cybernetic help."

"Interesting."

The room, located at the topmost, fifth floor, was furnished with quite simple yet extravagantly-patterned furniture. From a dresser with every drawer in a different color, to wallpaper with concentric lime green squares, to a small round table with a red bullseye pattern, nothing was left uncolored.

After everyone was back in their normal clothes, Kayden sat down for a brief meal of crackers with tea, while his companions mostly talked about something next to the window.

"Alright, so here’s the plan," he said. "The city is a little bit boring so let’s not spend our two days here. It’s like a frozen-over Upper Surwich without domes and with less variety. Instead, we could do some more… extreme outdoors stuff. Here’s a list," he then opened his datapad and showed a list of various activities.

Discussion ensued. The subglacial diving was out as it turned out Lai was afraid of being underwater, and the skydiving was a no-go due to Kayden being quite scared of heights and, after recent events, planes.

Finally, they settled on a rare local opportunity. The local snowmobile racing organization was only today offering rides across the rolling snow dunes of the endless glacier outside, passing through ravines and even some natural ice arches… at speeds faster than any civilian car.

"Won’t the wind make me feel cold even through the coat?"

"Nah," Kayden said. "They have windshields, remember? Oh wait you probably never saw one in your life," he then paused. "I didn’t either but I saw vids and photos."

Everyone was in general agreement, so the group dressed back up and just walked to the edge of the town towards the local ‘mobile park. It was a small one-story building with a red roof and barred windows. The inside was warm enough that it was uncomfortable to remain in winter clothes, so the travelers didn’t stay there for long. Behind a queue was a reception desk staffed by an elderly human of ambiguous gender. The largest model was picked, which conveniently could seat 5 passengers and a driver. Everyone paid with their own money; the ride wasn’t particularly expensive considering this was not an exotic mode of transportation here.

The driver’s body and face were hidden by a white coat-jumpsuit and a reflective-visored helmet, like those worn by motorcyclists. As they walked towards the parked snowmobiles, he silently gave away visor-like goggles to protect the eyes against wind and snow. Those goggles were made of a rubbery, pliable, shiny, yet translucent material, and could stretch to fit any amount and position of eyes.

"Interesting invention," Kayden mumbled as he put them on over his balaclava, and they seemed to solidify on contact with his skin.

The snowmobile looked like any other, with an aerodynamic frame, bright red paint, two skids, and a visible internal-combustion engine at the back.

"Er… why do they use hydrocarb engines here? Aren’t they illegal for civvies?" Kayden said to the driver.

"Not illegal here," he tersely responded with a thick Eastern European accent and continued after a pause. "It won’t matter if all the gasses just freeze into drysnow somewhere at the poles, ya know? And unlike a car we need all the power density here."

"Ah. Makes sense."

The driver continued talking as he ducked to adjust something with a wrench. "Even here in January you often touch what looks like normal snow and it just instantly evaporates under your hand with a pouf. Was surreal to me when I first moved."

Soon, the snowmobile started moving, with Nheka perched uncomfortably onto one seat, leaning backwards with her eight feet in the air, next to Kayden who was sitting on the edgemost seat. She and Kayden were startled by the sudden chopping noise of the motor as the vehicle accelerated. Kayden looked back to see the city gradually disappearing into the distance, then again forward, suppressing his fear. Snow dunes were weaved between and large clumps masterfully dodged as the ‘mobile swerved around like a hare evading a wolf. If not for the seatbelts, everyone would be flung out of the seats and onto the cold semi-compressed snow that made up the ground, but as it was, they were merely swayed around.

As top speed was reached, the landscape turned into a blur of two colors: white and pale cyan. The dim, reddish-orange sun was occasionally visible behind a dune, yet it did not sear anyone’s eyes even if directly looked at. In fact, it was the only static thing at that point, an anchor in the stormy sea of motion. Kayden’s fear turned to awe and adrenaline as the vehicle skimmed between the sides of two pointed dunes like a skateboard in a half-pipe, swinging around wildly.

Then came a sharp slide down the tip of a natural canyon, a fresh crack in the planet-spanning glacier. The wind howled and whistled in his ears as the snowmobile accelerated beyond its usual top speed, going straight between the walls of dull blue ice that framed the road ahead. Everyone was pressed into their seats. It was during this moment that Kayden noticed something dark on the edge of the canyon, but didn’t think much of it.

Not having lost much of its insane speed, the snowmobile went back up a similar natural ramp on the other end of the nascent canyon… exiting at about a thirty-degree angle…

Into the air. Kayden and the rest, except Ray, involuntarily screamed as the vehicle made some serious air… he could see above some smaller dunes now, and the wind not just howled but yelled into his ears…

…

Almost as if calculated, the snowmobile flew over a dune and landed on its downwards slope, gradually slowing down to reasonable speeds. In fact, it was likely calculated– the area was scouted before the trip and the driver chose the right speed to jump over it perfectly. Nobody even felt a strong impact, as the seats were amortized to prevent spinal injuries from this stunt.

While Kayden was still processing this, they reached something of a different biome: much flatter, bare ground that was a mixture of compressed snow and ice chunks, peppered with mesa-like formations, jutting out of the ice like the backs of immense sea monsters. There were many arches and tunnels in the older ones, abraded into the ice by harsh winds prying apart microfractures.

Though the tunnel they entered was high enough for even Nheka, she and Kayden instinctively ducked for the duration of it. His heart beat hard and fast for the whole brief duration of it, and only intensified as the snowmobile made a sharp turn, which leaned everyone sideways, and went back in for another tunnel-dive, then a few passes through the arcs. In between the anxiety of having his head taken clean off by a low ceiling, he looked at Nheka to see her just completely frozen– not in cold, but in utter terror.

The driver seemed to be having fun doing this. In fact, he took it a little too close, as a shard jutting out of the pillar of an arch went a mere ten centimeters from Kayden’s arm, and he ducked it away to avoid a glacial amputation. It was after this when he caught a glimpse of another snowmobile, this time pulling some kind of sled behind it, disappearing behind a dune away from the icepatch. Again, he was too preoccupied with feeling the most adrenaline he felt in a long time, perhaps ever since the BCI incident that nearly shattered his mind in childhood.

The snowmobile then left the patch of ice and kept going in a different direction. Kayden was of clear enough mind to notice that it was in the same direction as that other vehicle was going. Indeed, it was there, going over some dunes. Kayden could swear he noticed two crates on the sled…

He tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed in its general direction several times.

They closed in, and Kayden could get a good look.

…

The driver of the other vehicle was a tiny old lady, and the "crates" were in fact hydroponic planters, complete with glass domes and little green plants growing inside.

"I’m a fucking idiot", Kayden thought. "This is making me make a fool of myself in front of everyone."

After quickly passing the rather slow fellow traveler, the snowmobile began its uneventful return trip.

***

"Wow, that was…" Kayden said as he stepped out alongside his friends. "Thank you so much. Thank you. I will remember this forever."

Nheka and the others had similar sentiments.

"That was some gread emotional stimulation," Lai said.

He then took his friends behind the building, for some privacy. "If you wondered what that was about, I thought it was one of the thieves carting away crates. Not it, then. I’m very sure they will try to do something on this backwater sleepy planet though. Ray, do you have any ideas?"

"Confirming," Ray pinged.

Kayden sighed. "Ray, what are your ideas?"

"Thieves likely unstarted the transfer of stolen artifacts yet. Town small, yet too big to search. Await further information. You meatbags unneed to do anything. I want to visit local parts shop."

"Right. Stay safe."

Ray walked away from them, their metallic feet making a clanging noise against the concrete sidewalk.

"Did you ever think we would be here", Kayden said, treading alongside Nheka, "when we first struck that offtopic conversation in that tech support thread on Deepcode."

"No…"

"Are you still learning T#?"

"I gave it up… It wass weird for me to get ussed to inline languages… Our mosst common ones usse graphss…"

"...I can't imagine coding like I'm writing a goddamn flowchart," Kayden said. "That's so weird."

***

They were back in their room, and it was still morning. Though there was no real physical exertion beyond what was required to walk to the depot, Kayden still felt very tired. The soft morning light filtered into the room, unhindered by the currently-nonexistent clouds. He wasn’t really thinking about what the next attraction they would visit would be.

"Nheka, how are you enjoying this compared to Alacrity?" Kayden said, as the two sat across the table, him having finished another cup of tea and her having chomped up a few dried centipedes.

"I felt like I was about to have a heart attack on the ssnowmobile… The cold wassn’t that bad, however… It turned out that I could just download a third-party app to turn the kheaters above the maximum value… But I sstill liked Alacrity more… And thank you sso much, Tiik, for doing that glove thing. My feet would khave frozen off. Sspeaking of…" She looked at one of her four hands. "My talonss are getting too long."

Nheka went to the corner to start simply gnawing off the tips using her beak, with a grating sound. Kayden sighed.

"Do you need scissors? Or, I suppose, for the size of those things, pruning shears…"

"Would get dull very fast, or break… Did you know that there are actually little copper rodss there, like in our boness and beakss?"

"Right."

"In the prehistoric passt we ussed them to dissmember qaaktohra, our mostly-sapient evolutionary rivals. Their limbss were about the ssame width as human arms and legs, for the record. Now there are no qaaktohra."

Kayden didn’t appreciate this vaguely ominous trivia. "You guys are really into mass murder aren’t you?"

Nheka just turned her head to hiss at him in dismay.

"I didn’t mean to hurt you…"

There wasn’t a response. Saddened, Kayden just brewed another cup of tea and didn’t push further. It was an unfortunate reality of friendships between beings of different species: core values would differ in major ways that would come up even when not discussing politics. And the chohjozra were far from the weirdest species in the Oval, physiologically and psychologically. Nevertheless, Kayden was still trying to fully ‘get’ them.

Nheka then used a small device that resembled a polishing power tool, but smaller, to sharpen and smooth her now-gnarled claws back into the natural daggers they were before, albeit slightly shorter. The whining noise startled the others in the room, and Nheka, noticing that, went into the corridor to finish.

"Lai, I need your help," Kayden said as he sat down next to the relmai, prompting him to pause his gaming session.

"Whaddyawant?"

"You’re better with people than me. Help me make amends to Nheka," he whispered, then explained what happened.

"Hm… Well, bhor starters, ya could stop bringing up politics? Ya know how id always goes with ya two."

"Sapient lives aren’t politics."

"Ya think I didn’t hear everything? She said prehistoric. P-R-E-H-I-S-T-O-R-I-C. Hundreds obh thousands obh years ago. It doesn’t matter!" Lai waved his hand around as he spoke, including, again, in Kayden’s face.

Kayden sighed again. "I suppose… I suppose you are right."

He stood next to the doorway, waiting for her friend to come back in. Once she did, Kayden apologized profusely for his faux pas, and promised to not take such blunt jabs at her species’ history anymore. Nheka stared him in the eyes for a while before forgiving him.