Invarian Hab Unit, Prime Dome
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.10 Interstellar
“Would you stop apologizing?” Callie said, on the verge of exasperation. “I'm going to be fine.”
Janus looked at the sector checkpoint uneasily. Since he had the day off, he’d decided to take Callie to school early, just in case there were problems related to last night. Things seemed normal on this side, but if something happened in Sector One, Janus wouldn’t be able to pass through and help.
Callie punched him in the arm. “Hey! I mean it. I’m going to be fine.”
“I’m sure you will. You’re as tough as armor-glass.”
“And as vicious as a trilith,” Callie said, nodding.
“You know triliths are only this big, right?” Janus said, holding his hands about twenty centimeters apart. “They’re about as dangerous as a rabid chicken. I had one bite my boot one time.”
“Uncle Ivan says they get bigger out in the dust.”
Janus ruffled her hair. “Uncle Ivan says a lot when he drinks. It’s going to be strange talking to him sober.”
“Just make sure you get to him,” Callie said, walking toward the line. “Bring him home.”
“I will,” Janus said, smiling, although they both knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. The facade dropped as soon as she was out of sight.
They were in trouble. Uncle Ivan didn’t have a steady job, so the only people Janus could think of to vouch for him were other degenerates. Meg said she’d tell dome-sec about the incident yesterday, and Janus was sure someone in the crowd had recorded the fight through their retinal implant. Lira had crossed the entire bar just to let Janus know she’d gotten him busted. There was little doubt she’d provoked the fight, but Ivan made it physical and she was still a candidate to be the lead aspirant’s second. If she couldn’t participate in this year’s Trials, it would be exile for Uncle Ivan for sure.
And Janus couldn’t take care of himself and Callie on just his salary. Uncle Ivan didn’t get a paycheck, but he always scrounged up a few credits a month to cover his drinking and a little more besides that. Janus never asked how, and his uncle didn’t share—probably stripping construction sites for parts or helping traders get contraband past dome-sec. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep them barely afloat. With Uncle Ivan gone, Janus and Callie would have to move to a smaller hab unit, drop even further down the resource allocation ladder, and there was no way Callie kept her scholarship after that.
Here’s hoping Lira has thick skin, Janus thought. A busted lip would be fine. A nosebleed would do her good. A broken nose or major bruising would be the end of them.
He sighed. First things first: talk to Ivan.
It took him ten minutes to make it to the detention center, but it was visible from anywhere in the sector. Prime Dome was laid out like an Ancient Earth carriage wheel, with six sectors and a central hub. The detention center was also the checkpoint from Sector Six to the Hub, and it was a fortress—four above-ground stories of gray reinforced concrete with armored doors, observation platforms, and riot-control points that dome-sec could use to fire stun rounds or pain fields into an angry crowd. Sectors Four, Five, and Six were already the designated living areas of the dome’s working class, but the fortress between Sector Six and the Hub emphasized the uncrossable divide between the outsiders and dome elites. It was also where the lower-ranked dome-sec officers had their quarters.
They’d doubled the watch outside the front doors, and Janus could feel the tension radiating off the troopers. They were wearing light riot gear—full-face helmets, stab vests, and shock rods, but without the heavier plates and limb protection. It would have been intimidating as hell if Janus hadn’t recognized one of them, Corporal Tony Vasquez, Barry’s cousin. He didn’t know him well, but they’d shaken hands and talked over a beer once or twice.
“Hey, Tony.”
“Janus,” the big trooper said, giving him a deadpan look through the visor of his helmet. “You here to check on your uncle?”
“Yeah. Hope he hasn’t been giving you too much trouble.”
Vasquez shrugged. “He’s been pretty calm, aside from asking for better food and a ration of beer. Got bigger problems.”
“You mean the fights?” Janus asked.
Vasquez was about to answer when one of his colleagues cut in. “We’re on duty, outsider. Head inside or beat it.”
Vasquez turned to look at his fellow officer with the friendliness of a rockslide. “I look like I need your help, Trooper?”
“Piss off, Corporal. You heard the lieutenant at the morning brief. Aloof and professional.”
The corporal shrugged and turned back to Janus. “Sorry, man, but he’s not wrong. It’s not just regular fights; we’re used to breaking up a few tussles, but there’s never been so much hate in them before. Everyone’s wound up, and the pressure’s gotta go somewhere. Problem is, everyone’s picking sides. Primers think dome-sec sided with the outsiders, and outsiders think we’re oppressing them on Primers’ orders.”
“Sector Sixers gotta stick together,” Janus offered, hoping that was the middle ground, but the corporal shook his head.
“It’s not about sectors either. There’s dome law, or there’s the void. Higher-ups aren’t playing with this one.”
Janus swallowed. That didn’t bode well for Uncle Ivan.
“Go on inside,” Vasquez said. “Desk sergeant will get you sorted out. She’s expecting you.”
“Oh?”
“Gotta take your deposition about what happened. Don’t mess around. Tell them the truth and you’ll be fine.”
“Right,” Janus said, looking at the dome-sec officer’s face to see if he was being honest, joking, or lying through his teeth. It kept coming back to the same question. Were there people he could trust here? People who wouldn’t screw him over for their own benefit, or in Lira’s case just for the hell of it? In a way, Vasquez’s attempt to be professionally neutral was a positive sign, even if it didn’t help him in the moment. It meant someone was putting the law over favoritism, even if it was out of fear. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Vasquez said, but he was already looking past Janus at the crowd.
Janus went inside, feeling something like a change in pressure as the armored doors closed behind him, even though he knew there was no differential. Now that he was inside the detention center, it was that much easier for them to lock him in, or march him and his uncle to the nearest airlock.
The center’s entrance made Janus think of an Ancient Earth castle, with a narrow tunnel that could be sealed by blast doors at either end. There were allowances made for post-exodus technology, with security camera bubbles in opposite corners and recessed shock turrets installed in the floor. Janus made his way through to the processing room. The walls and the floor were a spotless white, contrasting sharply with the dome-sec officers’ void black and dust gray. They stared at him as he approached the desk sergeant.
Maybe I should let Uncle Ivan handle this like he said he would, Janus thought. All of this felt like a big mistake.
The desk sergeant looked down at him from the raised, armor-glass-enclosed desk, her eyes glowing blue as she accessed facial recognition. “Janus Invarian? Scan in, please.”
Janus put his left wrist in front of the scanner, and it flashed green in acknowledgment. “I’m here to see my uncle.”
“Later. For now, there are some people who want to talk to you. Follow the projection to interview room three.”
A holographic arrow traced its way to the right, stopping at an armored door labeled Interrogation Rooms that made Janus’s stomach do a standing backflip.
The door opened as soon as he walked up to it and sealed closed behind him, trapping him in an empty hallway with eight doors.
“Hello?” Janus said.
The holographic arrow flashed insistently, leading him to the second door on the left, which opened and shut behind him. There was no pad or scanner to open it again, and no access panel to pry open even if he’d had tools. He was now locked into a white room whose only discernible feature was a white table and a chair on each side.
Janus sat down and waited.
Then he waited some more. He called out and no one answered. It was a full twenty minutes before the door slid open noiselessly and a black-and-gray-uniformed lieutenant walked into the room with a portable terminal in her hand. “Thank you for waiting, Mr. Invarian. We’re a little busy, as I’m sure you understand.”
Janus was once more surprised by the neutral and courteous professionalism. Aside from Vasquez, the power balance usually meant that dome-sec demanded courtesy, not the other way around. “I’m just here to check on my uncle.”
“We’ll get to that,” the lieutenant said with no apologies. “First, I’d like you to walk me through the events of the past two days, starting with the confrontation at the airlock. We have footage and comm transcripts, but I’d like to hear it from your perspective.”
Janus swallowed. “Can I ask what this is about?”
“Just a formality,” the lieutenant said, tapping something into her hand terminal. “We’re recording. Start when ready.”
Janus did as he was asked. He started when Ryler called him over to Mr. Time-is-Money cussing him out.
“You punched his shoulder in the video. What was your intention, there?”
“Just to let him know I was stepping in. I didn’t want him turning toward my suit if he was holding something sharp.”
“Did you think he was holding something sharp?”
“I don’t know,” Janus answered. “It’s common practice. I tapped his shoulder so I wouldn’t find out the hard way.”
Janus continued the story, talking her through the argument in the locker room.
“Did you ‘tap’ Ms. Allencourt?”
“What? Why?”
“To let her know you were ‘stepping in,’” the lieutenant said with an air of understanding that felt false. “It would be understandable if you did. By all accounts, she got into your face first.”
“Don’t you have footage?”
“Not in the locker room. That area is privacy-locked; no video, only sound.”
“I didn’t touch her. Did she say I did?” Janus asked.
“Tell me what you did next,” the lieutenant said, ignoring his question.
They went through the rest of his day, from noticing the heat to taking Callie to the sector gate, then going to work and getting demoted. He was careful not to mention anything that might get Barry in trouble, but the lieutenant seemed uninterested in the professional aspects of his testimony. She did ask why he kept taking on other people’s work.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Isn’t that the right thing to do?” Janus asked. “We’re all better off if the plant runs smoothly.”
“In light of your recent demotion, I’d reconsider that belief,” she pointed out.
“Ever had a faulty stun rod?” Janus asked.
The lieutenant frowned. “Yes. Why?”
“Did you accept that your stun rod was now a baton, or did you get it repaired?”
The lieutenant snorted and made a note in her terminal. It was the only time he saw her smile.
They continued the interview, talking through his conversation with Barry, his trip home, and going to Tartarus with his uncle.
“So, you were hot, angry, drunk, and Ms. Allencourt all but admitted she’d gotten you fired out of spite or, at least, outright xenophobia. Did you ask your uncle to hit her?”
“What? No!” Janus said, gripping his armrests.
“But you wanted to hit her, didn’t you?” the lieutenant pressed on. “Wanting to hit someone isn’t a crime, Mr. Invarian, and to be frank, Ms. Allencourt had it coming. Don’t you agree?”
“No.”
“Why?” the lieutenant asked skeptically. “Were you afraid of the crowd?”
“I’m an outsider, ma’am,” Janus said. “I can’t afford to get into a fight. I can’t afford to resent people. I don’t have the money, and I don’t have the time.”
“Why did you argue with Allencourt in the first place, then?”
“Because she wanted to put other people at risk!” Janus said, tired and irritated. “What does a two-minute wait matter if we’re all dead?”
“Two-minute waits add up.”
“Then they should fix the airlock!” Janus practically shouted.
The lieutenant took a note on her terminal. “Would you say you’re afraid of dying, Mr. Invarian?”
“Am I… Of course I am. Isn’t everybody?”
“You do a dangerous job. I know plenty of people who never leave the dome, myself included. Why do you work as a duster if you’re afraid of the void?”
Janus blinked. He felt like he was pushing an equipment cart uphill; the two of them had been digging into every aspect of the past day for over an hour, and he realized the lieutenant had a point. He’d never tried for a safe job. Early-shift exterior maintenance was perpetually understaffed because it combined specialized skills and dangerous work. He would never get “bumped” from that work the way he had from quality assurance. “I just don’t think of it that way,” he told her. “I do what I have to so my family can eat.”
She took another note, scrolled back through the document, and made a few annotations, then stood to leave.
“Can I see my uncle, now?” Janus said, standing with her.
“There are more people who want to speak to you first,” she said—again, without apology, as if he was at the disposal of dome-sec and not a citizen visiting his jailed uncle. “Can I get you some water?”
“But I—”
The lieutenant raised an eyebrow at him, conveying in the simple gesture the futility of whatever complaint he was about to utter.
“Water would be great,” he said, sitting back down.
Over the next two hours, Janus spoke to representatives from recycling, sector maintenance, dome-sec customs, and two sociologists from dome admin. The sector maintenance rep grilled him on the manual override he’d performed on the airlock. “It sounds like you don’t trust people,” the engineer said.
“I shouldn’t have to trust people. I should trust in the process.”
“The process is to run the software override.”
Janus shrugged. “I don’t know anything about programming. I know a lot about hydraulics.”
“So you don’t trust things you don’t understand?”
“No.”
“Ever think of broadening your horizons a bit? The code is on the dome noosphere.”
Janus frowned. “I’m just a mechanic, and I already work two shifts. What’s studying airlock code going to do for me when I can just fix the real problem?”
“Because not everyone’s a mechanic. How is your solution going to fix the airlocks you don’t go through every morning?”
Janus didn’t have a good answer for that, other than sector maintenance doing a better job of keeping the airlocks functional.
As for the two sociologists, they were fascinated by what they called an “uncataloged sub-identity within the dome’s cultural strata.” They were particularly interested in Janus's characterization of the void.
“What’s so strange about it?” Janus finally asked. “It’s all around us, every day, formless and empty, and at any moment it could kill us. Are we supposed to think of it as beautiful, or the struggle that makes us strong?”
The two sociologists looked at each other and laughed. “I think you’ll find, Mr. Invarian, that most people try not to think about what’s outside the dome at all.”
After three straight hours of questioning, Janus was at the end of his tow cable. He was tired, uncomfortable from the seemingly unrelated questions, and completely unsure of whether he was being interviewed, studied, or set up to take the fall for the riots. He asked to take a leak, and the lieutenant from the first hour and a half appeared, escorting him to the restroom.
“How much longer is this going to take?” he asked her from the interview room doorway. “I need to go pick my sister up at the sector gate.”
“There’s one more person who wants to speak to you,” she said. “Your sister’s being watched. She’ll be safe until a decision is taken.”
“Taken by whom?” Janus asked.
The lieutenant shook her head. “Go wait in the interview room, Mr. Invarian. This will all be over soon.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, Janus thought.
Janus stepped back into the room, and the door slid shut in front of him. It had been nearly four hours since he stepped into the detention center to visit his uncle, mostly at Callie’s instigation, although Meg had also told him to make sure he stopped by. Had she known? Had Barry? Was that why they’d given him the day off, and if so, why hadn’t they just told him?
The door opened, revealing his final interviewer, and Janus recoiled instinctively. It was all he could do to stop himself from baring his teeth.
***
Janus backed further into the room as the wayfinder priest walked in, like a bogeyman from his uncle’s conspiracy theories. He wore artfully folded light gray robes that shifted with strange geometry. His gait was so smooth he seemed to be gliding. His head was cowled, his face hidden by a silver mask. “I see you’ve inherited Ivan’s distrust of the Survivor.”
“Only of his priests.”
The cleric dipped his head in acknowledgment and gestured to the empty chair. “Won’t you sit? This won’t take long.”
“I’d rather—”
“Stand, yes,” the cultist said, moving seamlessly to the opposite chair and sitting gracefully. “Unthinking defiance makes you predictable, don’t you think?”
Janus stared at the empty orbits of the silver mask. The face was simple, with strong, clean lines instead of details.
The cultist waited patiently.
Janus sat down.
“Good. Compromise is the beginning of all relationships.”
“Hard to have a relationship with a mask,” Janus answered.
The cultist reached up without hesitation and with a practiced motion removed his hood and the mask, setting it face up on the table before him. “It’s also good to come to a first conversation with something you don’t mind giving up.” His hair was short and white, his face tanned and lined, and his eyes were as black as the void. “My name is Nikandros. Do you know why I’m here?”
“You’re a wayfinder,” Janus said, crossing his arms.
“I’m an architect, but that’s just a title, young man,” the cultist said. “A rank in the Cult of the Survivor. The word ‘cult’ means worship, which itself stems from an ancient word that means cultivation. We tend to the Survivor’s flock. Do you like knowledge, or do you prefer certainty?”
Janus wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Until now, he’d thought the two things were the same, but clearly they were either different or the cultist thought they were.
The cultist sighed and started getting up.
“Wait!” Janus said.
The cultist stopped.
“I prefer knowledge over certainty,” Janus said.
The cultist smoothed his robes and sat back down. “Good. There’s value in understanding the difference, even if the question has no right answer.”
“There is always a right answer,” Janus said.
“There is at least one right answer at any given point in time,” the cultist corrected. “The right answer now may not be the right answer later. Has anyone ever called you obstinate?”
“Only the people who’ve met me, and some that haven’t,” Janus answered.
“How is that working out for you?”
“Not great,” Janus admitted. “Can an answer be right and wrong at the same time?”
“No, but your goals may be beyond your power to achieve,” the cultist said, standing up. “How many first-generation immigrants do you think live in Prime Dome?”
“I don’t know,” Janus said. “Maybe ten thousand?”
“It’s closer to twenty-five thousand,” the cultist said. “Prime Dome has more outsiders than any other settlement on the planet. They encourage settlers and refugees to come here. Not incidentally, they also marginalize these outsiders and emphasize the negative aspects of the places they come from. Why?”
“You say that like it’s a thought-out decision, not just people being assholes.”
“I do, and it is. It’s been carefully built into this dome’s administrative policies for generations. Outsiders become Primers under extraordinary pressure and then perpetuate the system on the next wave of migrants.”
The notion made Janus’s skin crawl. He could accept that living in Prime Dome was a privilege compared to having to survive in one of the smaller settlements or out in the dust, like the Hunter caravans did. He could accept that taking him in was a strain on the dome’s resources, something he and his family had to earn every day. That dome administration not only took in refugees, but sought them out, and then deliberately made their lives hell was too bitter a pill to swallow. “Why would they do that?”
“You accept that it’s true?” the cultist asked, curious.
“I’m not going to reject it. I don’t know enough about other settlements to tell if things are worse for outsiders here than they are there, or what dome admin hopes to achieve by doing it.”
“What if I told you it was the reason Prime Dome grows faster, has fewer safety failures, and has a more cohesive society than any other settlement on Irkalla?”
“How can you know that?”
“Simple regression. The cult has access to a lot of data.”
“Then I’d ask, if it was right then, is it still right now, and might there not be another right answer that would achieve the same or better results without making my life miserable.”
Nikandros the architect grinned. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings… I can see why young Abraxxis won’t shut up about you.” He retrieved his mask and pushed it over his face with a click, pulled the cowl back over his head, and stood. “Be well, Janus Invarian. I hope you survive.”
“Am I in danger?” Janus asked, alarmed.
“We are all in danger, Janus. Look around. The void takes, does it not?” The cultist dipped his head in farewell and walked out, leaving Janus exhausted by the interviews and troubled by what he’d learned.
The door remained open.
After a few moments of silence, Janus stood up and walked to the door. The holographic arrow was back, pointing the way out, and he followed it to the desk sergeant. She had him scan in again, and she assigned a dome-sec officer to escort him to the holding cells, where his uncle was waiting.
***
“Hey,” Janus said, sitting down across from his uncle.
“Hey yourself,” Uncle Ivan responded from the other side of the glass. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Got the day off. Good thing, too. Spent the last four hours getting interrogated.”
His uncle didn’t seem to be surprised by that, but he didn’t comment, either. He had a nice bruise developing on his left cheek.
“How they treating you?” Janus asked, unconsciously reaching a hand to his own cheek.
“Nothing I can't handle,” his uncle responded. “How’s Callie?”
Janus scowled. “Really? That’s how you’re going to play it?”
“What? Why the void are you so grouchy?” his uncle said.
“You got drunk and punched the aspirant’s second!” Janus shouted.
“Settle down!” the dome-sec guard barked.
“You got drunk and punched the aspirant’s second!” Janus said again in a low hiss. “There were fights in the street last night. Dome admin is cracking down.”
“Good. Their precious system is broken.”
Janus didn’t know where his uncle got off, acting like everything was going according to his plan. “If you’ve got everything covered, how did someone hang a mouse on your cheek?”
“This?” Uncle Ivan asked, pointing at his face. “Two drunk Primers in the holding tank held me while the third one punched. I’m in solitary now. I’m fine.”
“If you get exiled, Callie and I won’t make it.”
Uncle Ivan’s face softened. “I’m not getting exiled, Janus. But even if I was, you’re a good man. You’d find a way to take care of your sister.” He leaned toward the window. “You need to harden up, son. This isn’t the only upset the world and the void are going to throw at you. You’ll survive. As long as you remember what I taught you, and you don’t give up, you will always find a way.”
Having to listen to his uncle tell him to calm down and give him advice from the wrong side of a visiting booth was too much. He’d done what Callie had asked him to do. He’d tried. He’d gotten raked over the coals for it and he still wasn’t done processing what Nikandros had told him—if that was even true—and he’d still tried to help his uncle, to listen, but nothing the old drunk said made sense.
“You know what? Forget you, Ivan. If you can take care of yourself so well, then do it.”
“What's the drama? I'm handling this.”
“Great. Call me when that’s done. I've got to go work so Callie and I don’t get exiled, too.”
Janus stood up and left. His uncle’s laughter chased him to the door. Janus tried to ignore it. He tried to let it go, the way he let every slight and insult go, because he thought that was just the way the world inside the glass worked. As he followed the hologram back toward the desk sergeant, it felt like the walls were pressing in on him. He actually wished he’d gone out that morning, on early shift, into the dark, soundless landscape. The void takes. He knew that. But the void was also the place where everyone depended on each other, where a single mistake could be the last. There was none of this… mess out there. There was just the suit, the tools, the task list, and the satisfaction of a job well done. He didn’t want to have to think about Callie losing her scholarship, Uncle Ivan losing his residence permit, and dome admin running some sort of social experiment on him and all the other outsiders, and maybe the Primers as well. He just wanted to work, get paid, and be left alone.
Janus let his feet wander as his mind tried to make sense of things.
The easiest thing would be to set his whole meeting with Nikandros aside. If what the priest had said was true, if dome admin had deliberately instituted a program of systematic discrimination, it wasn’t within Janus’s ability to change. Forget it, then, Janus thought. It was a nice mind-blowing conversation with no relevance to his daily routine.
What he could do was get his life under control. He would fill his quotas. He would get his position at the plant back. He would get his uncle out of jail, and if he couldn’t do that, he could find a way to take care of his sister. In that regard, at least, his uncle had been right.
By the time he’d gone over the plan—and the contingencies twice, until they were clear in his mind—he found his feet had deposited him outside the recycling plant. He checked the time on his wrist-comm and realized if he went in now, he could still get a half-shift in.
That, at least, was something to smile about.
Janus squared his shoulders and took the first step on the path to salvage his life.