Recycling Plant Six, Prime Dome
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.10 Interstellar
The air was uncomfortably hot when Janus left the plant. The dome was still fully polarized and dark, so there was no shade to hide in, only the inescapable, omnipresent heat made bearable by the dome ventilators circulating the dry air. He checked the temperature through his wrist-comm. It was 32.5°C, just a couple of degrees over where it should be but it was funny how quickly things could go from uncomfortable to deadly when it came to living beings. Sector maintenance would probably be scrambling to fix the problem before it caused some sort of cascade.
And that wasn’t Janus’s problem. If anything, he should be grateful. Barry had let him leave before the shift change, and between that and the oppressive heat, the alleys and transport lanes between the subterranean complexes that housed the dome’s population were mostly empty.
That meant no one would see him like this. He stopped and leaned against a wall with his eyes closed for a ten count, letting his mask slip for these few precious seconds he was unobserved to actually feel the pain he suffered every day. He wasn’t angry, and he didn’t cry about it—Uncle Ivan’s voice in the back of his head wouldn’t let the weakness go that far—but he felt a deep, bone-numbing sadness about the end of a dream.
What was he going to tell Callie?
He took a few breaths to steady himself, then he peeled off the top of his coveralls, tying the arms around his waist, and found a bench to sit on and check his messages. There was a notification from sector admin about his grade change, of course; they took forever to process a new work application or a permit request, but bad news always came fast. There was also a message from the admissions department at Callie’s school.
He gritted his teeth and read that one.
Dear Mr. Invarian,
We were notified of your change of status by dome administration. As you know, participation in the Young Pioneer program is a privilege reserved for our most accomplished, hardest working citizens and their families—and there is no question on our part or that of Callie’s teachers that she belongs in this program.
We are, however, obligated to follow dome regulations. In consultation with the superintendent of the general skills program in Sector Six, we have agreed it would be best for Callie if she transferred to her new class at the end of next week.
If the change was due to an administrative error or your supervisor’s oversight, I strongly encourage you to rectify the issue before then as we would hate to lose a student with Callie’s potential.
Lucille Wendel
Sector One Advanced Program
Janus reread the message twice. Callie was going to lose her scholarship, but someone was giving him a chance to make it right. Of course they were. Bug was brilliant, and she fit in with the people in her program the way Janus had belonged with the mechs. She was everything Janus and his uncle would never be, and he needed to protect that.
On the surface, it still seemed hopeless, but it was something, a sign there might be other decent people under the dome. It felt like a tiny bit of give in a rusted bolt, even if all the evidence pointed to the machine being broken.
Janus fixed things. That’s what he did. He could work long hours. He could ask Ryler for help, even if his uncle wouldn’t be of much use, and hadn’t Barry said he would look after him, in time? Janus wasn’t sure if it was possible to work three shifts, but he’d do whatever it took, even if that meant he might have to… He sighed. He might have to bend on some of his principles to make the numbers work. Was that fair? No. But the world rarely was, and maybe it was time for him to start fitting into the machine instead of trying to design a better one.
He headed back to the apartment, still heartbroken, but also determined to do whatever needed to be done. And he would suffer for it, of that he was sure, but he’d already been taking whatever the Prime Dome could throw at him. The important part was that Callie shouldn’t have to.
The main room of the apartment was empty. Callie should already be home and hopefully asleep, or doing something fun. He assumed Uncle Ivan was out drinking because the old man slept in his chair about as often as he did his bed. Janus thought about going to check on his kid sister, but he wasn’t ready to face her yet. He hadn’t even decided whether he was going to tell her or wait until the last minute, hoping he could fix this. If there was any way to spare her this, he would, and wouldn’t that be better than putting her through the heartache of maybe losing her scholarship when that might never happen?
He wasn’t sure if believing that was cowardice or faith, but he did what he always did when he felt unsure and a bit lost. He sat on the ratty couch, pulled up his wrist-comm interface, and opened the program he’d gotten as a gift from his mother.
A hologram of Anika Invarian appeared in the room. “Hey there, little man. How’s my favorite adventurer?”
“Not so hot, Mom,” Janus said.
“My records say you’re twenty-four, now, so I guess you’re not so little anymore. What have you been up to? Are you out roaming the dust with your uncle, or have you become a proper boffin like your father and I, only leaving the lab to eat and play with our darling children?”
She couldn’t see him. The programming was adaptive to the layout of the room, so she didn’t walk through a wall or sit on thin air, but beyond that, she and his father, when he appeared, looped through a preset number of videos or pre-scripted routines.
“Are you all right, Janus?” a voice said, startling him, and Callie walked through the hologram, automatically pausing the program.
“Hey, Bug. Yeah, I’m all right. Your big brother had a long day.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s confidential,” Janus said with a grin.
Callie flopped onto the couch next to him. “I don’t really care, you know.”
“Oh?” Janus asked.
“I’m a teenager. Everyone knows teenagers only care about themselves.”
“I thought a lot of people were counting on your secret project.”
Callie blew a raspberry. “You and Uncle Ivan don’t even believe it's real. It’s like you think I’ve been spending my time making pasta art.”
“Didn’t you almost get suspended over pasta art?”
“No, I almost got suspended for trying to take some of the pasta home. They were wasting food!”
Janus laughed. “That’s right. And you still managed to smuggle a packet home.”
The two Prometheus Base survivors shared a smile. It wasn’t often they’d gotten one in over the system.
“You going to tell me what’s wrong?” Callie asked.
“Nope,” Janus said, clasping his hands behind his head. “Grown-up stuff that grown-ups like me have to deal with. Kids like you get to go to sleep.”
Callie rolled her eyes. “I have an important project to finish, remember?”
Janus bit down the answer that was on the tip of his tongue: that she needed her sleep; that no amount of work would make the Prime Dome elites appreciate her; that no project given to a fourteen-year-old was important enough to stress over.
Those were his issues. He was the one who’d been raised by genius parents only to wind up sorting trash in the guts of a recycling plant, not her. Callie was going places, and if she was lucky, she’d live in the nicest part of the dome and not have to deal with her loser brother and uncle anymore. “Don’t stay up too late.”
“I won’t!” Callie said with a grin and went back to her room.
The virtual program started up again as soon as Callie left the room, and Janus’s mother said, “Remember, all you can do is your best. Make the world a little better, and trust other people to do the same. Your sister is the luckiest girl on the planet to have you as her big brother. Tell her we love her.”
“I will, Mom,” Janus said, and he switched the program off.
He sniffed and wiped his right eye with the back of his hand, then hunched forward with his hands wrapped around his waist. What the hell am I going to do? The emotional pressure of living up to both his sister’s and his dead parents’ expectations was like getting thrown into an industrial compactor, but beneath the surface thoughts, he could feel the low-browed grease monkey with a wrench was already assessing the problem.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The first thing to find out was if what Barry said was true. Janus trusted his main-shift manager as much he trusted anyone who wasn’t family, but when it came to Callie, it couldn’t hurt to check. If it turned out to only be a question of tasks per hour, he’d start cutting corners. Not on anything dangerous—which was a problem, because in the void, everything was dangerous—but he was sure he’d find a way. It can’t be that hard if everyone else is doing it.
Worst case, he’d heard there were people who would help improve someone’s stats in exchange for credits. It wasn’t something he’d thought he’d ever do, but if it could stop Callie from dropping out of her program…
The front door opened and Uncle Ivan stepped through. His craggy expression was serious. “Good. You’re here.”
“You’re sober,” Janus said, surprised.
“Not for long. We’re going to go get a drink.”
“Uncle…”
“What?” his uncle said. “Did you have a good day, boy? I must have had an imaginary conversation with your manager when I went to pick you up at the plant.”
Janus cringed and looked toward the bedroom. He didn’t want Callie to hear this. Not yet.
“We’re going to talk this out, you and me, and we’re going to drink,” Uncle Ivan said. “Maybe we’ll even do it in that order, but it’s going to happen. You want to do that here or somewhere else?”
“Let me just change out of my work coveralls,” Janus said.
“Hurry up,” Ivan said, grabbing a bottle and a chipped mug from the cupboard. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
***
Janus could smell the cheap grain liquor on his uncle’s breath as they passed through the checkpoint to the entertainment district. Uncle Ivan looked focused and energized, for all that he smelled like cleaning solvent. There were several dive bars, flop houses, and houses of moderate ill-repute, but Tartarus was the largest and the loudest, and that’s where Uncle Ivan was headed. Janus wondered what it was the old man thought he could do, or was this just an opportunity to drink and feel sorry for himself?
Janus's instinct had been to decline the invitation. They had a limited amount of credits and a drink at a bar was a luxury they couldn't afford, both in terms of their currency and in terms of Janus’s reputation. Everybody knew Uncle Ivan was a drunk; the last thing Callie needed was for her brother to become even more guilty by association.
Except his cautious practicality hadn’t gotten him anywhere lately. He’d gotten harassed by strangers and his own personal nemesis, fired from the one activity he truly enjoyed, and now his kid sister was going to suffer for it. At some point, a man ran out of things to give.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” he told his uncle.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Screw it. Nothing else has gone right today. Let’s get hammered.”
Uncle Ivan patted him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirits,” he said with a grin, and Janus groaned at the pun. “We’ll get you sorted, boy, and then we’ll get this situation fixed as well.”
Janus wasn’t sure what “fixed” looked like, but he didn’t care. Either they would strike on some way for him to keep his job, or they wouldn’t need to save money for Callie’s gear and tuition because she’d be a mechanic just like Janus, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Being a mechanic had been good to him, at least until recently, and grease and duct tape were cheap.
Janus pulled up his contacts list as they stood in line to go in and sent a note to Ryler. You busy?
Yeah, Ryler said. I was up early sampling that compound we talked about, and my parents have a visitor from out of town. What’s up?
Getting a drink with Uncle Ivan.
Who is this? Ryler joked.
Uncle Ivan almost shoulder-checked someone coming the other way, while Janus stepped aside to let them through.
It’s been a bad day, my friend, Janus sent. One for the ages.
There was a pause, then Ryler answered, I’ll be there. Ping me your location.
Janus shared it and closed the interface.
Tartarus beckoned.
The main floor of the facility was a wide, circular space with three circular bars around which hundreds of people milled, jostled, and yelled against the loud, thumping music or watched the holo-screens for trek results, dancers of every shape and gender, or news chips brought in from other domes. Janus even saw a trio of Hunters, the nomads who cleared the roads of triliths and bandits in exchange for tribute from the settlements of Irkalla. Dome security was at the doors and scattered around the room, screening wrist implants as people came in and throwing the drunks out. It was as far as people who didn’t know better made it. There was an upstairs for VIPs, not that Janus had ever seen it, but Uncle Ivan took the curved outer stairs straight down to the second sublevel, where most of the real workers drank their cares away in relative quiet.
The room was a few meters narrower than the ground floor. Most of the patrons were still in their work coveralls, making Janus feel overdressed. They stood in clusters of four or five, talking quietly except for one cluster on the far side that seemed to be celebrating some sort of private victory. Dome security was there, too, but most of them were unarmed and off-duty. There was a faint, musty smell from the air filters, and Janus’s boots stuck to the floor as he and his uncle pushed their way toward the single bar and two waiters working the room. Strings of glow globes provided uniform lighting, or at least they would if one out of four wasn’t out. People didn’t seem to mind. They were mechanics. If they cared, they would have fixed it.
Someone jostled Janus’s shoulder. Uncle Ivan, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have that problem. He walked in a straight line and people seemed to make room for him. Some of the regulars recognized him and, while Janus couldn’t have said they liked Uncle Ivan, they gave him a surprising amount of respect. Maybe it was his uncle’s build, more like a walking refrigerator than a human being. Maybe it was his temper, which, while not volatile, always seemed to be simmering.
They were almost at the bar when Janus realized where his uncle was headed.
“Well, if it isn’t Barry, my nephew’s boss,” Uncle Ivan said, slapping a hand on Barry’s right shoulder.
“Oh, hi, Ivan,” Barry said, looking at the two Invarians. “I didn’t think I’d see you here tonight.”
“I didn’t think you two knew each other,” Janus said, pulling up on Barry’s left.
“Barry’s a good friend, aren’t you Barry?” Uncle Ivan said. “Gave my nephew his big chance. How’s the recycling plant been doing?”
“Look, Ivan…”
“We’re in the top five plants in the dome in terms of production,” Janus said.
“You were in the top five. That’s not going to last with you in sorting, nephew,” Uncle Ivan said, his tone mischievous and teasing.
“Cute,” Barry said. “You think I wanted dome admin stepping into my plant and telling me how to assign my people?”
“That ever happen before?” Ivan asked, his becoming fractionally less amused.
“What?” Barry asked.
“I asked,” Uncle Ivan said, crossing his arms on the bar and giving Barry the side-eye, “has dome admin ever stepped in like that before?”
Barry clamped his jaw shut.
“You going to order something?” the bartender asked.
“I was just going to buy these two gentlemen a shot and excuse myself,” Barry said. He wasn’t smiling anymore, either, and Janus realized he and his uncle had just pissed off his only ally.
“Listen, Barry—”
Barry cut him off with a raised hand. “Be smart, Janus. Keep your head down. Wait until the Trials start. And you,” he said, pointing a finger at Uncle Ivan. “I gave your nephew a chance because he works hard and he delivers results. You can’t strongarm me, so don’t embarrass yourself by trying.”
The bartender put a shot glass full of clear liquid in front of both Janus and his uncle, and Barry flicked the credits over from his wrist-comm interface. “Enjoy your drinks,” Barry said, taking his beer and walking away.
Ivan knocked back his shot.
Janus stared at his. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
Uncle Ivan looked at him, then rapped his knuckles on the counter, signaling the bartender for another round. “Drink your shot, Janus. You’re a good boy, but you don’t even know what you don’t know.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?” Janus asked.
“Like what Barry isn’t telling you for your own good. What does the beginning of the Trials have to do with tasks per hour?”
Janus almost choked on his drink.
“You can blame your friend Ryler’s Cult of the Survivor for your firing, mark my words,” Uncle Ivan added.
Janus scowled. “I swear to the void, I don’t have time for your paranoia.”
His uncle put another shot in front of him. “Have another. Maybe it will help you think.”
The raucous group off to Janus’s right burst into laughter.
“Found you!” Ryler said, joining them. “Emissary,” he said to Uncle Ivan respectfully, giving him a slight bow.
“Ryler,” Uncle Ivan said, ordering a third round of shots. “I told you not to call me that. And talk some sense into your friend!”
“What did I miss?” Ryler asked, frowning.
“Drink,” Janus said, pointing to Ryler’s first shot as he knocked back his third.
The cheap booze his uncle bought scratched his throat more than Barry’s, but it felt more honest. At least his uncle wasn’t wasting top-shelf money on a loser like Janus.
Ryler looked worried. “Janus? What’s wrong?”
“He was fired,” Uncle Ivan said.
“I was demoted,” Janus said. “Lost a grade. I need to figure out how to keep Callie in the advanced program.”
“You’re kidding right?” Ryler asked, looking back and forth between the two Invarian men. “Why would Barry demote you?”
“Why indeed?” Uncle Ivan said.
There was a sound like a light scuffle and a falling chair, and more laughter. Janus turned to look and the crowd shifted just enough for him to see.
It was Craig, Lira, and their cronies, there enjoying a celebratory drink, down in Janus’s world instead of the central hub of the dome where they belonged. They were polluting the whole floor with the loudness of their revels.
Something about the cold hardness of Lira’s face, even when she was partying, made everything Janus had heard tonight click into place like a hand-milled part.
Ivan had been wrong about the cult, and Janus had to be wrong to think it was bad luck. The machine wasn’t broken. Lira Allencourt had fed him into the gears. He didn’t know how she’d done it, but it couldn’t be a coincidence he got his legs cut out from under him the same day he embarrassed her.
“Something wrong, nephew?” Uncle Ivan asked with reptilian slyness, another shot already in his hand.
Janus felt sick. Part of that was because of the three shots sitting in his mostly empty stomach, eating its way through his stomach lining like battery acid. The other part was Lira’s face, especially when one of her companions tapped her shoulder and pointed. Her eyes met Janus’s across the room, and she smiled like a psychopath with a new pet.
“Hey!” Ryler said, snapping his fingers in front of Janus’s eyes. “Come on. Lira didn’t get you fired—”
“Demoted,” Janus said, turning back to the bar, his friend, and his uncle.
“Whatever. She doesn’t have that kind of pull, not unless she somehow drummed up enough witnesses to charge you with assault.”
“You hit her?” Uncle Ivan asked, surprised.
“I didn’t touch her,” Janus said, although remembering his own balled fists and how Lira had gotten into his face, maybe that had been what she was after. He looked at Ryler, who Janus knew was more reliable and better connected than his washed-out uncle. “If not her, then who?”
“Let’s get some food, and you can tell me what you know,” Ryler answered.
“Fine,” Janus said, turning away from Lira and her friends.
Barry and Ryler were right. Janus was pissed—he’d drunk too much too fast on an empty stomach, and he was letting his uncle egg him on. That wasn’t how Janus usually solved things. He studied the problem, figured out what the best, long-term solution was, and implemented it, even if that made other people think he was scared or incompetent. It was results that mattered, not politics and what people thought of him.
“Hey, Invarian!” Lira said, right behind him.