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MOST OF THE DORMS IN Second Earth were tightly packed between one another. I was lucky that mine was nowhere near the others; it also had a window. But that was about the only luck I ever had in my life, and I was not sure I would have even called it luck. My window always faced the darkness of outer space and never the planet below us. In the distance, tiny stars flickered like fireflies on a stretched-out dark, navy blanket, twinkling to gain our attention, and sometimes I wanted to join them.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I had until the hearing and didn’t want it to be the only thing that took up space in my mind. I kicked the boots from my feet and tossed them into the corner furthest from my bed. The lights that lined the walls faded to a soft amber so they would not strain my eyes. My heavy head landed on the soft pillow, and I half expected all my thoughts to disappear. But they still lingered, as if my brain was their own private playground.
Just as my eyelids were about to shut, I was pulled back into reality with the sound of the doorbell. Nobody really used the doorbells on Second Earth. Everyone just knocked hard to get into places. I heaved myself out of the floating bed and ambled to open the door. It was Anyma, puffing as if she had just completed a hundred-metre sprint.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked as I welcomed her inside, yawning between my words.
She paced around the room in one spot and then sat abruptly on the stool by my bed. I slid my hand on the matte control panel to turn up the brightness of the lights and sat on the far end of my mattress with a pillow wedged between my arms and chest. She threw her hands around my neck and squeezed comfortably tight. Her heartbeat pounded through her ribcage, and I almost felt it on mine but the pillow muted the pounding.
“I’m... I’m just worried about you, Fate,” Anyma whispered into my ear.
“Stop it. You’ll stress me out even more.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow?” She pulled her hands away from me.
“No. I don’t want to think about it,” I responded, rubbing my eyes to stay awake.
“I want to be there tomorrow—”
“No,” I interjected. “I don’t want you to see me get a terrible sentence. You know how harsh the High Judges are.”
“I’m going to support you. Nobody else will,” she said firmly.
“I went to see Halley not long ago to see if she had any information about all of this.”
“Was she any help?” Anyma asked.
“She showed me a message that I apparently sent her. It doesn’t make any sense that I’d ask her to put me on the list.”
“We will figure this out, Fate.”
“I was hoping Halley could back me up tomorrow, but she’s confident that the message came from my tablet,” I said.
“Do you have your tablet now? Check if it really did come from you,” Anyma suggested.
I scurried through the drawers in the wooden bedside table, moving books and inanimate objects out of the way to find the tablet. It wasn’t in the top drawer, so I checked the second one, and it was also empty.
“It’s not here.”
“Did you leave it at work, maybe?” Anyma asked.
It felt like a light bulb turned on inside my head, and my eyes widened. “It’s on my desk.”
“Get up.” She snapped her fingers and gestured for me to start moving. “We’re going now. We need to find out the truth.”
For a moment, it seemed as though Anyma was more determined to solve this case than I was. I followed her out of my room and shut the door carefully behind me to avoid waking anybody.
“What floor is this?” Anyma asked.
Surprisingly, I blanked out. I couldn’t remember which level we were on, so I crouched down and ran my finger under the lip of the illuminated path. Every level was labelled with its corresponding numbers, and since this floor had no obvious painted number, I used the second most useful method. It was a bit more tedious, but for the life of me, there was no easier way. Underneath the pathways were buttons, and when pressed, they revealed the number of the level.
I slid back slightly, and my finger found the button. I pushed firmly, and a robotic voice spoke through the speakers in the ceiling.
“Level seventy-six,” it announced.
“Right, we have to go up four levels,” I said as I pushed myself up. “I don’t know why I forgot that.”
“Drop pod is the fastest way there.”
“No, it won’t work. I tried going there before, and I don’t have access. We have to take the stairs.”
“I haven’t taken the stairs in forever,” Anyma scoffed.
“Yeah, because you always get the early shifts. There’s always drop pods available,” I laughed.
Anyma and I sped to the nearest staircase, which was tucked behind a set of dorms towards the centre of level seventy-six. The door raised up, and the individual lights lining the edge of each step turned on one by one. My legs already ached, and walking up four levels when I should have been asleep didn’t help at all. We paused in front of the door that had an etched ‘eighty’ on a small silver plaque. I expected it to raise up and let us into the level, but nothing happened, not even the whirring sounds the doors usually made before they opened.
“Use your key card,” Anyma suggested.
“It’s back in my room.” I moved my hands around the door to see if there was a latch that would manually open it.
Quiet murmurs echoed from the other side of the door, gradually increasing in volume as they moved closer. I immediately grabbed Anyma and held her against the wall, away from the light. The door shot open, and I heard Vesta’s nasally voice.
“I can’t believe they turned off the drop pods. Maintenance must be so important,” she said sarcastically.
I tried to peak to catch a glimpse of the person she was with, but their voice was also distinct. Halley.
“The stairs aren’t so bad,” she said. “We needed to start doing more cardio anyways.”
Vesta laughed mockingly as their footsteps receded to the lower levels.
“See you tomorrow then?” Halley asked.
“Sure. I won’t be at work, though. I’m going to Fate’s hearing,” Vesta answered.
I was positive I heard her correctly, that she was going to attend my sentencing. They were a few levels down, and their voices weren’t echoing as loudly. I knew Vesta didn’t like me much. Perhaps she wanted to see if I was going to be served a horrible sentence.
“Quick, Fate,” Anyma said as she pointed to the door.
We hurried to catch our only opportunity to get into our department; otherwise, the door would have locked us out.
Most of the lights were off, but I was still able to navigate through the piles of machinery and broken parts. We sneaked behind nib walls and dodged the people who were working this late. My desk was within sight, pressed against the closest wall in an open area. It looked lonely, and dust was beginning to gather because I hadn’t been at work in a few days.
My tablet sat on the desk above a small box. Someone must have moved it, because I had left it flat on my desk the last time I was here, and the small box had been on the floor.
“I’ll go get it,” Anyma offered.
I quickly pulled her out of sight and pointed at Pallas, who sat quietly at her desk, drilling into pieces of metal. She had been working on her project for months. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but I had a hunch it was something extraordinary. Pallas always worked on incredible projects, despite being so young. She was facing away from us, intensely focused on her work.
“I will go,” I insisted quietly.
I tiptoed in the shadowed parts of the room, doing my best to be stealthy. I carefully placed my feet away from scraps of metal and wiring scattered across the floor, but I missed a piece and tripped on a small aluminium sheet. My eyes widened, and my entire body froze, as cold as ice. I was stuck in an awkward position which gradually became more difficult to hold. I lost my balance and crash-landed on a crate that smashed into large pieces, and I prayed that Pallas hadn’t heard the noise over her drilling. Thankfully, she didn’t look up from her work. I paused for a few seconds and continued.
Even in the dimly lit room, Anyma’s worried face caught my attention. She looked more worried than I was, but I was determined to know if the message came from me. Just as I reached for my tablet, a voice echoed softly from behind my ears.
“What are you doing here?”
Oh no. Pallas had caught me. My heart pounded so fast I thought it was going to pop from my chest. My entire body rushed with a cold shiver, and sweat built up underneath my arms.
“I came to get my tablet,” I said honestly.
There was no point in lying. I didn’t want to be in any more trouble than I already was.
“What do you need your tablet for?” she asked, trying to squeeze a real answer out of me.
I didn’t want to tell her the truth. It was probably the third time in a whole year Pallas had actually spoken to me. At first, I thought she disliked me, but then I realised it was her personality. She rarely spoke to anyone in our department.
“I need to finish the project I was working on,” I lied.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“I’m not saying. What project are you working on?”
“It’s a project for Halley,” she answered.
“Halley isn’t supposed to be doing any group projects this quarter. What has she got you up to?”
“She wanted me to finish off a few things for her. It’s no big deal.”
“Alright, well, you take care. Don’t stay up too late.” I abruptly ended the conversation. I didn’t expect to avoid trouble so easily, but Pallas wasn’t one to get involved in drama.
I swiped the tablet from the top of my desk and walked back around the crates of junk to Anyma. We took the staircase back down to level seventy-six and made our way to my room, walking past the giant window to our right.
The door to my room detected my body immediately and unlocked without any hassle. Anyma sat on the stool again, and I laid down on my bed. I tapped the screen on my tablet to unlock it, but the battery was completely drained.
“Don’t tell me we have to go back to get a charger,” Anyma complained.
“Don’t worry. I have one here,” I said as I pulled one from the bedside table. “I have a spare as well. I think I accidentally took Vesta’s.”
“She’ll get over it,” Anyma laughed.
“I don’t think she knows I have it.” I laughed too.
My tablet took less than a minute to reboot, and once it did, it was pretty straightforward to navigate. It wasn’t as fancy as the tablet Tethys used when he interrogated me, but it did the job just fine.
There was an array of unopened messages that dated back a few years, but Halley was the most recent contact on my tablet. I was too nervous to press on her message. It could prove my innocence or prove that I had really sent the message. My finger double-tapped Halley’s name and the most recent thread appeared. It read:
HALLEY,
PUT MY NAME ON THE LIST OF PASSENGERS FOR THE NEXT TIME THE COMETT JOURNEYS OUTSIDE SECOND EARTH. IT WOULD MEAN A LOT IF YOU COULD DO THAT FOR ME.
THANKS,
FATE ARTEMIS
For the life of me, I still could not remember sending her that message. I didn’t always use my tablet to message people because it wasn’t its primary purpose. My job in aerospace was to write some of the system codes for the spacecrafts, and that was the main use for my tablet.
“Fate, what is it?” Anyma asked.
“The message did come from my tablet,” I answered with disappointment.
“Shit. But that doesn’t mean you sent it.”
“I’m the only one who can unlock my tablet. Nobody else has access,” I said, still pondering the possibility that I had sent this message.
“Wouldn’t our department have access to your tablet? Not the whole department, but the leaders? Supervisor Hoba?”
“They would. But they’d have no reason to get into it. Plus, they would have needed to ask for my permission.”
“Get some rest, Fate. Go back to it when you wake up.”
“I can’t. The hearing is tomorrow. I need to figure this out tonight.”
“Trust me, Fate. You’re tired. I’ll see you tomorrow, first thing. And we can try and figure out who logged into your tablet.”
“Okay. I am tired. You’ve got that right,” I giggled.
“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Anyma said as she headed towards the door.
“Anyma,” I said.
She paused and turned around.
“Can you stay with me tonight?” I said softly.
“Anything for you.”
I tried not to smile too much, hoping to play it cool. She tucked me into my bed like a little baby and dragged a pillow to the floor.
“No, I mean here,” I said as I tapped on the mattress lightly.
“This feels illegal, you know.” She laughed as she slid underneath the covers.
There was no law prohibiting us from sleeping in the same bed, but Anyma was very honest about her morals. I promised no funny business. I just needed comfort. I needed to feel safe, and Anyma was the closest thing to it.
Sleep took us both the same way darkness overtakes the light, and in my dreams, I was free. That was where I wanted to stay, never needing to come back to the reality of my supposed crimes.
* * *
MY EARS BURNED WITH THE SOUND of the siren on the back of my neck. I had completely forgotten the gazer had attached it to me. It was only loud because it was so close to my ears. I rolled over on the bed and found it empty on the other side. I assumed Anyma was in the bathroom, but the door was wide open, and the light was off. She must have left during the night without saying anything.
The clock by my bed flashed 10:10, a time I rarely woke up. I was more of a morning person. A fist pounded against the door to my dorm. This was the day I dreaded, and I had only found out about it a few hours before. Everybody feared the court hearings on Second Earth. The Council of High Judges always prosecuted harshly and sometimes without proper reasoning or evidence to back up their claims. I hoped only to get suspended from my job or have to forfeit my position. Anything but death — but I also knew there were far worse things than death.
I dawdled over to the door, still struggling to wake up. It must have been too long for the gazers to wait because they pounded the door much harder the second time. I waved my hand over the control panel, and the door shot up, revealing the two gazers waiting to take me to court.
I didn’t even get time to brush my teeth or wash my face, and they wouldn’t let me go to the main hall to eat some breakfast. I could already tell that my hair was a mess, and I smelled terrible. They did, however, give me some time to change into more appropriate attire to wear to court. It wasn’t any fancy suit or tie, just my regular cargo pants and a plain shirt.
We took the elevator to the legal floor just above my department. The gazers were the only ones with access to the larger elevators that could fit more people. I assumed they didn’t want me to use the drop pods because they probably thought I would have run away to delay the hearing, but I honestly just wanted it all to be over much earlier.
The doors opened, and for the second time in my life, I saw the legal floor. The first time I was here was eight years ago, during my father’s court case. My body didn’t want to step off the elevator, and I didn’t want to relive that moment. For some time, I had tried to forget about everything that had happened with my father, but it wasn’t easy to disregard such integral moments of my life.
The gazers pushed my legs off the ground and forced me to walk to the first door on the right, leading me into the courtroom. It looked the same as I remembered from eight years ago: the half-circle panel with five extremely tall chairs for each of the High Judges, and a large sitting area opposite the panel that stretched to the ceiling for the audience. There was no seat for me; there never was for the defendant. I was simply required to stand on a circular light in the very centre of the room.
Here we go, I thought.
The entire courtroom was already filled with people waiting to watch the hearing. It was embarrassing to walk to the centre with everyone’s haughty eyes glued to me. After all, they were only there to mock me and witness the sentencing. My feet locked into place on the centre circle, and I glanced over at the audience. Some co-workers from my department sat in the row of seats to my left: Vesta, Juno, Pallas and Halley. Anyma sat in a seat directly behind them and smiled at me as she nodded her head for encouragement.
Tethys was nowhere to be seen. I thought he was supposed to help defend me in here. But by the same token, my father had stood here alone and defenceless as well. I needed to do this by myself, and I wasn’t ready for it.
“All rise,” the gazer who stood at the door announced.
Everybody stood up straight, silently, and watched the High Judges as they made their way to their seats. They were all very tall and very old. Their beady black eyes were like marbles surrounded by their pale skin. Over their slightly hunched shoulders, they wore long red robes with a purple stripe that dragged on the floor. I caught a glimpse of gold tassels before they disappeared behind the panel.
The High Judge in the centre propped an electronic reading monocle on his eye and scrolled through the tablet in front of him.
“Fate Artemis?” he asked as his low voice reverberated through the court before he looked directly at me.
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“Today, we are here to witness the sentencing of Fate Artemis for his crimes against Second Earth. How do you plead?”
“Not guilty,” I answered.
The audience booed with conviction, but another High Judge raised his hand to stop them. I didn’t have any time to think about the ‘crime’ I’d committed because all of this had happened so quickly. Of course, I would never plead guilty without knowing the consequences, especially when I was innocent.
“Of the seventy-eight passengers and crew scheduled for the journey, all but one died.” He spoke calmly and slowly with random increases in volume.
“I don’t know how my name ended up on the list of passengers, but I was not involved in the explosion,” I responded much too quickly.
“Eager, are we? Do you know what could have caused the ship, the Comett, to explode?” the High Judge in the far-right seat asked.
“I know the stop switch should have activated. But Tethys, during the interrogation, stated that it was missing. The stop switch most certainly would have prevented the explosion.”
“Why did you step onto the ship?” the centre judge asked. “You must have been aware that your probationary period had not ended yet.”
I already told them that I shouldn’t have been on the passenger list. It seemed as though they were trying to get me to say the wrong thing.
“Yes, I was still on probation. I wouldn’t have risked that to enter the ship.”
“Your father did, eight years ago,” the High Judge in the leftmost seat said. “Scorpius Artemis.”
“I cannot speak on behalf of my father,” I said.
I didn’t want to talk about my father’s crime. There were too many unfortunate memories attached to that moment.
“From our understanding, you were recently restricted from entering level eighty. However, it was brought to our attention that you snuck into your department last night.”
I turned and faced Pallas. She was the only one that had seen me. I watched as her lips mouthed the word, “Sorry.” There was nobody on Second Earth I could trust anymore. Pallas, the one who kept to herself and remained content, had snitched me out for no reason at all. Perhaps she needed a promotion at work, but other than that, there was no logical reason for her betrayal.
“Fate Artemis, for crimes against Seco—”
“Wait a second,” I interjected in frustration, pleading with any excuse under the sun. “This is hardly a court case. I can prove that I’m innocent! I just need some more time.”
All five of the High Judges gave me a menacing look as they tilted their heads down at me. The centre judge pushed a button underneath the table, and the circular light on which I stood turned to blue. My body lost all its weight as I began to rise. My feet kicked off the floor, and I hovered about a metre in the air, unable to get back to the ground. The High Judges whispered to each other for a few minutes, but it seemed much longer as I felt the stares from the audience.
“Fate Artemis,” the centre High Judge said as he took off his monocle. “For crimes against Second Earth, we hereby sentence you to fifty revolutions around the sun on Mars.”
The audience grew loud with murmurs, and Anyma yelled out, “No, you can’t!”
Everybody ignored her.
Mars was the location of our most secure prison, and only those who committed the most disturbing crimes were sent there. Fifty revolutions equated to approximately ninety-four Earth years. That was an entire life sentence; there was no point serving it. How could I, a simple nobody from aerospace, be sent to Mars to serve a life sentence? I’d be leaving behind everything and everyone I knew.
“What about the prison here on Second Earth?” I asked.
“Alternatively,” the High Judge began as he ignored my question.
A wave of relief rushed through my body, and my eyes lit up. Please have something better for me, I hoped.
“The biennial Exogames are approaching. Do you wish to compete for your chance at freedom?”
No. Definitely no. I withdrew my plea. A tournament of five games that increased in difficulty each round, the Exogames were not something to be taken lightly. Freedom was granted to the winners who survived to the end. Only prisoners were allowed to play; nobody in the general public could enter the games. However, the chance of making it through any of the games was exponentially low, practically impossible. My father had competed after his court hearing. I never saw him again.
“I choose to spend fifty revolutions on Mars,” I said confidently, knowing either option would result in death.
“Right then,” the centre High Judge said. “Fate Artemis, you have been sentenced to fifty revolutions around the sun on Mars. That is final.” He struck a metal plate with his gavel to conclude the proceedings.
The gravity around me returned to normal, and I landed abruptly on my feet. The gazers who stood at the entrances marched in my direction and grasped my arms tight. I tried to fight back by throwing my hands around to break away from them, but it was pointless. They would have never given me back my life. They dragged me to the exit, but I wanted to see Anyma once more. She was the only one who had helped me try to figure this out.
“I get to say goodbye,” I cried, and my voice cracked. “I have to say goodbye.”
“Not this time, buddy,” the gazer replied as he jolted me closer to the door.
My head throbbed, and my heart became heavy as it sank to the bottom of my stomach. I shook with fear, unsure if the decision I made was the correct one. My throat tightened, and I felt myself on the verge of crying, although I tried not to show any emotion. I needed to be stronger than this, and if I couldn’t, then I had to make it seem like I was.