2

[Ignis Feed Location]

Block B Airlock Alpha

<Camera 27>

M ission shoved her way through the crowded, normally empty airlock hollow of the interstellar ark known as the Ignis . A vital law had been broken, and with the future of humanity at stake, such acts of disregard could not be permitted. She understood the irony as she neared the airlock, just as she did every time.

Three laws existed on the vessel for which the penalty was death without recycling of energy—to be forgotten forever.

The first: population was to be maintained at ten thousand inhabitants. Any more and the Ignis’ ability for provision would be strained. Any less for an extended period risked stunting the plans for eventual settlement in the Tau Ceti system. Any unauthorized action resulting in the population shrinking or swelling was punishable by spacing.

The second law: consumption of food and water was to be regulated to established feeding periods and rationed equally amongst the population regardless of position or rank. Any attempt to increase one’s share, including theft or manipulation, was punishable by spacing.

The third, and most vital law: Ignis’ core must always remain active. Any action that placed its proper functioning in jeopardy was punishable by spacing. Without the core, the Ignis would become as uninhabitable as any other rock adrift through space. Inhabitants were warned daily about the consequences of the Great Blackout—the brief period twenty years ago when the core malfunctioned and the Ignis went without power for three whole days. Laws were broken, supplies ruined, and hundreds of the asteroid-ship’s population had been lost.

Though one inhabitant was gained.

Mission had been born beyond those laws of the core and cared for by Alora despite them. The Great Blackout hit on the first day she saw anything beyond her nursery. Much of the core’s data had been damaged and rebuilt from backups. Alora intervened and, suddenly, Mission became the lawful, 14,130th inhabitant of the Ignis . The block populations had been reshuffled, and Mission appeared simply like a transferred Block B inhabitant. In the chaos following the blackout, nobody questioned it. Though Alora was convinced the true nature of her birth would have been ignored anyway.

Regulations had been forsaken in the name of restoring the population necessitated by the first law. This led to an overabundance of youth never before experienced on board the Ignis . Age variety in the populace had been key when the people of Earth were said to have sent the interstellar ark forth to preserve their species. It made adhering to the strict regulations easier and caused fewer distractions.

But as the Blackout Generation reached the age of assignment, they did so amongst an abundance of peers with still-developing minds and morals. The crimes they constantly committed made the implant malfunctioning accident that resulted in Mission being born seem innocent.

“There you are!” Jacen-14133 said to Mission as she neared the airlock. “I was worried you wouldn’t show.”

Mission turned to look upon her first friend in the world. The small boy, scared of the darkness, was no more. Jacen had filled out. Tall, with long, lean arms—well-suited for his assigned job trawling through the tremendous pipe-trench system that wrapped the Ignis . His short black hair and taupe skin accentuated the soaring forehead and long, narrow jawline indicative of humans born under the gravity—half that of the Earth’s—generated by Ignis’ rotation.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Mission replied. “I told Alora I was sick.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t buy it?” Jacen said.

“Nope. She said, ‘Birthmothers don’t get sick,’ and then pushed me all the way here. I’ve seen her puke plenty of times while she was pregnant.”

Jacen shrugged. “You know they don’t like anybody missing these things.”

Mission rocked up on her toes to see over the crowd. Every inhabitant of the Ignis was packed into the circular space. Technically, it was a hollow scooped out of the crust of the asteroid-vessel, but the rock walls were too smooth for it to be a natural air pocket. Sunken into the very center of the floor was a metal hatch with the appearance of a giant toothed gear. Beside it, a teenage boy and girl, both just passing puberty, stood holding each other, tears staining their grungy cheeks. The Collective hadn’t even let them wash off after they were found harboring an illegally reproduced infant within a sewage line.

The temptations of youth proved too much for so many members of the notorious Blackout Generation. Spacings were more common than ever, which was why, despite the Collective’s best efforts, the population still hadn’t returned to optimal numbers. This wasn’t the first time Mission had seen a young teenage couple who had fallen in love, felt a primal calling, and inexplicably removed the woman’s contraceptive implant in order to create life.

Mission couldn’t believe anyone would do anything so crazy. She understood that few women were lucky enough to be chosen as Birthmothers like she’d been. Using the Core’s data, the Collective had calculated all potential genetic probabilities. Reproductive matches were selected to perfect the human genome. As carriers, women were considered the primaries in selections, so their evaluations were more rigorous.

Mission had gone through the tests to carry despite her origin, and she had been chosen.

The temptation made sense. But the brazenness to think they’d be able to hide an inhabitant forever or until another event like the Great Blackout allowed Core records to be tampered with unsettled her. She couldn’t believe anyone would want to raise a child in a cramped hole like she’d grown up in.

“They were from our block, right?” Jacen asked.

“Huh?” So much of her early childhood was a blur now, all this time later. All except the sense of claustrophobia. If she thought about it, it overcame her. She could feel the air thinning, the desperate need for oxygen.

“Mission,” Jacen said.

She shook away the bad memories and turned to Jacen. He wore that confused expression he often did, with one brow raised too high and his lip twisted. She would have laughed if every other aspect of the day didn’t make her feel so sick.

“They’re from B,” Jacen reiterated. “Did you know them well, being a Birthmother and all?”

“A bit. Never saw either in medical much,” Mission said. “She seemed nice though. I remember she offered me an extra sip of water once when we were youn—”

Jacen threw his hand over her mouth. “C’mon, Mish. Lower your voice.”

She pushed his hand away. “Nobody’s listening.”

She regarded the criminal couple. Nobody on Ignis was a stranger to death, considering they were the last of humanity, but the two were hysterical. Inhabitants were rarely sentenced to spacing in pairs. One death impacted the population enough, with a full nine-month gestation process required to replace them.

“What would you have done if you’d found them in the channels you maintain?” Mission asked.

“The same thing any of us would,” Jacen said. “They made their decision to break the law.”

“What if it were us?”

Jacen choked on his next breath. His cheeks flushed a shade of purple. “I’m not that stupid. Your birthday is tomorrow. Don’t think I forgot. You’ll enter the core’s selection database.”

Her twentieth birthday, to be specific. One day until she was cleared for her prime reproductive years as a Birthmother and would bear a child into their world in a way she’d never had the chance to experience.

“Don’t remind me,” she grumbled.

“Well, all I’m saying is soon you’ll not only be named our next Mother, but be a mother. You won’t have time for sewer jockeys like me.”

Mission sighed. At sixteen she had taken the aptitude exam, mandatory for all inhabitants. The culmination of a life’s worth of studies to find her place on the Ignis. That was stressful enough. But there was no age she’d dreaded more than twenty, when a Birthmother’s true purpose arrived. Every time she thought of it, she could remember her infant roommates growing up, never noticing her, always crying and sleeping. Over and over and…

A deep, matronly voice thundered throughout the hollow and stirred her from her thoughts.

“Our laws are simple!” declared the gray-haired and wrinkled Cassiopeia-11445. “The delicate balance of resources provided by Ignis must never be tested. We are the last! We carry the lasting flame of humanity!”

Cassiopeia, formerly the Block B Mother before being replaced by Alora, now served as the acting Head of the Collective, the group of thirty men and women who had access to the records and systems of the core. They were deemed the most perfect subjects on the vessel of age, based on DNA analysis, physical appearance, and the rigorous aptitude testing every inhabitant endured.

Together, with the six Mothers who oversaw the health and reproduction of inhabitants—one for each of the ship’s six living blocks—they decided the future of the ship. Cassiopeia had been one, though her body didn’t show it. She wore her prim white uniform proudly.

“I swear we didn’t steal anything!” the young accused boy protested. He grabbed Cassiopeia’s arm and shook vehemently. “We only ever shared our portions with him!”

Someone sprinted out from the crowd and spat at him. “Flame-robbers! Your cursed generation will be the death of us all!”

The accused boy wiped his wet brow, incredulous. In a world where resources were so finite, there was no graver gesture of insult than the sacrifice of water.

“Order!” Cassiopeia bellowed.

Enforcers quickly pacified the situation. They responded only to the Collective. Most had scored just below the cut in the core’s standard aptitude exam of making it into the Collective themselves, and had exceptional physical ratings. Their batons could crack bones, but when things got as bad as they had during the Great Blackout, they’d bring out guns from back on Earth. Pulse-pistols able to blow a hole through somebody from dozens of meters away, though thankfully not through the Ignis’ thick enclosure.

Cassiopeia turned back to the young man on trial. “And once he grew, could your portions still be sufficiently shared?” she asked. “And what if a defect from your unregulated mating caused him to require even more? Or worse, polluted the gene pool before we reach Tau Ceti and have a chance at rebuilding Earth. Endangering one of us is the same as endangering us all.” The crowd voiced their agreement.

“We know what we did was wrong, but please spare him…” the mother of the child said, eyes wet with tears. “Spare our boy.”

Cassiopeia approached a semicircle of the Collective and Block Mothers. While everyone else in the hollow sported half-century-year-old boiler suits from when Ignis first set off from Earth, they wore clean white uniforms like hers.

Alora handed Cassiopeia a wailing infant swaddled in a cloth. Cassiopeia carried him to his illegal biological parents and stood before them, brushing his thin hair and gazing amorously down at his chubby face as any mother would.

“Your child was born innocent of your crimes,” she said. “By some miracle, he has been determined healthy and pure enough to become the 9,935th living member of our crew.”

“Samson…” the accused girl sniveled. She fell to her knees and reached for her child, but Cassiopeia turned away.

“In two days, he will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of our launch alongside each of us,” Cassiopeia said. “For the crimes of removing your contraceptive implant without sanction and breeding without core authorization, you two will not. Your energy will be expelled from the Ignis , never to taint us again, or corrupt our future world. Never to be recycled.”

“Samson!” The accused girl lunged but was halted by her partner before she could touch Cassiopeia. Three enforcers rushed forward and tore the clothing from her and the boy, as was customary. The young woman punched and kicked, but her lover did nothing. He merely stared blankly at his child.

Once their grime-stained flesh was exposed for all to see, they were shoved onto the surface of the airlock’s inner seal.

Cassiopeia positioned herself at the airlock’s edge, still stroking Samson’s head as she regarded them. There was no malice in her eyes, only the calm of a leader knowing she did what needed doing.

“May you find peace in the void.” Cassiopeia regarded the crowd and shouted, “Earth has fallen! We remain!”

The crowd’s echo filled the hollow. But Mission remained silent.

“Jacen, let’s leave,” she whispered.

“You know we aren’t supposed to,” he replied.

The airlock’s inner seal peeled open like a swiftly blooming rose, and the criminals fell in, clunking against the solid outer seal below. The crowd surged inward to watch as they screamed for mercy and pounded against the metal. Mission turned away. At first, she’d loved watching when the outer seal opened, hoping for the briefest glimpse of the stars beyond, but not anymore. She’d seen too many inhabitants she’d grown up around be sucked through, knowing there was a time she and Alora might have been destined to join them.

The shrieks of those condemned to die were squelched as the inner seal of the airlock shut them out.

* * *

“Any stragglers?” fixer Lance Alsmore asked through the comm-link in my ear.

“Give me a minute,” I replied.

A spacing ceremony was taking place on the Ignis , and as the Chief Director of Content for Ignis: Live , I was monitoring it while simultaneously coordinating a camera repair with Lance.

A director’s job is never done , I thought as I absentmindedly tapped my finger on my thigh.

The vast array of view-windows floating before me abounded with a selection of camera feeds and data. Front and center was one focused on Mission as she refused to watch the spacing. It was hard to miss her within the dark cavern, with hair like amber. Blonde in some light, but if you looked closely, the shades of natural red shone through. Though messy and littered with fraying ends, somehow, it made her look more interesting than the clean perfection of High Earth’s Residents. More unique.

It made Mission, Mission.

Every other inhabitant observed the ceromony with keen interest, but not her. She turned her face, a look of… what was it, disgust? Irritation? Frustration?

After watching over her every day of my life since my emergence from the synth-womb, I’d become good at reading her mood. This time? I wasn’t completely sure.

Over the last fifteen years, I’d seen her blossom from a bastard child living beneath a floor, into a beautiful young woman whose image was plastered on holoscreens throughout High Earth—the face of Ignis: Live emerged from the horrors of the Great Blackout.

That something so beautiful could spring from such darkness… it was what the program was all about. Beauty from ashes. Though none of them knew Earth was still here. Different, sure, but here nonetheless.

“I’m ready to go here, Asher,” Lance droned into my ear. “Waiting on your call.” Patience was not one of our fixer’s finer traits, of which it seemed there were few. Although, I’d never actually met him—not in person, at least.

I had a lot of relationships like that. Between those working upon Ignis , like Lance, who knew they were part of an entertainment stream, and those like Mission, who didn’t, I had many friends I knew I’d never meet.

I rotated in my chair to face another feed.

“All currently broadcasting feeds are focused on the airlock,” I said. “Give me a moment, please.” He was hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, so there was about a second or two delay.

I swept across my station’s central feed to pull another in front of me, then another. My crew had sent a station-wide update—the sector where the camera repair was needed remained free of inhabitants. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, but… I didn’t. It was too important, so I always liked to see for myself before a fixer entered the vessel.

“We’re clear for now, Lance,” I decided.

“About time,” he groused. “You got me itching, waiting in here.”

I turned to peer through the wall-sized window of my office at the camera-operating crew sitting at desks in the large, impossibly open studio. Considering the studio was a VR we were all uploaded into, standard physics didn’t apply. Which meant no columns or structures impeding my view, and floating screens that made it simpler for the crew to monitor hundreds of feeds simultaneously.

It was tough to call them a crew anymore, since they were a mixture of humans and AI projections. Developers of other programs utilized majority-AI workforces for support jobs once they had the data support, but Craig Helix preferred to keep his wildly successful program in as many human hands as possible. It was part of the charm of Ignis: Live.

Often, interludes in the show cut to the live, human-operated bullpen like it was a selling point. Real people producing a real show, in a real studio, about real inhabitants on a real, reclaimed, pre-techno-revolution interstellar ark carved into an asteroid that had never been launched.

I can admit, that’s a long tagline. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Helix is in charge of things like that and I’m not.

The only fabrication was that the Ignis wasn’t actually heading anywhere. It orbited the Earth at a safe distance on a plane roughly equal to the moon’s, making it possible to maintain near moment-to-moment reception. The inhabitants’ visuals and equipment, however, were modified to maintain the illusion that they’d been headed toward Tau Ceti for fifty years and counting.

When I’d started as an assistant to now-retired Chief Director Bolsa, the crew was seven-eighths human. Finding enough residents willing to help monitor and control the thousands of 180-degree cameras hidden within the Ignis was no easy task. Every month, it seemed like another worker had to be replaced by an AI. Most people of High Earth preferred to consume entertainment with their data credits, rather than be a part of producing someone else’s. The novelty of helping make Ignis: Live possible seemed to be wearing off on everyone but me.

I switched my station-wide comm-channel so the crew could hear me. There was nowhere I felt more comfortable than alone in my office with my feeds, issuing commands.

“Team, I’ll keep an eye on all entry points for the fix. Focus on the ceremony. I want to feel their emotion.”

“Yes, sir,” they responded.

“Operator 76, pan across the Collective,” I said. “Then widen scope and provide an overhead of the whole hollow. I want every single inhabitant in the shot when the outer seal opens. Senior cam, stay focused on Mission. Let’s give the people what they want to see.”

Mission was what I wanted to see too. Since that first day, so long ago. She was—

“Sir, I lost track of her,” my senior camerawoman Laura answered. “She left Jacen and disappeared into the crowd.”

I swore before answering, “Locate her immediately. Our viewers treasure her reactions. 81, find the cam with the clearest close-up of the infant. We need a face for his first day.”

Always a face for their first day…

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be observing the fix. Laura, feed’s on you until I get back. Find Mission, then frame again from her POV.”

“On it,” Laura replied.

Laura Mandini was a fast riser in development, like I’d been. I’d barely been acclimated to walking when I’d had VORA contact Mr. Helix and volunteer my data credits and my time to work on the show. VR programs featuring any worlds or activity you could imagine, the constant flow of original visual content streaming on the High Earth Network—none of it made me feel a thing like seeing Mission’s proud eyes for the first time, surrounded by so much fear and darkness.

I’d started out on cameras, but the show’s brilliant creator, Craig Helix, quickly took notice of me. My focus on Mission had led to some of the show’s highest ratings, historically. Approval ratings spiked when the show featured Mission after the Great Blackout, and I’d been assigned to monitoring her, as Laura now was by me. Her appearance, her attitude, her horrific then triumphant background, viewers couldn’t look away.

But I’d made sure of that. I wasn’t sure anyone realized it, and I’d never say it out loud… but I’d made Mission the star of Ignis: Live .

Nobody in High Earth had to work. However, I spent more time uploaded into the studio than my own home. And when I was out of it, I watched whenever I could. About three years ago, Chief Director Bolso formally retired to pursue developing her own program, and Craig named me his youngest chief director ever.

I switched my comm-channel back to a private line with Lance.

“Do you need anything, sir?” a timid voice asked. I nearly jumped, she startled me so badly.

Vivienne Poole was my new human assistant. I’d completely forgotten she was in the room observing. She was a young woman… well, relatively young. The ages when people were released from the synth-womb varied from ten to full physical development, depending on how well their brain took to knowledge infusers and if there were openings in domicile placement. With life expectancy among residents presently sitting at one hundred and forty-two, at thirty, Vivienne was technically older than me, but hadn’t been animated until her late teens.

“No,” I said. “Just watch.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion on one of the Ignis’ feeds. Lance crept to the end of a loose air recycler vent into a corridor near Living Block B. He was dressed in the same sort of ratty boiler suit that most of the inhabitants wore—an effort to reduce the risk of him being spotted. As per protocol, they also wore a holographic facial concealment that made them appear exactly like a similar-sized inhabitant, since Ignis’ low population would make a stranger stick out. On this job, he happened to be wearing the face of Mission’s lifelong friend, Jacen.

All safety measures. In all the years Ignis: Live had run, none of our crew had ever been caught. But Mr. Helix knew best.

I transferred the feed to my central window.

“Entering corridor 103B now,” Lance said. “Sometimes I forget how damn cold it is in here.”

“Just focus, Lance,” I said. “We’ve got cameras 2,331 and 2,338 down in the passage. I can see the position of the first at full zoom, but not the second.”

“Easy-peasy.”

“Let’s not get cocky,” I said. “Just get the job done quickly and quietly.”

“Yessir,” Lance said. He saluted toward the camera he knew I’d be watching, then hurried down the rock-strewn passage.

I tracked him with the cameras I still had access to. It was difficult to go ten meters on the Ignis without there being one. Every angle, every room had to be covered. It was the only way the show could work—one hundred percent access to the lives of the inhabitants. Nothing held back. Nothing censored. Not Mission’s birth, or the terrible circumstances that had caused it—nothing.

Lance stopped at the edge of my viewable area and kneeled to get started. The fixer’s job was simple enough. Most times, surges knocked out power to the cameras, or their wireless capabilities malfunctioned and needed to be replaced. He went in and took care of it. If an inhabitant ever stumbled upon a broken piece of High Earth equipment and looked too closely, that was when a fixer was really needed. To exfiltrate those who grew suspicious that the Ignis might be more than it seemed and remove the memory via brain infuser. I could only count on one hand how often that’d happened since I’d started at Helix.

Lance reached into his satchel and put on an OptiVisor to detect the signature of each camera. They were minuscule, like crumbs from a stale loaf of bread, and they’d all been carefully camouflaged to blend into rock surfaces, into the patterns on metal walls, or even attached to lighting fixtures.

“Do they have to make these things so impossible to find?” he asked.

“Exactly the point, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yeah, well…” He ran his fingers along the wall’s craggy surface for a minute or two. “Aha! Got you.” He stopped and drew a wand with a magnetically charged end designed specifically to grip the cameras.

“Is the entry port compromised?” I asked.

After transmission lag, he leaned as close to the wall as his OptiVisor would allow. “Looks fine.”

The slot it fit into could only be measured in millimeters. The port the tiny sphere would then latch onto for stability was even smaller. Lance removed a flat case from his satchel and carefully raised the lid. He then used the wand to refit it with a new lens. I couldn’t see it from my vantage, but he held it up to the light before inserting it in the wall.

“It’s in there,” he said. “Activating now.” A holoscreen projected from the lid of his case and he keyed a few commands. “Syncing with the comm-relays.”

I pulled up a field of data on my end. Strings of code ran down the screen. Thanks to Helix’s in-house brain infuser, it had taken me mere minutes to understand the code, but many years to master.

“I’ve got initial contact,” I said.

“Shouldn’t be long,” Lance said. “Second one now. Moving.”

“All right. You’re out of my view while the new camera syncs.”

I turned my attention to the live feeds of the spacing ceremony. The inhabitants remained safely clustered around the airlock. The lawbreakers had been evacuated, and the airlock was already resealed, but they were listening to their leader, Cassiopeia, share a few more ceremonial words. I’d always found it fascinating how they’d managed to invent their own laws using all the information fed to them by the core. The initial ten thousand delisted volunteers Craig Helix had selected had had their memories altered to believe the Earth was left completely uninhabitable by nuclear fallout, but the rest was all them.

“So how many cameras are there in total?” Vivienne asked, startling me anew.

I didn’t say anything. I was busy scouring through the feeds around the airlock hollow, probing the thousands of familiar faces in the crowd to locate Mission. I couldn’t help but think back to her younger years after she became a legal inhabitant, when she might as well have been named Mischief. My neck started to ache when I still couldn’t find her.

“Mr. Reinhart?” Vivienne said.

“Didn’t you infuse the manuals?” I snapped.

Her lip twisted. “I did, but my brain’s still sorting the information. It’s foggy.”

“Well, give it another day or two.” A few moments went by in silence; then I exhaled. Dealing with people over comms was so much easier. “Thirty thousand two hundred and sixty-one. On the inside.”

“And you use all of them?”

“Most of them. There are parts of the ship nobody ever visits, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t prepared. When Mission was first hidden beneath that floor, for instance, the current fixer had to sneak aboard to add cameras.”

Vivienne recorded everything I said on a holopad hovering above her wrist. Only her second day after the bots hooked her up to the Helix Brain Infuser and uploaded everything she’d need to know, and she didn’t want to miss anything. I remembered being that eager on my first day under Craig Helix’s wing.

“You really are interested in this, aren’t you?” I asked, finally turning my head halfway toward her.

“My VORA thinks it’ll really appeal to my mental composition,” she said.

I missed having assistants without brains. AIs stayed quiet while I worked, did what I requested within their limits, and did it efficiently. Vivienne, on the other hand, was a resident struggling to find her passion, by the looks of it. Not everyone emerged from the synth-womb only to find the thing they loved right in front of them like I had. I pitied her.

“So why exactly are you here?” I asked. I had to imagine Mr. Helix saw something in her, besides his desire to involve the human element in the show’s production as much as possible. He was always calculated.

“I decided to visit the Outskirts and got caught with banned tech that put my resident status in probation, with need for ‘volunteer therapy,’” Vivienne said.

Ah, there it is , I thought.

“The Outskirts? Why?”

Some residents also liked VRs for things like skydiving while I barely wanted to step out on my balcony no matter how often VORA listed the benefits of fresh air. I couldn’t imagine actually wanting to leave my smart-dwelling let alone travel to the Outskirts, where delisted people lived off-Network like the animals they were. Security bot escort was required for a visit. Some residents got a thrill out of seeing how the other half lived, donating data to them or testing their food and permitted tech.

“I needed to forget something and saw on Outskirts Today that they have their own off-Network brain infusers. It was foolish to ditch my security and sneak to one.”

“Did you forget how many nonresidents fry their own brains out there trying to live like us?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve just requested the procedure here, but it was too embarrassing.”

I shifted my jaw. “What was it?” I asked only because I felt I had to. Now she had me locked into small talk. AIs were so much easier. They let me concentrate. People always needed attention for something or other. I always suspected that was why Mr. Helix trusted me so much. All I needed was the show.

“I wanted to—” Vivienne’s eyes went wide. “Her.”

“What?”

“Her!” She pointed at one of the feeds on my screen array.

I tracked her finger. Mission was alone and heading toward the same tunnel system where Lance was. My inexperienced crew had lost track of her because she’d completely left the area. I’d allowed myself to get too distracted by the ceremony and Vivienne’s pointless questions to notice.

Seeing her froze me. It wasn’t until Vivienne repeated herself again that I snapped out of it. I jumped on comms and said, “Lance, you’ve got incoming!”

“Are you crazy?” he asked after the standard delay. “You said they were all at the airlock.”

“One snuck out, and you’re taking too long. Get out of there now.”

“Too long,” he grumbled. “I’m getting this camera set.”

“Just forget it. Go!”

My pulse raced. Mission moved at a brisk pace, like she did whenever… irritation it was. The transmission delay allowed her to get so close that in only a few more meters she’d reach the offshoot corridor where Lance was working. If she turned, she’d definitely see him, and if she did…

The idea of memories being yanked out of her head by a brain infuser made my stomach turn over. They could take information as well as provide, but the side effects of the former could be severe if the process wasn’t done carefully. Lance was far from the best infuser operator I’d encountered. Sometimes all the necessary fragments of memory weren’t found, and inhabitants returned to the Ignis went mad from the missing pieces. I’d heard that was the case with Mission’s biological father, that he lost it and took her Birthmother against her will.

But that wasn’t even the worst case. If Mission spotted him and made a scene, or ran, then Lance might have to take more severe action. It was why Craig chose residents on the verge of being delisted and cast away to the Outskirts beyond the walls of High Earth to be fixers. Otherwise, I would’ve jumped at the opportunity to be one. A chance to not only watch over the Ignis and its inhabitants through cameras, but be there among them.

I shook the thought out of my head and focused on the situation. I was of much better use behind the camera. I could never hurt an inhabitant, and Craig Helix had to prepare for the worst scenarios. The show came first.

“Lance, I’m warning you,” I said. “You have to go.”

“Just a second longer…” he replied.

Vivienne stood directly beside me, furiously taking notes.

“Stop that!” I slapped the screen out of her hands. It hit the ground and burst into pixels. “No more talking during operations.” A few heavy breaths later, I realized I’d acted rashly. But she had to learn.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“It’s my fault.” I took another deep breath to compose myself. “Can you please go see if anybody on the floor needs anything while I handle this.”

“I—”

“Now.”

“Sure.” She shuffled away, head hanging.

I tapped my fingers on the desk for a few more seconds until, finally, Lance shouted, “Got it!”

“Quiet,” I said into the comms.

Mission rounded the corner while he was still cleaning up. Her brow furrowed when she spotted him at the other end of the long corridor. There were about fifty meters between them, but she squinted and whispered, “Jacen?”

Shit! In my panic, I forgot to tell Lance to shift his appearance to someone from another block. Lance’s facial-concealer was programmed to look like Jacen, and the real Jacen was supposed to be back where Mission had left him at the airlock, halfway across Ignis .

The newly installed camera went live, and I witnessed Lance’s perplexed expression up close. He turned so Mission wouldn’t see his hip and reached for the pulse-pistol hanging there, equipped both for stun and kill. There was no saying which setting a delisted man like him would choose now that he’d gotten himself cornered. Not after I’d allowed him to be caught off guard.

“Lance, just find another way out of there,” I yelled into my comm. “She’s alone and saw nothing.”

He didn’t move. Mission walked toward him. Too late for him to change appearance.

I activated a virtual control window as fast as I could and dug through code. Most of the Ignis’ programming could only be altered by Mr. Helix, but as chief director, I had some additional access. I could adjust the lights if it helped a shot, only enough that it wouldn’t be noticed by inhabitants or could be excused as a minor power surge.

“Lance, move!” I demanded, hand hovering over the controls. Nothing.

I could see how panicked he was. I felt the same.

“Lance, listen to me,” I said. “On my signal, I want you to head for your exit as fast as you can.”

Without thinking twice, I adjusted some code and set the lights throughout the entire area to go completely dark.

“Go!”

Lance took off. I tracked his progress on the feeds with thermal vision. By the time I returned the lights to normal, he was safely around the next corner, then into the air duct he’d entered through. A keycard would get him past a hidden passage deep inside, and beyond the rocky exterior of the Ignis back to his observation station, which hovered around it.

I released a mouthful of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in.

I turned my attention back to the new corridor 103B feeds. A surge like that would have any other inhabitant who’d experienced the Great Blackout terrified. Not Mission. She strolled to where she’d spotted Lance in disguise, as puzzled as I’d ever seen her. She stopped where he’d been kneeling, bent, and rose with a tiny black orb sitting in her palm.

One of the malfunctioning cameras had fallen during his escape. My heart stopped beating.

“Drop it,” I whispered. “Please, Mission, just drop it.”

She raised it to her eyes and tilted her hand to let it roll. A pebble or a crumb would have been uneven, swerving along her hand from side to side, but the camera was a perfect sphere. It rolled straight down one of the grooves of her palm. She glanced curiously from side to side and then, to my relief, let it fall like it was trash. It rolled through an air recycler grate, where it would never be seen again.

We got lucky.

I checked over my shoulder. Everyone in my crew was busy monitoring the conclusion of the ceremony, so nobody other than me saw exactly what had transpired. I’d violated my agreement as a volunteer on Mr. Helix’s program not to intervene in inhabitant affairs by overloading the light to gain her attention. I had a good reason, I could convince him of that, but then Mission’s curiosity added a second strike.

I reopened comms with Lance and said, “Lance, you dropped the broken camera behind. We’re lucky it rolled into a duct, but you’ll need to sneak in and retrieve it as soon as possible.”

I heard panting as he opened his line. “How did that… It was clear.”

“Just get it. And let’s keep this between us. You almost caused quite a mess.”

“I—”

I switched off comms before he could answer. He’d keep it to himself. I might have messed up, but leaving a piece of High Earth tech behind like that? No matter the circumstances, he’d lose his position, and he knew it.

Next, I had to handle the crew and viewers. Nobody could worry that Mission might suspect something was wrong with her world. Since I oversaw all footage and had earned Mr. Helix’s trust enough for neither him nor his VORA to monitor my activity too closely, nobody ever would.

“You’re too smart for your own good,” I said to Mission, as if she could hear me.

I dug through command prompts to erase all history of my intervention with the light. Then I accessed the data for every camera in the area and deleted all proof of her interaction with Lance, as well as the fact that she’d almost noticed a camera. Then I reset the logs of both new cameras. It would appear like they’d come online after Mission was already walking away.

“Asher, old friend!” someone exclaimed.

I whipped around. If I were out in the real world, sweat would have been beading on my forehead.

Craig Helix materialized in my office out of nowhere, elegant tunic pulled tight over his broad shoulders. The upper portion of his face was covered, as usual, by the screen of a digital OptiVisor that floated in front of his eyes. From my end, it didn’t allow me to see what he was watching. Any number of Ignis’ public feeds could’ve been projected by it and manipulated simply by tracking his eyes and thoughts.

“Mr. Helix, I didn’t realize you were uploading today.” My voice cracked slightly. Deleting unusable footage was permitted. Getting caught erasing an interaction between Mission, a fixer, me, and a loose camera would get me kicked off the crew at best, or delisted at worst.

What was I thinking?

“I wanted to compliment my chief director on crafting such a beautiful scene,” Helix said. “Wonderful, just wonderful.” He ambled in, and I positioned myself in front of the feeds displaying Mission.

“You’ll have to thank Laura and my team for much of it,” I said. “Unfortunately, I had to take care of a situation in Living Block B.”

“I hope nothing too out of the ordinary?”

“Just a few cameras on the fritz and a random power flux.”

Helix signaled his OptiVisor to fade away. He was coming up on eighty years old; however, in a VR, age was but a number. Hair, eye color, skin tone, clothing—it could all be adjusted on the fly, if you even wanted to look like you. Here, the golden-hazel eyes Mr. Helix wore boasted the luster of youth.

He leaned to the side and peered over my shoulder. His nose wrinkled as he likely saw Mission standing alone while the rest of the inhabitants dispersed from the airlock hollow. Then he glanced at my wrist. For the first time, I did as well. A warning light slowly blinked red, transmitted from the lifeband I wore in person. It wasn’t an emergency, otherwise it’d be chirping out loud as well, but it indicated that my heart rate was elevated.

“I assume everything went well?” Helix asked.

“Lance cut it close, but everything worked out in the end,” I said.

“If he’s not getting the job done, I can look elsewhere. Plenty of deadbeats teetering on the edge of the Outskirts.”

“He’ll be fine. He’s getting faster.” The words poured from my mouth before I could stop them. Deflecting blame for Mission getting so close to discovering Lance. But Lance had nothing to lose. He’d already done something to put his residency at risk. And if he logged a complaint, as chief director, I oversaw interactions with him anyway.

“Now, sir, don’t waste your time with me.” I gestured toward the door, desperate to be alone before I said anything wrong. “You should compliment the crew on their job instead.”

“Yes, of course.” He summoned his OptiVisor back. Something he’d been watching on it made him smirk, and it wasn’t his own show. I considered playfully scolding him for upping the ratings of another program, but held my tongue.

“Excellent job as always, Mr. Reinhart,” Helix said. “Keep up the good work.”

“Will do,” I said. “Oh, and, sir, one thing. Speaking of looking elsewhere, I don’t think Vivienne is going to work out.”

Helix sighed. “I just brought her on, Asher. She seemed desperate for purpose.”

“I know, I apologize. I just can’t concentrate and keep up with her questions at the same time. Not at an important time like this. Can you shift her to Frederick’s night crew maybe? Bring back the AI assistant for now?”

“If it’s really a problem, I’ll see what I can do.”

I spotted Vivienne across the studio. She nearly tripped over a camera operator’s legs while attempting to squeeze between them.

“It is, sir. Thank you.”

“Doesn’t look good having my chief director working beside an AI, especially with so many of the crew missing days or being tempted by VRs,” Helix said. “As if living in a made-up world could possibly be more enjoyable than recording a real one.”

“I agree, sir.”

He exhaled. “But the fiftieth anniversary is coming up. I need everyone focused, especially you.”

“Again, I apologize. Trust me, I’m as focused as ever.”

“Of course you are!” He placed his hands on my shoulders. “You are the most focused CD we’ve had! From the moment you uploaded into this studio to interview, barely this tall.” He held his hand out near the middle of my chest. “You didn’t even know who I was, only that you needed to be here. From that moment, I knew this was your future.”

“Thank you, sir.” I shimmied out of his grasp, trying not to make it seem obvious how uncomfortable I was. In my opinion, Craig Helix was the most brilliant resident alive. He was my mentor, but no matter how long I’d worked below him, it always felt surreal when he touched me.

Program developers were the true celebrities of High Earth. They chose their passion and went for it. It was the beauty of the world. The High Earth Network provided those humans with a nature for creating, the ability to produce content and compete for ratings in a harmless way.

I myself never had it in me to develop anything as vividly realized as he had. I’d tried and failed over the years, never willing to publicize my work or ideas for data contribution, never giving it the chance for ratings. No, I was happy enough to help Mr. Helix’s vision. And though I loved the work, I could also understand those residents who were content with only experiencing the designs of others. Supporting incredible visions was a worthy venture. Without Ignis: Live fans, the Network would never have kept a show on air that required so much data.

Helix turned, but again I stopped him. “One more thing, sir,” I said. “Are you going to reveal your big plan for the anniversary yet or surprise us all?”

His grin stretched from ear to ear. “We’ll discuss it soon enough,” he said. “Trust me, it’ll be the best footage since the Great Blackout! We’ll be back on top.”

“I didn’t realize we’d fallen—”

“Oh, no. Not yet.” He laughed. “But you know me. I prefer a comfortable lead. Approval ratings are tough these days with so much out there. There are more worthy developers than ever. After next week, though, we’ll be number one again in every chart. You can bet on it!” He patted my back, then meandered out into the studio, clapping and congratulating every human member of his crew he passed.

I signaled my door to shut, digi-locked it, and fell into the chair at my station. My wrist continued to blink red. If anything was ever really wrong with me, automated med-bots would arrive at my home to treat me without even having to call for them. An indication of high stress levels wouldn’t elicit that reaction.

The same warning sometimes occurred when I was unsure of a camera shot, or got stuck in a crowded VR platform while I wasn’t working, or tried to stand at the edge of my balcony. Heights still made me as queasy as when I was a boy.

Presently, however, my wrist was blinking for reasons I wasn’t accustomed to. I couldn’t remember breaking a rule in my life. I was just grateful Mission had tossed the camera away somewhere out of sight. I knew better than anyone how curious she could be, how impulsive and smart. What would I have done if she’d looked closer? If she’d taken it and shown it to other inhabitants and the situation expanded beyond a harmless resolution.

I reached for my wrist and keyed a command on the circular screen that appeared above it, linked to my lifeband. Anxiety-easing pharma injected directly into my bloodstream. After a few seconds, my chest felt loose again and my pulse slowed.

I turned back to my array of Ignis feeds. With the spacing ceremony concluded, the inhabitants were returning to their daily routines. Keeping an interstellar ark built into a small asteroid in optimal condition wasn’t easy, especially considering they had no bots.

“All right, everyone, fix was a success,” I said, resetting my comm-channel to communicate with the whole crew. “Get me up to speed.”

“Still no location on Mission,” Laura replied, sounding somewhat embarrassed.

“I’ve got her,” I said. I considered bringing up how she’d possibly allowed Mission, of all people, to sneak so far away, then decided it was best not to press after what I’d done. “She snuck out early and headed home.”

“I… I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I missed it.”

“It’s fine, it was crowded. Just don’t let it happen again, yeah?”

“Yes, sir.”

I set the feed displaying Mission to broadcast live and centered it. She was climbing the stairs of the Block B med-bay, her forehead still creased by confusion, which would easily be mistaken by viewers for sadness over the spacing.

I closed my eyes tight and drew another measured breath, really letting the calming pharma sink into my system.

Seriously, what the hell was I thinking?