bored.
A life of leisure with no responsibility was not what it was cracked up to be, she decided. Even with the mutiny, the subsequent lockdown, and the Captain’s mourning period, the days blurred together. She could not tell them apart from the days of gossiping and chatter with her Ring friends, followed by nights of partying and teasing her dance partners. Even the teasing got old.
Most Passengers took it as a point of pride not to work or labor but to have fun. Labor and heavy lifting were left to the Ring’s farmers and the Crew. But months after adopting the Passenger lifestyle, Tomika discovered the trap of a life that held no challenges to wake up to.
The boredom was excruciating.
Even the illicit sex was boring. Missionary position. Every. Single. Time.
Has anyone in the Ring ever heard of the Kama Sutra?
Her current partner, Burl, was energetic, but he was prone to falling asleep before checking to see if she was satisfied. He was also dense between the ears, something she overlooked up until now, considering how beautiful and muscular he was.
Tell the truth, Tomika. He’s as dumb as a rock.
Burl grunted as he rolled toward her without waking up, his arm flopping across her bare chest.
Bored, bored, bored.
Her life wasn’t always this way. Leaving the Back for the Ring was a great adventure! Living under an open sky, so to speak, rather than feeling trapped between steel decks appealed to her sense of freedom, even though she was at the disposal of the Tech command center in the Back after she completed her one-year apprenticeship. Gone was the rigid structure of three work shifts—days, swings, and mids. She could sleep in every morning as long as her cell was at hand.
Her first stop in the Ring was the village nearest to the Basilica, and everything about it entranced her. The people were pretty and beautiful and clean! Everything was clean—the skin, clothes, and buildings. And the water. It flowed freely everywhere. She was hypnotized by a water fountain that appeared to have no other function than to exist. She almost climbed in before she heard a passerby talk about a “spa.”
Tomika dived into a hundred spas since that day and never tired of them.
The next surprise was disturbing. She could think of no other word for it. Whenever she was in a restaurant or in a crowd, she saw the looks and side-eye glances. She possessed no false modesty, being blessed with the best of her parents’ genetic heritage, but it still took her weeks to realize children kept pointing at her, only to have their hands jerked and bodies pulled away.
White children.
She never gave her skin color a second thought in the Back, where a “pure” heritage simply did not exist. Families were related to each other across decks and neighborhoods, and if you didn’t know anyone by name, the odds were good that you knew someone in common, perhaps even in the same family tree.
Tomika quickly learned the “Passengers” of color in the Ring were usually from the Back like herself. To test her theory, when she saw one, she would touch her forehead and chest with a forefinger, and she would receive a nod and a return gesture nine times out of ten. The feeling of community with them warmed her heart, but the prejudice from the white Passengers bothered her.
The last surprise was that sex was as easy to obtain in the Ring as it was in the Back when you played by the rules. Tomika remembered gossiping with her high school friends, and the rumor accepted as fact was that sexual behavior in the Ring was not discussed. Couples were expected to be virgins on their wedding night, and teenagers were counseled about the sins of the flesh by the high school priests. After years of happy matrimony, they would be afforded the opportunity to apply to the reproduction lottery to have their birth control devices deactivated. Every child in the Ring was raised by two parents and their village.
Yeah, no.
As it turned out, getting laid was almost as easy in the Ring as it was in the Back. Engage in conversation and dancing, then make a quick run to a secret location, most often a “love cabin” below decks. Bing, bang, boom. Leave when you’re done. No need to worry about the consequences because everyone has an implanted birth control device. Thank you very much.
Sex with a Passenger was a snapshot of reality in the Ring—puritanical hypocrisy and passive-aggressiveness instead of having a real purpose in life.
A boring and exhausting way to live.
Tomika traveled throughout the Ring, fell in love, then her heart was broken when she learned her partner chose a future without her. Getting over that love was the most difficult thing she ever did, a thousand times more difficult than becoming a Technician, and she busted her hump to get that.
Her day job was hardly a challenge after her apprenticeship, as the mission of the Ring-side Technicians was simple. Machines were not infallible, and the Ring operated its fair share of gadgets that required attention. The Crew in the Ring served the Passengers, and they could probably unplug a sewage excavator in one of the thousands of Passenger cabins below the Ring’s surface, but for any complex malfunction, Ring-side Technicians were called. They lived among the Passengers and responded when a fault was detected by Technician monitoring systems in the Back. When a fault was detected, a cell phone buzzed somewhere in the Ring and the nearest Technician responded.
In the year after her apprenticeship, Tomika was a dutiful Technician, answering the call from the Back whenever her services were needed. “No task too small” was the Technician motto, and she was proud of the work she did.
In addition to answering her cell, Tomika continued her remote studies in Ship Management and Leadership Engineering, a complex learning module for young Burners who were pegged by their aptitude as future leaders of the Back. Like her mother when she was Tomika’s age, Tomika was fascinated by the political framework of Salvation, and she enjoyed learning how the ship’s three sections worked together and, more often, how they operated independently of each other.
From what she saw of and knew about her mother, Tomika suspected Joro would embrace Landfall, but the leader of the Ring, the Pope, would push back because his power would diminish in their new home.
Oh well. As Grama always says, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
At some point, she learned her mother was the new “Bad Ass Engineer.” For reasons Tomika had since forgotten, Joro’s ascension to the Back’s most important post pissed off her daughter. She dropped her Technician cell phone in a fountain, gone deeper into the Ring, and didn’t look back.
But she continued her studies.
Lying there in the dark with Burl’s arm across her chest, the reality of her life was creeping up on her, and though Tomika hated the thought, she decided to say it out loud. “You were right, Mother.”
Ugh.
I have to go home.
No, I want to go home.
Ugh.
Mother will never, ever let me forget this.
She slid out of bed and dressed without waking Burl. Pausing at the door, she memorized his features, knowing he would soon be a part of her past. She felt no real regrets, except for maybe not being a better Technician, but all in all? No regrets. She closed the door noiselessly.
At least I’ll get to see Paolo.