The Asteroid

SEGOH’S MOTHER’S FACE twisted with anguish, streamed with tears, and shrank back from his field of vision as unknown arms dragged him away from her. Her eyes shone with fear, and she reached behind for the Effigy of the Holy Son, seeking comfort in the icon. 

A violent twist of his arm and he was free, dashing back to her, their arms outstretching to each other for one last embrace, for surely this was the Corporate Socialist Guard here to kidnap him for conscription into the off-world mines. Their fingertips reached each other, touched for the briefest moment, and then were separated as the kidnapper regained his hold on Segoh and began dragging him backward toward the door. 

The blinding pain of an electrobaton rattled through his skull and down his spine, and the last thing he saw as his vision faded away was his mother turning toward the holy icon and touching it before falling to the floor in a heap, as if the electrobaton’s current jumped through the air from son to mother.

SEGOH JOLTED OUT of his dream at the moment the electrobaton made contact with his head that day he was ripped away from his mother six years ago. He didn’t dream of it every night, but more often than not he woke up with a familiar ache in the back of his head and a tingle down his spine, his physical body recalling the sensations that his mind replayed while he was asleep. 

He stepped out of bed and took two steps across the room to relieve himself in the metal toilet. Segoh picked up his wristport bracelet, wiped some grime off of the plug, and looked at his wrist. A small rectangular port in the middle of the underside of his wrist, less than half an inch on its longer sides, protruded from the skin, pulling the skin slightly upward where metal met epidermis. He plugged the open bracelet into the port, and then snapped the bracelet shut around his wrist. 

After splashing some water on his face from the wash basin next to the toilet, he waved his bracelet at a featureless metal panel in the wall, which slid aside to reveal breakfast--an energy capsule and a ration of water. He waved his bracelet again at the door to his room, another featureless metal panel, which slid aside creakily to let him into the outside corridor. 

Dim white lights cast sharp shadows on the faces of his fellow mechsuit pilots as they plodded single-file down the hall, passing on the other side the mechsuit mechanics just off their shift and ready to fill one of the bunks recently vacated by the pilots. One by one, as a mechanic stepped out of the elevator tube, the pilots waved their bracelets at the tube and stepped in themselves to be sucked down to the mechsuit garage. 

The altered gravity of the elevator tube rocketed him to the depths of the asteroid and slowed him abruptly just before the bottom so he landed gently on his feet. The only gentle thing about this place, he thought as a robotic arm shoved him out of the tube to make room for the next man. He knew some of the men found gentleness with each other in the hour of rec time they were given each day, had tried himself to do so, but found he had nothing to give to another human being, and felt he could not take what he could not give in return. 

Segoh brushed his fingertips over the toes of the Effigy of the Holy Son hanging in the doorway to the mechsuit garage, feeling the depression in the small statue where thousands of fingertips of the weary, worn masses had brushed before his. The massive room opened before him, filled with dim halogen light that reflected dully off the yellow mechsuits in their individual bays. 

He approached his assigned mechsuit and moved quickly through the pre-flight checklist: oxygen levels, pressure test, laser cutter, gravity gun, compressed air jets, lights, mechanic’s sign off from second shift. He waved his bracelet at the lock and heard the slight hiss of the pressure in the suit equalizing as the cockpit door raised in front of him. He climbed into the pilot seat and waved his bracelet again to close the door. He strapped his oxygen mask on and felt the slight change in air pressure as the cockpit sealed and whirring machinery created its own atmosphere within the mechsuit. His bracelet indicated a solid connection with the mechsuit’s computer, and a heads-up display appeared floating on the cockpit windshield in front of him. He tested out the arms and, satisfied they were working, took a few steps forward to test the legs. Everything in order. He joined the group of mechsuits by a massive bay door at the very end of the garage. When all were assembled, the door opened and they piloted their mechsuits into an airlock chamber. The door closed behind them. 

Despite everything, the surface of the asteroid and the vastness of space just over the horizon never failed to amaze Segoh. As the bay door rumbled open, the gray, rocky, and utterly still surface came into view, the small boulders they would break apart with laser cutters casting stark shadows across the rocky surface. As the door reached eye level, Segoh saw the depthless black of space, dotted with countless pinprick stars in blanket unlike any night sky he’d ever seen on Earth. The calm of it was what arrested his mind. So still, so quiet, so stark. 

Two more days of this, he said to himself as the bay door rose above him. As long as Gow comes through for me. He said a quick prayer to the Holy Son for Gow, and the image of his mother touching the Effigy of the Holy Son before crumpling on the floor flashed through his mind. He said another quick prayer for himself: Holy Son, bless me with the chance to hold my mother in my arms once more in this life.

THE YELLOW MECHSUITS with their black stripes buzzed across the surface of the asteroid, cutting through rock with their laser cutters and piling it in the massive transport ships with their gravity guns. When the llunch bell sounded across their cockpits, they lifted off briefly from the surface using compressed air jets to propel them back to the garage. The bay door closed behind them, and the hissing of equalizing cockpits echoed through the cavernous space. 

The lunch cart held more energy capsules, another ration of water, and a ration of coffee for each man. Segoh seated himself on a crate next to a group of men he might have called friends in other circumstances, any circumstances at all, in fact, other than being enslaved together. He ventured a question. 

“Do any of you ever think of escaping?” 

“Segoh, hush,” a pilot named Mala said. “Are you crazy?” 

“Pah!” Segoh said. “They don’t care enough about us to listen.” 

“Even so,” another said. “I’ve heard that just mentioning escape or revolt can get your family killed back home.” 

“What makes you so sure any of us have any family left alive?” Segoh said. 

“Ayah, Segoh!” Mala said. “You might not have any hope left, but don’t take it away from those of us who do.” 

“I have hope,” Segoh said. “I have hope.” 

“Our only hope,” Mala said, “is to work off our ten years to be released back home.” 

They sat in silence for a few moments, sipping their coffee and water. 

“My mother is still down there on Earth, living in the surfacelands, alone,” Segoh said. “If there was anything I thought I could do to get back to her, I would do it. Wouldn’t you?” He looked around the circle, from face to face, seeing nothing but anguish and fear and embarrassment. 

The bell rang again, signalling their ten minutes were up and it was time to get back to work. 

THE REST OF that day passed much the same as the beginning had, and the next day the same as that, until the evening when Segoh used his rec hour to visit Gow in his room. 

Segoh knocked in a secret rhythm on Gow’s door and Gow opened it for him. Segoh had secreted his bracelet in the hallway before entering so that there would be no record of his having passed through the doorway and having his bracelet registered by the near-field doorlock mechanism. If he was suspected for any reason, he would be questioned about this time without his bracelet on, but at least he could give Gow plausible deniability this way. Not that plausible deniability was much to the corporate socialists, but he had to do what he could.

“Hi, Gow,” he said. Gow said nothing, but inspected his wrists to make sure his bracelet wasn’t on. “Don’t worry, I left it hidden in the hallway.” 

“Thanks,” Gow said finally. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Segoh said, stepping into the room and sitting on the toilet, the only seating available in the narrow space other than the bunk. “I know you’ve got to look after yourself.” 

Gow sat down on the bunk. “I’ve got it right here,” he said, rummaging in his blankets and eventually turning up a small memory chip soldered to a wristport adapter. “You just plug this into your wristport, and then plug the bracelet in right over top of it. Gow reached out with the chip laying flat in his hand. 

“Where--” Segoh started, but Gow cut him off. 

“Don’t even ask,” Gow said. “You don’t want to know.” 

“Okay,” Segoh said, picking the chip up out of Gow’s hand and inspecting it closely. He made to plug it into his wristport, but Gow leaned forward and grabbed his hand. 

“Best to wait,” he said. “Wait until you’re ready to use it. And speaking of using it--” 

“I know,” Segoh said, “but I can’t stay here. I have to get home.” 

“I have a family too,” Gow said. “I understand what you’re going through. And I still think this is utter insanity. You’ll be blasted to bits.” 

“They’ll never see it coming,” Segoh said. “They’ve successfully enslaved the lower class for generations, and success breeds complacency. They’re complacent in their power, and they won’t ever see it coming.” 

“All of that’s not even to mention surviving the lightspeed--” Gow stopped himself. “You know I have my doubts. Like you say, it’s nothing I haven’t said to you before.” 

They stood up, and Gow clapped a hand atop Segoh’s shoulder. “I’ll miss you, Segoh. I think you’re the only person here I can call a friend.” 

“I wish I could say the same.” Segoh said. “But this place has robbed me of everything I have to give, everything including friendship. I don’t deserve to be called a friend, and don’t deserve to call anyone else so, but were I able you would be the only one.” 

Gow laughed suddenly. “So dramatic, always,” he said. “That’s part of what I love about you.” He suddenly pulled Segoh into a one-sided hug that wasn’t returned. He released him and pushed him back gently, his hands on Segoh’s shoulders. “Good luck, my friend.” 

The next morning Segoh felt like a bundle of live wires that would electrify anything that touched him. Anxiety coursed through him and threatened to explode forth at a moment’s notice. After using the toilet and getting dressed, he plugged the memory chip into his wristport, grabbed his bracelet off of its charger, hesitated for a moment, and then drove it home into his modified wristport. On a little edge of the memory chip that stuck out from under the bracelet, a red light lit up, blinked twice, and then turned green. He waved it at his ration panel, and it slid open. A good sign, but he wouldn’t know anything until he powered up his mechsuit later that morning, and wouldn’t know for sure until he tried to override the mechsuit’s boundary limits on the asteroid surface. 

He ate his energy capsule and stepped out into the corridor, doing his best to contain the nervous excitement he felt. If all went according to plan, he could be home in a matter of hours. The possibility hadn’t felt real until now and he could hardly concentrate, stepping multiple times on the heel of the man in front of him as they filed down the corridor until the man turned and shouted at him to pay attention to where he was walking. The rest of the corridor and the ride in the elevator tube passed him by in a blur. The gentle landing of his feet on the bottom of the tube brought his mind to bear on the task at hand: passing the guard posted at the garage door without raising suspicion. The arm pushed him out of the tube and he walked forward, almost feeling that he had forgotten how to walk normally, feeling like he was doing his best imitation of how a normal, non-suspicious person walked, and he focused everything he had on his stride. Segoh nearly had a heart attack when the guard grabbed him by the collar of his coveralls as he was passing through the door. 

“Where’s your head at, man?” the guard barked. 

“Where...what...?” was all Segoh could stammer out. 

“That’s ‘what sir’ to you, mongrel,” the guard said. “You didn’t touch the Effigy. You mean to disrespect the Holy Son?” 

“No, no disrespect at all, sir” Segoh said, relieved beyond belief. “Just a little distracted, sir.” 

“Well? What are you waiting for?” the guard said, releasing his grip on Segoh’s coveralls and shoving him toward the icon on the wall. 

Segoh brushed his hand across the Effigy and thought, No matter what happens, this is the last time I pass through this door, the last time I touch this Effigy.

Like he had hundreds of mornings before today, he moved through his checklist and climbed into the cockpit of his mechsuit. He waved his wrist at the windshield and it closed over him. The heads-up display appeared, and then something that had never happened before started to happen. 

A dialog popped up on the screen, and lines of code started scrolling across it, endlessly and too fast for him to read, not that he would have been able to read the programming language even if it were moving slower. The characters were a blur as the cursor flew across the dialog box from line to line, pushing lines up and off of the top of the dialog box as fast as it could lay down new ones. Then all of the sudden the cursor came to a stop, blinked five times, and the dialog box was replaced with a new one, one that Segoh was more than able to read. 

It said “Mechsuit Hackbox 0.4” across the top, with a menu of options that controlled the top-level functions of the mechsuit’s software. He minimized the dialog with an eye-motion command, and piloted his mech to the bay door to await its opening. 

As the other pilots assembled by the door, he brought the hackbox menu back up and eyed the options. Near the bottom of the list was “Boundary Restrictions,” the option he would have to toggle to be able to pilot his suit outside of the normal operating boundaries, and further along he saw “Remote Control Options,” which he would need to shut off to prevent his suit from being remotely shut down when they figured out what he was doing. Whoever Gow knew, they were good. He minimized the dialog back to the system tray. The door began to open, and his heart skipped a beat. 

AN HOUR LATER he was nearing the boundary of the mining activities. Coming into view in the distance, he saw the transport ship that sent furloughed workers back to Earth after their ten years of servitude were complete. He brought up the Hackerbox dialog and navigated to the remote control toggle, switched it off, and waited a second. Nothing happened, and it was the most relieving nothing Segoh had ever experienced. 

Next he scrolled back up to the boundary restrictions and switched that off as well, but as soon as he did a red light started flashing in his mechsuit. “Unauthorized software det--” but it cut off along with the red light as soon as he toggled one last control in the hackerbox dialog: “Sever All Connection.”

He could see red lights flashing in the distance behind him through the rearview camera, but he ignored them for now. What will come, will come, he said to himself. No turning back now. 

Segoh engaged the compressed air jets at full throttle in the direction of the transport ship. He could see that the preparations for launch were complete, saw a gangway slowly retracting into the rear of the ship as it was sealed for takeoff. 

The broken, rocky surface of the asteroid sped by as he sat helplessly in the mechsuit, waiting to see if the jets would get him to the transport ship before it lifted off. The levels in the jets were going down fast, they didn’t last long at full blast, and he felt his hope start to wane as the transport ship’s propulsion engines began to glow. Just a hundred more meters was all he needed. 

As he neared the ship, it started to slowly push off of the surface of the asteroid, its mass lumbering into space and out of reach. Segoh steered his jets to push him upward so he would intersect with the ship as it rose up into the sky. He was only fifty meters away now, but the jets were nearly empty. He waited until the last moment, watching the level of compressed air left in the jets go down into the red, and finally reach zero, before pointing his gravity gun at the ship and flipping it on at full strength. 

The gravity gun caught the ship and pulled him the last ten meters to the ship, latching him onto the side of it just before it went into lightspeed and zoomed away from the asteroid, pulling him along with it. 

SPACE STRETCHED ALONGSIDE him, the stars elongating into long white streaks at the limits of his comprehension. His mind floated up out of the mechsuit, tearing away from his body in a terrible agony that he thought surely would drive him to madness if he survived. 

From above, outside of his body, he saw his mechsuit attached to the side of the transport ship, like a barnacle on a great gray whale floating in space while the universe moved around it. He felt his mind, his spirit, his soul, pulling farther and farther away from his body, screaming inside itself for an end, any end, and just as his very essence was on the brink of shredding into oblivion, the blue skies of Earth opened up before him, dotted with the islands of the atmoslands. 

He had survived lightspeed in his mechsuit. 

The landing zone was too quiet. He saw it as they floated down to the surface of Earth. Down inside of himself, he knew it was too quiet and none of it made sense, and it made even less sense that they had happened to land in his very own sector of the surfacelands. He’d been prepared to cut down anyone who stood in his way with the mechsuit’s laser cutter, but there was no one to stand in his way. His conscious mind ignored the portents of the empty airfield and he jumped out of his mechsuit and ran and ran and ran. 

SEGOH’S SECTOR OF the surfacelands was as it had been, and likely as it would ever be, when he had left six years ago. Up in the sky, the atmoslands, home to the corporate socialists, floated overhead like jewels in the sky with their domed shields glittering in the sun. 

Segoh tripped over a broken piece of sidewalk as he stared up at the atmoslands, nearly falling flat on his face before he recovered himself. He saw a souped-up dune buggy race around a corner ahead, flying the colors of a local warlord, and the jagged edge of a rusty dumpster tore at his coveralls as he ducked behind it to wait for the threat to pass. He held his breath against the dumpster’s stench of human waste and refuse as the buggy roared by. A man leaned out of one of the doors, aimed his machine gun, and rattled off a burst of fire at a vehicle in close pursuit behind it. Segoh continued down the broken sidewalk when they were gone, walking through the shadows of the decrepit high-rises, not breathing until he was half a block away from the dumpster. 

His building looked to be in slightly worse disrepair than before, but otherwise the smell of humans living in close quarters and waste strewn in the streets still pervaded, people were still being beaten at the checkpoints between subsectors, and the guards still had the same smug looks on their faces and same grim grips on their electrobatons. 

Segoh should have sensed something was amiss when he was unassailed at the three checkpoints he had to pass through to get to his subsector, and somewhere, in that same way he knew the landing zone was too deserted to be true, he did sense it. But the thought of seeing his mother, the hope he still held out that she was still alive, blinded him to these truths. 

As he made his way down their corridor to their room in the shelter building, Segoh saw the eyes of neighbors disappear behind cracked doors that slowly closed as he passed by. Neighbors that once would have smiled and greeted him, now wanting nothing to do with him. Not the homecoming he had imagined. 

When he got to his mother’s door, he saw that it was cracked open and he finally acknowledged the foreboding that had been growing inside of him since the transport touched down at the landing zone. His heart started beating faster as he pushed the door open, and he felt it leap into his throat when he looked into the room. 

Segoh saw his mother at knifepoint, held by a man in a clear rain poncho. He had healthy blonde hair that was slick with gel and combed straight back over his head. His green eyes twinkled with delight at the sight of Segoh, lighting up his unnaturally smooth face that looked like the skin was being pulled tight across his face’s surgically perfect bone structure. His white shirt and red tie and black suit were spotless and impeccably clean. Over it he wore a 

“Segoh,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.” 

The man drew the knife across his mother’s neck, and a sheet of blood spilled down the front of her sackcloth dress. The man dropped her to the ground, and for the second time in his life Segoh watched his mother crumple before his eyes. 

Now Segoh’s heart simply stopped. He fell to his knees, bent over on all fours, and barely felt the blows as the man kicked him over and over in the ribs, chanting at him, punctuating each word with a kick. 

“That’s. What you get. For going against. The corporate. Socialists.” 

Segoh fell over on his side, near to unconsciousness, barely able to feel the pain of the man systematically breaking his legs and then his arms and then smashing the bones of his hands and feet with an electrobaton. 

The man leaned down and whispered into Segoh’s ear: “You see your dead mother over there? I didn’t kill her. You killed her. Your little escape plan is what killed her. But you know what? At least you helped everyone in your building, and everyone of your fellow pilots, learn a valuable lesson today: that you don’t ever, ever, ever go against the corporate socialists. You just don’t do it. Because we have all the power, and we’re not afraid to use it. You’ll live out the rest of your days, Segoh, crippled and decrepit and miserable, as a living reminder to the rest of the surfacelands not to screw with us.” 

SEGOH DID LIVE out his days as a living reminder to the surfacelands, but not in the way the faceless, nameless corporate socialist would have had it. Segoh’s visage graced the flag the rebels raised over the first of the atmoslands to fall to rebel forces, and his mother’s name was on their lips every time they found their own knives at the throats of a corporate socialist.

Cover photo courtesy of Robson under Creative Commons.