Jeff Hewitt is a sci-fi writer living in Los Angeles. He grew up surrounded by water—in the swamps, lakes, and onion mucks of Upstate New York. He studied at Goldsmiths College. His work has appeared in Slate, Escape Pod, and On Spec.
It’s time for the Reckoning Press podcast. I’m Aaron Kling, Reckoning’s new audio editor, once again reading and producing for today’s story. Hello, everyone. Today, we have Jeff Hewitt’s “Where the Water Came From”, as featured in Reckoning 8. This is a story about distance. From culture, from family, from labor. A man is forced from a stricken earth to colonize a world man has only ever viewed from a telescope. Our protagonist is lost to his loved ones by light years, forced to make a family out among the stars. Ain’t capitalism grand?
The agent assured Tyrel it was a good contract. Eighty-five years wasn’t bad, as far as these things went. Could be worse. They could be sending him to Amarok, or Ragnar, or some other red dwarf gravity hell.
Not that Tyrel had much of a choice. More people arrived at the camp every day: dusty, desperate, dropped by coyotes at the border. He remembered his family’s long slog from California. One way or another, they had to get out. Just like everybody else.
The sponsorship agent told him about Hallex Industries. How they’d been the government’s top orbital vendor for the past thirty years. How, after the Declaration, they were tasked with refugee processing in the Northwest. He told Tyrel about the new seasteads. The state-of-the-art accommodations, just off shore. He told him about the desalination plants, ensuring his loved ones would never go through this again. He did have loved ones, right? People who relied on him?
Tyrel nodded. His wife, their kids, his parents.
The agent smiled, as if their shell-shocked trip through the desert had been serendipitous. What luck, to have an opportunity like this fall into their laps!
But water wars hardly felt like luck to Tyrel.
Then the agent explained the infopacks. Using their patented biomonitors, Hallex would track his dependents’ most important milestones. In-house specialists would produce snapshots of their lives, beaming updates to the ship throughout his journey. Despite the lost years and interstellar distances, it would be like Tyrel had been there all along.
Except, of course, he wouldn’t be. He’d be frozen in cryogenic goo, hurtling toward Epsilon Eridani.
Volunteering for a trillionaire’s interstellar boondoggle wasn’t on Tyrel’s bucket list. Neither was abandoning his family. But what could he do? Martial law had been declared. It was only a matter of time before the camps became funnels for the meat grinder. At least Hallex gave them a chance.
Was he sure he wanted to do this? The agent reminded him this was an all-or-nothing deal.
Tyrel didn’t want to do this. But he felt like he had to. For the kids’ sake.
He nodded.
“Great. Now, just state your name for the scanner, then the names of your dependents. Then we’ll work through the rest.”
Tyrel looked into the battery of lenses. He tried to keep his voice from shaking.
“Tyrel Brand. My parents, Erik Brand and Anya Teagan. My wife . . . .” The tears came. “My wife, Lexi Brand. My son, Jordan. And my daughter, Emery.”
Tyrel had a week to say goodbye.
After the biometrics, the behavioral panels, the skills assessments, and the corporate orientation, they shipped Tyrel to Kiribati. He and a dozen other passing grades stepped onto the Hallex elevator.
The burly guy next to Tyrel nudged him.
“Ever been up before?”
Tyrel shook his head, watching palm trees become dots against the seafoam below. Burly grunted.
“Change your damn life.”
But Tyrel’s life had already changed.
Emi had begged him to stay, clawing the logo on his new jumpsuit as Lexi pulled her away. She screamed as the repurposed troop carrier touched down behind them. Its rotors churned dust across the camp, wind whipping Lexi’s hair.
Jordan stayed back with his grandparents, staring from their tent. He’d been sullen. Quiet. Old enough to hide his grief, but not old enough to face it.
Tyrel kissed his wife. He smoothed her hair, salt stinging his tongue. Maybe there was a time when they would have fought this. Would have faced down war and famine to stay together.
Maybe. But things had changed. She’d wanted to leave after the first attack on the lithium mine, but Tyrel convinced her to stay. It was a good job. They couldn’t let some desert crazies ruin that. Besides, the Guard had been called in. They’d settle things down.
Tyrel had never been more wrong.
Then Emi had screeched, inches from Tyrel’s face. He wiped the tears from Lexi’s cheeks and let go. His parents waved as he slipped into the dust cloud, Emi’s scream still ringing in his ear.
“Look at that.”
Burly again, the blue curve of Earth glinting in his eyes. He pointed to something above them. A fleet of docked ships, their long spines and armored sides like wingless dragonflies against the black of space.
“Crazy.”
Tyrel agreed.
They separated the men from the women. Not that there were many women. But eighty-five years was a long time. If anything went wrong, the Bounty couldn’t handle more cargo. Cargo, in this case, meant people. Hallex Industries’ “beneficiaries.”
Of course, nothing would go wrong. The Hallex people assured them of that.
Cryo-pods lined the walls of the ship, status lights and access ports glowing against sheer metal. A technician explained how they’d fill up with a kind of artificial amniotic fluid, shielding them from acceleration and keeping them alive. Anyone outside the pods during their maser assist wouldn’t make it more than a few seconds.
“So, unless you want to end up an eighty-five-year-old puddle, stay calm, and don’t abort when the chamber fills.”
He walked them through a few scenarios: pod failure, waking up, lock-in. None of which would happen, of course. Then he opened it up to questions.
“Will we dream?” Tyrel heard himself ask.
“We’re, uh . . . not sure, actually.”
The pods maintained a minor level of brain activity. There might be something like dreaming. But it probably wouldn’t be eighty-five years of lucid fantasies. Next question.
Tyrel never thought of himself as much of a dreamer. But he kept feeling like he was about to wake up.
Sometime later, Hallex’s trillionaire founder shook Tyrel’s hand. He’d given a speech, telling them all how important they were, how he hoped to join them, how they’d write brave new histories amongst the stars. Tyrel doubted that.
The next day, a Hallex rep shuffled Tyrel into a media bay. A holo winked on as the door closed.
It was a farewell message. Lexi sat on a grey couch with Emi on her lap, Tyrel’s parents on either side. A spotless kitchen gleamed behind them, hints of an ocean view through its window, an empty cushion where Jordan should be.
“Hi, Tyrel.”
“Daddy!”
“We just wanted to—”
“Come home, Daddy! We got new bedrooms, and—”
“Honey, let Mommy—”
“No!” Emi squeaked. “I want to talk to Daddy!”
Lexi nodded, bouncing Emi on her knee. She distracted her with a pack of gummies.
She passed Emi to Tyrel’s mom and walked off-screen, hand over her mouth. His dad nodded to the camera. The feed cut out.
Then Tyrel’s cryo-pod was filling with cold, oxygenated fluid. The viscous goo rose past his ankles, his knees, hugging his skin. He knew he didn’t need to hold his breath, but he couldn’t help it.
When he woke up—if he woke up—everything he ever knew would be gone.
When Jordan was younger, Tyrel would take him out past Slab City to ride the dunes. They’d throw their fat-wheeled e-bikes in the truck and park on the wash, riding up and down the hills, watching the Salton Sea recede, sunset after perfect sunset.
That was before the water shortages. Before the crazies started blowing things up.
Tyrel wasn’t sure if he’d dreamt. But after he hacked up the last of the fluid, those memories kept playing in the back of his mind. Like he’d been reliving them for decades.
He struggled to the railing, muscles straining under his weight. According to the technician, they’d done something to keep them toned. It didn’t feel like it.
Where was the tech, anyway?
Pods hissed open as more beneficiaries woke up. A few stayed closed, occupants still blissfully unaware. Burly stretched out a few pods down. He cracked his neck and wrung his hair, globs of cryo goo splatting the floor.
Something was off. But eighty-five years of sleep fogged Tyrel’s brain.
Then it hit him: gravity. They weren’t supposed to have gravity.
The bulkhead door slid open. A woman in black stood beside one of the Hallex captains, hair slicked back, holo tab pulled up in front of her. Neither looked happy.
“If I could have everyone’s attention.” The captain boomed. “There have been some . . . changes you should all be aware of.”
Eighty-five years was a long time. Of course things would change. But Tyrel didn’t expect this.
An orbital ring rotated above the auditorium’s geodesic skylights, ships studding its surface. The Bounty was there, spinning away, hull dwarfed by the ring’s size. Dozens of other stations dotted the void, bathed in pale orange light. A lavender-tinged planet loomed below. Sunrise painted a crescent along its surface. Aurorae rippled its atmosphere.
They’d taken Tyrel and his fellow beneficiaries—“survivors,” people kept whispering—to a processing center. They gave them new jumpsuits. Some black, some red, some a color Tyrel wanted to call teal, but Lexi would call turquoise. New logos graced their chests: Almani, Edict Engineering, Sojourner Orbital. More colors, more logos. Sorting them into groups. Someone gave Tyrel a cup of frothy liquid and made him drink it. Then they herded him and the rest of the survivors into an auditorium.
Burly sat in the front row, spilling over his seat. He scanned the room, smiled when he saw Tyrel.
“Hey. Same team.” Burly pulled on his logo patch. They’d been drafted into something called Ichor Hydro. Light blue.
Tyrel wanted to smile, but he couldn’t. He wanted to wake up back in California, before everything went to shit.
The woman who supervised their transfer walked on stage. Chatter died down as a logo appeared behind the podium. Minimal arabesques surrounded a purple globe, a river carving through it.
“Not what you expected, eh?”
Murmurs rippled through the auditorium, her attempt at humor falling flat.
“My name’s Liya Chaudhary. I’m the presiding chair of the Tiānti Consortium, representing Chakra Subatomics. I’m sure you all . . . .”
Chaudhary paused. She’d clearly prepared for this. But confronted with a thousand hungry faces, she balked.
“Listen. I know this is fucked. We’re not the only system dealing with this. So just bear with me.”
The crowd fidgeted as she got them up to speed.
Hallgier Crow—the founder of Hallex—was dead. Which wasn’t that surprising; not even trillionaires live forever. Twenty years later, his company followed suit. Now, the Consortium had to deal with something called “contract transposition.” Hence all the new jumpsuits.
But the end of Hallex was just the beginning. Thirty-five years after the Bounty’s departure—or sometime between now and yesterday for Tyrel—some genius at Sojourner invented something called a “scalar field drive,” shortening the trip to Eridani to about forty minutes. Add another fifty years, and the desolate ball of ice they were meant to settle had already been colonized. And recolonized. And turned into a research outpost. And then colonized again.
By the end of the presentation, people’s eyes had glazed over. Not from boredom, but something else: something between information overload and disbelief, utter confusion and learned helplessness. It was the same combination that pushed many of them here in the first place. Eighty-five years later, and they were still wondering how it had come to this.
Tyrel felt his temperature rising. He’d sacrificed everything, betting on a better life for his kids. But it turned out to be just that. A bet. With no guarantees.
He’d signed the contract. Did everything he’d been told. He didn’t want “transposition.” He wanted to see his family.
Tyrel stood on his chair.
“What about the infopacks?” He shouted, mind reeling.
What Tyrel meant to say was: What about my wife? My parents? What about Jordan and Emery? But the contract had reduced them to a string of data points he might never see.
Chaudhary blinked, grappling with the question. She checked the podium and it clicked.
“Yes . . . The infopacks. We have a plan for—”
But it was too late. Other survivors leapt to their feet, bellowing questions, pitch rising to riot levels. Chaudhary pulled a mask from her pocket. She slipped it on, signaling someone off-stage.
Only then did Tyrel notice the security drones unfolding around the auditorium. The ventilation kicked on as unorganized groups tried to force their way on stage. Others made for the exits, bodies piling up as they fought to get out.
A riot squad entered from backstage. Tyrel saw Chaudhary point him out as he lost his balance, collapsing to the floor.
But Tyrel felt fine. Whatever they’d spiked the air with told him everything was going to be fine. The only thing that nagged him, that followed him down as he blacked out, was a high-pitched ringing in his ear.
Tyrel shot awake. His stomach ached. Dawn peeked through the windows, crimson light silhouetting the nearest bunks. A few others stirred, getting ready for work.
He’d been on Jal a couple weeks now. But he kept relieving those first chaotic hours: The frenzy on the orbital. Waking up as they landed. Shuffling through the unexpected city, twinkling in Jal’s early summer. The workers’ lodging. Another batch of tests and training.
The dorms were basic. Low-slung warehouses with corrugated siding, stuffed with beds, communal bathrooms, and two kitchens. Tyrel shared his with a hundred-odd Ichor conscripts. He headed to the bathroom, jumpsuit rolled under his arm. His stomach was still adjusting to the planet’s microflora. That frothy drink had prompted a few days of explosive diarrhea. But without it, he wouldn’t have made it a week.
Burly leaned over one of the sinks, tweezing hairs from his beard. He nodded to Tyrel.
“Big day.”
Tyrel nodded back. It was a big day. He squatted over the frigid metal toilet, thoughts vaulting past his work shift. He had his first conciliation tonight.
The Tiānti Conciliation Protocol dealt with the unique problems the survivors posed. Rather than dump eighty-five years of infopacks on them, the content would be released piecemeal. Probably edited too, Tyrel thought. But he’d take what he could get.
Each week, a hundred survivors got their fifteen minutes in a viewing suite, followed by mandatory group therapy. Just enough to keep them sane. To keep some hope alive as they adjusted. Maybe it would help, dealing with this together. Whatever “this” was.
They’d already seen what could happen if they stepped out of line.
After a dissociative shift at Ichor’s water treatment plant, Tyrel and Burly caught the bus into Sheen. The city had an official name. Something in the local pidgin. But everyone called it “Sheen.” Just like they called the planet “Jal,” even though it was listed as “Skadi” when Tyrel signed up.
They all had meanings. Histories. But they meant nothing to Tyrel.
The bus trundled over the dirt road, winding along the bay. Sheen stood at the outlet of a glacial valley, the city sprouting from alien tundra, framed by icy mountains, aurorae dancing overhead. Squat autofabs hunched next to multi-story farm towers. A street grid had formed during Tyrel’s lost decades, the Consortium’s headquarters at its center.
The bus stopped to let a line of construction vehicles pass. Tyrel turned to Burly. He stared across the quiet ocean, past the icebergs that never melted.
“What will you do while we . . . .”
While they did what? Reviewed their family trees?
Burly shrugged, arms crossed over his gut.
“Said I could surf the net. Guess they got something setup.”
His name was Cedro, but Tyrel still called him Burly. He’d gotten to know him down at the plant. They’d both worked in hydraulics, more or less: Tyrel in lithium flashing, Burly in shale. He guessed that was why the algorithm put them with Ichor, the planet’s water and hydrogen monopoly.
Ironic, Tyrel thought. It was water—or the lack thereof—that put them here. But Burly represented an odd minority: the people that signed up with Hallex not for their families, but because they had nothing else.
“Let me know what you find.” Tyrel said.
“También.”
The bus parked in front of a rec center in Hazar, Sheen’s pedestrian district. A Consortium welcoming party stood in formation off the road. Tyrel spotted Chaudhary, checking her watch inside.
A conciliator led Tyrel to some temporary buildings out back. Repurposed containers. The kind that went up and down the planet’s lone elevator across the bay. They passed security guards at each door, eventually entering one of the stacked prefabs.
“Here we are. Brand. Suite eleven.”
She scanned his face and the door opened. A folding chair waited in front of a holo terminal. Soundproofing padded the walls.
“I’ll grab you when you’re done.” The conciliator smiled and walked out.
Tyrel sat. A play button appeared, the old Hallex logo rotating behind it.
Tyrel hesitated. For him, it had only been a few weeks. How many years had they compressed into fifteen minutes? For the first time, he wondered if he wanted to see this at all.
But he pressed play. The Hallex logo expanded, revealing a flat blue seascape, a jagged spire rising from Puget Sound. Some promo for the seastead. Tyrel swept through the corporate fluff. He froze when he saw his wife and kids, back on that grey couch. A date notched the corner of the image, a ticker noting the time since Tyrel had left.
+00:01:03:22:18
Emery sleeps, splayed across Lexi’s chest. Jordan plays a game at the other end of the couch. Light flickers over their faces as they watch something, Jordan pretending not to, Lexi lost in it.
The view shifts to the other side of the room. A live feed shows the Bounty whipping past Saturn, magsails extended.
+00:01:17:04:53
Emery alone on the couch. Maritime clouds fill the windows.
“Hi, Daddy.”
Tyrel balled a hand over his mouth.
“They told me that anytime I want to talk to you, I can just talk, and you’ll get it. Eventually.”
She seemed so much older already. Her eyes had changed. They saw the distance between them, the unbridgeable gulf of time that would forever keep them apart.
“I just wanted to say I miss you. And—”
“Come on, Emi! We’re late.”
+00:02:05:10:39
Surveillance footage shows his parents walking through a park. They stop at a railing to gaze across the wind-swept sound.
+00:02:18:23:51
Lexi on the couch. She puts her hair up, pushes her fingers into the bags under her eyes. She searches for something to say, then shakes her head. “Sorry. This is too weird.”
+00:03:01:08:07
Jordan sits on the coffee table. Bruises mottle his chin, a black ring around one eye.
“I hate it here. I . . . .” His lip quivers as a tear drips down his cheek. He wipes it away. “I can’t believe you did this to us. The only reason I’m doing this stupid video is because the shrink made me. And they track everything, so . . . .”
Still mad, Tyrel thought. Eighty-five years, and he’s still a teenager. Maybe Jordan would always be a teenager to him.
The more Tyrel thought about that, the less he liked it.
The lights in the gymnasium whined, just above the ringing in Tyrel’s ear. The conciliator—the same woman who’d shown him to his suite—scanned their circle of folding chairs. Her eyes landed on Tyrel.
“Mr. Brand. Would you like to share?”
Tyrel shook his head. But he knew she would make him say something.
“It just . . . doesn’t feel real.”
Jordan had gone on: saying he’d never forgive him, that he’d never do another video. Tyrel figured that was just teenage angst. It had to be, right?
Burly and Tyrel waited in line for the bus back to Ichor.
“I didn’t know where to begin. The sites are all different.”
“Makes sense.” Tyrel watched people file onto the next bus. Red jumpsuits. Edict Engineering.
“The whole system’s different. The ‘NL-net.’ Some quantum shit from that lady’s company.” He meant Chaudhary, who’d just flown off. “Like Earth’s just a different time zone.”
Why not? Tyrel thought. Eighty-five years.
The bus left. Another jostled up the road, headlights throwing erratic shadows through the fleshy, blue-black plants that dotted the tundra.
“So, what’s new?
Burly grunted. “Everything. Nothing. New wars. Old people. Another sexy blue alien franchise. Found some articles about us and the Tau Ceti people, though.”
“Really?” Somehow, that surprised Tyrel. Who would miss them?
“Yeah. There’s this charity—”
Suddenly, an Ichor guy bolted from the back of the line. He barreled through a security guard, tumbling, then scrambling into the road. People shouted as he sprinted past, closing on the approaching bus and—
Gravel scraped under the bus’s tires as it braked, followed by a sickly crunch. The man screamed. And kept screaming.
The bus had swerved. But not soon enough to save the would-be suicide’s legs. Guards and conciliators rushed toward him. In the commotion, Tyrel recognized the agonized face as one of the men from his circle.
There are five basic steps to water treatment. The first is coagulation: dispersing charged ions to bind any dissolved particles. Second is flocculation: mixing the water, letting it form “flocs”—clumps of all the crap you don’t want. Next comes sedimentation: letting it all settle to the bottom. Then filtration: a series of molecular membranes sieve out the leftovers. Finally, disinfection: blasting the filtered water with UV light, hopefully killing whatever made it through the other steps.
Especially important on an alien planet, Tyrel thought.
Jal’s short summer had waned once again. The spiky, blue-black anthos bloomed along the roadsides, flower stalks bending under their own weight, purple spores hanging on the air. Ice crept down the mountainsides, lavender snow algae streaking their rocky faces.
Tyrel sighed and descended into the sedimentation pond. Ichor had him and Burly working overtime, processing as much water as possible before the bay froze over. The same thing, every winter. The workload meant the ponds—huge concrete trenches by the bay—got clogged up more than usual. So, they had to empty them out and mop up all the shit. Which humans apparently still did better than machines.
Cheaper, anyway, Tyrel thought. But at least they got overtime. Extra monopoly money. Better than what the Almani guys got.
Not much had changed on Jal. More paved roads. A couple new buildings. Countless accidents, maiming and killing workers. Tyrel had adapted to its eccentric, ten-month cycle: the long shifts at the plant, the rare days off, puttering around Hazar, the cramped lodging. But he felt like he’d aged decades. God knows his family had.
Jordan had followed through on his threat. Tyrel only ever saw him in the background of Lexi’s messages. And then, not even there. Secondhand, Tyrel heard about his son dropping out of school, falling into a gang, then disappearing altogether. Every conciliation, he hoped for news. And every time, he was disappointed.
His parents died a couple years after he’d left. Lung cancer. Probably from toxic dust blown off the Salton Sea. Lexi started messaging more after that, even though she’d moved on. She’d found a job on the seastead, met someone new. Probably would have happened even if Tyrel had stayed.
But Emi . . . Emi was his lifeline. More and more, the conciliations were like conversations with his daughter. It was like she could guess what Tyrel would have said, would have thought. A part of her mind she accessed every time she sat down and talked to him.
Tyrel watched her grow up. From five to twenty-five, in little more than a year. The birthday parties. The first crush. The teenage drama. She got straight A’s, went to Stanford, got engaged, called it off. She was smarter than Tyrel ever was. Smarter than he ever would be.
It took a while, but he’d opened up in therapy. He cried. A lot. Not so much in grief like the others, but in hope. Hope for Emi’s future. Hope that, despite what he’d done, everything would work out. Life on Jal was bearable with that kind of hope.
At sunset, the skies a deep scarlet impossible on Earth, Burly refilled their assigned pond.
“You thought about what you’re going to say?”
Tyrel shrugged, watching the water rise.
“I’ve been thinking about that since we got here.”
There was a charity back on Earth that put Hallex survivors in touch with their descendants, if they could find them. They took applications over the NL-net. But time online wasn’t cheap. And bandwidth limited their messages to text. People like Burly—with contractual access—wised up pretty quick, undercutting official rates.
Of course, the Consortium eventually caught on. Protocols had to be followed.
Burly was good for it, though.
Dear Emery,
Where do I start? How do you write a letter to someone you left behind? All I can say is: I miss you. Watching you grow up has been the proudest I’ve ever felt.
Here on Jal, you’re still in your twenties. But if I do the math . . . . It’s hard to even think about. Eighty-five years, like a blink. Maybe you were always the older, wiser one, trying to get me to stay.
Life on Jal is tough. The sun’s dimmer. Oranger, too. Our orbit’s all lopsided, with long, brutal winters, frost and fleas biting every time you step outside. But the summers are beautiful. Crystal clear rivers gushing into the bay. Auroras in the night sky. I wish you could see the sunsets. Even better than back home.
Hell, maybe you have seen them. Things changed so much while we were under. The people that took over our contracts say we could even go back to Earth, if we pay our dues. But that’s just a pipe dream.
Whatever’s going on back home, I hope you’re making the most of it. That’s all I ever wanted. Whatever pain I caused, I was only trying to do what I thought was right. I wanted you and your brother to have a chance, and didn’t see any other way.
Maybe I was wrong. But I can’t take it back.
I love you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.
—Dad
They rode the bus into Sheen, the road paved with some new synthetic. Workers complained about their pay rates. Someone heard Ichor was paying the women’s camp five more erds an hour. Hazard pay, Burly muttered.
No one took the gossip too seriously. But everyone went quiet when the bus pulled into Hazar. Security guards lined the streets. Drones hovered above the intersections.
By the time they reached the rec center, no one wanted to get out.
People shouted across the gym. Conciliators tried to calm anyone who would listen. Riot police dragged out those who wouldn’t. Eventually, the mood stabilized enough for Chaudhary to address the crowd.
“Connectivity issues.” That was the official line. But the survivors knew they were being taught a lesson: For the black markets popping up across Sheen. For unauthorized use of the NL-net. For the runaways who had set up a village across the bay.
Chaudhary told them that Sojourner and Chakra were working to restore access. In the meantime, they should take this opportunity to work through their frustrations here, in therapy.
That set the crowd off again. A guard nearly knocked Tyrel over, yanking a man out by his jumpsuit, fabric ripping at the seams. Riot shields turned on around the gym.
At moments like these, Tyrel’s ear always rang.
The remaining survivors sat in their circles, drones still patrolling the gymnasium. Tyrel scanned the empty seats, then realized the conciliator was staring at him. She’d asked him something.
“Sorry, what?”
“If you could receive another update from Emery, what would it be?”
Tyrel shrugged. He looked at the other dead-eyed group members, lost in their imaginations. Their own missing memories.
“I’d take anything.”
The conciliator nodded, like she could sympathize.
“What, specifically, would you like to see?”
What did she want to hear? What was the point of pushing him at a moment like this?
“Just her. Living her life.” He finally said. “Making her own choices. Even if they’re bad ones. I mean, it’s more than we can say.” A couple people in his group tuned back in. “Serving out these contracts we never signed, using your fake money in your shitty company stores.”
“Now, when I hear you say that, I hear—”
“You don’t hear anything.” Tyrel blurted, bunching his fists. The whole circle was staring at him now. He noticed the patches they’d made to their suits, unwilling to pay for new ones. “Yeah, you do your job, and you placate, and you act like you understand. But you don’t. Because after these sessions, you go back up to your orbital, while the rest of us freeze down here.”
A few people murmured, nodding. Tyrel stood.
“We do your grunt work, trapped in debt, while you work us to death.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s right.”
Burly looked over from his group. He prodded his neighbors, pointed to Tyrel. The same thing happened in waves across the gym.
“If you could sit down, Mr. Brand, I think we—”
“The only ‘we’ here is the people sitting down!” The ringing in his ear rose with his voice. He stabbed his finger at the conciliator, knowing it wasn’t her fault, but no longer caring. “You drip-feed the infopacks to keep us in line, doling out erds to blow in Hazar . . . .”
A drone started towards him, riot squad trailing.
“The truth is, we’ll never fulfill our contracts. We’ll never go back to Earth, even though we could. We’ll never see—”
A guard grabbed his arm. Tyrel resisted.
“None of this works without us!”
They dragged him from the circle, struggling.
“Without us—”
The drone tapped his neck and everything went black.
They kept him in iso for two days, that first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
As winter set in, word of the “connectivity issues”—and Tyrel’s outburst—spread; first through the dorm, then Ichor, then Almani. Pretty soon, Edict guys were stopping him in the street, telling him they agreed with what he was saying. Tyrel wasn’t sure what he was saying himself.
He and Burly spent their days at a distillery behind the ladies’ barracks, fighting off loneliness and the swarming snow fleas. When they weren’t doing that, they cracked ice and replaced pipes, which exploded during the coldest months. Tyrel kept writing letters to Emi. Not that he could send them.
If people asked, Tyrel gave them a piece of his mind: Pay was a joke. They might as well be slaves. And the Consortium had weaponized the infopacks. What kind of soulless automaton would do that? The only solution was to stop working. General strike.
Tiānti goons grabbed him again in Hamsa—the long month in the middle of winter. But this time, instead of throwing him in iso, they took him up the elevator, then shuttled him back to where this whole nightmare started. An escort led him past the auditorium, into an office the size of their dorm. A window screen covered one wall. Jal hung below, ice reflecting the flickering orange of Eridani.
Liya Chaudhary sat behind a large desk at the far side of the room. Tyrel checked for guards, for drones, for any kind of security. He didn’t see any.
“You’re turning into a bit of a troublemaker.” Chaudhary sighed, eyes still glued to her desk holo.
Tyrel walked over to one of the grey armchairs by her desk, felt the rough, printed upholstery. Chaudhary turned off her holo.
“Please.” She gestured toward the chair.
“What is this?” Tyrel asked.
“Some fabric Almani’s testing. Anthos-derived.”
“I mean: what am I doing here?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
Tyrel snorted. “Yeah. Right.”
He went over to the wall projection, put his hand through the curve of the planet below. Little reflections wrapped around his fingers. Like his whole life was another image. Another infopack.
“Like hell froze over.”
Chaudhary had snuck up behind him.
“What?” Tyrel was tired. Confused. Still cold from the bite of Jal’s lingering winter.
“My old boss described it that way. Jal.”
Tyrel nodded, but then shook his head.
“No. Hell’s something you lost and can’t get back.”
“Hm.” Chaudhary thought about that for a moment. “I’m going to be honest with you, Mr. Brand. We’re at the edge of civilization out here. A single fault could mean ruin. Not just for you and the other workers, but for everyone.”
“That’s the line?”
Chaudhary looked at him like he was a petulant child. Or an embarrassing parent.
“The Sojourner people want to strap you to that piece of shit you came in on and send you to Sirius.”
Tyrel shrugged. “Then what? Do all this again?”
“I don’t think they care about that part. And, frankly, neither do I.”
Tyrel turned to face her. But he didn’t have anything to say. She wasn’t telling him anything new.
Chaudhary smoothed her suit. “Just remember: we can live without you up here. The people on the surface can’t say the same.”
Intimidation by proxy then, Tyrel thought. All those poor souls left to freeze, just because he wouldn’t shut up. But he didn’t believe it for a second. He knew where the water came from.
“That’s it.” Thiba said, leaning in, squinting at the terminal. Tyrel and Burly lingered over her shoulder, clueless.
“Everything?” Tyrel asked.
Thiba nodded, patting the fan-covered box she’d spliced into their network. “Everything in, everything out.”
She looks like Burly, Tyrel thought. Big. Maybe that’s why he likes her. That, and she runs the distillery.
The strike had held through the winter. But the Consortium’s tit-for-tats were getting worse.
At first, it was just the Ichor workers. Then Edict voted to strike, and Tiānti put the whole planet under lockdown. When Almani joined, they tried sealing the farm towers. Of course, it was hard to keep the workers out when they wanted food for the orbitals.
“What about the Hallex archives?”
Thiba tapped in a couple commands, then nodded at the lines on-screen.
“All there.”
Burly clasped her shoulders, grinning.
“Nice work, babe.”
“Quit calling me ‘babe.’”
Thiba tabbed through menus, text strobing. “Looks like you got a message, Ty.”
“What?” Tyrel was still thinking about the archives. It had been months since he’d heard anything from Emi.
“From that charity. Tiānti’s been sitting on it.”
“They would.” Tyrel grumbled.
“Want me to read it?”
Mr. Brand:
On behalf of the Interstellar Migrant Workers Alliance, I’d like to thank you for your letter. You and your compatriots are a beacon of hope for thousands of migrant workers across the IS Free Trade Region.
As is often the case in these matters, tracking your next of kin has proven more complicated than initially assessed. While we were able to locate your daughter, we regret to inform you that she passed away three years ago, in Adelaide, F.O. Our team is now attempting to contact her surviving children.
Our sincerest condolences for your loss. Know that you are not alone, and we will continue searching for your next of kin. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to support you in the meantime.
Stay strong,
Shiraz Davani
SVP, Survivor Outreach
IMWA
Something broke inside Tyrel when he read those words. No doubt Emi had lived a long, beautiful life, retiring in what he guessed was Australia. But to him, she still had everything ahead of her.
He couldn’t bring himself to watch the rest of the infopacks, knowing what he knew. Now, all he had was the cause.
With spring around the corner, stored water was running low on the orbitals. And with their reclamators acting up, Tyrel knew they couldn’t last long. He denied Tiānti’s claims of sabotage. The Sojourner survivors had finally joined the strike. Deferred maintenance was just an unfortunate byproduct.
The Consortium still refused to negotiate. But the workers stayed united.
“Shunto.” That’s what the people in Jiyu called it. The spring offensive.
Tyrel watched the town’s children play at the edge of an empty field. Frost crunched beneath their woven boots. Scarves flapped from their necks. No one seemed bothered by the cold in Jiyu—the free city on the other side of the bay.
Oto, Jiyu’s nominal leader, pointed to a poisonous green vein on the mountainside above.
“They started dumping a few weeks ago. Runoff from the new builds by the elevator.”
“They’re desperate.”
“Maybe. But if that leeches into the ground water, we’ll lose the crops. We can’t last another winter without them.”
Tyrel glanced back to the cut-stone houses and open-air markets of Jiyu. Chopped anthos smoked beneath racks of fish, plumes billowing into the steel sky. A young woman ran towards them, waving her arms, shouting something Tyrel couldn’t make out. He still had a hard time understanding the locals.
Would he ever feel at home here? It wasn’t like he could go back; he’d lost his real home before they ever left.
Oto grabbed his arm.
“She says they’re demolishing the dorms.”
They took the town’s fastest boat down the coast. When they got to the Ichor complex, they found security teams battling residents, attempting to clear the dorms. Bunkbeds burned in a line around the building. Mobile autofabbers formed a perimeter on the far side, demolition plows rigged up and ready to go.
Tyrel sprinted into the fray, looking for Burly. Rocks flew through the air, forcing the security teams back. He found Burly fighting off three guards at once, easily throwing two of them to the ground. The final guard drew his stun gun, then froze, recognizing Tyrel.
“Why?” Was all Tyrel could shout. How could this be worth it?
The guard backed away, muttering something into his helmet. The rest followed, survivors chucking ripped-out fixtures after them. Burly wiped the sweat and soot from his face. Blood trickled from a swollen lip.
“Guess that’s all it takes for you, huh?”
Residents crowded around Tyrel, screaming past the autofabbers, throwing whatever they could find at the regrouping security teams. Oto appeared, pulling at his elbow.
“We must go. Find you a place to hide.”
But Tyrel couldn’t go. He’d seen how the residents rallied. How the guards froze when they recognized him.
Tyrel never planned on becoming a leader. But that’s what he was to the survivors. Someone who wouldn’t sit down and take it. He grabbed Oto’s shoulder.
“Tell everyone what’s happening. Everyone. Go!”
Oto frowned, nodded, and ran off.
Tyrel took stock of the remaining Ichor workers. Solemn faces nodded back, ash staining their worn-out uniforms. He turned to Burly.
“What now?”
Burly crooked his arm, holding it out to Tyrel. He smiled.
It took Tyrel a moment to understand. But when he locked arms with Burly, the rest followed suit. They formed a chain around the building, facing the autofabbers. They gazed through the hulking machines, past the wannabe soldiers, beyond the cruelness of Tiānti and the inconceivable expanse that divided their lives. What they saw was more than fair wages, more than lost memories, more than the struggle of the weak versus the strong. What they saw was hope. The hope that only hardship can provide.
They stood that way for some time. A late-season snow began to fall, sizzling over the fires. The sky dimmed. Security guards fidgeted on the other side of their line.
Then Tyrel heard something. A dull but growing roar, like the winter winds that blew in from the bay. The guards wavered, watching the Ichor residents, then furtively glancing towards Sheen.
“Look!” Someone shouted, pointing up the road.
Voices broke through as Tyrel spotted the mob. Hundreds of people in mismatched uniforms marched across the tundra, brandishing homemade weapons and eighty-five years of pent-up rage. Suddenly, a fireball erupted on the other side of the autofabbers. The riot squad scattered as more explosions rocked the line, the mob cheering as they charged.
They didn’t see the machines inching forward, treads chewing through frozen dirt.
The chain faltered as people stepped back, trying to keep their distance. But they held together, watching the plows grind toward them.
They’ll stop, Tyrel reassured himself, sweating from the fires. Some basic, inalterable safety feature. But when he thought of all the workers who’d died over the years, he knew that wasn’t true.
In that moment, Tyrel made the martyr’s choice. He’d lost enough. He wouldn’t yield, no matter what the Consortium threatened him with. Besides, he’d given up his life once already.
The chain broke as the autofabbers closed in, residents forfeiting the dorm. Tyrel didn’t judge them. Someone had to keep fighting. It just wouldn’t be him.
Burly stood by, arm still wrapped in Tyrel’s. The plows loomed, tarnished metal rending the ground.
“Run, Burly.” Tyrel shouted over the noise.
Burly shook his head, smiling. He turned and hugged Tyrel. He slapped him on the back, tears streaking his face. Then Burly cinched Tyrel’s arm, spun him around, and hurled him back toward the dorm.
Tyrel tumbled over the rocky dirt. There was a sound like a giant cracking its knuckles, and everything stopped.
They held the funeral in Jiyu, just outside of town. Looking at the crowd, Tyrel thought all of Sheen had turned out. Unwashed jumpsuits lined the terraced hillside, handmade threads mixed in with frayed corporate monotones. They waited for Tyrel to say a few words.
Did they come for Burly? Or did they come for him? After all, workers died every day on Jal. What made Burly special was that he’d died standing up for something. Standing up for him.
Tyrel stepped up to the altar. A container held Burly’s ashes.
“Burly—” His voice caught in his throat. “Sorry. Cedro. I never called him Cedro. Always ‘Burly.’ Anyone who knew him will know why: he was a big guy. With a low tolerance for bullshit.”
Laughter rumbled through the crowd.
“I met Burly back on Earth. He was the only person that talked to me before we got on those cryo-ships. The only one who seemed to know what he was getting himself into . . . .”
Tyrel glanced back to Thiba. She nodded, tears clinging to her eyes.
“Because Burly didn’t leave anyone behind. He had no one to leave. More than anyone else, we were Burly’s family. You needed something done, and Burly did it. Who wouldn’t, for family? Burly—Cedro—never gave it a second thought. He saved me,” Tyrel’s voice trembled, “without a second thought. And I can’t help wondering: what did I ever do for him? What kind of family was I, dwelling on my old life, pining over people I’ll never see again?”
Tyrel let that settle over the crowd. He saw how they waited. How they nodded.
“What kind of family are we?” He asked. “Most of us left Earth in desperation. We didn’t come here for ourselves. We came for the people we left behind.
“Yet, here we are, on a cold, strange planet, living together, bathing together, trying to remember a time when we had a home . . . when Burly’s home was right here.”
A few industrial coughs echoed from the hillside.
“Burly understood that no matter where you are, you find your family there. Because if you don’t, you truly have nothing.”
A chorus grew among the ranks of onlookers, and Tyrel felt himself letting go. He couldn’t go back to save his wife, his kids, his parents. But he could do this. A kind of penance. For Jordan. For Lexi. For Emi and Burly and all the rest.
“If I learned one thing from Burly, it’s that we are what we’re willing to do for those around us. And what do we do? We toil. We struggle. We’ve built our homes here, and the Consortium acts like they own our lives. They tell us they own this planet. But without us, there is no Jal. We. Are. Jal!”
The crowd roared and Tyrel roared back, adrenaline wiping his mind as talk of revolution poured out of him.
They scattered Burly’s ashes over a field that would soon be cropped. He’d become a part of Jal. Even more than he already was.
Tyrel watched a tiller mix his remains into the soil. A cold, unthinking machine, burying his friend under the frozen dirt. Fitting, he thought.
Teams of survivors headed into Sheen. They tore the beds from their dorms, piled them onto hijacked trucks, and formed a massive pyre at the edge of Jiyu. The Edict chemists handed out the firebombs they’d devised. Revelers tossed them into the jumbled mattresses and frames.
The bonfire lit up the night. Bottles were passed around. People laughed, and danced, and cried.
Tyrel, Thiba, and Oto sat outside a stone hut by the bay, the pale light from Jal’s moons glancing off the stippled black water. They planned. There would be a march, straight into the heart of Sheen. They had to show the Consortium this wasn’t a one-off. Some spasm from being pushed too far at the wrong time.
“No more bombs.” Tyrel said. They could take the high road. He had to believe, with the IMWA and their contacts on the orbitals, that there were people out there who would support them.
“What about security?” Oto asked.
“What about them?”
“They may have orders. Suppress, at any cost.”
Oto had always been the most caring of them, Tyrel thought. Someone people trusted. He was Jal’s heart, as much as Tyrel had become its voice.
“Maybe we can get some to defect.” Thiba said, standing. “I’ll push whoever we have space-side.”
Always the one with the plan. And the brains to back them up. Tyrel already missed how she and Burly would argue. Like two heavyweights circling, testing each other with jabs and feints. Thiba would always win, of course.
She went into the hut, her terminal’s glow the only light inside. Tyrel and Oto gazed into the bonfire, silhouettes flickering as survivors danced past the flames.
“Our spirits are stronger than we are.” Oto muttered.
Tyrel nodded.
“But we’re Tiānti’s most valuable resource.” He glanced toward the glittering bay. “Us, and the water.”
Oto just grunted, unconvinced.
“Ty.” Thiba poked her head through the hut’s arched doorway. “You got a message.”
He actually had two messages. The first was from Chaudhary: a request to meet. Neutral ground in Sheen. As if there was anything neutral on this planet, Tyrel thought. She would get her meeting, and then some.
The second was an update from the IMWA, this time from their CEO:
Dear Mr. Brand,
At the Interstellar Migrant Workers Alliance, we strive to lift up those whom the interstellar industrial complex has exploited. That’s why we’re always encouraged—and surprised—by stories like yours.
After tracking your descendants to Federated Oceania, it is my honor to inform you that we’ve located two surviving granddaughters. The eldest, Myra, is a clinician in Melbourne. We hope to arrange a meeting with her soon.
However, I’m reaching out personally because your situation presents a unique opportunity; both for yourself, and for the IMWA. Miraculously, your other granddaughter also resides in the Eridani system. Her employers have confirmed our findings. We’ve sent a contact request, including your information, through their channels.
Her name is Liya Chaudhary . . . .
Tyrel sat, pondering that letter in the quiet darkness of Jiyu, long after the celebration had ended.
The day of the march, Tyrel didn’t give a speech. He didn’t need to: at dawn, thousands crammed the roads into Sheen. The first aurorae of spring faded above them, sky slipping from indigo to pastel.
Tyrel took his time, pulled by the slow tide of the crowd. He’d left Jiyu in the middle of the night, bundled up so he could sit on the hillside, looking at the stars. Thiba had pointed Sol out to him and Burly one night, however many months ago: a tiny dot, barely distinguishable from the rest.
Eighty-five years is a long time, Tyrel thought. But it was also a long way. Far enough to make his old home seem foreign—an infinitesimal speck, shrouded in memories that felt more and more like dreams. He knew they were both more and less than that. But time and distance—and the way they become the same thing as you get older—made a mirage of the sturdiest memories.
People patted Tyrel’s back as they passed. They nodded, smiled, got chants going. Their jumpsuits were patchworks of red and teal, blue and black, pieces stitched together and remade. No color or corporate logo could sort them now.
A few locals whizzed by on their bikes. Teenagers, thrilling the nearest survivors with their youth, their enthusiasm. Tyrel had a flash of Jordan out on the dunes, laughing as sand sprayed from his tires. Maybe, after all this, he’d go back to the Hallex archives. Try to catch whatever he could. The glimpses of his son he’d have to settle for.
As he reached Hazar, he saw the electric fences they’d put up around the farm towers, the Edict fabs, the Consortium cafeterias. A handful of security guards lingered behind the fences, looking miserable. Then Tyrel noticed the helmets littering the ground, the open gates where guards were shedding their armor and joining the march. Survivors embraced them, shaking their hands as they waved them on.
They kept moving, past the rec centers and bathhouses, into Sheen’s industrial core. The chants grew louder as Tyrel approached the city center. The crowd knotted together. People held hands to keep from losing one another.
A cheer erupted up ahead. People pointed to the sky. A banner unfurled from the top floors of the Almani building, just as a passenger drone buzzed past. Fat blue letters read: WE ARE JAL.
The drone taxied above the rooftops, then descended over the Consortium headquarters, its stepped structure anchoring Sheen’s streets. Tyrel jostled through the crowd, heart in his throat. That would be her, he thought. Flying in for their meeting.
Did she know? Would anything change if she did?
Word of Tyrel’s arrival spread as he closed in on the Tiānti building. Rapt faces turned to see him. A path opened, clearing the way. Liberated workers reached out to brush his shoulders. Thousands of voices converged around those three words he’d said at Burly’s funeral:
“We. Are. Jal.”
“We. Are. Jal.”
“We. Are. Jal.”
Tyrel reached the end of the road. Featureless steel walls towered above him. A line of grim-faced security guards hid behind shields at the entrance gate. He waited, listening as the citywide refrain echoed through the streets. The chanting lapsed into wild cheers as the doors shuddered, then opened.
Chaudhary stepped out alone.
Liya Chaudhary. His granddaughter. Tyrel saw it now. The hints of Emi in her lighter features. The hints of Lexi. Of himself. An anthos-shaped pin glinted from her lapel.
Jal’s native flower looked strange on her. A symbol of the resistance. Proof that life—real life, not the corporate slavery that Tiānti forced on them—could thrive on this inhospitable world. Tyrel never thought he’d see it on a Consortium suit.
But she wasn’t just a suit. She was his kin. Like the people behind him. Like the security guards who’d joined the march. Like Oto. Like Thiba. Like Burly, the brother he never had.
Liya nodded, and the closest guards stood down, letting Tyrel through.
She held out her hand. Tyrel hesitated, fighting back tears as he saw the recognition reflected in her eyes. For the first time in nearly a century, Tyrel felt like he’d found his home.
It wasn’t the sight of a long-lost relative that brought him home. Nor the half-forgotten cry of someone left behind. It wasn’t the memories of what he’d missed, but the warmth of those around him.
Silence fell over the streets as Tyrel shook her hand. He glanced back, holding on as Liya tried to pull away. He saw the crowd’s apprehension. Liya Chaudhary was the face of their oppressors. Tyrel understood that. He’d been there with them. Suffered with them. Grieved with them.
They’d endured so much. Swallowed so many empty promises. Could things really change? Could he really make their lives any better?
Tyrel turned to face the survivors. They needed a sign. Something to show them they were in this together, no matter the cost. He slipped his other hand around Liya’s and raised their fists into the air, ears ringing as a triumphant cheer echoed across Jal.
