breath, he looked around to find himself surrounded by green. Plants. They covered the black ground, with narrow footpaths winding through them, and climbed up spindly frameworks that supported brightly colored fruits. The air was thick with humidity and a thousand smells, none of them the familiar oil and hydraulic fluid.
It was unreal, like an AR enhanced training module. With that thought, suddenly everything seemed too real, and Zero had to turn off his System’s visual enhancements to make sure it wasn’t a trick. Everything around him dimmed as his AR stopped sharpening and color-correcting his environment, and he felt lost as the plants all lost their info tags and the ever-present timestamp that hovered in the upper corner of his vision winked out. Without the ability to instantly access the secondary world that was the database, the real world felt distant, disconnected, but at the same time, a part of his brain trusted it in a way that it would never trust the enhanced world in which he lived.
“You can’t go on forever like this,” he said.
“No, but even after losing the Chalk, we have a few years by my calculations,” Ava said. “But really, it’s just a matter of time before we get sick or the plants get sick, or we end up too conveniently hospitable for pirates, and it’s all over.”
He wasn’t expecting her answer. He was expecting to hear the usual bit about being free, not having to depend on anyone for anything. He had seen how that worked out too many times, though, where people had run out of food or water or just gone crazy. When it came to survival, history was pretty firm about the group over the individual.
“So you want a connection to the Guild, then?” he asked.
“No, not that. We want something different, better,” she said. “There have to be others, people who are trying to do the same things, people on stations like this one, and traders doing short hops from station to station. We want to have our needs met, and in return help to meet the needs of others like us, but no more.
“The Guild would call you pirates,” he said.
“What would you call it?”
“I’m not sure, not pirates,” he said. He had seen pirates, too many and too close, manufacturing cheap knockoffs or smuggling things into and out of stations. They all had one thing in common though, they were all trying to make it, to get rich and live big. Ava, Remi, and Vance on the other hand, were just trying to live.
“Me neither,” she said.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“I’m saying, that you could make a place for yourself here. If you want.”
Zero looked around the garden. Where a moment before, all he had seen was a system to provide for his needs, now he saw it as part of the system that was Horizon Station, and in that larger system, he saw needs, and he saw himself.
END
About the Author
Tom Dillon lives in Olympia, Washington with his awesome wife and an assortment of cats, ducks, and dogs. When he isn’t busy writing or reading, you can find him riding his bike, working wood, or rock climbing. Visit him online at https://pawnstorm.net.
About the Series
Other Stories by Tom Dillon
Try Not To Panic
The Press
... and much more at https://pawnstorm.net
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