While We're Young

By Daniel Stephensen

"If you ever wished Blade Runner was a little more French New Wave, this is the book for you." — John Chrostek

Wealthy young Uptowner Edie Hamilton, all charm but worn out by existence, is Downtown on one last drinking binge before she quits Earth for Mars. Her bartender for the night, Mike Orion, himself a devoted drunk, is desperate to get to Mars, and falls hard for Edie, who's prepared to use her Uptown travel rights to take him with her. But Mike instead accepts a job from his mysterious friend and benefactor Robert Goodis: he's to escort a child android shell to the terraformed red planet — a child shell, but animated with the mind of Vela Lenn, Goodis's ex-partner. While Goodis means to keep his promise to Vela to destroy her mind should it become too far separated from her body, Mike is fixated on settling into an idyllic life on Mars with Edie, whose overpowering maternal love for the child android shell makes it impossible for her to envisage happiness without Vela.

• Language: English
• Publisher: FTS
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223103844

Book preview

ONE

Mike Orion waited on a warped, stained street corner outside the Chaplain Hotel, a pub on the northern edge of Natura. Last drinks here in the undercity, Downtown, before the Uptown border and its gilded elevator that carried citizens and passholders up to the holy sunkissed overcity. Two loves of comfort and despair, Uptown, Downtown: two cities of Natura.

Cyborg guards cast long shadows from atop the concrete border wall as they marched down Field Street before slipping into darkness under the vast Uptown slab. Dirty clouds clumped high around enormous pylons holding up the overcity. A slice of natural heaven between the top of the wall and the edge of the slab was the only glimpse Mike had of the outside world. Out there was a worn and blistered place. Heat haze curled from a spaceport anchored high up on the domed hemiseal that encased and preserved Natura. A shuttle streaked across the tawny sky.

If I could just get on one of those…

Three shuttles a day to Mars, two back to Earth, six days a week. Plenty of people thought like Mike Orion, the Downtown dream: If I could just… For anyone who made it to Mars could stay and live free out there, or get gone somewhere else, long gone, hop a cruiser through the interplanetary slipstream to another world, another galaxy, even one of those other Earths. Plenty of Downtowners dreamed of making a new start somewhere unruined, say Johir or Imul, those giants of the Ursu system, or their neighbour Csin, or Serinthea, glorious pristine Earthlike cousin.

But who’d make it off the globe from here, from Downtown? You needed a pass just to get Uptown, and pure luck to get from there to the spaceport without being arrested. You needed a pass from the Security Alliance, the police force of the Allied Faith, and when was the last time they bestowed a pass? Who do you know who ever got one?

In the early days of Natura, when the border wasn’t yet built, it was easy enough to leave, but that situation didn’t last long. Security tightened. The city’s cortex evolved. And then every time Mike Orion thought he’d done enough to get his pass, and passage up and gone, he discovered that the rules had changed again, or they were not what he remembered them to be. It was hard to keep track. There was always something changing. Mike would come up for review, he’d go to his Security Alliance interview thinking he had finally done enough, but something had changed. New rules just in today, Mike, incredible, such bad luck…

So he had to go on, build his credit, earn his way up.

If I could get on one of those…

All he wanted was the Downtown dream, to live on Mars as a free citizen, live wherever he pleased on that perfect planet, in Eden or Elysium or gorgeous old Tereshkova, or even build a house of his own in a wild meadow, plant himself a fresh food garden and live free with only the heavenly void above. And he could get gone from there whenever he wanted, gone anywhere, long gone and come back anytime.

Nine years past, to the day, his wife had gone that way, out to Mars and then to Ganymede, or so he’d heard. Long gone and never coming back. Mike kept her memory. He had loved her, and she him, though their love was made of loneliness and stray desire. Mike tended to their marriage like a noble duty, but Kad was a woman of flesh and blood. She wanted to be one color blending into another, into another, on and onward, beauty in motion, forever unresolved. She wanted to transform into new creatures of herself. Mike could never tell exactly what was on her mind.

Another shuttle sailed across the sky. A point of light, a trail of vapor, silent, bright.

But come now, look here, striding up Field Street toward the Chaplain Hotel, here’s a likely individual. Mike Orion lowered his attention to the new man. Young-looking, stringy hair, olive skin, acne scars, thin and tight in denim and stale air. A dead rat stink announced him. He was loud, this one, a loudmouth, maybe scatterbrained.

Hey, you the one selling Lyso? Hey!

Too loud. Far too loud.

Not me, Mike said, breathing through his mouth. Not a seller.

Aw, man, you seen anyone else out here? I missed my ride! Spare a poor old gunship bull a cred or two? Five? Twenty? I was in the Mining Wars, me. A gunner, you heard right. Killed and killed. Twenty cred’d set me, get me home and fed. Home and fed for twenty cred. I didn’t eat in all these past three days, old man. Help me out, will you? Aren’t you the one selling Lyso?

Listen. It’s my rosary to call to mind my need to share, Mike said, and to give freely of what I have, so I could share with you—

What, Lyso or cred?

—and you could share something in return.

You are him! Man, why’d you say you weren’t?

I’m no one. Forget it, Mike said. I’m an actor, I’m running lines. Get out of here.

This young man, this poor gunner, maybe he got copped by the Security Alliance, maybe gave them a tip about a feller selling Lysodol on Field Street, up by the Chaplain Hotel.

Mike backed off and held open the door to the pub.

I work here, he said. I’m a barman. I’ll shout you a beer, you can smooth out.

Beer? What use is beer? said the gunner. You’re supposed to have Lyso, man. I’m getting old, see? They took away my share, they cut me off. Why won’t you help? What gives you the right?

Get out of here, you, Mike said. Get gone. I don’t sell Lysodol, you must be looking for someone else…

He backed into the pub and let the door sigh closed. The gunner didn’t follow, didn’t look like he would, but he had his say, Hey! Hey, man, what’s wrong with you? Where’s your heart? and on like that.

Not worth it, that one, not nearly worth the trouble subtle commerce could attract. Mike Orion had his fair supply of trouble, and always plenty yet.

TWO

Quiet in the front bar, just the regulars, quiet old men slouched over beers and talking low, playing chess, checkers, Scrabble with each other, or the little games from ads on their screenpaper coasters. They were true old humans going out naturally, Lysodol-free.

From the radio came the sing-song campaign, broadcast by decree:

It’s Lysodol, Lysodol!

Lyso Lyso Lysodol!

It picks you up and stands you straight,

Keeps your body feeling great!

It’s Lysodol, Lysodol, with Lys for Li-i-fe!

A slap in the face, then back to cool tunes, golden voices of long gone days. The old-timers dipped their heads again over games and quiet conversation, but every half hour:

It’s Lysodol, Lysodol! …

Mike avoided seeing himself in the mirror over the bar. The image was constant: forty-ish, greying, creased and crumpled, tired but still strong.

He checked in at the employee terminal and waited anxiously for his personal messages. Nothing new came through. He held his breath through another refresh. The terminal blinked. Still nothing. It blinked again and showed him viz of happy people in dazzling sunshine dancing in a field, running after dogs, cooking steaks on a smoky grill, trading hats and laughing, laughing, the Lysodol brand superimposed over their madness.

Any day now he’d receive a message inviting him to an interview with the Security Alliance. He had to be ready. His turn was coming. He’d be invited to their scrubbed beige office for questioning.

It’s all routine, Mike, don’t worry. How are you? How’s your job? How’s your place? Say, how much do you think we know about your little scheme down here?

He tried not to think about it, the sickly office and the Security Alliance brute with his gray suit and shaved head and optical augments. Alliance officers believed themselves to be extensions of Natura, of the city and its immaculate cortex.

We knew what you were up to before you did it, Mike. We had a line on you all this time, before you even came here. We know all about you, soldier.

They were the city’s holy hands, these officers. They didn’t believe in or even contemplate lapses in Natura’s magnificent cortex.

Goodis did, though.

Goodis knew the lapses. He could see them coming.

Goodis, Mike’s friend and landlord, and sometimes client: Goodis knew where the holes were in Natura, the moments when the cortex had to evolve to correct errors. Moments of inattention.

Tell us where he is, Mike. Robert Goodis.

Robert who? What Goodis?

True enough, he hadn’t seen Goodis for months, almost a year.

That long? We don’t believe you.

You never have.

All right, so where did he go?

Who knows? Jakarta, Jupiter… Who can know?

This isn’t promising, Mike. How did he get gone?

How? On his feet, on wheels, gone into space. Gone like how anyone gets gone. He had a pass, right? You should know.

What kind of pass? Where did he get it?

How can I know? You’re in the wrong town for answers.

It was simply that Goodis would get gone, that’s all. And not long gone, either, just gone, gone as he wanted and back when he was done. And when he came back no one asked about him, no one summoned him, viz drones didn’t bug him, the Security Alliance didn’t invite him for a chat. No one in the Allied Faith superstructure had anything to say to him. Goodis raised no red flags, and yet they always asked Mike about him.

We saw you with Goodis.

Paying my rent.

We saw you drinking with him.

He comes to the bar.

You were drinking with him, we said.

Not me, I don’t drink.

This far apart, you two. Drinking.

Water, sure. I got hydration rights like anyone.

In subtle ways Goodis helped him get along Downtown, helped him stay as clean as anyone could. Goodis knew systems, knew Uptown and how the Allied Faith operated. And Mike knew better than to ask him how he moved around the way he did, or where he went when he got gone. He didn’t want that information in mind or memory. No one here had any use for secrets.

A mysterious place, Downtown. Sometimes it seemed abandoned, its broken streets silent and static. But then you’d turn a corner into a crowd and you could hardly move. Sometimes the city was a vibrant, living creature like any great capital; sometimes it felt like a hasty reconstruction, a backup ruin.

The suicide rate went strictly unspoken. Anyone caught trying to die got sent to rehab on the outskirts of Natura, or worse, prison outside the hemiseal. It was possible to get used to being Downtown, living dark and damp under the Uptown slab, and life down here was much better than prison out in the scorched, mutant countryside. From time to time you’d catch a glimpse of sun to keep your spirits up. And on the bright side you didn’t have to worry about food: the Allied Faith sent down rations for everyone in the undercity, along with vitamin-laced Lysodol, your daily bread and holy privilege.

But it was a strange city, no doubt about it, squatted down here under the giant dripping molding Uptown slab. Downtown, months would go by and you wouldn’t see a human child anywhere, not a single one. You’d see android kids, but most of them were on the verge of going scatterbrained from neglect: child androids had been a fad Uptown. Overcity kids begged their parents to buy them their own kids to boss around. But parenting was work, they were bored, their little android children just wanted to be good, they wanted to be taken care of, fed and clothed. They wanted to live.

Too many android kids got dumped in the glittering streets like Christmas pets, and the Allied Faith had to take action. New laws, age restrictions, extra monitoring. Good Lord.

But then there’d come a pale morning on Field Street and Mike would see a real Downtown baby, soft and burbling in its parent’s arms as they went down home into the old train station. Or, to top that awe, someone would bring their baby to the Chaplain and stay for lunch. Mike would buy a lottery ticket that day. A genuine baby, slung to mother and fast asleep. Imagine that.

He’d heard of Downtowners applying Uptown for permits to give birth. By all accounts this process was just as opaque as any other Allied Faith ordeal. Some got pregnant while waiting for a permit. Most miscarried. Some would apply and get a permit but be unable to get pregnant, so the Allied Faith would offer these parents permission to adopt a child android. But with mandated upgrades and repairs an android cost far more than a human child; and then to age it, which was mandatory, you had to transfer its neural cortex to a new shell once a year. And if you didn’t keep your income and savings in the required ratio the Allied Faith would send the Security Alliance to rescue the child, and then they’d send you out to prison for neglect and conduct unbecoming to urban peace.

But go ahead and try your luck, that’s what Mike Orion would tell anyone who asked for his advice. Don’t forget, though, if you manage to raise a human child you’ll have to buy their Lysodol yourself when they turn eighteen. The Allied Faith gives all human children eighteen years of low-dose Lyso, just enough to keep them fit and going—they’ll never even catch a cold—but when they turn eighteen you’re on the hook for their ration, and Lyso is compulsory. God help you. But listen, there’s an old trooper Downtown I know who has a few extra packs of Lyso, and he’s selling them for a song.

One hundred sixty years old, Mike Orion. A veteran of two Mining Wars, seventy years on Lysodol, fifty years Downtown. Each birthday he felt more and more like the ruins of old Port Brass, his home and native city, over which Natura had been built. Port Brass could still be seen, if you knew what to look for, among the older buildings Downtown. Mike’s apartment block had been recovered from the old city, and the wide hill west of there was made of Port Brass rubble…

The mystery of life rose up around him.

With a few minutes to kill before his shift started, he deleted old junk messages from his account. In the world these messages described, Mike Orion was a winner who could claim a fortune in prizes if only he could prove he lived Uptown.

Delete, delete, delete.

He almost deleted the invitation.

His stomach flopped. A hard lump swelled in his throat.

The message was from last month. He hadn’t seen it.

The Security Alliance of the Allied Faith invites you to submit information regarding your current circumstances.

Tomorrow morning. They had him scheduled for tomorrow, six o’clock at the office complex by the market. Same morning as his ration pick-up. Efficient.

And the consequences of ignoring the invitation? Well, the Security Alliance officer scheduled to interview him—a sentient servant android of the Allied Faith: servient, they called them—this officer might feel obliged to escalate Mike for a round or two of persuasion.

He had undergone persuasion before. He had no longing for it.