“Do you ever feel like a small, insignificant fleck of sand on a small insignificant speck of dust hurtling through an endless void?”

“I’d like to think that most everyone struggles with that feeling one way or another. Questions like the meaning of life, place in the universe and all that.”

“Do you want to answer them with me?”

~~~

*beep* *beep*

*beep* *beep*

Bec slapped the phone. Snooze please. The phone wouldn't stop beeping. Uungh. Stretching, Bec flopped out of her bed and gestured vulgarly at the vanity mirror across the room.

“Okay, I’m up!” The mirror hesitated for a moment before a semi-translucent checkmark displayed on the glass. Silence. The mirror began to stream a ticker tape of news and other tidbits down the sides, leaving Bec’s disheveled form framed by data. As a gangly and extremely tan girl with sandy blonde, short, wild, and wavy hair, she evoked strong surfer vibes even though she spent most of her time on the interior of C-attle, far from the docks that encircle the city. What broke the surfer illusion were the chamfered rectangular glasses that she put on her face.

Now in focus, the text on the mirror told her the highlights of the day. Docking procedures on schedule. An EngDub of a French show she’d been eyeballing is in the works. 40ºC and humid as hell. Why does it even bother telling me? It’s always humid in C-attle. Bec stared at the posters lining her room of some of the great cities of the world, Rio, Delhi, Shanghai, and Paris, La ville d’amour.

“Ah, Pair-ee. One day.” She stroked the crease in the center of the poster. With a big smile, she headed to the showers. Leaving nothing to chance, Bec planned her outfit and laid it all out the night before. Thus, in no time flat, Bec donned her pretties, a breezy t-shirt with a faded insignia establishing carefully cultivated nerd cred, and jean shorts. Moseying on over to the kitchen, Bec’s mom had filled the house with some of the best smells. She passed Bec a plate of leftovers omelet. Mushrooms, bell pepper, last night’s shrimp, and…

“Curry powder?”

Bec’s mom beamed. “Yup! I was saving it for my girl’s big day!” She bubbled over going on and on about how she was proud and worried and excited and scared that her big girl was taking an inland job. Bec gave her a token assurance that it’d be safe, and she didn’t have to worry but, well, it was inland. A smile crept across her face as she thought of how exciting her life would be from now on. Dune buggies, pirate raids, and maybe even some daring urban exploration. Huhuhu, she chuckles to herself.

“You aren’t even listening to me, are you? You got that goofy grin on your face as usual.” She sighed, “You really are looking forward to this, aren’t you?”

“It’s been my dream to see the world forever, mom…” Bec trailed off as the sirens started echoing down the hall and into the kitchen. They were docking. She grinned a wide grin. Abruptly and, with fury in her eyes, Bec’s mom stood; the screech of the chair pulling Bec’s eyes to her irate mother.

“I will get a hug and a warm goodbye WITHOUT a grin that makes me feel like chopped liver, and I will get it now!” Her arms opened wide. Bec slid in with practiced comfort.

“I love you, mom.”

“I love you, too, Bec.”

~~~

Bec rolled her favorite rolly bag and her backpack through the station. It was odd riding a tram for her entire life but only now, after 18 years, did she get to take the stops beyond her city. Obviously, this was not possible before as there were no extra stops unless the city was docked. Nevertheless, it still felt like she was just now learning about Platform 9 3/4. Bec felt special, like she was doing something no one else was, despite the foot traffic around her. Mom’s not here, I can curse aaaaall I want now! I AM a fucking wizard and I WILL fucking flourish, she affirmed to herself.

“Magic is FUCKING real,” Bec lied out loud, not caring about the sparse shuffling throughout the terminal. She walked out of the station into the city. But it really wasn’t a city. More like a shitty. If you couldn’t generate a kinetic shield these days, you couldn’t afford to have a dense population center and could barely call yourself a municipality. Tungsten rods fired by bored scavengers from 150km out tended to obliterate any and all targets that gathered too closely. Landlocked “cities” tended to look something like a mix of suburban and rural super-sprawl, decentralized to the utmost degree in every facet of life. I’ve seen people sweating over two major political leaders stepping within 10km of each other. Sea cities like mine, C-attle, are constantly on the move, drifting around in the ocean for years at a time. A moving target is harder to hit, and the faster railguns need energy and proximity that ocean city defenses counter pretty handily.

This and more went through her mind as she walked, and walked, and walked some more. Packed gravel roads turned to dusty orange roads as it started to take 20 minutes to pass singular buildings and fields of pop up housing. Eventually, she found a cart rider that was willing to give her a ride in the direction she needed. Then she rode and rode and rode some more. She was bored to tears. Literally! She was about to cry before she finally saw her destination and sighed a sigh so deep that you would’ve thought she held her breath the whole cart ride. She thanked the cart rider and gave him a tip.

Lauds Inc. stood before her in an unassuming, unlabeled two-story building. Even multinational corporations tend to prefer unlabeled and humble establishments in these frontier cities. She opened the door and took a deep breath of cool air. Bec stood in a lobby with a handful of people milling about. A tall, lanky man with light almost silvery hair saw her walk in with her luggage and flagged her down.

“You’re a new hire, yes?” He asked like there was any question. “Follow me please, we’re about to start orientation.” He opened a door to a room with 4 other people around her age (give or take a few years) all sitting around a meeting table. A girl with a heavy tan and sun-bleached, chlorine green hair, likely meaning she’s another C-attle resident, gestured to Bec to come over.

“Uh, do I know you?” Bec asked tentatively as she sat down in a seat next to her. Bec oozed nervousness but, internally, she was already giddy with excitement. I’m about to make a friend! I did NOT make many of those when I was in the city, doing my studies online, and trying to leave the second I could.

“Hey.” She whispered to Bec, ignoring the question. The volume forced Bec to lean in close to hear her better. “You see that boy over there.” She gestured with a limp wrist over to a guy with maybe Vietnamese heritage sporting short black hair and a cool smile. “And that one over there,” wrist flopping back towards the other guy with red hair and freckles.

“Yeah...” Bec suddenly felt an odd sense of worry form in her chest. The lime haired girl looked Bec dead in the eyes and clenched her fist.

“They’re mine,” she snarled.

“I-what?” Bec couldn’t believe it. This bitchy cliché. Channeling her mother, Bec stood up angrily, coolly saying, “W-w-well, I just wanted… Fine!”

So thrown off by this girl “marking her territory,” Bec stammer through a few half-baked remarks, “Both of them?! I don’t even… Fine!” Bec walked away to find another seat far away from… her before she could come up with any more zingers.

“Mean one, eh?” The last new hire, a girl with auburn hair and sharp features, staring up towards the ceiling loudly said, “It would be a shame if the threats that this basil-haired Bechdel-failing bitch has been doling out catch the ears of all the men in the room.” The guys looked confused, Bec sat with her mouth open and the green girl gave the sharp girl a death glare. Still gazing at the ceiling, the sharp girl continued, “I don’t like being told what to do and I will—”

“Actually, you’ll be quiet," a striking African man in a grey suit interrupted, startling the sharp girl. The silvery haired man shuffled to his side as he said, “Hello and welcome, I see you’ve all met each other and are getting along well.” He grinned a hungry, toothy grin like he was plucking meat from the bone. The sharp girl stabbed a glance at the tall man. A chill went down Bec’s spine. She recognized him immediately, and it definitely showed on her face because the next words out of his mouth were a huge mistake.

Looking right at me, he said, “Would you care to introduce me?”

Uh oh. “You’re the president and founder of Lauds, the company that we’ve all come here to start working for. Your rise to prominence in the last three years has been… meteoric to say the least. In only a few years, your net worth has exceeded the prewar wealth of several developed nations as your company has outstripped competitors in almost every burgeoning industry. You, yourself are an accomplished particle physicist and a hardware engineer of the highest order! You’re… Oratile (pronounced Ora-tealy) Nkosi!”

“Yes… yes… very thorough… I appreciate the pronunciation tip…” He smiled a little less though as Bec gave a progressively more detailed impression of his influence to everyone at the table. Everyone tensed as they realized at varying points in her recounting who they were dealing with.

As usual, Bec’s nerves got the best of her. Unlike most anxiety-prone individuals, Bec’s acute awareness of how shy she was manifests in a bit of overcompensation. With her spigot broken, she just kept on talking, “Oh my god, why are you here? I thought traveling across the ocean was deemed unambiguously too risky for people of your status. ShouldntyoubeattheopeningofthenewRelativisticHighEnergySupercolliderinPrague? WhatisJohannesburglike?UnlessyouhaventbeenthereinawhileandIapologi-”

He gave a pained look at what Bec now assumed to be his platinum-haired assistant, “That’s enough. You know, I’m pretty sure we’ve accidentally hired a stalker but that doesn’t matter. We have business to attend to!”

“Just a fan!” Bec said. Sure, that wasn’t precisely true, but he was nothing if not interesting.

He gestured his hand dismissively. “Yes, this is an exciting time! The supercollider in Prague is a great sign of the changing tides, but what we have here is just as, if not more, important. I am here to offer you the chance of a lifetime! Now I know it’s a hard sell to be the guinea pigs of this product but know that you’ll be ushering in a new era!” He gesticulated passionately as he unveiled a black Slate with a little doodad hanging from it. It was just a plain old datapad slightly larger than a paperback, only a few centimeters thick, with a white circular pad dangling on a long string. The room was silent. Mr. Nkosi cleared his throat. “Yes, well, anyone want to volunteer for a demo?” More silence. Bec hated silence.

“I’ll do it,” she said, vomiting out the words before her throat could catch it all.

“Very well.” Nkosi sighed and waved to a chair he pulled from the table and rolled to the front of the room. Bec, upset at succumbing to a habit that got her in trouble frequently in school, slowly placed herself into the chair and the hoary helper placed the suction cup on her forehead. The Slate lit up and a stream of text began rolling down the screen. Words like “wow,” and “what am I looking at?” scrolled rapidly down the page. Then, Bec’s breath caught as she saw the phrase, “what was I thinking volunteering?” Then she thought and, in an instant, before the words came out of her mouth, “Is this my mind? Well, is this what I’m thinking? This- oh, wow this is. I’m actually seeing what I’m thinking-lalalalala.”

This was when Bec realized that this data was being displayed on a screen wall behind her. “Uh oh. They can see me thinking… oh god, don’t think of anything embarrassing.” Bec glanced at the green girl. “Bitch. Whoops, haha messed that up, but it seems to not know that I looked at the green-haired girl before thinking it… wait, shit.” Green stared at the wall behind her, looked at the guys around the room, and caught a few glances her way. This led her to stare angrily at Bec for what felt like the fifth time in ten minutes. When Bec looked back to the tablet and saw that it recorded, in real-time, her own reactions to Green becoming visibly upset. She saw “This is getting out of hand” pop up.

“Uh, please take this thing off.” She says nervously.

“How about I switch to another channel! Please—” He looks at his assistant.

“Namiko Bec.”

“Bec Namiko,” She corrected. “We’re all talking English here and I’m more Cameroonian than Japanese.”

“Bec! Please avert your eyes. Stare at a wall or something.” He gestures a sweep at the air and the screen changes. The Vietnamese? boy gasped, causing Bec to look at him for a moment. He immediately starts looking back at Bec, like he knew she turned to him. She looked at the sharp girl to see her looking at the display wall behind her, then to Bec, then back.

“What is it? What are you seeing?!” Bec accidentally shouted.

The redheaded boy with soft features chimed in with a surprisingly coarse voice, “We’re seeing ourselves… through your eyes.”

“WHAT,” Bec says as she glances back. Her eyes register the familiar outline of the rims of her glasses and changing shapes and rims and shapes and rims and headache.

“No, no, no. Please do not look directly at your own visual stream. It’s very disorienting and very, very painful.” He pulled her head away, physically, as she could no longer think enough to look away on her own. She looked at him and the pain started to clear fairly quickly.

“As you can plainly see, we’ve broken through the sensory singularity. We can now perfectly capture all sensory data that a person sees, thinks, feels, etc. With an implant like this,” He puts a picture of a chip scaled to nanometers on the display wall, “we can begin the process of perfectly interfacing our computers to the user! This is the future!”

“What does this have to do with traveling? I thought we were here to do exploration of the lost lands,” the Vietnamese? boy asked with a tinge of anger in his voice.

Nkosi looked at his assistant. “Langley, sir. Luster Langley.”

“Lang! Do you mind if I call you Lang?” Nkosi asked.

“I really prefer Luster.”

“Lang, this has everything to do with exploring!” Nkosi excitedly gesticulated like he’s batting away Luster’s interjection. The display wall changed to an animated map with a little ISOTYPE Restroom Male symbol walking down a path. As he wandered the map, little symbols of plants, buildings, and vehicles popped into existence. The car symbols slid into and out of a cone that revealed what the man icon saw as he walked parallel to what seems to be a road.

“We’re gonna be some kind of walking, talking scanner? Isn’t this a horrible invasion of our privacy,” green girl said with her arms crossed.

“Privacy died in the wind-up to the Green World War anyways. If I get paid, I’ll do anything,” the befreckled boy yawned.

“We’ll hold you to that,” Nkosi remarked as he fishes for the two names of the two interjectors.

“These, I believe, are Ferris Davies and Tamara Watom.”

“And I’m Sarah Ramsey,” said the sharp girl.

“Well, we skipped the intros, but I guess we all have had a chance to chime in. Good, we’re going to be working very closely with each other in the future, for the foreseeable future! I would LOVE it if you guys started to feel comfortable with free discourse.”

What does he mean by working closely with us? Bec thought carefully about this job. Shocking revelations about this work dynamic aside, why on EARTH does Nkosi care about salvage and urban re-exploration? Bec bit her lip in contemplation.

“You didn’t answer my question about the privacy,” Tamara barked.

“We’ll talk about terms and conditions for your continued employment after the meeting,” the lackey said, “but know that you are entitled to your thoughts and information you’ve gathered; we will pay for anything you choose to share, and you can decide any and all things you choose to keep to yourself. Even delete it, if you wish. Frankly, this is a much more lenient policy than most get these days. My current contract holds me in a clause that states that any idea I come up with, even at home, was the property of Lauds. Standard for most technological industries since the prewar days. I’m eagerly awaiting the update to the contract.” He gave a shrug.

“Can I know who I’m talking to here, gray?”

“My name is Samuel Sterling. I am the lead researcher for the Lauds Neuroscience Research department, and this is my creation. I will not pretend that it was a solo effort and I owe almost every ounce of my progress to the brilliant Dr. Nkosi.”

Some of the other new hires looked over to Bec. Are they wondering if I know about him? Come on, I don’t know everything… yet, huhuhuhu. Bec joked to herself and realized that she had donned a really deranged looking smile which she quickly quashed. Dr. Sterling looked… uncomfortable at that. Nkosi grinned widely.

“Well, while I’d love to hear more about how brilliant I am, I’m afraid this introduction was all I had for you all. I just wanted to give you a primer of what to expect while working for Lauds. Everything will be clearer the next time we all reconvene.” Clapping his hands together, Nkosi adopted an extremely friendly tone. “We’ve assigned each of you a trailer out back behind the building. It’ll be a bit of a walk as they’re all pretty spread out. We don’t want to put all our eggs into one basket, as they say. All of you will head to office 2.15, on the second floor, and, once you’ve signed the work contract, you’ll be given a key to the trailer and you are free to wander or whatever until you’d like to call it for the night. There is a cafeteria at the end of this hall, feel free to help yourself to whatever is there. I look forward to working with all you bright-eyed youngsters in the future!”

“He’s pretty young, too. And accomplished… and pretty handsome,” Bec thought.

“Thanks,” Nkosi said with a smile as he took the slate off the table. Bec finally ripped the cup off her head.

~~~

All the new hires parted without so much as a word. Bec wanted to engage with them but didn’t see the opportunity. She told herself that she’d not let these potential friends slip through her fingers just because of nerves, but there would be other opportunities. Tomorrow, she hoped to see them in the cafeteria or something, then she’d strike.

The contract negotiations were a pretty standard affair but Bec knew how important it was to read things carefully. She read the contract thoroughly on one of those bland slates that housed the neurolink or whatever they intended to call that thing. Pay seemed to be a bit vague in regard to how information gathered would be quantified, but the default stipend seemed good even if she chose to not release any of her info. She was happy to see that she did indeed have all the rights to her intellectual property starting immediately. This was a pretty forgiving contract in that sense. She consented to a minor surgery to implant the chip and saw that removal would be covered at cost by Lauds (probably to guarantee that their property stays theirs) but it was nice to get a bail button. The real disappointment was that she had absolutely no choice where she’d be stationed. She knew it was an impossible expectation to have and remained satisfied as she knew that this was acceptable early on. Later, she may be able to renegotiate but it hurt, nonetheless. When she looked for the termination date on the contract, she saw that it was 4 years and a day after the first day of work which seemed like a tolerable duration. Happy with her contract, she signed with a stylus. A bright blue-white flash filled the room in an instant and vanished just as fast.

“Is that normal?” Bec asked, blinking away the spots. The Lauds employee gave her a noncommittal shrug. Fantastic, I feel like I just signed a deal with the devil or, maybe, I just got a freaky X-ray of my skull… I’ll just ask Nkosi what that was… not that I’d trust him to tell me the truth. No one that has made that much money in three years did it with concern for ethics. After all, now that I work for him, I basically am signing a deal with the devil… maybe. I’ll look at him more closely later tonight. She shrugged as well and shuffled off to the cafeteria. With none of the new hires in sight, she had a tuna salad sandwich and stole two raspberry and three cream cheese Danishes for later. Hehehe, might as well enjoy the perks of employment while I’m still in the building. I doubt I’ll have Danishes out in the wilderness.

It was getting dark, so Bec decided to call it a night. Thanks to the lack of light pollution, Bec could really see the Cascade in all its glory. Chunks of debris would sometimes hit the atmosphere and burn up, streaking the sky with oranges and reds and, rarely, blues and greens. This beautiful display was, unfortunately, a testament to humanity’s profound avarice. Through a combination of the sudden willingness to engage in orbital combat and a lack of a long-term cleanup plan, our complete oversaturation of satellites shattered, leaving us in a cage of our own space-faring hubris. It feels almost poetic that we used to wish on falling stars, aspiring to travel the cosmos, but, for now, we are trapped on Earth wishing at man-made meteorites with no hope of escape.

After a thirty-minute walk, Bec found her trailer and it unlocked the moment her phone was in range. Convenient. Bec noticed that the moment she entered the trailer, her phone began charging. Very convenient. The trailer was a single windowless room containing a steel-framed full-sized bed, wooden nightstand and dresser combo, a dining table, toilet in the corner and sink with a vanity mirror and a glass cup, a medicine cabinet behind the mirror with nothing in it, and a boxy cupboard-type thing under the sink. When she opened it, a billow of cool air flowed out. Fancy! A refrigerator! She put her Danishes on the glass shelf inside. She pressed her ear to the wall of the “fridge” and listened to the hum of the cooling coils.

“Coooool! Hehehehe.” It started making a hell of a racket and Bec worried that she broke the thing. Chunky noises emanated from the damn thing and she opened it up to see what was wrong. She was relieved to see that it seemed to be dispensing ice and she grabbed one and put it in her mouth.

“Ah, cold.” She breathed cold air in and out. “Haaa ha ha.” It hurt but was fairly novel to chew on it. She took another and rubbed it on her forehead as she synced her phone to the vanity and darkened the mirror to start reading up on Samuel Sterling. She read about his futurist aspirations to break through the cybernetic singularity. He envisioned a world where everyone seamlessly integrates with their technology. He claimed that the rapidly advancing A.I. fears were unfounded as we learn to symbiotically use them to enhance our own thinking as opposed to letting them function entirely autonomously. Comments varied from skepticism to an almost techno-fetishism where people pretended that this breakthrough would be the breakthrough that saves us from ourselves. Bec rolled her eyes. Everyone wants a technological messiah. Anyone who thinks humanity will always figure out an answer for their own stupidity must have overlooked the last three hundred years of slow cataclysm. Human resilience? Now that Bec could believe in. No matter how badly we screw things up, humanity will try really hard to survive despite new and often miserable circumstances. Bec shook her head, knocking those ideas loose. Enough with the fashionable doom and gloom, Bec. Optimism is optimal! She gave herself some positive affirmations and scrolled away from the comment section.

As she worked up the courage to go to bed, afraid to awake to a new life full of danger and adventure she found a high school photo of Dr. Sterling confirming that he does indeed dye his hair. She saved it to her photo roll of easily 50,000 photos. Maybe she could use it as an icebreaker for the other new hires. This was the last thing she remembered thinking before falling into a deep sleep.

~~~

*beep* *beep*

*beep* *beep*

She slapped her phone. Snooze please. She jolted awake. Putting on her glasses, she was relieved to see it was a normal time and her alarm clock had not chosen today to betray her. Peeling herself out of the bed, she realized that the other day must have put a hell of a crick in her neck. Rolling her shoulders, she realized that there really wasn’t a shower anywhere. That was an oversight, to say the least. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, urging the vanity to give up the goods. Where is my news feed, dammit?! Staring at the negative space in the mirror made her notice something on the table behind her. With the vibrating brush still in her mouth, she turned to the table to see one of those bland, black slates on the table and… a syringe? She thought she was a light sleeper, but someone was in her room last night. There was a note with a Lauds header containing a handwritten message in the center. It just said:

“You’re gonna want these. Use the syringe ASAP! Good luck!”

She pulled the brush out of her mouth in confusion and shock at the unbelievable invasion of her personal space. The vibrating brush sprayed her spit and toothpaste on her face upsetting her a little more. After cleaning up, she looked at the tablet but found no good way to turn it on. The syringe was full of comically ominous green, glittery fluid. It was a thick gauge needle for sure. “You have got to be joking,” she said to no one in particular. It looked like the note was acting like I’d just go and inject myself with this snot-colored goo. Wanting to storm out of the trailer and give the first Lauds employee a piece of her mind, Bec swung the door open and was met with a cool sunny day and a breeze, blinding her temporarily. Her feet hit grass with a scratchy tingle, and she looked down. When she looked up with her eyes adjusted to the light, she was greeted with the sight of a rolling green meadow. A bird flittered by, making Bec flinch.

“What the fuck…” She looked around to see none of the distant trailers or the dusty pathways. “I’ve been isekai’d?”