2. AMELIA

  You’ve got a message with the seal of the Aurora Space Institution. Amelia processed the sentence word by word. Her grandmother, who had just given her the news, now took her hand and gave her an impatient squeeze.

  “Aren’t you curious about what they want from you?”

  “Why would the ASI send me a m-message?” Amelia demanded, pulling her hand away. “Grandma, what have you done?”

  Creda withered, leaning back in the chair. Her gaze fell to the white tiles on the floor, face colored by a shade of shame. The cold light gave her the air of perpetual exhaustion and it roused Amelia’s sympathy. She regretted her harsh tone, but said nothing more, waiting for an answer.

  “I assigned you as an available cadre a few days ago.”

  Amelia pursed her lips. “Is it the m-money? Are we near debt?”

  “No,” Creda said. “Of course not.”

  Her grandmother entwined her hands on the table and took a deep breath, measuring her words before speaking again. Determination sparked anew in her eyes when she locked them with Amelia’s.

  “I want you to change your life. Change something. Anything.” Creda paused. “Get away from this apartment.”

  “That’s the ASI. You know I d-don’t want to work there.”

  “You wanted to make an impact, right?” Creda countered her words right away, with hopefulness. “This might be a real chance to do it.”

  Amelia remained silent. She shuffled the circles on her transmitter and checked the number of coinmarks in her account. The sum was lower than usual during this time of the month. It was the money. It was always the money.

  The annual fees for living on the base had risen again. Disguising the truth didn’t make the blow softer: they weren’t doing well. Her doctor's job wasn’t enough to assure them a stable life. But a job at the Space Institution would erase all their financial concerns.

  Never in her life had she thought her grandmother would sign her up for any job without consulting her about it. Amelia stood up, her chair shifting back with a quiet creak, and took a breath over the sadness and hurt that washed over her. Her eyes remained on Creda as she reached for her bag and, with a calm nod, headed back to her room.

  The door slid behind her as she sat on the bed, hands running through the thick coils of her dark hair. She lived in that apartment for thirty quiet years, but all she thought about was making an impact. Her heart pulsed with a yearning to be louder. Climb higher. For all her life, this dream flickered with a faint light… before the ASI incident, three years ago.

  Since then, she spent a lot of time suffocating that dream and poisoning that conviction. And it hurt, in some vacant, dull way, like she was mortifying a vital part of herself and had to bury it deep inside her heart. Helping people and taking care of her grandparents should’ve been enough. She already had her place of duty and a place to call home.

  “She would’ve wanted you to go, Amy.” Creda’s muffled voice reached her from the other side, followed by the sound of fading footsteps.

  Her tips skimmed over the side of the cabinet and a drawer shifted open. Amelia took the prescription bottle from there, opened it, and swallowed two pills. When she returned the pills to their place, the drawer slid back and its contours dissolved.

  With a sigh, she laid down on the sensitive matter of her bed and it enclosed her, drawing off her tiredness. Rapid shadows from passing hovers danced against the matte of her bleak walls. Amelia looked through the porthole across the room and saw the grey panels in the narrow alley. The walls, the ceiling, the pavement, the fence were grey too. Lifeless and cold.

  She observed the shadow chase for several stretched minutes in coiling anticipation, a strain almost like holding a breath... until it came. A soft sound wave echoed three times through the air as a warning before the shutters closed with a slightly grating, mechanical reverberation. Sudden, momentary darkness fell over the whole of Stellnoir. Then the night lights turned on and the familiar shadows returned, this time darker against the artificial blue, yellow, and violet rays that came from outside.

  Now she had to change her perspective and believe that it was nighttime, and that this artificial darkness meant the day was over. Frustration stirred inside her and her doe-like brown eyes moved away from the reflections.

  She couldn’t believe it because it was a lie. Like everything on this manufactured station. As Stellnoir was built in Earth’s orbit, naturally the sun was still blazing bright out there, hiding every forty-five minutes and then blazing again after forty-five more. But they hid and ignored it because that’s how it was supposed to be. Humans needed a full day and a full night, so they followed this biological clock. It was necessary for those who remembered living on Earth, but not for her. The sun blazed bright and so did all the millions of stars out there, behind this mechanical cage-construction. She had been waiting to break free.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Amelia passed a hand over her eyes. She slowly heaved up from the bed, reaching for her thin, high-collared blazer, and checked the time at the transmitter on her wrist. The door slid open at her touch and she found the living room desolate, with the deafened chatter between her grandparents coming from behind the closed door of their bedroom. With quick and silent steps, she went outside and stopped to take a breath of air before walking down the quiet alley.

  Solar paverlights lit up when they sensed her nearing, adorning both sides of the street and warning the flying hovers of her presence. She strolled to the end of the street and cut into the major boulevard, where the noise washed through her at last. Neon lights and bioluminescent trees bathed the vast space and showered the pedestrians with facets of animated colors. The ground trembled with the bass waves of the nearest set of clubs and all the blending heaps of individuals hanging outside, with shifting tattoos, skin-embedded precious stones, and glowing clothes. Misty clouds of glittering, bitter smoke tingled her nostrils when she passed by some of the night bars.

  She never tired of passing down S8—Prefecture 8’s main freeway—because it was different every single night. Clubs and bars were not of particular appeal to her, because instead of having several drinks and a bunch of colorful substances to get herself into a mindless fun state, she was worried about everyone’s health around her. But there was a place for everyone. Hers had bright white lights and a luxurious dark blue exterior.

  Amelia reached the massive glass gate of the Dionix Medical Center, one of the biggest hospitals in her prefecture and her haven. The stinging smell and the calm atmosphere were her two favorite things. She touched the transparent control panel with the unique tip of her index and the gate opened, allowing her to step in.

  The building was round-shaped and had three floors. The curving edge of the second and the third were visible as they were interconnected. Metallic frames around the hexagonal windows divided the bright light into uneven shapes. Grey benches girdled the neutral-colored walls and a circular information desk took the central place of the lobby. The woman working there smiled at her as Amelia walked by and headed straight for her own office to change into her medical uniform, greeting some more familiar faces on the way.

  Reporter voices filled the corridors: she usually overheard a lot of what happened on the news always when she entered her night shift. Unhurriedly, she put on her dark medical robe and headed to the Intensive Care Unit to check on the woman they assigned to her several weeks ago.

  Amelia entered the wide unit and crossed to the other side, accompanied by the low buzzing noise from the various screens that broadcasted different channels, though with the same set of news. Her patient laid still unconscious in the company of a male nurse, who diligently read through the electronic data next to the bed.

  “Hey,” the man greeted, and nodded at the multiple screens up on the wall. “The company war ended. The new drug came earlier today. We infused her blood with it half an hour ago. If it works, we’ll know soon.”

  Amelia joined him, eyes skimming over the data.

  The lines, numbers, and letters were not different. She really hoped this drug would help because otherwise, she’d lose all hope of ever curing this one. Nothing they tried worked so far. The quiet heartbeat signal distracted her as the inaudible murmur of the blonde lady, whose image was trippled on the screens above them, echoed again.

  “After the long-awaited trial between Stellnoir’s two most influential drug-producing companies was live-broadcasted today, Devaux Pharmaceuticals crushed Axolem Pharma and established their dominance in yet another prefecture. The Chief Executive Officer A.S. Axolem and his son, who led the battle against the medical giant, attended the conference after the trial along with Archibald Devaux himself. Shortly after, Devaux celebrated his victory by dispensing a new wave of drugs across Prefecture 8."

  "Rumors for the uncertain future of Axolem Pharma have already started spreading, as the CEO did not share any plans for the company, remaining silent and refusing to give any comments on the matter. His son, however, is boarding the starship Sentinel once more as the head of its Spacefield Research Department. Local sources confirmed he fired all the scientist crew in a single day.”

  The other news reporter hooted. “I’ll leave that to the commentary of Melanie and Sam. Back at you.”

  The elevated delivery caught Amelia’s attention, and she raised her eyes to the screens cautiously.

  “Told you.” She heard the nurse’s voice next to her.

  Amelia’s heart slightly increased its tempo and her breaths became a little shallower as she fixed her eyes on the news, now fully focused on it.

  Sam looked at his colleague with a practiced smirk as Melanie showed a gleaming white grin of her own. “Just an hour ago, First Lieutenant Pearl confirmed the ASI’s crown jewel is gathering a new crew.”

  “That’s true. Our reporters from SN1 News got a hold of Sentinel’s second-in-command, and she shared with us a few details on the ship’s next mission. We received permission to share a part of our exclusive interview with the lieutenant...”

  “T-Tell me if she gets worse.” Amelia touched the nurse’s arm before backing away. In feverish anticipation, she nearly ran out of the ward and quickly slid into one of the supply rooms next to the restroom, sharply leaning back on the still sliding door.

  She inhaled and exhaled, feeling her body shake with nerves. The moment suspended, and she lingered in its bittersweetness. Then her trembling fingers shifted the circle of her transmitter with a click.

  “You have one message,” the soft-voiced female AI announced, and she moved the rim a little further, shifting it as carefully as she would a cipher lock of a deposit box, “Doctor Amelia Harper, welcome to the Aurora Space Institution, Stellnoir’s Fleet. We have elected you from a hundred and twenty-two thousand candidates. Requested information on the subject granted. Scientific knowledge and skills fulfil all conditions. ASI offers: work position—Spacefield Researcher; workplace—aboard Spaceship Sentinel.”

  The transmitter silenced, and she looked down at it with bated breath, without moving a single muscle.

  Amelia imagined herself laying in her bed, in deep, old–age lethargy and thinking of lost opportunities. Gnawed by regrets that she hasn’t grasped this extraordinary opportunity and had missed it, growing bitter year by year. She never wanted to sentence herself to this, anchored to low mundanity and drowning in silence, but circumstances never allowed her to emerge on the surface until now.

  The transmitter beeped again, and she touched it quickly.

  “She’s getting worse.”

  Amelia came off the wall with a sip of much-needed air.

  “Devaux might have skilled lawyers, but their chemists are bad. Go back to Axolem’s Fifth Generation Adakveo. It had the best effect on r-reducing the frequency of her crises so far.”

  “On it.”

  Thick silence fell around her. She put her hands in the pockets of her robe and smiled to herself. The crown jewel it is, then.