The Future Belongs to Animals

Chapter 1

I awoke with my head compressed, stuffed with a persistent unyielding pressure. Still laying in my bed, rubbing the crust from the corner of my eyes, rolling out of the cold drool on my pillow, I asked my personal artificial intelligence device to tell me the time. From the far side of the room on the countertop charge-field, I heard the PAID’s smooth female British voice tell me I had two hours before I needed to leave on time for my shift at work. She slowly faded up the lights, simulating a rushed and uninspired sunrise from a light recessed in the center of a dark brown water-stain in the ceiling above me. Then, unsolicited, she offered a little extra wisdom:

Try to sleep a little more while you can. Research shows chronic sleep deprivation increases your chances of developing neurological disorders later in life. No pressure though, Jeremiad.

I wanted to sleep more but my head felt terrible, I wasn’t sure I could. I had skipped dinner last night too, feeding the last of my kibble to my pet rat, Snickers—a cute little guy I smuggled out of a lab in my pocket back when I had a very brief gig as a test subject for a drug trial. When I stood, I felt a gasp, a vacuum in the center of my chest and the floor tilted wildly. I got up too quickly. Sitting down on the side of the narrow bed, I steadied myself, closing my eyes to draw a few deep breaths. I don’t know if it’s lack of sleep, my terrible diet, or the crumbling feeling that accompanies me to and from every shift I work at EasyClick.

EasyClick is Titan’s second largest online reseller. They repeat this fact daily. It is written all over the office. Some long-gone manager printed them up in a dash of optimism, taped them up next to faded posters of empty motivational phrases superimposed over images of earth, places we’ll never be able to afford to see ourselves.

My latest work assignment, one of 6 or 7 in as many months, is the worst ever. Providing emotional exposure training data to EasyClick’s AI’s, which I imagine humming away comfortably in a climate-controlled building with a view of a waterfall somewhere back on Earth. In truth, I have no idea where they are. I suppose they must be on Titan somewhere to overcome lag. It doesn’t matter, it’s a pretentious undertaking for a company that brings in earth junk, literally trash no one on earth wants, only to then sell it as quickly and cheaply as possible to the residents stuck on Titan. My job is to sort through the emotional reactions of a never-ending stream of client video calls, complaints pertaining quite predictably to the quality of goods. During these sessions, I move these goofy sliding scales with iconic depictions between various stages of rage and disappointment. Every person I deal with is already in a heightened state by the time they get to me, having navigated a maze of misdirection and gas-lighting questions, forced to choose between getting their complaint addressed or canceling their membership.

I know it’s infuriating because I’ve done it myself several times, with other online retailers, sure, but most often with my own employee subscription to EasyClick, which, despite being the worst option available to anyone with half a brain, if I canceled or failed to spend most of my paycheck buying useless crap from them, would get me terminated. Officially, they aren’t supposed to do that, at least, back on Earth there were—and might still be—laws about that sort of thing; but here, they track and report that metric. I usually just resell it all, so it’s more of a nuisance than a significant hindrance.

I feel for the callers, even though they try to hurt me as much as they can, filling me up, repeating themselves, unloading all their problems, unrelated personal bullshit, spewing vitriol like there’s a timer going, getting it all out before some buzzer goes off and they slink back into their sad lives. I sympathize. I really do. They’re just people and people are nothing if not a strange mix of animal and rational. I keep my cool, mostly, even though we’re encouraged to react strongly; supervisors linger behind us like farmers tending to rows of cattle, goading us—siphons bolted to nipples in an automated milking plant—feeding us a harried mixture of termination threats and deeply personal insults gleaned from psychometric profiles collected by placement agencies before we’re even hired. I’m never eager to go there.

The product they are interested in making is the white gold of AI training data, the dripping alkali of noxious, focused human defects: emotional exposure training data. My job is to document all of this, my reactions as well as theirs, and somehow, after I move a bunch of sliders on a screen—all the way to the right, over and over again—these supposed outliers help the AI glean a deeper understanding of our client’s needs, to one day give them a better experience with EasyClick. It’s the final frontier of any AI research project: modeling the worst emotions to find the bleeding edge of what consumers will endure. Firms like EasyClick can’t afford existing licenses from Earth based AI companies, who presumably have solved these fringe problems ages ago, yet it is a common occurrence for companies here to embark on these boondoggles before they go bankrupt. No one could possibly give a shit, not at this point. Not the clients, not the employees, certainly not the software engineers, and I don’t even think EasyClick execs care—it’s all a fucking waste of time—and yet they call it corporate IP, which might be code for Corporate Icarus Project. Who knows. Maybe some execs have figured out a way to get rich tanking the company; I don’t have a mind for that kind of thing.

In contrast, my mind is always preoccupied with more immediate concerns. I never have more than 3 or 4 days of surplus rent in my account. Consequently, I can’t miss work, ever. If that weren’t already enough, there are additional incentives built into my work situation. For example: if I miss one day of work it’s instant termination—though not officially, never officially. My dismissal papers would say something like, poor corporate culture fit, or some such double speak. So rather than risk further slumber, I resolve to make the most of this poor night’s sleep and head out early to get some errands done: kibble might be back in stock at the nutrition dispensary; pop in at the junk shop to visit my friend Otis; then maybe hit up a doctor if I still don’t feel quite right. I willed myself up out of bed… leaning uneasily on the wall, waiting, assessing my inner world to find I am no longer dizzy, that’s positive, but the stuffy feeling is still there, that’s a negative.

Every day is a zero-sum game.

Grabbing from the top of the heap of clothes in the corner on the floor, I happen on a knee length, dark ages, peasant garb looking thing: a short-lived trend from earth which made its way here a year after it fell out of fashion. I get dressed and with the matching straight leg pants underneath, all leather, all black, it all looks kind of good together in my opinion. I grabbed my leather jacket off the hook in the wall between a poster of Audrey Hepburn I bought off my friend Otis, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the mirror next to it; my movement triggers a seismic-sensor-loop that folds my bed horizontally up into the wall behind me, clearing a small space for my morning workout. Stealing a quick look at myself in the mirror, my hair is clumpy, jutting out in big batches of wild waves of thick blue. I love it when it gets dirty; it stands up in ways it can’t when clean.

Layering my jacket on top, the crown jewel of my ensemble, tossing my shoulders a few times getting it to sit squarely, I notice my eyes are peering out from two open manholes. They look sunken, sullen, the whites perched between narrow slits like tiny seeds on semi circles of fresh raked earth. My cheek bones are jabbing out of my face more than usual and I’m pale, almost green. Definitely coming down with something. My jacket though… amazing, as usual. I love this fucking jacket. Best score ever. In the front is an oversize, crooked, sideways triangle flap of leather pulled down by the weight of a heavy zipper; it’s lined tightly with finer grain leather worn smooth to a reinforced point where the blade rests and waits. I keep my knife there—a short flat blade with a hole in the handle to slip a couple fingers through, a punching knife—unsheathed and ready in the front pocket. The opening is wide and easy to reach for, and best of all, no one ever expects me to draw from there in a fight.

But before I start my morning routine, I crank my nineteen twenty-eight era Columbia Grafonola one twenty, also known as the Picnic Portable. It has storage for a few seventy-eights built into the suitcase of the design, and the lid can hold half a dozen records. My favorite feature though, is the small keyhole slot on the front, between the latches, for a crank. I keep it on the counter in the kitchen with the crank always in it. The kitchen is just a counter on the wall opposite to my bed, a simple surface to pour kibble into a bowl; it’s where I keep Snicker’s, and he comes out of his house—an empty box of kibble I cut in half and dropped in his cage—to greet me every morning and watch me crank the Grafonola. I think he likes the music as much as I do. I swing the needle into the groove and Willie Brown’s guitar comes alive. Snicker’s bobs his head up and down a few times, and hops up on his hind legs, balancing a tiny, fragile paw on the bar, pressing his snout through, sniffing to see if I have anything to feed him. I do not.

I start with a few quick stretches and functional range of movement exercises before I start the real work. The track playing from the Grafonola is Future Blues; I’ve been listening to it every morning for a few weeks now, not because I’m too lazy to change the record, but to gain a deeper insight. For this recording, Willie strikes the strings so hard that the low E string of his guitar buzzes against the frets as he bangs out a bass line. His guitar doesn’t sound particularly good. The playing is excellent, but the tone… it sounds like he’s strung the whole guitar with thick rubber bands. I’ve read he played on a cheap Stella guitar, perhaps the lowest quality guitar available in his day, and, by the end of the track the guitar is completely out of tune due to the combination of cheap tuning pegs on the Stella and his aggressive performance. Yet despite these flaws, the bass remains distinct from the rest of his finger picking and because he maintains that separation so well, the track works. It’s a monument to reality.

Real artists like Willie Brown project themselves far into the future because they have no place left for them in the present. He reaches out from his destitution with a richness in his playing style. It’s audible. I can hear it in the guitar, in the lyrics and the way he sings them. I can also hear how nothing has changed for working stiffs since then. He’s not even singing about work, it’s about a woman, but it’s clear from the tone in his voice that he didn’t get lucky with this particular lady. He might have died a virgin by the sound of things. The recording also captures intangibles, like the overriding sense that nothing is going well for him, or anyone like him in his time, and somehow, that makes me feel better. Knowing I’m part of a long tradition of being fucked over by rich ass holes brings me a temporary relief that lasts as long as the record is playing.

These old seventy-eights my mother left me are far more comforting than the most compressed and condensed Beats I’ve ever come across online. There’s a quality to them, unlike anything in the digital world. Music and the arts can be quite technical and scientific, but with study comes greater appreciation. Knowing the sound of records is analogue, and while perhaps not as pristine or crystal clear as digital (the surface of records often have physical impurities no amount of cleaning or brushing can get rid of completely) they are not reconstituted in the way digital artifacts are. The needle rides up and down on wave forms cut finely into the vinyl, and those movements are amplified. The ossicles in the human ear do the same; the smallest bone in the body moves in response to changes in the air pressure and converts these movements into what we interpret as sound. The uninterrupted analogue waves of live music form beautiful and subtle overtones, mixtures of various waves. Because notes are mathematical, they can blend to form derivatives from common factors, or roots, or even symmetrical overlapping distances from relative tonics, and while these overtones may not be completely audible, they are nevertheless felt distinctly as pleasure. This can’t be captured properly with the digital slicing of sound. A record can reproduce these pleasures and are the nearest thing to being there in the recording studio with the artist the day the vinyl was cut. All of this is inaccessible to the unsophisticated listener.

Still feeling a little stiff, I crank the Grafonola again and do a little more stretching. I decide on an ancient series of movements I recently learned about, something called Yoba. This is not to be confused with the earth fad, YhoBoBa, a yoghurt boba tea concoction that replaced solid food for a while but recently fell out of favour. I’ve never tried it, as the fad never reached us here, and it would probably have been completely unaffordable. Yoba is a type of exercise that dates back thousands of years. Basically, you pant as quickly as you can, and twist in numerous ways until all the bones crack up and down the spine. You do the moves as quickly as you can, within 30 seconds to a minute—at most—or you risk losing the benefits. The panting creates a CO2 surplus that is supposed to make you better prepared for a heavy work out, also to be completed as quickly as possible. It’s very scientific.

While the track plays a second time, I rush through my relaxing Yoba moves: the oddly named Starving Dying Dog… I’m on my hands and knees eating from an imaginary dog dish. While I do this, I feel a mounting resentment about AI’s use of these digital artifacts: music, video, sound, texts, everything ever digitize to cut together modern Beats. I’ve yet to meet someone who truly understands how they are really made, and maybe that makes me feel superior and elitist for bothering to find out. I’ve looked into it on my PAID once. A little reading is all it took. Old scientific papers, publicly filed patents, chatter from pioneers speaking freely in old forum archives—it took all of five minutes. Hardware based; corporate owned AI’s combine digital artifacts with self generated connecting material. The artefacts and connecting material are spliced to make a 1 to 2 second clip, and this makes up an individual beat. The beats are then combined with others to make a full-length Beat. The terminology doesn’t help: Beats are made from beats. The crucial point is Beats are cut together, generated in real time for viewers, they are short, and popular as hell.

I shift into the Mount-Ten Nose – still panting aggressively, getting lightheaded all over again… I know the moves by heart and trust my body to complete them with little to no help from my consciousness, so I continue to let my mind run away with thoughts of Beats. They only leave an impression on the viewer. They do not convey information, or facts or data… only an impression. Sometimes people imagine they have a story to them, and through chance, they might. Just as an infinite amount of falsity might occasionally prove correct, if you are correct by chance alone, there’s nothing to be proud of. You are in fact a fool. People make this same mistake in their interpretation of Beats. They think they have meaning when they do not, but what’s worse—they share it and try to take credit for something they simply sat, mouth open and watched. They didn’t even create it. It’s doubtful if anyone absorbs any of it. Why would they? What they don’t know is that every Beat is tailored to them, created to suit their individual preferences and tastes—in real-time. The same is true for everyone else. The product of all the AI created Beat activity is hyper-curated, never-ending entertainment, but the by-product is no two people will ever have the same on-line experience of what is true, what is false, what is news, what is entertainment, what is real.

I move onto my feet, continuing my YoBa, the Tinendo Wario Push… still breathing short shallow fast breaths, legs apart, swinging my fists wildly… Beats are usually based on a single emotional theme, very basic, brute, utterly unsubtle: sadness, happiness, sex—these are the most popular themes, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon.

I feel like I’m suffocating a little at the end of my Yoba, but that is an indication that my body is ready. So I jump into my workout. I start with 100 push ups in under two minutes, a standard from my early training back on earth, before I even knew what kind of soldier they needed me for. I find it easier to meet these targets if my mind is engaged in other thoughts, separate from the physical, and thus far, this morning’s train of thought has been ideal. So, I do nothing to steer my mind away from these trivial concerns and instead continue to consider how records, in contrast to beats, are exactly as they were when first recorded. When my cramped living space is filled with his sound, Willie Brown is exactly as he was back in Nineteen Seventeen and that’s the magic of analogue. Records preserve time. Modern Beats raid time, steal from it, and propagate a looseness of the bowels that slips through the anus of human creativity leaving a profoundly unoriginal stain on the public imagination, though few would agree with me on that point.

My mother told me she got the Grafonola from her grandpa, who in turn, and I don’t know if I necessarily believe this, got it from his grandpa who, the story goes, was a real-life bounty hunter in the old west, in California. The timelines fail to line up by about 100 years and if she didn’t drink quite so much, my mother would have realized there weren’t any seventy-eights in the old west. Still, it must have meant something to her, because even though she rarely pulled it out, seldom playing more than a song or two, she also could never bring herself to sell it for drinking money—despite its value, and no matter how badly she might have needed it.

It’s a short song, Future Blues; I can finish each part of my routine before it ends. I used a timer when I first moved here but that became lame and boring. Now, I use the seventy eights. I can still do 100 push ups in two minutes, but I can’t run like I used to on Earth. The main dome here, the largest one, the Grand Dome, or the Grand Folly, depending on your view of things, is now cracked and weather gets in. The corporations that came after, built smaller domes over their capital assets and chipped in to build cover for infrastructure between these smaller domes. They are cheap tunnels that sit on the surface and follow rail, road and utilities, connecting the smaller domes to each other, all under the Grand. I could run those, I guess, but there’s just too many freaks out there. The days of grandeur when this outpost first opened were brief and are long over. So instead of running I tend to skip rope, or shadow box in my room, but sometimes, if I’m particularly irritable, I’ll just go for a walk outside and pick a fight with someone on the street. I don’t try to hurt them, badly, it’s just upkeep for my training…

With the music still playing, I got through the push-ups fine, but when I started to do the crunches, my stomach spasmed wildly and though I was flat on my back, it took a long time for it to stop. The record skipped to the end, crackling, fading slowly, until it needed another crank. I couldn’t tell if I was starving, sick with a virus, or maybe just pushing myself too hard after such a bad night’s rest. My PAID heard me groaning and offered its usual wisdom:

“Don’t strain yourself too much Jeremiad. Make reasonable arrangements for work, take the time to rest, and try to keep up your good mood.”

I haven’t been able to afford a software update for a long time. I bought my PAID second hand from Otis’s junk shop. Consequently, Victoria’s answers weren’t exactly relevant most of the time but were occasionally amusing. She was good at math though.

“Your concern is touching, Victoria.” I said. “Tell me, what sort of reasonable arrangements should I make?”

“Given your chronic lack of sleep, your immune system is likely depressed, you should use a sick day and get some much-needed rest, and avoid the risks associated with being vulnerable to infection.”

“But,” I added, “if I miss a day’s work, I won’t be able to afford my rent and will be forced to live in the streets where there are many viruses and bacteria.”

“But you’ve never used any of your sick days yet, you should be compensated for—”

“Victoria, what planet are we on?”

“Titan sir. Titan is known for its large deposits of hydrocarbons, methane and complex organics, and… you have an incoming message from Otis Granger, it’s a Beat sir, would you like me to broadcast it to—“

“—Yes.”

Victoria emitted the familiar spherical blue hue that surrounded me, blotting out the room, and the Beat started, as they do, directly in front of me while my peripherals filled in quickly afterward with overlapping related content all playing at once. As was typical for Otis, my friend who ran a junk shop, this Beat was spliced at a slower pace than what was popular. He had a way of finding this old stuff that, while slow and sometimes boring, was never built around the usual single strong emotion that typified popular Beats. Somehow, despite its flaws, his Shares had a charm I’d come to prefer over others and I guess that’s how we came to be friends.

This one started with a horse running, a Clydesdale, splashing through a narrow creek… There was music too, very old and distant: Runnin' down to the station… An ad for respirators played on my right. …Catch the old first mail train I see. The music continued. Floating up into the clear blue sky, huge black clouds puffing from a steam engine cutting through a rocky desert. An ad for carbon filters in my left peripheral disappears before I could make out the brand. …I got the blues about Miss So-and-So… A full frame black and white cowboy in chaps and a beaded vest of shimmering flowers, roses maybe… he quick draws… I only just notice the source of the music, a Robert Johnson B-side, Rambling on my Mind. I think Otis is trying to say he wants to buy my seventy-eights again… there’s an ad below for instant image-based appraisals through EasyClick… and the child got the blues about me… A rocking chair on a porch, still in black and white, an old woman knitting a sweater, she draws a shot gun from under the unfinished blanket and fires… And I'm leavin' this mornin' with my arm fold' up and cryin'… Flowers growing out of empty green beer bottles, perched on stumps of fallen trees... I hate to leave my baby, but she treats me so unkind… An ad above for food pellets, which I’m out of but I’ll buy them myself from Otis’s shop, so, I’m careful not to blink on the ad… Then the bottles are cut horizontally in slow motion down the middle by a parallel bullet shattering them into wavering fragments that dance together suspended in mid-air...

“—That’s enough.” I called to Victoria.

“What is your reply? Shall I…”

“No reply. I’m heading there now.”

“You should see a doctor first. Your heart rate variability is outside of normal—”

“—Fine… I’ll see Otis and stop in at a doctor after… power yourself off.”

“As you wish, but will you be taking me with…”

“No. Power off—now.”

The lights pulsed once; Victoria separated itself from all the room functions. There was a palpable feeling of being unattended. I tickled Snicker’s under his neck through the grate of his cage on the counter next to my PAID. A few weeks ago, I never went anywhere without Victoria, who now sat there, shaped like a short stack of coins, with smooth sides shining like bullion. People at work think I’m mad for tuning out, wandering around dangerously without a PAID, but I’ve got a way of looking at them that makes it clear they’re absolutely right and they should mind their own fucking business. Though the pull is still strong to take Victoria with me, and I did consider it, as I have every morning for weeks, but I left my PAID sitting there on the counter, put my boots on and headed out before I could reconsider.

***

The door locked automatically behind me, and as I made my way down the hall to the lift, cheap servos whirred from the door cameras on either side, following me. The floor in the lift had a hard crunch to it; the carpet fibers were flattened and densely saturated with evaporated salt water and dirt that grinded under my boots. The servos fixed a camera on my face, a light above the door turned green, and the lift shot up towards the surface floor.

When the doors opened, a young couple in the corner of the lobby were going at it to the left of the vestibule doors. The fella on top was in an open over-sized grey parka; the girl beneath filled the tiled lobby with echoes of pleasurable moans. I couldn’t see her face; she was somewhere behind 4 or 5 clear plastic garbage bags stacked around them in a nest. The bag nearest to me was tilted over at the middle, spilling dirty clothes out across the lobby. A half dozen small kitchen appliances had tumbled out of another open bag, and lay sideways on the lobby runner to the door: a coffee grinder, a waffle iron; I’m sure none of it worked, and I kicked them aside courteously for the next resident who might stumble on this tableau. I saw a bare leg, small, female, poking out between the bags as I approached: it was covered with bruises, and I noticed the calf was pocked with small round scars. Tweakers for sure. The reflective material on the back of the fella’s parka was rendered matte, stained over with grease and filth, and there was hardly any puff of down left in his parka. I stopped at the door, turned my head to steal a glance while the grinding door camera tried vainly to scan my face from a bad angle. I could see the girl’s face, her dark features, her dark set eyes, closed, many big round piercings along each eyebrow like two curtain rods; her hair was pressed into a bag behind her head and knotted in unintended dreadlocks, like a dried nest of uneaten tangled spaghetti. She opened her eyes and took note of me. I looked away, but she stopped moaning and shouted at me abruptly:

“Do you mind?”

I met her gaze and replied: “Yes, I do. You’re engaged in crude behaviour in a public setting. You should get a room or learn to control your urges.”

Then she shouted: “What are you some kind of prude?”

The fella propped himself up onto his arms, and swivelled to look at me to get involved: “What are you looking at?”

I got a clear look at the girl’s unbuttoned top. She had two sloppy pancakes for breasts. She had a wide slathering of cream for areolas and a couple dollops of nipple berries on top of each one. A bovine scene, but clearly, this unconscious comparison had more to do with my appetite for a hardy breakfast.

The door clicked open, and I pushed it open, but replied in a neutral tone before leaving: “I’m surprised there’s only two of you today.”

The fella took offence to my choice of words: “Two of you? You? What’s that suppose to mean? You’re lucky I’m in the middle of something or I’d kick your fucking ass.”

“Yeah, you piece o’ shit!” The woman added.

He was out of breath. Even under his oversized parka he looked skinny and clearly uncommitted to any sort of rigorous physical regimen. Though rude, he was just a kid and I determined it would be best to push on with my agenda, with one alteration: find something to eat immediately.

“There were twelve of you here yesterday.” I said. “Two is less than twelve, that’s all it means.” I stepped through the door, raising my voice slightly for their benefit: “Don’t read into things too much; you’ll get yourself killed.”

“Oh… Oh yeah? Fuck you…” I heard him get his last barb in before the heavy doors latched shut behind me and muted him out. I would be surprised if he stopped what he was doing to find alternate satisfaction with me.

***

Outside, the cold hits me. I pull the flap of my jacket up and zipped it high around my neck and face. I don’t give a shit if my head is cold, because my hair looks cool, and I like to keep it that way. Inter-dome weather is not exactly toxic, but it’s not easy to breathe either. The pressure shoots up the moment you stepped outside. Frozen crystals hang in the air like dust disturbed by a draft, swirling, suspended midair, waiting to be breathed in by a set of lungs like mine. Steam pushes up into the awning in front of my building, simultaneously bellowing from between gaps in the grate underfoot and the many more cut into the street and sidewalk ahead. I walk briskly. Though admittedly lovely to look at, every cloud of vapour is a potential place to get ambushed. The steam also breaks my sightline into a maze of fat roiling sky-high columns of white amongst and in between the short stubby buildings that tunnel deep underground into ice so cold and thick, it may as well be concrete. All the excess heat, moisture and carbon dioxide from sustaining underground dwellings get a second life providing warmth for the Grand Dome.

Far off, towards the very center of Titan City, concrete chimney stacks tower over many smaller domes with spires of huge open flame jetting forth from each one. The burning stacks are lined up and down with lights that together shine in the distance like radiant candles of crystal that reflect off the surface of the smaller domes caked around them. The myriad aluminium oxynitride glass panels of each dome make a transparent fondant held together with arches in a decorative shining icing of titanium alloy beams. The long rectangular log cake where I’m going, the Market Dome promenade, is where Otis’s junk shop is located. It's the closest thing to posh commerce you can find, but instead of luxury goods, there are various kinds of trash salvaged from Earth garbage no one wants.

There’s no one else on the street yet, since the last few operating warehouses, labs and offices tend to coordinate their work shifts. It is still a couple more hours before the next change and the streets are nearly bare of people. Titan’s thousand-kilometer-thick cloudy blanket of petrochemical weather outside the Grand, turns sunlight into a diffuse orange hue, the only reminder of a distant faded thing called the sun we can never see. There’s someone ahead of me. I can see a pair of black boots jutting out beneath the blue privacy field projected by their PAID like an unborn bird stumbling around stuck in a eggshell, following the ribbons of light embedded in the sidewalk to get to the station. Since I’ve been leaving mine at home, I can see the ribbons light up a few feet in front of me, while turning off a few feet behind, but when I try to look any further, the light struggles up through the dense low hanging fog and has the reverse effect of making the rest of the street look darker; another stupid choice by early designers and engineers, trying to make everything look futuristic, ignoring basic functionality.

I approached another thick cloud of steam, contained overhead by the next apartment awning; a functionally useless design hold over from Earth since it never rains inside the domes. I can feel a rush of air push through cracks in the ALON glass panels above, rushing cold up the street, pushing from behind towards the core of the city and its promise of heat and easy to breathe air; the gust bends the towers of fog towards the city center and reveals the quonset of thick steel arched over the train station ahead. I see this other person, a blue ball ducking into the station ahead and disappearing through the turnstile within.

As I follow soon after and push through the first set of doors, then through the turnstile and down the stairs into the station where it’s warmer. The train isn’t here yet. Waiting there, I find myself wishing I could afford to heat more than fifty square feet of living space. Of course, I can’t. I don’t know what I would do with the extra space, I just want it. But logically, I know there’s no faster way to multiply your financial troubles than going bigger, so I haven’t. Two hundred square foot leases have bankrupt people I know; colleagues thrilled at some minuscule raise who then sign up for a new lease in a fancy above ground place near the core. One of the reasons I left earth was because I couldn’t afford the A/C bills. Well, that, and dishonorable discharge and criminal record kept me out of work. Now I can barely afford the heat but at least no one out here asks questions about my past. Whenever I think of moving to one of the nice places inside Market-Dome, or The Core, I just remember how fast I went broke on Earth keeping cool during a brief time between jobs. It’s the same here but with heat. Humans live and die by the heat and the cold.

While I daydream, I notice a blue egg of a person standing still, while a man on the other side of the tracks, like me, he is not engaged using his PAID, but is staring at me fixedly with a blank empty look in his eye. He’s much too big to be a Tweaker, living underground, strung out on drugs, coming up only to rob people. He’s built like an inverted pyramid, with huge broad shoulders, arms crossed, in strange tight-fitting clothes, like a jump suit, all peanut coloured. He isn’t wearing a jacket so he must have come on the train from warmer parts. He also doesn’t have the charcoal stains on his face and hands from the black powdered chemical residue kicked up synthesizing various industrial compounds and fuels. Some of these Tweakers are big fellas who’ve suffered brain damage not only from drugs, but from their prior jobs too, they are labourers discarded from what’s left of the short-lived methane boom, laid off, fired, or let go.

It’s not often I worry about strangers in the street, but this fella looks like trouble. I cooly reach into my front pocket and loop a couple fingers through my knife, for comfort. He turned his gaze from me to the blue sphered person when the bing-bong of a coming train trigger something in him. He jumped down on to the tracks and hops up on to the platform on the other side, just before the train arrives, marching up to the much shorter, egg-shaped individual. He pressed his face deep into the blue dome until the field breaks off completely. The larger man grabbed the little man by the shoulders, lifts and tosses him over his shoulder like a gym towel, ignoring loud protestations, before marching out up the stairs, legs kicking wildly behind until they disappear at the top. It was the oddest thing. I suppose I could have intervened, but it was truly none of my concern, plus, my train had arrived.

***

There were few others on the train, everyone carrying on under their blue privacy fields watching endless Beats no doubt. On every divider between every seat was mounted a screen which shone together showing the same ad in posturized ruddy tones. The brute repetition created a magic trick of perception, a hall of mirrors and cascading recursions, layers of glare in the windows, faded, translucent copies, copies of copies, between bright distorted reflections on the chrome grab bars, even the empty white plastic seats were awash in the warm red colours of the ad. Zoned out in a waking sleep, helpless to the hypnotic hum of the train rocking gently, my attention was fixated on the ad directly in front of me: an image of people strolling about a plaza with benches, trees, waste bins, still under a dome but on the surface, where everyone wore shorts and T-shirts, or summer dresses and skirts, coffees in hand, talking to each other or walking tiny dogs. It simply said: Discover Life on Mars.

I’ve heard the Martian government is actively trying to steal labourers from failed outposts like Titan after dumping trillions into a wild vanity project to pilot Mars’s moons, Phobos and Deimos, nearer to the surface of Mars and to use their gravity to reignite Mars’s geological processes. Apparently, it worked. It’s been the subject of much fanfare and even optimism. Their virgin planet already boasts radiation levels lower than earth, and with a proper magnetosphere in the coming years… no other off-earth colony has achieved anything remotely similar. If I could afford the ticket out there, I would probably leave. Though, I came here on a similar impulse and I’m not exactly living the dream.

The seats around had vacated and had I not recognized the familiar arts and crafts design of Market Station slowing into view through the windows, I might have missed my stop. I stood to gather with the bulbus blue shapes of other riders hidden in the privacy fields of their PAIDs clustered around the doors. I followed them out, walking slowly through the station, still tethered to my brief Mars reverie. I’ve read it’s always above freezing under their domes… not like here. Here, even inside a dome within a dome, it’s still below zero, but the Market was warm enough to unzip my jacket and relax, and try to stroll like the people in the ad. But a magnetosphere, that was a game changer no human could completely ignore. It meant it could eventually regain its atmosphere; trace amounts of oxygen would accumulate. It meant hordes of migrants and entrepreneurs, mad runs on unclaimed land, misspent credits, pyramid schemes—opportunity.

The first thing I feel when I step off the train is the air; it is of such a noticeably higher quality. The difference is stark: like stepping out of a high noon desert to enter a bathroom full of hot steam from a recent shower. Walking slowly, I watched the commuters break up like blue snooker balls along the wide flat promenade ahead of me, rolling into pockets of tiny, specialized shops tucked along both sides of the Market Dome Promenade. The arches tunnel sharply downward behind the stores, but the glass above had none of the faded glow of the sun that illuminated the Grand. Instead the Promenade is lit by the flickering gas lights hanging from the beams between panels of glass overhead, in parallel pairs hovering pleasantly along both sides of the wide walkway.

The shops don’t immediately plunge underground like most buildings do on Titan. Here, most are two stories tall. There’s also a mezzanine level on both sides of the promenade accessible by stairs between the buildings. Everything in Market Dome is printed to look like wood and if you touch it, the texture is an exact match for well worn, reclaimed earth wood. Signs hang from the underside of the mezzanine, sharp looking rectangles on chains in the same, molded plastic wood, engraved with serif text and arrows directing passersby up, down, left or right, all very neat and orderly. The entire place is not unlike something you might find in Las Vegas or Disneyland back on earth, completely artificial in its design but with so much detail it feels wholesome anyway.

Some shops offer clothing, nearly all of it second hand, but new attire can be found on display in a window, and, if you had the credits, they were for sale. But these displays seldom changed and were mostly for show, since there are so few wealthy enough to afford them. It’s always easy to find food, drink, even alcohol, presented with the diversity of earthly ethnicities, India, Japan, China, Italy, Philippines—anything. The Market was both worldly and other worldly at once. The portions served were absurdly small (nearly everyone on Titan filled their bellies with nutritional kibble from a dispensary), and these merchants offered only a taste: a single French Fry with a dollop of ketchup, tiny thimbles of freeze dried coffee, and if you were feeling flush, a morsel of reconstituted ground lamb served on a disposable plastic fork with a single hydroponically grown mint leaf at prices equivalent to a weeks rent. But for many living here—to experience some fragment of one’s heritage, to feel a brief sensation of home—these small comforts were what made life almost tolerable and was the only kind of therapy they knew. I enjoyed the smells and bustle of it all, though I seldom, if ever, indulged.

I was however, madly famished, and was looking closely at the prices, and was considering spending four days of rent on breakfast, when my attention was drawn by a sign that grabbed me. It said only: Doctor, with an arrow pointing left, but between the arrow and the word doctor were a few wide strips of silver tape. It may have once said: Eye Doctor, or some other speciality. I stopped dutifully and looked to my left, where the shop seemed to have been built within the narrow alley of space between two other shops, an alcohol dispensary and a recruitment center. There, someways down a dark narrow alley, enclosed by the mezzanine above, a pool of light flooded the ground before a rusted steel door. There was no room for a display window, but after walking the distance, upon closer inspection, I found a small placard fixed to the wall next to the door listing the services on offer within. Strips of tape blanked off some prior services while newer services were hand-written in black marker on the bottom of the list directly on the placard: “walk-ins welcome”, “healing”, “medicine” a blank taped off space, then the recently added “blood testing” in small, neat print.

I’ve never liked going to the doctors back on earth, and I’ve been blessed with surprisingly good health. I have never needed serious mending, and have stitched up more than a few cuts myself, but these morning dizzy spells were a source of anxiety I could do without and I decided to walk-in and order up some healing. Pushing the rough and red rusted rectangular door handle exaggerated the moment with loud, squeaking hinges, but the unexpected smell of stale, spiced smoke when crossing the threshold bordered on the melodramatic. It tainted the room in far too much mysticism, choking out the science I had expected. It was very dark, though I could tell the room was comically small. Rather than plunge deeply into a larger room, I was cut off abruptly by an imposingly tall, false pine counter, something cheaply printed, anchored only a few steps from the door. My eyes adjusted to the dim light, piled disproportionately on one side of the counter were candles burning in tall, uneven clusters, each perched within hollow cylindrical carcasses, the knobby remnants of spent ones whose wax had poured over the edge of the counter to the floor. I stood a moment, taking it all in. Looking around a gap between the counter and the wall on my right, there was a second door, fake wood, closed, and fixed above it was a colourful, dangling beaded curtain.

I waited for someone to greet me, but my attention was diverted to the tinkling crystals dangling from different lengths of string on the ceiling above. Each crystal, swept by the breeze I’d caused entering this sanctum, created a delightful tussle of barely noticeable tones. There were too many to count, perhaps thousands, all very precious looking things. Each shard caught the candlelight differently, casting reflections, some coloured, some not, in different shapes, squares, diamonds, swaying a disordered light that sea sawed on the fake wooden floors, counter, door, and on the hand, I held out in wonder.

This was not what I had expected. I rested a hand on the counter and a boot on the footrest attached along the base of the counter. “Hello?” I called out, not without trepidation, “Is there a doctor in the house?”

Through the door, a small woman emerged, pushing the beads aside. Her presence brought immediate credibility to the room, and my misgivings about the unusual décor were relegated to the status of marginal observation. In a white, starchy medical overcoat, she took her post behind the counter and regarded me silently, distantly, waiting for me to declare my purpose. Her face was both youthful and wizened, free of wrinkles, pulled smooth by some magic cream or gift of genetics; it was impossible to guess her age, but I was certain she was in the prime of her life.

Instead of speaking, I took an instant to scan her face: every feature of her visage was eye-catchingly unique while simultaneously the darkest variation nature could confer on one so fair. She was a soft pencil sketch, rapidly and repeatedly redrawn by a gifted, lovesick artist until the delicate, barely-there-skin was finally captured by shading and the white of the paper itself; she was negative-space made animate, captured by the contrast of her eyes, brows, lashes—confidence outlined in the finality of deep running black ink traced over a scratched out form by a stable hand and a thick sable brush. The accumulation of these unusually dark features, so impossibly rendered on one face was altogether attractive to the point of distraction. She held me dumbfounded and silent in her gaze while unmoving, still, expressionless, staring back at me like a portrait, disinterestedly assessing my condition from beyond time.

Then she spoke to me: “What’s the matter with you?”

I reeled at the terseness. I was so caught off guard by her appearance and impressed with her beauty, not expecting her to cut into me the way she had. I didn’t know how to answer. I hesitated. My mouth hung wide while I mutely considered the extensive list of things the matter with me, and was maybe a little hurt that she could see this so plainly.

“My mother never held me enough when I was a baby. She would let me cry in my crib for hours, alone.” I’m not sure why I started with this detail, which I wasn’t even sure was correct; it was more of joke my mother would make when I failed to do as she asked, when I was a child back on earth. “Which is why now I crave the attention of every woman I meet.”

Without hesitation she replied: “That can lead to attachment issues which manifest later in life in a number of ways…”

“…No, no, I’m sorry.” I interrupted before she got carried away. “That’s not why I am here. I’m not particularly good with abrupt questions.”

“Well, that may simply be a result of your personality type. Though, you might have a neurological disorder that affects your speech production areas in the brain. I would need to conduct several tests to determine…”

“No, no. That’s not why I’m here either. Sorry. Give me a minute to compose myself. Can we make a little small talk first? Like the weather? Can you believe it’s below zero again today?”

Considering this, her eyes opened wider, wider than any I’d ever seen, catching the flickering candlelight and giving them a glassy liquid sparkle. They were of such a deep walnut they appeared impenetrably black in the dim.

“If that helps you, then yes.”

I gestured towards the space behind me, waved my hand in a wide circle, trying to draw her penetrating gaze away from me, to gain a moment of respite from their intensity.

“What’s with this bizarre location? The voodoo decor, the dangling crystals, what kind of doctor are you anyway?”

She retreated inwardly at this and seemed almost annoyed.

“Yes, I guess it does seem a little strange. I’ve only been set up here three weeks. I haven’t had time to redecorate, and I don’t have an eye for that sort of thing anyway. This space was occupied by an older woman, a fortune teller who started to proclaim herself a witch doctor.”

“So, you are a proper doctor then? Then why the candles?”

“The witch doctor left everything behind in a hurry. I don’t know the details, but there was a large box of candles, and with no electricity in this room, candles do produce light… that’s the extent of it. This little room is an addition to the actual space through this door…” She pointe at the beaded curtain. “If you’d like to move into the examination room, you will find it is a proper space...”

“I don’t mean to be rude” I said, “but, you have not answered my question about being a doctor.”

Her black, thick cattail eyebrows floated above her face in an open expression, and she sighed.

“I’m not a medical doctor, no. But back on earth I did run a research lab and have a deep understanding of human physiology. There is no other doctor here on Titan, and while I’m not licensed to practice medicine, I can offer my services to those in need, maybe help a few people.”

To my eye, she had regained her earlier composure and was again self assured her explanation would be sufficient. I suppose to anyone in need of medical care, it was. I was not aware that there were no other medical facilities on Titan, but given the terrible living conditions, and myriad options elsewhere to someone with so much valuable training, it made sense.

“I never intended to stay here, but Titan has a way of claiming people.” She said.

“It certainly does.” I agreed.

I didn’t want to pry into her circumstances much further and was satisfied enough with her answers to share with her my issue. There was now a trace of resignation about her, something that may have been there all along but that I only now just noticed. Everyone on Titan had a backstory that could make you cry, and it was best not to pry to deeply into these things, though I was almost certain some grand injustice stripped her of her post and her dignity.

“Well, I’m fine with all of that. Maybe you can help me with these dizzy spells I’ve been having, but first…” I laid my hand palm up on the counter and waited a moment, locking with her eyes. They looked at me but I had no sense of the person behind them. It felt like I was staring into the sun, risking blindness, but I’d be a fool for not trying something and all I could come up with was this: “Read my palm?”

She grimaced and tilted her head down a degree.

I persisted: “Doctor, please, will you read my palm?”

“I’m sorry?” She replied.

“Never mind, I’m only joking...” I withdrew my hand.

“I see.” She considered, briefly, then said: “I don’t know how to read palms.”

“I didn’t think so.” I said.

Then, in a professional tone completely void of humour, she described a procedure I was not even remotely interested in having done: “If I had a proper lab, I could isolate the aspects of the human genome responsible for accurate fortune telling, if it existed, and then splice those elements into your genetic makeup. After a few days of rest you’d be able to do your own palm readings.”

“Aren’t you concerned I might then put you out of business?”

“No?”

“As a witch doctor, I could provide the kind of healing people believe in, and with little overhead, my prices would quickly drive you out of business.”

“I don’t know if I follow what you are saying?”

“Don’t worry though, I’d hire you back before you became destitute, and you could assist me in various procedures…”

“…There is no witch doctor on Titan, and you have not had the procedure done...”

“…While I would be busy acting as a medium, channeling dead relatives, and pets, you would watch the door and make sure my clients don’t run off without paying.”

“…it was only a counter factual example.”

The more she spoke, the more it became apparent that for all her beauty she held extraordinarily little appeal. Humour was wasted on her. I simply couldn’t see myself living a happy life with her and decided to end all flirtations. Though I appreciated how civil and well mannered she was compared to nearly everyone else on Titan, she was sadly, extraordinarily dull. However, she would make a fine doctor for my current needs.

“Let’s proceed with the medical portion of this transaction. I must get going to work in a while.”

She happily abandoned all small talk and guided me through the beaded curtain into the back room which was indeed a proper medical facility. I made myself comfy, sitting on a thickly padded rolling stool, while she stood there, hesitating, briefly not knowing where to position herself for the exam. She decide on standing the entire time, looking down on me, which felt a little rude, but this may have been her usual method. I could however see her name tag clearly from this vantage, which I hadn’t noticed earlier; it only said: “Kai” with no last name. The room indeed had electricity, lights, a hospital bed and all the instruments you’d expect to see hanging from the wall in the most functionally appropriate way. Why she made no effort to make her reception area match the rest of the place, to renovate even a little, I couldn’t understand. Perhaps her services were too expensive which drove away business.

“What’s this going to cost me? How many kidneys?” I asked, and she replied dryly:

“It’s 1 day’s rent for a check up. I do not accept human organs in lieu of payment.”

She proved again that she had absolutely no gift for small talk, and by the time she reached the part of the exam where we worked through a series of diagnostic questions, she did so with admirable efficiency, asking increasingly more specific questions until she determined a particular type of blood test was needed. After placing my hand inside a small toaster like appliance, I felt a sudden prick on my index finger, and the machine whirred briefly before spitting out a strand of paper which she ripped off, studying the long narrow strip intensely for a time in silence, completely unconcerned about the dead air between us, while I whistled a soulful tune. Then, setting the printout aside, she continued with her assessment.

“I noticed you did not have your PAID with you when you came in. Do you often leave the house without it?” She asked. This seemed to me to be rather disconnected to my malady.

“Not really, but for the last few weeks, yes. I have found I’ve been increasingly unable to tolerate the usual popular distractions.”

“Have you had any issues with compliance at work?” This follow up was another unusual question.

“I can honestly say I dislike my work intensely but have so far avoided termination.”

“Do you find you suffer from an unstoppable compulsion to shop online?” Again, this seemed to have nothing to do with my headaches.

“No, not particularly. I only spend what I must to avoid being discovered at work as… being… less than sufficiently loyal? Oh, I should mention, I work at EasyClick.”

“Of course. That is wise of you.”

“I think so.”

“I understand completely.”

“You do?” Hearing her say this pleased me immensely and I said: “I’m immensely pleased you agree.”

“If it is alright…” She interrupted herself and thought deeply a moment, furrowing her bushy brows. “I would like to contact you soon with further analysis. I believe, with confirmation, that I can offer you something that might not only explain your recent headaches but could shed light on some of the other discomfort you’ve been experiencing. Until then, you may want to take these…”

She reached into the wall cabinet behind her, popping the top off to shake a few out in her hand, then offered me a small bottle of pills which I held and studied while she continued:

“I want you to take one of these now. It will help you concentrate and focus.”

“What is it?” I asked. “Cocaine?”

“No. It’s—”

“—a cocaine derivative?”

“No… It’s an experimental drug that is only available on Titan at the moment but is well known to not only help you concentrate and focus but can improve one’s mood so much, you’ll have trouble believing how disconnected your world view was before taking it.”

“My world view? I don’t know. I’ve had my share of troubles with experimental drugs, I think that may be what caused my headaches, and oh, I forgot to mention, I had a horrible stomach-ache this morning.”

“The pills are 100% safe for all humans. It’s well past animal trials and in the final phases of human trials. I expect you’ll hear about it soon enough in the most popular Beats. For your stomach-ache you should eat something as soon as possible. You are hungry.”

Skepticism washed over me. I tilted my head to the side, gritting my teeth. I must have sent enough unambiguous signs of my mistrustful state of mind, because she immediately took one of the loose pills in her hand and swallowed it herself.

“See? Perfectly safe.” She said. “Take three per day with meals, if you can, and you can take an extra one any time you are having trouble thinking clearly. You’ll feel the effects right away, everyone whose ever taken them claim they are a godsend. They report increased levels of satisfaction in all parts of their lives, and a deeper connection to others, and life in general. I really can’t recommend it enough.”

Despite my deep reservations, she was looking at me, holding out her dainty, beautifully, tiny hands with a pill there just for me. So, I grabbed her hand and held it, maybe a bit too long, taking another long look at her serious face and I nabbed the pill and swallowed it.

“You have very lovely fingernails. Have you thought of painting them red?” I told her. “I can tell you always clip your nails instead of chewing them off, like I do.”

“Thanks?” She said pulling her hand away.

“I’m like a savage animal in this regard.” I said, my tone conciliatory, apologetic. “Despite the rest of my vain habits, I can’t seem to help myself. See…”

I held up a hand so she could see the short nails, remnants of hang nails, and tiny scabs around each finger.

“I think you’ll find that these drugs will help with that too.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, they help to keep you in touch with all your basic biological necessities.”

I glanced at my watch and made my goodbyes with Kai. I was skeptical but at the same time satisfied, enough at least to find food and visit Otis.
~
END