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Photo by Daniel Morrison. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licence.

Symbiotes

by Tom Dillon

Please note that this is the second story in the Horizon series. I can't make you read them in order, but I feel they are better when you start at the beginning.

Looking at the Systems Schematics for Horizon Station, Vance couldn't help but think that he was looking at some obscure variety of giant space legume, Fabaceae Ouranos Maximus perhaps. It had veins and bones, skin and organs, tiny creatures that lived aboard it in symbiosis. Of course, he was one of those tiny creatures, and maybe it was just easier to look at everything bigger than oneself as alive.

He had already stripped away the outer skin of the station on the diagram, and now he removed the electrical and communications networks. That left the station's infrastructure and water systems. The primary system was presented in a healthy blue, fat pipes leading to bathrooms and kitchens. No such luck with the secondary system, almost everything from the reservoirs to the inter-deck piping was outlined in an inflamed red.

"Vance? Where are you?" Ava's voice blasted through his earpiece.

It took him a moment to recover. "In the atrium, why?"

"Can you come down here? I need your help." The echo in her voice meant that she was in the shuttle bay, five decks below.

"Can it wait?" He looked down at his handheld and kicked himself. He had never changed his status over to busy, to Ava it would look like he was just relaxing.

"Vance, I just need you to help me weld some panels," she said. "It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes." Of course, once that small task was finished, there would be that much less reason for him not to help her with the next of its thousand cousins.

"Sorry, but I can't." He knew that he would pay for it later, but whether or not he helped, the lift wouldn't be up and running for a week at best.

"Never mind."

Hopefully, she would get over it.

Vance's first stop was the auxiliary water storage tank. It was located on Deck 2, past the storage rooms clustered around the central shaft. When he arrived at the bank of consoles that controlled the auxiliary water supply, it had been manually shut off. In the sims, manual shutoff usually meant a lever or valve that had been closed by hand. This was not a simulation, and there was no lever or valve. Instead there was only a red light labeled manual shutoff. Every setting that he tried to change led only to an alert instructing him to press his identification up to the contact panel to unlock the console.

"Hey Remi, do you have a moment?" he asked, routing the question to her through the station's network.

"What's up?" came her reply a moment later.

"I need to unlock a utility console on Deck 2." With any luck she would just be able to fix it from Central Ops.

"Hold on . . ." she said. He could hear Ava's voice in the background. "Ava says you can figure it out on your own."

"Alright, thanks anyway," he said. Remi had always deferred to Ava, even when she had been sleeping with him. Vance understood, he usually deferred to Ava, too.

His handheld beeped to inform him that Remi had shut the connection. A few seconds later, it beeped again to announce a message. Use the diagnostics tool to flash the settings. Sometimes it was easier to remember why he had gotten together with Remi than it was to remember why they had broken up.



Vance checked his handheld, and both Remi and Ava had set their status as busy, but there were no do-not-disturb messages. He hesitated, but it was as good a time as any.

"Can you come up to the atrium?" Vance asked Remi and Ava through the station's network.

"Sure, I'll be up in a couple of minutes." Remi's reply was near-instantaneous and she sounded like she welcomed the distraction.

Ava's reply came a few moments later. Can it wait? It had been almost three weeks since he had refused to help her with the lift, and she was still raw over it. It wasn't a large station, but somehow she had managed to avoid him ever since.

No. I need you to come up here. Right now.

I'm on my way up, then. Ava took almost a minute to send the message, and he could imagine her steeling herself for a confrontation.

The lift doors opened slid open, revealing Remi and Ava. They were standing on opposite sides of the lift, a model of awkwardness.

Vance was dirty and sore, but it didn't matter, he smiled. He turned, and with sweep of his arms, indicated the small rectangle that had taken up so much of his time over the past weeks. Small green leaves had pushed their way through the soil. They were sickly little things, but they lived.

Remi practically ran to the edge of the plot, falling to her knees in the soil. She leaned forward on her hands, sticking her face up to one of the shoots, as though she was going to eat it right there. Instead, she reached out and touched it, caressing it gently with the tips of her fingers, as one might touch a piece of heirloom jewelry. Ava was more reserved, but he could see her giddiness nonetheless. She started back towards the lift, and as she passed Vance, she reached out to squeeze his shoulder.

"You're alright, you know," she said.



The third story in this series, Fractal, is nearly finished, and I anticipate having it up by September of 2010, until then, feel free to read my other stories. If you like this, and want to help out, feel free to spread the word or send a Flattr my way.



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