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[*] “The Dark Side of The Moon: Exploring the Ethics of Corporate-Owned Lunar Ventures”
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[*] “The City of Neon Lights Takes a Dark Turn: Kais Zenix’ Victory And His Shadowy Past”
[*] “Cyborg Voices Speak Out on Life, Pain, and Reclaiming Humanity”
Layla leaned back in her chair, tossed a stress ball against the walls of the rec room with exquisitely measured force, then waited…
One-mississippi, two-mississippi, two-and-a-half… for it to get back to her. One more earth-week of mining downtime still to go. Yes, the nights were long here on the moon.
The
lunar harvester was a marvel of technology and intelligence. A combination between a mobile refinery and robotics base, it slowly crawled the lunar surface, vacuuming up lunar regolith for concrete production, filtering out heavy metals and helium-3 for fusion energy production back on earth, sending automated rovers to central storage, building and transport nodes, and sending out demolition drones to loosen the mineral veins along the lunar surface. A skeleton crew monitored, maintained and provided oversight over the operation. But now it was nighttime, and that meant half a lunar cycle -14 regular earth-days’- worth of energy rations, unrelenting dark, and temperatures plunging to -173C. Actual mining work was reduced to the bare minimum until the risk of their robots freezing in mid-operation, equipment failures, and those all-too-human psychological strains were over and done with, more or less (they were selected and trained for this of course, but still). Then, the long, long shifts would start again. And so, for now, maintenance, research, and training were their main activities, along with bouncing holographic stress balls, and listening to the same old stories over and over again, of course.
Turre, their Norwegian robotics engineer (the company had a surprising number of far-nordic people, Layla had noticed), was just in the middle of telling story #6 to the newbie: the one where he tried smuggling the contents of his grandma’s spice cabinet into Luna Central Station -truly they were living on the edge here, and you weren’t going to find those stories in future history books, Layla mused with a smile.
“Small particulate hazard, they said, ‘as if the regolith dust isn’t enough’. But you try eating those flavorless rations all the time!” And he was right: Layla had lost weight again herself. With reduced gravity, smells and flavors became muffled, and their carefully regimented feeding and workout schedule was an absolute chore. So annoying… First thing she’d replace when she got the money for it would be that.
“Told you you should’ve applied for the metabolism enhancement trials.” Layla told Ferris, their newest rotation into the crew. She shrugged and sipped her cold brew mushrooms as Turre asked Layla
“You’re still wanting to become a robot yourself?”“You’d like that wouldn’t you?” Layla said with a wink. The ‘standby-switch’ jokes wrote themselves.
“Nah, I’ll still be me, just better.” She posited,
“Think about it: how easy would it be to just be able to plug into the rovers remotely? Would make for way less unnecessary checkups.” Turre just snickered.
“Ah, yes, I can’t wait to be a walking talking error message log. I swear, Layla, if only you knew the programming in these things. The only thing I’d trust to plug into my brain would be a damn record player, and even then it’d depend on the album. Literally anything else before any” *quote-unquote* “‘smart equipment’.” Layla rolled her eyes, then replied.
“You laugh now, wait till I’m blasting off at light speed, mate, then we’ll talk.”“I can see it.” Ferris offered with a smile.
“In fifty years: Layla Al-Nadir, brave captain of the Enterprise.”Layla laughed.
“Fifty years? Give me ten! And I’ll be the Enterprise!”To the moon and back…
Abu Dhabi, UAE, AU
6th April 2094, Early morning
Layla woke up with a sudden jolt. It always went like that now. As soon as her brainwaves went into the green, the prosthetics, the augmented systems, the various automation interfaces and fog computing hubs, all would snap back from standby in a split second. She never truly ‘rested’ anymore, not in the conventional sense at least, and it wasn’t just due to her polyphasic sleep schedule: even in her dreams she could often feel the whitelisted status updates of her VI assistant, the filtered news articles streaming in, the replies to her arguments on messages boards. Still, in that moment of waking up, the organics still lagged behind. She felt electric, wanted to jump up, her cybernetic parts told her to, but she knew those
other parts of her wouldn’t be able to keep up, not yet anyway. It was a shame she couldn’t offload the breakdown of melatonin to the cloud yet. So, the start of each sub-day cycle was usually a careful preparation to hold back what she knew she
could be. So annoying… She opened the blinds and looked out on the city, the tiny lights in the apartment windows in the distance flicking on and off, the people rubbing their eyes through their car windows. The start of the daily grind. In the distance, the crescent shaped test-island that was Al Saqr HQ beckoned. She made her way to the kitchen machine that her subconscious had already willed into action and ran its prepared caffeine extract straight into her metabolism port. Yes. Today was a big day.
Layla was a pilot study in more ways than one. She may not always come in at the top, but it didn’t matter. There was another finish line she was racing towards.
“I see you’re taking on the modifications to the neural limiters well,” Dr. Nasri said. And Layla thought: of course. If you’ve routinely load your brain with
more, you just reflexively come to know which data can be outsourced to the AI systems, and the strangeness of the data gets easier to parse as well.
“Thanks, doc. Told you I’m made for this.”“No one’s denying you’re gifted, Layla. There’s a reason Al Saqr wanted you on board.” She paused a little before continuing, clacking her fingers on her terminal’s user interface.
“But I am tasked with caring for your health and wellness, no matter how much you roll your eyes at me.” Dr. Nasri smiled a little, though Layla swore it turned a little wry as the holographic scans popped up. The borderline-hollow shell that was her body, with some greens and green-yellows highlighting whatever metrics they were tracking.
“Physically, you’re top of the shelf, of course. But I am more curious if your new augmentations and setup has any psychological effects. I’d like to go over a few questions with you.” Layla shrugged.
“Shoot, doc.”“How did you feel after the Tokyo race?” “Oh, it was intense. We really pushed our limits out there, did things we weren’t sure we could pull off if I’m perfectly honest about it. But I feel that we could’ve gone further. The win was good, don’t get me wrong… but it's nowhere near the end of the story as far as I'm concerned.”“How have you been sleeping? Any odd dreams?” Layla shrugged.
“I’m sleeping OK. A bit less than what I used to, but it doesn’t really bother me. Neither does the lack of dreams. I used to have nightmares every now and then, but that’s mostly over now too, luckily.”“I see.” The doctor said as she jotted down some notes.
“Would you say you’ve been feeling sharper or more energetic lately?” “Definitely. It takes a while after waking, but sometimes it’s like time slows down, like I’m thinking two steps ahead, you know? It can make routine things a bit boring sometimes, though. Then I just think about other things, play some low-level training programs.”“Have you noticed a difference in how you connect with people?” “Well, yes. With expanded mental processing I can easily study peoples' micro-expressions, simulate responses and such… So in a way, I do understand people better, faster, deeper, but they become more distant at the same time, hesitant, alien. I try to keep things light, but all the neural and computational mods just make things, well, different.”“Tell me about these extra sensory details you’ve been picking up on, anything you didn’t notice before?" “Yes. Slight vibrations, the humming of machines. It’s subtle, but it’s like I can see a whole new world now. And sometimes, ” her voice reduced to a whisper.
“I can hear whispers, little voices in the background, in the binary data streams. Do you think the machine god's talking to me?” Nasri looked up from her tablet, then said
“Are you serious, Layla?” Layla seemed to hesitate a little, then burst a smile.
“Sorry Doc. Couldn’t resist.” “At least the humor’s still intact, huh?”“Who would your parents say you are without your enhancements?” Layla was taken aback. For the soft and wooly, fluffy voice of their doctor, she threw the question out there like a grenade.
“Huh. That’s… that’s certainly a question.” Then she thought for a while, and answered
“I know what you’re getting at, Doc. I’m fine, don’t worry.”The doctor smiled, knowing perfectly well she had avoided the question. But it was fine.
Getting the answer wasn’t the point.
“Good to hear that, Layla. Then, unless you’ve got anything else, you’re free to go.”“Thanks, Doc…” Layla replied, and packed her things to leave in silence.
And as Layla stepped outside of the room and the automated door slid closed, Salma Nasri MD sat back in her chair, opened Layla’s profile once more, created a new report, flagged it to management-only, and noted
‘Progress on Al-Nadir all-green. Advice: proceed as outlined in the strategic development plan.’
“Have you heard anything from Kais yet? I’m getting a bit worried.” “You’re too sweet for your own good, Nadia. It’s Kais we’re talking about, he’s been through worse than an AGP win. I don’t think there’s any need to worry, even if he was vague about it.”“It’s just so unlike him. Usually he pretty much lives here.”“He won and yes, he worked hard for it, he has every excuse to take some time off. He still has plenty of hours of leave, and it’s better if he takes some now while they’re recalibrating the sims and trialing the ship setups for the Luna training sessions rather than in the middle of them. He’ll be back soon enough, you know him: when he has something on his mind, he goes for it ‘with more than 100%’.” Layla said, trying his best to imitate Kais’ accent.
“So what’s on his mind now, then?”“You wouldn't understand." Kais had said, but Layla kept that to herself.
Layla smiled an empty smile as she touched Nadia with the
lightest touch of reassurance. Layla had shocked herself somewhat at the Tokyo race when she hugged their one-time star pilot (
ad-interim, she emphasized to herself). She had let some of her oh-all-too-human emotions get the better of her. It had been a while since she let herself do that, with… well,
more or less natural humans. Touch amongst bio’s tended to become distant if not outright foreign with such sustained use of industrial-grade cybernetic implants as Layla had: for all their advancements, with the level of experimental and extreme augmentation she had, one wrong cross-system setup, one mismatch when the firmware updated, one wrong intent signal in the heat of the moment, one wrong force calibration, one wrong safety check, and, well, good thing it had been Kais there, then…
But, judging by the expression on Nadia’s face, she disbelieved her gesture of reassurance. Layla had erred the pressure too much on the side of caution again, it seemed. She looked in Nadia’s eyes with a slight mix of concern and pity, though even she was unsure if it was for her, or for the person she saw in her eyes' reflections.
“Speaking of vacation hours, you need to take some time off as well, you know… Do you have any plans later? There’s this new VR arcade down the road from me, wanna join?”
A Farm Near Helwah, Northern Egypt, AU
Kais called out. He had rented an electro-cycle at the most rickety shop he could find, and gave something extra to make sure there would be no location-tracking on the thing. After that, he had raced straight here, parked nearby and walked down the road between the waving, wafting coffea trees. The farmhouse was small, but enough, dug down halfway into the earth, and was made of natural stone for insulation. Kais felt it almost quaint, as if he had gone back in time after the neon bath that was Tokyo, a nostalgia to a time he had never even known.
A man came wandering around the corner of the house calling
“No! No, I don’t want any more visitors, I’ve had more than enough of those.” Then he took a good look at the one standing on his doorstep, pointed at him, and said,
“And especially not you!”“Really grown into the grumpy old man you always were.” Kais answered, arms crossed.
“You’ve gotten old, Khaled.”“You too… more or less…” the old former-rebel replied, with a tone in his voice that bordered on surprise and spite. Kais just shrugged.
“Good genetics, I suppose.”Khaled seemed almost bewildered to see Kais here, and it took him a few seconds to continue his line of questioning.
“What are you doing here? Why bother me now?” “I… Something happened in Tokyo. I’ve acquired something.”“Really?” Khaled replied.
“Came all the way over here to show off your little trophy?”“I’m not talking about that.” But he
did know, huh?
“I’ve gotten to know something about… us. From back in the war.”“After all these years, you dare come to me for the war? After what you did during the final--…?”“Don’t put that on me, Khaled.” Kais snapped, a knot filling his stomach he hadn’t felt in a long time. He knew exactly what he was talking about.
The Final Storm.
“Don’t dare forget that I lost then too.”“For goodness sake. Just let me be.” He said, turning around and started walking away.
“We’re at peace. The wars are over.”“Not for me!” echoed across the fields.
And Khaled sighed.
“Heard that a lot over the years.” He looked out over his coffee fields. The road in between. The road had seen others walk before him.
“Why did you tell the others about me?” He turned back to Kais.
“Because I had to.” Kais said.
“After one of the S-VET support meetings, when another one of us… Well, you didn’t know him anyway, and you wouldn’t care, would you?” He hesitated a little before continuing.
“I told them that you were…” A friend?
“That you could be trusted, if things were not fine, if anything were to happen.”A silence. Then Kais turned to face Khaled, and said.
“I need to know who came to see you.”Khaled sighed and thought for a long time. A very long time. Then he spoke, his voice a reconciled whisper.
“What happened, Kais?”Kais rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around, searching where to even begin. Then he nodded.
“Got any coffee?” And, on the inside, Kais couldn’t help but feel a wry tinge of a smile: he hadn’t called him by his number, at least…
“Did you have a nice trip?” Layla asked.
“Yes.” Kais said, though his mind seemed to be everywhere but the present. He went through the motions well enough: hung up his coat, loosened his collar, cleaned his neural link, then went straight through diagnostics, and then on to the sims. Business as usual, except that it wasn't.
“Good.” Layla said. A silence.
“Anything else?”“Got sniffed out by airport security again… What did I miss?” Kais quickly added, clearly trying to avoid talking about whatever he was dealing with.
“Well, people are happy for our win.”“Good.” Kais said. A silence.
“Anything else?”“Doc wants to speak to you. And we’re all set to begin training for Luna.”
“Lead, you won’t believe this, it's huge!” Ferriss said as she went over the monitoring data. The lunar satellite train had been scouting the lunar surface for promising mining sites, which robotic scouting rovers double-checked. And sometimes, they made for golden discoveries.
“We’ve got a massive deposit a few clicks from here, right under the surface!”
“Mining team, check-in.” Crackled through the static.
“Status on drill 7?”“All systems functioning, Lead.” Layla replied.
“We’re about 10 meters down, soil’s getting denser.”“Understood. Keep it steady. Don’t push it too far. Can’t afford another cave-in.”
Kais and Layla were discussing driving techniques in reduced gravity. Over the past few days Layla had schooled Kais on the finer points of gravitic and magnetic manipulation as well as how the pulse drive would function differently in an environment more frictionless than even earthbound maglev due to the lack of atmosphere. It was interesting to see the two do their thing: Layla knew Luna quite intimately, the subtle but alien shifts in how to handle herself, and stayed within her personal safety margins. Kais, however, had decided to take the complete opposite route: try to see where the edges of handling were. And Yasif, head of simulations, decided to alter the scenario a little more. He turned to Nadia beside her as she was going over the telemetry and whispered
“Watch how Layla adjusts the neural dampeners in the middle of maneuvering. I think she’s doing it to alter her time perception: more processing to compensate for the relatively ‘slower’, more careful pace of the lunar environment.”“It’s really cool,” Nadia nodded, but there seemed to be a note of tension in her voice.
“Do you think it’s safe the way she's using it? With the risk of hyper-stimulation?”“I get the concern, but she outsources most of it to her computation cores anyway. I don’t even think she’s thinking about it anymore, it’s all reflexive at this point. And they both seems to manage it well. Layla with her mods, Kais with his sheer stubbornness, his instincts, his... experience. Makes them quite the match, even though they seem completely different.” Layla laughed in cheer as she overtook Kais.
“It’s fascinating, like you’re watching two species evolve in real-time.” Yasif said under his breath, offering Nadia some snacks.
“Biscuit?”“Does it ever worry you?” Nadia asked, taking one of the cookies, her eyes firmly fixated on the data streams -chocolate pistachio, nice.
“That Layla’s… more machine than woman now, I guess?”“It’s something we struggle with a lot, actually. At Layla’s amount of mods, the distinction between what she actually feels and what all her systems tell her to feel gets tricky: feedback loops, over-stimulation, noise, phantom sensations, glitches; so, what do you filter out, what do you let through? It’s one reason why I think our work on the neural dampener is so important.”“It’s worrying me.” Nadia replied.
“The CMO came to talk to us about it recently. If something goes wrong with it during the race…” She didn't even dare finish the sentence.
“Yes, and that’s precisely why we put them through the wringer here.”“That’s the stuff.” Layla cheered as she finished the race.
“Nadia, see that? That's how you do a moon race!”Kais smirked as he came back out of the simulation, glancing towards the two of them.
“Stop coddling her, chief.”And they sure didn’t. Yasif, ever the obliging sims engineer, instructed Nadia to select the lunar dust blowout option. And the crash was hard.
Layla woke up with a sudden jolt. She felt heavy, and her mind was slow. Had the years with the moon’s low gravity slowed down even her mind now? She breathed and shifted, and felt…
something. It took a few seconds, but she finally figured out what the sensations were under her head. They were pillows, soft, somewhat luxurious, even. There was a smell of sterility in the room, and she noticed how
high-resolution the smells were here. How the white walls were… too bright. And too far away. Why was there so much space here? Where in the world…?
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep. The heart monitor said as the realization hit her.
She was
back. She leaned back into her bed, her throat closed up and the pit of her stomach churned with those all-too-human emotions.
Damnit. Yes, of course.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep. The alarms had said before it all went dark. An unexpected disruption in a critical mining system as they were working on them. Then: paralysis, panic.
“Get them off of me!” she remembered shouting at her legs.
She lifted up her blankets, and saw the prosthetics sticking out from under her. Standard procedure for heavy-duty accidents, according to the corp’s health insurance policies. Return to Earth on the first helium-3 shipment possible in a state of controlled low-consciousness and metabolism, then medical aid, apparently with the highest grade of prosthetics they could get their hands on.
It must’ve been one hell of an accident, according to the reports and news articles… Layla’s parents were borderline-hysterical about the whole thing, of course, but when
weren’t they worried about her? Over the days, a parade of nurses and doctors came rushing in to check up on her.
Then: a lady dressed for business.
Damnit, Layla thought. It never bode well when the suits decided they would have to interfere. She kept her eyes firmly locked on her legs and prepared for something even worse.
“Layla Al-Nadir, my name’s Ashari. It’s good to see you’re doing better. I hope you’ve been comfortable?”“As comfortable as one can be after waking from a coma with their legs replaced.” Layla offered dryly.
“What’s this about? You’re not really here to check in on me, are you?”Ashari put on a smile, but the eyes stayed as businesslike as they always were.
“Straight to the point, very well. I’m here to talk about your future with our company. We’ve gone over your recent… incident, and while we’re overjoyed to see you’ve taken well to the prosthetics and rehabilitation, the company has decided it would be best for you not to return to lunar operations.”“Excuse me?” Layla’s face paled.
“You think I’m just going to give this up? I've got years more experience than half the techs there! And you gave me a contract. You can’t just pull me!”“We’re truly, very thankful for your service, and your experience. However, our assessments have concluded that, considering the physical and psychological demands on-site, your current conditions may not be compatible.”Layla scoffed.
“You think I can’t handle a few more upgrades if it comes down to it?”The suit seemed taken aback by the suggestion. Layla hadn’t even hesitated in suggesting more augmentations.
“Miss Al-Nadir, I appreciate your spirit. Let me make it absolutely clear that we don’t doubt your personal abilities, nor your character. There have simply been… concerns within the board, about liability and sustainability. Even with augmentations, we must consider your sustained well-being and operational efficien--”“So I’m a liability, then?” Laya almost spit back at her.
“You’re more worried about the cost and image of it all than about what I want and what I can actually do. It’s all just PR, isn’t it, Miss Ashari?”“Layla,” Ashari continued, as if she hadn’t even heard Layla’s response,
“the company is willing to offer you a severance package, more than enough to support whatever you decide to do from here. Furthermore…” She played with her pen, as if hesitating to even bring it up,
“if you’re interested, we have opportunities -on Earth-” she emphasized
“in our training division.”“Training division?” Layla almost laughed, then shook her head, though her feelings about it were as much desperation as it was anger.
“No, no. You’re not going to stick me behind a desk to watch others take my place, and tell me it’s a ‘glorious new opportunity.’”Ashari paused, but kept her expression cool and collected.
“Layla, this is the best offer we can make. We respect all you’ve done for the company, and hope to see you back, else we wish you well. And that’s final.” She turned to Layla and emphasized.
“You’re not going back.”A silence. A long silence. Then, Layla whispered.
“We’ll see about that…”The woman in the suit stood up, took her sweet time to pack her tablet into her bag, and left with an eye-less smile, halfway between concern and pity. Then the nurses came, supplied Layla with water and food. Took readings. And in time, the
Beep-Beep of the heart monitor slowed down again. Slowly.
Too slowly.
And Layla thought: No.
That would be the first thing she would replace.
And then?
Everything else.
A Couch in the Sky
Italian AGP Post-Practice Interview
Rifugio Capanna Piz Fassa, Piz Boè, Dolomiti, Italia
Friday 14th April, 2094, 1700 CET
Layla asked over the soft humming of the skilift as the duo made their way up the mountain.
“What did the doc tell you?”“To take it easy…” Kais said.
The two shared a pause, then chuckled.
When they arrived, the Delta Hyper crew had already been well busy setting up The couch. Out in the open, and Kais internally sighed a little. Though he was made with hostile environment resistance in mind, that didn’t necessarily mean he
liked the frigid cold, the thin air. Luckily, instead of the usual too-bright lamps, he felt infrared lamps heat him as he took his place in the spotlights once more. Some last minute brushings of makeup later -you’d think they’d be able to do that with AI nowadays-, ‘a little bit more to the left’ for the view, and the crew thumbs upped each other and the red recording light turned on.
“Kais Zenix, one time race winner, and now here with us on the couch for Delta Hyper! This might be a bit different to Egypt, but do you think with your fast ship you can repeat your achievement in Tokyo on the slopes here in Italy?”
“A bit frosty here.” Kais said as he looked around the snowy mountain top, the cabin framed behind him undoubtedly a Delta Hyper sponsor.
“But I’ve been told that the piatto del montanaro is good here.” Kais said, echoing something their pilot manager had said as they were scrolling through the cabin’s reviews on the flight over.
“As for the race, there is strong competition for the top spots.” He looked out onto the players queueing up behind the camera crew. “Nora, Beatrix…” her “...and Amy, of course.” Kais saw Paul munching on some popcorn in the background as Layla gestured in faux-alarm, mouthing the words
'what about me?'.
Kais continued.
“But I’ll manage. In this weather the energy systems won’t have to cool as much as in Cape Town, and the track isn’t as wild as Tokyo, so I can dump most of the power straight into the pulse drive. And with all the long straights to battle for positions?” He shrugged.
“I wish them the best of luck.”
The two looked out on the holographic leaderboard as the qualifying rounds came in, and in, and in. And then: the shift. Layla to fourth. And Kais: to second place.
Second. Kais gritted his teeth, and the name of this race’s target came over his lips.
“Nora Kelly, huh…”
Sylvan
Tachi
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LadyAmber
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Red Wizard
Krasnaya
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Sky Blue
Chronic
