Finally Here

I can barely believe I am here, actually here! Has been almost one legal year and I still have difficulty to adjust to the light. All feels spectral here, like a dream.

Most of that comes to the fact that I grew up believing that I would never be able to leave my home colony. Not everybody here knows, but Fenrir is the last reason left for stick with the generic term “colony” instead of “planet”. Fenris is not a planet, it is a moon. One of the moons of a gas giant. Unlike the two other colonies that still endure in Lira System, which are planets both.

Gerunda, the largest and more densely populated by far. If very close to Fenrir. Comparatively speaking. And then there is Litmus, where I am living right now. Almost as distant from Fenrir as it is from the external limits of this stelar system.

That is why I wanted to be here, so much. Since I was old enough to understand the Universe and our position in it I have been obsessed with the dream of leave Lira System.

Find out what is going own with the rest of humanity, beyond the limits of our system. Whether or not there are still humans alive in the rest of the galaxy.

Due to the unique laws of nature in this region of space we are completely isolated.

Since our ancestors entered Lira System in their trillions of Seeding Vessels, each one with billions of individuals inside, communication was lost. Never reestablished.

Only a few thousand billion people survived the first hours after the shadows reveal themselves and start attacking. We do not know how many survived the 75 years that followed, but is universal knowledge that Fenrir would be the last colony standing.

Even there, humanity would eventually fall. Best projections suggest one thousand years, with population dropping every year. Slowly but surely.

The period of 75 years after the fall is called “Heliopolis”, because the only was to survive the shadows was to stay under the light of Lira. All the time. Fleeing the night.

Gerunda has a cycle of 55 hours, close to the equator that gives people a daylight of about 27,5 hours and equal period of darkness. They needed flying cities, and fast ones, to keep Heliopolis lifestyle. Fenrir has a day and night cycle much slower. About 5 legal years. The satellite is a bit smaller than Gerunda too, what makes the Heliopolis lifestyle even less expensive. Also, Gerunda has twice the gravity of Planet Earth, while Fenrir has only three quarters of Gerunda gravity. Because of all that my ancestors where able to afford a Heliopolis lifestyle for much longer, in cities that didn’t necessarily needed to be kept in the sky.

Litmus is a completely unique case. Due to strange orbits that make no sense we have here daylight for 262 legal years, and night only lasts between 1 and 2 years. The planet never rotates, and the period of darkness is consequence of other planets passing between Lira and Litmus.

The light of Lira is distant and weak here. Nevertheless, it is enough to burn the shadows and the vampires, when it touches any of them whiting the limits of atmosphere.

The light does nothing against he shadows in space, and that is the reason why is so hard and dangerous to travel between colonies in Lira System. The closest we go to the border of the system more numerous, larger, and aggressive the shadows became. No vessel was able to escape the system yet. Not even drones.

Litmus has the closest thing to a successful merchant caravan travelling between the colonies in the physical space.

Mages, in their astral-bodies, travel faster and with more success even than the Litmus Fleet, but is not possible to carry passengers or cargo that way. Mages travel as astral projections, and because of that they can only interact with technomagical items and other mages in their astral bodies. Even that way of travel between colonies is far from safe, many mages die in space, devoured by shadows. Every year.

The shadows, like the vampires, are made of a substance that is constantly in flux, neither astral not physical, but moving between those natures, and potentially able to interact with both.

I wanted to be here not only because Litmus is closer to the outside world. Mainly because they have the only serious program dedicated to reestablish contact with the rest of humanity.

For decades I tried to find a way to make contact with the Litmus Fleet, I would do anything for a sit in one of their ships. Anything to find my way to Litmus. Nothing that I tried worked.

Ironically, my day job was what put me in contact with someone that could get me what I wanted.

This thing that I was doing to pay my rent and keep my ability to eat every day. While I looked for clues about the Fleet.

My accumulated background in Sun System engineering and history of science opened me some doors in the medical field. Not necessarily the most conventional and, purely non-criminal, sort of medical field. To be clear. More that borders of medicine where the lights of social acceptance do not always reach. Creative surgery, in this case, cyborg stuff.

The subculture is not exactly criminal, per se. It is not exactly not illegal either.

Opinions differ.

Possibly due to that floating nature of moral and legal status the 99 community pays better than most other patients. They ask no questions, once they are convinced that you have the skills to deliver the results they demand. I f your work does not reach the expectations you have created with your words, no one will ever heard anything from you again.

If you deliver what you promise, more clients will find you. Money will start flowing.

I was almost giving up my dream, selling it for a comfortable plan of retirement, when I overheard a conversation between a vampire thrall and a mage. Both deeply integrated in the cyborg culture. Urban Samurai style.

I had not considered it until that moment. Turns out that 99 Clubs exist in all 3 colonies.

Not only they share the name, but they also keep some degree of contact with each other.

Some members of Litmus Fleet crews are cyborgs themselves. To them it is a bit like having tattoos. Sailors on Planet Earth, by the time of the Great Navigations, would cover their bodies in tattoos. Visiting artists in ports all over the world, and registering the history of their lives in their skin. Cyborgs register it in their bones, muscles and organs, but the social meaning still applies.

Without realize it, I had found the best possible place to be working. The one place where I would have realistic chance to buy my ticket to Litmus.

Cyborgs don’t talk much, and the average member of this community almost never trust people from outside the 99 circles. Pretty xenophobic people, by default. How much of that is reaction to not being welcome in most places outside 99 circles, how much is pure arrogance and despise for those who are weaker than them, I leave for you to decide.

Hardly makes any difference, to me.

What matters is that cyborgs who don’t talk to almost anyone. Talk with the tech-guy who makes their maintenance. One or another upgrade. Things like that.

Before I even get enough experience to take responsibility for a surgery of replacement. I was being treated by some of them as a fellow cyborg.

The “rep1” surgery is quite a huge responsibility. For the patient it is the first serious step in the 99 lifestyle. Hard to go back, very expensive. It consists in exchange every single bone a person has by an artificial, cybernetic, equivalent. This is the necessary step to get super-humans strength, velocity, and about everything else that makes cyborgs what to be cyborgs.

Not all tech-guys risk to make rep-1s. Those who do that surgery earn the title of “doc” in the Clubs. What grants status and respect, but many things can go wrong in a rep-1, even if you are using the simplest methods and materials.

Tech-guys trying to progress to doc seldom survive the surgery, if it doesn’t go well for the patient. If you catch my drift.

Not talking about their reputation, or chance to make a name for themselves in the community. I mean survival in the biological, existential, sense of the world.

So, naturally, I was **** to try my hand.

Unfortunately to me, they had no place for a tech-guy in that vessel going to Litmus. The fellow made clear to me. They could have a sit available, for a doc. I only had a few months to make that upgrade in my reputation. Or would be too late for this opportunity, and no one could say how long would take for the next opportunity to arrive.

Was impossible to say even if another opportunity would even exist to me. Litmus Vessels don’t take passengers. If they did, the price of a ticket would be far above my wildest dreams.

You already know I am here. So, you must presume my first rep-1 surgery was a success.

Not really. My patient died.

To my luck, it was clearly not my fault. A team of assassins invaded the room in the middle of that surgery, to kill my patient. I managed to put myself between them and their target. And delay the **** for a couple of hours, keeping my patient alive while I moved him from room to room. One step ahead of the assassins.

In the end, the man did not survived. Still, despite that, the effort earned me the good will I needed.

My first rep-1 surgery took place in Litmus. Was here that I finally got myself the title of doc. Which is way less important for me now.

Since my main interest here is to enter the project Reconnection. Help it succeed.

Find out what is outside Lira System. If anything.

Speak to those who are there. If there is any human still alive outside our stellar system.

I am here, I came that far! I am not inclined to give up now.