A Moon With a View

"The stars . . ." he croaks. "I've never seen them."

The fever has him bad and he doesn't have long. Despite being born in this hellhole penitentiary moon, few care and none can help the boy now. A guard owes me, though, and I call in the favour – surface access, briefly. Even my old ass can drag a sick child up there.

I look out at the glorious spectacle. I'd almost forgotten it and the reminder hurts. I turn to the boy, but the eyes are just glass orbs in a mannequin.

I wonder – did he see the stars before he died?

State Imposition

The unheralded entrance brings fresh hope. Words, speaker unseen, grind it into despair at point of recognition. Accusations lash the heart, strip the soul. Denial is torn away to leave no hiding place.

Torrential confession: a river of regret. Voice soothes until until the flow is dammed with acceptance. Quiet pleading tails off into silence, forgiveness ungiven, and only the ragged breath echoes. Weary, spent; defiance swallowed by the drain in the stained concrete floor.

A future, once blessed by uncertainty, now stone-bound; utterly known. The addition of one to ranks of statistics harvested with efficient indifference.

For the people.

Craze

"It isn't right, you know," bemoaned Father, as he stumped angrily around their habitat's main chamber. "It's inconceivable that any rational being would ever do this - let alone as a fashion statement."

He paused briefly in his tirade. "Inconceivable!"

"But he's young," soothed Mother. "It's his way of being different. Asserting his individuality." She immediately winced at her choice of words.

"Different?" stormed Father. "Individual? Deliberately replacing his limbs with prosthetics? Brain-damaged, I'd say."

Mother sighed. "No harm done, though. It is a reversible process after all."

"But we're androids!" exclaimed Father. "Grafting on these organic parts is simply . . . disgusting!"

A Fresh Start

Becky relaxed in the one of the sumptuous leather couches in the lounge of the luxury space-yacht Distant Horizons. She could finally leave it all behind. Her past. The squalor and deprivation and addiction; all that pain and misery. She had scraped together every credit she could and bought passage on the first starship with a destination she’d never heard of. Should be far enough away.

Becky glanced over at those passengers whose bodies lay sprawled by the doorway. She would airlock them and the remaining corpses later.

Yes - today was the first day of the rest of her life.