|Sci-Fi|: Eras of Cain Ch 2 |Sci-IRL|: Why We Should Go To Space
Fic: Cain Descends Into Unexpected Slums. Science IRL Article: 3 Ways Space Benefits Humans
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Previously…Cain is replaying her memories as if she’s speaking to her therapist. She is trying to make sense of the fight with her father that culminated in her running away from home, murdering some guy, and learning she’s a clone of her mother. Cain’s father—Mr. CEO of every tech company that matters—refused to sign her permission slip for her junior class trip to CopyChat—the only communication service that connects every 16-year-old to 7 other versions of themselves in parallel universes. Cain snuck out of the house to ask her friend to forge her father’s impossible-to-hack electronic signature.
Seeing this memory of me and the hovercar makes me realize I left out some things in my inventory of life-altering information I learned yesterday. Not only did I discover my clone status and that I’m capable of murder, I also learned I’m a spoiled rich bitch whose best friend spent the past six years hiding how shitty his life is from me. For extra credit, I also learned how the lower part of the city simply isn’t built for the people who live there. There’s a lot to be angry about all of a sudden, now that heightened emotions turn me into Ms. Robo-violence.
🎥 (📍 Hovercar; 🗓️ June 10, 5271 🕒 8:05PM
⏩(The hovercar begins to descend through the levels of the city, sinking first through the warm yellows and soft pastels of the upper Boutique sector. My favorite restaurant scrolls past my window on Level 159. At the table closest to the edge, a stranger holds a potsticker halfway to their mouth while their friend tells an apparently arresting story.
The soft boutique lights give way to bold neons that pop and strobe on each of the Entertainment levels. My favorite arcade is somewhere on 142. Below 138, the bright, fluorescent white lights of the industrial offices levels start to slide by.
The hovercar computer asks if I want music and plays a five-second sample of the song I was listening to at breakfast.
The song is a favorite of mine and Dad’s—though he says it was Mom’s favorite first. I thought we’d listen to it over my birthday dinner. It makes him think of happier times.
The video memory of our fight pops up, automatically filling my visual field:
▶️(“Because I said so,” Dad says. Then he’s turning his back to me and I’m looking down at my wrist augs, which are shaking with sudden fury.⏸️)
I force close the popup memory. Try to count the seconds to slow my breathing. Count the office desk plants in the endless levels of corporate windows as the car descends through the Business sector.
At long last, the warm lights of Middletown come into view—the residential 70-something layers of our city. Each layer is supposed to be walkable with physical health activity machines tucked away in cute gardens.
I wouldn’t know. In sixth grade, Irshim Standish had a big birthday bash somewhere in Middletown. Pretty sure that was the first time I didn’t get invited to a classmate’s birthday party. I’m not blaming other people for the fact that I havedn’t been below Llevel 135 before today. Just saying.
Stupid me is hoping Trin won’t mind that I stop by unannounced. People do that in Middletown, right? It’s ‘neighborly’ I hear.
My ears pop painfully.
The car passes the lowest residential level and descends farther into dimly-lit levels. The watery gray light is peppered by distant orbs of the occasional neon light mounted in the depths of these levels.
That can’t be right. We’re going too far down.
I pull up Trin’s address to actually read it. There’s a difference between saving a mindsnap of an address and actually knowing where someone lives.
1095-A East 134th St x 80th St, Level 21.
LEVEL 21?!
Trin lives one hundred and fifty-six levels below me?
What heck is even below Level 50? I had assumed it was like the utility closet in our house next to the kitchen.
Maybe my middle school geography is failing me. The internet to save the day!
Official sites tell me Levels 30-50 are Life Support, Infrastructure, Utility and Municipal Government. Levels below that seem to have changed over the years. Level 21 has been labeled many things: ‘Multi-purpose’, ‘Recycling and Trash Reclamation’, Temporary Modal, ‘Historical.’
So many words. So little meaning.
Obviously the address I have for Trin is wrong. The key word that isn’t in this hodgepodge is ‘residential’. Maybe my mindsnap’s number recognition software is buggy.
I pull up the video memory in my aug’s feed where the mindsnap came from. It’s been months and I didn’t tag it, so it takes ages to find.
🎥 (📍Planck High; 🗓️ April 2, 5271 🕒 10:09 AM
▶️(A skeleton of metal and wire sprawls on the black ceramic lab table. Schematics and small, silver, hand tools surround it.
A flurry of movement is dragging my eye away from the wrist joint I’m disassembling. Trin’s dark curls fall over his eyes as he bends over his school-issued tablet.
He’s like a kid hiding his homework from a cheater with his left hand tilting the screen. He’s shrugging one shoulder up against the hollow of his cheek, unconsciously scratching at one of the pearlescent round augs that punctuates the dimple there with his Scribnib. He’s nervous. Which is why I’m taking this mindsnap to study later and going back to work so he doesn’t notice me noticing.⏸️)
Let’s zoom in to the image.
📸 🔎( Well. There’s no doubting it—there’s Trin’s trademark 2 with the little bubble on the bottom. The 1 with its old-timey horizontal slash for a foundation that makes the numeral look like a hangman’s platform.)
He really lives on Level 21–unless he lied on this honors program form.
Back to the main memory.
🎥 (📍 Hovercar; 🗓️ June 10, 5271 🕒 8:15PM
⏩( The car is slowing its descent. The level sign for 21 scrolls by.
It’s dim down here and sort of misty. Smokey? I resist the urge to figure out how to use my augs and wearables to test the air quality. The car rotates midair 90 degrees and merges into this elevation’s traffic flow which seems to be composed primarily of automated trash trailers and mass transit trolleys. I’m in the only shiny 2-passenger vehicle and I’m grateful for the blacked out windows.
For a moment, I consider turning my find-me signal back on. If I disappear, there’s no way Dad thinks to look on Level 21.
The car swings gently into a side street, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The sidewalks are crumbling beneath rusted railings. There’s no way this passes the construction codes meant to keep pedestrians from toppling to their deaths off a curb. Many of the fluorescent lights running along the ceilings are broken or flickering. The buildings seem more like piled trash heaps than permanent structures. Once in a while, there’s a skeleton of an old cement-and-rebar that remind me of our history book images of the tenements the first settlers lived in. Every surface—the buildings, the street signs, the edges of the sidewalks, are all mottled black and green. I’ll analyze it later to confirm it’s various breeds of moss.
Pedestrians on the street stare at my car. The whites of their eyes stare out of dark caves of heavy hoods, wide hats, actual helmets. They’re glaring at the Planck logo painted on the driver-side door as my hovercar passes by.
Everyone has their head covered. I slide the hood of my sweatshirt up over my hair.
The car stops and chimes, queuing the intersection’s access arms to open. The archway is barely even functional—I’m surprised the car recognized it as operational. The archway’s digital readout is missing half its screen, and where one side of its structure used to be anchored into the sidewalk, there’s just a pile of rust.
“Exit when ready. Target address is three blocks north and one east,” the car’s computer says.
Wow when’s the last time I had to walk more than a block? There must not be access doors at each intersection down here.
“Exit when ready,” The car repeats.
My wrist augs start to shiver. This time, I’m hoping they’re gearing up the freak levels of strength I was augmented with. Then I laugh at myself.
I haven’t actually trained in years. My muscles can’t back up what my augs were designed for.
And if Trin lives here, it can’t be as rough on the inhabitants as it looks. Neither Trin’s augmentations nor his biological gene pool gifted him much in the way of physical strength or agility. Not that I’d ever say that to his pretty, pearly-pierced face.
What he doesn’t have in muscle he more than makes up for in genius. He’s also the only person who will help me break the law. He understands how important meeting one’s parallel selves is to completing an amazing junior thesis. If I don’t go to CopyChat tomorrow, I’ll be the only kid in school who doesn’t have several other versions of their brains helping them make big discoveries. And without discoveries, forget getting college scholarships. Dad wouldn’t be happy if this tantrum of his required him to actually pay college tuition for his should-be shoo-in daughter. This is about the millionth time I need to do something he isn’t able to do as my parent. No biggie.
This time, it hurts like never before.
Trin will understand. There’s nothing more important than school to Trinian Slade.
I cinch the hoodie up around my head and open the hovercar door.
To be continued…
|Sci-IRL|: Why We Should Go to Space
1) The ‘Overview Effect’ = Common Ground
When asked what’s the best thing about going to space, astronauts often say it’s the life-changing emotional rush looking at Earth from above. This phenomenon is so pervasive, it’s called the Overview Effect and it features an enduring commitment to finding common ground with others to protect and conserve our planet. Astronauts describe the visceral realization that this pale blue dot, spinning in a sea of star-studded black, is the only place we know of where humans are—where everyone who ever existed—has lived and died. And that from above, you can see no country borders. There’s just this delicately shielded star cradle, where the thinnest layer of atmosphere makes life possible for humanity. It’s hard to imagine how much better life would be if we all walked around with the Overview Effect motivating us to coexist. Check out
’s very thorough article about it.
2) Contribute to Safe Haven Development
Our Earth and the galactic environment she exists in have cycles of their own, and only some of them are favorable to our species. Our behavior, like our industrialized energy demand, can affect Earth’s cycles, but our technology can’t yet save us from an extinction event caused by normal galactic weather patterns. Because Earth is the only place we know of where consciousness exists, it would be great to have a civilization safe haven out there. Some place we could go in case of a massive meteor, or the next major ice age. The more time and folks we send to space, the more we learn about how we could live there long-term. Check out CNN’s article of work NASA did to flesh out this civilization space station concept.
3) Create a Global Community
If you’ve ever flown in a plane, you’ve felt turbulence—the wind buffeting the aircraft. Air travel is way faster than any other current option for long distances, but what if you could ride a rocket to space, and instead of battling the wind resistance over great distances, you let the Earth turn beneath you and navigate with far less fuel out in the vacuum of space to your destination? Point-to-point travel could connect us like never before. Imagine how interconnected we could be if you could travel anywhere in an hour. Here’s a segment CNBC did about it.
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So glad to hear the worldbuilding is working! I’ve certainly spent a ton of time wandering around this world and hoping y’all will join me in building out the parallel universes! :D I hope it’s still fun when it gets a bit murdery next chapter! 0.0
The story sounds cyberpunk, kind of Gibsonian. I really like it. When it ended, I wanted more. I also liked the Sci-IRL very much. I've dreamed of space travel since I was a kid, but I think part of its appeal lies in its inviolability.