Work Text:
May 1st, 2223
Cecil Applegarth’s eyes watered as he clutched the pink slip in a tight fist, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he lost another job or if it was because of the moondust in his eyes and nostrils. Cecil shoved the paper into his pocket to pull out a little silicone bottle, then tipped his head back to administer the eye drops. There were many reasons Cecil hated living on the top layer of Tranquility Point, but chief among them was moondust. He hated the way it got into everything, and how it reeked of burnt gunpowder. Every night he’d feel it grinding between his teeth as he slept and spat it up in globs of gray mud come morning.
Cecil blinked, letting his tears run down his cheek with the eyedrops. He hadn’t read the pink slip that closely, but he could hazard a guess what the reasons for his dismissal were: interrupting people, disruptive habits, lack of interest in the ‘work family’ , not being a ‘team player’, or one of a hundred different ways he didn’t make for a ‘valued contributor’. Retail hadn’t worked out, call centers hadn’t worked out, food services hadn’t worked out, nothing was working out and he was running out of time. Rent on the apartment was overdue, and he still needed to pay off funeral expenses for his parents because the class action lawsuit against Titanium Mine 7 had been dismissed.
As the trolley pulled up to the stop, Cecil let out a labored sigh and put on a pair of headphones that were being held together with a half-inch layer of adhesive tape. He scanned his ride card and noted he only had three ride’s worth of credit remaining before he took hold of one of the dangling wrist straps. Even through his music, he could still hear someone watching the news at full volume.
{-and now for the latest news on the war against the Kuiper Economic Alliance, there’s been a very spirited debate in the Solar Congress on how all this will be paid for and how it will affect the Coalition’s budget. With me today is Congresswoman Jessica Dezal of Mars. Congresswoman, you said in no uncertain terms that the Kuiper Alliance posed an existential threat to our democracy-}
Somewhere in the trolley, somebody let out an exasperated ‘ha!’ at the mention of democracy - an understandable sentiment, Cecil supposed. As much as the Coalition of Planetary States loved to talk about how they were ‘the dream of true democracy realized’, it didn’t change the fact that the Moon had no representatives in the Congress. At least Earth got three reps.
The ride home was just like every other ride on the trolleys - too many elbows getting jammed into the back and sides, too many feet stepping on toes, too many people coming home from a shift in need of a shower. Cecil felt overwhelming relief as he finally got off the trolley and headed towards his hablock.
The hablocks of Tranquility Point’s surface were built as last resorts to solve overcrowding. Concrete monoliths caked in built-up moondust, meant to make living spaces out of what was supposed to be a strictly industrial zone when the settlement plans were drawn up. They loomed like cathedrals long-forgotten, as unwelcoming as a spectacle as they were as homes. When the city expanded deeper down into the Moon’s crust, those who could afford it fled the hablocks as fast as they could.
Not many could afford it.
Somebody with a sense of humor or an axe to grind or both had put up ‘DAYS SINCE LAST ACCIDENT’ signs with ‘LAST ACCIDENT’ painted over with the words ‘ELEVATOR BROKE DOWN’ by the lobby’s elevators. Elevators #1 and 2 were tied at 45 days, Elevator #3 was at 81 days. Elevator #4, which had previously been at 99, was now back at zero, dashing its hopes of being the first to reach triple digits.
“Better luck next time, pal.” Cecil said wryly as he stepped into Elevator #3.
No matter how many times Cecil came back to it, the silence that greeted him in his apartment felt wrong. There was still a part of him expecting to hear his dad watching television, or to hear his mom singing along to her old records for the millionth time. Even as Cecil turned the TV on and put on a record, it lacked the warmth Cecil associated with those sounds. The news seemed more bleak, the music sounded hollow and empty.
Cecil peeled off his garishly-colored work shirt, wadded it up, and chucked it into a laundry basket. There, it joined its other brethren of work uniforms that Cecil only kept because they were free clothes. He booted up the family computer and did his nightly routine of checking inboxes, checking bank statements, calculating how much longer he could stretch the money his parents had saved away before it was all gone. Factoring in the loss of another paycheck, Cecil had roughly two weeks left. If he cut his grocery spending by a third, maybe he could get an extra week out of it.
As if sensing the impending tightening of the belt, Cecil’s stomach growled. A microwave dinner was followed by a shower, which was then followed by a yelping of profanities when Cecil ran out of allotted hot-water minutes. Cecil resumed scrubbing his face in the sink, and stopped when he caught a glimpse of his reflection. Cecil didn’t consider himself particularly unattractive - his face was a bit boyish in its roundness and got him carded at the store more than a few times, his wavy hair was the same color as the coffee his dad used to drink, and the eyes that his mom always said were just like her mother’s were the vibrant blue that brought to mind old documentaries about Earth’s oceans. And yet, under those brilliant blue eyes were rings so dark they almost looked like bruises. Cecil mentally winced at how rough-shod he looked. He tried to force a smile and see if that helped matters, but it couldn’t make the look of exhaustion go away.
Truthfully, he was exhausted. He felt like a rat in a wheel, running and running as fast as he could but ultimately getting nowhere.
Cecil took a handful of cold water and splashed it into his face, pulling the emergency brakes on that train of thought before it could speed out of control and cause serious damage. “Just need to sleep.” he muttered to himself. He slipped on a pair of briefs and flopped down onto the couch, pulling a blanket over himself. As he drifted off, he could hear an advertisement lulling him to sleep:
{Across the vastness of space and right on your home world, the heroes of tomorrow are fighting for your freedom. Enlist today!}
It was almost noon when Cecil awoke the next day, jolted up by the sounds of combat footage being played on the television. On the frozen plains of Ganymede, a pair of CAF Durendal units were locked in melee combat with an equal force of Hadrian-class mechs from the Alliance. The Durendals were slick in their minimalism, resembling boxy armored humanoids all done up in blue-gray with smooth, glassy faces like an astronaut’s helmet. In contrast, the Hadrians were bulkier, more rounded, and clad in olive drab. They had much thicker legs covered by a skirt of dark gray sloped plates, and a humanoid upper body with rounded armor, and a gunmetal-gray visor with an array of five glowing 'eyes' in the vague formation of an ‘X’. Atop the heads of the Hadrians was the sensor array fin that was a trademark of Alliance mechs, shaped into an arc that gave the impression of a Roman centurion’s helmet. The Durendals leapt back from the Hadrian, causing the camera footage to shake. Cecil could barely make out one of the Durendals switching from its combat axe to its rifle as a Hadrian charged with its thermal spear before the footage ended.
{What you just saw was a skirmish between the CAF and Alliance insurgents near a deep-drill mining platform on Ganymede….}
Cecil sighed and was about to turn the television off when a thought crossed his mind: what if he tried enlisting? They’d probably take anyone who’d survive basic training, right? They’d probably never send someone like him to an active front, so he could find some menial assignment where he could just keep his head down and follow a routine for a couple years. And if they did send him to the front…well, he didn’t have any big aspirations to look forward to, anyways.
…
The recruitment office was little more than a rented out space in a strip mall, with a small trickle of young adults streaming in and out as Cecil waited with a numbered ticket in hand. Every time someone’s number came up, they were escorted into the back of the office out of sight and came back fifteen to twenty minutes later. His knee wouldn’t stop bouncing as he contemplated that maybe this was a terrible idea, maybe he could find work elsewhere-
“Number 21?”
Cecil’s heart sank as he realized there was no turning back now. Still, they could always reject him on grounds of mental disability like so many other job prospects had. He stood up from the uncomfortable plastic chair he’d been sitting in and walked up to the desk. Every step felt more and more like he was marching towards the gallows, even as he forced a polite smile for the clerk.
After handing over some identifying documents, the clerk led Cecil into the back. She opened the door to a room that uncomfortably reminded Cecil of the interrogation rooms seen in the cop dramas his dad used to watch. The clerk pushed a clipboard into Cecil’s hands.
“When you’re done filling this out, leave it outside-”
She tipped her head towards a wire basket mounted to the wall next to the door. “And then wait for someone to do your second round of screening.”
Second round? Cecil wondered silently.
“Good luck.” the clerk said disinterestedly before closing the door. Cecil sighed and took a seat. The paperwork seemed pretty mundane - do you have a criminal record, do you have any family members in the Coalition Armed Forces, do you have any ties to anyone associated with the Kuiper Economic Alliance, what was your GPA in high school, when was your last physical, and so on. It wasn’t until Cecil got to the question ‘Do you have any disabilities (see list below)?’ that he paused.
His pen hovered over the little box next to ‘yes’ as he mulled over his options. Would his application be automatically rejected if he said yes? Did he perhaps want them to reject his application so he didn’t have to go through with this poorly-thought-out plan? He could just say no, but didn’t people get in trouble for lying on military applications? Major, federal prison trouble, even? He could hedge his bets and check the ‘I prefer not to say’ option but that would surely look suspicious, because what person without a disability would choose that option?
His throat felt painfully dry, he should’ve brought a bottle of water. Would they have even let him-
Cecil stopped, realizing he was getting distracted. Unsure of what else to do, he filled the box next to ‘I prefer not to say’. Cecil wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead that he hadn’t even realized was there before standing up and opening the door just enough to slip his hand through and deposit the clipboard with its papers, as if afraid being caught outside the room would incur some form of punishment. It wasn’t long before the door opened behind him. Cecil turned his head to see a broad-shouldered woman with serious eyes and an even more serious expression walk in with a laptop under one arm, a clipboard under the other, and a fanny pack around her waist. She wordlessly set the laptop up in front of Cecil and stepped back.
“I’m going to play you a video, and afterwards I will ask you a series of questions,” the woman said with all the enthusiasm of a burnt-out substitute teacher. “You will only be allowed to view the video once. Are you ready to begin?”
Cecil’s expression was one of bewilderment. “What does-”
The woman cut him off. “Are you. Ready. To begin?”
Cecil felt the irritation and contempt under her words and decided not to push the issue any further. “Yes.”
The woman leaned in to play the video before pulling back. Cecil stared intently at the screen, and what he saw only raised further questions that he’d never get to ask. It was a chaotic, shifting kaleidoscope of visual noise that strained the eyes to look at. Colors melted into one another, constantly shifting and warping and bending, turning into ripples, and then static, and then waves and spirals and grids. Occasionally Cecil would catch a random shape or word in between the noise out the corner of his eye. When the screen faded to black and the video ended, Cecil felt the start of a throbbing headache blooming behind his eyes. He blinked rapidly, trying to dismiss the spots in his vision as the woman spoke up:
“What was the first and last word you saw?”
Cecil put his elbows on the table and massaged his temples. “Uh…first one was ‘publish’, last one was ‘illness’.”
The woman hummed and jotted something down. “How many times did you see an upright equilateral triangle?”
Cecil furrowed his brow. “Three times- wait! No, not three, I saw it four times.”
The woman hummed again, this time an octave higher. “Did you see the word ‘basic’?”
“No.”
More scribbling.
“What shape did you see between ‘museum’ and ‘extend’?”
“Two circles, like a Venn diagram.”
“How many times did you see an octagon?”
“I didn’t see any octagons.”
“How many times did the word ‘leopard’ appear?”
“Once.”
Cecil turned his head back to see the woman’s eyebrows raised and her eyes widened in surprise. When she realized he was watching her, her stern expression returned.
“That concludes the second round of screening. Please wait right here while we process your results. Would you like some aspirin?”
Cecil perked up. “Yes, please.”
The woman reached into her fanny pack and tossed Cecil a small water bottle alongside a tiny paper envelope of name-brand painkillers. Then, she stepped out of the room. Cecil wasted no time swallowing the pills and guzzling down the water. As he stood to put the bottle in the recycling bin, he could faintly hear the woman talking to someone on the phone.
“...highest score we’ve seen all month…soon can you get here? Yessir…”
The voice trailed off. Cecil frowned, trying to figure out what getting the ‘highest score’ meant for him.
“Nothing to do but wait, I guess…” Cecil said to himself as he sat back down. His head was still aching, so he let it rest against the cool surface of the table and immediately felt relief. At some point he must’ve dozed off, because he was jolted awake by the sound of the doorknob turning.
Cecil sat upright just before the door swung open. A woman with a striking appearance stepped through the door: silky, ink-black hair impeccably cut into an A-line bob so tidy it reminded Cecil of calligraphy or wood block prints, a sharp angular face with high cheekbones and a straight, narrow nose. She wore what was a standard captain’s uniform in the Coalition Armed Forces - a high collared double-breasted coat that was a creamy off-white in color with gold buttons and burgundy accents, black dress pants, sensible black leather combat boots and white gloves. However, all those details faded into the background when Cecil saw her eyes. Her eyes were steely gray and seemed to pierce through him, but the look they held was hard to pin down - somewhere between sinisterly calculating and warmly inviting. Cecil’s face flushed as he dropped his gaze, waiting for the woman to take a seat across the table from him.
“Cecil Applegarth, I presume?” the woman asked. Her tone was formal and polite, and there was something about her faint accent - German? Russian? Definitely from somewhere in Europe back on Earth, or from a family that originated there. “I am Zarina Swartzentruber, I’m a captain in the CAF.”
Something about her stating her rank made Cecil double-check his posture. “Nice to meet you, Captain. Thank you for your service-”
Zarina chuckled softly. “No need to be so formal, Cecil - not yet, anyways. I wanted to talk to you about that little test we had you do.”
“The video thing? What about it?”
Zarina clasped her hands together and smiled - in a way that Cecil couldn’t tell if it was a friendly smile or a ‘there’s something I’m not telling you’ smile. “The CAF has been looking for candidates with a particular psychological profile. People with what a lot of what the boys down in R&D call ‘sensory retention markers’. Basically, they want people who can take in information quickly.”
“Alright,” Cecil said hesitantly, suddenly very worried about where this conversation was going. “But candidates for what?”
A sly grin crossed Zarina’s face, and her sterling silver gaze flicked past Cecil, looking at the door over his shoulder. She leaned in slightly, as if she was giving him some juicy morsel of gossip and didn’t want to get caught doing so.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” Zarina whispered conspiratorially. “But the CAF is working on a new model of mech that’ll make anything the Alliance has look like children’s toys. Top shelf stuff, but we need test pilots.”
“Test pilot?” Cecil parroted skeptically. “I…I dunno. Am I really the kind of person you want for that kind of job?”
Zarina let out a soft sigh, sounding almost disappointed. “You don’t have to take us up on our offer, Cecil. If you want to be shipped to some nowhere base, get screamed at by some Neanderthal for basic training, and get gunned down by some dipshit fascist on some colony that’ll never acknowledge your service, that’s your call.”
Zarina leaned forward, her expression turning more serious. “Or, you could become a pilot, a hero of the Coalition. They’ll sing your praises in every colony from Mercury to Saturn. You’ll garner the respect of billions.”
Sing your praises . Respect . Those four words reverberated in Cecil’s head like a church bell. His jaw tightened and his hands clenched as a surge of emotion rushed through him.
“I’ll do it.”
Zarina smiled. “Excellent. Welcome to the CAF, Pilot.”
…
The next morning, Cecil had packed up what belongings he was allowed to carry. There was a twinge of sadness as he went to lock up the apartment. The CAF had made a deal with the hablock’s landlord to keep the apartment rented out to him, but there was a very real chance that Cecil would never see the apartment he grew up in ever again. He decided to take the stairs down one last time, and was about to walk to the trolley stop when he heard a car horn. Cecil pulled down his headphones and glanced over to see Zarina in a CAF jeep pulling up to the curb. She flashed him a friendly grin. “Figured I’d save you the trolley fare.”
Cecil smiled back, putting his luggage in the back as he took the passenger seat. He barely had his seat belt on when Zarina hit the accelerator and oriented the jeep towards the spaceport.
“So, what are you listening to?” Zarina asked about twenty minutes into the drive.
Cecil clicked the pause button on his phone. “I-It’s some old music. Frank Sinatra.”
“Sinatra? Really?” Zarina teased, her eyes not leaving the road. “I thought you were 21, not 121.”
Cecil swallowed, feeling mortified. “My mom was really into his s-songs. Told me she fell in love with Dad at a karaoke bar when he did a rendition of That’s Life…”
He let out a soft chuckle as he recalled something. “She said it was some of the worst singing she’d ever heard in her entire life, but loved how much heart he put into it.”
Zarina smiled. “Cute story. I bet they’re very proud of you today.”
Immediately, Cecil’s expression fell. She doesn’t know, don’t get upset at her, he told himself. Still, he couldn’t help crossing his arms over his chest and leaning away from the captain. “My parents died a while ago. Mine c-collapse.” he said quietly.
Regret flitted across Zarina’s features, and sympathy chased after it. “My apologies, Cecil. I wasn’t aware.”
“‘S’alright,” Cecil mumbled as they pulled into the spaceport’s parking lot. “You didn’t know.”
He gave Zarina a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “But if they were still here, you’d probably be right about how proud they’d be.”
The sloping edge of Tranquility Point’s dome loomed over them as they made their way to the terminal. All that stood between the city and the vacuum of space were millions of triangular pieces of foot-thick reinforced polyethylene.
“Ever been off the moon, Cecil?” Zarina asked as they were waived through security. Cecil shook his head. “My senior class’s trip was d-down to Earth, but I couldn’t afford to go.”
“Well, we won’t be going to Earth, but we’ll be making a layover at Lagrange Point 5. Can’t exactly take a civilian spacecraft to a classified base, y’know?”
Cecil nodded absent-mindedly, his eyes fixed on the waiting spacecraft. He’d watched a fair share of launches, remembered the spiel the tour guide gave during his fourth grade field trip about how the launch procedure went (mass drivers electromagnetically catapulted the craft upwards, and after a certain altitude it would be safe to engage the fusion drives), but what occupied his racing thoughts the most was the fact that he finally felt like he was making progress. Progress towards what, he couldn’t say, but it was something. Something that gave him purpose.
Something that gave him worth.