The Sun Circles Us

Jeff just wanted to be alone. Bumping through the crowded decks, his heart began to race. He needed to find just one compartment, one closet, one corner, where he could be by himself. Not for long – five minutes would do.

He skimmed along the bulkhead, avoiding people as they floated along in happy clumps, laughing and talking without a care. A large group bore down on him and Jeff squeezed in a hatch that opened behind him. He turned midair, expecting to find another compartment teeming with people. With relief and confusion, he was greeted with silence. He pushed his way through the air onto a small but empty deck. Jeff recognized it as an access deck to the dry dock. Of course it was empty! Who wants to spend their time off at their workplace?

Jeff floated to a porthole and looked out. Unfiltered sunlight bounced off a wide expanse of ocean far below him, making Jeff squint. Jeff tried to remember what which ocean he was above, only to once again curse his lack of geography. Every ocean and continent looked the same after a while.

A slight cough brought Jeff's focus back to the compartment. He spun around to face a crewman holding a support at the other end of the deck. He knew the crewman by sight – a joker in a neighboring barracks – but could not place his name.

“Don't worry, dude,” drawled the crewman. “Believe me, I'm not going to rat you out. Though, technically, we aren't supposed to be here.”

Jeff furrowed his brow. “Why not?” he asked. “I work on this deck all the time. I have clearance.”

The crewman laughed. “It ain't about the clearance,” he said. “Dirtside doesn't like it for us to be where they don't expect us. There's no ship in this dock right now, so why should we be here?”

“Then why are you here?” Jeff demanded.

The crewman shrugged. “Same as you, I'll bet. Looking for a little alone time.” With that, he pushed off the support and floated to the porthole. He grabbed one of the handrails around the porthole and faced Jeff, sticking out his free hand. “No use in shouting across the room. I'm Colin.”

“Jeff Chang.” Jeff hesitated extending his hand.

Colin grinned. “You're fresh from dirtside, I see,” he said. “Still afraid to touch someone, still concerned you're going to infect somebody. Listen, you'll get over that. We're all past that. Every single one of us is here because of that bug.”

Jeff turned away and faced the porthole. Memories of waking up in that hospital room burned through his mind. The confusion from the high fevers and coma, waking up not being able to feel his legs, the whispered fears of the doctors and his parents as they signed his life to this station.

“It's been three months,” he whispered. Colin nodded.

“I've been here almost two years,” Colin replied. “The Agency says they're giving us a new life by putting us in an environment where we'll thrive. Who needs their legs at zero Gs? We can be trained to build and repair their new ships so the able-bodied can explore all those new corners of space they're discovering. Really, we're quarantined. Trapped. No way we're going back dirtside. Or to one of those new colonies. We're still contagious.”

“You don't believe in a cure?” Jeff asked.

“Would you try to cure us?” Colin snorted. “We're the perfect workforce. Ain't going to be any kind of strike here, unless you want to cut off the food supply. Nope, we're at the mercy of the Agency. But they need us. It's why we get paid and paid well. Anybody able-bodied can't survive up here without gravity past a year, not without something to keep their muscles and bones going. The virus changed us that way. We'll never walk again – heck, we'll die just trying to breath down there – but we can swim up here forever.”

Colin's words sank into Jeff's mind. He had heard most of the same rhetoric before, even prior to his own illness. Some said the Agency designed the Super Polio bug themselves to enslave people to work in this station and others scattered in orbit. Jeff thought of his own father's protests of the treatment of those infected before Jeff's illness. It made his commitment to this floating leper colony all the more bitter.

“Do you really think we'll be here forever?” he asked.

“Don't know,” Colin shrugged. “At least we're alive and kept pretty well, minus the tight accommodations and shower schedule.”

The two floated in front of the porthole in silence, watch the Earth spin far beneath them.

“What do you miss the most about that?” Colin finally asked, nodding his head to the bright world before them.

Jeff smirked. “Lots of thing, I guess,” he said. “Walking, breathing air that wasn't filtered from everyone's lungs a billion times, fresh fruit.”

Colin squinted toward the naked sun gleaming in the inky void. “For me, it's sunsets,” he said.

“Sunsets?” Jeff asked.

“I had an aunt who lived in Alaska," Colin said. “It drove me nuts to visit her during the summer. The sun never set. It made me feel all reversed, you know? Like we didn't seem to go around the sun. It was the other way round. Like here,” Colin paused. “We're so high up, we don't circle the sun. It circles us.”

Colin shook himself and forced a laugh. “Listen to me being all deep. Don't go telling your friends that this place is open when it's off-line. You'll never get any privacy.”

As Colin turned to go, Jeff stuck out his hand. Colin shook it, then pushed off toward the hatch.

“You're learning, kid,” Colin called as the hatch closed between them.

Word count: 969