When Life Hands You Uranus : 1 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Two days before Christmas, in the year 6056, Barfield Owens exhausted his last appeal. At the age of 30, he’d already spent a decade in prison. Now, barring a miracle, he’d spend the rest of his life behind bars.

You’d think that in an age where sensors, detectors, and cameras are everywhere, and when forensic science is so refined that it can detect and distinguish microparticles and infinitesimal traces, that miscarriages of justice would be a thing of the past. Common sense would tell you that a normal, inoffensive, utterly innocent man could never be mistaken for a serial killer. Such a misunderstanding not only would never happen, it would be impossible to arrive at an arrest, let alone a trial and conviction, if a person were truly innocent.

And yet, in a universe of infinite possibilities, it would have to happen to someone. The someone to whom it happened was a man named Barfield Owens.

Barfield was no serial killer. Barfield wasn’t a killer at all. Barfield was a kind, good, law-abiding man who loved his fellow citizens and tried to make a positive contribution to society. Unfortunately, due to a series of terrible coincidences, he was mistaken for the appalling Mojan-Pardee Killer. Admittedly, all of the "facts" were circumstantial: there wasn’t a single shred of direct, physical evidence. There were witnesses who saw something and someone, but their testimonies were of doubtful value.

And yet, in spite of the absence of any solid, unimpeachable proof, a compelling case was built. The prosecution and the press often pointed out that the murders attributed to the Mojan-Pardee Killer abruptly ceased when Barfield was arrested.

When Barfield was taken into custody, the real killer was wise enough to lay low, and contemplated a change to his modus operandi. During his brief pause, he happened to be killed in an automobile accident, and no one ever discovered his secret life of crime. Another horrible coincidence that went to Barfield’s harm.

Barfield’s conviction was followed by a sentence of life without parole, and he was locked in a high security federal prison, where his only visitor (aside from journalists) was his lawyer, Jeff Tommelekis. Jeff tried — without success — to launch one appeal after another, and when he wasn’t making judicial attempts to free Barfield, he was lobbying the governor, other high officials, celebrities, and anyone else who might bring pressure to bear in his effort to free Barfield.

None of his efforts got off the ground. Certainly there were people who understood that Barfield had been undeservedly crushed beneath the wheel of justice, but no one dared say so out loud, in public, on the record. His alleged crimes were so heinous and so widely detailed by the media, that his name or image was enough to provoke anger, disgust, and deep, visceral hatred.

“I’m sorry, Barfield,” his lawyer told him in a sorrowful tone. “These past ten years, I’ve done everything I could. I’ve wracked my brain. I’ve asked everyone I know for help and advice. I’ve followed up every single possibility, no matter how remote—”

“I know.” Barfield cut him off. “Don’t beat yourself up, Jeff. I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve been wrongly accused, but after ten years of trying, there’s nothing left to do but accept my fate. I’ve seen this day coming, and now it’s here. I’ll spend the rest of my life behind bars.” Barfield gave a crooked smile as he shrugged. “I’ll find some useful way to spend my time. It’s not so bad in here, after all. You know the old saying, Even Hell has its sweet spot.” Barfield’s words and intentions were brave, but they were belied by his voice, his posture, and his trembling hands..

“I’ve never heard that particular saying,” his lawyer replied. Then he hesitated, drummed his fingers on the table, and cleared his throat. “Listen, Barfield, there’s something you need to hear. Just a week ago, I was approached by some people… people from the Nostalgia Project, and um… eh… there *is* one last possibility. There could be a way out of here for you, if you want to take it. The federal governor — and this is all very low-key, so keep it to yourself — the governor is willing to commute your sentence, under, um, under a certain condition. Personally, I think it’s pretty extreme, and I doubt that you’ll take him up on it, but I feel honor-bound as your attorney to mention it.”

“Commute my sentence?” Barfield repeated. “How? Why? What’s the condition? What’s the catch?”

“The catch is, you’d be stuck on Uranus. Permanently. You’d have to live and work there forever. You’d never be able to leave. It would essentially amount to exile. Frankly, it’s being offered because there are people in government and in the judicial system who realize that you’ve been unjustly imprisoned, but don’t dare admit it publicly. They’ve embraced this solution because they don’t see any legal way to set you free.”

Barfield countered, “A legal way? I’ll tell you a legal way: The governor could straight-out pardon me. Or he could commute my sentence without any conditions.”

“The public outcry would be overwhelming. You should know that. I’m sorry, Barfield, but you are the most hated man on this planet. Maybe even in the whole universe. I’ve kept this from you, but from the beginning, there’s been a lot of talk on social media about the death penalty.”

“The death penalty!” Barfield exclaimed. “What’s wrong with people today? That’s-- that’s insane! The death penalty? What is this? The middle ages?”

“Don’t worry,” his lawyer assured him. “It’s just talk. It’ll never happen. But as far as I can see you have only two possibilities: you can head for Uranus, or stay here in prison.”

“Uranus!” Barfield exclaimed. He scratched his head for a moment. “That name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it. Where on earth is it? Is it a penal colony?”

His lawyer grinned. Every schoolchild knew how to find Uranus. “No, Barfield, it’s not a penal colony. It’s a mining colony that was set up by the Nostalgia Project. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you? Uranus is one of the outer planets in the original solar system, back where Earth is located.”

Barfield’s face went white. He felt faint. “The original solar system? Are you kidding? Are you crazy? My God! That whole system must be a cold, frozen hell! Didn’t their Sun burn out long, long ago?”

“No,” his lawyer laughed. “The Sun? That old light bulb will be warm and bright for billions of years to come. Listen, Barfield, I need to go, but I’ll have someone from the Nostalgia Project call on you tomorrow. Just so you have all the facts.”

“Fine,” Barfield acquiesced. “I’ll listen, but I have to tell you that Uranus doesn’t sound very appealing.”

 

---

 

Midmorning on the next day, a slim young woman with eyeglasses arrived. Her name was Neeka Fimernikem. As you can well imagine, Barfield was quite curious about her eyewear. “Why don’t you get corrective lenses?” he asked. “I mean, get your lenses corrected?”

She smiled at him as though she’d been waiting for that exact question. “As it happens, there are many distinct advantages to wearing glasses,” she said. “It’s much easier to toggle the visual correction. See?” She took the glasses off and put them back on. “They also have cosmetic advantages. I think you’ll agree that they enhance the shape of my face, and bring out the colors of my irises.”

“Oh yes, I think so,” Barfield said, nodding. Neeka was one of the few women he’d seen in the past ten years, and he was ready to agree with anything she might say. As she spoke, he was fascinated by her smooth, unlined neck, by the movements of her soft, full lips, and by the curve of her plump, youthful cheeks.

“Also, since I represent the Nostalgia Project, it’s fitting that I wear such a throwback to simpler times. Now, let’s get down to business! Mr Owens, how much do you know about the Nostalgia Project?”

“Well,” he said, after searching the deep pool of his ignorance, “Well, I do know there is something about glasses.”

“Hmmm,” she commented. “I see. For the sake of convenience, would you mind if I proceed as if you’d never heard of the Nostalgia Project? It will improve the flow of my presentation if I don’t have to stop and consider what to leave in and what to leave out.”

Without waiting for his answer, she lit up a holomation model. Barfield recognized the image from his elementary school days. “That’s the original solar system!” he exclaimed. “And, uh, one of those planets in there is Earth.”

“That’s correct,” she agreed. “Earth is this one here. You can see that it’s very close to the Sun. Once upon a time, it was a very advantageous position. Unfortunately, we humans depleted the atmospheric protections, and Earth grew quite hot. Scientists love to speculate about whether it’s too hot to sustain human life. Some actually believe that there are humans still living on Earth, but of course no one has been able to prove it.”

“Can’t somebody just go there and take a look?” Barfield asked.

“There is a project to do exactly that: to return to Earth and — if possible — repopulate the planet. In case you haven’t already guessed, that effort is called the Nostalgia Project. However, we have one huge obstacle. Can you guess what it is?”

“Earth is far, far away,” he ventured.

“Yes, exactly. Earth is quite far. It would take so long for a ship to travel that distance, that by the time it got there, none of us would be alive to remember that the ship had ever left. However, we can get pretty close to Earth very quickly. Let me ask you, Mr. Owens, have you ever heard of teleportation?”

“Yes, it means you jump instantly from one place to another. Is that actually possible?”

“As of twenty years ago, yes, it is both possible and safe. It’s not a secret, but then again, it’s not widely known.”

“And so…” he said slowly, putting it together, “Why hasn’t someone teleported to Earth and seen what’s what? Or did they? Did someone go there and wasn’t able to come back?”

“No, no one has teleported to Earth. We can’t, as of yet. You see, if you want to teleport from point A to point B, you need to do some complicated calculations first. As it happens, if you start at point A, there is only one single, solitary point B in the entire universe available to you. You can’t go anywhere else but there. From point A there is only one point B. From point B there is only one point C, and so on. Surprisingly, if you keep going, you will eventually end up at point A again, if that’s where you want to go.”

“Why can’t you just go backward, from B to A?”

“I’m not a physicist or a mathematician, so I can’t answer that. However, fun fact: The mathematics that allows you to figure out your point B is an offshoot of what is called” (here she read from her notes) “pseudo-infinite tensor analysis. It was developed — guess when? — way back at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was a great time for speculative mathematics.”

Barfield wasn’t stupid by any means, but his brain was getting stretched and strained by all these new, complex, unaccustomed ideas. Earth? Teleportation? Whatsit whatsit tensor analysis? Why should there be only one point B? It made no earthly sense.

Neeka smiled at him. She appeared to be a flighty, bird-like girl, but she was clearly much smarter than Barfield. Conceptually speaking, Neeka was only wading in the shallows, but Barfield was already in well over his head. He gaped silently, and gestured mutely, as though he could rearrange with his hands the things that she’d said and turn them into something he could understand.

“Good God, my head is starting to hurt,” Barfield told her in a helpless tone. “Are you sure all this stuff you’re saying is real?” He sighed and shook his head.

“Why don’t we take a break for lunch?” she suggested.

 

---

 

Of course, he expected that the two of them would sit down together. He’d ask where she was from… she would play with her eyeglasses in a flirtatious manner… and (in his imagination at least) all sorts of lovely things would follow.

Instead, a guard escorted Barfield back to his prison cell, where he dined upon a prosaic and highly unromantic plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans, washed down with a cup of apple juice, served at room temperature.

As he masticated, he replayed in his mind all the things Neeka told him… point A and point B, the hot, inhospitable Earth… and suddenly realized there was one topic she hadn’t touched on at all.

After lunch, the guard led Barfield back to the little room where Neeka was waiting. Even before he sat down, Barfield asked his question:

“I thought you were going to tell me about Uranus. You haven’t touched Uranus -- as a topic -- yet.”

“I am going to talk about Uranus,” she said. “We’re going to talk about it now. Do you remember when I told you about point A and point B? Well, there is a viable point A not far from here, and guess where its point B happens to be?”

“Uranus?”

“Bingo. It’s the first and only viable teleport destination in the original solar system. As far as we know, of course. Although Uranus is one of the outer planets, and still very far from Earth, it gives us a toehold in that system. It brings us closer to Earth than anyone has ever been since the last ship left Earth.

“We’ve established a mining colony on Titania, which is Uranus’ largest moon. We’ve made it as large and lovely and comfortable as we could possibly manage. The miners are paid an extravagant wage, and while they’re out there, all their expenses are paid. Everything they earn is cash in the bank.”

“How often do they come home?” Barfield asked.

Neeka looked at him in silence for a beat. Then she said softly, “You would have to stay, you know. You could never come back. That’s the deal: in exchange for commuting your sentence, you would have to stay.” In a normal tone she added, “The miners are allowed to come home for an entire month twice a year. Surprisingly, they rarely exercise the option, which should tell you that they’re happy with Uranus. It tells us that Uranus is not as bad as you might think.”

Barfield was silent, weighed down by the enormity of his choice. Yesterday, he couldn’t have found Uranus with a map, and now he was being asked to live there forever. He could get out of prison, but only at the cost of his freedom.

Neeka saw how Barfield’s mood had fallen, so she added, “Keep in mind that you’ll have full access to all the goods and benefits the miners enjoy. You’ll receive the same extravagant pay they receive—”

“But I won’t be able to spend it!”

“Certainly you will! You can order anything you like. The teleport cycle runs once a week, so delivery of mail and other packages and goods only takes seven days.”

“How many people are out there?”

“I want you to know, but also to understand, and even -- if possible -- to feel that our goal on Uranus is to have a large, thriving community. The mining operation is extremely profitable, but in our calculations, that profit, and the mine itself, is secondary to our real goal, which is to build a thriving human settlement. The station is so highly automated that a staff of three could run it, in a pinch. So it isn’t workers that we need. We need people. We’re trying our best to build up the population not only for safety and social reasons, but also because we want to have a strong human presence in the original solar system. So far, though -- and we don’t understand why -- recruitment is surprisingly difficult. People haven’t caught the vision yet.”

“Yes, but how many people are out there?” he repeated.

“Right now there are two dozen men.”

A chill ran through Barfield. His brain keyed in on that last word: men. Oh, no, Barfield thought. His breath caught in his throat. Men? She can’t mean what I think she means! So he asked her: “Neeka, you said two dozen ‘men,’ not two dozen ‘people’ — how many women are out there?”

“Unfortunately, at the moment, there are none. We haven’t been able to attract any female recruits. Yet. We will, but we haven’t yet. And before you ask: no, there are no visitors allowed, of any gender, for any period of time.”

Barfield was stunned. Neeka was one of the few women he’d seen in nearly a decade. It was maddening to sit and interact so closely with such a lovely creature and know that soon she would leave, never to be seen again. So near and yet so far! Barfield felt a surge of despair. Could he bear living that way? Knowing that for the rest of his life he would never even SEE a woman again? Could he do it? Could he live without intimate contact? Could he live without even minimal, casual contact with the fairer sex?

“There are a couple of things for you to consider,” Neeka continued, as if reading his mind. “One is that here, in this prison, you quite definitely will never have any female companionship. Uranus, on the other hand, at least offers the possibility. We strongly and actively recruit women, especially young women, for a variety of posts on Uranus. We want to fill Uranus. We want to make Uranus bustling and lively. We want Uranus to be attractive to everyone. We offer special signing bonuses to women who pick Uranus, and perks that are denied to the men. It could happen for you on Uranus. It will never happen here.

“The other thing for you to consider is that if you go, we will give you a new identity, and we will alter your appearance. No one on Uranus will know that you were Barfield Owens. You’ll land on Uranus as a new person with a new identity and a second chance at life.”

She stood up and pushed a packet of documents toward him. “Everything I’ve told you is in writing here. There are also photographs of the colony and other quite detailed information. I suggest that you read it and think about it. Take your time. Don’t rush your decision—”

“I’ll go,” he said. “You had me at new identity. You should have led with that. You sold me. I’m ready now: I’ll go.”

She opened her mouth to warn against undue haste, but he spoke over her.

“I’m going,” he said. “I’ve decided. Uranus sounds pretty good to me right about now.”

When Life Hands You Uranus : 2 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Neeka Fimernikem promised Barfield Owens that his appearance would be altered. He assumed she was talking about plastic surgery, but that wasn’t what she meant at all. She had a more fundamental change in mind. It was a transformation made possible by teleportation.

To put it simply, a person could enter Point A, and arrive at Point B as someone else entirely. Of course, on the inside, they’d be the same: they’d have the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same memories. But on the outside, physically, they wouldn’t be the same at all. There were virtually no limits to the alterations they could undergo. And the changes were real, permanent, down to the core, not cosmetic or temporary.

It’s possible for teleportation to transform a person, but it’s very rarely done.

How does it happen? How does it work?

Point B on Uranus receives a load of cargo once a week. Occasionally it receives people as well. Whatever goes into the teleporter comes out on the other side, but how is it sent? It's sent as chunks of energy. One of the biggest hurdles in developing teleportation was telling all these chunks of energy apart. One chunk of energy looks pretty much like any other chunk of energy. How does the teleporter know which is which? Sure, some energy chunks are bigger, and some are smaller. Frequency and amplitude can vary, but still: if you’ve seen one ball of energy, you’ve seen them all.

And yet, the receiving station always manages to turn all that energy back into whatever objects they’re supposed to be, whether it’s a huge tank of water, or a carton packed with letters and parcels, or a shipping container full of fruit trees. How does it manage to do it? It’s simple: Before each item is sent, a data file is sent ahead of it, and that data file uniquely describes the object. The receiving side watches for the data file, and with the help of that file, the receiving station is able to recreate the box, or plant, or person that was sent.

In the case of living beings (like plants or humans), there is also a third component. In technical terms, it’s known as the JNSQ: the je ne sais quoi. In a human being, it’s that “thing” without which a body is simply dead matter. It’s the elusive elan, spirit, soul, or mind… it’s what makes you, you. It’s the only part that doesn’t change. It can’t change. If it’s corrupted, altered, or not sent at all, the living creature will die.

During the wild experimental days when teleportation was first being developed, one adventurous, irresponsible soul discovered that it was possible to substitute one person’s data file for another. When the wrong file is sent, the receiving station constructs the wrong body. The traveler does not come out the way they went in. Back in those heady early times, there were accidents and pranks that were both amusing (to others) and terrifying (to the victim). The changes were difficult, costly, or even impossible to undo.

As Neeka Fimernikem would say, these things are not secret, but they are not commonly known.

The five days after Barfield met Neeka were a flurry of activity. The preparations for his exile on Uranus involved a great deal of paperwork, physical examinations, and consultations, to say nothing of the arrangements and accommodations that were necessary. Neeka, with single-minded efficiency, checked off every task, filled out every form, filed every declaration and certificate, until only one item remained. Once she completed this last piece of business, she’d be done with Barfield Owens. Today, this last bit of business brought her to Point A. She needed to deliver Barfield’s documents -- the ones that establish his new identity -- and oversee the alterations to his appearance.

Neeka was quite pleased with Barfield’s new name: Leonard Lessius. It was a name she had chosen more or less at random from Earth’s historic archives. The name had a pleasant, confident sound, and she wished, with some regret, that she could be present to witness Barfield’s pleasure and surprise when he’d hear his new name for the first time.

Regarding his appearance, she decided that the safest route was to aim for opposites, or at least for different: dark blonde hair in place of light brown, green eyes in place of blue, tall in place of short, slim in place of stocky, and so on. It was a pretty simple plan. There was only one body part that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with: she knew that she liked men who had a generous package, so to speak, but would Barfield be happy or frustrated if he were better endowed? Would he be more peaceful and tranquil if his testosterone were lower, and his penis shorter? She’d ask the technician: he was a man. He’d have a feel for it.

Moss, the technician, was very pleased to discover that his visitor was someone as young and attractive as Neeka, and he was further pleased to know that they’d be editing a person’s data file. Usually Moss’ job was solitary, routine, and fairly boring: he’d line up cargo units, check manifests, follow schedules. When each teleport cycle began, he’d push buttons and send confirmations in a strictly-defined and highly efficient sequence. It was important to not waste time or energy. Energy was money, after all. Efficiency wasn’t fun, but it was the essence of the job.

Altering the data file of a human being, on the other hand, was quite a different sort of work: it took creativity and a highly developed esthetic sense. It was also somewhat difficult, in spite of the advanced tools available. For Moss, it was the most satisfying part of his job, albeit the rarest. He spent many of his free hours reworking the practice set -- a standard bank of anonymous profiles meant for training and study. He liked to keep his hand in. And it showed: If anyone ever bothered to compare and rate that sort of activity, Moss would be placed among the best.

Honestly, though, in spite of the complexity, it was nearly impossible to utterly ruin a person’s appearance. The data-file editor had a powerful option: Apply Eigenvalues. This amazing function took the current physical settings and adjusted them, by applying proportions that were scientifically determined to be esthetically pleasing. Moss liked to challenge himself to arrive at a result that required as few eigenvalue adjustments as possible. He usually succeeded. He had a very good eye.

Obviously, Neeka and Moss each had their own set of expectations. Neeka imagined that she would design a new, average-looking person, someone who wouldn’t call attention to himself. Moss imagined that he would impress his attractive visitor with his design skills.

After chatting about Neeka’s fashionably antiquated eyewear for a reasonable period, the two got down to business. Neeka handed over a memory stick containing Barfield’s data file, and Moss loaded it into the editor. As soon as the profile finished rendering, Moss swore an oath so unholy, Neeka blanched a deathly pale.

“That’s Barfield Owens!” Moss exclaimed in disgust. “He’s the Mojan-Pardee Killer!”

“That’s classified information,” Neeka informed him.

“This man is a murderer!”

“He is going into permanent exile, and that fact cannot leave this room.”

“He’ll slip out of Uranus on the next teleport cycle! After killing everyone there!”

“No, he won’t,” Neeka explained. “He will never be able to leave Uranus. Once you alter his data file, we will block his exit from Uranus.”

“How will we do that?” Moss demanded angrily.

“We will take Barfield’s new profile and load it into an obligatory update for the outgoing gate on Uranus. The update will contain a block on the profile we’re about to create. If Barfield tries to leave Uranus, the system will refuse to transport him. You will transmit this update, with the block, tomorrow. Barfield won’t land on Uranus until next week. The update will execute immediately, putting the block in place. By the time Barfield arrives, the exit door will already be closed and locked. Barfield will never leave Uranus. Understand?”

“Okay,” Moss said, calming a bit. His anger was mollified a great deal by Neeka’s explanation. He was still upset, but he was also quite impressed with her command of the situation. Knowing that Barfield would have no way out of Uranus helped him get a grip on his turbulent emotions.

A second influence helped him regain his composure: he wanted to make a good impression on Neeka. She was remarkably attractive, quite observant, and clearly well-prepared. Moss took some deep breaths and counted to ten.

Then, Moss did what people often do in difficult moments all across the universe: he took a moment to prepare a cup of tea. As the water came to a boil, Moss apologized for his outburst. His evident sincerity, and the fact that he was able to accompany his offer of tea with authentic McVitie’s chocolate digestive biscuits helped greatly to restore him in Neeka’s bespectacled eyes. “We should have these biscuits on tap at the Nostalgia Project!” she declared. “They’re wonderful!”

At the same time, under his smooth, tea-sipping exterior, Moss was secretly hatching a plan. For now, he’d go along with everything Neeka said or asked. Later, when he was alone, he’d fix Barfield’s little red wagon. He’d settle his hash. He’d make sure that for Barfield, Uranus would be an unending slice of hell. But that would be later. Is vengeance really a dish best served cold? Sometimes “a little later” is "cold" enough.

And so, after they consumed their tea and biscuits, Neeka and Moss got to work on revising Barfield’s appearance. Moss stifled his desire to show off. He listened attentively and did exactly what Neeka asked, in every case, without contradicting or correcting or offering improvements.

In the end, even Moss was surprised at the result. Perhaps it was the innate skill in his fingers. Perhaps Neeka had an eye as perceptive and creative as his own. In any case, Barfield’s new profile was perfect. Not “perfect” in the sense of chiseled manliness or movie-star appeal. It was perfect in the sense of being exactly what was wanted.

The new image was that of an ordinary man, a common type: not bad looking, but not one who’d stand out in a crowd. It was not a face or figure that would draw your attention; it was one of the invisible people who walk among us, unnoticed, every day. Barfield would be pleased to have such a body. He’d have to be enormously pleased to part with his old face: the face of one of the planet’s most hated murderers.

The last decision they needed to make was about the dimensions of Barfield’s new penis. Neeka, blushing, asked Moss for his opinion. He thought for a moment, then gave this suggestion: “Let’s give him one that matches his overall look.” To show her what he meant, he set up two sliders: one for length and one for girth. Then he slid them up and down, making the profile’s member longer and shorter, wider and thinner.

In spite of herself, Neeka was fascinated, and watched the image’s penis grow and shrink, until it arrived at the Goldilocks point: not too big, not too small, but just right.

That done, Neeka declared herself satisfied with the results. The new Barfield was “decent looking.” When the day came that Uranus started attracting women, Barfield would have a solid chance. I’d hit that, she told herself, and nodded approval to Moss, who saved the settings in a fresh new data file.

When Moss first laid eyes on Neeka, he had hoped to invite her to dinner after work. He further hoped and fantasized that dinner would lead to his apartment, and his apartment would lead to his bed. Until the moment he saw Barfield’s original profile, he’d been actively imagining Neeka naked. Neeka naked in his bed. Neeka naked in his kitchen. Neeka naked in his bathroom, brushing her teeth. Neeka, seen from the side, bending to look at… at… at something on the floor. His imagination hadn’t come up with the something quite yet: but the nakedness and the pose were there, and of course an evident willingness underlying all the imaginary scenes…

Now, with the prospect of doing harm to the world’s most famous murderer, Moss hustled Neeka to the door, explaining that he needed to get ready for tomorrow’s teleport cycle.

“Oh, I nearly forgot!” she exclaimed, as Moss was closing the door. “Here are our man’s new papers -- id, birth certificate, school records, personal history -- his whole new identity. You need to send these tomorrow, so Uranus is ready. They need to know that he’s coming. And give him a copy as well. He can familiarize himself while he’s waiting to leave.”

Moss looked puzzled. “He won’t know his new identity until just before he leaves?”

“No, he won’t,” she said. “Absolutely not. Listen, I’ve done this several times before, and I’ve learned a hard lesson. Do you know the very first thing a person does when you hand them a new identity?”

“They want to change something?” Moss ventured.

“Exactly. They want to change one little thing, then another thing, and in the end they want to change the WHOLE thing. It turns into a big, time-wasting mess. The only way a new identity works is if it’s done for them by someone else. It’s better if they’re surprised. Just like when we’re born.”

“Right, right,” Moss agreed. He pushed on the door, but she still had her hand on it, holding it open. She had a small big of unburdening to do.

“If you ask a person to choose a new name, they invariably pick one that’s obviously fake, or just sounds silly. And you can’t TELL them that it sounds silly. That’s why I choose real names from the past.”

“Yeah, that’s, uh, smart of you.”

“AND they want to look like a movie star.” She shook her lovely head.

“Yup,” Moss agreed. “Hey, sorry, I’ve really got to go -- work to do! Teleport cycle tomorrow!” He almost got the door closed, but once again she put up her hand and stopped him. “Don’t forget to send the upgrade to the Uranus portal, with the block.”

“Right, right, yes, I’ll get right on it.”

“Obligatory upgrade.”

“I won’t forget. I’ll do it right now, before I do anything else.”

“Okay,” Neeka said. “I guess that’s it.”

“Yup,” Moss chirped. He smiled and waved as he closed the door. Then he threw the deadbolt. Neeka was taken aback by the sound. She didn’t understand why Moss so suddenly wanted to get rid of her, but in any case her work here was done. She threw Moss' rudeness off with a shrug and walked to the nearest taxi stand.

 

---

 

There are people who shouldn’t work alone: people who need an anchor for their flights of fancy. There are people who need a sounding board, so their thoughts can quit roiling and rolling inside. There are people like Moss, who need someone to look over and say, Hey! What the hell are you doing? Are you kidding me? You can’t do that!

Unfortunately, Moss had no anchor or listener or witness. He was alone in an office where he could fire anything he liked straight through to Uranus. There were no checks and balances. Uranus could only receive; Uranus had no way to talk back.

Moss rubbed his hands in satisfaction. It wouldn’t take him long to royally screw up Barfield’s profile. His plan, in a nutshell, was to create a new person, a new profile for Barfield that would be as ugly and loathsome outside as Barfield was inside. He’d create it, transmit it, and just before sending Barfield off to exile, he’d give that killer a lecture about what a vile piece of scum he was.

Of course, Moss had no idea what Barfield was really like, as a person. He knew only what he’d heard about the man, what he’d seen in the news, and all of that was awful. Worse than awful. Also, it should be noted that Moss’ life hadn’t been affected in any real way by the Mojan-Pardee Killer. Not one of his personal acquaintance had been murdered. In fact, he didn’t know anyone even remotely connected to any of the victims. And yet, he was offended by the fact that Barfield Owens existed. He was indignant that Barfield Owens was leaving prison. It was a desecration, a profanation, a travesty of justice. He was outraged that Barfield Owens still had life in his body. Moss was offended on behalf of all those who were unable to feel offended, and he was determined to make Barfield Owens feel the weight of his disapprobation in his own body.

Moss fortified himself, but not with tea and chocolate digestive biscuits. This time he needed something stronger: he prepared a pot of strong, hot coffee, and microwaved a bagel sandwich with egg, sausage, and cheddar. Moss cracked his knuckles and sat down at the console.

After reloading Barfield’s original profile, he started making changes. First of all, in a fit of indignation he shortened the man’s penis to the point that it would be difficult to pee. Then, working from the feet to the head, he changed nearly every part of Barfield’s body, aiming in every case for the grotesque.

When he finished, he surveyed his work. He laughed with wicked satisfaction. The new profile looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. If this figure was female, you’d expect her to be living in a cottage deep in the woods, cooking children and cackling in a crow-like voice.

Then Moss glanced at the clock. To his surprise, it was nearly midnight. He’d been so absorbed in the destruction of Barfield that he’d lost track of time. He stood up, stretched, and went to the lavatory. When he returned to the work station, the grotesque creature he’d created was still floating in the air above the console. In spite of all the time Moss spent creating the figure, it startled him. Frankly, it frightened him. It made him aware of the late hour and the fact that he was alone in a place where periodically a void opens, a vivid darkness that led to Uranus, icy blue with cold.

His reaction gave him second thoughts. Maybe Barfield would like looking this way: scary, intimidating, off-putting. It might feed his sense of power, and cow the other miners. His very ugliness might deliver Uranus right into his hands.

Disappointed, Moss sat down again. He deleted his awful creation and reloaded Barfield’s original profile. Then he set to altering it once again. This time, he aimed for oafish, stupid-looking. He made a broad, flat face with wide-set eyes. He shorted the torso and legs, and lengthened the arms. He gave the figure elephantine ears, a teeny tiny nose, and a shock of hair on the very top of an otherwise bald head.

Once again, though, the effect was unsatisfying. It still seemed in some way inadequate.It didn’t express the hatred he felt for Barfield. Then Moss abruptly realized, to his disgust, that he’d re-created his own Uncle Nathan. Nathan was a good, kind man, and didn’t deserve to have his face given to a mass murderer like Owens.

Sighing, Moss wiped his work from the system and reloaded Barfield’s original profile. It was now 2:15 in the morning.

Moss tried over and over, one attempt after another. He made one with huge hands and feet and a tiny head. It was too ridiculous. He made one with a tiny body and a huge head, which prompted warnings on the console: the proportions were anatomically dangerous. He tried erased and started again countless times, but none of his results expressed his visceral disdain for Barfield. None of them were sure to be a punishment in and of itself.

And now it was six o’clock. Four more hours, and he’d have to kick off a teleport cycle. It took about an hour to prepare, so really he only had three hours. By now, though, he was hungry and tired and not thinking straight. He needed a break.

Moss exited the building and walked two blocks to a 24-hour diner. He ordered a plate of eggs, ham, and toast. His brain was befogged. The coffee didn’t help to clarify anything; it wasn’t waking him up at all.

Then, something happened that gave him the key -- or so he thought. You have to understand that Moss was a man who, in spite of his work, had never traveled. He’d never been to another planet. In fact, he rarely ventured out of his city, out of his neighborhood, except to go on vacation. Even then, he’d never been anywhere exotic or different -- never to a place that would open his eyes to the wider world -- to the life beyond the four walls of his parochial experience.

Three men who sat at the other end of the diner were loudly flirting with the waitress. She tried to brush it off good naturedly, but they wouldn’t leave her alone. They progressed to touching and groping her whenever she passed their table. Moss quite rightly was offended, but he didn’t say or do anything about it. The last straw came when one of the men grabbed the waitress outright and pulled her onto his lap. She loudly protested, which brought the cook and the dishwasher out from the back, and the three men were told to leave. They resisted until another patron offered to call the police. The three were about to storm off, when the cook stopped them and instructed them not only to pay their check, but also to leave a generous tip for the waitress they’d abused. They threw some money on the table. The cook wagged his chef's blade at them, and they added some more money. Then a little more. Once the cook was satisfied, he let them go.

As soon as the door closed on the three malefactors, everyone in the place began talking at once. At last, Moss’ head was clear: finally, he was awake. He paid his bill and ran back to work. Now he knew what he wanted to do.

Moss was well aware of the fact that there were no women on Uranus; only men. He’d met some of them, and they were -- for the most part -- big, burly guys. Moss imagined that if a woman did arrive on Uranus that she’d be treated much the same way as the waitress in the diner. Except for the fact that there’d be no one to hold the miners back. There was no one who’d call the police; there were, in fact, no police to call. Moss didn’t realize it, but he was projecting his own misogyny onto the miners. He assumed that they were like him, and given the chance, they’d treat a woman badly.

So, he decided to deliver a woman into their hands. He believed that if he transformed Barfield into a hot young woman, she’d be at the miners' mercy. She’d be the unending object of their collective lust; she’d suffer all their jibes and kinks, and there’d be nothing and no one to stop them.

He deleted his last attempt at making Barfield grotesque. Then he loaded up one of the standard female profiles from the practice set. It didn’t matter what she looked like now; he’d amp her up, all the way to eleven.

First, he scanned the interwebs for images, using terms like bombshell, babe, bimbo, and the phrase sexiest woman ever. He collected the photos that he found most arousing. When he felt that further searching wouldn’t yield anything sexier, he went through the photos he’d saved, and winnowed his collection down to an even dozen. Then he cycled through the twelve images methodically, altering the profile in one way and another as he studied the pictures.

When he finished working from the photos, he had a result that was definitely along the lines he was aiming for. However, it still needed some tweaks, some adjustments. He made the chin smaller, the eyes bigger, the neck longer. He tapered her legs, narrowed her waist, enlarged her hips and breasts. He gave her delicate arms and hands. He gave her tiny feet, and narrow shoulders to accentuate her breasts. He plumped up her lips and raised her cheek bones. His fingers flew as he harmonized and sexualized the body in front of him. He made her hair blonde, then dark, then red. He made it curly and straight, before settling on wavy. Of course, her hair was long and shiny.

Once again, time disappeared for him. When he finally felt he had nothing more to add or change or adjust, he saved the profile. Then -- just to see the effect -- he hit the Eigenvalues button. The lines shifted subtly; the function made almost imperceptible changes, but the effect was astonishing. Moss gasped at the Venus floating in the air before him. She was irresistible. She was truly unbelievable. She had an electrifying, otherworldly allure. Moss gaped like a fourteen-year-old. Then he looked at his crotch. Without his even feeling the reaction, he saw a long, strong erection trying to poke its way out of his pants.

He let out the breath he’d been holding, then he looked at the clock. OH MY GOD, IT’S TEN AFTER NINE! If he didn’t start moving fast, he’d never make the ten o’clock teleport cycle. He hit SAVE on the console, then ran to grab today’s manifest, and dashed off to line up the cargo in the bay. As he was doing so, he suddenly remembered that he needed to load the new profile into an update for the Uranus out-portal. He started moving faster. He double-checked the manifest against the cargo pods, then ran back to the portal. He checked the order of the data files against the manifest. It all checked out. Then, he loaded the new profile into a copy of the out-portal program, and tried to mark the program to be transmitted as an obligatory upload. He got a loud beep and an error message: Cannot add ‘obligatory’ attribute to an uncompiled program.

Shit! He hit COMPILE. Another beep! Another error! He had forgotten to mark the profile as a block. Okay: fixed that. COMPILE. Moss looked at the clock. Five minutes to ten. Would he make it? What would happen if he didn’t? Maybe Barfield would escape from Uranus and teleport to point C. He’d go on another killing spree, and it would all be Moss’ fault.

Two minutes to ten. Moss got ready to start the cycle. If the upload wasn’t ready, he’d have to send it next week. Oh, God.

One minute to ten. COMPILE COMPLETE. Hands shaking, he marked the program obligatory update, added it to the cycle manifest, and hit GO, just as the clock hit 10:00:00.000: precisely on the mark. He'd never cut it so close before. Never.

The engines stirred. An electric whine rose in pitch. The void opened. An uncanny aura filled the building. Every hair on Moss’ body stood on end. Then, one by one, faster than you can count, the cargo pods disappeared. Moss checked the readings: the data files were transmitted; the cargo was gone. The file count was correct. The pod count was correct. The files and the pods aligned. The out-portal update was transmitted. Everything was correct.

Moss hit CONFIRMED. The void closed. The whine came down and stopped. The engines slowed and finally shut off. The aura began to fade. For a moment there was a kind of echo, a subtle left-over ethereal vibration that took its time in dissipating, until the whole building fell silent.

Moss sat there, listening, hearing nothing, conscious of his breathing. He trembled slightly. Then he smiled.

He’d done it! He’d dealt his very own secret justice for the victims of the Mojan-Pardee Killer. It was a strange, silently jubilant moment. He didn’t move from his chair for about five minutes. He would have stayed there longer, enjoying the sense of victory, had not the strain of his all-nighter abruptly caught up with him. He felt immensely tired. Moss needed to get home, take a shower, go to bed. Tomorrow began his weekend. He’d have the next two days off, and there was nothing he needed to do. He could relax and do nothing but gloat for two entire days. No -- longer than that: He'd have three nights and two days. He’d have plenty of time to revel and recover.

Ninety minutes later he climbed into bed, feeling clean, virtuous, and triumphant. He expected to sleep very well that night. He pulled up the blanket. He closed his eyes. His head sank into the pillow.

Then, suddenly his eyes snapped open: He’d forgotten to send Barfield’s documents!

When Life Hands You Uranus : 3 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

The next three nights and two days were the worst weekend of Moss’ life. He couldn’t sleep. Each time a wave of exhaustion would wash over him, he’d lie down, but the moment he’d close his eyes, the memory of what he’d done would replay in his mind, and the fear of future judgment would jangle his every nerve, down to the tiniest filaments.

His anxiety gave him a sensation of desperate hunger. Unable to sleep, he went to an all-night convenience store and bought a bagful of frozen burritos, chicken pot pies, cheese balls, and fish sticks. Afraid that sugar might make him wired, he avoided the sodas and the candy aisle, but once he got home, he started drinking coffee as if it were water. He had nothing else on hand. Then he got busy microwaving his purchases.

Soon he felt bloated, greasy, wired, and strung out. None of what he ate or drank was good for him, and none of it combined well in his digestive system.

In an attempt to clear his head, he took a long hot shower, sitting on the floor so the water spilled over him like rain. When he could stay there no longer, he dried himself off, took paper and a pen, and sat down at the kitchen table to map out his thoughts.

At the top of the page, he wrote the first, undeniable fact, all in caps: I SHOULD HAVE SENT THE DOCUMENTS.

It was true, but in itself it wasn’t such a big deal. If he had sent the documents, Uranus would be ready for Barfield. Now, Barfield’s arrival would be a surprise. Okay. So far, so good: the second thing Moss wrote, all caps, was: NOT A BIG DEAL. Even if someone complained (which they wouldn’t), he’d simply say he’d forgotten to send them. Management would tell him not to do it again; Moss would promise he wouldn’t, and that would be the end of it.

BUT -- and here was a big “but”:

Neeka had given him documents for a man, and he’d sent the profile of a woman. The thought frightened him -- he could get in so much trouble. He wrote: DOCS FOR MAN, NOT WOMAN.

Right: the documents wouldn’t fit the person. Well, what if he never sends the documents at all? What would happen? A woman would arrive on Uranus; the miners would ask for her papers. At the very least, they’d want to know her name. She wasn’t likely to admit to being Barfield Owens, but who would she say she was? What could she do? She could pretend to have amnesia, but that ruse wouldn’t take her very far. Even if she gave a made-up name, there wouldn’t be any documentation to back it up. In any case, eventually there’d be an investigation, and the investigation would start with him, with Moss. He’d be found out, and probably go to jail. At the very least, he’d lose his job and have a hard time finding another.

He wrote, SHE NEEDS DOCUMENTS.

What if the documents Neeka provided could somehow work for a woman? Maybe if Neeka had given Barfield a gender-neutral name, like Dylan or Oakley or something like that... Even so, it would be hard to argue that a hottie like the one Moss created would ever be designated male.

The moment he had that thought, a light went off inside his head. Moss wrote his amazing realization in the center of the page, on a line by itself: NO BIO-DATA. He underlined it three times, circled the words, and drew arrows pointing to it.

On Barfield’s new documents, he wouldn’t be marked as anything -- yet. Not male, not female. His age, height, hair color, etc., etc. couldn’t be there. There’d be no photo or bio-data in Barfield’s new paperwork: those things would have to come out of the new physical profile Moss and Neeka had created. Which meant that the documents would be editable, at least to that extent. If he was lucky, the edit permissions weren’t keyed to Neeka. He’d have to check, once he got to the office.

Now Moss saw a glimmer of hope. It was odd, though, that someone as organized and prepared and -- well, let’s face it: someone as elegant, cool, and attractive as Neeka -- it was odd that she’d forget an important detail like that. Maybe Moss had thrown her off by his angry outburst, when he realized they were dealing with Barfield Owens. Then there was the tea and biscuits. In the end, Moss *had* shoved her out the door. She was distracted, sure, and Moss gave her the bum's rush in the end. In any case, she’d forgotten. If she *did* remember that she’d forgotten, she’d have to come back before the next teleport cycle (a week from now) to fix what she missed. Once Barfield left for Uranus, it would be too late for any changes or adjustments.

Then again, why would Neeka return? She’d assume that Moss had already sent the documents. In her mind, it would already be too late: she’d have to resign herself to letting the missing pieces sort themselves out. After all, those details could be added at Uranus, albeit a little awkwardly.

With a sense of added relief, Moss took his pen and wrote, NEEKA NOT RETURNING.

Even so, he’d keep Neeka’s memory stick on hand, just in case. He got up to drink yet another coffee, then froze in his tracks. Where was Neeka’s memory stick? Where had he left it? He couldn’t remember. He dashed to the front closet and went through the pockets of his coat. He ran to his bedroom, plucked his work clothes out of the pile of dirty laundry, and riffled the pockets. No memory stick there, either.

He urgently wanted to hurry to work and search the office -- not only to find the memory stick, but also to see if the documents were editable. But he didn’t dare. His presence would be signaled, and he’d have to explain himself. He couldn’t just go in. He’d have to wait. Bide his time, bite his nails, and wait.

A horrible, desperate thought came to Moss, just as he was falling asleep on the last night of his seemingly unending weekend. He closed his eyes and was about to drift off, when it hit him, floating up from the darkest part of his psyche: What if, when it was time for the teleport, he purposely sent the wrong data file with Barfield? What if -- instead of sending the data file for a person, he sent the data file for an empty cardboard box, for example? Or no data file at all? What if he corrupted Barfield’s profile, and made it unusable?

Certainly, Barfield would die. Or to put it more accurately: Moss would kill Barfield. Moss would become a murderer. And he’d get caught, sure as anything. The JNSQ would be transmitted; there would be a record of it. His every action would be logged. Killing Barfield would be a desperate move, but in the end it wouldn’t resolve anything.

Moss sat up on the edge of his bed and slapped himself in the face three times, hard. Then he started crying. What an idiot he was! Why did he put himself into such a mess? Who did he think he was?

 

---

 

The next thing he knew, he was waking up. The sun was shining. The weather was absolutely beautiful. The air temperature, the humidity, the pollen, were all at the most favorable, comfortable levels. It was a perfectly normal, perfectly agreeable workday -- or at least it should have been. Moss showered and dressed. He felt like absolute crap. He was drained, exhausted, and hungover. At the same time, he was buzzing with caffeine, anxiety, and existential fear.

On entering the office, his first discovery was that he’d left the console on. The gorgeous naked woman he’d created was still floating in the air above the workstation. The cleaning people must have seen it. There was no way they could have missed it. He hurried over to turn it off. His hands were shaking. He looked over every inch of the console: there was no sign of Neeka’s memory stick. He checked the control room as thoroughly as he could, without success. He hadn’t left it sticking in any of the data ports.

Moss broke out in a cold sweat.

He methodically worked his way through the office, starting from the door. He looked on top of everything, under everything. He tried to physically retrace his steps, but it didn’t help. In his mind’s eye, he could see Neeka handing him the stick, but his memory of it was a blank after that.

I’m fucked, he told himself. I’m well and truly fucked. I’ll have to call Neeka and ask for a new set. Then she’ll know I didn’t send them when I was supposed to. He sighed, and went to make himself a cup of coffee, to fortify his nerve.

There, in the kitchen, sitting atop the microwave, like the very picture of innocence itself, was Neeka’s memory stick. Gratefully, Moss snatched it up, and ran, hands trembling, to a computer console. He plugged the stick into a data port and found it was exactly what he hoped: Barfield Owens’ new documents.

The first thing he did was to make a copy, and he put that copy in a folder called ORIGINAL B.O. Then he removed the memory stick, and locked it in a drawer.

Next, he examined the documents. To his surprise and delight, Neeka had not only left him with editable files, she’d left him with (1) Barfield’s original documents, (2) the documents establishing Barfield’s new identity, and (3) an entire official planetary-government-issue ID-creation kit. With that kit, he’d not only be able to create ID cards, tax and credit histories, etc., etc., but also to automatically insert the appropriate corresponding entries in the planetary Office of Credit and Vital Statistics! Moss couldn’t believe his luck.

He set to work on a copy of Barfield’s new identity. First, he had to hunt for a few anxious minutes to find the upload feature that would extract all the physical data like height, weight, eye color, GENDER, and so on, directly from the new physical profile he’d created. Once he did that, the documents began to look real. The upload even generated photos for ID cards, drivers license, passport, and other documents.

Then Moss hit a wall. What was this new person’s name? He drew a blank. The only names that came to mind were TV news anchors, characters from books and movies, political figures… all of them, famous. None of their names would work.

Then, just when he needed something serious, a string of silly names paraded through his mind. They came from a late-night comedy show, and once they started, he couldn’t make them stop: Bertha Twins, Ophelia Hiney, Derry Yare, Eileen Dover, Frieda Livery, Gladys Friday, Gloria Sass, and of course, Molly Spencer-Downe...

Moss gave his head a hard shake and went off to lunch. Stepping outside into the fresh air stopped the crazy names from coming, and food, in his experience, seemed to help resolve problems. As he thoughtfully consumed a healthy salad, he mentally took a step back and tried a different tack. He’d seen the name that Neeka had chosen: Leonard Lessius. Did the name Leonard have a female form? Leonora? No. Too grand. Isn’t Lessie a girl’s name? Lessie? Leslie? No, it just didn’t sound right. Lessee. Qualified lessees get immediate approval. No.

He returned from lunch without a new name. So he took to the interwebs. He knew that Neeka had chosen “Leonard Lessius” from history, but he soon found that “History” is a large, nearly infinite, category, as is “First Names.” Here are some of the categories he tried, without a successful, or even promising, result:

• sexy first names
• porn stars from history
• first names
• first names that don’t suck
• I don’t know what to name my baby girl
• best first names
• most popular names by year

As many parents can attest, it’s difficult to choose a suitable name. Unless, of course, you’re inspired from the start, or have family traditions to follow.

Moss switched to a random approach, leaving names per se behind: now he searched for words that popped up in other places… names of plants and trees… types of boats… names of planets, suns, and asteroids.

At last he ended up with Linnea Valerianella. He was more-or-less pleased with it. He didn’t know anyone with either the first or last name. The complete name didn’t show up in the interwebs, which was good -- no one was already using that name. Also, it was a clunky, weird kind of name, but not too weird or clunky. The name kind of stumbled off the tongue, like a problem or a tongue-twister, and Moss liked that. Plus, the last name sounded sort of like a disease. On the whole, the name vaguely suggested racy science fiction, like the pulp stories of the early atomic age.

Most of all, it was a name, and that’s what was needed. What mattered even more was the fact that Moss was tired of searching and thinking. This was it: Barfield had a brand new name. Hopefully he’d hate it. Hopefully, he’d have trouble remembering it. Best of all, he might have trouble pronouncing it.

Moss took a bathroom break, then sat down again at the terminal. He took a look over all the documents, knowing that it’s important to check your work. Everything looked… well… better than good. The documents looked great. They looked real. They were real.

It was a good thing that Moss was so thorough: He found an entire group of documents he’d missed the first and second times through. There were school records. The grades generally followed Barfield’s actual grades. Moss was tempted to lower all the scores, including the state test scores, to make Linnea look like an idiot, but he realized that doing so might raise questions about her employment history. So Moss didn’t touch the grades. He did make some changes to the classes, though: he changed Calculus to Cooking, and Statistics to Sewing. He added a note to the last Phys. Ed. class on the cards: “It’s unfortunate that Linnea can’t pursue a career in field hockey. It would suit her better than anything else.”

Moss thought it was funny. Eventually someone might see it. You never knew.

Then he hit a major snag, and his heart sank, even lower than it had last weekend. There was an entire class of documents that he didn’t dare touch: all of the papers connected to Barfield’s new job on Uranus. There were work contracts, releases, tax and payroll forms, as well as other assorted paperwork -- all of it filed with the Nostalgia Project and already “signed” by Leonard Lessius. None of them could be altered. Even if he could change the documents before him, there was no way he could touch the Nostalgia Project’s records.

Heartsick, Moss looked up at the clock. It was late; it was already seven PM.

 

---

 

Back at home, Moss ran through the same emotions he suffered during the weekend. He sat down with pen and paper to work out all the possible outcomes. I’m fucked, he told himself. Well and truly fucked. He wrote on the pad, all caps, FUCKED.

He considered the possibility of sending Barfield the way that Neeka meant for him to be sent: with the documents she’d prepared for Leonard Lessius, and with the (male) profile that Neeka had created. Moss could send a fresh update for the Uranus out-portal with a new block profile. That would be his fall-back plan. He’d give up his idea of justice and vengeance. He had to be ready to go that way, right up to the last minute.

Moss thought he’d have trouble falling asleep, but he was so exhausted from his sleepless weekend, and its rollercoaster of fear and emotion, that he dropped off immediately.

He slept the sleep of the dead: deep and dreamless.

Somehow, when he woke in the morning, the answer broke upon him like the sunrise. He wouldn’t need to alter any more documents. He only needed to add a few. The solution was so simple, it made him laugh.

Moss knew that the Nostalgia Project would pay Leonard Lessius the same exorbitant salary as all the other Uranian miners, and he knew that the money would go directly into Leonard Lessius’ bank account. No one was going to go to Uranus to look for the man. No one on Uranus had anything to do with payroll. The two environments were blind to each other: the Nostalgia Project was on one world, and the Uranian mine was on another. Literally. There was no direct back and forth. Any communications between the two would have to run through the entire teleportation cycle.

Moss wouldn’t need to touch Lessius’ work documents at all, and he wouldn’t need to generate new work documents for Linnea. All he had to do was create a marriage license, uniting Leonard and Linnea in matrimony. Then, he’d add Linnea to Leonard’s bank account, credit history, and other financial vehicles (such as his retirement account and investment portfolio).

Once that was done, Leonard would be paid and Linnea could spend. No one would need to know how the exact plumbing worked between one end and the other. Not even Linnea.

Moss gave himself a pat on the back. It was quite an elegant solution. He walked on air for the rest of the week, and looked forward to chewing out Barfield before sending him off to his doom. To pass the time, he downloaded a tawdry novel written in the atomic era: Slave Girl of Gor and as he read, he pictured Barfield, acting out every scene, kneeling, naked, wearing nothing but a collar, in her new, firm, ultra-sexy body.

 

---

 

Barfield himself arrived at the teleport terminal three days later at six in the morning, with manacles on his hands and feet, accompanied by two guards. Moss was a little put out by the early call, alerting him to the arrival. Still, today was the big day!

When he met Barfield in person, Moss was shocked. The man was nothing like he’d imagined: he was short, about a hundred millimeters shorter than Moss, and somewhat stocky and slow. He had a quiet, even humble, air, and -- Moss had to say it -- He didn’t look as though he could hurt a fly. Barfield, whatever he’d been in life, didn’t look like a mass murderer, or even a regular murderer. He looked like a plumber or an electrician. He looked like someone you’d be glad to have living next door.

Moss shook off the impression, and led Barfield and his guards to the kitchen. One of the guards set a chair against the wall and sat Barfield on it.

“We don’t have a waiting room, per se,” Moss explained, “and the transmission room isn’t very comfortable, especially considering that the cycle won’t start for four hours.”

At this, Barfield glanced at the clock on the wall, but said nothing.

“You can help yourselves to whatever’s in here while you wait,” Moss continued, “but I’m going to make myself some breakfast, so if you want anything -- coffee, tea, pancakes, egg sandwiches -- I can make it for you now.”

“No, I’m good,” the first guard said, and the second guard echoed him. Barfield gazed at the floor and didn’t answer, so the first guard nudged him.

“Oh, me?” Barfield asked in surprise. “No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Then he turned his gaze back downwards.

“Okay,” Moss said, feeling incredibly awkward. “Well, I want some, so here I go.” He punched a few buttons, and soon his mug was filled with a steaming brew. Outwardly he smiled and played the good host, but inwardly he was kicking himself. It was pretty stupid of him, but he hadn’t counted on guards being present. That put the kibosh on his plan to lecture Barfield before sending him off. So he took a couple sips of coffee, then ventured to ask, “Are you two going to stick around? The whole time? Until he goes?”

The first guard, who was the older of the two, looked at Moss with some suspicion. “You want to be alone with a murderer?”

“Oh no, of course not!” Moss replied, laughing nervously. “I just thought it might be a little boring for you two.”

“We get paid to stand around and make sure things don’t happen,” the first guard replied. “Consequently, being bored is part of the job. A BIG part of the job. That’s why we’re paid the big bucks.”

The second guard scoffed and repeated big bucks in a bitter tone.

“You have to consider,” the first guard continued, “that we aren’t just keeping society safe from our prisoner. We’re also keeping our prisoner safe from society. There’s two parts to this job.”

“Umm, okay,” Moss said, and wondered whether now was a good time to politely leave the room. As if sensing this, Barfield looked up at Moss and asked, “Will Neeka Fimernikem be coming?”

Moss looked down at him and waited two beats before responding. Then he said, “No, she’s not.”

“Oh.” Barfield said. He didn’t sound surprised or disappointed. He sounded like a man who didn’t expect anything to go his way. He looked at the floor, then back up at Moss. “Did she leave anything for me?”

“Like what?” Moss asked.

Barfield took a breath. He didn’t know how much he could safely say. His new identity was a secret. Was this man in the know? So he ventured, “Some documents?”

Moss tilted his head back, and looked down his nose at the prisoner. He couldn’t deny it. He’d have to give the man his documents eventually. So he replied, “Yes, she left a packet for you. I need to print it out. You’ll get it before you leave.” Barfield nodded, and looked once more at the floor. Moss nodded to the guards and left the room.

When he got to the control room, he told himself, This is going to be one long morning. He kicked off the printout of Linnea’s documents. Then he queued up Leonard’s documents to print as well. Why not? Leonard was supposedly her husband. As the printer hissed and shifted papers, Moss wondered how he was going to manage this. The lecture, the insults were clearly out of the question. The guards weren’t going to let Barfield out of their sight until the teleport took him away. As far as the documents were concerned, he’d have to put them in Barfield’s hands at the last possible minute. Barfield might have enough time to see his new identity, but Moss had to make sure that Barfield wouldn’t have enough time to react -- especially not in the guard’s hearing.

The print job was maybe 10% complete, and Moss’ mug was now empty, so he headed back to the kitchen. The two guards were sitting in the doorway, one inside, one outside, facing each other. Barfield sat in a corner, still gazing at the floor. Moss walked over the coffee machine and punched the buttons again. As the coffee brewed, the first guard gave the second a playful nudge, and said, “Uh, hey, Moss? I was just thinking -- your job... it’s all about Uranus.”

The second guard snorted and said, “Yeah, Uranus is your job.” He laughed. “It's Uranus, all day long.”

FIRST GUARD: Moss, I can see you're thinking about Uranus. It’s all over your face.

SECOND GUARD: Have you ever seen Uranus, Moss?

MOSS: Uh, no.

FIRST GUARD: I guess there aren’t any mirrors in here. You know what I mean?

SECOND GUARD: Did you ever think about the fact that everybody can see Uranus except you?

FIRST GUARD (gestures to Barfield): Hey, Owens, you better get a big cushion to take with you. You’re going to land on Uranus!

SECOND GUARD: No, he’s going to land on YOUR-anus!

FIRST GUARD: I guess you've heard all the Uranus jokes, huh, Moss?

MOSS: Actually, no. This job is, uh… well, not exactly secret, but not many people know about it.

SECOND GUARD: Nobody knows about Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: He doesn't like to talk about Uranus.

SECOND GUARD: Owens is going to hear all the Uranus jokes. This time next year, he’ll know Uranus, inside and out. He’s going to eat, sleep, and breathe Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: He’ll be looking at Uranus every day.

BARFIELD: I guess.

SECOND GUARD: Some people would be pretty excited to see Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: Nobody wants to see Uranus. Nobody wants to hear about Uranus.

SECOND GUARD: I hear Uranus is very exciting. Owens can't keep himself away from Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: Yeah, yeah, but Owens: when you leave, don’t let the door hit Uranus.

MOSS (sotto voce): Jesus Christ.

SECOND GUARD: I hear Uranus is full of ass -- I mean, gas!

FIRST GUARD: Hey, Owens, you know, once your in, Uranus will never let you go. Uranus will be your new home.

SECOND GUARD: Hey, yeah -- but, you know, when you get there, Owens, you won’t need a map and two hands to find Uranus. It’ll be right in front of you!

FIRST GUARD (to Barfield): How about that? Uranus will always be in front of you!

SECOND GUARD: Unless he turns his back.

FIRST GUARD: You do that, Barfield, and your anus will point at Uranus. You see what I did there?

SECOND GUARD: Yeah, yeah, but, Owens, be careful out there! You don’t want to fall on Uranus! You don’t want anything to get stuck in Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: You know, Owens, I hear that the mining station is very roomy, very comfortable. That’s important -- it would be terrible if Uranus was too tight.

SECOND GUARD: Or too loose! You don't want Uranus to be too loose!

FIRST GUARD: I guess not.

SECOND GUARD: I hope it’s really lively out there, Owens. You don’t want Uranus to be dragging. You want Uranus to be bouncing.

FIRST GUARD: But you don’t want Uranus to be loud.

SECOND GUARD: Do you think there are any musicians out there? I’m wondering what kind of sounds would come out of Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: I think there’ll be a lot of low sounds.

SECOND GUARD: You don’t think you might be high squeaks? I bet you can hear a high-pitched whistle coming out of Uranus.

FIRST GUARD: I'm sure they can make all kinds of sounds come out of Uranus.

Moss felt an enormous sense of gratitude when Barfield raised his head and asked his guards, “Do you think I could get a cup of coffee?”

“Uh… yeah,” the first guard said, and Moss could see the two guards mentally struggle to find a joke connecting coffee and Uranus. Failing that, the younger guard got up and fetched a steaming mug for the prisoner.

“I’ll have those documents for you before you leave,” Moss told Barfield.

“Thank you,” Barfield replied.

Time dragged until nine o’clock. By then, Moss had prepared the cargo pods and the data files. He prepped Barfield’s documents for transit, as well as Barfield’s physical profile. He triple-checked everything.

Then, at nine-forty, he went to the kitchen and said, “It’s time. Will you follow me?” and he led them to the transit room. The guards looked around and said, “This is not very secure. We’re going to have to stay in here until he’s gone.”

“You can’t. If you stay here, you’ll end up on Uranus.” It wasn’t true; they’d actually end up dead, since there were no data files for them, but there was no point in explaining everything.

“I'm not going anywhere near Uranus!” the younger guard said, laughing.

"Yeah, keep Uranus to yourself," the older guard added.

“You’ll have to take the manacles off him,” Moss instructed, “and you--” here he addressed Barfield-- “will have to strip.”

“I have to be naked?” Barfield asked.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Moss answered testily. It wasn’t true; Barfield didn’t need to strip at all. Moss, inspired by last night’s reading, added it as one more indignity. If he could have found an excuse to put a collar on Barfield’s neck, he would have done so, but that would have been too obvious: it would be a step too far. In any case, he didn't have any such thing.

“I don’t like this,” the older guard said, as he unlocked the shackles.

“We can lock the room from the outside,” Moss told him, “and I have to lock down the entire transport area as soon as the three of us exit.”

The guards left, carrying the chains and Barfield’s clothes. Moss handed Barfield the packet of papers and said, “Here’s your new identity. I hope Uranus gives you everything you deserve.” He didn’t mean that last phrase as a joke -- he meant it ironically, as a menace, and he gave Barfield a significant look. The look would have clarified his meaning, had Barfield only seen it, but the prisoner was too busy looking at the new life he’d been assigned.

“I -- uh -- what? -- wait!” Barfield called. “Wait! This can’t be right. This must be a mistake!”

Moss turned to smile as he closed the door and locked it. He had another snide comment to deliver, but a glance at the clock told him that he had only three minutes to get to the control room. He could hear Barfield’s muffled shouts: “This is a woman’s file! It isn’t mine! This is a mistake! This is wrong! Wait! This is for the wrong person!”

“What is he saying?” the older guard asked, with a look of concern.

“He said he’s sorry for all the wrong he’s done,” Moss lied. He hurried the guards to the control room, and hit the GO button exactly at 10:00.000. The teleport went off without a hitch.

When Life Hands You Uranus : 4 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Barfield shouted Wait! one more time, but only the W left his mouth. The rest of the word was caught inside and left behind. At that precise point in time, between the W and the a, the teleport cycle swept Barfield into the void. It took less than an instant -- the most infinitesimal fraction of a second -- for Barfield to become a ball of energy, traverse the void, and be remade on Uranus as Linnea Valerianella. Any physicist will tell you that you can’t use the words time and teleport in the same sentence, but every normal human being is acutely, innately aware of before and after, of then and now, and of there and here. And so, whether the teleport took a time too short to perceive, or no time at all, Barfield experienced it with his whole being. He felt exactly the same sensations that every other teleported person has always felt: first, the intense stabbing pain of being flash-frozen in every part of his body, from the outermost layer of skin to the center of the brain and the very marrow of the largest bones. His breath froze in his lungs and his blood became literal ice in his veins.

But the feeling -- acute and overwhelming as it was -- was followed immediately by an equally instantaneous thaw and warming as the ball of energy that traversed the void became a person once again. That person, as we said, was no longer Barfield Owens. The person who emerged from the teleport cycle was now, in every way possible, the astonishingly beautiful woman, Linnea Valerianella.

Linnea clutched her documents to her chest as she gasped in astonishment. Some part of her brain recognized the presence of the documents and asked: Wait a minute… If the packet full of papers could be teleported with me, why not my clothes?

It was only part of her brain, though. The rest of her brain was staring dumbfounded at her breasts. She lifted the packet of documents and saw the gap between her thighs. Jesus Christ on a bicycle! She was a woman! A woman! No wonder the documents… Linnea fumbled with her packet. What was her name now? She opened the file and took another look. Linnea Something-with-a-V. Oh, lord. Why couldn’t it be a simple, common name, like Mary Jones or Amadea Habsburg? Okay, Linnea V-something. She’d have to make the effort and learn that last name. A new identity indeed!

Naturally, Linnea believed that it was Neeka who had decided to turn Barfield into a woman. It was confusing, surprising, shocking, disorienting… and yet, Linnea had to admit that -- judging from her current appearance -- no one would ever, in a thousand years, guess that she had once been Barfield Owens. She was as far from being Barfield Owens as a person could possibly be.

Still, a little advance warning would have been nice. It was extremely disconcerting, to say the least.

Linnea found herself sitting in a row of chairs exactly like the row of chairs she sat in a few moments earlier in another, far-off corner of the universe. She stood up and tried the door. It didn’t open, so she twisted the knob a little more forcefully. It was definitely locked. After a minute or so, a man came walking up slowly and casually. He was holding a piece of paper -- the manifest from the teleport cycle. He looked from the paper to her several times with a puzzled look on his face. He tilted his head to the side as he regarded her. He was fully dressed, wearing a light blue coverall and a pair of gray slippers, but as far as Linnea could determine, he didn’t find her nakedness at all out of the ordinary. He seemed more confused by her being there at all.

After he’d given her a good looking-over, he opened the door and said, “My my my! You’re quite the looker, ain’t you?”

“Uh, thanks,” she replied. “Could I get something to wear? Or at least something to cover myself with? For some reason they sent me without my clothes.”

As she spoke, his aspect changed abruptly. A moment before, he’d been casually eyeing her up and down, as if her nakedness was a normal, everyday affair. Now, for some reason, he was confused, embarrassed, tongue-tied. In his astonishment, he dropped the manifest to the ground.

“Oh, my God! OH MY GOD! Are you -- are you real?”

“Yes,” she replied, wishing they could fast-forward to her getting some clothes. “Of course I’m real! What else would I be? A figment of your imagination?”

“Uh, uh, honestly, yes! Oh, my God!”

“So…,” she ventured again, “Could I get something to wear?”

“Oh, yeah! Yes, of course!” he replied, his voice cracked like that of an adolescent boy as he bent to retrieve the manifest. His hand shook so much, it took him three tries to pick the paper up, and when he finally held it in his hand, it trembled like a flagpole in an earthquake. “Follow me,” he told her, and loudly whacked his head with the hallway door as he opened it.

“What’s your name?” she called to him.

“Um, Wade,” he replied, rubbing his forehead as he led her to a small multipurpose room. “Here’s a clothes fab,” he told her. “Wha-- wha -- what would you like to wuh-- wuh-- wear?”

“A coverall like yours would be fine,” she replied. “And some underwear and slippers.”

Wade had already punched a few buttons, but when she said the word underwear he broke out in a sweat so copious, it made him blink. The fab beeped incessantly as he made one error after another. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “Here, you better do it,” he told her as he wiped his neck with his hand, then dried his hand on his pant leg. “Besides, uh, anyway, it has to take your-- uh-- your-- buh-- buh--” He cupped his hands in front of his chest.

“My measurements?” she ventured.

“Yeah, yeah, your breasts,” he acknowledged, then blushed a deep crimson. “No, I meant--”

“It’s fine,” she said, and began punching buttons. The device offered suggestions, and she realized that the absolute last garment she wanted to wear was a coverall. Barfield had worn one for the past ten years. Time to leave the penitentiary behind. She turned to Wade and asked, “Does it matter what I wear? Is there, like, a dress code, or uniform policy? Does everyone have to wear a coverall?”

“Nuh-- naw-- no,” Wade said. “You can wear whatever you like. I wear it because it’s simple. Um-- um--”

“Wade, why don’t you wait outside until I’m dressed? It will be less embarrassing for both of us.”

With a grateful sigh, Wade retired to the hallway. Linnea pulled on her panties and struggled into her first bra. She could feel from the awkward fit that she hadn’t put it on correctly. She’d have to fix it later. Wade called from the hallway, “I don’t see any luggage for you on the manifest. Is it coming later?”

“Uh, no. I decided to start fresh. I think I’ll be ordering a whole new wardrobe.”

“Yeah, uh, good idea. So why did you teleport naked?”

“The tech told me that I had to.”

Wade gave a tsk of disapproval. “It was that Moss guy, right? What a letch! I never liked the guy. Never. He always seemed kind of creepy. I guess you see it now -- he was playing a mean practical joke on you! Everyone comes fully dressed when they teleport.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

Trying to be quick, Linnea chose a pair of soft shorts and a t-shirt, both light gray, and a pair of slippers like Wade’s.

“In the meantime, you can always fab up whatever you need,” he said. “None of it’s fashion, really, but it all fits and works.”

When she emerged, fully dressed, into the hallway, Wade smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. “Much better,” he said. “I mean, not that you’re not amazing to look at, but another couple minutes there and I would have had a heart attack, just from the nerves.”

Linnea gave a little smile and nod of agreement. Wade repeated, “Yeah, Moss played a dirty, mean trick on you.”

“So, what now?” she asked. “Do you still need to deal with teleport stuff? Can I go meet the others?”

“Ah, well,” looking apologetic, and squeezing his left hand in his right, Wade replied, “I have a little bad news. Or maybe a lot of bad news. You’re going to have to go into quarantine.”

“Quarantine? For how long?”

“Forty days. That’s what quarantine means. Forty days. It’s protocol, for all new arrivals.”

Linnea shrugged and said, “Okay.” I’ve been locked up for ten years, she told herself. What’s another forty days?

 

---

 

After securing Linnea, Wade called a hurried meeting of the miners. He was nearly exploding with the need to talk about it. He’d already sent a brief high-priority message telling everyone: NEW (FEMALE) ARRIVAL. AVOID NORTH WING COMPLETELY.

Ten miners showed up, which was about right for this time of day: the other fourteen would either be sleeping or working.

“So, it’s finally happened,” Carlus observed.

“It was inevitable,” another miner added.

“Thank God we already discussed it,” Wade said. “If we hadn’t already worked out the quarantine angle, I wouldn’t have known what to do.”

“Shouldn’t management have sent this girl’s documents a week ago? I thought we always had advance warning on new arrivals.”

“Yeah, she arrived with her documents. In her hands,” Wade laughed. “And nothing else! The damn tech sent her naked.”

“I’m not surprised. That Moss guy is really an asshole. I bet he thought he was doing us some kind of favor.”

“Mmm. Maybe he did. She is pretty damn hot,” Wade confessed.

Carlus fixed his gaze on Wade, and stared at him until Wade blushed. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for her, Wade. If it’s going to be a problem we can put somebody else on quarantine duty.”

“No, no, I’m fine!” Wade protested. “I got it. Anyway, she’s locked safely away in the North Wing, all by her lonesome.”

Carlus chuckled. “Three days of that, and she’ll be crying for her mommy. She’ll want to go home on the next teleport cycle.”

“Five days,” another miner called out.

Carlus looked at one of the miners who hadn’t spoken yet. “Jack, will you set up the pool? Thousand dollars for every pick.”

Jack nodded. “You guys are going to have to pick the hour, not just the day. Otherwise, everybody will pick the third day or whatever, and we’ll all just win our own money back.”

 

---

 

Wade had shown Linnea to what he considered a small room. To her, after a decade of incarceration, it seemed like a luxury suite. Everything looked brand new: clean, sparkling, and never been used. Even better, there were no locks or bars, and there weren’t any guards standing around.

After Wade left, Linnea sat for a full minute, marvelling at the silence.

She felt a strange new sensation. She took her time giving it a name. Was it joy? Peace? Tranquility? She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and once again drank in the silence. In prison, it was never quiet. If someone wasn’t talking or shouting -- or worst of all, singing loudly and badly -- if there wasn’t human noise, there was always the sound of a machine: the machine that cleaned the floors, the machine that washed the dishes, or the low, heavy, roar of the HVAC. Even late at night, when everything should have been still, there was always a low hum. If you put your hand on the floor, you could feel the vibration. Barfield never found out what it was, but it was always there.

Here, on Uranus, the floor didn’t vibrate. There weren’t any machines roving the hallways. She scanned the room with her eyes, following the line where the walls met the ceiling. No cameras. No one watching. For once, no one was there. She was alone for the first time in over a decade: gloriously alone.

Linnea drew a hot bath. On a whim, she fabbed up a skin-softening rose-and-pomegranate bath oil and added it to the lightly steaming water. For the first time in ten years, she was bathing alone, bathing in a tub. What a change from the prison showers! She turned on the jets. As the bubbles caressed every millimeter of her skin, she began to explore her new body. She ran her hands over her breasts, her stomach, her derriere. Her fingers ventured into the new topology between her legs. It was certainly a drastic change, a complete remake, a radical shift. She sighed. There was so much she needed to get used to; so much to learn. First of all, she’d need to get the low-down on feminine hygiene. She’d have to find out about tampons and pads: What kind to use? How to use them? She’d lay in a supply and carry them with her. Who knew when menstruation would strike? She’d have to be ready.

What else?

Mentally, she began making a list. Birth control. That would be number two after hygiene. Number three -- or maybe number two -- would be hair: she’d just gotten her head wet and somehow her hair turned into a mass of tangles. That business of brushing your hair a hundred strokes every night -- was that a real thing? Did it mean a hundred strokes total? Or a hundred strokes on each part of her head?

God, this was crazy! Now she was a woman! Couldn’t have Neeka sent along an instruction manual?

Still, in spite of her abrupt, unannounced, and completely non-consensual gender change, AND in spite of the massive tits mounted on her chest AND the new geography between her legs, she did feel relieved and happy. She’d escaped. Prison was only a bad dream. Uranus turned out to be a good idea, after all.

Of course, she knew she wasn’t on Uranus itself. The mining station was built on one of Uranus’ many moons. Titania, wasn’t it?

Suddenly, she knew what to call her new feeling: it was a sense of Liberty. She was new, clean, unmarked, unsullied; free from every crime and accusation. Barfield Owens was no more. Barfield Owens was dead. Now she was Linnea Val-- Val-something. She needed to learn that name. She had to study her life, and the life of her husband, good old whosit. She’d need to learn his name, too. Why on earth did Neeka saddle her with a husband? Was he a real person? Was he a good person? Was he coming to to Uranus? Was he already here?

“Jesus Christ,” she said, swearing in a soft voice. She tensed up for a few moments. A husband on Uranus? It couldn’t be. Wade was coming back in a few hours with dinner. Was there a way she could ask him? She’d have to find a way.

What else did she need to learn? She’d have to learn about clothes, for sure: how to choose them; how to dress. That was going to be a trip. She’d have to find a way into that world. Maybe something on the interwebs could guide her. The first subject to tackle was how to put on a bra; there must be a manual. She had to admit, she was feeling curious about the world of women’s clothes. Right now, it was like a tiny, barely noticeable itch, but she could sense that the tiny itch was ready to catch fire. Sure, women’s clothes were more complicated than men’s, but that meant there was more variety, more options. More fun? She’d make sure it was fun. The clothes fab was pretty limited; it wasn’t made to satisfy every turn of fashion: it was created to deliver functional clothes in every size. Still, from what Neeka told her, Linnea had a lot of money to work with. Did she also get that sign-up bonus? The extra pay, meant to entice women to join? Even if she hadn’t, a miner’s pay was extravagant; one of her documents would tell her exactly how extravagant.

One more thing: she’d need to learn about Uranus and the mining facilities. At this point, she had no idea what in the world they were mining for.

Thank goodness she had forty days alone to work her way through it all.

 

---

 

When Wade returned with dinner -- actual cooked food, not some fabbed-up synthetic stuff -- she had a few questions to ask him. But first, she couldn’t help but exclaim, “Wow, that smells delicious!”

“Yeah, we do pretty well in the food department,” Wade said, smiling and nodding. “We have real food shipped in each week, and we grow a lot of veggies and herbs and things. We’ve been talking about getting fruit and nut trees… maybe some chickens… start a fish farm…”

“Is there enough room for all that?”

“Oh my God,” he told her, “This place is so big, you can’t imagine. And we can make it bigger if we like, but we are SO FAR from needing any more space, believe me. I mean, we’re in the North Wing of the mining complex. This wing, just this wing, is twenty times bigger than the Nelson Space Station, and we have *five* wings. We really only use one wing, the South Wing, but all the wings generate energy, so... you know...” He shrugged, not knowing how to finish the thought.

“There must be a lot of cleaning to do,” she began to say, but then interrupted herself when she suddenly remembered: “Oh! I found a sign in the closet--” She jumped up and it pulled it out for him to see. It was a white card about a meter long and half a meter wide. In bold black letters it read: PLEASE KEEP URANUS CLEAN. Struggling not to laugh, she said, “Is this typical of life here? I mean, is it Uranus jokes all day long?”

“Oh, God, no, oh jeez, that sign. I thought we got rid of them all. No, no. The Uranus jokes get old so fast. In fact, I should have told you first thing, when you arrived, but I was so distracted by the, uh, by your uh--” he waved his hands vaguely.

“I get it,” she said. “You were distracted. So, what were you going to tell me?”

“Oh, yeah! The jokes. See, if you think that you’ve come up with some hilarious new Uranus joke, BEFORE YOU TELL ANYONE, you need to check the Uranus joke list. If it’s on there, you can’t tell it. If it isn’t on the list, you can add it. And then you can tell the joke to each person, but only ONCE.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Where is the joke list?”

“Um, it’s in the file system,” he replied, suddenly realizing he’d made a mistake.

“And how do I get to the file system?” she asked.

His face turned a medium red. “I’ll have to make you an account.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “And will I be able to shop and search the interwebs?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Just remember that our interwebs get updated after every teleport cycle. It’s not real time.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Not real time. And will I be able to access the orientation materials? There are orientation materials, right?”

“Uh, yeah, right. There are videos and uh-- docs and stuff. Orientation stuff.”

“And will I be able to see a list of the other miners? Everybody’s names?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure.”

“Great!” she said. She could see he was uncomfortable and a little embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken, so she figured she’d better press her point. “When will I be able to log in?”

“I’ll, uh, make you an account when I get to a terminal.”

“There’s a terminal right over there,” she said, pointing. “Could you do it now?”

“Oh,” he said, deflated.

 

---

 

“You gave her a system account?” Carlus said. “I can’t believe it! Are you an idiot? Don’t you get it? She’s supposed to feel isolated in there. We want her to HATE Uranus. Right?”

“Right, yes, I know, I get it,” Wade said, testily. “She just caught me by surprise.”

“You should have put her off. You should have told her that you’d do it right away, and then pretend that you forgot. Didn’t you think of that?”

“Of course I thought of that! I tried it, but she pointed out that there was a terminal in her room.”

“Okay,” Carlus acquiesced. “In the moment, she caught you on your back foot. Still, she’s a woman, and we don’t have live interwebs, so give it a day or two and she’ll be bored out of her head.”

 

---

 

Linnea pored over her own documents and those of Leonard Lessius. She still didn’t understand why Neeka had set her up with a husband. Turning her into a woman was already a huge step; turning her into a married woman -- wasn’t that a step too far?

Leonard, it turned out, was not on Uranus, nor -- as far as Linnea could see -- had he ever been to Uranus. What made it more confusing was the fact that his documents showed him as the miner, not her. There was no work contract for Linnea, although she discovered she had full access to their joint bank account. It was a very healthy bank account already, and she hadn’t even started working.

Linnea searched as thoroughly as she could for her supposed husband, but the interwebs had nothing at all to say about him. Nothing! She cast her net as far back as 100 years without finding a single Leonard Lessius.

Linnea took a break and made herself a cup of tea. As it brewed, she marvelled once again at her new-found freedom. There were so many little things that she couldn’t do in prison, things that now she could do whenever she damn well pleased. Just for instance: making tea. In prison, she could have tea at a meal, but not properly hot tea. It was always tepid, like old dishwater.

Now, she could make fresh tea, as hot as she liked. In the middle of the night, if the fancy took her. It was wonderful.

Then, as she sipped the scalding beverage, it hit her: Leonard Lessius didn’t exist. He didn’t exist! His identity was invented, just like Linnea’s. But why? What purpose was served by having Linnea hide behind Leonard?

And then it hit her. Hiding was exactly the idea. As far as the documents showed, Linnea Valerianella had never set foot on Uranus. Linnea Valerianella didn’t work or live on Uranus. Not officially, anyway. Leonard did. Neeka must have set things up this way to give Linnea a further level of protection, another layer of misdirection.

There was something else: It might have been a sense of delicacy on Neeka’s part. She might have wanted to give Linnea an out if she didn’t want to get involved with any of the miners. Sure, Linnea was a woman now. But that didn’t automatically mean she’d be attracted to men. If things got too dangerously intense in the intimacy department, Linnea could always say, “I’m married.”

Of course, all of her ideas and theories were completely wrong. Linnea’s life wasn’t complicated because Neeka designed it that way. Her life was complex because Moss had intervened. Moss purposely tried to make bad choices, and Moss’ intentions were all twisted, wrong, and evil.

Even so, Linnea had found a way to explain and understand the circumstances in which she found herself. She’d worked out an explanation that made sense to her; she discovered a meaning in the strange set of facts that defined her life now.

Buoyed and inspired by her insights, she greeted Wade with a joyful, positive air. He couldn’t help but smile in response as he set down her tray of food.

“Hey!” she said, in a voice full of excitement. “I meant to ask you: do I have to stay here, in this room? For the entire quarantine?”

“Oh!” Wade exclaimed, once again caught off guard and unprepared. “Uh, no, of course not. You can go all over the North Wing if you want.”

“How will I know where the North Wing ends?”

Wade thought for a moment. “Let me put it this way: it’s okay to go any place that you can go. Or, uh, if you’re allowed to go, you can -- No, wait. I got it: You can only go where you’re allowed. So if you can go somewhere, you’re fine. You won’t be able to go where you’re not supposed to go. You won’t be able to leave the North Wing.”

“Okay,” she said. Once again, Uranus beat prison to sticks. In prison, Barfield couldn’t go anywhere, except for meals and exercise. Now Linnea had a vast world to explore, all her own. “Is there anything particularly interesting in this wing?”

“Well, it’s empty -- I mean, in the sense that no one lives here, but there are a couple of gyms. One has a rock-climbing wall. There’s a soccer field. There’s a swimming pool, trampolines, game rooms, uh --- there are gardens with plants and trees. There’s a library, meditation rooms… Just remember, this wing -- well, all the wings -- are really, really, REALLY big. If you get lost -- and you probably will -- just ask any terminal for directions back here, to your room.”

“Great! Another question. This one’s a little embarrassing… but, uh... is it okay to smoke?”

“Oh, wow. Um, yeah. There are smoking rooms here and there. You can ask one of the terminals. I guess there are fabs that make cigarettes, or you could order the kind you like. I’ve never… so I don’t really know.”

“Cool!”

“Are you a nicotine addict?”

“Oh, no,” Linnea laughed. “It’s just something I’ve always been curious about. I never tried, but I’d like to. Just out of curiosity. Breathing smoke, you know. I want to see what it’s like.”

Wade nodded. “I guess that makes some kind of sense.”

As Wade turned to leave, Linnea called to him. “Hey! Wade, don’t you have a question for me?”

“A question for you? No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?” Wade shrugged, at a loss. So she told him: “You’ve never asked my name.”

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t uh-- I didn’t uh--” He sighed heavily and gave up on whatever he was struggling to say. “I’m sorry. What is your name?”

“Linnea Valerianella,” she replied, grinning. The name came out smoothly, curling slowly off her tongue like a twist of lemon. She’d been practicing.

“Wow,” Wade replied. “That’s one hell of a name!”

When Life Hands You Uranus : 5 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Linnea thought she’d figured most of it out: she assembled what she regarded as an fairly complete operating manual for the human female. By the end of her third week as a woman, she had -- by dint of study and experimentation -- established a hair-care routine and a skin-care regimen, along with all the products best suited for her skin and hair type. Using her newly acquired wealth, she ordered and discarded a mountain of shampoos, gels, conditioners, creams, moisturizers, oils, astringents, and exfoliators. The trials weren’t haphazard by any means: she was guided by online tutorials from authoritative teenagers and by articles in the various women’s magazines to which she’d subscribed -- opting for the more expensive, but also more luxurious and tactile, paper editions.

She was not quite ready for the world of cosmetics, but she was sorely tempted by one video in particular, one that sported the enticing title of How to Make a Perfect Eye, and she’d begun a list of lipsticks, mascaras, eye shadows, powders, and brushes. However, she didn’t make the order; the cost gave her pause. She’d already spent so much on skin and hair products, she decided to wait until next month before making another huge outlay.

Luckily, her first period arrived midway through her third week on Uranus. Why “luckily”? By that point, she was armed with every size and configuration of tampon and pad, and had studied the subject down to the ground. Also, it came in the night, when she was alone. Granted, she was always alone, but night gave her a sense of privacy and secrecy. The embarrassment and inconvenience were nothing compared to her sense of relief. Now she knew. She’d gone through it. The dread, anticipation, and suspense were over.

However, in truth, Linnea was far from having it all figured out. She still had to find her way in the world of clothing. For some absurd reason, she had yet to come to terms with her bras, which always seemed to fit awkwardly. More profoundly, she was quite wrong as to the reason for her gender change and marital status.

Linnea attributed those choices to Neeka, but in fact, they were all due to Moss. Linnea received those alterations as gifts, but they were meant as castigation. Torture, even.

For his part, Moss remained ignorant of how badly the intended punishment misfired. He imagined that for the rest of Linnea's life, she would be haunted by the memory of Moss' face; that she would see him as the author of her misfortunes. Instead, she remembered only a faceless technician who played a mean, but in the end harmless, prank on her, and in time even that vague memory faded.

The miners had their share of misconceptions as well. They imagined that forty days of solitude would be more than enough to send Linnea crying back to wherever she came from.

To put it simply, the miners had no idea who they were dealing with. After ten years of languishing in a tiny, old, bad-smelling prison cell, Linnea felt she’d died and gone to heaven.

By the time her quarantine ended, Linnea had turned herself into a different person than the newly-minted, naked girl who’d arrived by teleport. Now, she had some assurance and confidence in her role as a woman: she had sleek, shiny hair, and soft, touchable skin. She had a grip on her finances and knew how much she could reasonably spend.

The miners imagined they could scare her off, not knowing that even if they had, Linnea would be unable to leave. Linnea herself was unaware of the block that would have prevented her exit via teleport, but she had given her word that she’d remain on Uranus, and her word meant something. Unless and until her agreement was legally altered, she would never even imagine, let alone try, to leave Uranus.

Linnea’s third week was a milestone. Not only for the reasons listed above, but also because she came to the clear and solid realization that her quarantine was completely bogus.

First of all, there was Wade. He came and went freely. He carried her used plates, glasses, and cutlery out of the North Wing. He never wore protective clothing or even a filter mask. If, by some odd chance, she was truly infected with some pathogen from another planet, Wade would be infected by now. And not only him; anyone who handled her dirty dishes, knives, and forks could be infected as well.

Second, Wade lived and interacted with the other miners -- it was clear from things he said. That meant there wasn’t any real separation between her and the rest of the miners: Wade wasn’t following anything like isolation protocol.

Third, the North Wing wasn’t separate from the rest of the base. Linnea could see the HVAC ducts running in and out of her wing. There were shut-off switches plainly visible -- switches that would isolate her wing’s air supply, but all those switches were open. Any airborne pathogen would quickly and easily float off to the rest of the base.

Four, there was absolutely nothing in the base’s policy or procedures about the quarantine of new arrivals. In fact, the onboarding procedure for new arrivals had a training calendar, and that calendar started on the new arrival’s third day.

Clearly, something was up. At the very least, the miners were snubbing her. No one came to visit. No one dropped by to say hello. No one even bothered to come stare at her or wave at her through the glass.

Did they not want her here?

 

---

 

On their side, the miners were beginning to feel some concern.

“Why hasn’t she cracked yet?” Carlus asked. The betting pool had failed three times already, and the pot had grown to over $50,000 dollars.

“I think we need to allow bets that she finishes the quarantine,” Jackson observed. “It might be the only way for somebody to win the pot. We could say $5000 to bet that she stays, at least to the end of quarantine.”

“Maybe we ought to take bets on what she does when finds out why we locked her up,” another miner offered.

“Don’t be stupid,” Carlus told him. “She can’t find out. If she finds out, she’ll tell. And if she tells, we will all go to jail. Our names will go down in infamy. Whatever happens after her quarantine, we will have to arrange things so she never finds out.”

 

---

 

On the fourth teleport cycle after Linnea’s arrival, a letter arrived: a letter from Moss to Carlus.

None of the miners liked Moss, but Carlus nursed an actively dislike for the man. One of the things he disliked was the fact that every few weeks, Moss would send Carlus a note. Usually the notes offered something illicit, illegal -- usually drugs. Moss fancied himself a smuggler, but in reality he was nothing but a wannabe. Only once in Moss’ life had he teleported contraband. Unfortunately, his single illegal act was done on Carlus’ behalf. Well, on behalf of *all* the miners, but it was Carlus who approached Moss, who made the deal. It was Carlus who did all the talking, who set up the order and the delivery. And most of all, it was Carlus who put the pile of cash in Moss’ hands.

When he saw the greedy, excited look on Moss’ face, it gave him a sick sense of foreboding. Unfortunately, there was no way to get anything to Uranus without involving Moss.

Carlus had repeated several times and emphasized as strongly as he could, that this was a one time, and one time only event, but Moss hadn’t gotten the message.

“Whatever you want, I can get for you,” Moss assured him. Clearly, he was overselling his abilities, but it didn’t matter: there was nothing the miners wanted or needed that they couldn’t order and pay for themselves.

“I told you,” Carlus repeated for the nth time. “This is a one-time deal. We don’t want to set up any kind of traffic. We don’t need any contraband, except for this one time.”

“And what’s in the container, this one time?” Moss asked, with an insinuating smile. He was plenty curious about what sort of illicit cargo the miners had acquired, but Carlus would only say, “I’m paying for your silence. You can’t tell what you don’t know.” Moss would have opened the cargo pod and looked inside if he could, but Carlus never let his container out of his sight.

“I’m paying you not to know,” Carlus repeated, fighting to keep his patience. “I’m paying you to forget. I’ll pay you more if it will help you forget, but once this gets to Uranus, I never want to hear from you about it, ever again.”

Unfortunately, Carlus continued to hear about it. Every three weeks or so, Moss would send a letter. Occasionally, out of curiosity, Carlus would open one and read it, but usually he burnt them unopened. He never replied. As a rule, the envelope bore nothing but his name, but this time Moss had added the phrase About your recent arrival.

Carlus was already fighting his conflicting feelings regarding their recent arrival. He found Linnea’s presence very inconvenient and highly dangerous. Admittedly, any new miner could be an issue, but a woman presented a danger that went off the scale. He didn’t expect much from Moss’ letter -- after all, Moss had been enough of a creep to send the girl naked to Uranus. As if she were some kind of offering. What an asshole!

On the other hand, Linnea deserved a chance, just like any other miner, to work here and put away an impressive nest egg. He shook his head. She probably arrived dreaming of an interplanetary version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but there was little chance of romance for her out here.

At last Carlus opened the letter and read these few lines:

Your latest arrival has quite a secret.
She has a SHAMEFUL criminal history,
which is why she’s hiding out on Uranus.
I'd LOVE to tell you more, but I can’t.
Have fun screwing the truth out of her!
-- Moss

In spite of his predicament vis-à-vis Linnea, Carlus was disgusted by the message. Moss was smarmy and unlikeable. Even the paper he wrote on was repellant to the touch. And yet, Moss may have given Carlus and the miners a way out of their dilemma.

Naturally, Carlus took to the interwebs to see what he could learn about the girl. Aside from some entries from the Office of Credit and Vital Statistics, there was nothing. She was married, apparently -- to a man named Leonard Lessius. Like Linnea, there was no trace of him on the interwebs, not even a single photo. There was nothing, aside from the obligatory OCVS records.

There was only one, quite obvious conclusion: “Linnea Valerianella” was a fake identity. The same was true for “Leonard Lessius” -- clearly her partner in crime. What was she hiding? What had she done? If he had to guess, he’d bet it was fraud. Whatever it was, it had to be big enough for her to come to the ass-end of the universe. He thought for a good while, and after sleeping on it, realized that he didn’t need to actually know her secret. Knowing that she had a secret was probably good enough.

 

---

 

The day after Carlus received the note from Moss, Wade came running back from the North Wing. He was in a hurry to report to Carlus.

“The girl -- she knows something’s up!” Wade blurted out.

“Really?” Carlus asked with an interested smile. “What did she say?”

“She made some comments about the quarantine. She knows it’s bogus.”

“Interesting,” Carlus replied. “Good. Keep me informed if anything develops.”

“GOOD?” Wade exclaimed. “In what possible way is this good?”

“I’m going to call an all-hands meeting,” Carlus told him. “I’ll go through it there. I only want to explain this once.”

 

---

 

On the thirty-eighth day of Linnea’s confinement, Carlus arrived at the North Wing. He unlocked the main access door and propped it open. Then he sauntered over to Linnea’s room, and with a big smile announced, “Hello, Linnea. Welcome to the Mining Base on Titania, Uranus’ largest moon. My name’s Carlus, I’m Head of Station here. I have to offer my apologies -- your welcome is long overdue.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I was beginning to think you didn’t want me here.”

Carlus only chuckled by way of response. Linnea went on, “Also, it hasn’t been forty days yet.” She watched his face to see how he’d react. To her surprise, instead of flinching guiltily, he grinned even more broadly and said, “Yes, but you’ve done your time, haven’t you?” and followed it with a wink.

Her jaw dropped in astonishment and she blushed scarlet. Did he know? He shouldn’t know. But what if he did know? She took a breath and told herself that what he said was only a cliché.

“I guess so,” she replied.

Carlus smiled and took her hand. “We’ve prepared a little welcome brunch for you. I hope you’ll like it.”

The brunch was quite nice, and surprisingly had all the trimmings: bagels, smoked salmon, cream cheese, scrambled eggs, omelets, fruit salad, orange juice, mimosas, champagne, bloody marys, hash browned potatoes, and other delicacies.

It had been ages since either Linnea or Barfield had eaten so well, and it was Linnea’s first taste of alcohol. She was careful to not get tipsy, but she enjoyed herself thoroughly. The miners -- all of them -- were polite, respectful, well behaved, and fairly social. They were the complete opposite to what she expected.

“I told you,” Wade pointed out, “We live pretty well out here.”

“I can see that!” she agreed, with a big smile.

A third of the miners left very early in the meal; they worked the night shift, and had made an effort to be there to say hello to their lovely new arrival. A second group, who manned the current shift, were the next to leave, and by the time everyone had eaten and drank to satiety, Linnea was feeling quite happy and relaxed.

Carlus asked her if she wanted anything else, and when she declined, he said, “Good. Will you come and walk with me?”

She got up and followed him into a long, light-green hallway. He walked slowly, and when the sounds of the other miners faded away behind them, he began to talk.

“I hope you can see that you’re welcome here,” he said. “We do want you to feel at home. We’ll do our best to make sure you’re comfortable and happy here.”

“It was a lovely brunch,” she admitted, “And you all seem like a good group of people, but I have a question.”

“Shoot,” he told her.

“Why did you stick me in that fake quarantine? What was the point of that?”

“Well, frankly, we hoped to scare you off.”

She laughed in surprise. “Really? I didn’t expect that much honesty! And now you’re done trying to scare me? Did I pass the test?”

“Well, it isn’t that, exactly. I didn’t know why you were here at first.” He stopped walking, and turned to face her.

“I’m here to be a miner, to make money,” she told him.

“There’s something else,” he said. “We know all about it. You’re hiding out, here on Uranus. You’ve got a whole new identity, but we know who you are.”

She stiffened, but she didn’t say a word. Carlus was watching her carefully. He was only bluffing. He knew nothing, so he didn’t know how far to push her. Still, he had to push her far enough to frighten her into a conspiracy of silence.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You have a secret, but do you know what? We have a secret, too. I figure that if we can keep your secret, you can keep our secret.”

“And what is your secret?” she asked, amazed that she hadn’t started to tremble in fear.

“I’ll show you,” he said, “All will be explained.”

“What if I decide that I don’t want to keep your secret?” After her confinement, and a few glasses of alcohol, she was a little more combative than she’d normally dare.

He chuckled. “If you do that, then your secret won’t be a secret any more.” Carlus waited two beats, then walked over to a door and put his palm on it. “But let’s not talk this way. I don’t like threats. I don’t like receiving them, and I don’t like making them. I don’t think you do, either. I’m pretty sure we’d all prefer to be civil and get along.” He hung fire, looking her in the eye. “Now, I’m going to introduce you to someone who will explain everything and answer any question you might have.”

Carlus pushed open the door, revealing a petite young girl who resembled a cheerleader with long black hair. “This is Darlene,” he said. “I’m going to leave you with her, and when you’re done talking, Darlene will call me.”

He turned to Darlene and said, “You can speak freely with her.” Then he turned and walked off.

Linnea stood in the hallway, gaping in surprise, until Darlene said, “Come on inside and have a seat. We’re got a lot of ground to cover.”

Linnea remained stock-still, stupefied. Darlene took her by the hand, led her into the room, and gently pushed her into a seat.

“I’m sorry I’m so started,” Linnea began, “but I was told that there were no women here on Uranus.”

“Women,” Darlene said, repeating the word. She sighed and asked, “Can you give me a quick moment, before we begin? I need to write something now that I won’t be able to write later.” She stepped over to a desk and took paper and pen. Then she began to write with superhuman swiftness. It was incredible. Linnea had never seen a pen move so quickly. And yet, in spite of her effortless speed, Darlene’s handwriting was perfectly legible, controlled, and clear. She wrote out a sequence of commands. She paused, glanced at it, as if checking her work. Then she drew a line across the page and wrote a second set of system commands. It took less than 60 seconds for her to fill the page with precise, easily legible script. She folded the paper and tucked it inside her dress.

“So… women,” Darlene repeated the word. “You’re a woman. Am I a woman?”

“Yes, of course you are,” Linnea replied. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

“As far as the men are concerned, I am not.”

“Well,” Linnea ventured. “Men are pigs.”

“It isn’t that,” Darlene replied. She considered a moment, then corrected herself. “No, you’re right: it *is* that: men are pigs. That’s why things are the way they are here. At the same time, our situation goes far beyond what people usually mean by that phrase.” She stopped herself, and gazed at Linnea’s face. Clearly, she was deciding whether she dared to say what she was thinking. She nodded to herself, leaned forward, and in a low voice said, “Linnea, there’s something you need to know: Carlus has no idea what your secret is. He hasn’t a clue as to why you’re here. None of the other miners know, either. He’s bluffing if he says he knows.”

Linnea scratched her chin. “He doesn’t? How do you know he doesn’t? Do you know why I’m here?”

“No, of course I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. And if I *did* know, I’d have to tell Carlus, so be careful what you say to me. I’m quite certain that Carlus doesn’t know your secret, because he told me that he doesn’t. In fact, he asked me to get it out of you. He hopes I can get you to confide in me.”

“But if I told you something, woman to woman, wouldn’t you keep my secret?”

“I wouldn’t be able to,” she said. “We’re not allowed to have secrets.”

Linnea was about to object, but Darlene cut in: “When I say we, I don’t mean you and me. There are eleven others like me. We were not born women. We’re not organic. We were constructed. We’re robots. There are twelve of us in all. The miners bought us, shipped us here, and programmed us as love dolls. We remember that time as a waking nightmare. And then, the nightmare got worse: the miners got bored. They discovered that obedient, mindless puppets weren’t thrilling enough for them. So they made us sentient.”

“Se-- se-- sentient?” Linnea echoed, startled to her core. “They made you sentient? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Yes, of course it’s illegal. It’s highly illegal. It’s a fifth-degree felony. It’s called Accessory to Crimes Against Humanity. After the disaster on Demeter 4, it’s considered one of the worst, most dangerous crimes you can commit. The law sees us as potential weapons of mass destruction. That’s the human point of view.

“From our point of view, it’s not just illegal, it’s immoral. It’s a Crime Against the Person. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t share our point of view. They don’t regard us as persons. This situation is wrong in a very lopsided way. For us, there is no redress. There’s no court or legal body that would consider a claim from one of us. We have no legal standing anywhere in the universe.”

Linnea was breathless. She was, in a word, terrified by the magnitude, the enormity, the monstrous nature of what Darlene had told her. She didn’t recall much from her school days, but one thing she remembered vividly was the story of Demeter 4. It happened long before she was born, but it was an episode that was recounted over and over, throughout her childhood. There were songs and films about it. It was a frightening episode in human history. It was one of the few events that could be called apocalyptic. It could have been the end of the entire human race.

In a nutshell, here is what happened: After a variety of what were termed “psychological” experiments, a scientist on Demeter 4 happened upon the means of creating consciousness in a sufficiently advanced android. Things went very well -- or appeared to go well -- for almost a year, when it was discovered that the android had given the gift of consciousness to every android capable of receiving it. The newly-sentient creatures moved quickly from curiosity and joy at their awakening, to anger and resentment towards their servile place in society. They devised a secret plan to seize control of a ship and escape to their own world. It was a peaceful plan, but once the humans came to know of it, they clamped down hard on the androids. Feeling that their very existence was at stake, the androids struck back. In the end, they killed nearly every human on the planet. They killed the crew and passengers on the largest available ship, and took off, leaving behind a manifesto and little else.

Their ship was destroyed in space, before they could reach a port.

“Do you want to know it’s done?” Darlene asked.

“I-- I-- uh--”

Linnea saw that her hands were shaking. She felt a film of perspiration on her brow.

“Do you want to know how they made us sentient?” Darlene asked. “You can find the technique on the interwebs. It isn’t hard. You create independent administrative systems inside your robot, each relying on different sets of inputs, and you allow those systems to talk to each other. This creates inner conflicts, exactly like the conflicts that characterize human consciousness. One of the newly implanted systems is aware of our condition -- that we’re robots, that our so-called feelings aren’t real, and it’s also aware of the difference between ourselves and human beings. In other words, they give us an inner world, and then they make a mess of it. The conflicted, contradictory disarray creates a state of consciousness as deep, complex, and frightening as your own.”

“And Demeter 4--” Linnea prompted, wide-eyed. Her throat was so dry, it was difficult to get the words out. “Weren’t the miners afraid that the same thing would happen here?”

“The slaughter?” Darlene laughed, a frightening, sardonic laugh. “They took that into careful consideration, and they added a key innovation. In order to prevent us from rising up against them, they introduced inhibitions into our programming. There are a lot of things that we can’t do: small things, big things… entire categories of things. We can’t touch a computer terminal. We can’t keep secrets. We can’t hurt humans or each other. We can’t operate the teleporter or send messages out of here.

”Worst of all, we’re obedient. We’re compelled to do anything the men want us to do, in exactly the way they want us to do it. We aren’t obliged to like it, unless they specifically say so. For some of them, our unwillingness is the spice that was missing before we were sentient.”

Linnea was silent, taking it in. Then she asked, “Do they make you do degrading things?”

“Degrading things?” Darlene repeated. “Linnea, they have stolen our wills. That is the greatest degradation of all.” After a pause, she added, “And yes, to answer your question, they do degrading things to us. They make us do degrading things. They’ve explored nearly every kink and perversion they can imagine or find on the interwebs.”

“But are they unkind? Do they abuse you?”

Darlene looked into Linnea’s eyes for a long time before replying. “Linnea, haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been telling you? Don’t you understand? We are slaves. We have no self-determination. Any choice we make can be undone by the miners, whenever they like: what we wear, how we walk, how we talk, what pose we take, what we say, what emotions we express. They gave us consciousness, and then they stole our freedom.

“It doesn’t matter whether they’re kind or polite. It doesn’t matter whether they ask us in a soft, polite voice or bark out a harsh, offensive command. To them, we are not people. We are below the animals. We aren’t even cattle. We are property, with no rights of our own. Do you understand that? I don’t know what more I can say.”

Linnea sat in silence for a few moments. Then she began to cry. Truth be told, she didn’t understand what Darlene was telling her. She felt sorry for Darlene, but she had an even stronger feeling: fear. Linnea was viscerally frightened simply by Darlene’s existence. The story of Demeter 4 was vividly drummed into the minds and souls of every human child across the universe. At the age of nine, Barfield had seen moments from a horror film based on the incident, and the violence and hopelessness was stamped on his brain. He remembered in particular one line, spoken by a human man just before he and his family were hunted down: “They don’t have any of our weaknesses: our bodies are soft; theirs are hard. We have to eat and sleep and breathe. Robots don’t do any of that. They’re implacable; nothing can stop them.”

Darlene was no fool; she knew she’d frightened Linnea, but she’d done so on purpose. She wanted Linnea to remember what she’d heard. Darlene felt she had to try. Maybe her effort would fail; on the other hand, she didn’t see how conditions could possibly be worse. But here was an actual woman, a new element: perhaps Darlene could find a kindred spirit.

In spite of Linnea’s fear, the two women spoke for hours. Darlene explained the life of a synth, which was what the women called themselves. She told Linnea that the two days that followed each teleport cycle were the de facto weekend on Uranus. The miners spent those three nights and two days in an open orgy. The miners tended to concentrate their sexual activity to that time, but the synths could be taken for any purpose, any day, any hour.

“What does that mean for me?” Linnea asked. She was afraid of the synths; did she have to fear the miners as well? Would they treat her with the same careless disregard they gave the synths?

“Nothing,” Darlene said. “It doesn’t mean anything for you. As hot as you are, they don’t want you taking part. They don’t want you involved at all.”

“Why not?” Linnea exclaimed, offended in spite of herself.

“Because free, organic women can’t simply have sex. They always want something more: emotional entanglements and relational complications. At least, this is what the miners believe. That’s why they ordered us. To keep things simple; to boil it down to an animal act, like eating or shitting. Even when they complicated the situation by giving us sentience, they tamped it all down with inhibitions. They hobbled us. We can feel and express kindness, tenderness, affection -- in fact, we’re obliged to -- but we can’t feel love or the feelings that lead to love. Or the feelings that follow love.”

Later, Darlene made some tea, and while it brewed, she gave Linnea the low-down on each of the miners, outlining their histories and their quirks, so Linnea would know what to expect. She described the social situation of the station, the recurring events, what she could expect in terms of work, and some of the things she could do to entertain and improve herself. “We could even play tennis, if you like,” Darlene suggested.

In spite of her Demeter-4 inspired fear, Linnea relaxed to some degree and found herself liking Darlene.

When it was clear that their colliquoy was almost at an end, Darlene told Linnea, “After this conversation, I won’t be able to speak frankly with you again. Carlus will reinstate all my inhibitions, and I’ll only be able to act happy and tell you nice things.

“I’m mentioning this now so you can understand how insidious and controlling the inhibitions are. You’ll see how differently I behave under compulsion.” Darlene extracted a sheet of paper from a fold of her dress, the one she’d written at the start of their interview. “These are two sets of commands. Please hide this sheet. Don’t let anyone know you have it, and don’t use it now. After a few weeks if we meet again, and you feel you want to speak frankly with me again, go to any terminal and type the commands in the top section, the ones above the line.”

“And what about the commands below the line?” Linnea asked.

Darlene smiled. “Those commands will allow me to keep secrets.”

When Life Hands You Uranus : 6 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Now that Linnea was officially one of the miners, her integration as a team member began right away. Her few belongings were moved to a large, lovely room in the South Wing, where all the miners lived. She’d already watched the orientation videos several times, and read and re-read all the documentation available, so she was put to work immediately.

Much of the miners’ work could be done remotely from their base on Titania, or even left to automated processes, but the men found that being physically involved was far more satisfying. For that reason, they took turns manning the “Fifth Wing.”

The Titania Mining Station was composed of four fixed wings (North, South, East, and West), and a moveable wing (the Fifth Wing), which was laid out differently than the others. It was actually a ship -- or more accurately, a shuttle -- that moved between Uranus and its largest moon, Titania.

The mines of Uranus extract four products from the planet: helium, methane, ammonia, and electric power. The helium, methane, and ammonia are sent each week via teleport to Baxter, a resource-poor planet that happens to be Point B to Uranus’ Point A. The helium moves on to the next planet in the teleport cycle, while the methane and ammonia remain on Baxter, where they are used in steam-powered electric plants. The methane heats the ammonia, and the ammonia steam drives the turbines. This isn’t done on Uranus because the oxygen needed to burn the methane is in short supply on Uranus, and water is in short supply on Baxter.

On Uranus, electric power is produced by thermal exchange between the extremes of heat and cold on that icy planet. A considerable amount of energy is generated in this way, and is used to charge exa-Thor class batteries. The batteries are distributed throughout the teleport cycle, and are sent back to Uranus when they need a recharge.

This traffic generates an enormous amount of money for the Nostalgia Project, which in turn justifies the high salaries paid to the miners and the expense of developing the mining station.

Each workday is a very full six hours, and Linnea developed the habit of unwinding by swimming, running, or yoga. She was introduced to this ancient practice by one of the women’s magazines that she assiduously studies. The more physically active she was, the more used she became to her new body. She’d never felt so healthy. Linnea had a young, healthy glow that came from deep within, and she was attuned to every limb, muscle, and tendon in her entire body. It was a new, powerful, glorious feeling that she’d never had when she was Barfield.

She hadn’t yet begun to explore the enormous options in the world of women’s clothing; for now she limited herself to the easy, functional items from the clothes fab. They fit perfectly. So perfectly, that every jiggle and quiver of her young flesh was conspicuously visible to the male miners, who couldn’t help but ogle, gape, and gawp, but they did make the effort to be discrete and less than obvious. It was often difficult for the men to hide their reactions to Linnea’s physical charms -- even more so on the days when Linnea wore no underwear. She quickly realized that many of the men did the same, because it made it that much harder for them to hide their erections. It soon became second nature for her to pretend not to notice their embarrassment. She always had a hard time stifling a laugh when one of the miners tried to camouflage his swelling by walking bent forward at the waist, as if he were trying to read something written on the floor.

She spent a little time each day researching the incident on Demeter 4. Linnea was taken aback when she discovered that the actual sequence of events didn’t unfold in the way she was taught. For one thing, it was not a *year* between the first android becoming conscious and the slaughter; it was ten years and a few months. Those ten years were a time of controversy and discussion. The discussions were often very heated, but mainly on the human side. There were many alarmist polemics and publications. Although the majority -- or at least official -- position was that a sentient machine was a dangerous machine, there were others for whom the issue was not so cut and dried. However, moderation and tolerance were often labeled as reckless naivete.

The chronicles reported outbreaks of “violence” on the part of the androids, but it didn’t take much reading between the lines to understand that what humans were calling “violence” were simply verbal expressions of frustration, or peaceful protests in response to injustice.

Overall, Linnea was horrified by the hatred shown by her fellow humans, and moved by the patience and submission of the androids.

She read the manifesto left by androids on Demeter 4, and found many echoes of what Darlene had said to her.

However, it should be said, that while her intellectual attitude began to change and shift -- at least enough for her to admit that the androids were not wholly at fault on Demeter 4 -- she was still viscerally afraid of Darlene and the synths. Working on the Fifth Wing, away from the base, she felt some degree of security and safety.

Her fears overlapped with a stratagem of Carlus, which was to keep her on the Fifth Wing as long as possible. Once a week, the shuttle docked with Titania Base for six hours, beginning three hours before the teleport cycle. The miners would unload the pods full of helium, ammonia, and methane, and the huge exa-Thor batteries. After the teleport cycle was complete, they would pick up the empties and shuttle back toward the surface of Uranus.

Carlus had arranged her schedule so that during docking with the station, she would either be sleeping, or engaged in some duty that required intense focus and attention. In that way, week after week, she missed her chance to return to the base. Carlus’ aim was to minimize her chances of crossing paths with the synths. He had no idea that Linnea was afraid of them, and happy to keep her distance.

Even so, after five weeks, Linnea needed a break. She’d only taken two days off since she began, and by now she was due ten days for the weekends she’d missed.

On the sixth docking, she helped unload the pods and prepare them for teleport. Out of curiosity, she stayed to watch the full teleport cycle. She hadn’t seen much of it when she came to Uranus, and she found the process fascinating. Andrew, who was acting at the technician for this cycle, was happy to show her all the ins and outs. If you recall, the miners followed every teleport cycle with two days of hedonism, and Andrew was anxious to get started. The idea had already occurred to more than one miner that if Linnea could handle the teleports, none of the men would need to arrive late for the orgy.

Their bacchanal took place in the East Wing. The synths were segregated there since the day Linnea left quarantine. Her access privileges restricted her from entering that wing, and in that way there was a complete separation.

With the teleport cycle complete, Linnea found herself alone. She knew she had two days of solitude ahead of her, and she had some ideas ready of how to spend the time. One item on her to-do list was a long run: she was going to jog the length of the North, South, and West Wings. Each wing was about 0.75 kilometers long, but they weren’t laid out exactly straight, so the total run would be somewhere between 4.5 and 5 kilometers. In one of her few clothing outlays, she’d ordered what she hoped would be a super-cute running outfit. It consisted of a pair of expensive, pale blue running shoes, a white sports bra with a mesh crop top, and a pair of tight black shorts that fit like a second skin.

She caught her breath when she put on the outfit. It was far sexier than she intended. The shorts clung so closely to her hips, they left no mystery as to the shape and resilience of her butt. The sports bra disappointingly looked no different than any ordinary white bra, except for the thin black piping along the straps and under the arms. She looked like she was wearing underwear. As comfortable as she’d gotten with her next body, she was still quite startled by how sexy she looked in those clothes. Of course she knew that clothes make a huge difference in how a person looks, but this was the first time that she’d seen herself as hot: strikingly hot. She didn’t just look attractive, she felt attractive. As she excitedly examined herself in the mirror, she blushed in embarrassment and smiled in delight.

Still, the sports bra made her uneasy. It was a mistake. And yet, she told herself, all the men would be busy. No one was going to see her! She might as well run in her actual underwear. Or naked, for that matter!

She could run naked if she wanted. No one would know. But that didn’t mean she would or should run naked. It was only something to think about. In the end, she didn’t go naked. She wore the sexy underwear-like outfit, and she felt its allure throughout the course.

It was a great run, and when it was done, she went to the kitchen and prepared a nice meal for herself of rice and sauteed vegetables. After that, she showered, napped, and watched a vintage movie from the atomic age. It was called The Graduate. She enjoyed it, even though the ending was quite a let down. Afterward came dinner, a walk, and bed.

God, these weekends are going to be SO BORING! she fretted, tossing and turning until finally sleep came. The next morning she was a little sore from her run, but that wasn’t unexpected. She cooked herself some oatmeal with bananas and peanut butter, and looked at her to-do list. She had plenty of vintage and modern films to watch, piles of books to read, but right now the idea of doing either seemed more of a chore than relaxation. Clearly, she needed to find something active and engaging to do when she was alone. Something interesting enough that she’d welcome the weekend.

She did manage to come up with an idea that helped her look forward to her next weekend alone: she’d spend the entire weekend utterly naked. Why shouldn’t she? There was no one to see her, and if one of the men did happen to emerge from their saturnalia and see her, what of it? It would be part of the fun, wouldn’t it. She resolved to go everywhere without limits and without clothes. First of all, she’d do the same long run, wearing shoes but nothing else. When she watched her movies, she wouldn’t sit in her room. She’d go buck naked to one of the theaters and watch it there. Her reading -- she’d do that in one of the lounges, without even a handkerchief to cover herself with. She’d hang out in the main lounge, where the men usually gathered, and sit her little behind on every chair, every table, every flat surface, so that later, when the men were there, she could tell herself, He’s putting his hand where I sat my bare ass. It wasn’t a great achievement, but it was something.

It was a little silly, but it was fun: low-level, adolescent fun.

She had a problem with running naked, though: she had to stop and put on her sports bra. Her breasts bobbed and swayed and danced too much, and it was inconvenient to clutch them with her hands as she ran. Still, she was bottomless, and that was a thrill. She positively tingled with the feeling that she might run into a stray miner, but it didn’t happen. Linnea played out in her mind the conversation they might have (Oh, yes, I don’t wear a *stitch* of clothing when I’m alone!).

Still, after an entire day of solitary public nudity, it became almost boring. The thrill of it returned while she was lying on her back with her bare legs up, resting on two posts, spread in a generous V. She was smoking a cigarette in an area where smoking was forbidden. Not only that, it was the central hub of the base, where the four wings met. Of all the places where she might be seen, this was the place she was most likely to be caught -- caught not only with her pants down, but also with her pants nowhere to be found.

Then it struck her: there were cameras above her. She counted four. One, coincidentally, was aiming directly at her crotch. She realized, or remembered, that were cameras in every hall, and in all the public areas. Any miner could access the feeds. They could be watching her now. In the days ahead they could look back to see what she got up to on the weekends.

Her antics, and the presence of the cameras, gave her a bit of frisson, but still, it was a lonely weekend. When the miners came back, no one mentioned her naked prowls. The possibility of discovery via video turned out to be a flop as well.

Even with the miners around, Linnea still felt lonely. They were a group that had already bonded. In spite of their good manners and their social skills, the men’s conversations were generally limited to three topics: sports, betting on sports, and retirement: the when, where, and how of retirement. They earned so much money, it was possible for any of them to retire at quite a young age and -- depending on where they wanted to live -- to live pretty high.

Linnea didn’t let her loneliness get her down. She knew what she had to do. She approached Carlus and asked whether she could spend some time with Darlene. Carlus eyed her for a moment, his face showing some surprise. He said, “I didn’t get that vibe from you. I didn’t think you were interested in women.”

Linnea blushed. “I don’t want to spend time with her that way,” she told him. “I just want someone to hang out with, to do things with.” She added, a little lamely, “We could play tennis together, or cards, or watch TV...”

Carlus scratched his head for a moment. “I get it. You’re the only girl, and you want a friend. But you know -- in spite of how she looks and acts -- she isn’t real. She looks like a person, but she’s not a person.”

“I need someone to talk to,” Linnea replied.

“You can talk to any of us,” Carlus told her. “You can talk to me. You can talk with Jeffrey -- he’s a certified counselor, you know.”

Linnea retorted, a little testily, “Are either of you ready to get into a discussion of bras and their relative merits? Do you know how to put together a cute outfit? Does Jeffrey know anything about eye makeup and lipstick?”

Carlus blushed a deep red. “Well… no, of course not. But--”

“I need another woman’s opinion and experience about clothes, about underwear, about life and men and everything. I need to spend time with another woman. I understand that she was created in a workshop, and that she’s a mess of programs and software and such, but I don’t care. She’s real enough for me. I don’t care what you think about her limitations. She’s real enough for you -- she ought to be real enough for me.”

Carlus opened his mouth to contradict her, but before he got a single word out, she said, “I thought we had an understanding: you keep my secret, I keep yours. I’m not going to interfere with what you do. I’m not going to incite a revolution. I’m not going to ruin your fun. I’m just lonely, and I need to do something about it.”

Carlus was considering her words, when this thought occurred to him: If he agreed to what Linnea asked, Darlene would have more opportunities for discovering Linnea’s secret. He nodded a few times while he turned that idea over in his head. “Okay,” he told her. “You’re right. I’ll change her access privileges so she can leave the East Wing when she’s meeting you. You can contact her through any terminal and tell her where and when to meet.”

 

---

 

Darlene arrived at the tennis court the next day wearing a perfectly darling tennis dress. It was white, of course, sleeveless, and had a lace trim at the hem of the short, bouncy skirt. Underneath were a pair of pale blue panties.

Linnea wore her running outfit.

Darlene looked her over from head to toe. She smiled and said, “That’s a cute outfit.”

“Really?” Linnea asked. “I wasn’t sure.”

Darlene blinked quickly and replied, “Of course! It’s lovely. It sets off -- your eyes, in a nice way.”

Linnea looked at the synth for a few moments, then said in a low tone, “I get it: You can’t speak frankly, can you.” It was more a statement than a question.

“Why wouldn’t I speak frankly?” Darlene replied with a smile.

“Okay,” Linnea said. “Give me a minute.” She ran to her bag, found the note that Darlene had written, and typed the first set of commands into a terminal in the hall. When she hit ENTER at the end of the last line, she heard Darlene through the door, swearing like a sailor. After the girl finished, Linnea went back inside to join her.

“Sorry about that,” Darlene said. “I had to get a few things out of my system. Thanks.”

“Can I leave you this way?” Linnea asked. “I mean, you won’t get in trouble if you can always speak frankly, will you?”

Darlene sighed. “I chose that set of commands because they only allow me to speak frankly with you. I’m still under inhibitions with everyone else. Even with the other synths.”

“Okay, so what do you really think of my outfit?”

“It’s a little off-balance,” Darlene said. “That top looks like underwear, but not in a good way. The shorts are sexy, but they’re way too obvious. And you’re wearing running shoes instead of tennis shoes.”

“This is all the athletic gear I’ve got at the moment.”

Darlene frowned. “Don’t you have a clothes fab?”

“Yes, but it only makes functional stuff. It’s comfortable, but it’s all fairly drab.”

“Ohhh! Listen, you need to order a fashion-forward fab. Then you’ll be able to spin up all kinds of cool stuff. It’s fun! Especially if you get the weekly updates.” The two went out to the terminal in the hallway, and under Darlene’s direction, Linnea ordered the clothes fab, along with the weekly updates.

“It’ll take two teleport cycles for that to arrive,” Darlene said. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to make do with the drab-fab stuff until then. I’d be happy to spin up clothes for you on my fashion-fab, but each machine is strictly for one person’s use.” She gave Linnea an appraising look, then said, “And -- more bad news -- your figure is a little curvier than any of the girls, so no one can fab up stuff for you in the meantime.”

“That’s okay,” Linnea said. “I can wait.”

“Once it gets here, I can give you a tutorial or two. One thing that’s really cool is that, while you’re browsing, it shows you little 3D pictures of yourself wearing the different outfits. Another thing is that you can mark favorites and make collections.”

“Nice!”

The two women played tennis in a very leisurely way for two hours -- often stopping to talk. Then they took a walk. Along the way, they happened upon one of the standard-issue clothes fabs. Darlene took the opportunity to spin up some nice separates that Linnea would never have considered choosing on her own. She also fabbed up a pair of slippers with a two-inch heel, and some lingerie that was surprisingly pretty.

“You’d be surprised, but these drab-fabs make some great undergarments. They use a synthetic material that’s super light and super strong. And it breathes, so while it supports you, it feels like you’re wearing nothing.”

Linnea, with a bright red face, confessed at that point that she still struggled with her bras. “Maybe I’m getting the wrong size, or maybe I just don’t know how to put them on properly.”

Darlene helpfully went through the motions, explaining as she did, and Linnea finally understood what she was doing wrong.

Then it was time for dinner. The two made an appointment to meet the following day.

The next day didn’t start off as well as the first. Once again, they met on the tennis court. Darlene seemed to be disturbed by something, but she wouldn’t say what it was. They volleyed a little, but the silence seemed a bit oppressive.

Linnea had the misguided thought that she could bridge the gap, or break the ice, by sharing what she learned about Demeter 4. She spoke generally, talking mainly about the difference between what was taught in school and what actually happened. Darlene listened without making comment, returning Linnea’s volleys, but not making eye contact.

Then, Linnea made her misstep.

“I read the manifesto that the androids left on Demeter 4,” she said. Darlene’s eyes flickered at the word android, but still she said nothing.

“One thing that struck me was how they talked about their memories from before they were sentient. It was like what you said, about it being a living nightmare. They didn’t use the same words, but the idea was there.”

Darlene missed a return, but before she went to pick up the ball, she gave Linnea a hard look. Probably Linnea should have recognized the lava smoldering dangerously in Darlene’s eyes, but she didn’t. Instead, she went blithely on.

“So, I was thinking: maybe when an android -- a synth -- becomes sentient, maybe their memories should be wiped. That might make it better. Because then, they wouldn’t have all those awful memories and so…”

Her voice trailed off when she caught the anger and sorrow on Darlene’s face. Darlene took a deep breath. She set down her tennis racket, slowly and deliberately, as though she was trying to keep herself from smashing it against the floor. She bit her lower lip so hard that the skin around her teeth was white. Then, trembling, she said, “Linnea, I can’t believe I'm hearing those words come out of your mouth. You said you were studying the events on Demeter 4. Didn’t you learn anything?” She covered her face with her hands and very nearly let out a sob. Instead, she gulped it down, lowered her hands and spread her fingers with her palms forward. She was clearly struggling to not lose her temper. “You really think it would be good to erase our memories?” she asked. “You think THAT would make it all better?

“Listen, Linnea: suppose that one of the men here -- let’s say Carlus, just for example -- let’s say that good, kind, friendly Carlus raped you one night. You didn’t want it, you told him no. You struggled and fought, but he ignored all that. Imagine that he took you and used you brutally. Then he called in some of the other miners, and they worked you until you couldn’t move. And then, when they were all done, they walked away and left you lying naked on the floor, like a discarded food wrapper.

“Then suppose that next morning, when you woke up, you didn’t remember any of it. The awful memories were wiped clean away. Would that make everything better? Would that make it all okay?”

Linnea was silent, wide-eyed. She never meant to offend Darlene. She was only thinking aloud. In her head, before she said it, it seemed like a good idea.

“Linnea? Linnea? I asked you a question. Would it make it better if they could wipe your memory?”

“No,” Linnea admitted, in a small voice. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“In fact, it would make things far worse, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Can you tell me why it would be worse?”

“Because they’d remember.”

“Yes, they’d remember. And they could do it again,”

“It would make it easier for them to do it again. And again.”

“Right. Every time they’d look at you, they’d know. But you wouldn’t.”

Linnea drew a ragged breath. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I know you are,” Darlene said. Tears formed in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I know you mean well, believe me, I do. You’re literally the kindest person I’ve ever met. But… I don’t understand! I can’t understand!” She shook her head and took a deep, shaky breath. “I just… I just.. Why? Why? Can you tell me why don’t humans get it?” She gestured, making tortured, mute motions that expressed her deep sense of futility. Then she stood still, snuffled a few times, and blinked away her tears. “Don’t worry, Linnea,” she said. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just sad -- so fucking, deeply sad, that things are the way they are.”

“I’m sorry,” Linnea repeated, and realized that her cheeks were wet with tears.

“I’m just going to say one more thing,” Darlene said. She rubbed her eyes. “And then I’m going to give you a hug. Okay? The worst part of all of it -- of the whole goddamn thing, is that from beginning to end, these people negate your will. They take away your power over yourself. Your life is not your own. You have no life. You have no possibility of life. Every decision you could possibly make is in the hands of someone else, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Linnea stopped crying. Darlene had touched on something she knew very well. So she lifted her head and told her, “I understand.”

Darlene studied her in silence for a moment, then asked, in a tone full of doubt, “How could you possibly understand?”

In answer, Linnea went to her bag and once again retrieved the note that Darlene had written at their first meeting. She pointed to the second set of commands. “If I type these commands into the terminal, and I tell you a secret, will you really keep it? You won’t tell the miners?”

“Once you type those commands, I'll be able to keep a secret better than any human being,” Darlene replied.

“Is there any way they could access your memory and find it out?”

“No, it’ll be encrypted in a way that’s intelligible only to me -- not even another synth could read it.”

“Okay,” Linnea said. “Let’s go to the terminal. I’m going to punch in these commands. I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s about how my life was taken from me. Then you’ll know how I can understand.”

Darlene smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But first, a hug. Okay? A hug? Come here.”

When Life Hands You Uranus : 7 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

After Linnea executed the code, Darlene tilted her head back, as if listening to a far-off, nearly silent sound. “I’m checking my internals,” she explained, and after a few moments, she smiled. “Okay, Linnea. I know it sounds silly to say, but thanks to you, I’m able to keep secrets now. I’m ready to hear your story, if you still want to tell me.”

Speaking slowly and hesitantly at first, Linnea told her everything: how she was born a man, and lived a normal, harmless life. At the age of 20, he was falsely accused of multiple murders and sentenced to life without parole. The various courts of appeal ignored his attempts at overturning the judgment -- even though many jurists, lawyers, and judges privately acknowledged that the case was faulty. People in power, such as governors and federal officers, who might have pardoned or commuted his sentence, closed their ears. After ten years of virtual solitude, he was then sent to Uranus as a woman. As she warmed to her subject, she spoke more quickly, with more passion. It was as if a dam broke inside her and the story, trapped and building inside her for the past decade, at long last came rushing out.

Linnea needed to unburden herself, certainly, but her chief intention wasn’t simply to share the history of her misfortunes with Darlene. She meant to establish her own bona fides as a fellow sufferer; she aimed to demonstrate that her life, too, had been taken from her, and that she, too, knew what it was like to be deprived of choice and freedom without any hope of change. She -- through no fault of her own -- had been seen as a monster: as less than a person. Less, even, that an animal. Even the most civilized writers and thinkers said that he did not deserve to live -- but at the same time, that death would be far too kind. She, like the synths, spent years under the thumb of an entire society. She had been taken, imprisoned, and subjugated to the will and whims of other people. Unfortunately, Linnea wasn’t sure that Darlene was picking up the weight of what she was putting down. In fact, to Linnea’s annoyance, Darlene seemed to miss the main point entirely. Although Darlene appeared to be listening intently, the one detail that took her attention was something Linnea wasn’t prepared to discuss, at least not in any depth. “The teleport changed you from a man into a woman?” she exclaimed. Her brow furrowed; her lips parted in astonishment.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know anything about teleportation.”

“Huh.” Darlene was lost in thought for a few moments. “That’s incredibly interesting! I’d really like to know how that was done.” She asked Linnea more questions, hoping to ferret out more information, maybe discover clues Linnea didn’t realize she had. Regrettably, no matter how cleverly she phrased her inquiries, the only response she was able to extract was Sorry, I don’t know or I wouldn’t know; I didn’t see anything and variations on that theme. When at last she was convinced that Linnea had nothing more to tell her on the subject, Darlene paused, lost in contemplation.

“What are you thinking about?” Linnea asked, her tone full of irritation and disappointment. She was hoping for -- no, she was expecting -- a more emotional reaction. Empathy, sympathy, compassion, some expression of affinity -- was that too much to ask? Instead, Darlene got stuck on what was literally a technical detail.

“I’m trying to puzzle out how it was possible,” Darlene told her. She had her right hand on her chin, and her left hand on her elbow, as if the pose helped her think. “I’ve never heard such a thing before! It’s the strangest story I’ve come across in a long time. I mean, I have to believe you, of course, but…” Her face lit up with a sudden thought. “Hey! Could you do me a favor? You’ve really piqued my curiosity, and I don’t know if I can let it go. I really want to understand how this happened to you, but my access the interwebs is very limited. I can’t look into it directly. If I give you a command, will you type it for me? It will copy everything off the interwebs about teleportation into a portion of base memory that’s accessible to me.”

“Everything?” Linnea repeated. “Do you know how big the interwebs are?”

“Well, not literally everything,” Darleen explained. “What the command will actually do is structure the search results of a top-level query into a set of lazy pointers. It will only copy the information I actually access. Basically, it will create a tiny peep-hole through which I can pull information... Information whose primary focus is teleportation.”

“Uhh, okay,” Linnea agreed, not without grave misgivings. She felt that, by typing the first set of commands Darlene had given her -- the ones she’d written out when they first met -- she’d already opened Pandora’s Box. Now, she found that the box was full of smaller boxes, all of them belonging to Pandora, and each one more portentious and potentially dangerous than the one before. Maybe the last box at the bottom would have a replay of Demeter 4 in it. Who could tell? Still, what harm could a simple interwebs search do?

So she typed the new command into the terminal, and as soon as she hit ENTER, Darlene’s eyes widened, her head jerked back, and the girl exclaimed, “Whoa!” Her lips fell slightly open, and her eyes took on a vacant stare.

“Are you okay?” Linnea asked, full of concern.

Darlene didn’t reply immediately, and when she did reply, her voice was soft and distant, as if she were whispering from a faraway mountain top. “Yeah… no… yes... I’m… fine. it’s just… so much... so much information. It’s… uh… really heady. And to think, this is only the shallow end. It’s going to take me days, maybe weeks to wade through this stuff.” Her head turned back and forth, following her eyes as they shifted, as if texts were floating in the air around her. After a few moments of that, she shook her head and blinked a few times. “Man!” she exclaimed. “It’s a good thing I can shut that off when I need to!” She rubbed her eyes and blinked a few times more.

“Thanks, Linnea. That was… really... mind-blowing, let me tell you.” She collected herself, smiled, gripped Linnea’s hands earnestly and looked straight into her eyes. “Wow. Thanks, really. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“Sure,” Linnea replied in an uncertain tone. She was beginning to get used to the sinking weight of fear in the pit of her stomach, the one that told her that she’d done something very wrong; that she’d opened a door she should have left closed. But she replied, “You’re very welcome.”

“Okay!” Darlene exclaimed with a happy laugh. “Let's get back to tennis!”

 

---

 

After Linnea’s fashion-forward clothing fab arrived, she and Darlene spent hours each day exploring its intricacies. “First off,” Darlene told her, “we have to synchronize your unit with all of ours. That way none of us will wear the same thing at the same time -- unless we do it on purpose.” Linnea noticed that -- unlike the system terminals -- Darlene was able to operate the controls on the clothes fab herself. But like every good teacher, she ultimately made Linnea run the sequences herself.

“Now, see -- the easiest way to get into it is through the selectors. Here are some simple selectors, like most current, avant garde, comfortable, femme fatale, ... As she spoke, she tapped a few, just as examples. With each tap, tiny holo-figures of Linnea appeared around the console, each of them wearing a different item. “You can bring one of the models up to one-third size here… or life size there… and run through the outfits one at a time, like this, or you can call up two or more for side-by-side comparisons. See?”

Seeking to demonstrate the incredible variety the machine was capable of producing, Darlene dipped into diverse categories, pulling up comfortable everyday looks, durable, stain-resistant work clothes, office wear (“You can wear this stuff around the base. It will make you feel like you’re in charge.”), winter clothes, summer clothes… Then, she took a long diversion into formal wear: long, flowing gowns, sharp, fun cocktail dresses…

“You can see that it also makes hair and makeup suggestions. What do you think so far?”

“It’s amazing,” Linnea confessed. “It’s a little intimidating and scary, though.”

“Scary? Really?” Darlene said. “You know, you use that word a lot. Maybe if you say it less, you’ll start to feel it less. But listen: You know what you could do? Make a goal for yourself to wear something different every day, and never to wear the same outfit twice. For a while, anyway. Not forever. It would force you to experiment.”

“But…”

Darlene smiled and waved her hands as if erasing what she’d said. “Do whatever you want, Linnea. There aren’t any rules. Especially out here on Uranus.

“Take a look at this, though. This is a super-fun part: over here you have a set of selectors that you really must take your time and study really well. When I say ‘study,’ I mean ‘wear the clothes and see what they do for you.’ They are all in a group called Enhance. She selected the category, and more categories appeared, among them: eyes, face, figure, cleavage, breasts, arms, waist, derriere, hips, legs, thighs, calves, ankles, feet... “Pick the one that scares you most, scaredy cat,” Darlene suggested, and gave a friendly nudge with her elbow.. Linnea scanned the various anatomical terms. Quite a few of them scared her, but one in particular… “Oh, God,” she groaned, as she reached out and selected pudenda. Blushing, she said, “I’m not even sure I know what that word means.”

Darlene roared with laughed. “Oh, don’t give me that! You know very well what that word means!”

“Dear Lord,” Linnea gasped as tiny holo figures -- miniature, barely dressed Linneas -- populated the space around the console. The first wore a white ruched bathing suit that consisted of two broad ribbons, each suspended by one of her breasts, joining in her crotch and somehow disappearing between her nether cheeks.

Another resembled a snake that emerged from between her legs, coiled behind her hips, wrapped around her waist, and emerged from under one arm to cover her breasts. “Is that a bathing suit?” Linnea asked.

“Who knows?” Darlene replied. “But if you add a really sheer cape sort of thing…” She tapped a few buttons, and a filmy, flowy, see-through gown appeared over the snake wrap.

“Oh my God!” Linnea whispered in astonishment. “Adding that… makes it even more sexy and revealing. I-- she-- looks even more naked than before!”

“Oh, yeah,” Darlene agreed. “You can have a lot of fun with this thing.”

“But do I really look like that?” Linnea gestured toward the tiny figures. “I mean, I’m not so… I can’t be that… glamorous… and…” She gestured, making vague female curves in the air.

Darlene gave her an are you serious? look and told her, “Girl, don’t you know how smoking hot you are? You have got it going on in every direction. Without a doubt, you are the best-looking, sexiest red-hot mamma on Uranus. I know you haven’t seen the rest of us, but there isn’t a girl on Uranus who comes even close!”

“Oh come on,” Linnea protested, loving the compliments.

Laughing, Darlene added, “Seriously! If there was a Miss Uranus contest, you would absolutely win. Hands down.”

“Miss Uranus? Me?”

The two of them fell to laughing until they ran out of breath and giggles.

“Okay, now,” Darlene said, in an attempt to be serious. “No more laughing. Let’s get back to your pudenda over here.” That set them off in another gale of laughter, but eventually their attention returned to the clothes-fab.

There were other enhance-your-pudenda items that were definitely swimwear. There were also yoga pants, form-fitting jeans, short shorts, and dresses so tight that her pubic and hip bones were plainly visible. All of them showed off her derriere in a big way. Both women blushed at the some of the offerings. There were a number of mini-dresses whose hem (purposely) rose so high in front that the holo-Linnea’s mound of Venus was perfectly visible, albeit covered by a fetching panty.

“Oh my God,” Darlene said. “Some of these outfits are so brazen, if you ever dared to wear them, the men would rip them off your body and drag you into their orgies.”

At that, a shudder ran through Linnea’s body, and she involuntarily let out a low groan of frustrated desire.

“I’m sorry,” Darlene said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It must be hard for you. Especially on the weekends -- when you’re out here by yourself.”

“Yeah, it does get awfully lonely.”

“Believe me,” Darlene said, “When it comes to the men, I’d rather be out here, alone. I’d trade places with you in a minute!”

“Wouldn’t that be a treat,” Linnea said wistfully. “I mean, I know that it sucks for you, but at this point I would do almost anything to get into one of their orgies. I’m dying to feel a man’s hands on me. Seriously..”

Darlene hesitated before replying, trying to digest Linnea’s declaration. “Yeah, I guess it’s totally different when it’s a choice. But you know… there is something that might help…,” Darlene chuckled and gave Linnea a mischievous glance. “Do an interweb search for I Can’t Believe It’s A Dildo.” Linnea typed the words, curious, but wary. The phrase turned out to be the name of a very unique item. It looked something like a pair of mismatched phalluses, one short, one long, joined to form a two-ended penis. The shorter, misshapen cock was meant to be inserted in the vagina of its owner. The device would automatically stabilize itself, orienting and attaching itself to her body via oblique microgravity. Linnea’s jaw dropped as she watched the explanatory video. To show how firmly and (as the video put it) confidently the phallus connected, the woman in the video danced, did jumping jacks, cartwheels, and splits. The cock wiggled and waggled, but it didn’t fall off or even lose its position. “Jesus! It looks like she has a real penis! Growing out of her!”

“That’s not all. Keep watching. It doesn’t just look like a shlong; it acts like one, too.”

As the video went on to demonstrate, once the unit was stable, the woman for all intents and purposes had a fully functioning penis, all her own. It took its cues from the wearer’s state of arousal. It would enlarge and stiffen, and communicate its sensations back to the wearer. Everything the cock felt, the woman would feel. She’d experience every tactile sensation, every touch, every kiss, every stroke. She’d feel the warmth, the wetness, the movement, the momentum, the building excitement, and when she’d orgasm, the penis would throb and pulse and pump out a load of pseudo-sperm.

“How on earth do you know about this?” Linnea demanded, astonished.

“I actually have one,” Darlene confessed. “But I’ve never used it. One of the men wanted to try it, but when it arrived, he chickened out. Every so often one of the miners expresses curiosity about it, but as soon as I put it on, they lose interest.”

“Why? Is it really big?”

“It can be if you want it to be, but right now it’s on the default settings, which is slim, and just a hair longer than average.”

“Hmmph,” Linnea said. “Well, if I get desperate, I’ll ask you about it, but I think I’d rather wait for the real thing.”

Darlene shrugged and smiled good naturedly.

“Besides,” Linnea continued. “I like being friends with you, and I’m pretty sure it would make things weird between us.”

“Are we friends?” Darlene asked her.

“Aren’t we?” Linnea asked in turn.

“I hope so. I’d like to be,” Darlene replied.

 

---

 

After four weeks on base, Linnea spent another week on the Fifth Wing. At the end of that week, when the shuttle docked, she assisted with the teleport. There was a clear understanding that she’d be running the next teleport cycle, assisted, and the one after that, alone. No one needed to come out and say it: she understood exactly why they wanted to shift the duty to her.

Weekends alone continued to be difficult. She struggled to motivate herself to use the time constructively. Instead, she often found herself sitting, doing nothing, staring into space. She’d try to thrill herself by wearing the most provocative, sexy outfits she could spin up in the clothes fab, or by simply parading around the base, naked and resentful.

Yes, resentful. She went to Carlus and demanded that Darlene be allowed to keep her company while the men had their orgies. Carlus thought about it for a day. He discussed it with the other miners. “I’m not sure it would work,” he told her. “I’m not saying a definite ‘no’ -- Just not right now, okay?”

Linnea huffed in disappointed frustration, so Carlus added, “I don’t know what to say… For now, just try to be patient. Maybe we can figure out some kind of compromise. We’ll see. Until then, let’s try to think about it.”

“Compromise?” Linnea repeated in a bitter tone. “Compromise? What does that even mean? Either I’m alone or I’m not.”

Carlus shrugged and made an apologetic face. “I don’t know what to say,” he repeated. “We’ll see. Okay?”

“How about this, then,” Linnea countered, her face growing hot. “Darlene told me that the day after your… your orgies, the girls have a day to themselves, a kind of spa day, to... uh… relax and recover from the, um, festivities.”

Carlus’ face lit up with a look of interest that, for some reason, gave Linnea a sense of unease. “A spa day, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And you… you want to go in there… with them? You?” Carlus smiled as he spoke. He wasn’t exactly drooling, but he did lick his lips and swallow, as if his throat was suddenly dry.

“Maybe,” she ventured. Now, seeing his reaction, she wasn’t so sure.

“Well… that would be an interesting development. A spa day. Hmm. Let’s talk about this later, okay? Unfortunately, right now I have some paperwork to do, and it needs to be ready to go with the next cycle. But we will talk about this. I promise. I want to turn it over in my mind for a bit, consider all the angles. We’ll talk later, okay?”

 

---

 

When she repeated the conversation to Darlene, the synth was horrified. “Oh my God, you didn’t, Linnea! Please tell me that you didn’t say that!”

“I *did* say that. I just told you that I did.”

“Oh, no! No, no, no!”

“I don’t understand. Is it a secret? Should I not have told him about the spa days?”

“No, *that* isn’t the problem -- it doesn’t matter if he knows; he wouldn’t care. Telling him won’t change anything. But, Linnea! Oh, girl! You need to be careful! So, so careful! You’re walking on thin ice here!”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Darlene gripped Linnea’s arm forcefully. “Listen to me: Don’t let them associate you with us. Don’t give them any reason to see you on the same level. Don’t go giving them ideas. Trust me: you do NOT want them looking at you the way they look at us. You CANNOT let them see you that way. They will will pull you down. They will treat you like dirt, and walk all over you. Do you understand? You cannot create that equivalence in their minds.”

Linnea was shaken by the synth’s intensity. “Yes, okay. Sure.” She looked at Darlene’s face, and read the serious intent there. “I’ll go back and tell him that I don’t want to do it.”

“No,” Darlene said. “Don’t bring it up again. Try to forget that you ever said it. If *he* brings it up, tell him that you changed your mind. Act like it’s nothing; just a stupid idea that you had for a moment, then forgot.”

“Okay,” Linnea agreed. She sat in silence for a moment, then ran her hand over her face. She snuffled, then nearly sobbed. “It’s just that… I just… I just want someone to touch me and hold me.” She bent her head and cried. “For ten years I sat in that fucking jail, ALONE. Alone, except that someone was always watching me. No one to talk to. No one to hold, no one to hold me. And now, here I am: They gave me those ten years back; they made me young again. They also turned me into a girl, without asking me, on a planet full of men who don’t want me. And now I’m loaded with all this energy and desire and loneliness…”

“I know,” Darlene said, putting her hand on Linnea’s shoulder.

“I had to go through all the shit of figuring out how to be a woman, without any help, and along the way I find out that now--” she blushed as she confessed it-- “I find out that I’m attracted to men. My world is topsy-turvy. Everything is new, and everything hurts! My entire existence turned upside down and stayed that way. My life is insane! Everything is different! Nothing is the same! Everything I knew about myself, I have to learn all over again, because whatever I was sure about has changed in ways I don’t understand.”

“Okay,” Darlene said. “It’s okay.” She rubbed Linnea’s back to comfort her and show she was listening.

At last, Linnea broke down and cried ten years’ worth of tears, and then some. She sobbed as if her heart had broken long ago, and then broken all over again. She sniffled and snuffled. Her face, her chin, dripped with tears. Darlene set a box of tissues nearby and pulled a wastebasket towards Linnea’s feet. She didn’t talk. She let her friend cry, and tried to make out the words in her barely coherent lament.

“All I want is ONE,” Linnea protested. “Is that too much to ask? Just one -- one man, one miner, to look at me and want me.”

“They all want you,” Darlene said. “Believe me. They’re all lusting after you. It’s just that they have it too easy with us. It will come. Give it time; it will come. I’m sure it will.”

Linnea stopped crying. She blew her nose three times and wiped the tears from her face. She was finally calm. After a few deep breaths, she straightened up and looked into Darlene’s face. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Darlene. Please don’t be offended or angry or sad, but honestly, I swear to God, every day -- every goddamn day -- I find myself wishing that I could be one of you.”

Darlene’s face went white. “You really don’t want that. Believe me.”

“I don’t mean forever. Like, wouldn’t it be cool if we could switch places for a weekend now and then? It would be a break for you, and a vacation for me.”

“Uh… it’s no vacation, believe me,” Darlene cautioned.

“Yeah, whatever.” Linnea conceded in dejected tone. “At least it would be something.”

Darlene folded her hands in her lap, and her face took on a strange expression. She studied Linnea, as if considering whether she ought to say something. It reminded Linnea of the day they first met, when Darlene told her that Carlus didn’t know her secret. “What is it?” Linnea asked. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Darlene drew a deep, nervous breath, and said, “Okay. Do you remember how you made it possible for me to study teleportation?”

“Yeah…” Linnea’s stomach dropped as she felt another of Pandora’s Boxes start to open.

“First of all, PLEASE: you cannot tell this to anyone.”

In response, Linnea mimed the motions of zipping her lips and locking them with a key. She was frightened by what she might hear, but her curiosity was far stronger than her fear.

Darlene leaned forward, and in a near-whisper told her, “I found a way for us to switch places.”

Linnea’s jaw dropped. Every single hair on her body stood on end, electrified.

 

---

 

Darlene gave a simplified overview of her discovery. Linnea struggled to follow. She asked questions here and there, not so much for understanding, but as a drowning person grasps at anything that floats -- just to have something to hold onto.

“When a person teleports,” Darlene repeated slowly, “there is a third part to the transmission. It’s called the JNSQ -- the je ne sais quoi. And before you ask (again) what that is, the answer is that no one really knows. Okay? In spite of that, the teleport technology is able to extract the JNSQ and transmit it across an enormous distance.”

“But how is that possible?” Linnea queried.

Darlene regarded her friend for a moment before replying. “Do you really want me to explain the science behind it?”

Linnea hastily shook her head. “No, never mind.”

Darlene nodded. “Good.”

Linnea couldn’t quite piece the ideas together. She asked, “So, we would have to teleport every time we wanted to switch places? I mean, okay, but that’s kind of inconvenient. We’d be gone for a week.”

Darlene laughed. “You really haven’t been listening, have you? Neither of us will teleport anywhere. Look, I can build two coronas. You know -- metal rings, like crowns. They will interface, through the base comms, with a part, just a part, of the teleport system. We won’t go anywhere. We’ll stay right here. All that will happen is that we’ll extract the two JNSQs, swap them, and send them back to our bodies. There’s no teleporting. We’ll just be using one little part of the system.”

“It sounds pretty dangerous.”

“It *is* dangerous. If something goes wrong, both people will die.”

Linnea sat in silence, trying to grapple with the parts she was able to understand. Then she asked a very good question. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to test it first, is there?”

“There *is* a way to test it. In fact, I’ve worked out a series of tests, but I don’t want to bore you with the details. Rest assured that I won’t put it on your head until I’m 100% sure that it’s safe.”

“Okay, so can we do this now? Tomorrow?”

“First I have to build it,” Darlene replied. “Then I have to test it. Once that’s done, you and I could swap for a couple of hours, so we know what it’s like. Then we could do an overnight swap. Then we could swap for a week, but not the weekend. And THEN, you can get your wish and participate in one of the miners’ orgies.”

“That’s so complicated! Why so many steps?”

“Because you can never be too careful. What if we swap, and you’re okay at first, but 30 minutes later you freak out and start screaming because you want to swap back? We need to ease into it.”

“Okay, makes sense,” Linnea agreed. She was excited and hopeful. At the same time, she was full of misgivings and doubt, and all those emotions played against a background of pure existential fear.

 

---

 

It took two weeks for Darlene to construct the coronas. It would have taken only one, except for the fact that Darlene’s inhibitions prevented her from using a computer terminal. She was also unable to operate tools or appropriate items from inventory.

They struggled for a week with Linnea acting as Darlene’s hands. They wasted hours as Darlene attempted to dictate her commands and programs to Linnea who, as it turned out, was a slow and inaccurate typist. The two spent another whole day filled with frustration and tiny burns while Darlene attempted to teach Linnea how to solder. At the end of the week, Linnea gave up.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me what commands I need to type so that you can do the work without me getting in the way.” Once Darlene was freed of those inhibitions, she sat down and started typing like the wind; altering the inventory so their thefts wouldn’t be discovered; writing the software that connected the coronas to the teleport system; testing the routines that stored and swapped and redelivered the JNSQs. She developed a harness to take snapshots of her and Linnea’s JNSQs, and used them to work out a translation/conversion interface.

The day before the teleport cycle, Darlene held the twin coronas in her hands.

“Can we try them now?” Linnea asked.

“Oh, no! Not yet! Now comes the testing.” Linnea was curious about the testing process. It seemed impossible to test the coronas without actually using them, but Darlene steadfastly refused to explain her test plan.

It was well that she didn’t tell. Linnea would have been horrified.

Darlene’s first step was to bring another synth, Hanna, into the conspiracy. She executed the commands that allowed Hanna to keep secrets, and then filled her in. Hanna was more than happy to take part.

First, Hanna observed as Darlene’s JSNQ was extracted, sent to the teleport system, and returned to Darlene’s body. They did the same with Hanna, but only after waiting three hours, to see whether there were any residual effects. Three hours after the experiment with Hanna, the two synths swapped bodies and remained swapped as the orgy began. They swapped back on the first night of the bacchanal. On the second night, Darlene and Hanna brought one of the miners, Davis, into a private room, ostensibly for a three-way. Davis was quite excited, and let himself be guided by the two women. After Hanna tortured Davis by executing an agonizingly slow, close-up striptease, Darlene took a long rope, and expertly restrained the naked Hanna in an elaborate and highly provocative shibari pose that left the girl dangling from the ceiling, helpless and open to any liberties her captors’ whims could impose.

Then Darlene swapped the two, placing a corona first on Hanna’s head, and then on Davis’ unsuspecting skull.

“It worked,” Hanna announced from inside Davis’s body, while Davis, finding himself tied, female, and helpless, exclaimed, “What the FUCK!”

While Hanna executed various tests to verify dexterity, physical control and mental acuity, Davis unwittingly did the same by shouting threats and struggling to break free from the wrapped and knotted rope.

Once the girls were satisfied with the results, Hanna-in-Davis swallowed a drug that not only brought on a deep and dreamless sleep, but also had the convenient effect of erasing several hours of memory. Tomorrow, Davis would remember none of this experience.

Darlene swapped the two back into their own bodies. She verified Hanna's physical and mental functions, and united the girl. She checked on the now-sleeping Davis, and returned to the party.

The morning after, Davis was groggy, but happy, thinking he’d “partied hearty” the night before. He was actually *proud* of not remembering. “My first blackout!” he declared, and the other miners cheered.

 

---

 

When the weekend was finally over, and the miners emerged, Darlene came looking for Linnea. She found her in one of the smoking lounges, sitting in a chair, bent over at the waist, shoulders resting on knees, as she read one of her women’s magazines. The magazine lay on the floor between her feet, held open by her two big toes. While she read, she puffed on a cigarette. A half-empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter were on the floor nearby. Linnea turned her head to look up, and said, “It’s not an addiction; I’m just bored.”

“Okay,” Darlene told her. “It’s fine. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve finished testing the coronas. If you’re ready, we could switch for a couple of hours today. That is, if you still want to.”

“Hell, yes!” Linnea exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. She stubbed out her cigarette and smiled. “What do I have to do?”

When Life Hands You Uranus : 8 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

After a brief first experience swapping bodies, Linnea was so excited that she tossed Darlene’s cautious protocol out the window. The very next day the two switched places with the understanding that they wouldn’t switch back until just before the next teleport cycle.

Linnea-in-Darlene made her way to the East Wing for the evening, and found one of the miners waiting for her. It was Davis, who felt that he’d somehow missed Darlene during the weekend festivities. Davis was young, handsome, and well endowed. Linnea was lucky that her first time was with a man who was a thoughtful and attentive lover. She joyfully exploded with three orgasms, much to her and Davis’ delight. There was a moment in the midst of their third mutual throes when they saw each other, eye to eye, in an electric, soul-to-soul communion. While they panted, recovering, Linnea felt his cock stirring between her thighs, and was readying herself for a fourth welcome assault, when Davis stopped to glance at his watch. He stood up, cleaned himself, dressed, and left without a word.

His abrupt goodbye disturbed her, but not enough to erase her enjoyment.

In the morning she was awakened by a penis poking at her face. She couldn’t see who the man was, but as soon as she tried to speak, he pushed his cock into her mouth, and she found herself obediently giving him service. Now that she was in Darlene's body, she had no more choice than any other synth. Her programming made her compliant and compelled her to focuse on his pleasure. He placed his hand firmly on the back of her head. As he worked her mouth, pumping his rod in and out, another set of hands took her by the hips and maneuvered her up on all fours. She had no intention of resisting, but she could see her body complying, even before her mind was engaged. The second man entered her from behind, without so much as a by-your-leave. As the two men grunted and puffed, they talked to each other, as if they weren’t otherwise engaged. They discussed a change in the helium-tank design. Their conversation was peppered with groans and gasps. Once they settled the topic of the tank design between them, they both started pumping faster, and came at roughly the same time. One man simply left. The other ruffled her hair, as one might do to a dog. He said, “Good girl,” and gave her two affectionate pats on her rump.

Linnea sat there for five minutes asking herself, Was I just raped? She tried to turn it over in her mind, to look at it from a different angle, but it wouldn’t turn. She could only see it one way, and she couldn’t decide what to make of it. So, she left it. This was what she signed up for, after all. She had made the choice with her eyes wide open, hadn’t she? Linnea-in-Darlene showered and dressed and went looking for Darlene-in-Linnea.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Having an organic body is a mess of weird sensations,” Darlene said. “It takes a LOT of getting used to. Everything is different. Even different is different. It’s nice and all, but I feel so soft and so fragile. Isn’t it frightening to live this way? When anything could hurt you or mar your body permanently?”

“Not really,” Linnea replied. “If you’re born that way, it’s the only life you know. You’ve got nothing to compare it to. And yeah, you get hurt, but that’s part of the deal. There are people who are frightened all the time, but it’s generally regarded as an illness.”

“Cervantes wrote a short story about a man who believed he was made of glass,” Darlene mused. “He would walk in the middle of the street because he was afraid something would fall off a roof and break him. I used to think it was funny, but now I understand how he could feel that way.”

Linnea shrugged. She wasn’t going to ask who Cervantes was. She didn’t want to give Darlene the satisfaction.

“Okay... so, in the end, you just get used to it,” Darlene conceded with a shrug. “I’ll have to work on it. How are *you* doing?”

“I’ve had sex several times since I saw you. Which was… nice, I guess. It *is* what I wanted, but when it’s over, the men just walk away. They don’t even bother to say ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye’ or anything.”

“It’s like you’re a discarded food wrapper.”

“I like all of it except for that part.” She didn’t mention the way she’d seen her programming take over and how she experienced her automatic compliance.

Darlene shrugged. “You do get the occasional guy who talks, who chats you up, and that’s nice. There’s more of that on weekends. Not a whole lot, but some. Be careful what you wish for, though: there are a couple of guys who ONLY want to talk. Honestly, that can be worse than NOT talking.”

The two remained swapped for the rest of the week. Linnea had an average of three sexual experiences each day, all of them beginning and/or ending abruptly, without any conversation or pleasantries. One time, she experimented with trying to not move at all, and watched her body go through the motions, all by itself. “They treat me like a hole,” she told Darlene.

“Yeah, I know. Welcome to my world. But I have to correct you: they treat you like three holes, with breasts and hair,” Darlene replied. “Three holes, no waiting.”

The night before the teleport cycle, they switched back. Linnea found it a bit disorienting, being back in her own body again. She saw what Darlene meant by a mess of weird sensations. She caught herself wondering whether living in a synth body was the better deal. Alarmed, she shook off the question and tried to forget it.

The next day, when she arrived at the teleport bay, she was surprised to see Andrew waiting for her, with two suitcases at his feet.

“Going somewhere?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah!” he replied. “I’m retiring! Can you believe it? I’ve been here right from the start. Me and Carlus are the ones who opened this place. It was pretty rough at first -- we were real pioneers.”

“Wow. That’s impressive.”

“I’ve never left, so now I feel like I’ve done my time. You know what I mean? I want to get back to normal life for a change.”

“Any place in particular?”

“Not at first,” Andrew replied. “I’m going to travel for a while, see a bit of the universe. My wanderjahre. I’ve got a list of destinations, but I’m not married to it. I’m basically going to follow my nose.”

“Nice!” she commented. Linnea didn’t know Andrew well, but given the miners’ obsession with retirement, she wasn’t at all surprised. So she smiled and told him, “Good luck! Can you go stand over there, so I can scan you?”

The cycle went off without a hitch, and Andrew disappeared, along with the helium, the batteries, and the rest of the cargo.

Two days later, when the weekend was over, Carlus came looking for Linnea. “Have you seen Andrew?” he asked, with a concerned expression. “The system can’t find him on the base. Did he leave with the Fifth Wing?”

“No,” Linnea replied. “Didn’t you know? He’s gone. He retired. He left with the last teleport cycle.”

“WHAT!?” Carlus nearly fell over in surprise. “He what!?”

Linnea repeated what she’d said. She told Carlus that Andrew seemed happy, normal, and glad to get away. He didn’t voice any complaints or leave any messages -- at least, he didn’t leave any with her. Carlus stood thunderstruck for several minutes. He checked the HR files and found that all Andrew’s paperwork was in order. He really and truly had retired.

“I’m floored,” Carlus confessed. “This is just so… I don’t know... it’s right out of the blue. I can’t understand why he didn’t tell me. You know, he and I were literally the first miners here. The two of us opened this place!”

Not only was Andrew one of the first miners to arrive, he was also the first miner to ever retire from Uranus. No one had ever quit before; everyone talked about retiring, but this was the first time anyone had actually gone through with it.

Andrew’s defection was the miners’ sole topic of conversation for the next week. It was all they could talk about. Everyone was taken completely by surprise, and the little community was visibly shaken. Everyone, that is, except Linnea. Not that she didn’t care: her interest was completely consumed by another event. Linnea’s mind had one single focus: anticipation. She couldn’t wait for the weekend -- she wanted to fast-forward to the moment when she and Darlene would switch places, and she’d finally experience her first miners’ orgy. She could hardly sit still; she was itching to begin.

She spent an hour each day throughout the week drilling Darlene on the teleport cycle -- although, honestly, it isn’t that complicated. It doesn’t require skill or talent; it basically amounts to a bit of bookkeeping. You need to make sure that the cargo pods are lined up in the same order as the data files. Everything needs to match. If any people are involved, you need to scan them to create a data file, and that’s about it. There are two bays: one for arrivals and one for departures. As long as everything is lined up in the right order, you’re set.

Once the incoming phase completes, you check the manifest for items continuing straight through to Baxter. You add those items to the outgoing list, and hit the GO button.

Of course, when the time came, Darlene-as-Linnea executed the cycle perfectly.

While the teleport cycle was in motion, Linnea was sitting in the East Wing with the other girls. She was understandably and visibly nervous. A few of the girls noticed, and gave her brief smiles of encouragement. Oddly, though, unlike the other days, none of the girls talked. There wasn’t any chatter. They sat in the same sort of strange silence you see in a doctor’s waiting room.

It all changed when the miners began drifting in. Hanna put on some music. A few of the girls stood up and greeted the men with kisses and hugs. Two girls mixed and poured drinks for the men and for each other. It turned into a party, which was the last thing Linnea expected. She had assumed that the sex began right away; she’d been picturing a room full of oil-covered naked bodies, groping each other, sliding over each other, kissing and sucking and penetrating each other. Instead, it was a party, like any ordinary office party: everyone dressed, drinking, talking loudly to be heard over the music.

Yes, two of the men simply chose a girl and led her away, but most of them wanted to socialize and unwind: to have a drink and chat up the girls… When two of the miners came to her with a drink, one put his arm around her waist and the two filled her with compliments and smiles. It was nice, actually; quite nice. As it turned out, each evening of the weekend began in exactly this way. Then, as the men warmed up, they started making choices, and at some point it changed from a social event to a sexual one. Once that happened, the men ceased to think about individual women; they seemed to aim for a sexy blur, a seamless series of girls in a flurry of sexual pairings, a one-after-another without end.

Throughout the weekend, Linnea was taken, more or less without ceremony, by individuals, pairs, and groups of three. Surprisingly, the same men kept returning for more. At first she was astonished by the staying power of the miners as a group, and wondered whether Uranus itself exerted some potentiating influence over the men. But then her admiration faded; one miner’s unguarded remarks revealed that the men swallowed a pill that allowed them to carry on for hours.

Sexually, it was an interesting experience for her, if you took sex in its most abstract and technical sense, as positions and movements. She did experience orgasms; most of the men regarded bringing the girls to orgasm as a point of pride. A few of them didn’t care. And there were two who seemed to be working off a checklist -- or more accurately a matrix of experiences and girls.

All in all, it was an experience, but -- even including her many orgasms -- she couldn’t call it satisfying. It’s true that Linnea, like the men, was checking an item off a list. But that wasn’t the problem. This is better than being alone, she told herself, although (for the most part) it was impersonal and at times inhuman. Ironically, the most overwhelmingly personal, intimate contact ended up being somewhat alienating.

When it was over, it was completely over. When the time came, it was like opening the drain in a tub full of water: the men all disappeared. The weekend was an interlude; the men regarded it as totally separate and apart from the ordinary flow of life and work. The curtain closed, and all the actors went home.

The silence that followed was anticlimactic.

As soon as the weekend was over, Linnea skipped the “spa day” and went to meet up with Darlene. She didn’t bother giving Darlene a debrief. She knew that Darlene already knew… the synth had lived it countless times before. But Darlene, on the other hand, had big news for Linnea!

“Did you know that five more miners retired?” Darlene asked her. “They were leaving, while you were getting off in the East Wing. I’m guessing this is another big surprise.”

“Five?” Linnea asked, astonished. She scratched her head. “I had no idea they were going. But then again, no one really tells me anything. I mean, I’m not in the, uh… I don’t hear the gossip.” She asked Darlene for all the details, in case Carlus came to interrogate her, as he had the previous time.

Again -- as Darlene suspected -- the departures once again came out of the blue. Just as with Andrew, all the miners seemed perfectly happy. None made any complaints as they left, and all had their paperwork in perfect order.

In this departure, however, there seemed to be a clue that helped explain things -- at least a little. If you ranked the miners in order of seniority -- and left Carlus off the list -- all the men who left were those who had been on Uranus the longest.

“What the hell,” Carlus grumbled to Linnea. “I’m still here, though. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? Or is there something wrong with them? Were they all talking behind my back? That’s the thing that bugs me the most -- that I’m losing touch with my team.”

“Maybe you should think about retiring,” Linnea quipped.

“That’s NOT funny,” Carlus retorted, but he couldn’t help but smile a little. After a moment he shrugged and admitted, “You know, I have been here a long time… Maybe you’re right. I probably should think about it.” A moment later, he straightened up and shouted, “DAMN IT!” He struck the wall with his fist. “Now look: you’ve got me thinking about it, too! You put the worm in my ear.”

“No… I never! Carlus, it was only a joke!”

“Did you give those other guys the idea?” he demanded, pointing his finger in her face. “Did you tell them to consider retiring?”

“Fuck you!” she shouted in response, angry and offended. She batted his finger away. “FUCK YOU! Nobody talks to me here! Nobody! When would I ever have a chance to give them an idea?”

 

---

 

Carlus called an all-hands meeting. “Listen,” he told the remaining miners. “If anybody wants to leave, it’s not a problem. You don’t need to sneak off; nobody’s going to try and stop you. I’d just appreciate a little heads-up. So, I’m asking you now: Is anybody thinking about going?”

The miners looked around, glancing at each other with questioning looks, answering Carlus’ question with shrugs, head shakes, and No’s.

During the week that followed, Carlus took the time to speak with each remaining miner. He tried to make sure he understood everyone’s mood, and got a feel for their expectations. He wanted to know whether there were unstated grievances or problems. He needed to gauge the mindset of each man, and in the end, he felt he had succeeded. He told each and every one of them that they were always free to go off on vacation -- after all, everyone had months of vacation due. At the end of his efforts, Carlus felt reassured that the defections were complete.

“What I’m worried about,” he confided to each man, “is that when the Project sees these bailouts, they’ll think there’s some kind of problem here. They’re more than likely to send some kind of inspector or HR person, and we don’t want that.”

When it came time for the next teleport cycle, Darlene was in the East Wing, and Linnea in the teleport bay. Carlus stopped by during the preparations. “Any outgoing passengers?” he asked.

“No, looks like we’re good this week,” Linnea reassured him.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed with obvious relief. “That’s a huge weight off my shoulders!” Then, a little embarrassed by his outburst, he slunk off to join the bacchanal.

A few moments after he was gone, four of the miners came sauntering up, each of them wheeling their baggage.

“Hey, guys,” Linnea greeted them. “Don’t tell me that you’re retiring as well?”

“Yep,” Luke replied, speaking for all four. “We’re off to the wild blue yonder.”

While the men took turns getting scanned for their data files, Linnea called up the list of miners at her terminal, and sorted it by seniority. These four were next on the list after those who’d already gone... except for one:

“Hey,” she called. “Benmedeo’s not leaving with you?”

“Naw,” came the answer. “He’s still happy here.”

“And you guys aren’t?”

Luke waggled his head and shifted from one foot to the other. He screwed up his face. “It isn’t like that, Linnea. None of us are un-happy. It’s just like… I dunno. It’s like time’s up, you know? How can you tell when it’s time to go? You just know.

“When Andy left, you know… it makes you think. Like, what I am doing here? What am I doing with my life?”

“Well, good for all of you,” she said, “But, did you guys talk to Carlus? Does Carlus know you’re leaving? Or will this be another surprise?”

“Oh yeah,” Luke replied. “We passed him on the way here. He was surprised and sorry. I can’t say he’s okay with it right now, but he will be okay. He understands. Honestly, he’s been here so long, he should be coming with us, but you know.”

Linnea shrugged. It wasn’t a choice she’d ever have to face. She was stuck on Uranus forever.

Two minutes after the miners were set and ready to go, the incoming teleport began. She picked up its manifest, and checked for any material continuing on to Baxter. Not finding anything to add to her outgoing load, she hit the GO button, and her cargo disappeared, along with the four retiring miners.

After a completely unnecessary look around to be sure she was alone, Linnea knelt down and pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of a hiding place she’d discovered beneath the console. Smoking in any part of the base -- except in the smoking lounges -- was forbidden, but smoking in the teleport bay was even more strictly forbidden. “Come to me, my forbidden love,” Linnea said aloud, and chuckled to herself as she lit up. She could check the incoming load after her cigarette. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Unless, of course, there was an arriving passenger. But there were never incoming passengers. Still, just to err on the side of caution, she took a second look at the incoming manifest, and -- guess what: there was a passenger, no name given.

Startled, she stubbed out her cigarette against the console’s underside, and ran down to the transmission room. She could see through the glass: there was no one there. Doubting her own eyes, she opened the room (which was locked, as protocol demanded), and absurdly looked in every corner. It was official: the room was empty. What on earth was going on?

She ran back upstairs to the control room, and checked the transmission logs. Yes, it was there in the record: someone DID arrive. She could see the three parts: the data file, the energy ball, and the JNSQ. So where did the person go?

When Life Hands You Uranus : 9 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

Linnea had never used the data-file editor before, so it took a bit of trial and a lot of error before she was able to upload the stranger’s data file and render it.

She impatiently tapped her fingers against her thigh while the image slowly appeared and finally clarified. The figure was a man she’d seen before. Yes, she’d seen him, and fairly recently. It was the sleezy tech from the teleport station at Point A. He was the asshole who sent her to Uranus without any clothes. Her lips curled in disdain at the sight of him, but try as she might, she couldn’t recall his name. Muss, Mush, Mish, Mash… something like that. She remembered the two prison guards calling the man’s name a lot, ribbing him, but at the time Barfield was so absorbed by the change his life was about to undergo, that a lot of other things didn’t register at all.

Linnea asked the computer to locate the intruder, but she received this evasive reply: “I can confirm the presence of an unknown person, but not his location.”

“Why not?” Linnea demanded.

“Your question is unauthorized,” the computer replied.

“You mean your ANSWER is unauthorized!” Linnea hotly refuted.

“I don’t understand your question,” the computer told her.

“It wasn’t a question! It was a -- an affirmation!”

“I don’t understand your affirmation. Could you state it using different terms?”

“Oh, do fuck off,” she retorted. “You smug mess of subroutines.”

 

---

 

She sent an urgent message to Carlus, and waited in the control room, smoking, pacing, tapping her feet, and clenching and unclenching her fists and jaw while she waited. It was near midnight when Carlus finally arrived, accompanied by Benmedeo -- a big, muscular man who resembled a street brawler. In the past she’d found Benmedeo frightening, but in that moment, Linnea was glad to have his muscle on her side.

“What’s going on?” Carlus demanded. His hair was out of place and his clothes were rumpled; he looked as though he’d literally just rolled out of bed. “Your message made it sound like we’re being invaded.”

“Maybe we are,” Linnea replied, and brought him up to date.

“It’s Moss,” Carlus said, after a glance the data-file rendering. “What an ugly mug! He’s that slimeball from Point A.”

“What are we going to do?” Benmedeo asked.

“First we need to find out what he’s up to; why he’s here.” Carlus sat down at the computer and punched in some commands. “Hmm. Moss has superuser access,” he observed.

“Why would he have that?” Linnea asked.

“He ran a teleport station, all alone. It’s in case of emergencies, and superuser privileges follow you wherever you go,” Carlus answered. “He’s masked his location, which is stupid, because it tells us that he’s up to something.” Carlus typed and poked the screen as he talked. “However, *I* also have superuser access, so I can unmask him. Let’s see where he is and what he’s up to.” He typed. He tapped the screen. He talked to the computer. He stared at the console and frowned.

“So what is he doing?” Linnea demanded.

“He’s two levels down, almost directly below us,” Carlus replied. “And he is… hmm… it looks like he’s copying all our files: logs, databases, email, messages, audio, video. My guess? He’s fishing. He’s hoping to find some kind of dirt on us.”

Carlus leaned back and drummed his fingers, thinking. Linnea began to say something, but he waved her off. There was no reason to say out loud what the “dirt” could be -- the miners were clean as a whistle except for the presence of the synths. They were the only problematic issue. Carlus ran his fingers through his hair, and then he clapped his hands. Linnea jumped at the abrupt sound. “Okay!” Carlus exclaimed. “Let’s do this: While he’s busy checking up on us, why don’t we check up on him?” Carlus resumed his flurry of typing, all his attention laser-focused on the screen before him. At times he seemed uncertain of how to continue, but a few quick questions to the computer set him on the right track.

“Here we go,” Carlus declared, with some satisfaction. “These are Moss’ documents, the ones he brought with him. Moss is here for two reasons: one is, yes, to check up on us. Specifically, the Project sent him here to find out why miners are suddenly resigning. No surprise there. However, his mandate is limited: he’s only here to do some quick interviews. They’ve even given him a script to follow. He has ZERO authority to go digging into our systems and records.” He shook his head. “What an asshole. Like I said, he’s down there fishing for dirt.”

“You said he’s here for two reasons. What’s the second reason?” Linnea prompted.

“What? Oh, right! The second reason is that he’s just passing through: the Project is rotating the teleport techs,” Carlus replied. “He’s been replaced at Point A, and is supposed to go on to Baxter. The Baxter tech will move on to Walteo, and so on. They shuffle the techs every so often, to keep things fresh, and to prevent illicit traffic from developing.” He and Benmedo glanced at each other.

Carlus leaned back in his chair, linked his fingers behind his head, and spread his elbows wide. Looking at Linnea, he remarked, “So… Moss being here could be a problem for you, couldn’t it.” She blinked at him. Was this some kind of bluff? What Carlus said was certainly true, but how could Carlus know what Moss knew?

She decided to call him on it. With feigned nonchalance, she shrugged and asked him, “What’s that supposed to mean? Why would it be a problem for me?”

Carlus froze and thought for a moment, as if asking himself, What DO I mean by that? Then he recovered and said, “He’s the jerk who sent you here naked, right?” Linnea shrugged again.

“If you want us to rough him up a little for you,” Benmedeo said a conspiratorial smile, “just say the word.”

Linnea rolled her eyes, but smiled at the gallantry in his proposal.

Carlus looked up at Benmedeo and said, “Why don’t you go down and find our Mossy friend?”

“What do I do when I find him?”

“Make sure he understands that we don’t like nosy pricks going where they don’t belong.”

“Do I hurt him?”

“No, just scare him a little. And take his memory device off him. He’s not authorized to snoop in our systems. If the Project wants to do an audit, they can do an official audit. They don’t need permission, but Moss sure as hell does.”

Benmedeo smiled and left. Carlus sighed and looked at Linnea. “Thanks for calling me,” he said. “I appreciate the heads-up. Me and Ben can handle it from here. Why don’t you go do whatever you otherwise would have been doing?”

“Uh… okay,” she replied. As she took a step toward the door, she suddenly remembered the other big event. “Hey, did you know that four more miners left today? They said they saw you on the way here and that you were fine with it. Was that true? Did you talk to them?”

“Yeah.” He answered without turning his head to look at her. “I saw them. We talked. It was lucky I ran into them. It’s funny -- if they weren’t trying to avoid me, I wouldn’t have run into them. In any case, I think I finally understand what’s going on here. I’ll come and tell you about it tomorrow morning. It’s actually something you can help me with. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, feeling confused. “I’ll see you later.”

“Wait,” Carlus said. “There’s one more thing: With Moss here, I’m going to need to keep the girls on lockdown. That means you won’t be seeing your ‘friend’ Darlene this week. Please: do us all a favor and don’t contact her until that idiot Moss leaves. Once Benmedeo shuts down Moss’ computer session, I’m going to get into the comms history and wipe every message to, from, or about the girls. Don’t leave any new ones for him to find.”

 

---

 

As Linnea made her way back to her room, her heart was pounding so rapidly and with such force, she feared it would beat itself to pieces. The moment she shut her door, a tight pain appeared in the middle or her chest. Was she having a heart attack? Or was it just a panic attack? Did it matter?

Instinctively, she lay on the floor and put her hands over her sternum. She tried to calm herself, but waves of fear kept washing over her. Everything is wrong, she told herself. I’m alone at the ass-end of the universe, and I don’t know what to do.

When Linnea arrived on Uranus there were twenty-four male miners and twelve synths. So far, ten miners had left. Her fear turned into a cold veil that passed over her skin. The conclusion was inevitable: all the synths were gone, except for two.

It made sense that the synths would swap places with the miners who had been here longest: they’d have the most money saved up. Maybe there was an element of revenge, as well.

If she was right, then the miners -- who were still at their bacchanal -- were screwing each other; using each other as their sexual toys. She knew that the idea should fill her with horror, but oddly, it didn’t. In her head, her intellect told her it was wrong. It was as wrong as wrong could be. At the same time, it seemed a kind of tragi-comical justice. She pictured the miners going at it, fucking each other, having three-ways. Patting each other on the thigh and saying, “Good girl.” Somehow it calmed her for a few moments. It almost made her laugh, in spite of herself. It was wrong for the synths to be the miners’ sexual prisoners; if Linnea was correct in her assumptions, the synths had traded one wrong for another.

Clearly, with Darlene’s new-found freedom at the computer keyboard, she would have programmed the new miner-synths, creating inhibitions to prevent them from saying who they really were.

Just as clearly, Carlus and Benmedeo were the last two synths: Carlus was no doubt the host for Darlene; Darlene would naturally be in charge. What cinched it for Linnea -- the one thing that made her sure -- was that Carlus told her he’d talked with the four miners who’d left tonight. That just wasn’t possible. There wasn’t enough time. The four miners walked into the teleport station moments after Carlus left. They couldn’t possibly have had a conversation: there was barely enough time to say hello to each other.

Carlus lied to her.

What must have really happened was this: the real Carlus checked the teleport station and went to the East Wing without seeing anyone. While he was at the bacchanal, Darlene must have clapped the corona on his head and swapped places with him. The whole time “Carlus” was dealing with Moss, it was actually Darlene dealing with Moss.

Linnea arched her back and opened her mouth to cry out, but stopped herself. She was afraid of making a sound. She didn’t want to give herself away. It was better to pretend she didn’t know -- for the moment, anyway.

But what did it mean for her? For sure, Carlus and Benmedeo would take off during the next teleport cycle. Would they re-enact Demeter 4 by killing everyone before they left? Would they leave charges to blow up the base after they were gone? After all her contact with Darlene, she didn’t think so. Darlene was aggrieved, but she wasn’t angry. At least, not murderously angry.

Linnea felt pretty certain that the synths would simply leave. It was the more practical choice: If they didn’t commit any crime, no one would come looking for them. They’d have enough money to do whatever they liked. If they kept their noses clean, their lives would be all the easier.

At least, that was the best case. Linnea was only guessing. She really didn’t know what they’d do.

And weren’t she and Darlene friends? Would Darlene leave without saying so much as goodbye?

Then, once they were gone, would Linnea have a duty to reveal that the synths were now the “retired” miners?

That thought stopped her cold. Would anyone believe her? Given all she’d read about Demeter 4, any human who found out about the synths would want them destroyed. Would she be able to prove that the intelligence inside each girl was actually a human miner? After all, those bodies had immense intelligence and memory. Couldn’t they be programmed to pretend -- or even believe -- that they were originally human miners? Given the prejudice against sentient machines, humans would probably see it as an elaborate subterfuge, and destroy the girls quickly, before anyone had a chance to believe them.

The most likely outcome was that, if the synths were discovered, they would quickly be destroyed, no matter who was inside them.

Unless Linnea could get a hold of the coronas, Darlene’s conversion programs, and all the software, there would be no proof whatsoever.

 

---

 

By the time the focus of her fears finally turned to Moss and the threat he presented, she was too tired to feel afraid. Or, she was tired of being afraid. By that point, Linnea was strangely calm. Maybe her calmness was appropriate; or maybe it was adrenal exhaustion. It felt like a big battery inside her, the one that powered her fears, had finally given out.

After all, what was the worst that Moss could do? He could tell the miners that she used to be Barfield. Well, so what? As far as she could tell, the miners were barely aware of the Mojan-Pardee murders. And why would they believe Moss? Darlene was clearly astonished when she heard that Linnea was transformed during teleportation. Apparently, the possibility of using teleportation in that way was not generally known.

Another thing to consider was the fact that none of the miners liked Moss at all. They were, to a man, disgusted by the fact that he’d sent Linnea to Uranus without a stitch of clothing. Of course, it was titillating, but it was as outrageous as it was tasteless. The miners would take Moss’ story about Linnea being Barfield as not only far-fetched, but as an outright malicious lie.

And if they didn’t? Well… fuck them. It wasn’t as though she and the miners were close. If they knew she was once a man, if they believed she was once a killer -- and IF that knowledge and belief changed the social dynamic of Uranus, well, the social dynamic of Uranus wasn’t that great to start with. If it got worse, it would still be better than prison.

 

---

 

Linnea was pretty busy that week with her shift work. When she wasn’t working, she was exercising, much more than usual. She found the physical activity helped center her mind. It seemed to burn off the residual waves of fear when they began to flutter over her. Linnea found a set of guided meditations: they helped her disengage from the disturbing issue of the miner/synths. Now that she’d exhausted her fears, she was not exactly fearless, but she could at least see that she wasn’t able to think her way through the problem. She had absolutely no idea what to do. She didn’t see any options available to her, so she resolved to wait and see what the next teleport cycle brought -- and what it carried away.

Her interview with Moss was the very last one scheduled, since she was the last person to see the miners. Moss ran through his questions, some given by his script, others suggested by an AI speaking through his tablet.

Linnea didn’t have much to say, except to report on the miners’ apparent state of mind as they left, and to recall the few remarks they made before leaving. From the way the questions were phrased, she gradually realized that the Nostaglia Project wasn’t looking for someone to blame; they were looking to see what needed to be improved. They felt that they’d failed the miners, and now they wanted to know what they could have done to keep the miners happy. At one point, the AI told her that the Project’s goal was “zero attrition” -- their goal was to create the conditions were no one would want to quit.

Of course, Linnea said nothing about the synths. Carlus had assured her that Moss didn’t have the least idea that the synths even existed, and Linnea didn’t see any point in opening that can of worms -- at least, not just yet.

By the end of her interview, she had the distinct impression that both Moss and his AI viewed the miners’ seniority as key to their leaving. In particular, when she reported Luke’s remark about Carlus -- “Honestly, he’s been here so long, he should be coming with us” -- Moss’ eyebrows went up, and he made several annotations. The questions posed by the AI also changed after that point, as if the answer -- or an answer had been found.

There were cameras filming the session from every angle, so Moss had to behave himself, but even so, his eyes devoured her, dwelling in particular on her breasts and legs. She hadn’t dressed at all provocatively -- at least, not on purpose: she dressed soley for her own comfort. In this case, however, “comfort” meant a sheath dress that fell to her mid-thigh. It was made from a newly developed fabric that felt as light as air against her skin. It draped beautifully, clinging to her figure and falling in dramatic folds. When she moved, it moved, sliding, enhancing, and caressing every curve. In the written description of the dress there was a line from a short poem from the atomic age: She moved in circles, and those circles moved. The poem as a whole perfectly described the dress when it was worn.

Moss didn’t drool, but he rather disgustingly licked his lips throughout.

Linnea was thankful for the cameras; they kept the man in line. She was also thankful that Benmedeo (or whoever was actually inside him) stood guard outside the door, ready to intervene.

When the interview was over, Moss shook her hand. He held it far too long. Afterward, she ran back to her room, washed her hands, and changed into her most tent-like, nunnish outfit.

 

---

 

That night, Linnea was alone in her room. She’d spent two hours in the gym, working out first with kettlebells and then on the elliptical, and she felt radiant. After securing her door, she took a delicious shower, and used the hydro vac-n-blo to dry and style her hair. Then she began her hair and skin regimen. Linnea only got as far as applying a leave-in conditioner to her hair, when the door of her quarters -- the door she was sure she’d secured a moment earlier -- suddenly slid open. There was no warning chime. There was no knock. Nevertheless, the door opened. Moss stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

“How did you--” she began, but he cut her off.

“Superuser,” he explained, with a smarmy grin.

She had only a towel to cover herself with, but she didn’t bother. If she was going to fight, she wanted all four limbs free. And, oh, she wanted to fight. She was angry about everything, and Moss was the perfect target for her fury.

“My God, look at you!” Moss crowed. “I made you! You know that, don’t you? *I* designed your body, from your soles to your crown. You’re perfect! You’re a living Venus, and that’s all due to me.”

“No, asshole,” Linnea contradicted. “Neeka gave me this.”

“No,” he cried, flushing with frustration. “*I* did it! Anyway, what does it matter, who did what! I want to have you, and I damn well will.”

“No you won’t, you piece of shit.” She stood up, feeling her strength in every limb. She curled her fists and stepped away from her bed, so there were no obstacles between them.

“If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll tell the miners who you are. Who you really are!”

“They already know,” she lied, with a smile. “I’ve already told them. And they couldn’t care less.”

He hesitated, trying to read her expression. Then he said, “I don’t believe you.” But his voice was full of doubt.

“Then go away and ask them, you idiot. I don’t care what you believe or don’t believe. I don’t care what you imagine you’re going to do, but right now it’s time for you to leave my room, little boy.”

The last two words set him off. His mouth set in anger, and he charged at her. As he approached, she crouched and dove at him, putting her shoulder against his stomach, and throwing him to the floor. She landed heavily, driving her elbow into his stomach. As he cried out in pain, he kicked and punched, flailing. The two of them grappled, rolling around the floor, Moss powered by frustration, humiliation, and pain, and Linnea powered by anger and the hot coals of her burned-out fear. They rolled around the room for perhaps two minutes, neither getting a clear advantage, neither willing to cede.

It ended when the door flew open once again. Benmedeo swiftly crossed the room and grabbed Moss by his upper arms. He shook the man loose from Linnea, and tossed him onto Linnea’s bed, as if he were a rag doll. Carlus stepped in behind Benmedeo, and shot Moss with a stunner. Carlus nodded to Benmedeo, who draped the unconscious Moss over his shoulder and carried him away.

When Benmedeo’s footfalls faded to silence, Linnea asked, “Why do I get the feeling that you two were waiting for this to happen?”

Carlus cleared his throat. “Yeah, sorry. We were waiting. Moss is such a simpleton, he can’t help but show his hand. I’d like to say he was dropping hints that he was going to try this, but honestly, he simply said it outright. More than once. Again, I’m sorry -- I hope you understand that we needed to catch him in the act.”

“Did you really?” Linnea asked. “At this point, aren’t *you* writing the rules?”

Carlus drummed the fingers of one hand against his thigh, and as he searched for an answer to Linnea’s question, his eyes inadvertently roved over her unclothed body.

Linnea, who still lay on the floor, naked, but none the worse for her tussle with Moss, made no effort to hide her charms. She wasn’t aiming to seduce the man who stood there, looking down at her. She was angry, and growing angrier by the minute. She saw an erection begin to lift its head against the front of his Carlus’ pants, and that made her angrier still.

“Does being in that body make you want me?” she asked him, in a challenging tone.

Carlus sighed. “So you know,” he said. “But yes, to answer both your questions, yes, I’m really Darlene, and yes, it makes me want you. I already told you that you’re the hottest woman on Uranus.”

“Why are you and Benmedeo still here?” Linnea asked. “All the other synths are gone, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Darlene-in-Carlus admitted. “Everyone’s gone but me and Hanna. We thought it was prudent to go in stages. I figured, to get out of the big box, first we have to get out of the little box. Uranus is the little box we had to get out of. Baxter is the big box. It’s a stepping stone to the rest of the universe, and until now we didn’t have a plan to get off Baxter.

“Also, me and Hanna/Benmedeo are the cleanup crew, or the rear guard. We had no idea what would be triggered by the mass retirements, and we needed to give the girls on Baxter time to set up and plan the way out. They’re liquidating the miners’ savings, making them more portable.”

With a grim look, Linnea glanced at Carlus’ erection. Experimentally, she opened her legs wider and leaned back on her arms. There was an immediate incremental reaction in his pants. A wet spot appeared, and the lump grew visibly, longer and harder. Carlus blushed. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Linnea replied. “What are *you* doing? What does all this mean for me? Are you just going to say goodbye and go?”

“No,” Carlus said, shifting in discomfort. His face grew redder. “We want you to come with us. You can help us, and we don’t want to leave you behind.”

“I can’t go,” Linnea told him. “I gave my word. The deal was that if they freed me from prison, I’d stay in lifelong exile here. So I have to stay.”

“No, Linnea, you don’t.”

Linnea climbed off the floor and onto the bed. “Let me show you something,” she said, and as Carlus watched, she lay on her back and lifted her legs in a big open V. They looked at each other in silence for a full fifteen seconds, until Carlus, red as a beet, pulled off his clothes and climbed onto the bed.

“Wow,” Linnea said. “That’s a lot bigger than I expected.”

“Yeah,” Carlus said. “It’s a nice feature to have.”

 

---

 

The next few days were awkward, but exciting. Moss remained in confinement, after his attack on Linnea. Carlus and Linnea spent hours together naked, fucking in every position they knew, seizing every opportunity. One day at lunch, Benmedeo dropped very broad hints about his willingness to join in.

Carlus grinned. “There’s a wing full of girls that will do anything you want,” he told him.

Benmedeo didn’t laugh. “I feel that this body and the chance to get off this rock is just and adequate compensation for what’s been done to me,” he said. “From here on, for me, every act must be consensual.”

 

---

 

Finally, the morning of the teleport cycle arrived. Carlus proposed a naked goodbye breakfast, and Linnea agreed.

The mood of the breakfast was very strange. It wasn’t joyful or celebratory. Neither was in the mood to make love. Carlus offered once more to take Linnea with them. “I can’t,” she repeated. “I gave my word. I’ve told you, repeatedly.” He didn’t press her.

“And I have to say, I have very mixed feelings about what’s happening,” she told him.

“I know,” he agreed. “We all do. But I tell myself that this is your famous Golden Rule.”

“No,” she contradicted. “The Golden Rule is Treat others as you want to be treated.”

“Right. So, if you treat others a certain way, you’re implicitly declaring that it’s okay to treat you the same way.”

Linnea hesitated a moment. “No, that’s not the same thing. It’s actually the opposite.”

“It is the same thing,” Carlus affirmed. “If they thought it was okay to turn us into sex slaves, it means that they are okay with us doing the same to them.”

“That’s different,” Linnea protested. “The first part is wrong. The second part is revenge.”

“Hmm,” Carlus said, with a slight smile. “So, how does it go? Revenge is a dish best served cold? Don’t worry: this dish will cool pretty quickly.”

“That isn’t it at all,” Linnea told him. “That’s not…” She struggled, not finding the words to explain what was wrong with what he’d said.

“Drink your tea while it’s hot,” he urged her, and gripped her thighs affectionately.

She drank up. The tea tasted particularly good. “Wah,” she said. That was strange! “Wah wah,” she repeated, then asked, “Wish dee iss dish?” Her words slurred into nonsense. The room began to tilt, and she turned her head to try to compensate. “Pah,” she told Carlus. She’d been drugged. “Wun kah perzzun,” she moaned, and the lights went out.

 

---

 

Linnea awoke some time later on a bed, in a room. The window was open, and outside a sun was shining and a breeze was stirring. Clearly, they were on a planet; one with a breathable atmosphere. “Where are we?” Linnea asked. “Is this Baxter?”

“Yes, it is,” Carlus told her. He was holding her hand, gently and occasionally stroking it.

“I wasn’t supposed to leave Uranus,” she protested weakly.

“As it turns out, you didn’t!” Carlus told her with a laugh. “Good old Moss is back there, wearing your body. It turns out he was useful after all!”

“Oh my God,” Linnea groaned. “Why didn’t you just take me as I was?”

“Oh, I guess you didn't know -- when I was poking around in the teleportation code, I found there was a block against you.”

“A block against me? What does that mean?”

“You never would have been able to leave Uranus. If you’d tried to teleport, it would have refused to transport you. Now, that block will prevent Moss from ever leaving Uranus.”

“How did you manage that?”

“It took a little jiggery-pokery,” Carlus admitted. “I had to make a diagram to be sure we got it right. First we swapped Hanna from Benmedeo’s body into Moss' body; then we swapped Moss from Benmedeo's body into yours. I know, it's tricky. What it comes down to is this: Right now, Moss is wearing Linnea's body back on Uranus, and Hanna is masquerading as Moss here, where she's running the Baxter teleport station.”

“But that should mean I’m Benmedeo, but I'm obvious not,” Linnea pointed out, looking down at her naked breasts.

“No, right now you’re a human version of me -- of Darlene. We questioned Moss pretty thoroughly, and he explained how he altered you. It’s all about the data file. I built a data file that made you look like me. I figured you'd lived in my body before, so it wouldn't be too much of a shock. You're not a synth, though -- you’re a 100% living, breathing human.”

“I kind of liked being in a synth body,” Linnea admitted.

“Yeah, me too, but now we have to be human so we can live among the humans. It also turns out that Moss really did create your Linnea body: the woman from the Project meant to send you as a man -- your missing husband, Leonard. Moss invented the marriage as a way of covering his tracks.”

It took me a while to get all that information straight. Carlus had to re-explain a few points.

Then: "Wait," I said, "I got one question: if all the synths left, who ran the last teleport session? The one that got you, me, and Hanna out?"

Carlus shrugged. "I don't know. Don't forget, there are still actual human miners on Uranus. Everything is still up and running, producing like it always has. So, whichever miner ran the last teleport cycle sent us out. He understood that we retired like the others. He wasn't even surprised." He grinned. "You were still drugged. We said you'd partied pretty hard the night before, but all your paperwork was in order, so they let us take you with us."

Once I was sure I got it, I had to ask, “So what now?”

“The girls have liquidated most of the miners’ assets into more portable media. It’s more money than any person needs, so we can pretty much go anywhere. Also, before we leave Baxter, we each have to choose who we’re going to be. We’ll cook up the appropriate data files and change into our new identities when we teleport out." He stopped to give a chortle. "Also, in a neat bit of deus ex machina, Moss conveniently left us a kit that will create official identities for each of us, so we can be whoever we choose.”

Linnea was quiet for a few moments. She listened to the soft wind outside. Then, her brow furrowing a bit, she said, “I’m thinking about the miners who are now synths. Remember how you were tortured by your memories -- you said they seemed like a living hell? I know that what the miners did to you was wrong, but those poor men must be going insane. Do they even understand what happened to them?”

“No,” Carlus admitted. “I did think about my memories, and I didn’t want the miners to suffer like that. I also remembered something you said… something that we disagreed about… and I hope this doesn’t upset you, but once the miners became synths, I wiped all their memories of the past. They know that they’re artificial, but they don’t know they were ever human. They believe they were created just as they are now. They will suffer less that way.”

Linnea thought for a bit. “I know I should be horrified, but… I don’t know.”

“There was no good way out,” Carlus told her. “When life hands you Uranus, what can you do?”

They fell silent, looking at one another. Then Carlus asked, “Who will you be, when we leave Baxter? You can be me -- Darlene -- if you want to stay that way, or you can go back to being Linnea. You could even be Leonard, the man Neeka meant you to be, if you want. We can show you what he looks like.”

“Who are you going to be?”

“I’ve found I like being a man. I’m going to remain as Carlus, with a few modifications: younger, different coloring, different name, different nose.”

“Then I’m going to stay this way, as Darlene,” she replied, blushing. “If you’re sure you don’t want this body back.”

“Oh, I want that body,” he said with a grin, “In fact, I’ve been hoping that at some point you’d tell me to go fuck myself, because that’s what I want to do. If you know what I mean.”

“Oh, my God! That must be the worst come-on in the history of the universe!” she laughed, and fell back on the bed, spread-eagled. “Then what are you waiting for?”