Far, far away: part 2
Smells like morning
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: Former Met detective Yannick Clarke is now a private investigator, investigating a missing koth on Ceres — an asteroid in the Belt.
Lower Merkado, Ceres.
2550.
Living on Ceres reminded Clarke of the London underground. Descending steps into the hole, trusting the engineers had done their jobs right a century earlier, boarding a train to hurtle through darkness, relinquishing all control to the hundreds of people who had dug the tunnels, laid the tracks, built the trains, controlled the signalling. It’s why he’d always taken the tram to get around whenever possible: it was much easier to get off.
Ceres hurtled through space rather than tunnels, its insides hollowed out to become a life raft for the people that had somehow ended up there. What were the chances of humans from Earth having found themselves inside a tiny rock in the middle of space, entirely reliant on artificial systems to keep them alive? It was several layers deeper into the trust exercise. Clarke had no idea how Ceres was possible, only that it was, and that he was still breathing and walking around. He hadn’t been jettisoned into space, hadn’t woken in his hotel bed to find himself suffocating.
There was no getting off the train. No climbing the steps back into the light, back onto the street.
A rustling in the bed next to him knocked him out of his thoughts. He turned from staring at the air unit in the ceiling to see Shannon, hair even more tousled but somehow managing to look sleepy and composed at the same time. Max-Earth humans looked after themselves well, even out here, even on a barkeep’s salary.
“Hi,” she said, smiling. Her breath didn’t smell like morning or even the previous night’s alcohol; something was working its magic to freshen her up without even needing a splash of water.
He turned away slightly, conscious of his own stink. “Morning,” he said. “How are you looking so perky?”
“All my little helpers,” she said. “You’ve not had the treatments, have you?”
“You got any idea how expensive they are? To an outsider, anyway.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes as she propped herself up on one elbow. “I know, it’s outrageous. I wish they’d extend coverage to everyone. Why be so picky, right?”
“Well, because then you’d get an influx of sad old gits like me coming over and stealing all your fancy medication.”
“It’s not like we can’t afford it.” She shifted into a seated position, the bed sheet falling to her waist. “I suppose it could cause some problems.”
“Yeah,” Clarke said, trying not to stare at her chest. “Plus, the longevity treatments don’t stick if you go back to Mid-Earth. So you’d have to deal with all of us staying. You’ve got a lot of planets to go around, but even they’d start to fill up if you had two universes migrating over.”
“You should try to get full citizenship. Then you’d be covered.”
Clarke grunted. “Not sure I want to live forever. One life’s been tricky enough as it is.”
The previous night they’d both been drunk — or, at least, he had been — but in the artificial light of a pretend day he was feeling distinctly self-conscious. Thinning hair. Beer belly. All those little bastard pale marks and moles over his arms and chest. He’d never been an especially fine specimen even in his younger years, and now he’d firmly entered his sixties was definitely a far distance from Adonis.
“Maybe the next one could be better,” she said, leaning forward and running a hand gently over his chest, her fingers tugging at his hairs. “Besides, I don’t think this version is too bad.”
“Pull the other one,” he said. “You don’t have to humour me.”
She sat more upright and took her hand away. “Yannick. I chose to spend time with you last night. I came back here with you on purpose. Stop wallowing.”
He lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling, then raised a hand to his face and pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger. “It’s just been a while,” he said, eventually.
“There’s any number of perfect men in the system.” She placed her hand back, smiled. “Point is, I like that you’re different. That you’re real. I like all of this.” She moved her hand down to his belly, pushing the sheet down. “I like this.” She wobbled his stomach with her hand. “Do you know how rare it is to see a bit of fat on a man? Honestly, this dimension is the most boring one. Everything’s averaged out.” She moved her hand down lower. “I like all of you just the way you are. It’s what makes you interesting.”
He reached up and pulled her closer, kissing her. “But look at you. You’re perfect. I’ve never even seen anyone like you back on Mid-Earth.”
“Well, then, you know what they say about eye of the beholder. Sounds like we’ve got a good combination going here.”
They walked through the district, Shannon pointing out potential sources of information. The lower levels of Ceres shifted abruptly from low, narrow tunnels to expansive natural caverns and larger community spaces. It was a maze that Clarke struggled to understand, even with the help of the assistant on his wrist. Justin had offered him an implanted version but he’d politely refused.
Banners adorned the tunnel walls and digital posters were displayed proudly in shop windows and on the street lights. They cycled through a carousel of faces, men and women, young and old.
Shannon looked at him askance. “Are you going to vote?”
“Not sure I’m the voting type anymore,” he said, shrugging. “Didn’t do much good, last time round.”
“It’s compulsory for us. Legal requirement across the solar system over the age of sixteen.” She nodded, chewing on her lip. “That’s a good thing, I think. Makes sure people have to really think.”
Clarke had read about the system on Max-Earth, but didn’t quite believe it. “Is it true that everyone can vote? There’s no lower age requirement?”
“Not quite true,” she laughed. “You have to be able to walk, and operate the voting app without assistance. But otherwise, yeah, everyone.”
“So you’ve got five year olds voting for who is in charge? Sounds like madness to me.”
She shook her head. “It’s a sliding scale. A three year old’s vote doesn’t really count for anything. But they still can vote. A ten year old’s vote is worth a bit more. A sixteen year old’s vote is worth a lot more, proportionally. Gets people engaged right from the start. Then it flattens out for most of your life. Once you hit 150 your voting influence start to reduce again. Though they keep having to up the thresholds because people are living longer and longer.”
“What have they got against old people?”
“Not going to be around as long. It doesn’t make sense for them to be voting on things they’ll never have to live with.” She pointed a finger at him. “Oh, wait. You don’t have the longevity treatment, so you’ll already have a reduced vote. It used to kick in at fifty.”
A woman with two very young children was standing in front of one of the posters, excitedly explaining it to them. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “Sounds like it’d be chaos to make sense of, though. How does it even get counted? Must take days. Weeks?”
“Once all the votes are in it’s a couple of minutes,” she said. “Different things are possible when you’ve got a fleet of superintelligent megaships floating around the system. We do the voting, they crunch the numbers.”
They’d arrived at a multipurpose community hall. A screen outside listed all the upcoming events, which seemed to cut across every religion, political creed and social activity Clarke could imagine. At the top of the display was the current event: a regular gathering of the local koth.
“I can take it from here, thanks,” he said. “Hopefully someone in there will know something.”
She planted a kiss on his cheek. “Well, don’t be a stranger. You know where to find me.”
Clarke watched her go, disappearing down tunnels in the vague direction of the market and her bar. That had been unexpected, though not unwelcome. That old warning alarm was going off in the back of his mind, cautioning him against forming attachments. It never went well, for him or for them. He ignored it: he was only going to be on Ceres for a few more days.
Needing to travel through two portals and book passage from Earth to Ceres meant the koth population on the asteroid was small in comparison to humans, but put them all into one room and it felt like a lot. There had been a time when Clarke wouldn’t have been able to step foot inside the place, and it still required him to steel himself against a simmering panic. There was a low hum emanating from the hall, a reverberation that Clarke had felt before he’d heard it. Ceres was always awake, always noisy, the machines working hard to keep its occupants alive, and he’d thought it part of that constant background pulse.
As he approached the large double doors, it became clear that the sound was coming from inside, and wasn’t mechanical. Nobody was outside, so Clarke put his hand to one of the doors and pushed.
The rumbling sound rushed out in a wave, undulating, louder, softer, shifting pitch, enveloping him on all sides. The hall was dimly lit, but he could still make out the hulking shapes of koth, filling the space from wall to wall, each of them producing a sound that echoed and mixed and intensified with each contributor. Clarke could see only horns and spines and muscle.
His instincts told him to turn and leave, to run. To take the train back to the surface, buy a ticket for a ship back to Earth and get the hell off Ceres.
Instead, he stepped forward. He had a missing person to find.
Thanks for reading.
Elections are on the brain. While much of the rest of the world goes a bit funny, the UK has just voted in a new, non-extremist government. Difficult times ahead, nevertheless, but it’s a rare bright spot, and having grown-ups in the room makes it at least possible that the hugely complex issues facing the country might be addressed.
Back in May I entirely failed to do Mermay, the month-long mermaid-drawing challenge. I stuck to it in 2023 but my writing schedule leaves very little space around the edges at the moment. Someone who never lets the side down when it comes to mermaids is
, and she just released a lovely one-shot comic:
Meaghan’s style is always gorgeous but I’m more used to seeing individual pieces from her, rather than an extended story. And it’s a real treat. I mean, look at it:
More, please! :)
In irritating AI news, this comment on LinkedIn about a copywriter’s work being flagged by a client as being AI-generated (when it wasn’t) caught my eye. The bifurcation of audiences into anti-AI and pro-AI (or, at least, ambivalent-about-AI) continues, as per
’s predictions.Also on the ugh AI theme, do have a read of I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again, which is both funny and on point, and is written by an engineer with a background in machine learning.
When I worked at the National Centre for Writing we spent a surprising amount of time warning writers about dodgy ‘hybrid’ publishers. There are all sorts of ways of getting published these days, but it mostly boils down to these three:
A traditional publisher: the way it was done in the 20th century, and which is still very effective. Get an agent, get a publisher, get on shelves.1
Self-publishing: do it yourself, one way or another. It’s often a good idea to hire professionals to help, such as editors, illustrators, designers. You’re 100% in charge of how you do it.
Hybrid publishing: you pay a company and they promise to do all the work.
That last one, #3, is the risky one. While I’m sure there are some honourable hybrid publishers, there are also a lot of crooks. Companies that exist solely to exploit enthusiastic writers who want to get their work out into the world. It’s also these companies that actively hunt down writers and court them with false promises.
had the misfortune of encountering one of these and has generously written about her experience in the hope of helping others avoid it:
Remember the golden rule: the publisher pays the writer; writers should never pay the publisher.
OK, let’s dig into today’s chapter.
Author notes
‘Far, far away’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in terms of world building. We’ve not visited Max-Earth much in the course of the story. It’s been one-offs, or from the point of view of the megaships, or the brief storyline at the start of season 2 when Kaminski found himself accidentally smuggled through the portal.
Max-Earth has always been at a distance. Observed from afar, because our point of view characters are primarily the SDC team. They’ve not had much work to do on Maxc-Earth, so we haven’t seen it first hand. That’s now shifted, but there are a lot of gaps to fill in, in order to bring it to life as a believable place.
And it’s very different. The Mid-Earth stories have mostly been confined to London. Palinor stories have been focused on Bruglia. In both cases, single cities. Max-Earth doesn’t really work like that: we’re going to see many more locations, and starting with a remote asteroid floating through the Belt seemed like a good way of making that point. We’re not in Max-Earth London, that’s for sure.
At the same time, there’s always that fear of turning the story into an infodump. I wrote about that in detail here:
How to do exposition without it turning into an infodump
I was in conversation with the inimitable Elle Griffin earlier this week, discussing the difficulty of explaining things to a reader without killing the story dead in its tracks. As Elle put it: ‘“how do you crack the whole ‘explain what needs to be explained’ without making it a boring dialog chapter?!”
I think I skirt a little close to dangerous territory in today’s chapter. But that’s why Shannon is there, to give information to Clarke. Although he’s been living in the Max-Earth dimension for five years, a lot is still new to him. This is the first election he’s seen. The Sol system here is so sprawling that there’s no way Clarke would have a handle on it all. There’s a lot of new things to establish.
The aim is to surround all of that exposition with legitimate character growth and insight. That way the information goes down nice and smoothly, rather than catching on the back of your throat. So we have Clarke finding himself in an unexpected one night stand (or possibly more, we’ll see). We have him working on a case to help a koth, despite his complicated history with koth. Challenges and surprises all around him.
And we still don’t really know what’s happened to Lola or the others. There’s a lot left unsaid so far in this storyline, but don’t worry — it hasn’t been forgotten.
Right, I’m off to listen obsessively to UK politics podcasts. See you all next week.
Yes, it’s that easy! lol
Ack! Thanks so much for the shout out, Simon! 🧜♀️
I love that morning after scene - been there, done that. First time there's awkward avoidance of a kiss, the wish the room were still a little darker, the sudden desperate need to pee. Well done on the gradual worldbuilding, avoiding a brain numbing exposition dump
Nice elections scenario too. I'm in Canada, with an election probably a few years away still. We've a left-ish leader that's fading in popularity, with calls for his retirement now. The choice to the right is 's pushing the lines that everything is broken, only I can fix it, I will cut all your taxes and fix all your problems. There seems to be a worldwide response to people's dissatisfaction with much of the world and a belief that the only way to effect change is through drastic steps. At least some are still choosing a more cautious central solution.
I'm watching the US situation with fascination and worry - I did a few posts on it exploring the metaphor of watching a circus as it falls apart - while stuck under the same tent with it.