NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2: Singing Alone
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Hiram: Dinner. 7:30 pm. Do not be late: I won't be.
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Friday, November 8th, 2091, about 7 pm MST, Montana City, Binary Systems Compound
"The stars are just another sea. Come, sail the sunbeams with me," Gordon sang softly, his voice clear but untrained—a voice made for carrying, not beauty. It had an edge that could drop into gravelly undertones or rise into a near-growl that broke apart on high notes. He wasn't a singer, but he had enthusiasm in spades. "We'll see the stars burning clear—the way you never can here." Around him, the glory of winter spread its frosted embrace over Montana: fields of glittering snow, conifers crusted in white, and rocky mountain faces stark against the twilight. A few streetlights lined the roads, but they seemed feeble compared to the vast, open quiet of the land.
Gordon wasn't much of a walker, at least not by choice. His days were spent on his feet, pacing while he worked, pacing some more on a treadmill for his hobby. Pacing was just another way to feel in control. He liked control—or at least the illusion of it—this was probably part of what he didn't like about the outdoors. The weather, the seasons, the world outside, these cared nothing for what he liked. Take today, for instance: late autumn, and already the kind of cold that bit deep into his skin. Northern latitudes could do that—a rogue cold front sweeping down and turning a crisp November day into something that belonged on a Christmas postcard.
But something had drawn him outside anyway. A whim, a wistful urge. Earlier in the day, with the sun a little higher and the snow gleaming a little sharper, he'd had the errant thought, You know, this is probably what Mars feels like. Of course, he'd immediately known the comparison was nonsense. Mars was cold, sure, but airless. Its chill wouldn't press against your skin or sting your lungs because you wouldn't feel it—not in the way you could feel this. And yet, in some abstract, unspoken way, it felt like a true comparison. He'd imagined the barren red rock of Mars, stripped of this snow, and he couldn't help but wonder: would it feel like this to stand there? Could he feel that for himself, someday? The thin gravity, a fraction of Earth's; the cramped habitats and pressure suits, and barren crimson vistas?
It had been too bright, though, not nearly Mars-like enough, so he'd looked up the time of sunset and when the time came had ventured into the cold. It had been a while.
He wasn't much of an outdoorsman, even here on Earth, but he suspected that Mars wouldn't smell this good. He took a deep breath, letting the mountain air sting the bottom of his lungs, his alveoli pulling greedily at the oxygen that Earth gave so freely. Mars would have none of that. Breath there would boil away from his lips, stolen by a near-vacuum.
"When we're done, we'll join the falling stars, surf the solar winds and float to Mars," he crooned.
He sighed. "Mars," he murmured.
Crusted snow scattered as he moved, his boots crunching over brittle grass hidden beneath it, every step breaking instead of bending the frozen stalks. He liked the sound, liked the way it carried in the cold air. Cars slid along icy roads in the distance, their tires mashing snow into slush with a rhythmic hiss, artificial and far away. He wondered if Mars would carry sound the same way, or if the thin air would make even that strange. What would it feel like to throw a rock on Mars, watching it soar farther than it ever could here? Would the quiet bother him? Would the emptiness?
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He stopped and looked at the sky. It stretched vast and grey above him, faint stars scattered like spilled salt. Faint buzzing, the trio of drones his father had following him for VIP security reasons, fell faintly on his ears. Hiram. The name carried all the weight of their relationship: bitter respect, mistrust, and resentment. Hiram had spent the better part of three decades grinding Gordon down, starting when Gordon was a teenager and continuing long past the age where it should have mattered. But it still did. "You'll never live on Mars on my company's dime," Hiram had said once, a barb buried beneath the veneer of distinguished respectability. Gordon could hear the words as if Hiram had just said them. "No one can say I don't pay you, though. The house, the car—you'll have the use of those until you turn thirty, at which point you'll take your place and gain control of your shares in the company. That, plus a fund for living expenses, and I'm practically overpaying you."
A little fund. Practically minimum wage, Gordon thought. The truth was plain: embodiments of his father's wealth—stamped with the logo of Binary Systems Corp., the company Hiram had built—were all around him, but none of it was really his. The house, the cars, even the family spacecraft sporting company-brand twin fusion engines, a symbol of stupifying wealth and the corporate power it represented—all came with chains attached: If Gordon wanted something of his own, he'd known, and wanted to keep the freedom to pave his own way, he'd have to get beyond the company's reach, and that would take serious funds. Thus, Gordon had turned to streaming, earning enough to supplement his income and carve out a sliver of independence while still differentiating himself from his father's live-to-work example, slowly building a nest egg for when he finally left the Earth and its obligations behind him.
"We'll leave the ship to compute navigations—while we join the stars making new constellations," he warbled, eyes crinkling slightly as he continued the cheeky, half-remembered lyric he'd once improvised for Marie, the only one who really seemed to understand his longing to leave the Earth behind him. She called it 'pioneer spirit'. She was busy now, working double shifts at the bioreactors, tending the Martian farms to produce breathable air and potable algae—not a phrase you heard often, that—for people who had already made it to Mars. He hadn't spoken to her in days, and it was an unaccustomed, lonely feeling.
"...get our names put in books on the space race."
He understood that sometimes work is busy. It was just their bad luck that their schedules were currently six hours apart, a quirk of their interplanetary relationship that just served to highlight the gulf between them. He wondered if he'd ever actually cross it.
His portable beeped, reminding him of the time and his responsibilities.
His breath fogged in the frigid air as he turned back toward the compound, following his own footprints through the snow with disconsolate crunches. The pale stars remained behind, unreachable as ever. His father's house waited ahead, filled with familiar routines and sharp words. Soon, the nightly ritual would commence—the lectures, the silences, the repetitive posturing of two stubborn people navigating a relationship that had never worked and probably never would. Gordon straightened his shoulders, steeling himself for the unavoidable.