The Other Side of the Solar System

I woke groggy and confused, momentarily forgetting where I was.

The couch.

Rubbing the bleariness from my eyes, I rose and stretched. Outside the wall sized window of my living room, the speckled lights of the vast metropolis painted me in their starlit glow. It was still dark, the never sleeping cityscape of Galactic Center bathed my living room in a calm indigo ambience.

Speeders, hoverbikes, and trams cruised quietly along the skylanes between superscrapers jutting up from the sea of steel. One of the metropolis's three moons hung in the far corner of my wide window. I could never remember which was which, we didn't spend much time in the living room anymore, not since—everything.

Grunting, I felt the call of nature and turned from the lovely cityscape. I didn’t bother to put on yesterday’s shirt, I was still wearing the same pants from the night before. I pressed my palm against the living room’s control panel and activated the gateway to the bathroom. A brilliant beam of blue light erupted on the wall and spread in a sharp circle, revealing the near blinding light of twin suns and desert sands.

Covering my eyes, I cursed the brightness and my choice of bathroom locale. The gateway shut as soon as I crossed the threshold onto the harsh orange sands. In the distance waves broke and gulls cried. Belching quietly and scratching my exposed gut, I suddenly wished I’d put my shirt back on, the twin sun's glare was hot on my hungover flesh. Still drunk flesh.

Sweat already beading my forehead, I walked over to the lone toilet sitting on the sands, the king's seat. A washbasin and small side table with my old holoreader sat next to my porcelain throne. The same holoreader Denyse gave me on our wedding night.

Sighing, I dropped trough and took a seat. Grasping the aluminum slate reader, I activated the projector, black text fuzzed into existence. I toggled out of yesterday's mining reports and switched over to the novel I'd been trying for weeks to finish. A silly story about a man who falls in love with the basic AI in his vacuum and is convinced by the machine to overthrow his home planet's government. Ridiculous of course, but I thought the title was funny, Technosexual, it was the main reason I'd bought the book all those weeks ago. Before Denyse and I started fighting every night in bed instead of reading.

I rubbed my searing head, the heat was doing my sea sickness no favors. I wasn’t looking forward to work, I had a meeting with the Navigator’s Association. The Nav’s Ass wanted cheaper prices for helium-3. I was going to have to break the bad news. Nobody was ever happy with my compromises. Especially Denyse.

I rubbed sweat out of my eyes, exasperated, I cursed myself for drinking the whole bottle of Teran Red last night, there were daggers behind my eyeballs and my stomach hated me more than my wife.

Well, maybe not that much.

I flushed and washed my hands in the small basin beside the solitary desert toilet. I'd made my fortune selling helium-3 used in hyperdrive engines, the most valuable resource in the solar system. With those millions I'd built my entire home with gateways, a newer trend amongst the galactic elite. My living room—based on Galactic Center, mine and my children's bedrooms on one of the many floating cities of Altaera, my office sat on a mountain top overlooking the frozen plains of Hathar, my bathroom beside the salt seas on desolate Cinivir on which I now stood.

The twin suns blazed overhead, in the distance xenogulls that vaguely resembled those that flew the skies of Old Earth I’d learned of in high school xenobiology squawked. One of the four winged birds dove headlong into the green algae ridden sea and came up holding an eight legged crustacean in its beak. The creature's legs wiggled wildy about, desperately trying to break free of the gull's grasp.

Not an unfitting metaphor for my marriage. I thought as I turned back to the gateway's small control panel.

The panel was a simple tower of cold rectangular steel a meter tall. I’d wanted to decorate it in the local orange and red sandstone that covered this arid world, but Denyse insisted all our home's gateway panels be a uniform design. It was easier to give in than to argue. If only I remembered that lesson learned long ago—last night.

I placed my palm against the access panel and visualized the living room back on Galactic Center. I should at least get my shirt before showing my face in our treetop kitchen in the rainforests of Anzanon where Denyse would be making the kid's breakfast. No, where our automated chef DuPeau would be making the kid's breakfast.

Nothing happened.

The hell? I lifted my hand and placed it back on the access panel. Nothing.

Damn. I bent over to inspect the solar arrays charging the gateway panel from the brutal rays of Cinivir’s twin suns. Everything looked fine. Not that I would have known what to look for.

I tried again, this time focusing on our lush kitchen, the tall kapok and banyan trees with their finger-like vines and wide trunks that surrounded the glass walled dining area.

Nothing. What the hell is happening? I became acutely aware of the twin sun's heat on the pale flesh of my exposed back. I tried again, focusing this time on my office with its aurora borealis and tall violet glaciers and basalt towers. Nothing.

Something must be wrong with the network. Yeah. That had to be it. The gateway system was temporarily down for an update and would be back up any minute. I cursed myself for neglecting to check the maintenance schedule, I hadn’t checked my terminal notifications when I woke in my drunken state.

I became suddenly—painfully parched, I would be deathly hungover once the last dregs of last night's wine wore off and I was thrust into the throes of alcohol withdrawal. If I was back home I would have just taken an IV and been done with it. But I wasn't home, I was stuck on Cinivir, with nothing but red sands and squawking birds to keep me company.

Trying to swallow, to drink any last bit of saliva in my quickly drying throat, I placed my hand back on the access panel. Nothing. Shoving down my growing fear I paced back and forth, knowing full well I should be looking for shade and conserving my energy. Who the hell knew how long it would be until the gateway system was back up and running?

Oh shit. Had Denyse checked the maintenance schedule this morning? Had she checked last night? Of course she did, she always did. My panic at being trapped was suddenly overcome with rage. Of course she had, of course she hadn't told me. Knowing I'd be trapped in the living room or on the shitter. She thought she would teach me a lesson!

I placed my hand back on the panel, nothing. No error message, just a blank palm shaped smear of perspiration.

What if Denyse didn't know? What if she hadn't checked the schedule? What if she and the kids were trapped on Anzanon with that obnoxious mechanoid chef?

My god. What if Denyse wasn't with the kids? What if the kids were trapped on the clouds of Altaera? Alone and afraid, I pictured my two children, neither more than ten, beginning to panic, terrified and alone without their mother. Without me.

They'd certainly be terrified without Denyse, she’d always been the more hands-on parent. I'd taken the role of breadwinner, an old fashioned arrangement, but tried and true. Still, I wondered whether my six and seven year old children were crying out my name in fear?

Wait, were they six and seven? Seven and eight? I'd missed more birthdays than I should have, I knew that. But I'd promised never to miss another after the last and had always come home from whatever work meeting or business trip that kept me away with armloads of gifts. That counted for something right? Right?

My mouth hurt, I could feel the skin on my neck and shoulders burning in the sunlight. Dammit when is this update going to be over? I placed my hand on the access panel once more.

"Agh!" I screamed, kicking sand and throwing sandstones. There was no one there to witness my tantrum, my "childish display" as Denyse would have put it.

"So thirsty." I rasped, each word stung, I needed water.

In the distance the ocean waves crashed. Groaning, I wondered how long it would be before I became desperate enough to drink salt water. How long had it even been? Minutes? Hours? I left my terminal back in the living room with my shirt. The old holoreader was so basic it didn't even have a clock function. A remnant of a time before I'd become a CEO, back when Denyse and I had been poor and happy.

What happened to us? In my dehydrated, and likely the beginning of a hallucinatory state, I remembered the years we'd been happy together. Traveling the solar systems, talking about venturing beyond known space, outward to the fringe worlds. Back when I'd been nothing more than a shuttle pilot. But then I discovered that vein of helium-3 on on Hathar, and everything changed. I used the last of our measly savings to buy the plot of land and began mining with my own two hands. It hadn't taken long before I was able to buy more land, and proper equipment.

At the time I'd thought we'd won the lottery, we were going to be the richest people in the system! But as the old cliche goes, money doesn't buy happiness.

Denyse and I went to therapy for a time, but then it got in the way of work. We'd thought having a couple kids would do the trick, bring a little joy back into our joyless union. And for a time it had.

Then I began spending more time at "work." Out with the boys. Late nights on Galactic Center, it was incredible what vast amounts of wealth could buy on GC, the best booze in the solar system, private parties, concerts, clubs and one or two infidelities.

Maybe more than one or two.

Cinivir’s suns beat down on me, I dug my toes into the orange sand and felt the brief relief of cool. Maybe I could bury myself until the gateway came back online? Or I could go for a swim.

I walked to the green swelling sea and dunked myself. The water was crisp but the algae ridden sea left my skin itching and red. I soon felt worse than when I'd been dry.

My tongue was like an overcooked sausage in my mouth, my skin itched incessantly, growing enraged I slammed my hand against the access panel. Nothing. I cursed so loud that a small six legged lizard that wandered over to inspect the toilet while I'd been swimming skittered off.

The toilet. The bowl was filled with water. Oh glorious water. I ran to the bowl and lifted the lid before realizing what I was doing. My mouth ached, but I told myself I wasn't that desperate yet and closed the lid.

I paced, staring inland toward the distant orange towers of sandstone, giant phallic things that reminded me of my own painfully average endowment. I thought about trying the panel again then tossed the notion aside. I wasn't going home, it had been far too long for a routine update. The system was either down, or I'd been locked out. Had Denyse locked me out? A petty punishment for a petty man?

I waited what could have been another twenty minutes or two hours. I tried burying myself in the sand, some small protection from the sun, but couldn’t cover myself and grew more agitated with each attempt. My throat changed from uncomfortable cottonmouth to painful cracking.

Beyond desperate, I flipped open the toilet’s lid, cupped a hand in the cool water and drank deep, ignoring the taste uncomfortably reminiscent of this morning's business.

I cried after. Self pitying and cowardly. I cried knowing I was stuck on this godforsaken shithole desert of a planet. I cried knowing I'd never get to see my kids again, to celebrate another birthday with them. I cried knowing I'd never be able to apologize to Denyse, to tell her I'd learned from my mistakes, that I could be better. Would be better.

Having lost all hope, sunburnt and hallucinating, I turned inland toward those tall towers of sand once more. Maybe, just maybe, I would find salvation somewhere out there, at the very least I would find shade under those phallic obelisks. I started inland, delirious and dehydrated. I was engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.