An Unexpected Dawn

I

Kytyra woke from too little sleep, smacking into silence the alarm blaring its final snoozed wail. Reedy echoes of not-so-distant snores and a cacophony of myriad other bothersome sounds had kept the night from providing any significant restoration. The familiar reentry into alertness brought with it the dull, quotidian dread of another day here.

Day 915.

(If she was lucky, Day 915 of 2,191).

1,276 days left.

Or 1,277? she thought. Surely I can’t yet cross this day off…

Despite the protestation of her uncaffeinated mind, her high-arched feet and thin legs lithely made their way to the bio stall.

As the DentaSyrv finished brushing and X-raying her teeth (chirping its all-is-well confirmation midway through her shower), her mind drifted. She sailed lazily over gentle ocean waves, a pleasantly warm rain falling upon her bare arms. She walked through a shady grove with so much fragrant flora there seemed to be too much oxygen to healthily take in. She remembered the intoxicating feel of those halcyon days, her vitality itself seeming to course through her veins and announce itself via the thrum of her heart. She felt a large hand clasp hers with an affectionate squeeze…

The flow of lukewarm water ceased after exactly 200 seconds, as always, and her reverie followed it down steel pipes and away.

Exiting the stall, Kytyra pulled on the mauve boilersuit she’d grown nauseatingly accustomed to and poked a few items into her pockets. When she was done, she turned toward her room’s lone door and sent the halves flying open with two fingers flicked quickly apart.

Turning left into a long hallway of matte black walls lit by soft white lighting running along each edge overhead, she made her way to breakfast.

As the hallway ended, a zig-zagging escalator took her down the three levels to the Cafeteria. Stepping off the escalator and banking right, a wide walkway with high ceilings and glass panels to either side revealed that today her port-side location offered what, under different circumstances, would have been a breathtaking view of the Asian continent worthy of a long pause.

Low Earth orbit does have its charms, she mused. Even here, these days.

Ahead, the walkway’s travelator continued past the glass panels and into a lengthy, gently arcing passage with doors lining the left side that opened on to auditorium-sized spaces within. The second of these doors was the Cafeteria, and as it came into view she saw other mauve boilersuits queuing outside it and thought for the hundredth time (at least) how glad she was to at least have her morning routine and walk to herself. Solitude was a cherished scarcity here.

Stepping nimbly off the travelator, she got into line. A few pairs of eyes caught hers briefly and immediately looked away, while most stared straight ahead. Some, Kytyra could see, were barely maintaining their facade of appearing uninterested by their surroundings. One, whose hands fidgeted noticeably in her pockets, looked exhausted by the effort.

Rookies.

The line now moved quickly as a majority inside had finished choosing foods and beverages. Kytyra walked briskly to the espresso faucet once inside. That in hand, she grabbed a hunk of LOEbread and walked purposefully down the right side of the aisle formed between Row 3 and Row 4.

Stopping at Table 38, she sat down on an unforgiving, cold bench and put down her food. She had beaten her compatriot here – a rare day. Not unprecedented, but uncommon enough to be noteworthy. She was hardly ever in a hurry to get the day started in earnest.

“Heya ‘Tyra!” came Ansla’s greeting. A broad woman with a soft, homely face marked by the evidence of a difficult life, ambled over to Kytyra’s position and sat across from her. Her legs stuck out so far beneath the table that Kytyra had to shuffle slightly to one side to avoid playing footsy – no, perhaps legsy was more accurate – for the duration of their morning meal.

“You know I hate that nickname, right?” ‘Tyra’ replied.

“And you know I don’t mean nothin’ by it!” Ansla said. “It was one of my cousins what went by ‘Tyra and I just can’t seem to push it out of mind!”

That and countless other things, Kytyra smirked to herself.

“Yes. I know. How’s the gruel today?”

“Aw come on Tyra it ain’t gruel! If not for your sayin’ that, it passes for half decent enough grub. Where I’m from anyway.” She wheezed out a chuckle and coughed up a small something which landed on Kytyra’s wrist.

Kytyra made no reply while taking a small sip of her espresso and taking a first bite of LOEbread. After a few moments of silence (which was always interminable from Ansla’s point of view), Ansla spoke.

“So… you are gonna be Grindin’ this go-around, right dear?”

Well, that didn’t take long.

In the parlance of those incarcerated in the Dawnbreaker’s District 12 facilities, “Grindin’” was the only sanctioned way to get a date. Sure, the District 12 equivalent of a midnight rendezvous (often a brief proposal followed by a short time sharing a bio stall just before the lights were cut and room doors powered down) did exist, but it was a far cry from what many were used to on the outside. Down on the Surface.

The official name for the sanctioned matching program was the Convalescent Companionship Initiative, alternatively referred to by the name of the portal which recorded data used for predictive analyses of potential partners – CupIQ – or even more colloquially by “Grinding”, a term which needed no further explication apart from noticing the meaning of that word which pointed out how much hard work it took to find someone else worth exploring (and investing in) in this world.

Kytyra reeled. “Not a chance,” she said, softly.

Ansla, gruff but not unwise, considered this.

“Sweetie-“ she began.

Kytyra focused her intense, dark-eyed gaze upon Ansla.

“Listen hun… I know we done been over this every quarter when the matching window comes up for you. Thing is, the numbers are off the charts these days as far as predictivity” (she paused, obviously wondering if that was a word and/or the word she was groping for) “… and you ain’t leaving this place for some time. I seen what denyin’ it all did to Maiah, that little angel, and I just couldn’t let myself stand by and watch that happen to you.”

Kytyra silently ate and sipped.

A moment passed, and Ansla spoke again.

“And, well, child, if that ain’t enough… I submit to you that I can arrange your date to get you out of Chores alongside Sirae’s crew.”

At this, Kytyra perked up.

Sirae, a brute of incomprehensible ignorance and cruelty, had made life miserable for Kytyra for the first year of her stay here. Only after considerable effort forging alliances and meticulous planning to never see Sirae and her associated sycophants did things improve. But, in a mere three days, her meticulous plans were nevertheless to intersect this hateful bunch.

Simultaneously furious, grateful, puzzled, and relieved, Kytyra relented. This made things simple.

She looked up at Ansla with a look that said let’s get this over with.

II

Three evenings hence, Kytyra made the trip over to I-19. Located halfway across the Dawnbreaker in District 4, I-19 was a medium-sized, high-ceilinged, domed space which was made to offer fully immersive experiences to those on board: real life, plus simulated augmentation that was the characteristic accoutrement of the modern age. She was first to arrive, which gave her time to reflect on when her last true first date had been. Long before this, in another life, before her marriage, before everything that led to her being here…

No.

She shut down this unhelpful reflection, as it was outwardly making her jittery and inwardly ransacking her ample confidence (despite the fact that she was able to choose a stunning evening gown to match the décor CupIQ felt was best suited to the tastes of both parties, which it then fed to I-19 to make fully realized).

Kytyra got her thoughts back to neutral just as the entranceway to I-19 hissed. Beyond a small veiled area just inside, her date was customizing his side of the experience before he walked over to their table.

After a few moments, a tall-ish man of roughly 40 walked over and joined her.

“Hello. I’m Sayle,” he said simply.

“Hello – Kytyra,” she replied.

“That’s a lovely name… quite apropos of your visage,” Sayle said.

“Oh… thank you,” Kytyra said, a bit flustered. Whatever she had expected for this evening, it wasn’t this. Wasn’t him. She could already tell. His thick crop of jet black hair and angular (yet slightly and charmingly asymmetrical) facial features that framed his light blue eyes were somewhat disarming her.

In a flash, a waiter appeared.

“Bon soir!” the digital simulacrum greeted them. “Shall we start with a drink?”

Sayle turned to Kytyra.

“Do you like wine?” he offered.

“Yes, very much.”

“Great. If I may make a request for a vintage I know we’ll have on hand here – and I hope it doesn’t displease you if I recognize certain of the realities facing us – might we have the Jetbird Merlot?” Sayle inquired.

“Ah oui, monsieur!” the waiter cried. “A fine choice, the 2019, a fantastic choice indeed!”

He flitted away in the ethereal manner that belied his materiality.

“I haven’t had a glass of Merlot in… years,” Kytyra said. “Why that one, by the way? They have it here on the Dawn?”

“Yes,” Sayle said. “When my grandmother was little, and the States were still one country, my family lived not far from where it was made. They had racks and racks of it and we drank it at many a family gathering.”

“I see.” Kytyra said. Despite the promising entrance and her current state of interest, she now found herself at an utter loss for words. Sparking conversation was a skill not generally needed nor smiled upon in her recent life.

“So why do you think there’s stuff?” Sayle ventured, cryptically (though it was clear from his face that he didn’t consider it cryptic whatsoever).

“What?!” Kytyra asked. “What… stuff?”

“All stuff. Any stuff. Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Kytyra felt her mind, slovenly from its under-utilized time here, coughing and sputtering to life like a freshly-oiled machine long since given up on. Her eyes blazed with a ferocious acuity, which Sayle noted and hoped to be a portent for the evening.

“Well… good question, actually,” Kytyra began, sipping the just-poured Merlot. “I remember reading, years – decades – ago about that question and others perhaps adjacent to it. I suppose there’s no perfectly satisfactory answer; the physicist wants to tell you a story about net energy, vacuum fluctuations, and inflationary events. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-science to my core, but that answer actually rests on an uncareful conflation: the oft-referenced vacuum of space in our cosmos is not the same as the true vacuum imagined by the philosopher. The philosopher’s sketch of nothingness calls out for an answer… or rather, a repudiation, that doesn’t appeal to postulating some preexisting stuff within the undergirding spacetime structure for a further, proper universe to then bootstrap itself.”

Sayle smiled as he prepared his volley back to Kytyra. This was the evening he’d been hoping for all his lonely nights in this place.

Across the table, Kytyra’s reticent but warming heart sang agreement.