SMT Holiday StoryFlod Part 2 - Featuring “Exiled To Gravity”
SMT Holiday StoryFlod Part 2 - Featuring “Exiled To Gravity”
For this holiday season, we’ve selected a few favorite stories from the first six months of the year to share — unlocked — with readers far and wide. As with last week, we had a difficult time choosing, as they’re all favorites, so if you love what you’re reading, please share and recommend, and dig into the archives for more. As well, please tell us YOUR favorites from 2023 in the comments, and by emailing morningtransportnewsletter@gmail.com
* Please note: We are looking at strategies and platforms for 2024 and will update as we have further information.
This week’s unlocked stories are Marissa Lingen’s “Exiled to Gravity” (February 2023 and below), and (linked) Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Ethnomusicology of the Last Drednought,” Rachel Hartman’s “Ghost Story,” and Rachelle Cruz’ “Office Auntie”.
Enjoy them all!
~ Julian and Fran, December 31, 2023
Exiled to Gravity
by Marissa Lingen
My mother is dead, and I am going to space.
Liese Hak-O’Connell, she often said her name was, never actually told anyone that we were Martian princesses. Jovian heiresses in exile. Oortian royalty. (Only one of those things actually existed, but Earth people don’t pay any attention to how space is organized.) She had her lies down to an art where she didn’t have to say them outright—even to me, at first. No, she just looked terribly, terribly sad, and frowned beautifully and stroked my hair, and talked about how things might have been so very different for us, if I hadn’t had my—she would sigh a delicate sigh—medical condition.
“Alma had such a terrible reaction to the artificial gravity,” she would murmur. “She was so sick. And—things would have been different for us if we could have stayed, but she’s my baby, so . . .”
At that point she would gaze off into the sky, and my job was to do anything at all except snort derisively. Gazing with her would work. Putting my hand on hers. Even getting up and stalking away moodily was fine, once I was a teenager and getting sick of the entire thing.
I was to be the pretend-daughter. A rich man’s holiday dream of a child. I was the tiny princess they would rescue, my mother the queen in exile, so grateful, so genteel. They would take me on Jet Skis, ponies, hydrofoils, and watch me laugh with my beautiful mother. I didn’t do anything so gauche as exhibiting the same symptoms now, of course. No vomiting, no fainting, no fevers. All of that was safely away in space. At first I thought I remembered it, but later I realized that what I remembered was her telling the story. My earliest real memories were of Earth, and of my mother’s hand on my head, gentle, relentless.
Earth men loved this. Loved her. Loved me, too, the adorable moppet for whom all must be sacrificed. My mother had a knack for finding rich men who loved a hard-luck story when it came with her pretty face.
Earth children were a great deal more skeptical—or maybe it was just that it was my face, not hers, delivering the tale. I had to get scoffed at in school by other seven-year-olds before I had the epiphany that it was all a lie.
“There’s no such thing as an artificial-grav allergy,” said my now-former best friend, Davis.
The bottom dropped out of my tiny stomach. “There is! That’s why we live here and not in the Belt with my cousins!”
Davis’s tiny face screwed up in scorn. “You’re a liar and your mama’s a liar.”
I punched her and burst into tears, but I refused to tell the teacher why, and when my mother tried to interrogate me, I went silent and wooden-faced. Neither threats nor coaxing got any more out of me. I wondered later whether she’d guessed. Whether she’d seen it coming.
Mama and I had a rocky road through my teens—five cities all over Earth for the two of us, twice as many schools for me, but that’s what it took to please her string of wealthy gentlemen friends. But then, just as I was researching artificial gravity and intensifying the skepticism that had blossomed in me in primary school—then, just as I had turned eighteen and strangely at the age of majority here on Earth, despite what we know about brains—
Then I came home to the flat, ready to snark at her about my plans for the future and their conflict with her aspirations for me living her life all over again, ready to tell her I knew what a terrible fake she was, ready to yell at her for giving my childhood to a series of scams—and she was crumpled on the floor, lips crimped together with pain, and from there it was only two weeks, only two, an eternal two.
My mother is dead.
She left me a surprisingly large chunk of money, or I’d have been in real trouble, the kind they let teenagers without family get into on Earth. But my grifter mother, my con artist mother, was apparently damn good at what she did, and I had a startling credit balance. I immediately knew what I wanted to do with it, sort of spitting in the face of the person who left it to me.
I am going to space.
I’m not as filthy rich as the men my mother fleeced, but that was all right: I trained as an atmospheric-flow engineer. I want to pay my own way with honest work, after her. Also, the equations of ventilation are beautiful to me, the complexities of populations and mixing sublime—and it’s definitely a job for one of the habitats. Which makes it one in the eye for my mother’s melodrama. A new start. A new life.
Arago-4 is a gorgeous station, with prismatic views of both the inner and the outer ring systems of Saturn from its central-ring location. Gorgeous, but not glamorous: there will be no famous concerts, no important symposia on Arago-4. The people stationed here are so grateful I came, because the job is merely important, not particularly respected or well compensated. And they’re nice people, happy to meet newcomers, only a little ready to tease Earthers. I get invited to audition for community theater productions my first week here.
Everyone wants to make sure I find the best viewport for Saturn-gazing. (They all agree on which one it is.) I’m not as overcome by the joy of being in space as some of them. It’s a beautiful view, but not really more or less wonderful than the Cascadian beaches where I spent my early teens, or the Argentine Pampas where I learned to ride a horse as a little girl. The main thing that makes it beautiful is that I chose it for myself.
It’s a week and a half before the headaches start, and I don’t think anything of them. I’m working long hours getting used to my new job. It’s probably stress. And when the fatigue sets in, well, it’s probably exhaustion from those same long hours. Unfamiliar food. I try to cut back to more of a normal workweek and eat as healthfully as I can. I look up “difficulty adjusting to new home” and read about how hard it can be to meet people. (I think the writer of that article should try moving to Arago-4, where it’s incredibly easy.) I try “difficulty adjusting to new job” and get page after page about stress and its effects.
So yeah. It’s that. Definitely that.
I’m tired enough to withdraw from auditioning for the community theater. I can make costumes a little at a time, have fun and meet people, still be able to lie down rather than collapse into my bed at night.
The day I pass out at work, I start looking for causes. As the atmospheric-flow engineer, I’d know if our system was pinging gas leaks, insufficient oxygen exchange, airborne viruses, or other harmful particulates. Every double-check diagnostic I run comes back as clean as the initial readings. So it probably is stress. I withdraw from making costumes completely. I never had anything like this at university. Better safe than sorry.
But it doesn’t get better. It gets worse. The day I pass out at work would more accurately be labeled the first day I pass out at work. My new coworkers are solicitous and kind . . . and worried. And I have to admit I’m getting worried too. My boss gently but firmly insists on a leave of absence and a trip to the giant medical complex in orbit around Io to see if they can figure out anything the station doctor missed.
For the first time, I have to consider: What if my mother was right? What if she was telling the truth for once in her life?
Impossible. I put it out of my mind and try to be the model patient for the staff at Io General: Helpful, calm, polite. Easy to help. I hope. They provide lots of viewports for me to stare down at the yellow volcanic plumes, full of sulfur and silicon, while they run tests on me. Whatever is going on with me didn’t stop when I left Arago-4. But the supposedly best doctors aren’t making any progress either. Finally, sheepishly, I mention my mother’s stories to the neurologist on my care team.
“Alma,” he says gently. “You know there’s no such thing as an artificial-gravity allergy.”
“I know that I’ve been sick since leaving Earth,” I manage.
“And I know what the research says. Have you considered that you might just be homesick? It’s a lot easier to say that you feel sick than to admit you made a mistake.”
I think of the times I passed out just trying to get a glass of water. The ache in my joints, what I thought was visible swelling in them. Maybe it really is all in my head. Maybe I am just like her, a scam artist, playing on sympathy. I shouldn’t even have said it out loud. It’s too ridiculous to say to a doctor. They’ll think I’m crazy. Maybe they already do—who could get so homesick that it would make you pass out, make your joints swell?
“Take some leave,” the doctor says. “Go home, get your head back together. Decide what you really want. And rest. I see so many of you young kids on your first serious job burning yourselves out. You have to learn to pace yourself, Alma.”
I have to learn to pace myself. Yes. That’s the answer. I resign my position and head back to Earth, trying not to feel defeated. I’ll use a bit more of my stupid tainted inheritance to give myself space to recover. And then maybe some additional classes or certifications so that the question of why I left Arago-4 isn’t at the top of every other hiring committee’s mind.
It takes me less than two weeks to feel fine, and the second of those weeks is basically testing myself. Walking? Yes. Running, swimming, dancing? Yes. Staying up late watching silly movies? Absolutely. I feel rejuvenated. I feel alive again.
Apparently I really did need to get my stress under control.
So at that point, I apply for graduate classes, just in time for the term to start. I get involved with a lab that’s doing airflow studies for one of the big arcologies there on Earth—the principles transfer easily to other kinds of habitats, and the practical experience will look great to future employers. I hope. My horrible nest egg won’t keep me forever, and frankly I don’t want it to.
A month into the program, I meet Andrew.
He’s studying water treatment—another field with fluid flow and contaminants, so we understand each other’s shop talk pretty well. In fact, we generally get each other—we make each other laugh, and we have a sense for when to be serious with each other too. We like a lot of the same foods but haven’t tried all of each other’s favorites—same with books, music, places near campus to take long walks. I’ve never had a relationship this idyllic before, and when we both get jobs on Shinde Station, I’m delirious with joy.
Surely even I can’t stress myself out with such a great partner to come home to. I keep discussion of my childhood honest but vague. I’m going to do it this time. I’m going to reinvent myself as me, not as her daughter. I’m going to bring as much to the table in this relationship as I get from it. This is going to be mutual.
The headaches start basically right away. The dizziness, the aching joints follow. I try to hide it from Andrew at first, because really, at first it’s no big deal, not that different from the rocket lag he has too. Everybody has it. It’ll go away if I just don’t psych myself out about it. It’s fine. I’m fine.
Everything hurts.
I honestly have no idea how long I would have gone trying to push myself into believing I’m better. But I don’t get that choice, because it’s not even a month on Shinde Station when I see a familiar face coming into the café where Andrew and I are having a quiet tea date.
It’s my mom’s penultimate mark. She’d want me to say “gentleman friend,” but I know better; I heard all the tragic tales she’d told him. He was there for my peak sullen teenage years, and he hasn’t changed a bit: red genial face, booming laugh, weirdly shiny clothes. It’s Elliot, all right.
Maybe he doesn’t see me. I hope he won’t see me. Or maybe he won’t recognize me—the leap from “sullen teenager” to “accomplished professional” is a large one, and I don’t affect the silky curls my mother loved to see on me. But the way his face goes from pleasant to overjoyed when he glances at our table makes my stomach sink.
“That can’t be little Alma!” he bellows.
Perhaps not as large a leap as I’d hoped.
“Not on a station, with your condition!” he continues, still at top volume. “If your poor mother knew—”
I wince. “Hi, Elliot,” I say. “It’s nice to see you again.”
I’m lying, of course, but I’ve been taught by the best. And he doesn’t seem to notice. Instead he turns to Andrew. “Did you drag her up here? In her condition? Shame on you!”
“What condition is that?” Andrew asks mildly.
“You didn’t tell him? Alma!” Elliot scolds.
I fight back the urge to snap that he isn’t my dad—I said it to him at least once as a teenager, and I have tried so hard not to be that kid again. “I hope you’re doing well, but we have an appointment. I hope we run into you on-station again. Please excuse us.”
And then I pay the tea shop and drag a bewildered Andrew away. “What was that all about?” he asks. “What condition? Does this have something to do with your headaches?”
I break down: I tell him everything. Not just Arago-4, but all of it, my childhood, my mother, everything I’ve been hoping he’d never have to know about me. I was a fool to think I could flee my mother’s legacy. Even if Elliot leaves the station and never comes back, my mother had other “friends.” I could run into them anytime. Better that Andrew know so he can make a clean break from the crazy lying lady. If I’d tried to imagine this moment, I’d have thought I’d cry, but instead I’m preternaturally calm. Rational. And when I finish, so is he.
“You know you don’t have an allergy,” he says, and my stomach plummets. Another one. And I wanted him to trust me. But he continues: “Allergies are a histamine response, mostly. An immune response for sure. This is . . . It might be immune? But it might be something else, I don’t know. I don’t think we have enough information.”
I feel almost as dazed as a week in artificial grav would leave me. “You . . . you think this is real?”
“Of course it’s real, Alma. Look at you. Look at how much better you were on Earth.”
“But—but there’s—there’s no such thing as—”
He leans toward me, his long face earnest. “Alma. Come on, now. You’re an engineer. In atmosphere, of all things. You know that the gap between stuff we observe and stuff we can fully explain is pretty large.”
And that is the moment when I start crying. Hiccuping little sniffles, in their own way more pathetic than full-body sobs. I can’t stop crying like the little girl performing with her mother, but this time it’s real. He wraps me up in his arms and waits for me to calm down. “But—but my mom,” I finally manage, “she was a big liar. She lied about everything. She had to have lied about me.”
“So she lied about some things and told the truth about some things,” he says, letting me step back and compose myself a little. “That’s most of us. Granted, it sounds like she made more of a career of it than most. . . .”
“I always thought”—I take a deep, shuddering breath and make myself go on—“I always thought that she was a terrible mother. That she was using me to scam people. And now I find out she really did come to Earth for my sake? I don’t know what to think.”
Andrew shrugs. “Why does she have to be ‘a great mother’ or ‘a terrible mother’? She had options other than scamming people when she came to Earth, and that’s what she chose. Why can’t she just be a person who made some choices and some of them were good and some of them were bad? You let everyone else do that. Why not your mom?”
It sounds reasonable. It sounds completely unsatisfying. “If she made sacrifices for me, I have to be grateful for them. I . . . don’t want to be.” Even in my own ears, this sounds petty, but there it is.
He scoffs. “I mean, you can decide that you want to be. If that’s who you are as a person. But you can also decide that you didn’t ask for any of this, and that it’s really the barest minimum a person would do for the child they brought into the universe.”
I’m not going to be able to take it all in, not in one conversation. “Leave my mom aside for a minute. That still leaves us with a problem.”
“How is it a problem that we know what to do so you don’t feel terrible all the time? That sounds like the opposite of a problem to me.”
He has to stop being so great, or it’s going to kill me to let him go. “But you want to live in space.”
Andrew looks so surprised that my heart drops. I thought we felt the same way, I thought we were on the same page with all this, that he meant for this to be more than a short-term thing too. I open my mouth to say something else, to tell him it’s all right, I’ll leave, but he beats me to it. “I wanted to go to space, Alma.”
My mouth is still open. He keeps going. “I may want to take more vacations in the habitats. Sure, it was my plan to live out there. But plans change. We’ll figure it out. Your professors will know which arcologies are looking for atmospheric-flow specialists who have to stay on Earth. Water treatment is literally everywhere, so my end of things should be fine.”
Fine. Can I imagine a life that’s fine? That’s . . . nice? With someone who really knows me and doesn’t run away? With someone who’s willing to let a more complicated truth show itself as we figure it out together? Andrew holds his hand out to me, and after only a second’s hesitation, I take it. In that moment I can’t imagine it. But I’m willing to learn.
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Thank you for joining our journey this week.
Marissa Lingen lives in Minnesota atop some of the oldest bedrock in North America. She writes poems, essays, and science fiction and fantasy stories.
“Exiled to Gravity,” © Marissa Lingen, 2023.
The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!
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