Callisto 2.0 by Susan English (e novels to read online .txt) 📕

try and put labels on everything, and to look at the world from a binary perspective: black or white, good or bad, female or male. But in reality, gender identity is like sexual orientation. There are the extremes, but it’s a spectrum, and there are people who feel they aren’t even on the gender spectrum at all—they have no gender.”

“I guess I never thought much about it.” What must it be like? To live in a binary world as a nonbinary person? At Caltech, my classes had always been gender-diverse, and everyone seemed open and accepting, happy to use whatever pronouns were suitable in the moment. But how would it have been for Jesse in my conservative high school? Not fitting into a neatly defined box, or maybe fitting for a day, a week, but then one day the so-called “biological” pronoun doesn’t fit? What then? It was hard 130

enough for me, keeping my sexual orientation under wraps, not that I was fooling anyone. Don’t ask, don’t tell. But for a person like Jesse, being forced to wear the wrong gender, day after day, the dysphoria must be excruciating.

“I love that about Jesse—not being tied into any particular gender,” said Jordyn. “It’s liberating. And Jesse is such an interesting human being. Talk about thinking outside the box. The way J’s mind works, it’s beautiful.” She smiled. “J and Tanya have similar ways of looking at the world. At first, when Tanya and I started working together, I thought, impossible, this will never work, we tackle problems from such different angles, how can we ever come together? But somehow it works. Synergy, that’s how I think of it. Together we are greater than the sum of our parts.”

“Synergy is a great word to describe what’s happening between Hadley and me, too.”

“Annie’s a genius,” said Raven. “Okay, I know she’s a computer program, but she seems to understand the human psyche, or psychology, or whatever it is. When she puts people together in a team, they thrive, and the work they do, it’s cutting edge.”

“So, she doesn’t only identify potential employees, she also determines who will work well together?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” said Raven. “She chose all of us to work here on the station. Why do you think everyone gets along so well? Why you rarely see any arguments? She analyzes our personalities and selects people who are most likely to thrive on harmony.”

Jordyn pursed her lips. “I think discord is so engrained in our subconscious, it’s hard for us to even imagine a society like what we have here on Shambhala.”

My fingers traced the beveled edge of the table as I looked toward the window.

“When I first arrived, at Arcadia, I had a fleeting thought, or maybe not so fleeting, that everyone was under some kind of mind control. I figured there was no way people could be this happy.” Biting my lower lip, I glanced at my colleagues. “I was even a little afraid to get the implant.”

“Me too!” said Raven. “I was very suspicious in the beginning, remember, Jordyn?”

“Yeah, you waited, what? A whole month?”

“Uh-huh. But now I wouldn’t want to live without it!”

I looked around the room, at all the women, some sitting and talking like us, others playing cards or other games. Laughter was the common theme. “An AI of many talents, our Annie. I couldn’t be happier working with Hadley.”

“Same here, with Tanya,” said Jordyn.

“So, what about you, Raven?” I asked. “Is Annie going to fix you up with anyone?”

“Fix me up?” She raised her eyebrows and gave me a sidelong glance. “You mean like a matchmaker? Are you asking me if I’m single? Are you interested in going out with me sometime?”

“What? No, I mean, I wasn’t asking—” I stammered. “I, I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was wondering about your work, if you were collaborating with anyone. I didn’t intend to ask about personal stuff.” I closed my mouth and averted my eyes, feeling desperate.

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“Are you sure about that?” Raven leaned toward me, batting her eyelashes.

My face was hot. “I, um, I mean, you’re great, Raven, and I, um, I think you’re great.”

I gave Jordyn a pleading look. Both she and Raven were struggling to contain their laughter.

“Shall I put her out of her misery?” Jordyn asked.

Raven raised her eyebrows, eyes dancing.

“Relax, Calli, Raven is hetero.”

“Oh, well, I, I thought so, but … I didn’t mean I wouldn’t be interested. Raven, you’re really great, and—”

The two women broke into peals of laughter, doubling over in their seats.

I looked at each of them in turn. “Oh sure, make fun of the new girl.” I tried to make my expression stern, but without much success. I started laughing.

“If you didn’t make it so easy!” said Raven, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. When the laughter died down, Raven said, “To answer your question, I’m single.”

“That wasn’t my question.” I put my hands on my hips. “But thank you for the clarification.”

“Okay, okay, I’m done.” Her eyes were twinkling. “And to answer your actual question—”

“Finally!” I said.

“I work better alone. And I suppose Annie knows that, too. But I love our biology power lunches!”

She looked across the room, and I followed her gaze, spotting Naomi sitting with Quinn and Fae, playing cards. She looked up at that exact moment and caught my eye.

She smiled. It was good to see her enjoying herself.

◆◆◆

A week later, Hadley and Andrea arrived on Shambhala, back from their trip. That afternoon, in our lab, Hadley and I had a chance to chat.

“What’s the news from Planet Earth?” I asked.

“Same old thing. The newsfeeds are, as usual, full of conflict and destruction. After being on Earth for about two minutes, Andrea and I decided to avoid the news completely, and we prohibited anyone from bringing up the subject. Too depressing. It seems like people never learn. Always the same story. It reminded me of how fantastic it is to live here on Shambhala.”

“That’s for sure. I never watch the news from Earth now that I live here. So how did it go, meeting the family?”

“It was interesting.”

“Interesting?” I arched my eyebrow.

Hadley laughed. “Andrea has a lot of family!”

“I thought she only had a brother.”

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“That’s true, but there are her parents, aunts and uncles on both sides, grandparents on both sides, cousins and second cousins and I don’t know what else!”

“Wow.”

“It was a little overwhelming, but everyone was really friendly and welcoming.”

“And what about your family?”

She snorted. “Couldn’t have been more different. Andrea’s family is fun, and loud, and everyone talks at once, and mine is really quiet. If either of my parents say three sentences in a row, it’s a big deal.”

“How funny! How was it, being with Andrea?”

“It was good. We did some serious bonding on the trip. But oh my god, Calli, the gravity!”

“Oh yeah, it can be brutal.” When I had returned to the Earth after a visit to the Moon or the government’s orbital lab, it felt like I was being crushed.

“I didn’t expect it to be so bad. I’ve been away from the Earth for over a year, living here on Shambhala. I do go to the Moon now and again, but one-sixth G is nothing.”

She shook her head. “We were both suffering a lot for the first couple of days.”

“Part of the bonding experience, I’m sure.”

Hadley laughed. “You could say that. Mainly we were in bed, moaning, but not in a good way.”

“Sounds rough. I can’t imagine being in a strong gravitational field after so long in micro-g.”

“I’m very glad to be back home, and Andrea is, too. Next time our families will have to come visit us on the Moon. But Andrea’s family is so huge, it would cost a fortune

….”

“There’s always holochat.”

“Yeah, that’ll be enough for me for a very long time.”

“Not to change the subject, but I had an idea about the bubble collapse.”

“Me too! That’s all I could think about on the trip from Earth. Andrea went over everything with me, and I think I know what happened.”

“Let’s work on it first thing tomorrow morning. Right now, there’s a social we need to attend.”

Hadley laughed. “Yes! I can’t wait to see everyone!”

◆◆◆

Hadley and I spent the whole next day, and late into the night, going over our notes, bouncing ideas back and forth. Between the two of us, we were able to piece together what had most likely happened. It wasn’t the control mechanism that had failed. There was a flaw in the energy density oscillations. The fine-tuning of the vibrations had been tricky, and even with our multiple computer simulations, it appeared that the temporal and spatial frequencies were slightly out of sync with the Broek warped region 133

surrounding the warp bubble. We reworked the equations, and it looked like the warp bubble collapse issue was solved. Finally, at one a.m., we called it quits and went to our respective cabins, too excited to sleep but too tired to continue working. I zipped myself into the sleeping bag on my bed, my eyes wide open. I couldn’t wait until the next day to get back to work.

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