The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

played video games on her cell, drew geometrical shapes on the napkins, then clovers for luck, and stars out of habit. When she knew she’d spent too much time at the coffee shop, she switched to the crêperie, where she repeated the process: black coffee, another couple of hours lost in mundane tasks.

When she was done, she took the subway back home.

It was always the same.

That night, a woman boarded Amelia’s train and began asking people for a few tajaderos. The most popular cryptocurrency folks used since the peso was a piece of shit, jumping up and down in value faster than an addict dancing the jitterbug. You could tap a phone against another and transfer tajaderos from an account. A few people did just that, but even if the lady was old and rather pitiful, Amelia couldn’t spare a dirty peso.

To be frank, just a couple of bad turns and Amelia would be begging in the subway right next to the old woman.

The doors of the car opened and Amelia darted out. On the walls of the concourse, there were floor-to-ceiling video displays. A blonde woman danced in them. RADIOACTIVE FLESH, she mouthed, the letters superimposed over her image. A NEW COLLECTION. A tattoo artist sat by one of these video panels. He was there every few days, tattooing sound waves onto people’s arms. A snippet of your favorite song inked onto your flesh. With the swipe of a scanner, the melody would play. At first, she couldn’t believe he lugged his equipment like that around the city, not because it was cumbersome, but because she expected someone might try to steal it. But the man was quite massive and his toothless grin was a warning.

‘Hey, I’ll give you a discount,’ the man told her, but she shook her head, as was her custom.

Amelia took the eastern exit, which was rarely frequented by the gangs. She was in luck; they were nowhere to be seen. Now there was a choice to make. Either follow the shortest route, which meant walking through the courtyard and encountering the young louts who would be drinking there, or take the long way around the perimeter of the complex.

Amelia picked the short way. In the center of the courtyard, there was a dry fountain filled with rubbish. All around lounged teenagers from the buildings. They were not gang members, just professional loafers who specialized in playing loud music and yelling a choice obscenity or two at any girl who walked by.

Although the kids had nothing to offer except, perhaps, cigarettes and a bottle of cheap booze, when Amelia had been a teenager, she’d peered curiously at them. They seemed to be having a good time. Her mother, however, forbade any contact with the teenagers from the housing unit. Mother emphasized how Amelia was meant for bigger and better things. Marta was a lost cause. She’d gotten herself pregnant her last year in high school and married a man who ran off after a handful of years. It didn’t matter. Marta possessed no great intellectual gifts anyway. She’d flunked a grade and barely finished high school through online courses. Amelia, however, was a straight-A student. She couldn’t waste her time crushing beer cans with those kids.

Amelia believed this narrative. When her mother learned she was going out with a good boy from the university, she was ecstatic. Elías Bertoliat, with his pale skin and light eyes, and his fancy car, seemed like a prince from a fairy tale. Every time Amelia floated the idea of Mars, her mother immediately told her Mars was unlikely and she should focus on marrying Elías. After he broke up with Amelia, her mother insisted they’d get back together.

Glancing at the boys kicking around a beer can and laughing, Amelia wondered if she wouldn’t have been better off partying with them when she had the chance. If she was destined to be a loser, she could at least have been a loser who had fun, fucked lots of people, enjoyed her youth while it lasted.

She looked at the girls sitting chatting near the fountain, in stockings and shorts, heavy chains dangling against their breasts, their nails long, the makeup plentiful. Then one of the boys hollered and another followed.

‘Where you going? I’ve got something for you, baby.’

Laughter. Amelia looked ahead. There was no point in acknowledging their displays. The faint fantasy that she might have once enjoyed spending her time with them vanished.

They called the days on Mars ‘sol’. Twenty-four hours, thirty-nine minutes and 35.244 seconds adding up to a sol. Three percent longer than a day on Earth. She reminded herself of this. It was important to keep her focus on what mattered, on the facts. They could scream, ‘Show me your pussy!’ and ask her to give them a blowjob, but she did not listen.

When she reached her building, she climbed the five flights of stairs up to her apartment – the elevator was perpetually busted. A dog padded down the long hallway which led to her apartment. Many tenants had pets and some let them roam wild, as if the building were a park. The animals defecated on the stairs, but they also kept the indigents away. The teens who held court downstairs also provided a measure of safety.

Amelia paused before her door, fished out her keys from her purse, and stood still. She could hear dialogue from the TV, muffled, but loud enough she could make out a few words. Amelia walked in.

‘Let’s see what’s behind Door Number One!’ the TV announcer yelled. Clapping ensued.

MARS, SCENE 1

It’s nothing but sand dunes. Dry, barren, quiet. When she bends down and picks up a handful of sun-baked soil, and wipes her hand against her pale dress, it leaves a dark, rusty streak.

There is air here. This is Mars but the Mars of EXT. MARS SURFACE – DAY. And she is a SPACE EXPLORER, a young woman in a white dress now streaked red.

SPACE EXPLORER has no lines of