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

There were also a few novelties never experienced on Earth: the odd psychological condition of simultaneous claustrophobia and agoraphobia, restricted nerve conduction, incontinence, prolapsed sphincters. A few of us got to experience comas. And then there was the high radiation and constant vomiting. Radioactive fuel fleas, tiny particles charged with alpha radiation, pummeled our bodies at lightspeed. They penetrated our protective clothing and body, burned holes in our internal organs. They made us bleed and ache, wish we had never been born.

On a more positive note, there were the genetically engineered algae that produced our oxygen and protein, though the taste was a bit unsettling. We gained knowledge and experience we would never grasp in several lifetimes on Earth. If you’re a curious kid, space mining might be just the right career for you.

I returned to that man’s body. He was staring into a mirror, haggard and old. The face was unfamiliar but the sense of déjà vu was so strong. I knew the plot continued from the previous dream, but I couldn’t remember the backstory at all.

The mirror reflected a messy room, a typical bachelor’s apartment with no trace of any other family member’s life. There were bottles of booze, cigarette butts, powders of unknown composition scattered on a tea table. A photo frame lay face down showing only the buckle on the back. Printed papers littered the furniture and floor like giant snowflakes.

The man seemed to have come to some decision. He was looking at a black card in his hand, then dialing a number.

‘It’s me… Yeah, I think so.’ He sniffed, turned his back and looked back at the room.

‘… You let me down once already. I hope there won’t be a second time…’

‘… You can’t come with me this time. What does that mean, we tried our best? You didn’t try!’ His voice grew louder then weaker. ‘… You didn’t.’

‘… Yeah, read it word for word. Took me all night. Hope it was worth it.’

‘… Anything unclear? Ha, everything! The whole complexity of the system is far beyond any one normal person’s understanding. How am I supposed to understand it?’

‘… I know, the old debt’s still in the repayment cycle. This adds on a new debt. I get it. That’s just life…’

‘… I get how your psychological strategies work – what’s for family, what’s for future… You create a papier-mâché moral aura that’s just a bit too fake, can’t even weather a little wind or rain. For me, I just hope I get to live a bit longer or a bit better, even if I have to mortgage someone else’s life…’

‘… I hope you guys have some kind of conscience. I hope you can allow her a better life…’

A virtual birdcall activated behind the man. He spun to see himself lit up in the mirror, embedded in golden rays that were probably supposed to signify hope. An electronic contract illuminated in the mirror. A voice prompted him to read it carefully, then place his palm on the mirror for biocryptographic verification. The man clenched his eyes and frowned, hesitated for just a moment before he slapped the mirror with his palm. Circles of colored light rippled from his hand.

‘Verification complete. Your contract is now activated. Congratulations on your new debt quota…’

‘Go fuck yourself!’ The man seemed to relax. He took a sip of wine and began cleaning up the disaster zone that was his room. When his finger touched the frame on the table, he pulled back as though it were burning hot.

‘… What the hell did I do?’ The man touched the back of the frame with his fingertips, found the courage to turn it over. A girl’s innocent smile beamed back from the other side. He picked up the picture book and covered his face. The book seemed familiar.

‘… What the fucking hell did I do?’

The man began to sob. His body trembled. He stood unsteadily.

‘I have to… have to stop… have to…’

He inspected his room in a panic. His eyes fixed on the balcony. The man picked up the remaining bottle from the table and downed it. He let it go. The bottle shattered at his feet.

The man rushed toward the balcony, and without a hint of hesitation leapt over the railing. Though I was just the dreamer, the sudden abyss hundreds of meters below me made my adrenaline soar. The gathering wind whistled sharply.

Many dreams end in free fall. This wasn’t one of those dreams.

The man’s fall lasted just 0.3 seconds then paused mid-air. He was like a flying insect trapped by an invisible cobweb, unable to struggle. The bust of a woman in black emerged from the thin air. She wore a golden chain brooch, delicate smile and dignified air.

‘Mr. Dongfang Jue, it’s been too long. You’ve forgotten the details of our first contract. You have no right to end your life. All rights belong to your creditors, to the company. Even if you end your life, your debt cannot be cancelled because its data is encrypted and embedded in your genes. It is impervious to tampering.’

Like that man, I tried to decipher the hidden meaning in her words. It was as though there were a subtle tremor in the transparent spider silk connecting us, reverberating in all directions. It seemed to await only an open sesame that would unleash a flood of signal as it busted the locks on my cognitive module.

But sesame didn’t open.

6.

…

Ginger.

Freckles.

Magpie.

Popcorn.

…

They had all been deleted. One by one. Faces and voices blurred in my mind like paint dissolving in the rain, mixing into muddy colors, seeping into the dirt along the gutter of my memory.

‘We’re space miners. That’s our life.’ Everyone repeated the old clichés to me in hopes we could keep busy with the tasks at hand.

Maybe they were right. This was our life. Held captive in the distant cold borderlands of the cosmos, abandoned, forgotten, able to repay our inherited debt only through interminable labor. My skills allowed me to