Fortune's Detour: Prequel of the Deka Series by Abigail Schwaig Read online

  Fortune’s Detour

  By Abigail Schwaig

  Text copyright © 2014 Abigail Schwaig

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  To my family: both blood-related and not; you are fabulous.

  To all the Sams of the ‘verse:

  You guys are gold.

  To the name Tom:

  May it forever have a pleasant association from now on.

  Prologue

  She was Natalie Pryce and they gave her the name of Nicki-Ray Silas.

  The girl sat in the corner of the bare, wooden-floored room, clacking away on her antique typewriter, circa the year 4,300. She glanced at it appreciatively. She loved antiques.

  The keys clicked and pinged; she was oblivious. She really should have been using an e-board. Of course it was expensive, the very latest in translating thoughts directly into the data file on your portal. But she liked tactile sensation.

  The outlying sounds of the city’s serene and sleek super-fast mag-lev trains gaining momentum as the magnets sucked them across the metropolis did not disturb the tranquility of her silent (except for the popping keys) room.

  The girl did not mind. She paused for a moment, her wrists distanced above the machinery; eyes half-closed in meditation.

  She questioned herself, what do you hear? The answer was there, hanging in the space all around her in leftover bits of resonance from the city sounds. She closed her eyes; she could still feel the pulse, the vibrations.

  She listened raptly to the clatter and general disturbance that arose in the metropolitan city. The honking, the switching of traffic lights, the voices and laughter growing boisterous as the night grew deeper.

  It seemed to her that with the city noise, she heard all of the sounds of the sea.

  She was unlikely to experience such a peaceful noise within city limits, but still, she was remembering the past so vividly that it seemed to her as if the loft she inhabited was right in the center of her lazy, stagnating beach of Myceania Shores. It didn’t even take effort- she closed her eyes and she was back home near the town of Cornish, and not the wildly flourishing metropolis that was World City.

  She was, by all rights, stuck in the middle of hell. At least, her version of it. She had never been one for city life. Or for being cooped up inside all the time.

  The rules were simple: 1) Never go out alone or at night. 2) Keep to yourself, but be friendly. 3) Blend in. Always blend in. 4) Never tell anybody your real name. 5) Don’t keep any of the old habits you had in your old life. They were traceable.

  But even though she felt like a prisoner sometimes, she looked for and found the overwhelming city to be raucously teeming with beauty and inspiration. What inspiration? The inspiration that only she herself could see.

  For this girl, our girl, could see things that weren't there.

  She rubbed her hands together, making her own brand of magic. Below her, four-boards (a rendering of sky-boards so that families could fly too) and ancient vehicles (the enclosed kind) swooshed by along the differing levels of air-traffic while the most dangerous of all- old motorcycles- sputtered to life. They blasted into motion and roared off into the night. The Federation was constantly trying to toss those two wheeled death traps out of legality, but they would never succeed in tossing them out of public favor.

  It was the middle of the night, but still the girl clackered on like a telegraph operator on Exa, tuning in to the soft purring sounds of the fissional street lights outside.

  Natalie had the power to imagine whatever she liked, but nothing she thought now could ever fix the past.

  What do you fear? It was an unbidden thought, spoken in a cold, slithery tone from the dark pit of her imagination. Another self-exploratory aid? But so unwelcome that she shied away from it. It pried at her, grasping and reaching for her with agile, hot fingers. I fear nothing! she wanted to scream. But she knew herself too well for that. She had lots of fears. Fears of death, pain, and loss.

  The one question that haunted her constantly wasn’t even a question anymore. It was a word. Only a word- just a stupid, two-syllable, five letter word- and yet it could produce such havoc within herself whenever she spoke it aloud.

  David.

  She felt her breathing hitch. Oh galaxies, just thinking his name made her want to slink into a corner and die.

  I’m tired of carrying it around, letting it fester inside me. I’m tired of being soul-sick.

  She thought of the conversation she had had earlier today over the Comms. Knowing Sam, he would come as soon as possible- especially when she was in such a state as this. That meant he would probably arrive by morning. She had a long night ahead of her. Fingering her necklace pendant made of a sharp, crafted thin sheet of bronze, she took a breath to steady herself.

  So she put fingers to keys and forced herself to go back to the place she promised herself she would never go. Back to the start.

  ~

  4811/14/1/5

  I can’t hold it in any longer. I know at times I’ve been stupid and way too trusting, but that can't be helped now. What's done is done and all I can really do to keep rational is to tell it as it is.

  Let me start by saying that, at the moment, I am perfectly safe.

  Just can't sleep is all.

  I keep thinking of all the people I knew before and how they have a right to know what happened, and especially my poor family.

  The memory of this past year keeps on going in agonizing replay in my head. I can't make it stop.

  Right now we are in the 4th month of winter, the 14th and last month of the year, with only two more to go until our orbit takes me full circle to the beginning where I met him. But I'll get to that later.

  Apparently, nobody outside of the Deka Quadrant has ever heard of it, so I should give you a cheat sheet on all of the numbers we use here.

  4811 is the year. You already know what 14 is, so I won't sully your intelligence. 1 is the week. And 5 is the day of the week we are presently on. (There are two 12-day-long weeks in each month, making the total days in a year 336). There are 50 seconds in a minute and 50 minutes in an hour. Here in the galaxies of the Deka Quadrant, we like even measures of time and currency, along with everything else. We also like even numbers of children. But that’s more of an obsession than an actual law. (Thank Deka.)

  Some of the things that have happened to me have been really boring and I’ll try to leave those things out. And then other parts of it are really uncomfortable and terrible, but I’ve got to write them down and sort out my head.

  CHAPTER ONE

  4811/2/2/9

  I slammed my pile of books down on the floor of my bedroom, kicked off my sandals and groaned long and loud, like a creature settling into its nest for the night. Nobody was there to care. I covered my face in my hands and sank down to join my stupid lab books on the throw rug.

  “Why does it have to be this way?!” I pounded my fist onto the blasted, weighty Biofuel lab text.

  The day had been rough. Tutorials hadn’t been the killer; it was the Comms call I’d received from good old mom and dad afterwards, on my way home from academe. I had assumed that since the summer was almost upon us, I had a little more time before getting “the fated call.”

  This particular talk usually happened around Winter. I assumed I would have had some extra time to figure out my life before they gave me the annual interrogation. But, no. I should have known. Things had been too quiet and I had felt too free. It was bound to blow up in my face.

  My dad, as usual, did not understand “this fascinatio
n” as he termed it with switching my career path every month. This month it was Color Therapy. Last month, it had been Oceanic Charting Sciences. The month before that, I had wanted to pursue a teacher’s position in art. Those were just the last couple. I had a whole notebook full of other ideas I had toyed with. Artificial Intelligence Psychiatry, Primitive Culture’s Music Epistemology, Event Photography, and Cyber Shipping Florist were mixed up somewhere in there.

  Ugh. I didn’t have a life plan. How could I, when I had a series of different people inside me that all wanted to do different things? I wasn’t a singularly impassioned person. Either I loved everything or nothing.

  I had even woken up one morning during Harvest season last year, convinced I was destined to be a farmer and till the soil out in the Benzoate Sector, in the MidSouthern part of the continent. I was full of bright dreams of becoming one with nature. It wasn’t until I had crawled out of bed, splashed water on my face, and glanced in the mirror that I remembered how much I hated manual labor. I had switched personalities in my

  dream, only to realize that yet another moment of inspiration was useless.

  And he didn’t get it. Of course, why should he? I didn’t get it myself.

  Disappointment seemed to follow me like a cloud of desperation. When had I turned into such a failure?

  I just couldn’t bear to do something that I wasn’t fascinated by every second of my life.

  A life without passion cannot be endured.

  Unfortunately, Oceanic Charting Science had been their last straw with me. My one last chance to keep their trust. I had promised I would choose before the Winter and they were pressing me for a declaration now, right after Spring. The time had come to choose and I still didn’t have an answer.

  ~

  I’d have to find a way to support myself. I had nothing; save the little house on the beach that Gran left me when she passed. While that was a comfort, I still had to pay on-grid bills with my part-time job.

  The job at Paganda’s Sweet Shop wasn’t exactly worth much. And I couldn’t expect my parents to pay for the academe if they didn’t have a clear understanding of my future goals. Especially when the person most confused by these “future goals” was me.

  Everybody else seemed to know what they wanted, where they were going to end up. I was stranded. Waiting for something to hit me over the head and tell me to choose it.

  All I’d ever wanted to do was exist.

  I flopped on my floor and let the lacy edge of my coverlet tickle my nose. I took a long hard look at my skillset. What am I good at? Where does my potential point me? I had taken numerous aptitude tests and they all were unsatisfactory.

  You’d think that thousands of years of increasing technology and human understanding would create a workable paradigm for job-testing.

  Apparently not. Either people like me have never existed before or they have and just died off too quickly to be incorporated into society.

  There was literally nothing I wanted to do anymore. I had been so eager, so full of life just a couple of years ago. So ready for my future to begin. And now I just wanted it over. I was stressed, bored, overwhelmed, and disinterested in the previous things that used to please my senses. And my hobby of artistic pursuits- well, it had dried up, too.

  I had fourteen mostly full notebooks of poetry that was kriv-worthy, along with a stack of folders full of paintings and drawings that measured from the floor to my waist. The art was good enough to get into academe, but the poems were no closer to becoming anything special than the day I started them and nothing in the great Four-headed galaxy of Deka was going to change that. I guess I lacked meaning.

  This was the summation of my creative undertakings. They symbolized my talent and skill as well as the tentative hope of my future ambitions. They were the constant pride and ever-present blighting embarrassment of my short life.

  Why was this career decision so impossibly hard to make? Why couldn’t I just be happy like all the rest and go through life as a little cog, stuck inside the system, but overjoyed about it? Why couldn’t I embrace structure? Why did I even bother with anything anymore…

  I groaned again, feeling my heart ache at the thought of compromising and becoming a marketing executive like my father suggested. I didn’t want to manipulate people into buying something they’d hate in a few weeks! Where was the meaning in that? Nothing but credits. And yet lack of a tao deck was my biggest problem.

  On an impulse, I searched for my Comms device. It was on the floor, along with my satchel and pretty much everything else I owned.

  I hoped it would cheer me up to give a call to a friend. Lexandra was what my parents termed “a good kid,” the kind that gets academe ratings off the charts without much worry. She didn’t have too much ambition besides getting a good job and snagging her boyfriend Aton. He was a nice guy who wanted to become a doctor. With tan skin and curly dark hair and a studious yet pleasant expression, he was very good looking. He had basically proposed already and they were just finishing up academe before taking the final leap. I was both happy for and proud of Lex for her success in love.

  I, on the other hand, only seemed to attract goofy and awkward spacers. Lex said my love life resembled the red, barren desert of the interior, with the occasional oasis that seemed promising but turned out to have a lot of green gunk floating around. She was right about those things.

  I flopped back on the floor and scooted nearer the bed, playing with the fringe hanging down off the comforter.

  “Hey.” Lex answered peppily.

  “Hi- how’s your project coming along?”

  “Kriv it! You sound like my mother.” She laughed.

  “Sorry. All I can think of are my stupid problems… so I thought I’d call and busy myself

  with yours for a while. Get some perspective.”

  “Whatever, Natalie. Gossip’s more your style.” Lex had a penchant for hassling her friends, and I was no exception.

  “Haha- ok.” I shook my head affectionately. “I’m just so frustrated; anything you say will be entertaining to me.”

  “Angels, Natalie! Thanks for the compliment. I’m just your little joker who lives solely for the purpose of amusing you.”

  I could practically hear Lex’s eyes rolling into the back of her head. The thought made me crack a smile. Lex was a cynical art apprentice who didn’t look like one. She was pursuing administration and was one of the few that didn’t alter her appearance with dyes and piercings and tattoos. She looked more like a law student, with her perfectly trimmed bottom-of-ribcage length hair and her classy pendants and black slacks. As long as she kept within the top 5% of the season’s projected peer group’s rating average, her parents were dedicated to paying her way through academe.

  It sounded nice, but everyone had their problems. Hers just happened to be camouflaged better than most. That was another reason why I liked her so much. I felt we had a connection because she listened, no matter what I had on my mind. Sure, she would make a snide remark or two, but that was just her jagged sense of humor surfacing. She was full of hidden agendas, yet seemed to be completely open. I enjoyed peeling back the layers of her dichotomy.

  “I hate money,” I breathed for the tenth time that day, laughing at how pathetic I sounded.

  “Don’t we all?” she chuckled darkly over the line, sounding preoccupied.

  “No- I mean I really hate it.” I toyed with the tassels hanging off the edge of my comforter, my side halfway underneath the bed. This was the perfect position for talking on the Comms. I craned my neck and contemplated the bed furnishings. “I don’t know why nobody else does this.” Talking in and out of thought streaming was a bad habit of mine.

  “Mmm hmm.” Lex was tuning me out, probably brainstorming up an idea for her project due the next morning.

  “You know- I have to get this done between now and the break of dayshine, so I should probably go...” Lex sounded completely absent, as was her default lately. She was probably u
sing her neural-electrode-thought-syncing-board (SYNC-B to the rest of us mortals) to process her thoughts into type-written material.

  “Yeah, probably. Well good luck on it.”

  “I have seven more hours until I have to hand it in, so I’m good.” Lex sounded careless over the Comms, but I knew the self-perfectionistic streak she hid on the inside.

  I laughed. Lex had turned her tendency for procrastination into a perfected art, or at least a science. Whatever it was, she had a perfectly distilled system. “Great- good night!”

  “Night.” Lex was mellow. The Comms disconnected.

  I waited in the darkness of the room, staring at the device before my eyes. I checked the weather. As if knowing what tomorrow would be like could help me plan for the uncertain future.