[68839] FrederikSkardaFrederik and Io shuffled through the doorway of their rented Skardan hab pod. The rental hab was just a few levels below the bustle of the cosmodrome, and a few kilometers away from Lake Lapis, at the furthest edge of Arco Lazuli. Frederik sensed the vibrations of the moon’s surface launches through the floor, but just barely.The hab’s entrance was a working airlock tunnel, to be used in case of catastrophic failure of Arco Lazuli’s pressure seals, and led the pair into the large half-dome shaped commons of the hab. On the far side, a gentle and large ramp carved in the Skarda blue gray marbles led to the branching hallways of private quarters. The floor and side walls were rough, opaque, and sanded down—practical. Polished until the azure Skardan marble sparkled, the domed ceiling was streaked with white filamentous lines and speckled with flecks of yellow impurities, like an impressionist painting of a starry night.To the left, modular, printed furniture filled half of the hab. A liminal space separated the two halves of the hab, with the other half serving as a mess area. Stacks of cargo containers, biosuits, and personal rucksacks destined to return to Ergo filled most of the space between permanent features of the rental hab. Except for Charles sitting at the head of the long mess table, these commons were empty. Charles was Frederik’s pik debrat—Di Lingua for his brother’s son. Frederik smiled when he saw Charles.“Hao fa,”[36][Di Lingua]: Hey. ↑ Charles mumbled from a simple modular table.Io tapped on Frederik’s shoulder. “Later, ye?”“Ye,” he turned back to Charles. “Hao fa, Charles.”[37][Di Lingua]: Hey. ↑Charles smiled as he picked at the doshirak tin filled with reheated food. “Did you look at the contract?” he asked idly. Charles nodded. “Ye. Everyone sealed it.”With a wave, Frederik saw the pile of notifications on EAR. He swatted the display closed like it was a fly.“Everyone?”Charles ate a spoonful of rice, then shrugged with his free hand. “Diya has not.”“Hmm. Ye,” he tapped gently at the table in the mess, suddenly anxious that Io’s suspicions were correct. “Do you think Diya and you can stay behind on this run?”“I assume I still get my cut?”“Fine. You can still get your cut.”Charles nodded, disinterestedly. “Then ye—works for me.”“Oke…one of the Absolute Horizons representatives is going to meet us at the cosmodrome. Diya gah wey dey?”[38][Di Lingua]: Where’s Diya? ↑“Hasn’t left her hatch.”“Ahdioseu, Charles.”[39][Di Lingua]: Bye, Charles. ↑ “Ye, ye.”[40][Di Lingua]: Yeah, yeah. ↑Frederik left the mess, walked up the ramp to the private quarters, ducked through the rightmost passageway, and knocked on Diya’s closed hatch door. No response. He knocked again. His seal bracelet buzzed. Frederik re-opened his EAR interface and read the message from Diya.[Diya]: use your EARFrederik frowned, and asked Diya if she was in her room, and would talk.[Frederik]: Yu gah A bang lul comot?[41][Di Lingua]: I’m in your room, are you coming? ↑The door’s magnetic lock released with a click.[Diya]: yey-eh[42][Di Lingua]: Useless. ↑He stepped into Diya’s pod. “You don’t need to lock this, oke? No one is going to barge in,” he stopped short when he realized Diya was nowhere to be seen. “Diya?” He let out a frustrated sigh as he looked over her living quarters.Diya’s room had a similar layout to all the private rooms. Frederik thought of it as a long cylinder, cut in half along its long axis, and then placed back on the ground. It was tall enough for Frederik to jump and not hit his head, close to three times his body length—much longer than the typical stateroom on a spacecraft. Carved out of the same Skardan marble as the rest of the rental hab, Diya’s quarters had a small ledge desk at waist height that demarcated the ceiling and walls. About a quarter of the right side of the room was a polarizable spinel ceramic window—currently in an opaque configuration—with a door to the outer courtyard. There was a work desk, a dining area, even a small mess and a sink, a forest biome in a bottle, and a private water closet cubicle—shower, sink, and sanuchel. A sleeping pad filled the opposite end of the door, stuck between the water closet and the leftmost wall. It was long enough for the tallest Grond steh to stretch out comfortably.Diya’s personal rucksack was lying on her sleeping pad, its former contents spilled out carelessly over blankets, and even spread out on the floor next to the bed. He stooped, grabbed up anything that looked fragile or important, and rolled his eyes. A half-packed biosuit, a few ink displays covered in Diya’s ERR–AL physics notes, Diya’s great-great-great-great-grandmother’s Martian shawl. There were also three half-eaten doshirak tins that had turned. Frederik curled his nose at the pungent odor and dumped the food into the recycling chute before he went out the door to the courtyard with the family’s heirloom shawl.Frederik’s great-great-great-grandmother’s shawl was shiny with a bumpy texture woven from thick composite fibers. It had a blue and gold fringe with white blocks that were reminiscent of lizard skin. Made from a boron filament weave, the shawl was beautiful, but also practical—just like Frederik’s tattoos. Its sturdy self-cleaning fibers allowed for using it as an emergency breach patch in space or wrapping it around the face to filter particulates and bacteria or using it as a medical brace or weave bandage in a pinch. Frederik held onto it as if it was fragile, though despite its age, it was sturdier than most freshly fabricated fibers. With his face near the shawl, he took a deep breath to smell it. It brought fond memories of his wrinkled and weathered great-grandmother, who had given him the shawl. Despite his inability to recall her face, he could still detect that blend of spice and astringent that always accompanied her. He felt like a kid again in the embrace of his great-grandmother—an emotional warmth rivaling the Ya Ke starrise.“Diya?” he called out onto the roofed patio attached to Diya’s room.“In the courtyard,” Diya replied, angsty and irritated.He exited her room onto the adjoining balcony and was in the large open space between Arco Lazuli’s core volume and the outermost barrier that defined the celarium. This outermost wall of the celarium was called The Drum. Stacks of planters, rows of grow lights, winding tubules of hydroponic systems, life support systems, and glossy cobalt gray crab-like maintenance autos—like those in the Arco Lazuli gardens, save their coloring—covered The Drum. This was not Martian pseudo-planning, but a more rigidly controlled agriculture space—the residents in this liminal space between The Core and The Drum saw the wall but would never be able to reach out and touch it.These were the air recycling pods that extended the entire kilometers long height of the celarium from the agronomy sections at the bottom of Arco Lazuli, all the way up to the same level of Lapis Lake, just below the cosmodrome. There were no birds or buzzing insects here—no natural predators to feast on the unnatural decapods—only the whirrs and puffs and scuttling claws of autonomous maintenance systems growing food and cleaning air.Frederik followed the curve of the walkway from the patio, down and away from The Drum, into the two-story courtyard nestled between Diya’s and Io’s private patios. It was this hab’s private garden. Across the space of the courtyard, Frederik saw Io out on her patio, brushing her teeth. She waved, then pointed down at the base of the courtyard’s tree. Frederik nodded in thanks at Io and walked the rest of the way down the spiraling walkway to the lowest level.In stark contrast to the rigidity of The Drum, the courtyard was a grassy knoll. A gnarled tree sat in the center of the knoll and reached the very top of the Skardan marble arch that connected the two roofs of the patios. Diya sat at the base of the gnarled tree, resting her head on its sturdy trunk. Her long, curly hair draped over her shoulders in a way that reminded Frederik of her late mother. She was wearing her well-loved headset, her hands shoved into the pockets of her favorite bright red and teal-seamed high-collared jacket, and her feet were out of her boots and curled into the grass. She stared vacantly toward The Drum and did not acknowledge him at all.Brow furrowed, he pointed at her headset. “How did yo—”“You never use your EAR, so I cooked up an auto to listen-and-inform in my room,” she said.Diya pulled the left cup of her headset off one ear. She was cold to him, and mad.“Did Charles—”“Tell me I have to stay here? No. Figured it out on my own,” she turned her intense glower toward him. “Io seems a bit worried about this contract—should I be?”“When did you talk to her?” “Didn’t have to. She broke her after-night routine, figured something was wrong. Saw the contract notifications. Should I be worried?”Frederik gave Diya a concerned smile. “Not any more than usual.” “So why are you having me stay behind?” Diya scowled.Frederik raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you want to stay here? With your friends? Working through your courses? Exploring the celarium?”Diya rolled her eyes. “Friends? All my friends are on Horizon’s Edge. They’re just little pictures on my EAR now, and light lag makes streaming with them impossible,” she sighed. “Besides, I learn way more on Ergo than I do sitting around here.”It was like someone had punched his heart.“You know I only want the best for you, and we need the space and—”She jolted up from her resting place against the tree’s root. “Then have Charles stay behind!”“I want you to have more…stability.”Diya scoffed. “Juan juye[43][Di Lingua]: Bullshit. ↑…you’re really worried about this contract, huh? Like Io?”“Diya…there’s nothing to worry about. And I want you to grow and learn somewhere that isn’t Ergo. We never intended it to be our home forever.”Diya got agitated, looked as if she was about something as she pointed a finger at Frederik, but then she bit down on her lip, shoved her hand back in her jacket pocket, and scowled off at The Drum. Frederik looked down at his feet and apologized. “Diya…chu’eh son—”[44][Di Lingua]: Diya. .. sorry ↑Diya continued to frown at The Drum. “When do you leave?”“We have three hours to pack, then we’re going to meet the Absolute Horizons representative at the cosmodrome, and head back to Ergo.”“See you in eighteen days, plus or minus six days, then.”Frederik sighed and took the time to remind Diya he loved her. “Ye. A gah Diya ill luv dey.”[45][Di Lingua]: I love you, Diya. ↑Diya muttered a perfunctory acknowledgement. “Adrey, byanjeng bin dey.”[46][Di Lingua]: Previously authenticated, Dad. ↑Frederik waved at the green space around them. “You might not like it, Diya, but when I get back, we can start building a place like this for ourselves—the Obialo’s will have our own hive in Domot Get Grond Dey. You’ll be able to make lasting friends and have so much to learn too. And we won’t have to move again.” Diya looked unmoved.He set the Martian shawl next to Diya, and spoke sternly. “Take better care of this, eheen.”“Muwha?[47][Di Lingua]: Huh? ↑ Fine. Oke,” Diya put her headset back over her ears.Frederik was half-way back to Diya’s patio, and the rest of the hab, when she called out.“Wait!” Diya ran up to Frederik and handed him the Martian shawl.“Keep it safe for me, on Ergo?”“Oke, eheen, but when I get back…you need to be responsible for it, oke?”Diya rolled her eyes. “Yeye.”“Oke, ahdioseu eheen.”[48][Di Lingua]: Okay, bye sweety. ↑He let Diya walk back to her spot underneath the tree to brood in a world of her own, undisturbed by her surroundings and isolated by her headphones. Back up the stairs into Diya’s room, he neatly folded his family’s shawl to be tucked away for transport to Ergo. Despite Diya’s protests and sullenness, Frederik still smiled to himself. In that moment, before they exchanged words, Diya looked happier beneath that tree than she had ever looked onboard Ergo Infinitum. If everything went well, they would have their very own garden in Domot Get Grond Dey, and Diya would have a tree to sit under every day. Not a rental, but something permanent.