Submitted for the November 2024 prompt: Aspirational Utopias

My mag-boots clanged against metal as I traversed the outer hull of the orbital ring. One of Ochoa-Strausburg Corporation’s many engineering marvels, it straddled Eris’ equatorial region and was home to my rehabilitative program, Envision.

 

My buckyball faceplate, manufactured on the ring, relayed a steady stream of Mentee objectives, quotas, and informatics relating to my suit’s support modules and corresponding integrity thresholds. The plate would likely fetch me around 300,000 pesos on the black market — if I played my cards right. After all, Envision could never really tamp out my entrepreneurial cunning, even though it was at odds with the program’s rigid ethical standards.

 

“Uh, Marq?” Broward's usual cheer was absent from the commline. “You see that plasma front a few thousand kilometers out?”

 

“It’s barely a breeze,” I scoffed, ignoring the blinking radar array at the bottom left of my faceplate. These solar events were a dime a dozen, and Broward's overcautious ass insisted on crying wolf over every single one of them. “Coordinates, Broward. Let's get this rupture welded before the breeze moves in.”

 

“It’s not up for debate, Marq. Head back to Triage, now.”

 

I bit my lip, annoyed by his paranoia. A green bar on my faceplate blinked with upward arrows. “Leak’s within walking distance; I can see it from here, man. And I’m well over quota today. No way am I gonna let Sol's fart rob me of a service reduction merit.”

 

“Let’s not do this, not today,” he responded wearily.

 

Scowling, I flipped the bird towards Triage. Broward was just another hapless cog in the OSC machine. Not me though. Envision may have been well-intentioned, but I never needed fixing. Not by glorified babysitters born with silver spoons up their asses.

 

“Mentee Marquardt, please—”

 

Deactivating the commline, I trudged toward the leak in relative slow motion, constrained by my bulky EVA suit. But I was jolted backward as a winch reeled my safety tether towards Triage.

 

Broward, you bast—

 

* * *

 

“Can you hear me?” a soft, masculine voice jarred me from semi-consciousness.

 

A grunt was all I could manage.

 

“One breath at a time, Mentee Marquardt. Your road to recovery won’t be an easy one.”

 

Even in my disoriented state, there was no mistaking the voice of Mentor Santos, a stodgy old bastard parading as some grandfatherly sage. Or so I thought.

 

Forming words, let alone coherent sentences, was no easy task, but I eventually managed.

 

“Recovery… from… what?”

 

“The solar storm you endured on a maintenance run last week. We can repair your eyes and extremities, but not you.”

 

That explained why I couldn’t see or feel anything. But my memory still evaded me.

 

A soft hand caressed my brow. “Unfortunately, you face a difficult decision. Disobeying your field officer's direct orders resulted in… unfortunate consequences. The midsection of your EVA suit was breached, and 70% of your body sustained deep tissue damage.”

 

Panic needled into me. “Tha-that can’t be."

 

“Your obstinance will be your undoing, Mentee Marquardt. From now on, please meet us halfway.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, the regenerative couch you’re in doesn’t synthesize tissue for free. Repaying that debt will require an additional three and a half years of service.”

 

Like so many before him, Mentor Santos’ words wove invisible walls, closing in around me. But I was too exhausted to hold them back, to keep waging war against everything and everyone in my path.

 

“But,” he paused, “OSC's bioengineering division may have another option, one that will halve your debt and allow you to complete your service work… unencumbered. Are you willing to take a leap of faith?”

 

I’d never trusted anyone but myself, while always placing blame on everyone else. Tears streamed down my cheeks, illuminating the invalid I’d become.

“I’m… all ears, Mentor Santos,” I stammered, my heart thudding wildly.

 

* * *

 

Having lost all control, all sense of time in this circular, aquatic enclosure, I live and breathe uncertainty. Like all of my prior confinements, this place has no exit — it’s another manifestation of the Gordian knot that’s bound me for a lifetime.

 

Oxygen bubbles escape my breathing apparatus, which I fixate on like pockets of hope. Chemical clouds obscure my vision, discharging from nearby apertures. Slowly, I feel my reservations being stripped away, one double helix spiral at a time, as my skin tingles in this soup of proteins and amino acids.

 

Lucidity coalesces and dissolves like order and chaos battling for supremacy in my mind. IVs periodically flood my bloodstream with nanochines, slowly altering my body’s chemistry down to the cellular level. My outer skin softens and eventually sloughs off. The rough, pink flesh underneath is firm yet flexible, like scar tissue.

 

For a time, darkness and panic are all I know, as my eyes shrivel and dissolve. But in their pits grow gossamer strands coated in sensory cilia, and I’m no longer blinded by my own shortsightedness.

 

Emboldened, I pull the breathing apparatus away from my mouth, testing the limits of this metamorphosis. Immediately, I recoil from the shock of milky liquid flooding my lungs. But this womb isn’t so different from the one that birthed me. When I stop resisting, the liquid passes through newly grown branchia on either side of my neck.

 

My lumbering skeleton eventually dissolves, and I know a range of motion previously unimaginable. Strands of cartilage grow from the back of my arms, legs, and shoulders, sheathed in tensile flesh, as protective membranes envelop my orifices.

 

A panel slowly retracts, exposing the exterior of space, and an OSC-emblazoned bracelet around my ankle. Once I would’ve considered the band a shackle, but now it’s a lesson learned in accountability — to myself and those around me. Beyond the enclosure an expanse of freedom awaits; freedom from EVA suits, safety tethers, and who I once was.

 

The glass encasement buckles, then shatters. My wings unfurl and expand to great lengths, jettisoning the weight of my past. I glide through this sea of stars, humbled, knowing I've found a new way forward.