Marcus Donovan was floating in the middle of his quarters. The walls were in crystal mode, as he’d taken to calling it, revealing the stars all around and the rust colored planet below. This was how he spent his down time; it was the closest he could get to the pure freedom experienced while reliving Legacy’s memory, back when she first plugged the interface into his head. He ached for that feeling, and the ache filled his thoughts and dreams. He just didn’t know how to make his longing a reality.
While rooting around inside her mind, he often tripped other memories, but they were only faded images and dim sensations in comparison. They weren’t the rich, sensory complete experience he had that first time. He literally lost himself and became her, and it was the single most transformative moment of his life.
Now, she resided permanently at one edge of his consciousness, a friend and confidante, but whole, separate and complete. There was no commingling, no question where one ended and the other began.
Sometimes, Legacy wondered why Marcus was so eager to be rid of himself. She thought Eireki were the most beautiful things in all of creation, and the desire to escape that existence totally baffled her.
Truth was that being out among the stars was all Marcus had ever wanted, though, and he just couldn’t ever explain it quite right. When it came right down to it, he wanted to be a ship. He consoled himself with the fact that for one titanic battle, he’d lived his dream. It was more than most people could say.
It still wasn’t enough.
He watched the stars and identified constellations for a while, until Legacy told him Amira Saladin was awake and inside the factory. The fact that Amira had trouble sleeping wasn’t surprising. Most people had some difficulty their first night aboard, thanks to the heartbeat rhythm audible throughout the ship.
“She’s in the factory? That’s a good sign,” he said out loud. “She’ll come around. I promise.”
Legacy told him again how excited she was by Amira’s presence. The woman had a vibrant imagination, and saw possibilities wherever she looked. Her thoughts were different somehow, radiant like a bright light amid darkness. She was more like the Eireki of old, and Legacy found that especially invigorating.
She told Marcus to go give Amira a nudge in the right direction.
“You’re not going to shut up about this, are you?”
The whole of Legacy’s being communicated the word “No.”
“Fine,” he said, “but let me talk to her alone. Really alone. No eavesdropping.”
The ship reluctantly agreed.
Marcus floated back down to the floor, threw on a shirt and some loose pants, and headed out the door. At the end of the corridor was a landing pad and transit tube, which carried him several kilometers to the factory where Amira Saladin was silently looking over the machinery. She had the look of someone thinking heavy thoughts.
She was leaning against a railing that overlooked an assembly line. The manipulator arms and their panoply of tools were at rest, just waiting for a job to occupy them.
Marcus walked across the empty floor and took a spot next to her. She didn’t react to his presence at all, but couldn’t have missed him. She would talk to him when she was ready, he assumed.
And after an eternity, she did. “The future never quite works out how you expect, does it?”
“Not as far as I’ve seen. Life would be pretty dull if it did.”
“Maybe. It’d be nice for a change, though. I mean, when I was a kid, before my family came to Mars, I never ever would’ve guessed I’d become an engineer.”
“You had something else in mind?”
She laughed. “Yeah. Artist, all the way. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have paint on my hands. And my clothes. And my face. My mother still has all the goofy little pictures I made.”
“So what happened?”
“Mars happened. For my parents, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The kind of offer they couldn’t refuse, and me… Well, I came along. That’s the only choice a teenager has.”
“There are only a couple constants in the universe, and one of them is that being a teen sucks. So, I take it there’s no market for art on Mars?”
“I dunno. Thing’s change, so maybe. Probably stupid landscapes. There wasn’t back then, though. Art’s a luxury, and when we first made planetfall, life was hard. A lot harder than anyone expected. We all worked our fingers to the bone in the early days, adults and kids alike.”
“And that’s how the painter became a wrench jockey.”
“More or less. I had small hands, and I could reach where other people couldn’t. I hated it. I hated it so bad that whenever I fixed something, I made sure it stayed fixed so I wouldn’t have to fix it again.”
They both laughed for a while. When the silence returned, she spoke again. “How about you, Doctor Marcus Donovan? What did you want to be?”
“Me? I just wanted to be on Mars.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Completely serious. There wasn’t anything I wanted more. Rocketing through space, traipsing around alien worlds and meeting little green men. That was the dream, and Mars my first target. It was the only planet close enough to be realistic. The only one with the possibility of becoming more than a stupid kid’s fantasy.”
“If it’s any consolation, you really didn’t miss anything. There was nothing on Mars but rocks and hard work.”
“I know. I’d still have given my eye-teeth just to hold one of those rocks, though. I had to make due with a crappy telescope, and by God, I kept my face glued to it from sunset to sunrise, just dreaming about all the places I’d go if I got my chance. If you look close, I’ve still got a dent on my cheek from the eye-piece.”
She looked at his face and started to giggle. “Oh God, I thought you were just saying that.”
“I cheated,” he said. “Neglected to mention the part where my brother smacked the back of my head so hard that I needed ten stitches. What are brothers for, right?”
“That’s terrible.”
“Nah. It gave me character. That’s what mom said, at least.”
Sal smiled, but it faded quickly. “So, you always knew you were going to outer space?” She sounded wistful.
“S’pose so. I went to university on a scholarship, got my degree in astronomy, and then it was straight into the Foundation. I got so wrapped up in the work that I kinda forgot about aliens and weird worlds, and just stared out into the unknown, hoping to discover some strange phenomenon to slap my name onto.”
“Until you saw an alien ship.”
“That was… clearly a turning point for me. I bet I wasn’t the first to see her. It just took someone half-crazy to recognize what she was.”
“Is that when you became Mr. Fix-It?”
“Yep. Doctor Donovan, patch kit and space gypsy. Most despised man in the Foundation, I reckon.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Say you’re working on a project, and the suits inform you that Marcus Donovan is being transferred to your station. How would you take it?”
“Like a slap in the face.”
“Right. I got used to steely gazes and professional sabotage after a while. But it didn’t matter because I had my eyes on the prize.”
A look of utter disbelief suddenly overtook her. “Wait a minute, Donovan. You’re full of crap. You’re telling me your life turned out precisely the way you imagined it.”
“Not precisely. Like you said, the future never turns out quite how you expect. In my case, I just got more than I wished for.”
“More of what?”
“Everything. I wanted to see new places and peoples. Instead, I’ve got an alien warship plugged into my skull, and now this war… The Earth’s lying in shambles, Legacy keeps telling me the fate of the galaxy is hanging in the balance, and I’m the only person in a position to do a damn thing about it. Can you imagine that? No one likes having responsibility dropped on their shoulders, and I’ll be frank with you… I’m the worst possible candidate for the job. I’m not a general, or even much of a leader really. I’m just an astronomer who likes to solve problems.”
They were both silent in the wake of that revelation. Marcus hadn’t paid much attention to how he felt about it all. He’d just been along for the ride, doing whatever came naturally, and this was the first time he stopped to think about it. He wasn’t entirely pleased at what he found.
They both looked out over the sleeping factory for a long while, until Marcus finally spoke again. “I know this isn’t the future any of us expected, Amira, but whether we like it or not, it’s the one we were dealt. The fate of our race is hanging in the balance, and we need all the hands we can get. Even the little ones.”
She was still quiet. He decided it was time to leave, and let her make the right choice on her own. Before he left, he said one last thing. “We’ll all collapse if we don’t carry this weight together, and there won’t be anyone left to pick us up.”
It was true: Marcus Donovan didn’t have a subtle bone in his body, but sometimes subtlety wouldn’t do.