Liquid Blue, Book 1, Part I Read online

Caeden Bishop Llewellyn waved his arm arbitrarily over his head to shut off the alarm. And, while he knew that would stop the incessant beeping, he also knew it wouldn’t stop the unit’s calendar system from telling him about his day. He’d yet to find a workaround for that, but at least he’d been able to reprogram the voice dynamics. It was no longer the voice of a harsh little man who reminded him of his technology teacher from the previous year. The new voice was soft and feminine. It gave him a good feeling to start the day with, though it often made his mother uncomfortable.

  “It sounds too sensual, Caeden, really,” she would say.

  “Awe Mom, its just a computer program.”

  “What was wrong with the man’s voice? Your father doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

  “That’s why he asked me to reprogram his too, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Caeden pulled the covers closer to his head. The heating unit was programmed to run low during the night and still hadn’t kicked back on. He heard the hum of the computer. The voice came down from the speaker over his bed.

  “Good morning, Caeden Llewellyn. You have seven modules scheduled for this morning. Records indicate that you completed all indicated units of home study. Congratulations. (Caeden had added this particular part of the program. It gave him accolades for the simplest accomplishments.) At 1300 hours you are scheduled to visit the oral hygienist. (Caeden groaned.) This appointment was edited by Linda Llewellyn. You will miss one education module; physics.”

  His day had just gotten progressively worse, all within a matters of minutes. He hated the dentist. And, of all the modules to miss, physics was the one he loathed to miss the most. Anita was in that module, and he would have endured The History of Dirt, let alone physics, just to spend some time sitting next to her. The voice continued on.

  “This evening is the residential module party. Tomorrow, you have a scheduled outing with your geology module. It will encompass the majority of the day. Plan accordingly. Based on today’s measurements, you have gained one half pound. Your temperature is normal, body mass index is slightly below average, blood pressure is stable, vitamin levels are normal, and you slept well. Congratulations. This alarm will repeat in two minutes if you do not vacate the bed. Have a nice day.”

  Caeden rolled into a sitting position with his legs over the side of the bed. The alarm would go off again, but he didn’t feel like he had started his day unless he had stayed as long as possible. He was trying to train his inner clock. He had kept his eyes closed in the still-dark room. He opened them, looking around the room. It was a small room, but that was the way things went when you lived in a Mining module. Even the government modules weren’t very big, according to his father. You just didn’t have the kind of space to waste that they did back on Earth. His father had talked of Earth with such a sense of sadness. It would always be his home, but he said it wasn’t the same place anymore. Caeden had always had a hard time understanding that. He had never been to Earth. He had never had the chance to leave Callisto. It just wasn’t something an underage person did. Once you were of age, you were assigned a job based on your schooling. If you didn’t study, his father said, you drilled for blue up on Jupiter. The top could pick their assignments, or, more often than not, were fought over by the various corporate and government entities. Caeden rose from the bed. The computer knew his game.

  “One tenth of a second. Congratulations.”

  “Lights, forty percent,” Caeden said. The lights in the room eased on and illuminated his surroundings. The room was seven by eight. His father often joked that if he grew much beyond his six foot three stature, he would have to sleep standing up. He opened the wardrobe door and pulled out his uniform, slipping into the green jumpsuit. It was standard dress for all students. He pulled on his boots. This was the only item allowed in the school that could be different. Caeden’s boots were from Earth. A special gift from his Uncle Lucious. They were called Doc Martin’s. Caeden had worn them almost every day since they had arrived. It was his favorite item of clothing. The only things he changed, on occasion, were the laces. Orange for Halloween, red and green for Christmas, silver and gold for New Years, etc. He even had some blue ones for corporate days.

  He made his way out into the hall. The unit was quiet. His father was sitting in the kitchen, sipping some tea. He smiled at Caeden as he entered.

  “Morning Cae,” he said.

  “Morning, Dad,” Caeden said, and he leaned in and kissed his father on the cheek.

  “I think your mother is going to forgive me for letting you change the computer’s voice.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It didn’t wake her up this morning. First time in about five years.” He winked.

  “Anything planned for the day?”

  “Need to jump up to one of the new rigs. Seems to be having a hard time keeping aloft. Programmings off or something. Fairly routine.”

  “For a new rig, though?”

  “Well, the way the company is building them nowadays, they can’t get them out quick enough.”

  “Kinda dangerous though, isn’t it?”

  “They figure that so long as the escape modules are functional, any crew should have enough time to get out. I hope they’re never wrong.”

  “If altitude was lost suddenly, wouldn’t that throw off the gravitational effects.”

  “Yep.”

  “And wouldn’t that make it difficult to get to an escape pod?”

  “Yep.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s why you’ve got to do well in school.”

  “It’s not really fair.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I wish I could change it.”

  “Maybe some day you can.”

  “Do you think?”

  “You’re a Llewellyn. You’ve got it in your blood to change the world.”

  “No pressure.”

  “Look at me. Do you think I’m a world changer?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t in the genes after all.”

  “Your great-great grandfather was a successful man. A great scientist before they visited him. He did all he could to guide the use of liquid blue. He wanted it to change the world, but he didn’t want it to rule it. I don’t know how happy he would be with our decision-making today. Of course, he died before they really knew what the hell they were doing.”

  “I know the story, Dad.”

  “I know, Cae. I just don’t want you to think that you can’t go out and change the world, or that you have to. It doesn’t happen that often. We do what we can, with what we can.”

  “You ok, Dad?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just not really looking forward to the jump today.”

  “You never talk about the jumps.”

  “I hate them.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s nothing. I just can’t imagine jumping so often as some of us do is healthy.”

  “But, all the studies. They say everything is perfectly…”

  “Who conducts those studies, Cae?”

  “Scientists, technologists.”

  “And who do they work for?”

  “The corporations.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you think they would lie?”

  “Do you think they would tell you if it was slowly killing you?”

  “But, no one has died from it have they?”

  “We’ve only been jumping for forty years or so. Too soon to tell. I would have never jumped if you had been born on Earth.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. You wouldn’t understand. It’s a parent thing.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  “You’d better get to class.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to ride a burning rig to Jupiter.”

  “Not funny!” His father mockingly yelled as Caeden left the module.

  Outside the residential unit, the lighting was simulating early morni
ng. The narrow corridors were relatively empty. He walked with a heightened step toward Turk’s module.

  Frederick Turkovitch had been his best friend since the first module they had taken together at age five. Caeden had been the first to call him Turk. Ten years later, some kids and teachers had to be reminded of his actual first name, as it just was never used. They shared a sharp sense of humor, a love of Earth snacks, scary movies, and video games. Turk was like Caeden’s brother and where one was, the other wasn’t far behind.

  Turk was a short broad shouldered teen with curly thick black hair. He was the only kid on the station who wore glasses. Everyone else had their eyesight corrected surgically when it was required. His parents had refused, based on some religious belief. Turk had begged for the surgery every year that he could remember.

  He was quite a physically distinct contrast to Caeden. The tall, pale, lanky, red-haired boy was handsome and athletic-looking, though he had little skill in any physical sports. Turk was the captain of the wall-soccer team. Caeden had failed to make the team his eleventh year. But, Caeden was a wiz with computers, and spent endless enjoyment hacking into his friends’ systems and playfully messing with their morning announcements. Once, he had told Turk that his mother had scheduled an exam for him in the afternoon, in the girl’s locker room. Turk was still somewhat bitter about that. Recently, he had programmed the voice to speak in foreign languages. Caeden hadn’t expected him to know Cantonese, but Turk’s mother had once enrolled him in the class as an at-home learning module. Stumped, Caeden switched it to aboriginal Mowri the next day.

  As he walked down the hall, he spotted his friend, who looked somewhat aggravated. He might not have appreciated the most recent adjustment of his computer system.

  “Hey, man. Your parents coming to the module get together tonight?”

  “Don’t play it off, Cae.”

  “What?”

  “Firstly, I have not gained fifty-seven pounds since yesterday. Secondly, I do not have a proctologist appointment at lunch. Third, my fortune for the day is not “Give up and just be a blue miner, you lazy duster!”

  “Good morning, Anita,” Caeden interrupted.

  “Hey Cae,” Anita said, and she walked by the two.

  Caeden felt his legs go weak and the pit of his stomach made a strange leap that he didn’t quite understand. He had long ago given in to the fact that he had a thing for Turk’s younger sister. So had Turk. Caeden even suspected that Anita knew all about it. She certainly had a habit of embarrassing him at every opportunity, much to both his delight and dismay. The sad part was that he adored every moment she paid attention to him, even if it was to take him down a notch.

  “Hey, lover boy.”

  “What?” Caeden said, watching Turk’s sister walk around a corner up the hall.

  “Let’s go, of we’ll be late…again.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Could you at least pretend to not ogle my sister in front of me?”

  “I wasn’t ogling her!”

  “You didn’t take your eyes off her the entire length of the hall, and your eyes didn’t exactly stay above her neck.”

  Caeden blushed.

  “She’s two years younger than you.”

  “That’s nothing. My parents are five years apart.”

  “Yeah, but they’re…old. It doesn’t matter for them.”

  “They weren’t always old, you duster.”

  Dusting, as it had been explained to most children of Jupiter, was forbidden. Someone had come up with the brilliant idea of snorting the dust filtered from the ice water siphoned from the planet’s surface. It was claimed to have a healing/hallucinogenic property, and despite ample proof to the contrary, still sent several people, usually teens, into the emergency module every year. The only thing guaranteed with it was a heavy dose of radiation poisoning, depending on the amount inhaled.

  “You do that engineering paper?” Turk asked, trying to redirect the subject.

  “Yah,” Caeden said. “So, about your sister…”

  “Can we not discuss my sister?”

  “Do you think your Dad would be ticked if I took her to the Holiday dance?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “What?”

  “My mother adores you, my father would probably offer to adopt you should anything bad happen to your folks. I don’t know why you waited this long, though. The dance is next week.”

  “Stop pulling my leg,” Caeden said.

  “I’m serious. My parental units love you,” Turk said, “Why do you think they’re always asking you to stay for dinner.”

  “My witty table banter?”

  “Well, and I think my sister might put in a good word every now and then.”

  “Really?”

  “Ooooooh! I got a live one! It’s huge!” Turk yelled and jumped back and forth in the hallway pretending to reel in a fish. “Whoaaaa!”

  “Awe man, shut up.”

  “You are way too easy to mess with,” Turk said, still pulling on his imaginary fishing rod. The first time he had done that he had to explain to Caeden what exactly the joke meant. Fish weren’t exactly plentiful on Callisto. And his father had never really talked about the sport of fishing. It had always seemed like a boring concept to Caeden. But, having grown up with Turk, he now knew the joke all too well.

  As they reached the education module, they joined the rank and file of their fellow students entering the hall. It was a sea of green jump suits and a colorful assortment of shoes and laces. There were just about a hundred and fifty kids in the unit, and Caeden probably knew each one of them by their full name. That was just the way it was in the modules. Every knew everyone else, and in turn, everyone else’s business.

  Several of the kids they passed would say “Hi” in turn to both Turk and Caeden. A small wiry boy, who looked only about eleven came up to them.

  “Cae, you ready for the Physics quiz,” he said in an uncharacteristically deep voice.

  “I’m puttin’ it through the moon, Vic,” he said, and the boys shook hands.

  “I’m failin’ like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “You didn’t study?”

  “Turk’s mom kept me up all night, again.”

  “Awe man, lay off the dust,” Turk said.

  “That’s just wrong, Vic, on so many levels,” Caeden said.

  “Oh, it’s the only way to start the day,” Vic said triumphantly, chortling in his deep voice.

  “Hey, I’ll catch you spacers later,” Turk said, “History of Blue.”

  “See you in Engineering.”

  Caeden and Vic walked together down the hall toward Physics. Caeden towered over the much smaller boy. Vic’s friends would bust his chops for his short stature, but in the end, they always tried to tell him he was just a late bloomer. And, besides, none of the other seniors got hit on by sixth graders. What he lacked in height, he made up for in brains. Stanislav Petrovic was the top senior in the class, academically. He was destined for a corporate desk and he hated it.

  “There are kids who would kill to have grades like you. I don’t get it,” Caeden said one day when they were partnered in a lab together.

  “Cae, you can do anything. You’ve got good grades, and you’ve got the build, the good looks, the name. Look at me. I’m going to have a nice safe job behind a nice wooden desk where I stare at a monitor and check stats all day. I don’t want a desk job, Cae. I want to be where the action is. I want to be in the core, finding the blue, or scouting out new systems. They’ll never give me that.”

  It took Caeden a while to absorb what Vic had said to him that day. Later that week, he offered to include him in his weight training. He wasn’t sure it would help, but at least he might make the guy feel better. Vic had gladly accepted Caeden’s offer, and had religiously shown up at every workout. The results were meager, but it had increased Vic’s self-esteem. He said he’d even gotten the guts to ask a girl out to the holiday dance.

&n
bsp; “Hey, why don’t you come to the party tonight,” Caeden said as they approached the classroom.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Cae. You know my mom doesn’t like those things, and I can’t leave her for too long.”

  Vic’s mother had lost her left leg in a transporter accident. There was some sort of miscalculation in the amount of liquid blue used in the small jump. The prosthetic leg they had attempted to attach had resulted in a permanent blood disease. They had sued the corporations, but the suit had gotten lost in the bureaucracy and red tape that existed between the corporate-owned modules and the laws determined by a government half a solar system away. That had happened before Vic was born. His father died seven years later in a rig accident. That lawsuit had gone the same way. Rumor had it that they were kept comfortable and quiet by the corporations. Caeden never heard Vic talk of money, but he knew they certainly didn’t have too much. Her disease made it so that she couldn’t work, so there must have been money from somewhere.

  “Listen, just stop by for a little while. A few of the girls from the mod have promised to be there. I thought you had a thing for that O’Malley girl. The redhead.” He saw Vic blush through his olive-toned skin.

  “Duster.”

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun. You don’t have to stay long. Just swing by and be social for a bit.”

  Vic stopped in the hall suddenly. They were right in front of the classroom. There were no other kids in the hall. Vic looked very serious.

  “Do you pity me, Cae?”

  Caeden’s initial instinct was to shrug the question off and laugh. But the look on Vic’s face told him that wouldn’t pass.

  “You know I don’t.”

  “I don’t need your pity.”

  “You’re my friend, Vic. I want to help you out when I can.”

  “I am your friend, aren’t I?”

  “Have I ever let you down?”

  “No, Cae, you haven’t. I just don’t like feeling like I’m being treated differently.”

  “I’d do the same for Turk.”

  “Except he’d invite himself,” Vic said, and smiled.

  “Which would be fine, so long as he brought his sister,” Caeden said.

  “You’ve got it bad, Cae,” Vic said.

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” he said, and they went into class.