Light clanking was the wake-up call for every denizen of the Fuglesang Dome: algae roast machines cleaning themselves before the first sanctioned cup of algae brew of the day. Skipper Gustav Petrucelli opened his eyes and looked to his right. In an open drawer across his bunk, on top of a mattress too large for said drawer, so it had to be shoved in, a baby was peacefully snoring.
Gustav slowly sat up, took off the blanket and relocated his feet from the bunk to the floor, and attempted to stand up as silent as possible. He failed miserably: his head hit the ceiling producing a loud thud. The baby opened his eyes and quietly stared at his dad. Gustav couldn't help but smile.
"Good morning, Erik! Slept well?"
Erik tried to yawn and say something at the same time. It turned into an adorable "kg" sound.
"Yeah, sorry about that, my little patty. Still can't get used to these quarters. When Mykola said the ones under the roof are the worst, he wasn't kidding."
"Agoo!" Little Erik woke fully up and produced his first loud sound for the day. He added a deafening screech at the end.
"Yeah, I know, you don't like Mykola, he never shaves and still kisses you with that brush. Anyway, you didn't say how you slept. Any dreams?"
"Khhh!", the baby answered. Gustav waited until Erik finished whatever that was.
"Yeah, maybe a bit too early for that. Well, your pappa dreamed about this woman he met on Earth. She was frozen, but we brought her back and thawed her out. I dreamt about her hair. She had the same hair as your mamma…"
"Agggri!", the baby responded.
"Don't worry, I won't replace your momma this early. I want you to grow up knowing who she was and what she looked like before I introduce someone else to the family."
"Goo!"
"All right, Erik, dear, let's start our first training session of the day!"
The baby smiled. Gustav took him from the improvised cradle, held him in one arm, and closed the drawer with the other. Erik was still short enough to fit on the bunk sideways. It was 80 centimetres wide, and the last measurement they took put Erik in the "late 60s", but that was a couple of weeks ago.
"I have no idea what I'll do when you're… taller? Gotta hurry Mykola up with that relocation," he said to the baby.
Erik would be sent up when he rolls from his back to his tummy for the first time. Gustav was training the baby to do just that. These trips slowed down children's development — it was normal for small Selenians to start walking by the end of year two — but that was the price of growing bones dense enough and muscles sturdy enough for 1g. Maybe Erik would be the first one to go back to Earth, then he would need it.
"Nah, it would be too early for you to go down the gravity well. Believe me, I went there with the progocheologists half a dozen times already. Wouldn't want to give you false hopes." Gustav said. The baby's lower lip started sticking up and trembling. Erik burst into tears. Gustav picked him up and hugged.
"Come on, baby, nothing wrong with living on Selena. Come, you're hungry."
Gustav took a bottle from a bottle warmer hanging off the ceiling lamp — there just wasn't enough space for it on horizontal surfaces — and stuck the feeding end into the baby's mouth. The bottle cap ejected an elastic hood of sorts, attaching itself to the area surrounding Erik's mouth and creating a vacuum to prevent any spilling. Gustav put the baby in a uniform regulation papoose that was hanging off the wall in an inclined position, and Erik grabbed the bottle with his tiny hands.
Skipper used the feeding time to put last night's dishes into the sonic cleaner unit, get dressed in uniform and set up everything for a diaper change at the station. Security personnel spent their time in the elite part of the dome, which had access to warm running water: perfect for the babies. Way better than wet wipes, safer than sonic cleaning units. When Erik finished eating and the bottle released him, leaving a temporary mark around his mouth, Gustav attached the papoose to his uniform and slipped out of the quarters.
People often preferred not to think on their way to work. In larger places they drowned their internal dialogue in screens and noise. In Fuglesang there was no such luxury — everything was five to ten minutes away on foot. For Gustav it was "me time": in the quarters it was Erik; at work — schedules, incidents, reports, and, again, Erik. Only during descent and ascent from Earth did he get longer stretches of internal dialogue, and even then it was hard to think about anything but the explosives ten meters under his bottom.
Right now the internal dialogue wasn't refined and smart. It rather looked like the lazy writing of an erotic fiction author. Cheesy lines ran through Gustav's neurons: what would he say to that woman, Mileva Nova, if he met her? In which Dome, in what environment would it be? Gustav would prefer to meet her in a rover somewhere away: it felt more romantic somehow.
Gustav lost track of the moment when curiosity about Mileva turned into fascination, then infatuation, and perhaps even obsession. Maybe it was because of all that time he spent with her hibernating body on the way back from the mission. She looked so strong, yet peaceful. Born in 1g, she had muscles most non-security Selenians never dreamed about. Her skin looked like someone was pouring water on it her entire life: not grey due to lack of sunlight, not slightly shriveled due to arid air. She was the most beautiful thing he ever witnessed. He would give up his place in one of the most prosperous Domes if it meant seeing her again.
Having privileged access to the reports and mockup images of committee meetings didn't help. Skipper was happy he was one of the few ones on Selena who even knew about Mileva, it gave him a rare sense of exclusivity, even though he couldn't share what he knew with others. He never told Erik, even. But the images kept feeding Skipper's fantasies. Upon seeing those, Gustav's mind was waging war between salacious thoughts and rants about how those caricatures didn't do her justice. He also hoped for recordings to be released: he had never heard her voice.
The only thing available were the heavily redacted transcripts, which he gobbled up the minute they appeared in the network. Mileva sounded very bureaucratic there, so Gustav liked to think the committee just edited the text to make it sound more familiar.
"He's trying really hard to tell you something!", said a friendly woman in the elevator that would take them to the security office. Gustav frowned: he didn't see when she came in. As his awareness returned, so did the sound. Erik was babbling louder than ever before. If he wasn't in the papoose, he would've been shaking his little arms and legs already.
"Oh. Are you all right, patty?" Gustav turned to the woman, looking guilty, "Thank you. I got lost in my thoughts a little."
"It's fine. Looks like the little one doesn't let you sleep much."
"Weirdly, today he did a full 10 hours without waking up to feed."
"Well, fatigue stacks, so you won't rest properly for some time. Oh, this is me. Try to get some rest, minn herre Petrucelli, you are responsible for our safety. We'd like to see you vigilant at all times."
The woman exited the elevator, leaving Gustav alone with his thoughts, and with the baby. He was used to people recognizing him: Erik was one of twenty-three babies approved this year. Of them, just five were already born, and everyone knew their names. Every single child was noticeable in a Dome with merely 7,400 inhabitants.
Gustav felt like he was dipped into the waste removal section. He looked at Erik who calmed down a bit after some taps on the back and a gentle kiss on the back of the head, where the soft spot hadn't quite closed yet. The baby laughed.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh away. Some security guard your pappa is! Missed a whole person walking in. I didn't even hear you babbling! I'm sorry, Erik, I can't shake off that dream I had tonight! I promise I'll be more aware from now on!"
"Gooo-agoo-goo", said Erik.
The elevator slowed down as it approached the lowest level of the Dome. Gustav turned to the mirror, checked how he looked, and straightened his uniform.
"Everything a-okay now", he told himself.
The elevator stopped and Gustav marched straight to the office, bypassing anyone who could distract him further. He promised the baby to be more aware, and he was. Aware that Erik was long overdue for a diaper change.
"Hi, skip!"
"Skipper!"
"Morning, Gustav."
"Herre Petrucelli!"
Gustav rushed past his colleagues, nodding to quiet ones and ignoring the "good morning wishers". It always starts with "hi" and "how do you do", and then a whole world of problems is dumped at you all at once, and you have to go sort it out. Or, even worse, they would like to talk to the baby. It never lasts less than twenty minutes.
Skipper had no time for it. He made a beeline towards his office, grabbed the changing table, made a one-eighty and rushed towards the facilities.
"Hot water?" He asked one of his subordinates on the way.
"Nobody touched it as you asked. The supply must still be high."
Gustav put the changing table next to the sink and glanced at the meter. It said "200". The bottom residents cut the supply again, there must've been an accident somewhere. Gustav decided to look into it later. For now, there was Erik. Skipper unzipped the papoose and carefully lifted his son from it and on top of the changing table. In two easy movements he took the baby's pants off and threw them into one of two bags he set up on the floor. Then he started unfurling a complex knot he had to learn to tie when Erik started trying to roll.
The diaper was made of fabric laced with absorbents made of special mold discovered about a century ago on one of the extrasolar planets. The mold emitted a lot of heat, vaporising everything in their vicinity and then swiftly absorbing the vapor. The diaper used the same concept: any fluids from the baby would pass through a one-way heat resistant membrane, vaporise and be absorbed by the mold. The protective layer made sure that heat couldn't hurt the baby in any capacity. The threat of greenhouse effect against the skin was also prevented by this design. Gustav opened it up and grabbed a full little sack, and wrung it into the sink to Erik's delight. He loved it when pappa did that with his diaper or the towel after the bath. Gustav threw the wringed sack into the second bag. Clothes could go into the sonic. Really dirty things still needed water and soap.
"Stay there, don't go anywhere." Gustav opened one of the drawers, pulled a washed and dried diaper from yesterday, placed it next to the baby and raised the transparent sink dividers. Now, even if Erik suddenly learns how to roll over, he wouldn't fall on a cold surface. Gustav gave the baby a small toy for teething to keep him company, and got to washing the used diaper.
Usually Erik would spend five minutes trying to lick the toy, but this time he dropped it and started fussing.
"Maybe you want a spider tale like the one my grandma used to tell?"
Erik stopped fussing and turned his little head towards Gustav. Skipper could've sworn the baby saw him clearly from five meters away, even though their doctor insisted all babies were myopic.
"Okay, here goes. Back on Earth, many many years ago, there was something called a forest. It was like a hydroponic section, but larger, without any limits, only the open sky and tall, powerful plants. In that forest, a rabbit lived. He was small, grey and furry. He ate very little but could run a whole lot! Most of all the rabbit loved carrots, but they were rare and precious, and he only could afford them once a year."
Gustav started soaping the dirty diaper.
"One day, the rabbit was looking for food in the ground when he happened upon a small chunk of gold. It was shiny and precious, and it could buy him a lot of carrots. Maybe even a seed, those cost like a good, sturdily constructed rabbit hole! With a carrot seed he could eventually grow his own carrots, sell some of them to the other rabbits… The rabbit's mind started racing."
Skipper finished soaping and went on to rinse.
"So the rabbit went to the clearing in the middle of the forest. There was a market, where anyone could come by and sell something. Today there were a lot of noisy, angry bears there. Rabbit didn't like days like that. Sometimes there were days where the clearing was filled by bulls, they were as big as bears, but polite and had good manners. Today, there was only one bull, and he was leaving."
Gustav wringed the diaper and hung it out to dry. There was no point in drying it using a sonic unit: when the mold extract inside of it recovers from the shock of being soaped, it'll dry itself pretty fast.
"The rabbit asked the bull what happened, why were there so many bears? The bull answered that somebody dug up a big pile of gold, but was caught and the gold spread throughout the forest. Now bears came by and were trying to buy it all up for cheap. The rabbit nervously touched his puny chunk, and the bull saw that. He recommended holding on to it until there isn't as much gold in the forest. Rabbit nodded: that was good advice. Pleased, the bull left. As soon as his cowbell stopped ringing, the rabbit was also ready to leave, but he suddenly noticed a bear selling carrots."
Gustav got back to the baby and slid the dividers back inside the bathroom counter.
"The rabbit asked how many carrots he could buy for a chunk of gold he had. The bear looked at it with a suspicious frown and said: two carrots. The rabbit thought: on one paw, it was better to wait for the bears to leave and buy more carrots. On the other paw, it could be months from now, even a year! And right now the rabbit could get two carrots!"
The skipper made a pause. He lifted his son up and put him on his left arm, belly down. He turned on the faucet, waited for the warm water to arrive and started washing the baby. After it was done, Gustav put Erik back on the changing table, but now with a towel over it, so the baby wouldn't feel cold.
"The rabbit took two carrots, brought them home. He ate one, and decided to store another one. But the rabbit usually ate the carrots he bought outright, and he never had to store any. He put it in a small tunnel in his rabbit hole. When the time came, seasons had changed. Bears were gone from the clearing, and bulls came back. Rabbit decided to celebrate, but when he went to the tunnel, he smelled a foul smell. The carrot went bad."
Gustav dried the baby, checked time on his ARA, and decided to give Erik ten more minutes without a diaper.
"The moral of this story is if you have something precious, hold on to it, don't spend it here and now. Today will pass, and you'll still be staring at the meter," Gustav glanced at the display showing "140". "But in the future you could be rich, given just some patience."
Erik smiled. He liked it when Gustav told stories. He didn't understand anything that happened in them, but the sound of pappa's voice soothed him.
"O-o-ooh! That's not a position a man would like to be caught in!", a gravelly voice from behind Gustav proclaimed. Erik, laid down on the changing table without even a diaper on, turned toward the voice, recognized its owner, and immediately turned his head the other way, trying to forget he had ever seen that man.
"Good morning, Mykola", Gustav said.
"Hiya-ho, citizen Pe-tru-celli!" Mykola sang. "How's the little one? Still negotiating with gravity?"
"Trying to, still no luck. How's Nina, how's family?"
"We applied for the lottery this year," Mykola said. "Man, I'm not ready to be a father. But the family needs to be 'replenished,' as our matriarch put it."
"Oof. Even thinking of her gives me jitters. Yeah. I remember how she thinks with bloodlines and advancement. Remind me, is she some kind of Wang royalty?"
"Her mom was a cadet, and she always wanted to get her family back in power."
"And now with Oksana gone… that's one branch less on the old family tree. Erik was supposed to be a new one…"
Mykola Tsai Huang suddenly looked devastated.
"Gustav… it hasn't been forty days yet. We do not say her name before the fortieth."
Gustav felt like an idiot. Oksana, his late wife and Mykola's sister, spent hours educating him on Wang Dome traditions, a mix of spiritual beliefs and norms that were prominent back on Earth. Three and a half weeks later, all of it blew away like a piece of hull upon a bad atmospheric entry.
"I apologize."
An awkward silence was broken by a loud "agoo" by Erik.
"So-o-o, about your request", Mykola started, "I talked to your leadership. You know their manner to make you feel like they're really listening to you?"
"Yes?"
"Up until the last second I was sure they'd move you to bigger quarters. But they won't."
"What? Did you tell them they're 200 people under capacity? That's, what, seventy or eighty empty units?"
"I did bring it up. In the interest of transparency, as they said, they've disclosed that most of those were reserved for their tourism initiative, and the rest is already distributed to expecting families."
"Fucking tourism initiative? That project is more dead than a crater full of farewell pods."
"Nonetheless, they said your accommodations are 'sufficient' until Erik turns four."
Mykola was a union representative. He collaborated with several worker groups across four different domes. Representing security in all four was his main job, and usually it went without a hitch. He was the one who helped Gustav get better designed suits for the first missions on Earth. He met Oksana that way as well.
This time he seemed to fail. It looked like he took this failure personally.
"Look," Mykola said, "we can take it to court. We'll win. But there's no telling how long it'll take. Erik might already be walking by then. I'll say it again — take Wang's security transfer offer. You never answered them. Stay with us for a couple of weeks. Leave the baby with us when you need to. We'll help you rent bigger quarters. Come live with us."
Gustav thought about it twice already in the span of two weeks. Pay and hours seemed to be good, Wang Dome felt more comfortable than Fuglesang: "Wankers" were the biggest experts in robotics on the Moon. But the idea of leaving home gnawed at Gustav. He knew many like that — people who left. He carried a quiet disdain for them, though he never showed it in public. He remembered Oksana readily moving out of Wang because "she couldn't breathe freely over there." He remembered her holding him tightly at the border during her relocation to Fuglesang, making him promise they would never go back.
"I can't, Mykola. They say the sweetest things. My experience on the Cradle is valuable, they say. I know their contingent is three times bigger than ours, and I'm still in awe of the numbers in the last offer. But I just can't leave Fuglesang."
"Yeah, I thought as much. I'll pass it along the pipe." The union rep shook his head a little.
Gustav glanced at the meter again, showing "120". He hesitated for a second, then pulled two thermos canisters from under the sink and started pouring water into them.
"Again, I'm very sorry, Mykola."
"Think nothing of it, mate. Need any help?"
"Yeah, get the baby dressed and hold him while I'm setting these up. You'll need practice."
"Why do you think I'm gonna do all these diaper things?" Mykola asked, getting Erik's little palms through the sleeves of his shirt. Baby resisted this to the best of his baby abilities. One or two fingers were always stuck, making Mykola take the sleeves off, restarting the entire process. When Gustav was done — the meter was showing 80 now, and he hoped his colleagues wouldn't mind — Skipper put the canisters on the floor and approached Mykola and the baby.
"Look, do it like this. Don't pull on the turn-ups — you'll piss the baby off and just stretch them out. Turn them up instead. The hand settles easier that way."
"That was a priceless experience, thank you", Mykola said and turned his face back to Erik, "and thank you, little one."
Mykola kissed the baby on the cheek. Erik tried to grab his nose, failed, and produced a sound between a groan and a grunt. The Union rep's beard was itchy, and as soon as he let go of the baby, the little one made a sudden movement. He used his leg as a counterweight and caught the one moment when one of the bathroom screens was down. A small push — and Erik made his first roll from back to belly. The baby didn't love the experience and started crying, trying to get off the cold surface of the counter.
"That's what you get for running away from Uncle Mykola! Tell me you're recording that."
Skipper pushed a button near his temple.
"Baby's first roll — in the presence of his mom's little brother," Gustav said for the record. ARA took the last minute before activation and saved the moment for the future. Erik started wailing and was swiftly picked up by his dad.
"Proud to be present, nephew. We're gonna have so much fun together when you grow up a little…" Mykola promised.
The two men exchanged a quiet nod, and the union rep left while Gustav secured the baby back into the papoose. Two canisters of hot water were saved for the evening bath — for both child and father. Skipper stepped outside and back into the world of somebody else's problems…
Four feedings, two short naps, one long one, and five work cases later, Gustav, Erik, and two canisters of hot water went back up to the small quarters under the Dome's roof. The baby was tired: closer to the evening his dad's colleagues took turns to babysit, cuddle and squeeze the little one. They also helped him practice his rolling over: he was better at doing it to the left side than the right. The doctor recommended to promote balance in physical development, but it took time.
When Erik fell asleep after the bath and final feeding, Gustav set him up in his drawer, took a wash with what was left in the canisters, and got one of his night orderlies to take them back down to the office. Then he set his ARA to alert mode if the baby started fussing, secured everything around the improvised crib and went out to dinner.
The joint on the Dome roof level made a good mushroom risotto, and Gustav still had a few kwahs left before his allowance — what they called salary in Fuglesang — came in. It should've come any minute now. If Skipper didn't have enough, he could've gone to the free kitchen two levels down, but he had to be swift: it closed an hour after his shift was ending. Gustav shrugged. The food there was mediocre at best, and choking it down before closing felt worse than going hungry.
After filling his stomach, Skipper checked on the baby: he was sleeping in the same position he left him in. Gustav nodded to himself, paid for the meal, exchanged small talk with the owner and sat back to check if there was anything new on Mileva. He had restrained himself all day — no checking on her, no searching the network — focusing on Erik and the job. Now he allowed himself a look.
One headline from the secured part of the network suddenly made Gustav's mind race, so he made ARA repeat it over and over. "The Earth guest to be relocated amid security concerns. Wang, Gagarin, and Bagmon Domes under consideration." Opportunities started rushing through his head: he could ask Mykola to get him onto her security detail. If they kept it in-house, he could accompany the Fuglesang delegates. He could even become a delegate himself. With Gezeravcı hosting Mileva, their restrictions on conference space meant only one delegate per Dome, but all the listed ones had big venues enough to fit everybody with privileged information access.
Thinking about Mileva carried him home buoyant and restless at the same time. He checked on the baby one last time before going to bed. As soon as he laid down, he booted up the latest mockup and started perusing Mileva's image. Even with this abysmal art style, she looked confident, which tickled something in Gustav's mind. He checked again if Erik was sleeping: the fiasco in the elevator was still stinging him with a sense of shame. The baby was out like a light. Gustav got ready to immerse himself into another fantasy of his, this time exploring Earth together with her… And then he noticed a message about his personal account being replenished. Gustav switched his attention to it.
The Fuglesang financial system was anything but straightforward. Most Domes used money, there were different currencies. More transparent societies used public ledgers where anyone could look up anyone's earnings and spendings. Other Domes preferred the tried and true concept of everyone minding their own business. But they all still used money, be it digital or, in very rare cases, physical. Not Fuglesang. Fuglesang was one of three Domes who decided to go their own way.
Gustav's people divided all the energy produced in the Dome between their citizens. A third went to the government emergency fund: a huge energy storage cube that also served as the floor for Fuglesang basement level. The plan was to fill it and then distribute the excess among the population. In two centuries of operation, the cube had been completely filled exactly once.
Another third went to external trade and Dome maintenance. The final third was divided among citizens according to their assessed contribution to the commune. Once a year those assessments were recalculated in a Dome-wide vote, with citizens answering questions like, "Should we raise the teachers' allowance at the expense of the engineers?"
But that wasn't all. Those who emigrated still kept their share, though it was halved. And every citizen — living in Fuglesang or not — paid a hefty progressive tax, sending a sizable portion of energy back to the government for communal programmes: education, healthcare, monthly pizza parties, the tomato revival project, and so on.
On top of all that, energy output fluctuated month to month. The amount depended on how well the reactor was maintained, what the quality of helium-3 was, and many other factors. Gustav's share was 0.045% — a bit more than the average Sven, but not by much. Usually it amounted to something like 400–420 kwahs. From the fourth month on, half of his household income would go to Erik — into a fund he could access after coming of age. Gustav himself used his own for a gravity well diving license, eventually becoming the first Fuglesang citizen to visit Earth. Skipper expected his allowance to be around 200 kwahs.
This time Gustav got 120. That would be barely enough to pay for hot water if it was accessible in this part of the Dome. Gustav's dinner cost 5 kwahs. Outrage began to simmer low in Skipper's gut. Gustav opened the ledger with all the calculations. Scrolled through the end to find this month's energy output. It dropped significantly, but not enough to justify a 40% drop. He scrolled up a bit. Then some more. Gustav couldn't believe his eyes. This month he was absent in the Dome for a week to mentor a progocheological mission. Nothing changed when he went on missions, but apparently teaching didn't fall under the "from everyone according to their abilities" principle. And they didn't calculate it halved like they did with the emigrants. For that week, Gustav simply didn't exist.
"Jävla kupol", he uttered with only his lips with as much anger as he could allow himself not to wake the baby.
Skipper got out of bed, hastily put on his trousers and went just outside. His ARA was already calling his union representative. Mykola would sort it out, he never lets his clients be screwed like that.
Gustav looked over the Dome from behind the railing on the top level. He had chosen not to dwell on it before, but Fuglesang seemed out of shape. Not all the lights were working. Piles of dry garbage — mostly packaging — dotted the walkways. When he was a kid, it would have been cleared before nightfall. When Gustav was a kid… Skipper looked back at the door of his quarters, behind which Erik was letting out his adorable baby snores.
"Hello?" Mykola answered, sounding sleepy.
"Svåger, tell Wang I'm taking the offer."
"What? What swagger?" Mykola wasn't following.
"Just… Call me back in the morning. We'll set up a meeting for the papers."