Chapter 1

The promenade looked particularly busy today. Not that it wasn’t always but since it was a Saturday most people on this level didn’t have anything else to do but shop along the strip. Most weekends allowed the workers to switch on the maintenance bots for the two days before having to turn them off for their own version of maintenance. The bots kept Jupiter Station’s most crucial systems at peak performance – otherwise we’d all die. I could see several toiling silenty away from the edge of the promenade, oblivious to the life surrounding them.

Nonchalantly, I walked through the bustling crowds and no one paid me any mind, like any other day. The only exceptions to this were the merchants with smaller stands or more familiar with me. Those merchants I kept my own eye on – I didn’t need any of them catching me and turning me into station security. I mentally complained as my stomach grumbled a bit, having been at least two days since I last acquainted it with any food. Water, luckily, was a pretty common commodity thanks in part to Jupiter’s moon Europa – the vast liquid ocean beneath its icy surface provided all of the station’s residents and workers with many, many gallons of free water. I believe I heard my teacher telling all of her students that the moon’s supply of water would last our single station of around three thousand with at least three hundred years’ supply. And that’s not counting the already five hundred for which this old bucket has been around in one form or another. And that number actually is increasing thanks in part to other technologies being developed and recycling what water the station could.

There, finally! A bread merchant that seemed really overwhelmed with orders and customers. She was a slightly youngish woman – around twenty-five or so I’d guess. But I could see in her eyes in the brief glimpses I caught the stress of having too many people to serve. Deftly, I slipped further into the crowd and found myself surrounded by slightly agitated consumers at the lengthy delays. And, staring me at chest height – I was only five foot much to my consternation – were several loaves of freshly baked bread sitting nicely next to a bag of day old rolls. My eyes darted up to see if I was noticed and saw no eyes on me. My gut told me it felt none on me as well as I smoothly tucked two loaves into my vest. And seeing those rolls made me decide to try and score them as well. My ears pricked up as they finally allowed some of the conversations to reach my brain.

“I’ve been here all morning!” one shopper complained loudly. I felt a body stamp the ground to my left, almost jostling one of the loaves from my vest pockets. My fingers curled around the plastic and hoisted them to my person. “What is taking so long?!”

“I-I’m sorry!” the flustered merchant said. “M-My help all called in sick and I’m short-handed! I apologize profusely for all the delays!” For a moment, I felt a bit guilty in lifting the food that I did but then another rumble from my stomach told me that she probably wouldn’t care one way if I starved on the promenade – unless my dead body detracted from her profits, that is. I decided to move onto the next stand as the same customer threatened to take his business to the self-replicating devices that always sat under heavy guard.

That bit of tech was relatively new and still consumed a lot of power from what I’ve pieced together in my dealings with the marketplace. With only a few presses of the buttons on its face or verbalizing the order, it could synthesize any and all manner of food or clothing. Once I tried to access that holy grail of devices but was caught just before my order could materialize. I spent a week in the detention area of the station – or would have if I wasn’t sprung early thanks to a napping guard and good timing.

As I walked by some of the less crowded stands, I confidently picked a couple of potatoes from one, a bushel of carrots from another, and even a slab of beef cubes that managed to slip out of another consumer’s parcel basket. And as I neared the corridor, I saw the ever vigilant security guards on approach to the area. If no one had a generated receipt for their items, the guards would confiscate those items not on their bills and return them to their owners. Having no receipt for anything found resulted in a trip to the detention center of the station – one place I couldn’t afford to be right now. It was supposed to help deter thieves – such as myself – and the ordinance more or less worked but only if one was caught in the act.

I decided that my “shopping” for the day was over and I used taller people to keep me between the guards and my exit – a grate stationed only a few feet from me. As I neared I already saw Jesse sitting just on the inside, ready to help me out if it came to it. A guard suddenly appeared out to my right, slightly in my path. My heart leapt to my throat. Surely he somehow already knew that I stole from a myriad of stands. I prepared to make a break for another ventilation grate. But then he turned and moved away and I sighed gratefully for his departure. I made my way to Jesse and glanced around before I slid the grate to its side with my brother’s help.

“What’d you get?” he whispered excitedly as I secured the grate back from the inside. I turned to see him rifling through the bag I also procured in which to store my “purchases”. “Oh man! You got some beef! We’re gonna eat so good today!”

I ruffled his hair. “Yep. Nothing but the best for my baby brother.” I smiled at him as he beamed at me. “All right. Let’s get going. I think I’ll try and make a stew out of this. We can save the leftovers a lot better that way. If we stretch this out, we might get about three days’ worth of meals out of all this.”

I heard Jesse’s stomach rumble and mine joined his but more insistently. He frowned at me for a moment before he started crawling through the station ductwork. “Trav, I told you that you should’ve had that last–”

“Jesse, what’s done is done. And besides, you were the one the time before that that made me eat the last slice of cake I managed to score for your birthday a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t feel right for me to do that to you, so I returned the favor this last time, okay?”

“Still don’t have to like it,” he grumbled as we finally fell silent for a time. We twisted our way through the ductwork for several more minutes before we found our way to our latest home – an unused station room. Jesse removed the grate and climbed out. He took the groceries and then helped me out. I wanted to laugh a bit as I watched as he ran and threw himself on the single bed in the space. It was pretty sparse but for now it was home. And if my idea came to be, it’d be our permanent, if not relatively new, home.

The two of us had to constantly find new places to stay as security kept up with our moves and cleared out one room after another before we could get back. And each time I think Jesse’s heart took a punch that it wasn’t meant to, forcing me to quickly find us another place. I didn’t want this to keep happening to him – it wasn’t fair to him that both of our parents have yet to return from their latest assignment.

After a month of them not returning, the station locked our normal home down so tight that I have yet been able to find a way back inside. We were meant to temporarily – in theory – become wards of the station and placed in the few rooms designed for that but I saw those kids before. Hardly any of them had any life in them since they weren’t allowed to do anything but schoolwork or a few meager jobs the station matron gave them. It wasn’t for either of us and I vowed to watch out for Jesse until Mom and Dad could get back. Then we’d be a happy family again.

“I almost forgot what a real bed felt like!” he called to me as he tested the bounce of the mattress a few times. “Trav, this is a great place. How’d you find it?”

I sat down at the small two-person table that served as the dining room. I started sorting out my recently acquired items. “I managed to sneak a glimpse at the housing database when I was caught that last time – the guard on duty was reviewing it. I saw a lot of vacant places on this level and even a few back up on B level. This place is actually between two other unoccupied places – I figured if we accidentally got a little silly we wouldn’t alert our ‘neighbors’ that way.”

Jesse got off the bed and brought the other chair right next to mine and sat down. He leaned his head against my shoulder. “Travis… why hasn’t Mom and Dad come back yet? Do you… do you think they’re… dead?”

I brought an arm around my brother’s shoulder. “I honestly don’t know that, bro. My gut tells me that they’re still alive and until I hear otherwise, I feel it’s best I keep hoping for their return. I mean… that’s better than the alternative, right?”

“I guess,” he said. “It’s just… I-I don’t know if I can keep doing this, you know? Running from security when they think I took whatever I’m snacking on, even if it was given to me freely.” I felt him deflate a bit. “I-I hate this kind of life.”

“I don’t like it either, Jesse.” I rubbed my hand along his right arm. “The only reason I’m doing it is so that we don’t end up like the orphaned zombies that don’t have any fun all because of the strict bitch that keeps them in line.” I swallowed. “All my crimes… everything I’ve done since Mom and Dad haven’t returned… it was for you.”

“Really?” Jesse sat up and looked at me, a small but still sad smile trying to grow on his face.

“Really,” I confirmed. I leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “And if Mom and Dad came back and we moved back in with them I’d stop it all in a heartbeat.”

“Travis… thanks.” Slowly he stood up. “Okay, how about we start cooking before all this delicious looking food goes to waste?”

I had to keep swatting Jesse’s hand away from the pot I scrounged up. He kept insisting that he was only “checking the potatoes” but I wasn’t buying it. “Bro, seriously. It’s gonna be midnight before I get this stew cooked at this rate!”

“I can’t help it! It… just smells so good!” I pushed him towards the bed and told him to lie down – no telling what might happen and sleep for us seemed to be a luxury that sometimes time wouldn’t let us afford. When both of us work off little to no sleep, the two of us revert back to the way things were before.

I thought back briefly on those times as I stirred the soup, when Mom and Dad would be home on extended leaves from the science academy. I still cringed a bit when I remember how harshly I treated Jesse on my worse days. Snapping at him for any little thing, punching him in the arms or even kicking him a couple of times if he got on my nerves. As much as I didn’t want to remember those times, sometimes I did see that Jesse was just as bratty as I was. Petulant, demanding of our parents’ attentions when they were home, never wanting to listen to me if I even asked him to do something nicely. The two of us butted heads a lot and it took all of our parents’ energies to stop us from killing one another more often than not.

It’s been about eight months since our parents haven’t returned to the station – and most of our time since then hasn’t been easy in the slightest. In the beginning, Jesse and I constantly shouted at one another, him wanting things done his way, me shouting at him because he was being stupid. But then after our food supplies ran out and the two of us started to get hungry, both of us changed a little bit. Not enough to stop the shouting matches, but enough for the two of us to realize that something was seriously wrong – our Mom and Dad always called at least once a week via interspatial telecommunication networks when out on assignment. Those networks were the backbone of how all the outposts talked – regular radio waves took too long. Even if they were totally busy, they usually found a way to send even a brief message – usually telling me not to kill Jesse and for Jesse to listen to me.

Those messages stopped coming only a week after their departure.

It took almost two months for either of us to fully realize that their lack of communiques meant the situation was really serious. Parts of my mind kept rationalizing the events, telling me that they were just too busy or kept putting it off. That the next day, they’d send their love for their two sons and an apology for the lengthy delay. Explain what the delay was – a newly discovered spatial anomaly or actually finding the ruins of an ancient non-human civilization. But it never came. Still hasn’t come.

It was then that, after both of us came to our own conclusions, that I saw a change – a big one – in my brother. For the first time, I saw that he was afraid. His eyes grew large and I watched as his bottom lip quivered a bit, thinking the worst about Mom and Dad, no doubt. That day his eyes drifted towards me. That same day I think I mostly felt numb but then, when Jesse’s eyes found mine, I knew that as the older brother it was my duty to make sure that he stayed safe and unchanged by the matron that scoured the station for us, runaways by that point.

I smiled a bit at the recollection of me and Jesse’s first actual talk. Not some bitching match or whine-fest, but an actual, honest conversation. Sure we had them before but they lasted usually in the area of two minutes, tops. But this one lasted for nearly an entire day after I got lucky in one of my first thieving attempts. Jesse really opened up to me then, telling me how scared he was, wondering aloud what might have happened with Mom and Dad, asking me what I thought about things, and the biggest one – what would happen to us if they had died?

At the time, I couldn’t answer that last one.

“Okay Jesse, it’s done.” I heard my brother leap off the bed and nearly tackled me out of the way as he snatched up his bowl. “Settle down there, squirt.” He just rolled his eyes as he dipped his bowl into the stew and came back with it two-thirds full. He tore off a hunk of bread and used it to wipe off the side of the bowl. I mimicked his actions but nearly dropped my bowl into the pot – I dipped my finger a bit into the near-boiling gravy. But I held fast as I winced – it wasn’t the worst pain I had felt.

Jesse groaned in earnest. “Trav this is amazing!” I saw that his eyes were closed as he savored that first bite.

“Remember, don’t eat it too fast or you’ll just throw it up again.”

“I know, I know. I don’t need to be reminded about that again.” I walked over to the table and retook my chair. “Travis?”

“Yeah, bud?”

I sensed my brother fidgeting and it made me look up. It had been a while since I saw that same pensive look on his face. “Travis… what will happen to me if you get arrested again? I don’t like the thought of you being in a jail cell. And last time I got lucky in busting you out.”

I smiled, hopefully comfortingly. “You’ll just have to get lucky again and bust me out like last time. That or find Kevin and his crew – they’ll look after you until I’m released.” I took a bite of bread. “But I think you’d be fine on your own. You’re tougher than you think you are.”

“I don’t know…”

“Look around us Jesse. You’re here, with me, and no one else has taken care of us since their disappearance. This station would’ve just shoved us into their ‘orphanage’ and called it a day – and we’d be like the other robot kids. The only person that’s helped you so far is me. We’ve been a team for around six months – when we stopped fighting one another.”

Jesse looked away. “You really think Kevin’s Krew would help me if something happened to you?”

“If it’d make you feel better, I can get a hold of him soon and make sure that they do. I think Kevin owes me a few favors still.” Kevin Renault ran his own version of an orphanage – but it wasn’t sanctioned mainly because Kevin himself was sixteen at most. He had been living on his own since he was around eight, having broken free from the mindlessness of the real orphanage before it got really bad. A few others over the years, younger than him, slipped away too and gravitated towards Kevin. While he wasn’t the nicest guy out there, Kevin’s penchant for screwing over the station’s matron was nearly mythical. Having mellowed down some, Kevin’s main focus was rescuing as many kids as he could from the station’s clutches. There was rumor that the small and abandoned F level was his hideout, the station more or less turning a blind eye to him and his Krew.

A tiny smile was in my brother’s eyes as he looked at me again. “I’d… I’d like that Trav. Just in case something happens.” Jesse shuddered. “I-I don’t want to get taken in by the station.”

“I know that. And I don’t want it either.”

“But…” Jesse started as he remembered something. “What about Zane?” I grimaced at the name. Zane was Kevin’s first mate, for lack of a better term. If Kevin wasn’t around then Zane was in charge of the Krew. That kid – a mouthy, bratty fourteen year old – didn’t like most of the kids and bossed them around almost as bad as the head bitch in the orphanage. Only Kevin managed to cool him down and I wasn’t quite sure how he did it. Every encounter I had with Zane never went well. There were several occasions that the bastard stole from us, right after I stole something from someone else! It’s like an unwritten rule – no thieving from other thieves. And as much as I wanted to rat him out to Kevin, I really didn’t have proof since it was almost always his word against mine.

“Don’t worry about him, Jesse. If you have to, stick close to Kevin or the others like Julian – he seems a bit more in control of himself if there’s a big crowd that stands before him. He only likes to berate others when it’s a one-on-one scenario or when he otherwise knows he has the upper hand. But that’s something to worry about later anyway – I’m still here, right?”

Jesse’s smile finally reached his eyes again. “Right.”

“Now… tomorrow I’m gonna go about seeing if I can make the records show that this is our home and fake it so it shows someone ‘adopted’ us. That way we’ll still be on our own and then security can’t detain us and ship us to the bitch. I’ll probably need to enlist the help from the Krew so maybe we can kill two birds with one stone so you can come with me.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

The two of us stored the pot of stew in the cooling unit after we had our fill. We also stored the bread and rolls in a vacuum-sealed cabinet to keep the bread fresh. And after a quick shower, the two of us made our way to the bed. Jesse scooted closer to the wall to make room for me. I slid in after him and with only a few additional words to each other, I drifted off to sleep long after I heard Jesse’s light snoring.