Ice's End, page 2
For Roscoe’s entire life, and most of his parents’ lives, that water and energy had kept their refrigerator full, their showers hot, and their A/C running in Pennsylvania’s swampy summers. StarCross water and energy had also backed two digital currencies—Water Equivalent Certificate (WECs) and Renewable Energy Credit (RECs)—that seamlessly moved around the world, along with electricity, via the Lagrange stations. His parents and countless other small-scale generators had fed the flow, selling natural gas to a fuel cell near Scranton that beamed power up to Lagrange-2 for re-transmission. They had earned enough RECs to put Roscoe through Granite Gorge, but the Lagrange stations were the biggest producers, and governments the biggest recipients. These days, governments didn’t govern so much as grovel for StarCross’s water and energy. That dynamic had earned politicians and bureaucrats around the world the pejorative nickname “govellers”—but they couldn’t complain. StarCross had, after all, saved their citizenries from the water and energy shortages, warfare, and financial crises that had plagued the twenty-first century.
But StarCross hadn’t ended the floods, heat waves, storms, and fires that Roscoe had grown up fearing—disasters he now checked for by tapping the SNN home screen’s “Weather” tab. The parched grass of the Great Plains and the tinderbox of dead rainforest in the Amazon continued to smolder, but Pennsylvania, for the moment, was safe. Roscoe felt his pulse slow. He knew their prefabricated home couldn’t withstand the Northeast’s ever-worsening floods, fires, and landslides. He also knew his family couldn’t afford one of the new, ruggedized models built in StarCross’s Marius Hills lunar manufacturing facility. If their current home was lost, the Updated Terms of Service would force them into a so-called Displaced Persons Center—what everyone back home called a Femaville. These centers were supposedly disaster-proof, with strategic siting and perimeter defenses, but conditions inside bred discontent that could only be contained by razor wire, guard towers, and strict limits on outside travel. Roscoe’s family had escaped that fate—for now.
Roscoe closed his wristband, slurped down the last of his SynCoffee, and reminded himself that he had to free his family from that fear by finding them a way off-world. You’re it, he told himself again, trying not to think about how his family had already blown two of StarCross’s three routes off-world. His parents would never earn enough WECs or RECs to purchase Resident status on the Moon or at one of the Lagrange stations. Most of the RECs they had earned siphoning natural gas had gone to his Granite Gorge tuition. Roscoe had failed to leverage that hard-earned tuition into a career-track position—one that came with family housing—off-world. The only chance left—to excel in his internship, earn a spot in StarCross’s Leadership Training Program, and perform well enough there to secure an off-world posting with StarCross’s Executive Staff—was now entirely in Roscoe’s hands. He left the galley, letting his wrist guide him to the auditorium. Better pay attention at orientation, he told himself.
The auditorium lobby was also quiet. In front of the double doors, Roscoe saw one of StarCross’s standard-dimension memorials to the Orbital Strike, the terrorist attack he’d learned all too much about this past year. He also saw a table and two lines of interns waiting in front of it. After a few minutes, it was his turn to face a copper-haired woman, wearing a lanyard. She sat next to a male intern with a buzz cut, also checking people in. They both looked a couple of years older than him, though they wore the same jackets as the other interns.
“Name?” she asked, barely looking up from her laptop.
“Roscoe Slake.”
“Date of birth?”
“May 28, 2101.”
“Happy belated birthday! Big two-two.” Roscoe flinched, surprised not only by the reminder that he had turned twenty-two just two days ago—while drugged on a submarine under the Southern Ocean—but also by meeting someone this chipper. Her smile only grew as she looked up from her laptop. “You went to Granite Gorge?”
“Yeah.”
“No way! Same!”
“Really? What year did you graduate?”
“In ’21. Guess we never crossed paths. I’m Jen.” She leaned across the table to shake Roscoe’s hand. He only offered it after a quick look confirmed that the band still covered his scab. On her wristband-free hand was a bracelet—two beads shaped like black diamonds—that some of Granite Gorge’s upper-class girls used to pilfer from the abandoned souvenir store in the academy building. “You’re the first Gorgie I’ve met down here,” she said, widening her green eyes.
“Really? The first one?”
Jen nodded. “Yep. Glad I can finally start a little alumni network down here.”
Roscoe tried to remember if he had heard a “Jen” recognized at any of Granite Gorge’s top-tenth award ceremonies; she was probably doing the same with him. The fact that neither of them had ever placed in the top tenth of the one percent on the quarterly Q-CAT exams probably helped explain why neither of them had gotten an off-world internship. “You’re all checked in,” Jen said as soon as Roscoe realized this. “Go on in and take a seat.”
Roscoe found a seat and thought back to Granite Gorge: its cathedral-cabin main building originally built for skiers back when it still snowed in Pennsylvania, and the prefab-metal dorms, sunken into the slopes that had once been the easy ski runs. He never thought someone would smile about that place, especially when it hadn’t gotten them off-world.
Looking around the auditorium, Roscoe counted fifty heads scattered beyond the front row. Everyone sat alone and adhered to the StarCross Silence. But in the front, nine interns sat clustered together. After a few minutes, Jen, and the other intern who’d been checking them in, hurried down the aisle to join this group.
The lights soon dimmed, and a screen appeared in front of them. First, StarCross’s three-star, one-droplet logo came up. The graphic zoomed in on the droplet, then through its sky-blue outline to old stock footage from the mid-twenty-first century: parched riverbeds, empty reservoirs, dead crops.
“How could humanity keep feeding itself when rain no longer fell on its breadbaskets?” the narrator asked. “When every aquifer had been tapped, when rivers ran dry, brought destructive floods, or seethed with pollution? Desalination, pumping, and cloud seeding were all tried, and all failed. Then, in 2085, Rob Eatonson had an answer: Tap the last great freshwater source on Earth—Antarctica’s glaciers and ice sheets—and export it around the world.”
The soundtrack jumped an octave, and the video cut to a bearded, middle-aged man in a parka, safety vest, and hard hat, hunched over a machine’s control panel. “Rob Eatonson’s mining expertise helped StarCross source its minerals and metals from the Moon, rather than from unreliable mines on Earth. In 2085, he took that expertise to the Taylor Valley.”
The camera panned over a brown sea of gravel, threaded with snow and ice. On all sides, it sloped up toward bare, craggy peaks. This was Roscoe’s new home—hopefully just until he could get to either StarCross’s Marius Hills facility or to one of the Lagrange stations.
The video switched to a map of the valley: a banana-shaped groove running twenty miles from ice to ocean.
“The valley had no ice itself, but it had easy access to the Taylor and Ferrar Glaciers—and to the ocean. It was the perfect place for Eatonson’s vision.”
The video showed a tunnel-boring machine churning through rocks the same color as the valley floor. “Under Eatonson’s direction, StarCross engineers built the boldest drainage system in history. A network of tunnels to siphon the meltwater from beneath these mighty glaciers and slake humanity’s thirst—and to house the hard-working employees who would run this operation.”
“StarCross created a new unit of exchange, called the Water Equivalent Certificate, or WEC, to account for this water. Modeled on StarCross’s energy accounting unit, the Renewable Energy Credit, it guarantees the bearer one thousand liters of fresh water.”
Roscoe rolled his eyes. He’d known the difference between RECs and WECs since he was eight. He guessed Spigot showed this video to visiting StarCross Residents, whose families no longer needed to care about RECs and WECs, unless they ran some side business on-world as a hobby.
“The U.S. government lent its resources to the effort.” Roscoe rolled his eyes again. Lent? He knew enough about StarCross’s Updated Terms of Service to know that when StarCross named its price for WECs or RECs, the govellers paid. “Applying an idea first developed to export Alaskan oil in the 1970s, the American military worked with StarCross engineers to blast out a deepwater port at the Taylor Valley’s northeastern end. It retrofitted its naval submarines as undersea tankers, ensuring that Spigot’s water could be securely transported around the world—at any time of year, in any weather condition.”
The screen cut back to the logo of StarCross’s predecessor, TriStar Energy: an equilateral triangle of three stars. “TriStar Energy’s three space-based energy facilities had already made energy plentiful. As the first submarine tankers sailed north from Antarctica, the water shortages that had plagued humanity also came to an end. You might say these age-old challenges were star-crossed.” As Roscoe rolled his eyes yet again, the three stars shifted a bit, and a blue droplet glinted into its place well below them on the StarCross logo. If Spigot’s so important, why doesn’t your logo have the droplet closer to the damn stars? Roscoe thought.
The music crescendoed, and the lights came up. At the podium stood a balding man, slightly stooped, with cheeks that sagged like a bulldog’s. A circular, red-white-and-brown pin was fastened to his jacket. Jen and the other interns from the front now stood beside him onstage. So did the buzz-cut intern who’d been sitting next to Jen out front.
“Hello everyone,” said the man at the podium, his voice calm but commanding. “My name is Grei Jahnford, and I am celebrating my tenth year as the CEO of Spigot.” Jahnford paused; Roscoe wondered if they were supposed to clap. After a few seconds of silence, Jahnford stretched his lips and bared his teeth. Roscoe couldn’t tell if he was smiling or grimacing.
“I’m honored to welcome all of you to the Spigot family. As interns, you’ve been selected as some of the best and brightest in this year’s internship class, and we need your skills now more than ever.”
Now, Jen was the one to sneak in an eye roll; she finished it just as the CEO waved back to her and the other interns. They all looked a few years older than Roscoe. “With me are this year’s Head Interns.” Jen and the others gave a tentative wave. “They’ve just finished the two-year internship program you’re beginning, and now they’ve entered StarCross’s Leadership Training Program. With the exception of Trent here”—Jahnford gestured toward the intern who had sat with Jen at the table—“they will each be leading cohorts of you to get you situated during your first year in Antarctica. Welcome aboard, and let’s bring water to a thirsty world.”
Jen stepped up to the podium. “You’ve all had a long journey, so take the rest of the day off to get adjusted. Be in the galley at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow to get your work assignments.” That did it for orientation.
The interns rose from their seats and began to file out of the auditorium, maintaining the StarCross Silence. Roscoe followed his wristband’s directions back to his room. On the way, he noticed a sign at a side tunnel entrance: This Tunnel for Male Interns Only. Violators Will Be Disciplined. Looks like I was right about the separate-genders thing, he thought.
His room was small, roughly two and a half meters by three meters, with a bed and drawers set into the wall. Roscoe opened the duffel bag he’d been given and unpacked the rest of his clothes. Nothing fancy—just a few pairs of synthetic pants, shirts, and jackets with Spigot’s droplet logo on the breast, along with a week’s supply of socks, underwear, and some exercise shorts and T-shirts. A sign on the wall read: Dispose of Used Clothes in Wall Chute. Clean Clothes Your Size Will Be Returned to Your Room Every Friday.
Then, his wristband buzzed. Calling up the near-opaque screen, he saw a new message:
Welcome to Spigot, Roscoe Slake!
We are excited to have your help with our mission of bringing water to a thirsty world. Please read this message as it contains important information about your cohort and job assignment.
Your cohort leader is: JEN DOIL
Your cohort leader, an intern in the StarCross Leadership Training Program, will lead you and a group of four other interns in regular discussions and social activities during your first year at Spigot. They will be in touch soon with more information.
Your job assignment is: ARCHIVES.
This job is vital to Spigot’s mission of bringing water to a thirsty world. You will gain vital experience in this position over the next two years. At the end of this period, you will have the option of either pursuing a career-track position in the ARCHIVES division, or of extending your internship by two years and then entering the StarCross Leadership Training Program, which can open up new opportunities for StarCross leadership positions and transfers to other StarCross facilities later in your career.
Roscoe already knew he’d go for the Leadership Training Program. He’d made that choice a week ago, before his wrist had even stopped bleeding.
He scrolled through a few more paragraphs of platitudes probably cranked out by some algorithm, then closed his eyes. Two years of interning here, then two more in the Leadership Training Program, and then, maybe, he’d get his shot off-world.
A dull pain had sprouted in the center of his brain, and thoughts of his father pointing toward Lagrange-2 filled his mind. Homesickness and headaches—it was the same every time he ran out of compound. But this time, there would be no more pills. Time to face withdrawal, Roscoe thought, grateful he didn’t have a roommate.
Even so, he had already been marked as a compounder.
T T T
“Hey, you got any extra doses?”
Roscoe looked up from his second SynCoffee-and-quinoa breakfast in Spigot’s galley. The wavy-haired guy he had noticed the day before was sitting across from him, asking for drugs in an Australian accent.
After a long silence, during which Roscoe wondered what had given him away as a “pounder,” the Aussie spoke again. “I got a compound for logic and geospatial reasoning,” he said, snorting. “Wasn’t enough to get me off-world.”
Roscoe sighed and shook his head. “Mine was a coding-heavy formula. Wasn’t enough for me either. Don’t have any doses left. How bad are your headaches?”
“Had worse. I’ll muddle through. Really wish StarCross would let us taper after graduation, rather than cut us off cold.”
For the first time in Antarctica, Roscoe smiled. It was a relief to find someone in the same pharmacological bind as him—even if the compound hadn’t stopped this guy from growing a dozen centimeters taller than him. When the intern extended his hand, Roscoe noticed his wrists were unmarked by suicide attempts.
“Hamza,” he said.
“Roscoe.”
As they shook hands, Roscoe couldn’t quite place where Hamza was from—his skin and hair suggested South Asian parents, but his broad nose and thick lips seemed to point somewhere else. Roscoe spotted, on a cord around his neck, a wooden carving no bigger than two knuckles. A stylized face with almond-shaped eyes inside concentric curves stared back at him. Then Hamza leaned forward, and it dipped into his collar.
He pointed toward the gate at the galley entrance. “Think those pills they gave us will make up for it?”
When Roscoe arrived, a small hatch in the tall black box beside it had opened, dispensing a gray pill stamped T3. Swallow, the screen instructed. Daily T3 doses are essential to prevent winter-over syndrome. Once Roscoe took the pill, the galley opened.
Roscoe shrugged, uncertain what T3 was or if it resembled the compound at all.
The ceiling lights suddenly flashed blue, and everyone fell silent. Roscoe heard a disembodied voice and saw Jen, the head intern he’d met the day before, speaking into a microphone.
“Good morning, interns!” she said with vigor likely fueled by several cups of SynCoffee. “Time to head to work! Last night you should have received a message on your wristbands with your work assignment.”
Roscoe and Hamza joined their new colleagues heading toward the funnel of the galley door. “Where are you working?” Roscoe asked.
“Drone Operations!” Hamza said, suddenly seeming to forget compound withdrawal. “You?”
“Archives.”
“Huh,” Hamza replied. “I wonder what they do there.”
Roscoe shrugged again. Since last night, he hadn’t figured out how Archives would help Spigot find water.
Chapter 3
He still wasn’t sure by the end of the day.
Roscoe’s wristband had directed him to a long, low room. A woman just a few centimeters taller than him answered the door. She looked at him through thick, circular glasses beneath a gray-streaked pageboy haircut. “Roscoe?” she asked, voice high and lilting.
“Yep.”
“Karla Marmolada.” They shook hands. “Welcome to the Archives.”
Karla led him into a hall as wide as Spigot’s main thoroughfare, and nearly half a kilometer long. Both walls were lined with grids of filing cabinets, with a row of standalone cabinets running along one side and two desks positioned near the entrance. Ceiling lamps bathed everything in warm amber. Karla swept her arm over the tunnel. “Everything you ever wanted to know about Antarctica—and lots you probably didn’t.”
