“Take a number,” the wrinkled crone grunted from behind the patina counter. “Be with you in a moment.”
Charlie shrugged, pulling his shielding hood down to cut the yellow glare from the overhead lights, and req’d a number from the kiosk panel near the door. The panel was cracked, barely registering his finger press, and his wrist chimed with the assignment.
He flicked his wrist to silence the notification, and took a seat near the window. It had a virtua-panel over the glass, and like the kiosk, it was cracked in places, flickering the image of a idyllic city scape in the rain. Virtual water dripped down over the blurred lights in a city that did not exist, and Charlie imagined what it be like to live in a world with rain.
There was a single other occupant in the lobby, an old man with optical implants, snoring against the wall like he was a human shaped white noise machine. Charlie shook his head, and tilted his head to turn on his newsfeed.
As usual, the future was all bullshit. Just like taking a number in a lobby with no one in it, except the snoring dude who was more like a water feature than living being waiting for the old crone at the desk. Election time was the worst time of year, and the newsfeeds were so heavily saturated with crafted messaging, it felt sticky. If you read it, it would embed itself like a virus, going full on mal-code, and subsuming neurons like Alzheimer’s. Charlie turned it off like he was scratching an errant itch, and focused on his breathing. The new implants were nagging his management subsystem, adopted kids letting the adoptive parent know they were terrible investments.
But he had to have them for his job. Natural lung tissue was far too sensitive to pressure changes, and utilizing a buffering system allowed the substandard gear the company dropped on the market to actually function. He didn’t need it to survive in the mines, but having the implants opened options. But it cost, man. Implants were never cheap, even though they were the standard for most folks. Kids got their network uplinks the first year of school these days, and the recent legislation pushing towards mandatory implants at birth had some real support behind it.
The Earthers did not appreciate it, but the were nothing but tourists really, thinking the edge of the human frontier was an exciting opportunity. A way to start over! Be like our ancestors exploring the wilderness!
Charlie scoffed inwardly. Fucking idiots, each and every one, and he knew, because he used to be one himself, a lifetime ago. Mankind couldn’t afford to be ‘au natural’ here on the edge, it only would lead to an inevitable death. And Charlie felt that humanity should collectively just let them die. Because afterwards, people like him, born survivors, would be sitting at the top of the pile, fully aug’d and ready for whatever the in-system worlds thought they could toss the colonies beyond the belt. His optical interface popped from the edge of his vision, and he noticed the crone behind the desk was staring him down, as if he was a shit stain on the chair.
“Sorry, off in LaLaLand over here,” Charlie apologized as he hustled over.
“When your number is called, you are supposed to come to the window, hun,” the Crone grimaced in some semblance of a pitying smile.
“I know, I know. It’s the election, its in my head,” Charlie groused.
“Join the club,” the Crone commiserated. “I don’t even turn on the feeds any more.”
“Did you vote?”
“No. Never have.”
“Huh.”
“I don’t complain about who is ruining our lives,” the Crone explained further. “The damn politicians all screw it up, just in different ways. So my vote doesn’t matter, Election Day is only good for the food.”
“Fair enough,” Charlie shrugged, dropping his hood down over his shoulders. “You know back on Earth, it used to be called Thanksgiving. Not Election Day.”
“Weird. Who would be thankful for a politician fucking them over? Anyway, what can I help you with, hun?”
“I need a imprint restore.”
“Customer ID?”
Charlie handed over the card that had been haunting him since he arrived back to the realm of the living.
“Wow. This one is old.”
“It’s my mom’s account. She passed a long ways back. My name is on the beneficiary field.”
“How long!? This card number is at least… what? A century old? The imprint date here, it says 2044. Wait, you can’t be over thirty?”
“I was in a coffin for a long haul, when I came out, the jump was wrong. It took a while to get back to the belt,” Charlie said offhand, avoiding the pain of the experience in telling the real story of first contact with a long dead species. She would have died in place hearing a story that long.
“I would say so,” the Crone sniffed. Her bouffant shifted on her head, and Charlie realized it was an artificial hair piece.
“Cancer?”
“Excuse me?” The Crone sniffed, typing furiously into her console.
“Your hair. I am assuming cancer?”
“Just my genes, hun. Mother was a spliced Ionian, her genes were designed for zero hair growth. My dad thought she was beautiful anyway. My brother got the hair, I got the skin,” the Crone paused. “Ah here it is. Look at that. That is impressive.”
“How long will it take?”
“A couple mins to spool up. The age on it means it is the crystal storage, so it will need to be lased back to the nearline matrix. But it’s here. The entire stack.”
“Wait, her entire stack?” Charlie wondered aloud. He was expecting a goodbye letter or a tearful farewell from his mom. Not her entire consciousness imprint.
“Looks like it, hun. You know what, since it is the holidays, I will spin up the entire thing for you. Looks like you need a little good in your life,” the Crone crooned. “It won’t cost you extra.”
“Th-Thanks,” Charlie stammered.
“What do you do now, Mr. Rembrandt?”
“Detective now,” Charlie admitted openly. “I found long haul mining a bit too stressful.”
“I can imagine. You went in, came up for air, and found the universe shoved you into the future. Why are you grabbing this imprint now?”
“Call it being homesick,” Charlie was still asking himself why. He didn’t know the real reason. The card had been sitting on his shelf, the only thing left of his old life, staring at him every day since he had landed his job on Europa. Five years of waking up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and seeing his mother’s name on his shelf. Beckoning him, calling him to remember a family that had passed a hundred years before he had even woken up. The entire contact event had wrought him into something new, something he had never imagined. Touching his old life felt like reaching across an unfathomable distance to something that should not be there to touch.
“You definitely need your memories, hun. It is what makes us who we are,” the Crone said. She handed him a small block, within contained the graphene and crystal memory core that contained all of what he had left behind. “Happy Election Day.”
“Happy Thanksgiving, you mean,” Charlie winked.
“Happy… Thanksgiving.” It sounded foreign on her tongue.
Charlie tapped his fingers against the core, and wandered back to his quarters, wondering if he would grow the balls in the intervening distance to see his mom again.
He didn’t know yet. But remembering Thanksgiving was better than any Election Day. Charlie smiled at the thought. Holidays are not what they used to be, but then again, maybe not all that much has changed after all.