He set his bag on the floor and looked around. An entry-and-storage room, a common room, a bathing room, and four more bedrooms, all the same size and shape as the others, all windowless, all spread out around the circular hatch that led down to the family cupola. The home was tidy and filled with basic furniture, all signs of previous ownership erased by cleanerbots. There were tables and chairs, a couple of couches. Cupboards for food and belongings. Empty planters waiting for seedlings and a guiding hand. It looked like a package home, like something that popped out of a box. There was no sign that anyone else had ever lived there – except one. Sawyer walked with reverence toward the wall in the common room, the one the cleanerbots had known to leave alone. It was covered with handprints, pressed in paint of every colour. Big handprints, little handprints, smudged infant feet. Belkin, someone had painted above it – the name of the first family that had lived here, and the name that every other family who lived there after had taken, regardless of genetics. This was one of the many Exodan customs he admired. When born, you took your parents’ name. When you grew up and started a family of your own, you took the name of the home you settled in. In a lot of cases, your name didn’t change at all, not if you kept living with your parents and grandparents and so on. If you settled in the home of your partner, you took your partner’s family name. If you both decided to live in a separate home entirely, apart from both of your families, you’d both get the name of whoever’d taken care of that home before you. Sawyer liked that.
He looked up at the bold, painted letters above his head. He wasn’t a Belkin. It wasn’t his custom yet, and this placement was temporary. He ran his hand along where others had been. ‘Wow,’ he whispered. He didn’t need to count the prints to know that there were at least nine generations represented here, all the way back to the first. He crouched down, looking toward where the wall joined the floor. The prints there were faded, and covered with others, but their shapes were clear as day: six adults, three children, one baby. He tried to imagine what they must have felt, watching their planet fade away through a window in the floor, pressing painted hands to an empty wall with the hope that one day the wall would be full.
Sawyer put his hand over the tiny footprint. That kid had grown up never having known the ground. That kid had grown old and died in this ship, and all xyr kids besides. The enormity of it almost made him dizzy.
He straightened back up and looked around the room. The wall was full, but the home was empty. So empty. It was a space meant to house three generations at least, where kids could run around and adults could relax and everyone would be together. But right then, it held only him. Just him in a big room full of ghosts. There were families outside, in the homes the Belkins had shared a hex with. Sawyer knew the kitchen was for his use as well, and the digestive punishment of Jojo’s ninth day special had faded enough for him to be hungry again. But he wasn’t sure about going out there. When he’d gone to the housing office, he’d hoped to be put in a home with another family – a spare room, like he’d read about. When he’d gone to the hex number he’d been given, he’d hoped for a big welcome, with shaken hands and big smiles, introductions all around. Granted, he’d gotten his hand shook and a few names and nods, but the smiles had been hit or miss and mostly confused, and everybody seemed too busy for him. There were kids to chase, vegetables to chop. They all looked at him, though, with questioning eyes and words whispered out of earshot. He got it. He was a stranger, the new neighbour, the guy who’d just moved in. They had their own days to get about, and ice-breaking would come soon enough. And truth be told, Sawyer was tired. It had been a long haul, and a long day. One adventure at a time.
He stuck his head in each of the bedrooms, trying to determine a favourite. Each was the same as the last. He settled on the middle-left, and sat on the edge of the bed. The air filter whirred quietly. He could hear a faint rushing in the pipes below the floor, the odd click in the walls. But other than that, nothing. No drunk idiots out on the street, no skiffs zipping past at every hour, no delivery vehicles rumbling along. It was nice. It was odd. It would take getting used to.
His stomach growled. He reached into his bag and pulled out the bean cake he’d bought on his way. He was used to wrappers that crunched and rustled, but even the throw-cloth was silent. He took a bite. It was just a cheap sweet, but his taste buds bloomed with gratitude for something sugary. Take that, pickle bun.
Sawyer sat alone and ate his snack. Okay, so it wasn’t the first day he’d imagined, but hey, the sentiment held true. Everybody had a home, and nobody went hungry.
Kip
There was a delicate balance to getting the dishes done fast. Do it too quick, and a parent or a hexmate would make him do it over. Too slow, though, and . . . well, then you were still cleaning dishes. Nobody wanted to be in those shoes.
He picked up a plate from the eternal stack and scraped the food remnants into the compost bucket. Crumbs, flecks, whatever oil and sauce hadn’t been soaked up by quickbread. Kinda gross, but he supposed it could be worse. He remembered one time watching this crime-solving vid set on Titan – Murder on the Silver Sea – where some characters were at a fancy restaurant having this crazy smart conversation where the investigator and the informant both think the other one’s the killer and they were saying it but they’re not really saying it – and also they kind of wanted to bang each other? That scene had layers, seriously – and when the conversation was done, they just . . . left their food. Like, let the server come get it while they walked out of the place. The scene would’ve made sense if one of them wasn’t hungry or had a stomach ache or something, but if that were the case, then the other one would’ve reached over and eaten the leftovers. But no. Both of them left. They left half-plates of food on the table. It was the weirdest shit. He couldn’t imagine what cleaning dishes was like in a place like that. Dealing with half-eaten food sounded disgusting.
Scraps bucketed, he picked up the compressed air canister you could find in any kitchen and blasted away everything that wasn’t plate. He’d kind of liked that part when he was little. He remembered it being satisfying. But that had been about, oh, eleven billion dishes ago, and blasting away food bits had long since lost its charm. He looked over at Xia, who was helping him that night. She was seven, and hadn’t yet realised that getting to do grown-up things like dishes and pruning and floor cleaning was super boring. She stood attentively at his side, waiting for each plate he handed her, placing each one just so in the sanitiser. He had to admit, it was kind of cute.
He handed off the blasted dish to Xia, then picked up another dirty one, and scraped, and blasted, and handed off, and started again. Beyond the kitchen counter, everybody else from his hex was sitting in the same spots at the same tables, as they always did, having the same conversations they always had.