The Slip: The Complete First Season Read online

  Table of Contents

  Episode 1: The Yao Dynasty | L5 Elevator Platform, Lunar

  The Occulto, Lunar region

  Titan Orbiter, Saturn

  The Occulto, in region of Saturn

  The Lunar Band

  The Occulto, in region of Lunar

  The Occulto, in region of Mars

  Episode 2: The Boeki traders | V5 Orbiter, Venus

  Molotok, en route to Lunar

  Episode 3: United Solar | Kurowsawa household, Insularum 3, Lunar

  Capsule Line, Insularum 3, Lunar

  United Solar Assembly, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Judiciary holding cells, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Judiciary Holding Cell, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Judiciary Airlock, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Episode 4: As the Gravity Flipped | Titan Orbiter, Saturn

  Episode 5: Traders, After All | The Segrado, on approach to L2 Platform, Lunar

  Docking Bay, L2 Platform, Lunar

  The Coraygar, in region of Titan, Saturn

  The Segrado, in region of Saturn

  The Coraygar, in region of Saturn

  Episode 6: Riko | Kurowsawa household, Insularum 3, Lunar

  Shopping District, V5 Orbiter, Venus

  Kurowsawa household, Insularum 3, Lunar

  Docking Bay, V5 Orbiter, Venus

  Kurowsawa household, Insularum 3, Lunar

  Efans Household, Insularum 5, Lunar

  Fune Cruiser, Venus region

  Kurosawa household, Insularum 3, Lunar

  L2 Platform, Lunar

  Judiciary Holding Cells, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Judiciary Holding Cells, Insularum 1, Lunar

  VanderMeer Apartments, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Capsule Line, Insularum, Lunar

  Efans Household, Insularum 5, Lunar

  Orphanage, Judiciary, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Efans Household, Insularum 5, Lunar

  Efans Household, Insularum 5, Lunar

  Vin Ranghi household, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Efans Household, Insularum 3, Lunar

  Vin Ranghi Household, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Efans Household, Insularum 5, Lunar

  Episode 7: Judgement | Offices of Lunar Chronicle, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Examiner's Office, Judiciary, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Secretarial Palace, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Elevator Capsule, L5 Casino Platform, Lunar

  Gustav's Bar, Insularum 3, Lunar

  L5 Casino Platform, Lunar

  Briefing Room, Secretarial Palace, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Secretarial Palace, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Offices of Lunar Chronicle, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Muedin Boardroom, Muedin Headquarters, Lunar

  United Solar Assembly, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Tshilidzi’s Personal Office, Judiciary, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Gustav's Bar, Insularum 3, Lunar

  Tshilidzi’s Personal Office, Judiciary, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Offices of the Lunar Chronicle, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Tshilidzi’s Personal Office, Judiciary, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Holding Cells, Judiciary, Insularum 1, Lunar

  United Solar Assembly, Insularum 1, Lunar

  Judiciary airlock, Insularum 2, Lunar

  Appendix | Head Yao celebrates third millennia | Originally published by Venus Argus, 12/11/6,534

  Besuto selects Takeshi Ozu as Secretarial candidate | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 02/07/6,533

  Kurosawa denies rift in Ozu's Cabinet | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 01/03/6,537

  Information sought following L17 data theft | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 12/6/6,539

  Secretary cleared of corruption | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle 27/02/6,539

  Yao Plans Blocked | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 04/10/6,521

  Farmers call for better deal | Originally published by The Martian, 23/06/6,542

  Okada honours young reporter | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 02/01/6,522

  Illegal crops destroyed in Aghoro raids | Originally published by The Martian, 28/06/6,543

  Scores dead in Vaporum dome breach | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 01/12/6,543

  Miners forced to evacuate platform | Originally published by The Martian, 20/05/6,541

  Yao ships leave others behind | Original published by Jovian Reporter, 04/01/6,530

  Kurosawa grows impatient over L6 repairs | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle 12/05/6.541

  Museum details Lunar's rich history | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 12/02/6,322

  Pregnancy vote passes, but only just | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 22/12/6,341

  Eight linked to child smuggling | Originally published by Lunar Chronicle, 12/02/6,343

  Ozu to be executed for Yao assassinations | Originally published by Lunar Enquirer, 29/07/6,544

  Thanks for reading

  Episode 1: The Yao Dynasty

  L5 Elevator Platform, Lunar

  The walls behind the stage fluctuated in soft blues and yellows as music drifted above the wheezing air ducts. Chao-xing sucked in her bottom lip, sweat gathering around her armpits as she waited.

  She looked across her sisters' identical faces — twenty-four women with shaved heads save for a five centimetre spike of black hair at the front and centre, all looking at her. Their expressions were expectant, encouraging. Lights flickered before their eyes. Red tunics hung over their black trousers.

  The music stopped as Huizhong, the oldest of the Yao, strode out onto the platform, the walls turning to a flat steel grey as she positioned herself behind a shimmering podium. "Today is a very important day for not only for Chao-xing, but for all of the Yao family," she said, passing her gaze across her sisters’ faces. Though her skin did little to betray her age, her eyes shone with ancient depth.

  Chao-xing flushed as she was led to the raised platform to join Huizhong, her long black hair rippling past her waist.

  "You have shown yourself to be a worthy and committed member of our family,” said Huizhong, looking down at Chao-xing. “Please kneel"

  Chao-xing smiled and bowed her head as she dropped to her knees.

  "Do you swear live long and strive for greatness?" Huizhong asked, her voice echoing from the swooping ceiling.

  "I swear it,” Chao-xing said. “I will live long and strive for greatness."

  "Do you swear to place the integrity of our family above all else, forsaking all others for your sisters?"

  "I swear it,” Chao-xing said, swallowing. “I will place integrity of our family above all else, forsaking all of this from my sisters."

  She rose to her feet, bowing her head and waiting. Huizhong summoned a shaving drone, fist-sized and hovering., darted and dived insect-like around Chao-xing's head. Long strands of her hair, grown from birth, drifted to the floor. She smiled as her scalp grew cold, the low breeze from the air ducts bristling against her bare flesh. A proud tear coursed down her cheek.

  The drone dived in a steep arc to the floor, sucked up the hair, then left. Huizhong reached beneath the podium, emerging seconds later holding a red silk tunic. Chao-xing raised her head and arms, she felt the tunic fall down over her body.

  "Please kneel," Huizhong said.

  Chao-xing closed her eyes as she dropped to her knees. Waves of electricity swept like water from top of her head to the base of the spine. She shuddered as Huizhong’s warm hand pushed down on her bare scalp.

  Images and ideas flooded her mind, altering her perception, dreamlike, transparent. Concepts and histories clawed at her thoughts, consciousness so
ft, pliable, malleable. She became aware of her sisters massaging her reality, directing her reasoning, sharing themselves, becoming her. Sweat oozed from her pores as she trembled with the overwhelming new power.

  "Please rise as Yao Chao-xing."

  The wall to Chao-xing’s private quarters gaped open with her intent. She smiled at Armand, still waiting in her bed. "How do I look?" she asked, the wall closing behind her.

  "Like a Yao," said Armand. His face and eyes were dark, his features sharp.

  Chao-xing shook her head. "I'm not sure whether to take that as a good thing or a bad thing. But I can do this.” She nodded to the wall, smiling as it transformed from a flat grey to swirls of blues and purples.

  Armand raised his eyebrows and sat up, his elbow resting in his lap. "It's just weird, that's all," he said. “They took your hair.”

  "You knew this day would come, you knew that when we got together."

  "I know, it doesn't stop it from being weird though."

  Chao-xing ran a hand over her scalp. "You’ll get used to it."

  "What's it like?"

  "It's like you know things, you know everything,, but we don't really know it. It's like everything is there in my mind, but you got know what to ask, you’ve got to know the right questions, know what you are looking for. If I want to know where my sisters are, I don't even have to ask, I just know, but I only know because I wanted to know. Does that make any sense to you?"

  Armand shrugged. "If you knew everything, if it's already in your mind, why the lights?"

  "I don't know, the implants seem to guide my thoughts, give me access to the Knowledge, but I still have to use my eyes to see images."

  "Just looks like dancing lights to me."

  Chao-xing blinked, placing the images on standby before removing her clothes and climbing into bed next to Armand. She kissed him on the cheek and smiled. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m not going to change.”

  “Does this mean I can meet your sisters now?”

  Chao-xing stiffened. “You know I can’t.”

  Guan-yin poured tea from an antique teapot made from clay and coloured in daubs of blues and white. She looked up at Chao-xing and smiled, handing her the tea cup.

  Chao-xing sniffed the steaming liquid, cradling the cup in her hands. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table.

  "Things are going to seem a bit strange for a while,” Guan-yin subvocalised, her voice without international as it creeps into Chao-xing’s thoughts.

  Chao-xing trembles for a moment, getting used to the new sensation, tea dripping onto the table.

  “It’s something we’ve all been through,” Guan-yin continued. "You'll start to feel your thoughts being manipulated, not in any direct way, but in subtle ways that you hardly notice. See it more as a background noise of ideas shaping your thoughts, moulding you to focus.”

  “I’ve already felt it,” Chao-xing said, looking into her cup.

  “You don’t need to talk out loud to me. Just think.”

  “Right,” Chao-xing thought.

  “Good. You’re getting there.” Guan-yin sipped her tea and gave a half-smile. "With your new responsibilities, it will be necessary to assign you to a management role at one of our mining sites. Is anything you'd like to ask me?"

  Chao-xing placed her cup down and leaned back, the chair altering its shape to support her new position. "How do you deal with it?” she asked, subvocally. “How do you not get distracted all the time?” She leaned forward, reaching for her tea and spoke out loud. “It's like I've got all these memories the things that I've never experienced, ideas that I've never learned, opinions on things I've never had to think about before. I suppose I'm concerned about where I am in all of this, whether I'm just a conduit for Yao knowledge, an embodiment of something that isn't myself."

  Guan-yin smiled. "You are you, but you are also Yao. Do something. Do anything. Go on. Try it."

  Chao-xing shuffled in her seat. "I don't want to.”

  "So, you know your mind. You have agency. Your choices are your own. Your identity is your own. You are Yao Chao-xing. We have all been through this process of doubt, this process of feeling like you're losing something of yourself to the Knowledge, but this is not so. You have access to our entire history, our collected thoughts, achievements and failures. Now your thoughts achievements and failures will become part of all our memories."

  Chao-xing shook her head and downed the last of her tea, wiping her mouth with a sleeve. "You can all read my thoughts, you can steal my past. I'm sure the implants will probably push my mind into accepting this, but right now I'm scared."

  Guan-yin let out a thin sniff and stared at Chao-xing over her cup. "Your past is your own. You can choose what you share and what you don't. We have twenty-five of the greatest minds working together with access to millennia of knowledge and research. And it's all there, all immediate: don't scoff at this gift."

  Chao-xing sighed. "I know," she said. "It's going to take time to get used to."

  "As I say, it did for all of us." Guan-yin reached forward to place a hand on Chao-xing’s arm.

  "Do you have any idea where I'll be placed?"

  "Most likely, you'll be required to oversee operations around the Kuiper region."

  Chao-xing pulled her arm away from Guan-yin’s touch. "Kuiper? That's—"

  "Your assignment."

  Chao-xing stared up at the ceiling, allowing it stay its usual bland grey. "What am I going to do?” she asked, wiping a tear. “I really don't want to be sent to Kuiper. I’ll be so far away from everything, from everyone, from you. I want to stay here."

  Armand paced at the end of the bed, wringing his wrists. "Did she give you an idea of how long you'll be assigned out there?"

  "She didn't say. Assignments can last for centuries, so who knows?"

  Armand stopped and met Chao-xing’s gaze with a haunted look. "Centuries? And this is can sound a bit selfish, but where do we fit into all of this? Not being funny, but I don't have the luxury of having few a centuries to look forward to.” He sat at the end of the bed and stared at his hands.

  Chao-xing sat up, crawled to the end of the bed, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We can make it work.”

  Armand got to his feet, starting to pace again, his knuckles white with the tightness of his fists. "It's on the complete edge of nothing, how would we make it work? Where would we even live?"

  Chao-xing shrugged. "On one of the mining platforms, I guess."

  "Oh great, so if I came with you I'd be away from Lunar, from my work, from my friends. Would be forced to live in a stinking box on the outer edges of the system, never seeing sunlight, never feeling soil beneath our feet."

  "What am I supposed to do? Do you think this is something I want? Do you think this is something I asked for?" Her jaw tightened.

  "We can run away. You could join the Purdah. Imagine what we could do with access to the Yao archives."

  "I don't want to run away. I don't want to leave my family. I want to stay here with you."

  Armand sat back down on the edge of the bed, looking at Chao-xing. "Then speak to your sisters,” he said in an exasperated tone. “What have you got to lose?"

  Chao-xing blinked, holding back a tear as she looked down at her open palms. "I've just been made,” she said. “Can you imagine just for a second how that would look if I were to go against my first assignment? I just can't do that."

  Armand got up and shook his head. “Fine. Do what you want.”

  “Don’t put an ultimatum on me,” she said. “That’s not fair.”

  “No ultimatum,” he said, waving a dismissive hand, his feet half-out of the room. “We’ve just got to be realistic.”

  Guan-yin sat back and regarded Chao-xing with her ancient eyes. The walls around them pulse with a fungal glow. “You’re not drinking your tea,” she said, gesturing.

  Chao-xing looked down at the cup cooling in her hand and blinks. “What?” she said.

/>   Guan-yin let out a sigh and spoke subvocally. "Over the coming days, I need you to experiment, I need you to discover for yourself what the knowledge is capable of. Let the information you discover lead you to more information, then to more, then to more. Think of it like branches on a tree, constantly growing, constantly moving in different directions. Your implants are tailored to read you.”

  Chao-xing stared back at her. “I don’t understand.”

  Guan-yin poured another cup of tea into her cup and sipped. “It will read your body's rhythms — your heart rate, your hormone levels, your blood sugar. You will be able to regulate yourself, regulate your body. Unless your body undergoes a great physical trauma, you should be out to live long and strive for greatness.”

  Chao-xing nodded and gave a half-smile, running a finger around the rim of her teacup. "How do I do that?"

  "You just do it — it just is."

  Chao-xing thought about her heartbeat and became aware of her heart beating seventy-two times per minute. She saw an array of hormone readings, blood-sugar, cholesterol, and vitamin deficiencies.

  "What do high levels of oestrogen and progesterone mean?" Chao-xing jerked a hand over her mouth, the answer already there.

  Guan-yin snapped her gaze to Chao-xing. "What did you just say? "

  "Nothing, I was just thinking out loud. I suppose I don't need to do that now."

  Lights flickered before Guan-yin’s eyes, her face creasing into a sneer, "You're pregnant."

  Chao-xing stiffened, staring down at the surface of the tea.

  "How long have you known that your with child?"

  Chao-xing shook her head.

  “Well?” Guan-yin snapped.

  "I only found out when I use the implants to perform a hormone check. I didn't know."

  "You are a Yao, Chao-xing. You are not permitted to birth a child. Our customs are very strict about this, and you knew that. We should banish you right now for this.”

  “But—“

  “Silence. Your only saving grace is that you had not completed your evolution.” Guan-yin stares ahead for a long moment, lights flickering before her eyes. “Maybe— yes, Huizhong agrees.” She turned her attention back to Chao-xing. “We can resolve this problem. If we terminate the pregnancy before the little wretch grows inside you and if you cut ties permanently with your criminal boyfriend, then maybe we can get past this."