Learning the World

The estate would have looked even more impressive if its pattern hadn’t been repeated, with variations, for kilometres around in all directions. There was something of a relief to the eye in seeing in the far distance, hanging like a pictorial map on the upward curve of the ground, the closer-together and taller buildings of a town. Imagine growing up in a place like this! The first thing you’d want to do, as soon as you could if not sooner, would be to get out. For the first time Horrocks felt what he’d long understood: the outward urge of the ship generation.

This was what he had come for. Something like this. He turned away and climbed back up the steps to the platform and waited for the next forward train.

14 364:09:27 20:38

Sorry about the two-and-a-half-month hiatus, everyone. (Note to self: months, huh? Re primary origin myth question.) I’ve been too busy living to biolog. It’s all very well for adults, who can stick their thoughts on a site for anyone to see. Well, not their thoughts and not anyone, but you know what I mean, and frankly subvocalizations and saved sights and sounds and smells and such seem like cheating compared to writing. When all that adult stuff comes on in my head I’m going to keep on writing. I promise to you my faithful reader(s).

So… to catch up. I’ve turned fifteen and I’ve moved to town. Only the nearest town to Big Foot, mind you, but it’s surprising how different living among ten thousand is from living with five hundred. The town is called Far Crossing — another of these pioneer names — and it absolutely rocking fucks, as I heard somebody say the day I arrived. It’s nearly all ship generation, most of them a bit older than me, not that that’s a drawback. And the buildings and the streets are dense. You can walk a hundred metres and not see a flower or a blade of grass or another living thing except people, and that’s not a drawback either. You appreciate these things more when you’re not surrounded by them all the time. When we go out we’ll have to get used to that, for a while anyway. It’s like with the shops. When you’ve had everything you want all your life you appreciate shops. They’re full of things you don’t want but somebody does. Most of them are owned, if that’s the word, by people who’ve thought of or made something that’s never been made before, and they sell them. Like, you know, somebody might sell space and time on a training habitat, but it’s strange to see small material objects being sold.

Even stranger to buy them. I now have more bracelets and pendants and hair-slides and clothes and would you believe shoes than I ever imagined I would want, and that’s the point I think, I would never have imagined them. I used to get given gifts or take what I fancied from the estate store or make things myself. Even my own business was nothing to do with stuff like this. Atomic’s Enterprise (now Magnetic’s Magic) used to (still does) trade in phenotypic expression derivatives, which is something so rocking abstract that it bores even me.

But enough about me. You know what’s dragged me back to this, it’s what everyone else is talking about too. Doesn’t matter. Someday we’ll look back on this. Eventually everybody in our light-cone will know about this and wonder how it felt, so I think it’s worth noting our first reactions for posterity and our future selves.

This morning I rolled out of bed and made a coffee to wake up and went down to the cafe along the street to have a proper breakfast. There I met Grant—

Let me tell you about Grant. I met him the day I arrived. The thing is, Far Crossing isn’t on the monorail. It isn’t even on one of the roads. You either arrive by air or on foot, slogging across the estates. Guess which way I arrived?

So there I was, leaning on my rucksack where the road runs out at the edge of town, looking along the streets and up at the towers like, well, like someone who has just walked in from a little estate out in the middle of nowhere. Somebody said hello. He was standing in front of me, a boy about my height and age, with very short black hair and a wispy beard. His eyes were very dark, he had broad shoulders and thick biceps and he was wearing a loose black T-shirt and long shorts and scuffed sandals.

“You’ve just arrived?” he said.

I looked down at the pack. “You guessed?”

He stuck out a hand. “Grant Cornforth Dialectical,” he said. He kind of winced. “Sorry about the name, but it’s mine.”

“Atomic Discourse Gale,” I said, shaking his hand.

He brightened. “I can see we’re going to get on well.”

There’s a notion that gets kicked around the cohort that our names have some occult co

“Maybe,” I said. “Pleased to meet you. Been here long?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Weeks and weeks.”

I stooped to lift the pack.

“Let me take that,” he said.

“There’s no need.”

“I need the exercise. Please.”

“All right,” I said. In truth I was glad to be rid of it. I accompanied him into town. Small parks and plazas buzzed with people building ecologies and machines. The buildings were grey and very smooth. They went up and up. Some were angular, others all sweeping curves and elliptical windows and cup-shaped balconies, many of the shapes priapic or vulval or arboreal, a stone dream of the organic.

“Strange smell in the air,” I said.

“Concrete,” he said. He waved a hand at the buildings. “Structural material.”

“So that’s how it’s done.”

“Right. I find it interesting because that’s what I’m learning: structural engineering. You can use some concrete mixes in vacuum, you know.”

“Water could be a problem.”

“Ice and compression. Proven tech.” He looked at me. “So, what do you do?”

“I used to speculate in organic futures,” I said. “When I was younger, I mean,” I added. I knew it sounded tame and obvious, kids’ stuff about, well, kids. “I recently did my micro-gee training and I’m busy trying to plan my future habitat and put together a team. And I write.”

“Biolog?”

“Yes. ‘Learning the World.’ ”

“I’ll check it out,” he said, sounding as if he wouldn’t. “I write too.”

“Not a biolog?” I guessed.

“Just the minimum. If anybody wants to get to know me they can rocking well come and meet me. What I’m really writing is a novel.”

More people say that than say they’re biologging. It’s a disease.

“What’s it about?” I asked. I was looking at shop windows and avoiding collisions. Grant was looking straight ahead and letting other people do the collision avoidance.

“Let’s go in here,” he said, stopping and indicating a cafe. “It’ll take a while to tell you about it.”

I didn’t have anything better to do, so I agreed. The place was bright, with yellow tables and blue crockery. It was about half full, with a dozen or so people at various tables. A wall screen at the back was showing airsurfing, or some such sport. The counter was self-service. I got — bought, I should say — a chicken salad and orange juice. Grant shrugged off the pack beside a vacant table and bought a heaped plate of hot processed meats and fried potatoes and a pot of coffee. I could see why he’d jumped at the chance of exercise.

“So tell me about your novel,” I said, when we’d eaten our first few bites.

He leaned forward, gesturing with his fork. I leaned back. He took the hint.

“It’s about the previous generation,” he said. “Our parents’ generation.”

“Oh,” I said. “Old people.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “Nobody else is interested in it. But there must be stories to tell. Think about it, four hundred years! Cities being built and destroyed! Intrigues, affairs, deals! Secrets! Their past before they took ship!”