Things Could Be Worse

Things Could Always Be Worse

“Things could always be worse.” I repeat this aloud to myself. It was the last thing my mother said to me before she died in a machinery accident. It became a mantra for me. I settle into my chair as the starship quietly shuttles from Earth’s orbit towards the Cosmolauncher. A needle piercing the fabric of space that will zip me to the next phase in my future, indentureship.

The other seats in my row are all empty, a hollow luxury in a ship packed with the desperate. There are several humans in the rows in front of me, hunched over their glowing devices, likely checking their debt clocks. Behind me, the seating changes to accommodate other species so chairs are larger, reinforced, and shaped for the non-bipedal. For this brief moment, I am alone.

I pull out my journal and scribble these lines. I have a finite amount of paper but I want to document my whole experience. Paper is a rare commodity on Earth and in the Glorbian Galaxy, it’s practically a myth. I was only permitted to bring fifty pounds of goods, a weight limit enforced by gravity wells and fuel costs, so I packed mostly dry paint and thick, heavy paper. I left my home world forever with a bag full of potential colors and a heart full of gray.

When Earth was brought onto the Intergalactic Network on June 6, 1991, the world didn’t end with a bang or a whimper; it ended with a contract. It effectively created the World Peace we had talked about since civilization began. All wars suddenly stopped, not because we actually tried peace, but because we found a bigger target. Humans had a focus for their unbridled rage, and for a while, it was the alien invaders.

I was not quite ten years old then, living in the swampy, humid outskirts of North Florida. My childhood was a blur of electric lights and damp heat. I worked in a roadside motel as a maid by night, scrubbing the grime of travelers off tile floors and attended the local corporate education center by day. We all thought the Intergalactic Network was a miracle. Many people touted this event as proof of God, or the absolute death of the concept. For a single summer, it seemed peaceful. The news showed us videos of our world leaders meeting an array of creatures that defied every law of biology we knew.

The tall, green, walking celery stalks are known as Kerpians. They have no obvious faces and communicate with telepathy. Reported to be a chilling sensation that feels like someone whispering inside your own bone marrow. The red, rocky tripods are Ventali they have a verbal language that sounds like a rockslide. The Coopda are colorful sentient gas clouds who speak with thunderous booms and lightning. And the magnificently colorful, dragonlike folk are Fiercervathian, the most humanlike because of size and bipedalness but also in appearance despite the scales and feathers.

They told us they wanted a "Space Hub" for trade. What they didn't tell us was that by the time I graduated from my compulsory schooling, the Cosmolauncher would be a permanent fixture in our sky, its gravitational pull literally altering the tides and its economic pull altering the value of a human life.

By the time I married Justen at nineteen, the transition was complete. Earth had signed the Whole Planet Initiative (WPI), which unified all governments under one corporate entity. Under WPI, our debts and credits were monitored, insured, and processed by the government corporation. It gave the illusion of a post-scarcity society since you didn't pay for food, housing, or clothing upfront. Instead, you "earned" your subsistence through "Daily Active Production" or DAP.

I still remember the jingles, “Did you make your DAP today?”

If you were active and productive, you were fine. If you were a "sluggard" their term, they loved to use in the media, you were considered a drain and usually disappeared into the system. Merits based on production were hardest for teachers, artists, and philosophers.

Of course, our medical and healthcare abilities skyrocketed. There were fewer and fewer disabled or unhealthy humans. But our aggressively productive society shunned them, making them disappear from the media, which was Earth’s most popular product. Soon, "Human TV" was the hottest thing in the galaxy. Streaming cameras that floated on mini-drones live-streamed everything, lunch became content. People became brands.

I hated it. My husband hated it. We avoided the cameras like the plague. We refused to get the upgraded cortical implants that allowed you to view the live streams directly in your visual cortex. I didn’t associate with people who acted as if they were real celebrities just because a Ventali liked their feed. This meant Justen and I had a very small population of friends.

Mostly we hung out with our residents and co-workers. We both worked at a retired human apartment community in Washington state, a "Legacy Community" where hundreds of wealthy, pre-alien humans lived out their unaltered golden years. Most were wealthy prior to WPI and lived in a magic bubble outside the modern world. We lived in the basement level of the building, part of the extensive network of caretakers. It was a nice, quiet life for fifteen years. I had the smell of linseed oil, the warmth of Justen’s hand, and the quiet hum of the building’s furnace. For a while, I had real and true happiness.

The day of the collapse is a scar in my memory. I was out at the farmer’s market with a dozen of my elderly residents. We were trying fresh Bing cherries, a rare, dirt grown treasure, when the ground shook violently.

An earthquake. Magnitude 9.2. In the "New Earth," infrastructure was supposed to be indestructible, but the WPI had cut corners on the foundations of the old cities. I watched from the transport pod as our apartment building was swallowed by the ground. Justen was inside those doomed walls. He was always inside, fixing the boilers, making sure the old folks were warm and now he's always going to be in there.

The building didn't just collapse. The Earth opened its mouth and ate it. Emergency services took my seniors, but they could not find a single survivor from the building. I had nightmares about the claustrophobic ending my beloved must have endured. For weeks, I could not function. I lost weight. I slept in my transport pod and stopped caring for myself. I did not meet my DAP.

Then, the WPI debtors came calling. Without my job or my husband's joint credits, I was officially making fewer merits than the minimum cost of living. My debt was bundled like a bad mortgage and sold to a third party: the Glorbians. This was a race I never heard of and knew nothing about.

“Things could always be worse,” I think as I am jostled awake.

We have arrived at Glorb's Cosmolauncher. The planet is a small, dusky pink fog with large metal protrusions surrounding the entire surface. Black concentric rings encircle the globe like sea ports, spreading out to harness the very energy of the core. It’s a Dyson sphere of sorts, armor for a world.

The entry into my new world was a portal of mindnumbing scale. How big are Glorbians? I wondered as I held my breath and grasped my bag tightly and walked through. There was a moment of light blindness, and then I was in my new habitat.

It was a warm, tropical paradise of lush green plants, purple vines and blue flowers. The ground was a neutral brown linoleum hard surface and the sky was a deep, impossible sea blue. Then the sky moved. It rotated, and I saw a giant yellow eye with an oblong pupil. It was larger than the summer sun.

“Oh.” I said to myself, “Glorbians are big-BIG.”

Then a pink castle appeared from thin air. It looked like a Barbie Dream House scaled up for a human. It was "Open Concept" in the most literal and terrifying way with the back entirely missing, leaving the interior rooms exposed to the giant's gaze. There was no bathroom, no toilet, no shower or running water. And I needed to pee. Also no kitchen or place to prepare and I didn’t even think to bring food.

I realized my status quickly. I am a pet.

I began to communicate the only way an artist knows how. I mixed my paints and wrote on the roof: HELLO! NEED WASTE PLACE AND FOOD PLEASE as large as I could.

Xheuz, as I would later learn they are called, responded with the detached efficiency of a hobbyist. A giant green stick mopped up my message. A blue tub filled with savory, graham-cracker-like squares appeared. An outhouse followed. And finally an endless water fountain large enough, and warm enough to bath in. Luckily there was no one else around to be modest for.

The food varied. Sometimes I got giant jelly beans that tasted of kale and iron; other times, I got meat-like squares that tasted of roast chicken. I had everything a pet needed, but I was hollow. I was a ghost in a plastic box. I would sit on the roof of my pink house and weep for Justen, knowing that a skyscraper-sized insect was watching my tears with scientific curiosity.

Days bled into weeks. I spent my time journaling and drawing detailed scientific drawings of the plants in my habitat. I tried to give them names like Purple Lily to remind me of home. I also painted the outhouse with crescent moons. I painted the interior of the house with trees from Washington and Alligators from Florida to remind myself of where I came from.

I did yoga and noticed that when I was active, they would lean over the invisible edge of the glass walls to watch. Sometimes, other Glorbians would join, their massive shadows casting "clouds" over my artificial sun.

I tried to communicate with Xhuez but it was difficult for both of us. So after it confirmed I had everything I needed to survive, it mostly left me alone.

It was several weeks, probably months, before the next surprise came.

The earthquake didn't just rattle the pink plastic roof, it shook my skull and cracked my teeth together. My first instinct was a jagged, piercing flashback to Washington. I could almost smell the rupturing gas lines and the dust of pulverized concrete. I scrambled into my bedroom, diving under the frilly, rococo bedspread, waiting for the floor to open up and swallow me again.

But when the shaking stopped, there was no smell of dust. Instead, the air felt... electric.

I crawled to the edge of the open-backed house and looked out. The dull, muffled grey of our usual orbit was gone. We had moved. The world beyond the transparent walls of my domain was now a riot of neon luminescence and impossible architecture. We were in a hall so vast it had its own weather systems, wisps of Coopda clouds drifted near a ceiling that must have been miles high.

I wasn't in a private study anymore. I was on a pedestal.

I watched, as kaiju sized figures drifted past. To them, my entire world was likely the size of a coffee table book. The Fiercervathians were there in droves, their iridescent feathers shimmering like oil slicks under the harsh gala lights. Most of them were actually riding on the limbs of the Glorbians, looking like brightly colored lap-dogs themselves.

My heart was racing as I tried to figure out where I was. Then came the sticks.

Long, firm, translucent appendages, mechanical extensions of the aliens' own limbs, began to poke through the top of my habitat. They weren't trying to hurt me, they were prodding me. It was the universal gesture of a child poking a bug with a twig to see if it still moves.

"Stop it!" I yelled, though my voice was a microscopic squeak in that cavernous hall.

Suddenly, Xheuz’s massive shadow eclipsed the neon lights. Their own limb, not a stick, but the actual, chitinous appendage of the mountain sized Cyclops Mantis Shrimp, descended toward me. It was an act of terrifying intimacy. Most owners wouldn't dare touch their "livestock" directly for fear of crushing them or catching a primitive pathogen.

I didn't run this time. I reached out. My small, soft, mammalian hands pressed against the cold, iron-hard exoskeleton of my owner. The texture was like polished stone, vibrating with a low-frequency hum that I felt in my chest. In a blur of motion that defied physics, Xheuz scooped me up.

The transition was a physical assault. My habitat was always a steady, climate-controlled 21°C. The air in the Great Hall was freezing cold and smelling of ozone and something sickly sweet, like rotting jasmine. I was held aloft in the palm of a god. The scale was incomprehensible. I looked down and saw hundreds of other habitats like mine filled with desert landscapes, miniature oceans, for what I could see at such great distance. We were a collection.

Flash. Blinding Flash. The lights were more than blinding they told me something new.

"Paparazzi," I whispered, shielding my eyes.

It wasn't just a pet show; it was a premiere. The drones were everywhere, tiny buzzing gnats to the Glorbians, but the size of hawks to me. They were recording my reactions to everything. My fear, my smallness, my exotic biology for the Intergalactic Network. I felt sick with every moment.

I saw a smaller Glorbian standing nearby, its limbs festooned with Fiercervathians who seemed to be judging me, their dragon-like heads tilting in synchronization. I felt the vibration of Xheuz’s "voice", a windy howl that I now realize was probably a boast. “Look at my human. See how it paints? See how it mourns?”

Just as my lungs began to burn from the thin, freezing air, the world blurred again. I was lowered with surprising gentleness back through the ceiling of my habitat. Xheuz didn't just drop me on the linoleum; they placed me gently right at the threshold of my bedroom.

I collapsed onto the floor, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I had survived a near-death experience, or perhaps something worse: I had realized that I was the most famous thing in the galaxy, and I had never felt more invisible.

I crawled back to my journal, my hands still shaking too much to hold the brush.

“Things could always be worse,” I whispered into the silence of the pink plastic room. “I could have liked all the attention. What would Justen say about that? Scandalous.” My own voice is the only comfort I could find.

The next morning I was on the left of the front door continuing a black dragon eating a heart on the pink wall when the projection appeared. Xheuz manifested as a twelve-foot-tall hologram.

“Hello human friend!” Xheuz asked, "Are you happy?” but the voice came down from above like wind on a beach. The voice vibrated in my chest. I fell off the roof in shock, bruising my foot. I scrambled toward the light, my face wet with sudden, desperate tears.

"No," I sobbed up the hologram, "I am not happy. I am lonely. Humans are not meant to live in solitary confinement."

Xheuz tilted their massive, single eyed head. The appendages along their sides rippled. "You have food, water, shelter. You have safety from the WPI. On Earth, you are 'Deficit.' Here, you are 'Treasured.' You won show, gain much acclaim."

Realizing they meant I won a pet show made my stomach cliche in anger. "I'd rather be a 'Deficit' with a purpose than a 'treasure' in a box," I whispered. "Please. This isn't what it means to be human."

There was a long silence, a cosmic pause. The giant seemed to be calculating the value of its investment. Finally, the hologram flickered. Its body moved in side to side motion that implied something when finally it asked, "Would you want to go back to Earth?"

"Yes!" I laughed, a jagged, hysterical sound. "Yes, please."

Xheuz nodded its whole body and then the hologram vanished. It was nearly an hour of me just sitting and processing before I realized that I was maybe going… Well I can't say home, but back to Earth. I gathered my goods, now lighter, as the paint was on the walls of a pink house and waited. I looked over my notes and drawings. I hope I am able to share them someday. I waited and waited until finally I fell asleep on my bed holding my travel bag like a lover.

I woke up in the Earth Satellite Hub orbiting Mars. I have no memory of the journey. My skin is clean, my hair is trimmed, and I am wearing a high-quality WPI jumpsuit. In my pocket is a small, glowing token, an "Fulfillment Credit" from a Glorbian trade house. It is more than just a ticket home; it is a full debt forgiveness. It is enough to buy a small plot of land where the ground doesn't shake.

I am standing at the viewport now, looking at the blue marble of Earth. It is a beautiful, corporate, broken world. It is the world that took my husband and sold my soul, but it is the world where the air moves on its own and the sky doesn't have an eye in it. And the scrolling prompter says I will be there in just 3 more days.

“Things could always be worse,” I say to my reflection in the glass.

I look at my hands, my nails still stained with a bit of black paint from the dragon’s wing. For the first time in a long time, I think things might actually get better.