Letters from Titan

Now that the acid rain had stopped, Sheltel braved the overcrowded streets and made her way to Arbum Station. She carried an overstuffed leather bag, with a white envelope poking out the top. The scent of roasted nuts, hot dogs, candied fruits, and squid on a stick rippled through the air, bringing with it a sense of comfort.

The squid man called out to her, in his gruff smoker’s voice, “Hey, Sheltel! Morning squid?! Your favorite!”

“Not today, Rylan," she said through a forced, hollow grin. "I have to hurry before the rain starts up again!”

Rylan's face scrunched in disappointment as she waved and hurried off.

She could do this walk, including all the side streets and empty alleys, with her eyes closed. It was the same routine, every Sunday, for the last twenty years—a routine she wouldn't miss for the world.

Sheltel loved her grandfather, and the letters he sent from Titan were amongst her most treasured possessions. The feel of actual paper on her fingertips, using real ink that was never fully dried, was something that couldn’t be replicated, no matter how much the corporations tried. The smell of organic parchment was unmatched anywhere on Earth. It was joy. And it was comfort. And it arrived every Sunday.

He could have sent her an E-Gram. It would be faster: an E-Gram from Titan would take less than two hours to arrive, even if Titan were at its furthest from Earth. But no, her grandfather, Pratchett, sent her paper letters made from trees growing on Titan, handwritten in ink made there. And the ships from Titan only arrived on Sunday. He would even send along an extra piece of paper for her to write back, using the pen he had gifted her for her 6th birthday. She kept that pen all these years, never losing it once. And despite how difficult it was to get real ink on Earth, she always found a way to get it refilled.

The sky rumbled, and she looked up at the gray-green clouds, sucking in a bitter breath. No more, she thought, as she pushed through the masses, observing the unending blocks of drab, perfectly square gray buildings all around her. Every inch, every stone, every curb had been so carefully planned by someone so long ago to fit neatly in a straight line. She sighed at it all, knowing that all sense of heart had been ripped away from this place for the sake of convenience or, worse, haste. It was all so sanitized.

The weekly letter from Pratchett was everything her world wasn't.

Her city was a massive megalopolis on the North American continent, a mass of concrete, neverending plastic, high walls, and uniformity. Flora and fauna were almost nonexistent, except for the occasional rat or city deer that had adapted to living among people over the past century. It once housed the imperial capital—until the emperor shifted his court to Luna decades before Sheltel was born. The capital here, only a few miles from Sheltel's home, was as drab as every other building surrounding it. Sheltel had seen pictures of the new capital: a marvelous work of modern architecture, rife with archways, painted statues, koi ponds filled with real fish, and lush rose gardens displaying every rose color imaginable. Her mother had promised to take her one day, but she got injured at work and was bound to a wheelchair before she could ever make good on that promise.

The next building she passed looked exactly like the one before it, except this one had a holographic tree out front, with leaves looking so green and vibrant that she could almost mistake it for the real thing. Except she knew the real thing. She had seen the real thing. Once a year, Pratchett would fly in to pick her up and take her with him to spend her summer on Titan. The seasons didn’t correspond, of course, but that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy the three years in a row where it was winter there while it was summer here. Pratchett taught her how to ski.

For the past five summers here, she was enjoying the Titan Spring there. She fished with Pratchett and his neighbor Jack on the rivers near his home. She hiked through the vast forests filled with deciduous trees whose leaves had helped terraform the place over the past 150 years. They would kayak on clear days and play holographic games together on the rainy ones.

“Going to the station?” a soft voice called out to her as she strode along the sidewalk, breaking up her mental static.

Sheltel halted and turned to see her friend Lyrisa standing at the corner, doing nothing in particular. Which meant that, despite the meeting’s impromptu appearance, Lyrisa had been waiting for her.

Sheltel took a deep breath and let it slowly escape her lips. She had intended to go alone today. She wanted to let the walk and the musty air clear her head. But that wasn’t going to happen now.

“Yeah,” she said, cracking a half-smile.

Lyrisa returned with a full smile and said, “I’m coming with you.”

It wasn’t an ask. A lesser friend would ask. Lyrisa wasn't a lesser friend. Lyrisa was the friend that Sheltel would ask to hide a body. Her soft voice betrayed her hard personality. And that personality had been the cornerstone of their friendship for a long time.

Their friendship was old and true. When they were 13, Sheltel was being bullied by a classmate, Brody. Every day he would tease her, trip her if they were walking in the hallway, or laugh at her if she answered a question wrong. Sheltel’s mother told her that Brody did those things because he liked her. Lyrisa had a different approach: on the fifth day of the bullying, Lyrisa walked up to Brody and punched him square in the nose, breaking it. That was the kind of friend Lyrisa was. And now, it was the kind of friend that Sheltel needed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep quiet,” Lyrisa casually lied as she walked beside her.

Now Sheltel gave an honest smile. Lyrisa knew what was in her mind.

Tall buildings, dull and gray as the sky above them, haunted their walk. Haunting it further still were the people moving this way and that, most of whom wore identical black suits or beige work dresses. Once in a while, someone stood out—someone wearing green or pink, sporting spiky hair, dangling a long beard, or even an exposed midriff. But those were the exceptions, not the rule.

After three blocks, Lyrisa was done being quiet. “You don’t have to.”

Sheltel’s pace slowed, her feet tugged against the concrete, and she said, “I need to.” Her eyes shot up to the closest, indistinct building. “For me.”

"Remember your mom taking us to the arcade? The one right down the block?" Lyrisa pointed down a side street the next block over.

The memory elicited a smile, then she said, "It's gone, too. It's a bank now."

"Another one?" Lyrisa asked. "That's a shame. They had the best 3D simulator there."

She was right. It did have the best 3D simulator. But it was long gone, replaced with something as drab as the rest of the city.

As they moved on, Sheltel could see Lyrisa side-eying her bag. She laughed to herself because Lyrisa wasn't going to keep quiet about it for much longer, so she beat her to it. "Yes, I brought the letter, too. I want it with me."

"It's not that nice, you know.” There was a bit of desperation in Lyrisa's voice.

Sheltel stopped, and Lyrisa stopped with her. "Lyrisa, it's all I've ever wanted."

"Is it?" Lyrisa asked, her annoyance thinly veiled.

"You know it is."

"This city...all of our memories. We built them all here," Lyrisa said.

"I know. But it's not the memories here that matter," she said.

Lyrisa went to respond when heavy footsteps approached from behind her, followed by thick arms wrapping around her and lifting her into the air. She kicked in the air and laughed. “Brody, put me down!”

Brody put Lyrisa down, and she kissed him. He turned to Sheltel and said, “You didn’t think I was going to miss this, did you?”

Sheltel rolled her eyes, grinned, and said, “No.”

The three of them had been inseparable once Brody got over the whole broken nose thing. And after he did, he got the courage to ask out the girl who broke it. Maybe he did have a crush on Sheltel once, but something about getting socked in the face made him fall head over heels for Lyrisa. And something about socking him made Lyrisa fall head over heels for him.

Which was good for Sheltel, because she had no feelings for him. She didn’t have feelings for anyone—a few boyfriends here and there, but no one worth hanging on to. So, throughout the rest of high school, and then their adult life so far, they were all three of them together. And Sheltel didn’t want it any other way. She couldn’t imagine what life would be like without them.

In those summers away, when she was enjoying the hiking, the boating, the darkness of night unobstructed by millions of artificial lights, and the sounds of the imported animals—the ones long gone from Earth’s ecosystems—she would often think about her friends. The moments they shared on Earth were the moments she treasured. Almost as much as Pratchett’s letters. Almost.

Brody asked, "What are you going to do there? Is it still spring?"

"It's still spring. I'll hike, I guess. After I get settled in," Sheltel replied.

"You'll be fine," Brody assured her.

"I know." Will I?

They walked around a corner, and Arbum Station came into view, replete with freighters coming in and out in every direction and blasting out towards the atmosphere. The flat, gray facade, flanked by holographic trees in electronic pots, stood as the final barrier to greenery. Sheltel halted for a moment. Every memory she had of this place overtook her in heavy waves. Her eyes grew wet and, after a moment, her cheeks followed suit. Her face reddened and pulsated with every heartbeat. This wasn’t the usual Sunday stroll. She started walking again.

“So, are you ready?” Brody asked, keeping pace with the women as they navigated past the black suits and beige dresses, as the buzz of hovercars and flybikes sped past them on the streets while a few rule-breakers cut through by flying over their heads.

“Yes,” Sheltel let out. It was a mixture of truth and lie, sweet and bitter, soft and hard. The kind of thing one tells their friends when they don’t want them to worry; though Sheltel couldn’t tell for herself if she was worried or not.

Brody, much less subtle than Lyrisa, looked right at the envelope poking out of her bag and asked, "Is that it?"

Always to the point. "That's it," she said. She wanted to leave it, but Brody would never. She pulled it out and handed it to him.

It was the last letter that Pratchtt sent her, arriving three weeks ago. Along with his urn.

"You give in too easily," Lyrisa said.

"She knows me too well," Brody said, taking the envelope and opening it. Moving his finger along the lines, Sheltel could see that real ink darkening his fingers just a bit. He read silently for the most part, but said the last sentence out loud. "And I give to you the deed to the house, free and clear. What does that mean?"

"It means there's no mortgage. He left it to her, fully paid," Lyrisa said.

"Who sent the letter?" He asked.

Sheltel let out a sad, weighty breath. "His neighbor. I should have gone sooner. I thought I had more time." She didn't know if that was true or not. Something here, in this place, had tugged at her when he first offered for her to come live with him.

"You didn't know how sick he was. You couldn't know," Lyrisa said.

Brody tucked the envelope back in her bag and asked, "Are you OK?"

"I'll be OK," she said. It comforted her that Brody was concerned for her. He was always making sure that they were all OK. It was one of the things she loved most about being with them. There was safety with them. There was comfort with them. There was joy with them, even in this gray world.

But it is a gray world.

She almost cried, but in that moment two rats the size of chihuahuas ran out from the alleyway and across their feet, fighting over an old piece of pizza. She belted out a short scream, and they all laughed as the rats took their epic battle further down the street before getting stomped by a galloping deer coming from a different alley. The people crowding the sidewalk didn’t slow down. They stepped around the chaos and continued on with their lives.

It reminded her of the time she drew a rat on her return letter to Pratchett. His letter had talked about his garden, and how he had spent time after work picking eggplant and zucchini; her favorites. She longed for a garden of her own. Instead, she had rats. And deer that crushed the rats. And gray buildings. And black suits.

Lyrisa squeezed her hand. The firm grip grounded her. Brody placed his arm around her shoulder. Her heart steadied.

Letter after letter, visit after visit. All she had ever wanted was to leave Earth and go to Titan. Taking care of her mom kept her here, and it tore at her heart every day. But that ended months ago. That didn't stop her from coming here each Sunday to correspond with her grandfather. Her wonderful, loving grandfather who retired early so that she could move to Titan and live with him once her affairs were taken care of. The Titan that was abundant with green, with blue, with red and yellow and all the other colors that the universe had to offer across the spectrum of light that humans could see.

But now, as she stood embraced by her best friends, all the memories of their time together flooded to her as well. Those memories of partying in college together, of walking the streets late at night and grabbing food from the many street stalls along the way, of dodging bad weather, of playing cards or video games late into the night. All those things were part of her, too.

And the part of her that wanted to go? It was fighting with a part that didn’t exist fifteen minutes ago: the part that wanted to stay.

She turned to see Lyrisa’s face just as wet as hers. “I love you. We love you,” Lyrisa told her.

Brody removed his arm from around her shoulder. “This place won’t be the same without you. I don’t know if she’ll keep me around after you’re gone!” He teased her, to which Lyrisa gave him a love-smack on the arm.

“I—” The words didn’t come out of Sheltel the way she had expected; the way she had envisioned. In her mind, in all the times she had dreamed of this moment, it was joyful. It was warm. It was kind. And it was easy. Yet here and now, it was none of those things.

Now, she stood, staring at the station. At the future. No, Pratchett wouldn’t be there with her; not in person. The letters were done coming. Now it was her chance to go. To be where she was meant to be.

Was it where she was meant to be?

She glanced at her friends. Her comrades. The people who made her life worth living. Then back at the station, at the moment she had waited a lifetime for.

​The flicker of a pair of holographic trees caught her eye. Most of the black suits pushed past it until one person gave the base a soft kick and the trees stood clear and at attention.

The future—her future—was ready.

Whatever it was, she would write it in real ink.