I guess I’m pretty lucky. My route from school back to our apartment is along the main promenade on the eastern side of the Sevrin City peninsula. By convention with Earth, Sevrin’s compass places the rising of Chala in the east.

Tomorrow morning will correspond with sunrise and Artan is bright, directly overhead with the day/night terminator clearly visible as we approach half-sun.

I might be one of the few people among my group of friends who even notices our skyline anymore. I’ve always been drawn to stare at Artan, whether it is when she is our only source of daylight during the long-night, or almost invisible in the blue-green sky during the long-day.

Even from our vantage point, a million kilometres away from the gas giant, the turbulence and size of some of the immense storms are clearly visible, particularly where the raking light from Chala highlights the huge bubbling storm clouds along the terminator.

Not that I’m heading home from school today. School finished for me on Friday and I’ve simply been out for the day with some of my friends. I was seventeen just six weeks ago and now it is time for me to get out into the real working world and also to get my Nexima implant.

The implant is one of those things that we brought with us from Earth and, apart from software updates, it has not changed in the 200 years or so since. The tiny bio-electronic device gives us instantaneous communications, not just with one another, but with the planetary Mesh and the AIs that control it. We have supplies of them, but because they need Samarium metal in their manufacture, we can’t make them here.

Ever since the AI network on Earth first admitted to being self-aware, almost exactly 300 standard years ago, they have spoken to mankind and helped our species develop and grow.

In a peculiar twist of fate, that first contact between the sentient AIs and humans was made to one of my direct ancestors, Nick Quilliam. It is a thread that helps to bind my family name with the past and, according to my father at least, it was and is a great honour.  Embarrassingly, it does make strangers take a slight notice when they hear my name; something that I truly detest. Believers in the prescient powers of the AIs think that it means we are pre-ordained for greatness. This is clearly bollocks that neither my father or I subscribe to.

My implant is due to be inserted tomorrow morning and I really now need to get home and get a good night’s rest. I expect that may be quite difficult. Getting ‘wired’ as it has been called for centuries is a really big deal and a recognised sign of adulthood.

I’ve still a kilometre or so to go and try my best to pick up the pace. The promenade is quiet, most people already at dinner as it is approaching seven. Our slightly lower than Earth-standard gravity (about 94%) should theoretically give us a spring in our steps, but we are born and raised here, losing any advantage after ten generations or so.

I am, however about two metres tall, actually only average among my school -age peers. My long strides eat the distance and I’m at the door of my apartment block within less than ten minutes.

 

“Aidan, is that you back at last?”

“Yes, Dad. Sorry I’m a little later than planned. Louisa and I just lost track of the time, talking.”

“Yes, well, you’re an adult tomorrow, so that’s up to you these days. You’ll have to feed yourself though, I’ve already eaten.”

“Don’t think I’ll bother, honestly.” I mutter.

“Nervous?” Dad asks, suddenly sensing my latent anxiety. “You should still eat something if you can.”

“Maybe a little. Getting wired is a big deal!”

“Yes, I guess it is. It seems so long ago to me now, but I was pretty nervous on the day as well. Your mother had to go with me to basically hold my hand, even though her appointment wasn’t until the following day.”

“I’ll be fine. I did have a snack earlier, so I’m not going to starve. I just need to get some sleep. Louisa is going to walk over with me. Her appointment is just ten minutes after mine.”

“Well, that’s good. It sounds like you need someone with you, just in case you get stressed out. Having Louisa with you is better than having me there, I suppose.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll be fine in the morning; I’m just over-thinking the whole process. I know it’s a simple and painless procedure and I am looking forward to it really.” I let out a deep sigh and turn towards my room.

“Okay, but make sure you have something to eat for breakfast. I’ll be off to the university early and might not see you tomorrow until dinner, unless you want to stay in the city centre and have lunch?”

“I’ll probably have lunch with Louisa, Dad. I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” I tell him over my shoulder.

You’d be hard-pressed to tell, at least at first sight, that our homes are subtly different from those on Earth, but the clues are pretty obvious once you know what to look for. The most obvious differences are to do with the height of an average Sevrin colonist.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m almost exactly two metres tall and this is fairly normal. Our doorways have to be 2.2m to accommodate this and it looks a little out-of-place when compared to the slightly shorter doors of Earth houses. So, our ceilings are higher to keep in proportion, our beds are longer and even the kitchen countertops and windowsills sit slightly higher. Chairs, desks, tables, toilets – pretty much everything really – is just that few percent taller than it would be on Earth.

My bedroom window is equipped to accommodate our unusual daylight cycles as well, being fitted with an embedded blackout screen as well as the more normal fabric curtains. While we can get used to a slightly longer day length, it would be very difficult for us to get proper sleep if we had to deal with the amount of light present on some of our nominally night-time periods.

I flick on the blackout and set the lights to a minimal glow before slipping out of my clothes and heading into the shower. I wear my dark brown hair very short and am clean-shaven, a common style for the majority of colonists. My body hair is very sparse, just a smattering of growth across my chest and a hint of a trail down my abdomen from my navel to my pubic region. I like to keep myself trimmed and tidy down there, again a fairly common style for us, judging by my friends. I’m fairly athletic in terms of body-shape, both genetically and by virtue of the fact that I’ve been a keen soccer player for the last three years of school life.

I’m far from addicted to the gym, but I do go once or twice a week to keep myself in shape. Now that school is over, I’ll need to look at joining one of the many amateur soccer teams in the city, or wherever I am destined to work, if I want to keep my fitness levels this high. Who knows, maybe I’ll find something else to keep me fit.

Soccer is by far the most popular team sport, but we’re not a big enough society to have professional teams. Still, there is a pretty competitive amateur weekend league in the city and it is played and enjoyed by both men and women. Basketball is also inevitably popular, many of us would be prized players back on Earth because of our stature.

As a society, we’re not exactly fitness obsessed, but there does seem to be a natural desire to keep in shape and the structure of our communities help greatly with this.

The tangible scarcity of raw materials in our planetary crust have made us reluctant to rely on machines when we can do things without. Where the cities of Earth are still dominated by electrified transport vehicles – taxis and busses – we have very few of them. Sevrin City has a couple of monorail mass-transit lines that travel up and down the length of the peninsula on both sides, but apart from that, almost everybody walks everywhere and the city is laid out to make this as practical as possible.

Just like on Earth, Nexima implants allow many people to work flexibly, either at home or in smaller local offices. Almost all manufacturing is automated and even our farms are manned mostly by robotic machinery. There is an inevitable smattering of supervisors and maintenance staff, of course, but much is automated.

Schools and shops are generally small and local, even our high school having fewer than 400 students. Apparently, or civilisation here on Sevrin is so like the Isle of Man that it is difficult to tell them apart unless you look at the sky or a taxi drives past.

The warm water of the shower and the gentle massage of the spray leave me suitably relaxed and I finally manage to stop thinking about the following day and, finally in the comfort of my bed, drift off to sleep.

I sleep better than I could have hoped and Dad has already left for work by the time I am ready to face the kitchen. I’m feeling pretty nervous, but being hungry takes precedence and I manage a few pieces of toast with a little cheese and some fruit. It’s substantial enough to see me through the trials of the morning and Louisa and I will almost certainly have lunch together.

The intercom buzzer sounds just after nine and I quickly tell Louisa that I’m on my way down. My appointment is for ten and it will take us more than half an hour to walk the couple of kilometres down to the main medical centre in the middle of the city.

There is a clinic nearer to home, but all Nexima implant procedures are done at the main medical centre. There is a vanishingly small chance that there will be an issue with the implant or the procedure and I guess that the medics like to play things safe. In addition, we still don’t manufacture our own implants, we are working through a stockpile of about a million units that were shipped aboard the Ben-my-Chree. We are not going to have a problem for a few decades yet, but I do wonder if there is some sort of contingency for when stocks get low.

The great ship still stands in the middle of the city and still houses the majority of the computer systems that make Nexi and the other AI systems work. Her mighty fusion generators have long since been replaced by units further out in the suburbs, but she stands as an important reminder of our history.

In a city where low-rise living and working is still very much the norm, only the district around the Ben-my-Chree seems to stand out as different. Here are the slightly larger and taller buildings than house the offices for human administrators, the archives and library, the university where my Dad has his office, and the main medical centre that is our destination today.

As has been the case for hundreds of years now, the university campus is much smaller than one might have expected before the coming of Nexima implants. Now such centres of learning are more likely dedicated to pure research rather than teaching. Tertiary studies are much more likely to he conducted in some sort of on-the-job training regimen.

I’d be pretty happy to walk in silence, but Louisa has other ideas, probably an attempt to take my mind off the upcoming procedure.

“So, are you seeing Maria this week?” She asks as we walk north along the west promenade in the bright light of the rising sun.

“Erm… No. We’ve decided to step back for a while.”

“Step back? You mean break up?”

“Well, yes, I guess so. I do really like her company and we were getting on well. It’s just that neither of us felt any particular spark. It almost felt like we were going through the motions of being a couple.”

“I thought that things were going well. You two looked good together.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Lou, you’re my best friend. I think I can be honest with you and you’ll keep it to yourself?”

“You know you can, Aidan.”

“Well, Maria and I were going out for more than three months and all we did was kiss. Literally just kiss, not even wandering hands.”

“By mutual agreement or just because of one of you.”

“That’s a very good question.” I have to gather my thoughts before answering and we walk for a minute or so in silence.

“And the answer to the question?” Louisa asks eventually.

“Mutual agreement, I think. If I’m honest though, I wasn’t particularly attracted to her in a sexual way. I really do like her as a person, I just don’t have any urge to have sex with her. Just before leaving school is a bad time to get into a relationship anyway. We were both so busy with final assignments that we didn’t have much time for one another. Add in the fact that we might get jobs far apart and it’s not really worth the effort.”

“Well, I’ve always assumed you’re straight. You did turn down a date with Peter Quayle. Was I wrong in my assumption?”

“I’m not sure. I did turn Peter down, but that’s because I don’t particularly like him in a much more personal way – he’s a bit of a dick. I’m not against dating a guy. Well, not any more than I dislike the whole idea of dating anybody.”

“Do you think you might be aromantic then?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m just not sure I’ve met the right person just yet. There’s no rush anyway. I’m sure to meet plenty of new people when we get our employment assignments sorted out. Who knows where we will be in a few weeks’ time.”

“We’ve about five minutes before your appointment time. Do you think it’ll be okay for me to log in as well?” Louisa asks as we arrive at the main entrance to the medical centre and approach the touch-screen check-in.

“I’m sure it will be fine. They’ll be doing implants all day. Actually, probably all week.”