Kristof left the therapist’s office at a reasoned pace. He didn’t want it to look like he was running away from his session. And, for himself, he didn’t want to feel like he was running away from his past, on Beatrix. He tried putting his mind to work. A dozen different repair requests had come his way whilst he was wasting time sat around talking about his feelings. He pressed his thumb and finger into his eyes and groaned. Despite having so much to get through, the work had failed to keep him distracted.

The Boadicea wasn’t empty, exactly. It was neat. The guts, the heart of the ship, were just tidied and hidden behind expensive wall panelling. It wasn’t so different from Beatrix under the surface. Sure, the ships always start out standardised. The longer they are out in space, the more upgrades, engineering innovations, and jury-rigged solutions, the closer the two concepts converge. These recent repairs would contribute to that.

The intrusive memories of filthy moss-walled high-rises persisted. Kristof fought them off, directing his attention toward Hearn. The colony ship’s destination planet was so rich in anthocyanins that the clay-like soil was a deep orange, not brown. Hearn grew trees with bark that was striated in pinks and reds so that forests of deep magenta covered the planet.

Kristof felt inventive as an engineer, but he was not broadly creative. He had a hard time picturing Hearn. So, once again, he was back home on Beatrix. By the time he had retired to his new bunk, secreted away in a workroom, surrounded by the exposed inner workings of the ship’s engines, wrapped up in the low rhythmic rumble, and occasional ghostly clanks from the cooling pipes; Kristof found himself transported back to Beatrix.

Michael’s Gate, the largest of the three grimy domes, covered his sector. Here the high-rises reached out their tallest. Stitched atop were rickety shacks whose ramshackle additions were made mostly from rusted, reused metal and salvaged ship parts. They leaned into each other, joined in a patchwork of accidental culture. Scaffolding and walkways, called ‘runs’ by the locals, weaved around the outer edges, intertwining with the ducts. Spewing from the metal pipes was a dirty fog surrounding the tops, obscuring the view into space.

Closer to the ground, the founders had built the original colony buildings with moss-concrete, designed to provide cheap insulation and low oxygen production, augmenting the colony’s supply. The deep greens gave off a musky scent that always put off newcomers, but smelled of home to the colonists.

Kristof sat in his bunk, thinking of how they had ripped him from his job and home. Objectively, he knew they were right to do it. No ten-year-old, or anyone really, should work in the conditions that Beatrix factories provided. Yet he still resented the men and women who, for a political stunt, took him away from his work, his home, and his captors.

His supervisors were not kind people, but they had the power. When the suits had taken that power away from them, Kristof had felt aimless. He was afraid, and in denial of that fear. He denied it, playing it off as foolishness, even to himself. Yet here he was, just as Doctor Zaharani had predicted: isolated, alone, and mimicking the conditions of his old home.

“Tch, I hate doctors,” he said to the bulkhead.