Thelonious adjusts the clasps on his Helmet. His joints hiss while his fingers wrap around the metal. He looks at the airlock ahead of him.
“Ready, compadre?” Randolph asks, his voice coming from the HelmetCom. Thelonious activates his RappelBoots.
“Ready,” he replies. The airlock opens swiftly. Thelonious glides out onto the surface of the hull. The station’s external lights blink at fixed intervals—soft, white pulses that catch the edges of a distant cruiser. Thelonious never gets tired of that sight. Something about the way a vessel floats scratches at the inside of his chest.A small alert pings in his helmet: Dock Sensors: Minor Anomaly Detected — Sector 12B Thelonious sighs. It’s always Sector 12B. “Randolph,” he says, adjusting the gain on his HelmetCom, “You seeing this?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t look serious. Probably the damn regulator again.” A pause. “You want it?” Thelonious glances at the cruiser inching away from him. If he hustles, he’ll make it to 12B before the problem escalates and the supervisor notices. That means more hands-on work tonight.
“Yeah. I’ll take it.” He rotates his boots, disengaging the RappelLock, and pushes off the platform. His boots catch the station’s outer track, pulling him along with gentle, programmed strides. Thelonious likes moving this way—gliding across the hull’s exterior.. It’s just him, the cold, and the low electric whine of metal older than he is. As he rounds the curve of the station, he spots Sector 12B’s grav-lock pad flickering an unhealthy yellow. The field is stuttering, collapsing in patches like a dying lightbulb. “Easy fix,” he mutters.
He crouches, hands finding the maintenance latch automatically. His fingers—gray at the knuckles where synth-skin meets metal—slot into the recessed panel. The lock pops open. Inside, a cluster of fibre-lines and grav-coils buzz, uncoordinated. He pulls one coil free. Thelonious vaguely remembers when this used to terrify him—when circuitry looked like a tangled impossibility. Now his implants simulate the grav-field patterns in the corner of his display, overlaying the real coils with glowing highlights. He swaps two connectors, reseats the coil, and resets the field. The grav-lock stabilises, and the sector light turns green.
“12B’s back,” he says.
“Good. You’re a damn machine, Lonnie,” Randolph replies. Thelonious grins despite himself.
“Damn right.” He closes the panel and stands. The station hums around him like an enormous metallic animal breathing through thousands of vents and power lines. Off to his right, the cruiser is nearly through the lock. A good catch, he thinks. Smooth pull. Then—just as he’s about to head back—a faint ripple brushes across his suit’s sensors. Not physical. Electromagnetic. Like a brief shiver of static. He turns toward the source. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Just the black. And the faint silhouette of a cargo hauler drifting in from a distant bay. Too far to trigger anything. He frowns, tapping his HUD. No anomalies. “Randolph,” he says slowly. “You register a field spike just now?”
“Negative. You sure?” Randolph asks.
“Yeah. Felt like… interference,” Thelonious says.
“With what?” Randolph asks.
“I don’t know,” Thelonious says. Which is true. But something about the way the static prickled along the seam of his jaw implant lingers in the back of his mind. He shakes it off. Old coils, old wiring, old station—things ping weird all the time. His boots lock into the track, pulling him back toward the main deck. He watches the stars slide under him like glitter thrown across an endless floor. Work to do. Ships to catch. Night’s still young. “Randolph,” he says, accelerating slightly, “What’s next on queue?”
“Two merchant freighters inbound,” Randolph replies. “We’re gonna be busy.” Thelonious smiles. Good. The more work, the better. He pushes forward into the dark, boots humming as they carry him along the station’s curvature. Then a sharp tone pings through his HelmetCom—higher-pitched than Randolph’s channel, clipped and officious.
“Thelonious. Report to the interior. R&R cycle begins now,” Supervisor Hawthorne’s voice blares in his HelmetCom.
Thelonious clenches his jaw, servos whirring, then says, “Negative, supervisor. I can stay on for another—”
“Thelonious,” Hawthorne’s voice doesn’t rise, but it hardens, “That’s an order. Dock crew regulations cap you at a triple. You’ve hit your limit. Get inside.”
Thelonious slows, boots shifting to a softer pull. “I’m in the middle of—”
“You’re done,” Hawthorne says, “don’t make me repeat myself.” Thelonious bites back the first dozen impulses that come to mind. He glances toward the merchant freighters—still just pinpricks of navigation light in the distance. He could help. He wants to help. But Apparatnia loves its rules almost as much as it loves pretending those rules were written for the workers’ benefit.
Randolph cuts in, voice low, “Just come in, Lonnie. I’ll grab the freighters.”
Thelonious exhales through his teeth, “Copy that.” He disengages from the track and lets the boots guide him toward the entry port. As he approaches the airlock, the clamp seal engages and the outer hatch irises shut behind him. He strips the HelmetCom off and claps it into its wall mount. His joints whine faintly as he steps into the crew corridor, half-lit and too quiet. That static ripple from earlier nudges at the edge of his thoughts, but he shoves it aside. No point in dwelling. Not when they’re forcing him into downtime again. When he reaches his bunkroom, he punches the panel harder than necessary. The door slides open. Same cramped space and stale recycled air. He drops onto the bunk.
On nights like this, when his supervisors have sent him away on the grounds of ‘needing rest,’ Thelonious will stare at his Holo-Program and remember the dark times that came before the docks. Those days, months, years when he felt there was nothing he was good at. He especially hated nights when he could remember. Tonight, he’s remembering when his old girlfriends would drone about ‘work-life balance’ to justify their life-leeching behavior. Rest–what a crock of shit. His supervisors don’t let him work more than a triple shift. About four months ago, Apparatnia sponsored a procedure for his Adrenal Glands to be replaced with enhanced ones. Apparatnia called it a sponsorship. Says it like they were doing him a favor. Voluntary, technically. But everyone knows that workers who turned the sponsorship down got moved to interior duty within a month. Lower pay. Fewer hours. Slower tracks toward promotion. So he signs. Everyone signs. He can go about 96 hours before he even starts to think of sleep. So, no, he doesn’t need to rest. Not for another two days. So instead, he’s staring at his Holo-Program.
Tonight, Apparatnia is broadcasting a docuseries about the Caldwell Seven– the first Uranographers to venture into a black hole. He’s seen it all already, of course. When Thelonious was five years old, he dreamed of joining the Uranographers’ Legion and soaring out into the uncharted cosmos. By the time he was twenty, all of the cosmos had been charted. The documentary plays the opening sequence—seven suited figures silhouetted against the trembling blue edge of a black hole—while a narrator recounts the risks, the physics, the legendary audacity of it all.
Thelonious has every line memorised. He always watches anyway. There was something about the Caldwell Seven that had crawled into his bones as a kid. His right temple twitches: a phantom ache where, according to Apparatnia medical briefings, his biological cortex meets the reinforced lattice. Nothing major—just a reminder of the mental scaffolding Apparatnia uses to “optimise cognitive cohesion” in its workers. They never upgraded the parts of his mind that mattered, though. The parts that loop and replay and dissect and re-dissect until he’s chewing on old memories like gristle.
He wishes—really, truly wishes—that there was an implant for that. Something he could bolt into the back of his skull to mute the noise. A switch he could flip to shut off the ruminating, the spiralling, the nights where his brain claws back through his history like a scavenger digging for scraps. They can replace his adrenal glands, his joints, his grip strength, and his respiratory capacity. They can rebuild half his face with synth-skin that never tires or sweats.
But the part of him that replays every mistake he’s ever made? The part that remembers every wasted year before he found the docks? The part that won’t shut up about work-life balance or ex-girlfriends or regrets? Still painfully, stubbornly human.
Thelonious lowers the volume on the Holo-Program, the faint glow still flickering across his bunk. He shifts, lies back, stares at the ceiling. He doesn’t need sleep—his implants won’t let him feel fatigue for at least another day—but he wonders if he should try anyway. Just lie still. Pretend. Let the hours pass faster. He closes his eyes.
For a moment, his mind quiets. Smooth, dark, empty. He considers what it was like to slip into sleep the way he used to—slow descent, drifting thoughts, the pleasant dissolve of consciousness. Unnecessary. His brow twitches. He exhales sharply and turns on his side.
Rest is incongruent with productivity targets. He frowns.
“Shut up,” he mutters. The door panel chirps a soft tone. Someone is on the other side. He sits up, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah?” The door slides open, and Miles leans halfway into the room. Skinny guy, shaggy hair, eyes too big for his head, same family nose as his cousin, Randolph, just stretched over a more wiry frame.“Hey, Lonnie,” Miles says, offering a sideways grin. “Thought I’d see if you were dead.”
Thelonious snorts, “Not yet.” Miles steps in, letting the door whisper shut behind him. He plops onto the edge of the desk.
“Heard Hawthorne pulled you off early,” Miles says. “Brutal. You were in a groove tonight.”
“Still am,” Thelonious mutters.
Miles laughs, “No shit. We’re the future of manual labor, man. Unstoppable. Unbreakable.” He flexes dramatically, his joints hissing as his muscles tense around them.
Thelonious snorts, “Speak for yourself.”
“Aw, c’mon, Lonnie. Apparatnia didn’t dump all this tech into us for nothing.” Thelonious shifts on the bunk, feeling the soft whir of a servo along his spine “Honestly,” Miles says, “I don’t even think about sleep anymore. I just… stand around until I’m allowed back on the floor. Last night I read the entire manual for those new Mag-Clamps they’re testing. Thirty-eight pages. Didn’t blink.”
“You’re a sick fuck, you know that?”
“Whoa, nah man,” Miles says, “I mean.. I kinda liked it. But it was just something to keep the brain busy, you know? Otherwise…” He scratches the back of his head. “Otherwise, it gets too loud up there.” Thelonious’s heartbeat stutters—synthetic, steady, but still capable of skipping for a moment.
“Loud how?” he asks.
Miles shrugs, “Just thoughts. Work stuff. Noise. Like my head’s a machine room. You don’t ever get that?” Thelonious shrugs back.
“Sometimes,” Thelonious says. Miles brightens, relieved he’s not alone.
“Yeah! Like—like the implants hum, or something? Or your brain hums? Hard to explain,” Miles says. Alignment progressing. Thelonious blinks. “What?”
“Nothing,” Lonnie says. Unnecessary disclosure. He forces himself to look relaxed, elbows on his knees. Miles stretches his arms, joints clicking.
“Anyway. I should probably try to shut my body down for a few hours. Or at least pretend I can sleep anytime soon,” Miles says.
“Yeah. Same,” Thelonious fires back. Miles hops off the desk.
“If there’s no hope, I’ll be in my room listening to old comedies. They’re terrible. Helps pass the time.” He heads for the door, then pauses with one hand on the panel. He gives a lazy salute. The door slides open and shuts behind him. The room falls quiet again, but Thelonious doesn’t feel alone. Not in the usual way. Not in a ‘someone’s watching’ way either. More like there’s a parallel track to his thoughts now. A second rail just beneath the one he’s used to. A faint flick of sensation runs along his jaw implant. Diagnostics nominal. It’s okay, then. Wait, no, it’s not. He stands up and rubs his forehead.
“Great,” he mutters, “now my brain’s narrating itself.” He stretches out his shoulders. The synthetic musculature responds perfectly. He decides to walk. Not far. Just enough to shake off the stillness. The corridors are dim, lit by the blue low-cycle strips that always make the station look like it’s underwater. He pads past the supply alcoves, the docking-level lifts, the silent maintenance drones parked in their wall ports. He rounds a corner and feels the faintest ping of déjà vu.
Not normal déjà vu. It’s spatial, like a map of the corridor formed in his mind before he saw it. Perfectly accurate and perfectly lit. Though he has walked this corridor thousands of times, he can see it all now. The old monks he learned about in school might say he’s seeing through his third eye. He stops, blinking his eyes– his two eyes. Pathfinding active. He stiffens.
“Okay,” he whispers, “why the fuck am I thinking about pathfinding?” Another corner. Another perfect pre-image in his mind. He steps into the small break alcove near the water dispensers, leaning against the counter. He presses a palm to the cold metal. His thoughts feel crowded. Thelonious’s jaw twinges. The phantom sensation again. Like a hand brushing lightly across circuitry. Report the anomaly. He closes his eyes. It’s subtle, it’s small. But something in the back of his mind—not quite a voice, not quite a thought—keeps nudging him toward the same conclusion: Hawthorne will know. And even though he doesn’t want to admit it…even though the idea irritates him… Thelonious realizes he’s already turning toward the supervisors’ wing. If anyone knew what was happening in his head, it would be Hawthorne. Supervisors got briefed on all implant protocols. That’s what they were always saying, right? ‘We’re equipped to support you.’
Thelonious snorted, “Yeah. Support.”
The corridor outside the supervisors’ wing is brighter than the rest of the station, the light too even, too intentional. Thelonious slows without meaning to. His boots hum softly beneath him, awaiting instruction. He hates the sound. The door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY recognises his ident-chip immediately. No pause this time. The seal breaks with a clean hiss. Inside, Supervisor Hawthorne sits alone at his desk. No helmet. No visor. Just a man in a half-unlatched chestplate, rubbing at his temples like he’s been doing it all night. Hawthorne looks up.
“You’re off shift,” Hawthorne says.
“I know,” Thelonious says. His voice sounds flatter than he expects; it sounds observational, “something’s wrong with my head.” Hawthorne studies him for a long moment. Not with suspicion. With something closer to tired recognition.
“Sit,” he says. Thelonious does. This time, his knees don’t need prompting. “You’re hearing structured thought prompts,” Hawthorne says, not unkindly. “Internalised performance language. Optimisation framing.” Thelonious blinks.
“You didn’t even let me explain,” Thelonious says.
“You didn’t need to,” Hawthorne replies. “I’ve seen it before.” That makes something cold settle in Thelonious’s chest.
“It’s not… it’s not a voice,” Thelonious says, “it’s more like—” He searches for the word. His mind offers none. “Like my thoughts are being sorted.” Hawthorne exhales through his nose.
“That’s because they are,” Hawthorne says. Silence stretches between them.
“You volunteered for the cognitive lattice, yes?” Hawthorne asks. Thelonious nods. Then he continues, “You remember signing the consent?” Thelonious nods. He remembers the forms. The way they framed it as clarity. Focus. Reduced mental fatigue. “I bet you didn’t read the appendix.”
“They told us it was optional,” Thelonious says.
“It was,” Hawthorne agrees, “just like declining overtime is optional.” Thelonious’s jaw tightens, the bolts that replaced his joints hiss. “The lattice doesn’t add thoughts,” Hawthorne says, “it prioritises them. Routes them. Over time, it learns which internal pathways produce results.”
“And the rest?” Thelonious asks. Hawthorne doesn’t answer immediately.
“The rest,” he says carefully, “become less accessible.” A chill runs up Thelonious’s carbon fibre spine. He presses his palm against the arm of the chair. The metal feels too smooth.
“So take it out,” Thelonious says,“roll it back.” Hawthorne finally looks away.
“That’s not how neural scaffolding works once it’s integrated,” Hawthorne says. “Your brain’s been reorganised around it.” Thelonious laughs once. Sharp.
“You’re saying I can’t take it out,” Thelonious says.
“I’m saying,” Hawthorne replies, meeting his eyes again, “that removing it now would be functionally similar to a lobotomy.” The word lands heavily, without remorse. “You’d retain motor control, sure,” Hawthorne continues, “Basic memory. Language. But executive continuity? Emotional regulation? The ability to form long-term intent?” He shakes his head, “No guarantees.” Thelonious feels the urge to stand. To pace. His body does not respond.
“This isn’t—” Thelonious stops. Rephrases, “this wasn’t in the contract.”
“It was,” Hawthorne says softly, “just not in plain language.” Something inside Thelonious tightens. Rest is incongruent with productivity targets. He closes his eyes.
“That thought,” Thelonious says quietly. “That wasn’t mine, was it?” Hawthorne hesitates. Just a fraction of a second.
“It started as yours,” Hawthorne says. Thelonious opens his eyes again. The room feels smaller. Or maybe he is.
“What happens now?” Thelonious asks. Hawthorne leans back in his chair. Older. Heavier. Human in a way Thelonious suddenly feels very far from.
“Now,” Hawthorne says, “you keep working. Because the part of you that could choose otherwise doesn’t have a clean path anymore.” Thelonious nods. The motion is smooth. Efficient. Understood. Hawthorne watches him for a moment longer. Then he exhales, slow and tired. “You know, I feel sorry for you bastards,” he says, “I’m just glad they didn’t have the lattice when I was still on the docks.” Thelonious pauses.
“You still took the upgrades as they came, same as me,” Thelonious says.
“Of course I did,” Hawthorne replies. “Joints. Lungs. Reaction time. The obvious stuff.” He flexes one hand, the faint click of old augmentation audible in the quiet office. “They made me stronger. Faster. Kept me alive.”
“And this?” Thelonious asks. Hawthorne shakes his head.
“This makes you useful in a different way,” Hawthorne says.
“How so?” Thelonious asks.
“It doesn’t just help you work,” Hawthorne says. “It teaches you how to want to work. That’s new.” Thelonious’s jaw tightens.
“You could’ve said no.”
“I did,” Hawthorne says, “long enough to get promoted out of the blast radius.”
“You could’ve told me the risks,” Thelonious says.
“Yeah, but then who’d do the work?” Hawthorne asks, “Look, I pity you, but I wouldn’t trade places with you. Ain’t that the way of it? First generation broke their backs. Second got the upgrades. Third doesn’t get an option.”
“You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?” Thelonious asks.
“Yeah, well, if being a ray of sunshine starts offering a better salary, maybe I’ll consider changing my career,” Hawthorne says. Thelonious stands and pulls his arm back. Hawthorne eyes him cautiously. Thelonious brings his arm down, forgetting why he raised it in the first place. He turns toward the door. It opens, and he walks back into the station’s hum.
The corridor is dim again, washed in the familiar blue of low-cycle lighting. The soft hum returns—steady, patient. He focuses on it. It’s easier than thinking. He passes closed doors. Sleeping quarters. Empty break alcoves. A maintenance drone glides past him, pauses as if considering him, then continues on its route. The station breathes around him, metal settling, systems adjusting. Everything knows what it’s supposed to do. His room recognizes him before he reaches the panel. The door slides open.
Inside, nothing has changed. The bunk is still unmade. The air still smells faintly of recycled coolant and old fabric. He sits, then lies back, staring at the ceiling. The faint glow of status lights reflects in his vision, aligning themselves neatly at the edges. He waits. A thought drifts up—slow, incomplete. Something about cost. About choice. It doesn’t hold long enough to finish forming. His implants settle. The noise smooths out. Just four more hours until he can get back out on shift. Just four more hours.