Odd Prompts: Long Commute

“Have you been on station before?” 

Laney stopped, her hands in midair as she’d been reaching for the stack of tiles. “No?” 

If it had been anyone but her boss, she’d probably have snapped at them and sent them away. She had a tight time frame and everything about this project had to be perfect. First time, every time, that was the company motto and Laney lived it. The boss respected that, so Laney lowered her arms and met his eyes. 

“We landed the Natha account.” 

“You should look happy. Why don’t you look happy?” Laney folded her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him. The night before, during the final recap of the client meeting, he’d been all but walking on air. 

“They had a stipulation.” He raised his bushy eyebrows. “And no, I’m happy. You may not be in a minute.” 

“Why... are you firing me?” She shrugged. “What’s the catch?” 

“The opposite. They are requiring a rep on station. And that would be you, young lady. I don’t have a better quality engineer.” He jerked his head towards the tiles she’d been reaching for. “Like those, you’re about to make sure they meet standards.” 

“The station. You want me to work on station.” She tipped her head back, like she’d be able to see through the warehouse roof, the atmosphere, and see the vast jumble of materials that made up the nexus of trade that connected them with the rest of the settled galaxy. It might have been planned at the beginning, Laney wasn’t sure as that had been well before her birth. It certainly wasn’t now. It had grown organically like a fungus. 

“Yep. We need you up there with your finger on the pulse at the space dock.” He met her eyes when she lowered her chin again. “You up to the challenge?” 

She blinked. “Hell, yes, sir!” 

That brought a smile to his face. “Wait to be enthusiastic until you hear the rest of it.” 

“Like...” She made a gimmed gesture. 

“A raise. A living stipend. Oh, yeah, and a new title.” 

Laney thought her grin would split her face. “Hell yeah!” 

***

Three days later, she stood in a worn metal corridor and stared through a hatch. “They want what... for a sardine tin?” 

The realtor shrugged. “I’m sorry, but the station has a severe housing shortage. Just not enough space that meets the safety regs for living space.” 

She looked at him, seeing the rueful expression. “I sort of knew that it wouldn’t be like renting an apartment downstairs. But this...!” 

It wasn’t a room. It was more like a pod. The bed was also the seating, and a folding table dropped down in front of it. There was no place to prepare food. The washing and toilet were done barracks-style at the end of the stub corridor. Laney shook her head. They wanted more than double her current rent, for this. 

“How. How does anyone live like this?” 

He shook his head. “Lotta people do. Lotta people come up here, wages are sky high they say. Well... they don’t always stay long.” 

“Yeah, I can see that.” Laney put her hands on her hips. “I need to think. Crunch some numbers.” 

“This one won’t last long.” He cautioned. “I don’t have a lot of open spaces right now.” 

“What do people do if they can’t get a place?” Laney asked. 

“Can’t sleep in the park up here.” He smirked. “Lots of them hotbunk. You can look for a sublet with eight hours access. Or you can commute.” 

“Commute...” She blinked. “What? How?” 

“Come up from the planet.” He spoke slowly, like she was a child. “You know, live down there, come up here to work.” 

“The shuttle ride was six hours. How does that even...” 

With a shrug. “Twelve hours of sleep sounds good to me.” 

Laney shook her head and started to turn away. “I need to think.” 

***

“Mom?” Laney smiled at the screen, and the video window that showed her parents. “Hey!” She waved as her brother poked his head into view of the camera. 

“So what is it like up there?” They leaned in as the question was asked. 

Laney made a face. “Expensive. You know, it would be cheaper to commute than to live up here?” 

“What?” Her father looked startled. “How is that possible?” 

“Subsidized shuttles.” She replied with the driest tone she could muster. “And not enough safe living space up here for the industrial growth.” 

“But where would you sleep?” Her mother cocked her head. “It takes so long to go up there.” 

“Well, my days tend to average ten hours. Twelve hours on the shuttle. That leaves me a whole two hours to be in full gravity.” 

“And no time to sleep!” Her mother protested with a wail. 

“Well,” Laney now understood the packed shuttle full of mostly-sleeping passengers. “I guess you get used to it...” 

“That’s not a sustainable arrangement.” Her father looked thoughtful. “Not at all.” 

“Tell me about it.” Laney shook her head in an exaggerated gesture to convey it through video. “They say more housing is coming. Until then...?” 

“It’s not safe.” Her father surprised her. She’d expected that sort of emotion from her mother. “Sleep is essential to function. Sleeping on a shuttle isn’t going to be restorative, and the workers are going to be impaired.” 

“Dad, I know, but I don’t think I have a choice. I got a fat raise with money specifically for this, and I still can’t afford it.” Laney ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. “And I’m not exactly a bottom-rung worker.” 

“It’s a conundrum.” He nodded. “One that isn’t yours to solve. But I have to wonder if the company knows about it.” 

“I don’t see how they don’t.” She knew he didn’t mean her own company. There was only one, when you talked about the station. The one that had put it up there in the first place. “It’s not them, it’s the safety regs. I’ve done a little nosing around. There’s plenty of places where people could live, but it’s not fully set up for life support and armoring.” 

“Armoring?” Her mother sounded alarmed.

“No one’s shooting at us, Mom. It’s micrometeorites that would be the problem. We don’t have an atmo to burn ‘em up. They could punch right into the space and then we’d leak air.” 

“How often does that happen?” Her father’s eyebrows were drawn close enough to touch. “I’d think that would be an issue with the space dock.” 

“Well, I don’t think it’s common. I can’t speak for the living quarters, but I deal with the skin of space ships. We don’t design for that, because of the shields.” 

“So they could shield the station.” He nodded emphatically. “There’s the solution.” 

“I... Dad. Not my job!” Laney protested, laughing. “I just have to find a place to live!” 

****

My prompt this week came from AC Young with "It was a lot cheaper to commute to the space station from the planet’s surface than to live full-time on the station. The major downside was the length of the commute…" 

I prompted Becky Jones with "In the shimmer of the rising heat…" 

I'm very happy I managed to get back into the prompts this week, and that I was able to write for the first time in weeks. I'm sure I'll keep struggling, but I'm at least starting to get back into the work. 

You can join in the prompt challenge, or grab a spare, over at More Odds Than Ends.