#XENONAUTS BASE SELECTION BLACK SCREEN SKIN#
He had let his hair turn silver, and his dark brown skin was creased and lined. Among his obsessions was a horror of physical reconstitution, and while he didn’t complain about her treatments, he himself refused all but the most basic procedures. As she entered the room, Jade was struck, as she often was, by how handsome Ash was, in spite of his strange looks. When she arrived at the orbscapers’ offices for the main design meeting, Ash was already there, poring over maps and artists’ renderings of the proposed terrain. The whole thing seemed like a very involved pet project and she was just as happy to let him make the decisions while she dealt with the more practical aspects of their future together, arranging for their partnership paperwork and giving notice at her job even with the prenup, she’d never have to earn an hourly wage again. But it was quickly clear that in this, as in all other aspects of his life, Ash had very specific ideas about what he wanted, and she was mostly there to witness. When she and Ashwin had gotten engaged and Ash had decided to purchase the planet as a honeymoon escape, he had asked her to come with him to meet the designers, ostensibly so she could give her input. The city was Jade’s only contribution to the whole enterprise. Most of the floors were empty - for later, she said - but the penthouse had been fitted out with furniture to match their place at home, and from it you could see much of the rest of the world. In the middle, a single building rose up twenty stories into the air like an obelisk, though it was faced with mimicry panels that kept it blended into the surrounding sky and foliage until you were within the city itself. “Nature is not to everyone’s taste, you know,” she said, “and we might want to have guests some day.” She had designed the city herself, and so it was a hodgepodge of the megacities she loved, part Omaha, part Shenzhen, with traces of Mombasa and McMurdosburg and Oslo. The land was divided into three sections: grassland, deciduous forest, and tropical jungle. The ocean took up about a third of the planet - blank canvas for later expansion, if they wanted it, Ash said - with a coastline of white-sand beach all around it. Watching from the ship as they slowed for landing, Jade found the way the horizon curled across the little freshwater ocean unsettling. The planet was small, about sixteen kilometers in diameter. He didn’t care if the trees looked real if you couldn’t reach out and touch them, crumble the dry leaves in your fingers, scrape your shoulder on their bark with a careless stumble. But Ash was always a fanatic for authenticity.
To Jade, the place was beautiful without having any special charm she knew she could have seen the same landscape in a vidroom down the street from their apartment, could’ve had the scent of fog and bonfires pumped in and controlled the temperature from her cuff. Everything was just as he’d imagined it: roseate light, unseasonal butterflies, crisp air with a faint waft of frost in it. Ashwin was pleased as anything and couldn’t say enough about the designers, how it was worth spending more sometimes, how you got what you paid for.
They walked down the avenue of oaks that reached above their heads like Gothic arches, red leaves drifting lazily down to collect at their feet. That first autumn it felt as if the whole world had been made for them - which, of course, it had. This month’s selection is “The Incorruptible World” by Anjali Sachdeva. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. Gizmodo is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE.
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