White Space

16

 Anisim gathered some of his tools in a toolbox and skimmed through his mental checklist. The toolbox, same as his list, was full of things meant for the post-digital age, things to diagnose and fix computer systems instead of loosening and tightening screws and hacking at metal and plastic. He never really liked that kind of work and he still enjoyed how Enki station offered a much more hands-on experience than most places around the solar system. Often this here was real work, grease and sweat and blood. But most of the time, it was still just running diagnostics.

 Most space stations practically serviced themselves, since it was safer and more efficient. A machine would never make silly mistakes, would never take a piss at their superiors and break something intentionally. Bribery was also out of the question. A machine was reliable where humans were fallible. He hated them. Now, most places in the world only required people to service the machines that serviced everything, slowly making the people themselves obsolete.

 Anisim wasn't looking forward to leaving the small research outpost as it was the love of his life. And he meant that in a heart-wrenchingly literal sense. He knew he would be fixing minor problems to the day the demolition crew came to tear it all down. If he could, he would stay even longer and fixed everything they broke. He was happy here. And only here.

 He never planned for this to happen, of course. Nobody ever does. It was just a job forty years ago, when he left university. Mother Russia had always been great with training engineers. His plan back then was to spend good a few months on Europa, seeing some beautiful vistas painted entirely in black and white and assisting with the building of a stupid research station. Not that he cared about any of those, especially at the time. But this would have been a great springboard for him to be included in future projects. Once he was done, he was supposed to go home to his beautiful wife and start a family and have a very, very comfortable life with the money off-world construction jobs would bring in. That was the plan.

 And, as plans usually do, it didn't work out flawlessly. The job took longer than expected and then he was entirely focused on it for a while, which turned out to be a very good thing. This awarded him tremendous experience in off-world engineering. It had also seen him tucked away on an inhospitable, icy rock, far-far away from his wife's failing body, writhing in spasms, and foaming at the mouth when the fatal seizure swiped in to deny Anisim the life he had been building so hard.

 From then on, it was only brief visits to Earth, to the place he had hated, to the gravity that had helped the aneurysm take away everything he held dear through this ridiculous excuse for a life. He buried what remained of him in the work at the half-finished station, trying to patch things up, to prevent them from failing, from dying. From then on, he focused only on the things he could fix. And he could fix everything here. And so, maybe through guilt, maybe through a bit of madness, he remained. While everyone came and went, he remained.

 So he fell in love with the place. With all his heart, with all the love he had nobody left to give to. For decades. And now, a rich asshole and some goons came in to tear it down even earlier than he'd expected. Well, he would show them. Or, at least, he would expose Narayanan for what he truly was. A fraud. A criminal. He didn't know how. He had no idea what he'd done yet, but the guy was hiding something. Hell, he was hiding a ton of stuff. Why had he come just before his hotel blew to shit? Why was he holed up in his freaking room all the time? And how did he manage to tap into the surveillance system? Anisim could hardly keep up with him, physically killing the cameras he suspected Narayanan had hijacked.

Well, it was finally his time to catch him in the act. He was sure Narayanan was behind the mysterious lockdown. and he was fairly certain a small panel held the key to the mystery. The one just to the side of the hangar door on the surface. First, he had to eliminate the obvious. The logs in the Control room were all squeaky clean. He had expected nothing less, but he had to see for himself. After establishing that no hacking had taken place, he headed for the locker room. He wasn't especially fond of the suiting up part these past few years. No matter how much physical labor he'd tortured himself with, it would always get a little harder to squeeze himself into these things. As time went by, he found it harder and harder to beat himself into shape and eventually, he kind of just admitted defeat.