Aindrea's Sibylcard

“Sam, our schedule says to meet dad at 2:00, right? It’s 2:10 and we’re in front of the jaunt booth. He isn’t here.” Wanda seemed nervous, one of her too-long legs folded atop the other. Sam sat next to her on the ceramic bench, fiddling with their Headster. “Dude, we’ve got the same calendar.” Despite their dismissive tone, they looked up. “It isn’t really like him to be late, is it.” “No it isn’t, Sam! That’s why I’m worried! I have no idea what he’s doing right now and because he lives in Euboea we can’t even qall him!”

“Dude, just qall him if you’re that worried. You know the whole thing is bullshit, like how you’re not supposed to qall on airplanes. They just tell you that to sell their overpriced peanuts and media. Ask him where he’s at.”

Wanda glared at Sam, busy with the quartz-screened Headster. They were playing some pixelated, ancient game - when their obsessively timely dad was ten minutes late. Since Wanda was a foot long Aindrea had drilled a respect, no, adoration for timeliness into her. Everything good followed the creation and adherence to a schedule, something that Sam had never learned to appreciate. That was why Wanda was the one to organize checking up on Aindrea - via email, of all the antiquated things! And Sam didn’t seem to care about her contribution, they just put more tasks and more stress on her shoulders. 

“Qall him yourself, asshat. Let’s see you actually relate to dad for one moment. Do you even speak the same language as him? You don’t know him at all Sam, you don’t care. You don’t care about anything outside your Headster, outside your own head. I’m this close to leaving your ass without a ride.”

“Jesu, dude! Maybe we shouldn’t qall him right now.” Sam narrowed their hazel eyes. “I have trouble with emotions, Wandy, you know that. I made a sybilcard for dad, just to understand him better. He’s complicated, too complicated for either of us to get.” A pause followed, wherein Sam and Wandy scanned the street outside the airtight jauntstation. It was 2:12, then 2:13. The seconds fell like grains of rice on the enamel tiles or randomly distributed drops of water on a forehead - each contained a new variation on stress.

“Hey.” Wanda turned right to look at Sam. The circles under her eyes were blackish purple, like blueberry jam. “How about I run dad’s sybilcard on my Headster? It won’t bother him, and maybe we’ll figure out what he’s up to.” “Ok Sam, you can do that.”

Sybilcards are a truly humbling piece of technology. They are chips of superconductors and quantum qubits that contain a distilled human personality. Data collection to create these chips often requires several weeks of exposure, and it works only on adult humans - though specific versions exist for some cephalopods. Despite being a relatively new piece of technology, at least in its current form, several businesses have taken up use of sybilcards, as well as plenty of entertainment-oriented industries. The sybilcard itself only stores the personality of a person, but can work with VirflexSoft standardized hardware. One example of VFS-s hardware is the Headster - a highly modular, portable personal computer.

“Ok, so if I plug in Xscor’s map of Euboea.. and here’s his apartment address.. ooh, a contacts list..”  “Hey Sam, I got us some lunch.” Wanda walked over to the bench with a bag of food, her tennis shoes lightly slapping the tiles. 

“Nice dude, I love wraps. Thanks!” There were three wraps in the bag, but Sam declined to comment on the third’s presence. “Sam, I should really qall dad. I appreciate you setting up the sybilcard, but -” “Dude, it’s running. Let’s watch it through before we qall dad - it’ll be like we’re seeing his day, through his eyes! Y’know, I could rewind it and we could watch his dreams - that’d be sick, huh..” Sam paused the LifeSim on an image of teeth getting brushed and went to fiddle with some settings, but Wanda caught his hand. “Sam, let’s watch the sybilcard of dad, then I’ll qall him. Ok?”

“Sure, let’s unpause..”

“Damn it damn it, what the hell was that dream?” Aindrea stared into his mirror - last night he had a deeply disturbing dream, which involved a helicopter named “My Mind” and himself holding a chunk of congealed stupidity, which happened to be pink and slimy. 

“FUCK dude I’m telling you we need to look at his dream!”

“Bite me, Sam.”

Aindrea pulled on an undershirt, which snagged briefly on his curly, brown beard - it was formerly salt and chocolate, but as a human on Euboea he had earned his share of pro-telom pills, which both prevented gene damage from excessive solar radiation and helped to reduce the effects of aging. His craggy hand reached into an aluminum can to fish out a couple of pro-telom pills, which he washed down with a gleaming cup of water.

He proceeded to put on his olefin dress suit, an impressive thing with a blazer both magnanimous in presence and capable of surviving a military-grade UV laser for a few seconds - thus Euboea’s rather poor UV shielding meant little. Such a blazer wouldn’t be affordable for the average mining foreman on Earth - but Euboea was the first and greatest city on the Moon, and Aindrea was the first and greatest among mining foremen. Being recruited to work on the first outpost of humanity on another planet was quite gratifying for Aindrea, but this new reality left a great rift between him and his children.

“Damn it damn it, my tie isn’t straight what am I doing?” Aindrea’s tie was in fact straight, but his beard made it difficult to see his tie properly, just as his beer belly made his shoes into anxiety-inducing enigmas. Luckily, his shoes had aluminum toes and were quite good at taking care of themselves. 

His room, in keeping with his anxious habits, was quite bare. Nothing changed from waist-level down, there were no slopes or stairs or other fancy ornaments. The floor was composed of silica tiles, while his desk and drawers were made of an aluminum-titanium alloy, all of which were materials that the mines he supervised dealt with. He ran a finger along the dull sheen of the wall to his right, which he leaned against to pull his suit pants on. It smelled like Sam - Sam who owned a computer store, who was no longer Samorn. She changed.. no, they changed when he left for Euboea. Aindrea did not care much about gender, indeed, many Euboeans eschewed gender norms. But Samorn hated herself until they became something new. Aindrea’s fault, all of it Aindrea’s fault. Her tears, their tears, her dresses, their shirts. Damn it damn it damn it.

“Sam, did the simulation freeze? He’s been standing there for a while.”

“No, it’s running fine, great performance actually. This card is really efficient!”

“He.. he doesn’t normally do this Sam. I’m really worried, I should qall.”

“No! Uh, let me fast forward. Here we go.”

Aindrea walked down the dusty street, his view turned earthward. The view from Euboea cannot be exaggerated, to see a blue marble instead of a gray blob of dust struck Aindrea again. He murmured a short doxology and continued forward. The streets were curiously bare, despite their ability to handle most traffic - a consequence of Sam’s overly hasty programming.

“Damn, I forgot to activate my traffic module. Hrmmm..”

“Sam, just let it run. I want to hear if dad prays any more. Ugh.. it’s 2:40.”

He passed by a few buildings - each sealed tight against the omnipresent threat of lunar dust. Crystallized silica is quite deadly to both technology and the lungs, meaning that the Moon could never have a breathable atmosphere - a small fraction of its silica dirt was lethal, easily airborne crystal. The earthlight illuminated his steps past convenience stores and office buildings. Normally, he would have taken his Ford X Madra to get to the jauntstation, but Sam neglected to include that vehicle. The sidewalks rapidly piled up with dust, without the currents of vehicle exhaust to clean them - an example of Madra’s aggressively multi-faceted engineering.

As if summoned by Aindrea’s thoughts on a great engineer, Timee Joon popped around a corner. “Ho, Andreas! Missed you at work. What’s up?”

“I’m headed to the jauntstation, to see the kids. How about yourself Tim?”

“I’m getting some coffee, do you want to join?”

“Timee, there aren’t any coffee joints on the way to the jauntstation. Do you mind walking with me?”

“Sure, on my way.”

The pair walked along the dimly lit street - it was more of a back alley, with a nasty turn leading both in and out of it. Especially in moon gravity. 

Despite the normally stern demeanor of Euboean engineers, Timee was prepared when Aindrea leaned his globular helmet on Timee’s slight shoulder and began to cry. “Aindrea, stop thinking about the ex. You shouldn’t have visited when she was with the kids.” 

“No, not her. I thought.. I said bad things to my kid. I don’t think… she’ll forgive me.”

“Why do you think she won’t forgive you?”

“Because they’re a they now.”

“Jupiter’s glass, Aindrea. Stop pitying yourself. Go visit the kids. Don’t be an ass and they’ll love you.” Aindrea gulped and neglected to respond - but the stress sweat beneath his beard was answer enough.

As Timee and Aindrea stopped before the jauntstation, Aindrea began to shake uncontrollably.

“What the hell? I’m not doing this what the hell what the damn -” he shot into the lunar sky at immense speed, as a loading symbol appeared on LifeSim.

“Damn it! The map updated with traffic patterns. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Hmm. I guess this is a good time to eat your wrap, Sam. I don’t want yours to go bad.” Sam took a massive bite out of their wrap, with an eye devoted to the stalled-out simulation. 

“Do you know Timee well? He talks really weirdly, in my opinion.”

“Pretty well, I’ve seen him when I interned for dad. He doesn’t speak like that at all, I think you’d need another sybilcard for him to make sense.”

“Yeah! His responses sounded canned - I’m wondering if LifeSim pulled his text history and just had him read out his texts. I’m gonna check when it reloads.”

“Sam - it’s 3:20. I don’t think he’s coming.”

The simulation unfroze - Aindrea had been launched by a car-crash loading in, between a storage truck and an unrecognizable black car. Luckily, the crash was about 10 meters away from the jauntstation. A crash looks quite strange without a trace of fire or smoke - obviously, combustion systems don’t work in Euboea. The vehicles looked like a child’s lego set that had been accidentally dropped, all plasticky and abiotic.

“Damn it, would you look at that Timee? Poor bastard should’ve learned how to drive - no decent driver could crash in an alley.”

“You’re right, Aindrea.”

“Hrmmm.. I suppose this is it, for now. I appreciate the shoulder to cry on. You get back to your kids, Timee. You’re a fantastic dad, you know that?”

“I do, in fact, know that. I’m well aware, friend.”

“I’m sure you are, friend.”

Aindrea entered the airlock for the jauntstation and shook his heavy shoes clear of dust. He reached his arms to the ceiling, in order to brace himself with the bars above as a blast of air cleared his body of dust. A pleasant voice informed him that he was clear and he stepped into the narrow building - no more than a hallway with various barriers to his egress.

They weren’t significant - just ticket takers and visit planners, fried antmeat patties and free relaxants. Jaunt booths are, in a way, a petite mort - the body is destroyed on one end, its carbonic sludge reused to remake those coming to the jauntstation. Aindrea was used to such procedure, and did not fear it. He trusted the web of quanta that his data would be fed into, and he trusted the science that he did not know which carried him to Earth.

The LifeSim briefly blipped, then displayed Simulation Complete.

“Sam, why isn’t Aindrea here?”

“I.. I don’t know.”