Zero Limit Read online

  ALSO BY JEREMY K. BROWN

  Ocean of Storms (with Christopher Mari)

  Calling Off Christmas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Jeremy K. Brown

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503946651

  ISBN-10: 1503946657

  Cover design by Damon Freeman

  Dedicated with love, respect, and admiration to all the women in my life.

  My wife, mothers, sisters, nieces, and goddaughters.

  Keep on conquering.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  There were times, usually in the morning, when Caitlin Taggart almost felt like she was still alive. Lying in bed, riding the line between sleep and waking, everything around her seemed sweet and warm and possible. Even her dreams felt almost tangible, as though she could reach out and dip her hand into them like a cool mountain stream. Then the alarm always shattered the stillness, jerking her fully awake. After a fruitless few seconds of lying still and trying to recapture the dream, Caitlin would give up and climb out of bed. She’d wince as her feet hit the floor and she felt the granules of dust beneath them, the remnants of what she had tracked in the night before. The fluorescents then popped on automatically, bright and angry, insisting that the day begin. Their ugly presence destroyed the illusion even further. And right then, that was when everything hit home at once and the feeling vanished like a startled deer. Caitlin wasn’t living. She was just existing on the Moon.

  This unpleasant routine, played out morning after morning for the past year, had become as familiar to Caitlin as the rhythms of a prison sentence. Which, if she were being honest with herself, is exactly what it was.

  “Good morning, Caitlin.”

  “Good morning, Ava,” she said, answering the AI that ran all the systems in her unit. “Any news from the world today?”

  “Satellite communications with Earth have been restricted,” Ava said in her gentle but detached voice. “All news and entertainment channels are temporarily offline. I can pull up the in-unit entertainment if you like.”

  “What have you got for me?” Caitlin asked.

  “There are still two hundred and twenty-five unviewed Failvids for your amusement,” said Ava.

  “No thanks,” said Caitlin, rolling her eyes. When she had inherited the unit that she now called home, Caitlin had also inherited whatever entertainment preferences the previous tenant had left behind. While scripted dramas and sitcoms remained just as popular as ever, this particular Hive resident had a predilection for Earth’s other favorite form of entertainment, “Failvids.” These were exactly what one would expect—thirty- to forty-minute reels of people damaging themselves in clumsy, painful, and often mortal ways. The hook for the viewer was watching each vid program with comprehensive virtual reality gear that allowed them to fully experience every fracture, bruise, and injury in vivid detail. Caitlin was not an elitist by any stretch of the imagination, but she did have to wonder what the extreme popularity of these kinds of programs said about humanity.

  “What else have you got?” she asked Ava.

  “A selection of random movies,” Ava offered. “I can run through some titles if you like.”

  “I’ve seen everything before,” she said. “Twice. Music?”

  “Yes of course. The top forty songs are as follows . . .”

  “Don’t bother,” Caitlin said. “What have you got under oldies?”

  Despite having been born well into the twenty-first century, Caitlin possessed an unabashed love for classic rock from the 1960s and ’70s. She had inherited the tastes of her father, who had always puttered around their house listening to Cream, Nazareth, and Deep Purple. “This is real music, Caity-did,” he’d say. She hadn’t always understood his words at the time, but she definitely did now. Listening to that music was like being able to reach out and hold on to a piece of her dad. And, given her present circumstances, she didn’t have many pieces of anything or anyone to hold on to.

  “I have Rush, Uriah Heep, Creedence Clearwat—”

  “Stop right there, Ava,” Caitlin said. “You had me at Creedence.”

  “As you wish,” said Ava.

  The screen in the unit flickered and Bayou Country began. As the swampy opening notes of “Born on the Bayou” poured out of the speakers, Caitlin climbed onto the treadmill and began her morning run. Exercise in space, even in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon, was vital to keeping muscles from atrophying and bones from growing brittle. This wasn’t necessarily a problem in the Hive, or anywhere else indoors. Aldrin City had highly advanced artificial-gravity systems that simulated Earth’s conditions, but the Hive still relied on more old-school methods of keeping one’s feet on the ground. The entire structure was built on a slight slant, while underneath, gently rotating carousels turned in slow and steady revolutions until the gravity of Earth was replicated. It was a bit jarring at first, but eventually, one got used to the sensation. To Caitlin, it was almost like being on a cruise ship at sea. A little wobbly at times, but somewhat soothing.

  Still, despite the gravity replication, the body was under constant and significant strain on the lunar surface. Not working your body enough could make returning to Earth incredibly difficult. And she had every intention of returning to her home planet as soon as humanly possible.

  As Caitlin ran, her mind began to wander as she mulled over her situation and the circumstances that had led her here. She supposed, to people of a generation long since dead, the idea of living on the Moon would sound impossibly romantic. Enviable, even. Many times she’d thought about how much she’d love to bring those naive souls forward in time and give them a guided tour, just to smile wickedly at how fast their rose-colored glasses would come off. That wasn’t to say there weren’t places on the lunar surface that would inspire won
der. The shining glass-and-steel cylinders of Aldrin City, for example, were as pretty a picture as one could put on any postcard. In fact, those very cylinders were featured on many items in the gift shop on the commerce level, including postcards, which, even though no one sent physical mail anymore, still did brisk business. Chalk one up for kitsch.

  But Aldrin City’s unblemished magnificence was immaterial to Caitlin. She was about as far from there as one could get without crossing into the wasteland of the far side. A fully functioning replica of the best that Earth had to offer, the city represented the pinnacle of lunar colonization. New construction projects seemed to pop up daily, and most people figured that the entire surface would soon be covered in cities and towns.

  The city’s design was based on the ideas of Gerard K. O’Neill, consisting of a series of massive cylindrical structures built directly into the lunar regolith and stretching for more than twenty miles across the surface. O’Neill believed that a colony suspended above the Moon was more practical. He felt that, due to Earth’s neighbor having a fourteen-day night as it rotates during orbit, the obtaining and maintaining of energy resources would present a problem. Additionally, he raised concerns about the expense of transit to and from the surface and the challenges of working and living in one-sixth Earth’s gravity. But in the nearly one hundred years since he’d published The High Frontier, his treatise on the colonization of space, there had been a great many advances, particularly in the harvesting and distribution of both solar power and helium-3. The dream of Aldrin City could thus become a reality. After years of construction, the metropolis now stood proudly on the face of the Moon, easily visible from Earth with even the most economic telescope.

  Inside the city’s walls was a near-perfect mirror of the planet its builders had once called home—parks, lakes, forests, open fields, and sprawling urban locales. Much of the animal and plant life that had been endangered on Earth had been brought to Aldrin City, where they thrived. Through genetic engineering, some species now extinct on Earth, from tigers to lowland gorillas, had been bred and allowed a second chance at life in the lush preserves encompassing the ecological cylinders.

  Transportation inside the city was equally advanced, with everything—from vehicles to the power grid itself—running on clean, sustainable electrical energy. Visitors traveled to and from the city via a single magnetic levitation train that ran on a loop from Aldrin City out to the mining colonies.

  Of course, not all the cylinders were as luxurious as the largest ones at Aldrin’s center, with the outskirts offering fewer amenities. The people there swam in concrete pools instead of lakes, lived in council estates instead of luxury condos. But even the most meager accommodations would be considered lavish by Earth standards. Put simply, Aldrin City was for tourists, executives, the elite, and all the other people who dwelled at the top of the food chain. The rest of the rabble, Caitlin included, ground out their days in Tranquillitatis, or as they preferred to call it, the Hive.

  Caitlin imagined that, when it was first built, Tranquillitatis was conceived as a triumph of man over the forces of space, or at the very least a testament to the industry that would revolutionize life on the Moon and Earth. Signs to that effect hung all over the Hive, aging, covered in lunar dust and crud from the surface. They trumpeted the same slogans, promising a brilliant future: “Tomorrow Begins Today!” “Tranquillitatis: Where the Future Happens!” Or, her personal favorite, “Mine Your Future Today!” That one was hung right over one of the airlocks that led out to the surface. She was sure that the execs at the Guanghang Mining Company had visions of workers slapping it one by one as they walked out, like football players ready to take the field. If that had ever happened, it was well before she got there. Now if anyone acknowledged the sign, they just rolled their eyes. Besides, no one walked out of the airlocks anymore. The mining fields were much farther out, so everyone rode harvesters.

  Caitlin finished her run and then worked her way through a series of core drills, crunches, kettlebell exercises, and yoga poses, all designed to keep her body protected from the diminishing effects of microgravity. She capped off her workout with a seven-minute plank, then stood up and stretched out, breathing heavily. Her body was sore and aching from the workout, but that was nothing new. Having spent the first six years of her life in the Moon’s low gravity, her bones and muscles had never quite adapted when she went to Earth. She had always been taller than anyone in her grade and her skin was pale from being raised under artificial light. These features, combined with her blonde hair and aquamarine eyes, made Caitlin stand out from everyone else in the small Oregon town she’d been transplanted to, and not in a good way. So, in the absence of friends or dates in high school, she had thrown herself into training her body and mind as hard as she could. Eventually, her weakened bones and muscles bent to her will and her form became lean and strong, thriving under Earth’s strong gravity and warming sun. But more than twenty years later, her joints still reminded her of her Moonborn heritage with a creak or howl of protest.

  Still stretching, Caitlin shuffled her way into the shower stall. She hated showering on the Moon. Water conservation was a constant concern, with shipments coming in sporadically. You couldn’t risk taking a long shower for fear of the water cutting off just as you had a head full of shampoo. So most people, Caitlin included, did things the navy way. She’d turn on the water long enough to get wet, then turn it off to lather up. Once she was soaped up from head to toe, she’d turn the water back on to rinse off. The process was unpleasant and clinical, robbing the showering experience of its inherent joy. When she made it back to Earth, Caitlin vowed that the first thing she was going to do was march into her shower at home and stand under the hot water until her skin scalded. Actually—she corrected herself—the first thing she was going to do was hug her daughter. In fact, sometimes Caitlin thought that was the only thing she was going to do if she ever got back. Just melt into her and never let her go again. Thinking of Emily sent a cold needle into Caitlin’s heart, although in truth that needle never really left her. It simply flared up from time to time, a splinter agitated by errant missteps.

  Caitlin hit the stall’s center button to activate the water. Nothing. Offering a quick curse under her breath, she punched it again repeatedly, like an agitated office worker trying to summon a slow-moving elevator. She was about to hit the button again when Ava suddenly spoke up.

  “By the way, Caitlin,” the computer said, “this month’s supply shipment from Aitken basin is running one day behind. All water will be rationed until further notice.”

  Caitlin hung her head with a sigh of resignation, leaning against the cool plastic wall. No shower this morning. And no coffee. Which meant that she would have to will herself into feeling like a human being. That would be no easy feat.

  “Ava,” she called out, her head still down, “what are you doing to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Caitlin,” answered Ava somewhat impassively, “but I believe this is a clear-cut case of not shooting the messenger.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  Caitlin stepped out of the shower and toweled the perspiration off her body to give herself the illusion of feeling clean. She drew on laundered shorts and a T-shirt and checked the time. She had to continue getting ready for work, but there was one more task to complete, the most important one of the day.

  “Ava,” she said, “call home.”

  “Of course,” the AI said. “Dialing now.”

  The main screen in the unit’s living area flickered and glowed blue. After a moment’s pause, Caitlin saw the words that always made her brighten up: “CALLING HOME.” After a minute or so, the face she had been hoping to see filled the screen.

  “Hi, Mom . . .”

  “Hi, baby girl!” Caitlin said, reaching for the screen involuntarily and already feeling the tears in her eyes. “How are you doing, kiddo?”

  “Fine,” Emily said. Her blue eyes shone for a moment, then went briefly dark
. A cloud passing over the sun. “You didn’t call last night.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” Caitlin said. “They put me on a double shift at the mine again. You know how it goes. Mom’s the only one who can get things done around here, right?”

  Caitlin laughed weakly and threw up her hands in a gesture of mock surrender. Emily fixed her mother with a glare that made her look much older than her eight years.

  “You could have at least texted, you know.”

  At this, Caitlin laughed again, and this time it was not weak, but hearty and full of bemusement. As the parent, wasn’t she the one who should be correcting the behavior of her daughter?

  “It’s not funny,” Emily scolded, although the sound of her mother’s laughter had started to melt the ice. She tried to keep her face stern, but a slight smile insisted on peeking through. Caitlin saw the change in expression and leaped on it like a drowning woman to driftwood.

  “You’re right, you’re right,” she said, arms up. “Am I forgiven?”

  A pause, and Emily nodded, the smile now in full bloom.

  “I’m so glad,” Caitlin said. “Are you having a good day?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Yeah?” Caitlin asked. “Did Dad take you out for pancakes?”

  Emily’s expression flickered a moment. The reaction was brief, but Caitlin could read it well.

  “No,” Emily said. “Ben did. Dad’s still asleep.”

  “Asleep?” Caitlin asked, incredulous. “What time is it there? It’s got to be after three, right?”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “He came home late. He was yelling a lot when he did.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” Caitlin said, wishing that she could step through the screen, scoop her up, and keep her safe. Caitlin had made a lot of good decisions in her life, but marrying Eric Greene wasn’t one of them. But she did get Emily out of the deal.

  “It’s OK,” Emily said, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I have more fun with Ben anyway.”

  At this, Caitlin couldn’t help but agree. Ben Martin had been one of her closest friends since the campaign and one of the few she’d trust with her life or her daughter, which these days she considered to be pretty much the same thing.