Friends With Wings

Friends with Wings

Maxwell Pearl

This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 by Maxwell Pearl

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Address inquiries in permission to:

Echobird Press, echobirdpress.com

ISBN 979-8-9863865-4-6 | ISBN 979-8-9863865-5-3 EPUB

Introduction to this edition I wrote this novel almost 10 years ago. I was a different person and a different writer then. There are some things I would change about the characters, but I didn’t really have time – I am too busy with new work and new ideas. I removed this from sale when I changed my name and gender, because I didn’t want novels with my old name still being sold. But I didn’t want this novel to just die on my hard drive.

This novel has been slightly edited: mostly copy edits and better language and such. Nothing substantive has been changed, for better and for worse.

Journal Entry, January 10, 2136

I am alone and have been alone for one hundred days. Not really alone, of course. Zolweeva, Keeliza and all of their clan are gentle and generous, even though we don’t really understand each other yet. Al of the winged creatures that I’ve met have been kind and they are very curious about me.

They answer all my questions, and care for me, and they like to keep me company, but that hasn’t made the loneliness go away. I think that they understand that being so alone is difficult. I look out at the forest, and I realize I’m the only human eyes to see this. I can feel the vastness of the planet and know that there is no other being that can fully understand me anywhere on it. I look back at the place where the wreckage of the colony is strewn over the field, and I can’t help but cry for the friends I’ve lost, and the great hope of the colony, lost too.

I think back to my family, my sister and cousins. To them, I’ve been gone more than thirty years, even though it's only been a year for me. I wonder if they have forgotten me already. They don’t even know I’m not on Earth anymore. My great-grandmother and grandparents are likely dead by now.

I’m learning my way, slowly, but everything is different. This planet is habitable, even comfortable, but so much is new and there is so much to learn in order to survive. Without the support of other people, everything seems harder. I can consult the encyclopedias and databases that I have access to, but all of the information about this planet we named Johannes is incomplete, and so much of it is just plain wrong.

And I have to keep hoping that I won’t be alone forever. I’m eighteen now, and I won’t see any more people until I’m 28. I can only assume that the third ship will find its way here after leaving Kepler 75f. There is so much work to do.

The Very Beginning: December 2102

As Trina walked through the narrow alley leading to the street, she looked up and saw only concrete and glass, then finally, dull grey sky.

She missed the trees desperately. She missed seeing the leaves turn, missed hearing the breeze blow through them. She missed being able to feel the bark under her hands as she held on to branches, hefting her weight as high as she could go.

They’d lived in this neighborhood in the northern part of the Bronx for almost five years, after having been forced to move because their old neighborhood in Queens was flooded by the encroaching ocean. She liked the old neighborhood a lot better. She’d learned how to climb trees there, an activity she’d greatly enjoyed. Here, the only things to climb were fire escapes. It wasn’t the same, but she liked climbing up high, and spending time looking down.

They lived in a big apartment complex full of tall, drab, gray buildings built in the ‘70s and ‘80s, as other parts of the city were increasingly underwater. They didn’t really care how many people they could squeeze into the spaces left. She shared the small 2-bedroom apartment with her extended family of seven. In Queens, they'd shared a whole house. It wasn't big, but it was a lot roomier than what they have now.

She considered herself lucky, though. At age 6, she won a lottery spot to go to school, something her little sister hadn’t. They both worked to support their family, but at least she didn’t have to work as many hours as her sister did. And since her sister was so young, her work was only drudgery. At least Trina got to sit in a relatively quiet cubicle, while her sister was in a noisy factory.

As she walked down the street to her school Trina got lost in thought. She had been encouraged by her math teacher, who thought that Trina had promise. But they both were realistic—the chances that Trina would be able to win a scholarship to college was quite slim.

More likely, she’d spend the rest of her life doing what she was doing

now. But somewhere, deep inside, Trina knew her life would turn out differently. She didn’t know why she knew, but she did.

As she approached the school, called Bronxwood Preparatory Academy. Trina thought the name was antiquated, like the big thick columns in front. It was from another era, an era that didn’t exist anymore. When there was something to actually prepare for. All but a tiny number of her fellow students would emerge from this school, prepared to do not much else except be a cog in the vast wheel that made other people rich. A wheel she was a part of and hated already.

Her first class of the day was physics, her favorite subject at the moment. She had stayed up until 3 a.m. this morning finishing her homework on fluid dynamics after she got home from work last night.

As usual, she did all of the extra credit problem sets. They had been working on Pascal’s law.

She walked into the classroom and sat in her seat, near the front. As her classmates entered, she watched equations appear on the front screen.

Her teacher, a light-skinned woman with tight black braids tied behind her head said, "Alright, people. Settle down.

Today, we’re going to make sure that you all fully understand Pascal’s law. Can someone summarize for me what it is?

Trina’s hand shot up.

Trina?

Pressure exerted on a liquid in a confined space is transmitted equally in all directions such that the pressure ratio stays the same.

Good. Someone give me the equation.

George, who sat next to her, raised his hand.

George?

Delta P equals p times g times delta h.

The equation went up on the board.

Someone explain?

Trina knew, but she waited a while before raising her hand.

Trina?

Delta P is the hydrostatic pressure, p is the fluid density, g is gravity, delta h is the height of the fluid.

Good.

The class went on, but Trina’s mind wandered to one of the extra credit problem sets that she’d worked on last night. The question had been whether or not the Earth’s atmosphere obeyed Pascal’s law, and if not, how might one determine pressure depending upon where in the atmosphere one was. It had been a fun problem. Trina always enjoyed problems that involved things like that. She liked thinking big: things like how did the atmosphere work, and how might it be different if it was composed differently?

The rest of the day was a blur of mostly boring things. Her math teacher was out sick, and the substitute just handed out problems for all of them to solve. Problems she solved with lots of time to spare.

She felt lucky to be in school, but she also felt frustrated by it. There was so much she wanted to learn, but she knew that she’d probably never get the chance.

She left school and walked to the subway to make her way to work. She climbed down the stairs, through the automatic payment aisle, then to the platform, and looked at the display. The next subway was due in 5 minutes. She leaned against the wall, thinking. It was almost time for Christmas, and her mother had already started to put out the decorations. Her mother loved Christmas. Trina always tried to get into the spirit to please her mom, and generally enjoyed the holiday, even though she didn’t really feel it like her mother did. She hoped her mother wouldn’t force her to go to church too much. It was the season her mom spent at church a lot.

The subway arrived, and Trina leaned against a pole on one side of the subway car. She looked at a very elderly lady, who occupied one of the two seats in the car. She was wearing an overcoat that looked too large for her. It was purple, and it looked like it had seen better days. The woman’s hair was very thin and gray, and she coughed on occasion. Trina wondered what things had been like for her when she was Trina’s age. The car wasn’t too crowded this afternoon, which

felt like a relief. It took about twenty minutes for the train to get from the station near school to Westchester, where she worked.

The company she worked for, CalSpace Tours, was the leading provider of space tours. She had applied for the job on a whim, not really expecting to get it. The job she had been working before was in Manhattan, where she worked in one of the fancy hotels, delivering room service meals. The competition for this job had been fierce, but she aced their tests, and aced her interview.

The company had some ships in orbit, and they did tours of the moon. She applied for the job simply because it had to do with space, but once she realized that she was going to spend all of her working hours selling space trips she dreamed of taking to people who could actually afford them, she started to hate it. It cost at least $250,000 for the most basic of trips to orbit for one day. Trips to the moon were more on the order of a million dollars. More than she could ever dream saving in her entire life. But after a while, it became rote, and her dreams of space slipped back into a pocket of her psyche, rarely to be looked at.

When she first came to the job, she was given a long list of leads, and she was supposed to contact each one through the voice network to try to sell them on the tours. It was completely disheartening at first. 60% of the people didn’t respond in any way, and almost all of the rest just took her valuable time, but never actually signed up. Her first week was a complete disaster. She was sure she was going to be fired. She'd gone through less than ½ of her list in the time she was supposed to go through all of it.

But she found a system. She wondered about what would make people take a space trip. She dug up information about who had already signed up, ran the numbers, and then instead of contacting everyone on her list, she filtered it by the criteria that she’d discovered.

Soon, she had a success rate that rivaled everyone’s, and people wanted to know how she did it. She refused to tell them, because it was her security—she needed this job.

Today was a research day. She’d just gotten a new batch of leads, and she was researching them. She’d written a small program to get basic demographics for each person: age, marital status, gender, occupation and location, and filter the leads based on that data.

Location told her how relatively wealthy they were. Age, marital status and gender told her about the likelihood that they might at all be interested.

Somewhat wealthy, middle-aged single or divorced men who worked in technical or engineering fields, and lived in California, Florida, Arizona and Texas, were by far the best candidates, and she always contacted them first. Anyone living in New England she didn’t even bother with—if they wanted to go to space, they would do the contacting. Her next tier were very wealthy young couples that showed evidence of adventurousness—had they gone on eco-tours, or were they climbers or surfers?

After those, she cherry picked some based on instinct. She didn’t know what it was about them that made her choose them, but she was almost always right. There were always some sorts of deals she could provide—extra time, or a cabin upgrade, or a discount. Trina knew which people would respond best to which deal.

By the end of her shift, she had a nice long list of likely folks she would contact tomorrow. It had been a good, productive day. And it was Friday. Her family would all be at home, making the weekly family dinner. That was one of the rituals of the family. Everyone was always home on Friday nights. Trina looked forward to it as she closed up her terminal and walked back to the subway home.

The next morning, Trina was fighting with the problem in front of her.

It shouldn’t be that hard, she was telling herself. She’d done plenty of problem sets like it before. This one was for extra, extra credit, but that didn’t make it feel any less necessary to solve. The solution to the theorem had been eluding her for half an hour, and she was frustrated.

She heard something and looked up to see her mother standing in the doorway, with a stern face.

Trina!

Yes, Mom?

You are going to be late to work.

Trina looked at her display and swore under her breath. She’d been working on the problem for too long. She was going to be late to work. She was embarrassed and annoyed at the same time. She would much rather be struggling with this problem set than going to work.

Sorry, Mom.

Your sister will be home from work by six, and Nana will be home by seven, so we’ll eat then.

As she