Okay yeah, I was not the best caregiver for a teenage boy. I fully admitted this. I smoked too much, drank too much, cursed too much, and yelled too much. Somehow Ryan was coming out well-adjusted despite my deficiencies. I couldn’t credit myself with that. I think he came in that way, and he’s just sensible enough to withstand my bullshit.
“The 280 was made by Intelgen, the pioneering all-colonial engineering corp,” I said. “They were revolutionary when they started up. Sticking it to the big Core corps.” I exhaled a breath of smoke. “All-Hands philosophy, openware, the works. But as they got big, they closed off. Patented everything. Restricted manufacturing for replacement parts.” Like the cabling. “Now that they’ve gone under, there’s nobody making anything for it anymore. It’s what happens when you get greedy, Ryan.”
Ryan’s head lolled backwards, long-suffering through my diatribes. “Thanks, Aesop.”
“Show some respect for my wisdom here.”
He got quiet. “I worry sometimes. Like, about what’s gonna happen to you once I leave.”
My chest tightened. His tone was different. How old was he now? Sixteen? Seventeen? About old enough to start looking at an engineering school somewhere. Old enough to be on his own and not need me anymore.
I took a drag from my smoke. “You’ve started looking at schools, haven’t you?”
“I’ll be old enough for admittance to Becker or the E.I. next year.”
“Those are good schools.” I’d gone to Becker. But then, he knew that.
He rolled the beer bottle between his hands nervously. “I owe you a lot. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for you. And I’m not leaving you forever. I’ll come back on holidays and breaks. But I just worry about who’ll take care of you when I’m not around.”
I chuckled. “Take care of me?”
He gave me a knowing look. “You know you would live in a filthy hovel and eat nothing but whatever Yuuto’s rat cart is serving up if it weren’t for me.”
“I got along fine before you came along, kid.” It wasn’t right for him to worry about me so much. “You need to go make something of yourself.” And do it better than I had.
“I would feel better if you at least considered the possibility that you could have a partner of some sort. Some nice woman who likes you that you also like. That sort of thing.”
I ran my hand through my hair, mussing up the bedhead. He rarely brought up my perpetually unpartnered status. “Come on,” I said. “I’m not the partnering type. Look, there’s that tech expo going on down in Hightower. Best Tech of 2346 or some nonsense. I got an invite. Let’s put this 280 on hold and see if we can’t get some inspiration.”
He looked sheepish. “Actually, I was gonna go out with Celia and Brian to check out the new project over in the Melkov area.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I can do the expo myself.”
He stood. “You’ll have fun, I’m sure.”
“Right.”
Lots of fun.
* * * *
I hated expos. Lines of tyrannical companies hawking their wares, talking up their features, outright lying. At least my celebrity was wearing off as the war became more distant. Right after, I’d have an avalanche of self-serving assholes congregating around me, wanting my attention or time or whatever. Before the war I’d been an unknown grease monkey wasting an elite engineering degree, but after scraping together a design for the rebellious colonies, I was the next big thing for a hot minute.
In the human system, there were the Core worlds and the Outer Core. That “Outer” made all the difference. The Core worlds were the first to be terraformed and developed by the big corporations. The Outer Core—the colonies—were the next stage. The corps did the terraforming, but the people who settled in the Outer Core did all the actual work of building. The Core just had trouble acknowledging that. They forced us to always send them taxes, as if they did anything for us. They bossed us around by limiting our self-governance. Made fun of our accents. Basically, they were all-around assholes. So we got pissed off and pulled the rug out from under them in a glorious colonial revolution that had been very, very close to successful by the time we had to surrender and accept a humiliating peace treaty.
I came out of it okay. The colonies had needed engineers, and I had practically volunteered my time. My design gave them an edge in their battles over the shipping routes. The engine hadn’t been flashy, but I got cred for patriotism if nothing else. So as the bitter taste of colonial defeat had settled in, I’d had a gallery of interested parties waiting to see what I would do next.
But my encore never came, and the sycophants got bored. Now I was slowly turning back into an unknown grease monkey. Circle of fame.
I blew out a stream of smoke as I stood outside the convention center, debating whether to actually descend into that madness or if I should just camp out in a bar all day. The conversation with Ryan had put me in a foul mood, as had his decision to ditch me.
Parents of teens had to deal with this sort of stuff. Kids got older. They spent more time with friends. They eventually left to go to school. But I never thought I’d have a teen. I never thought I’d have a kid. I was utterly unequipped for the feelings that went with it. My general approach to dealing with emotional whirlwinds was to drink them away, but it was harder to do that knowing that Ryan worried about me so much.
