You’re blowing past all the long, thin windows that are usually so distracting. The pallid green sky was beautiful when you were resigned to it, but now that every step is taking you closer to seeing something new, cloudy, maybe even blue, the view molders. Hard plastic changes to rubber under your treads before you know it, the occasional crunch of dust disrupting the elastic zone surrounding the airlock. You bounce on your toes a couple times after noticing a few of your neighbors doing the same in front of their designated storage area. They must have been awake even before the tremor, if they slept at all, to arrive before you. Before you can settle yourself on your stool, and almost like you’d called it up by thought, a 3 quivers through the room. The rubber mat makes its usual gurgle-whine-gurgle as it bunches and stretches against all the other layers of rubber underneath. You glance up, eyes flinting off the nearly-lanky kid from hub 200 as his gaze blinks over the room nervously. Anticipatorily, you mean.

To pass the time, and now that almost everyone is sitting in their spot, you start counting how many of the several dozen recruits’ hair whorls clockwise or counterclockwise. You have at least a couple inches of height on everyone in the room (besides the 200s guy), which makes it easy. Sixteen clockwise, fourteen counterclockwise, nine either too straight, too curly, or two messy to tell. One of the many girls who look like she was probably born in the 900s hub starts trying to pet down a wayward tangle of hair using her small, pudgy hands. You secretly hope that you won’t be paired with any of them for on-boarding, because it looks like they’re almost too young to even type.

It’s not much longer when a Plastics Repair Officer you’ve never met before gusts another wave of dust across the rubber as she emerges from the airlock. The warm cream of her uniform, rather than the usual white, gives her away as the one you’ve been waiting for. Your brain understands that she’s telling everyone the shuttle is cleared for boarding, to finish suiting up, but the only sound registering in your ears is the sound of a 10 quake whipping and tearing the floor up and down with a sickening bamBAM-bamBAM-bamBAM-bamBAM, even though everything around you is so, so still. Does anyone else notice?

Muscle memory puts the rest of your equipment on, guides you through the airlock, through the sterilization chamber, through the no-longer-just-a-model entry gasket, and to your definitely-definitely-absolutely-no-longer-just-a-model travel unit. It’s absurd how familiar everything looks to you, laying in bed like this. Everything exactly like training. Only now you have to unband your watchface for what might be the first time in years, in preparation for an upgrade. Nobody who stayed in the hubs would ever be able to afford any of this, but for some reason that thought doesn’t comfort you as much as usual. You unconsciously loop your right forefinger and thumb around your bare wrist, needing pressure.

The system is efficient once it’s finally set in motion by your check-in

Your central monitor pops on and off, sizzling with the images of various Producers, royal-purple-clad, delivering the same reminders you’ve seen time and time again: “We expect great things from CORA-L. We know how hard you have worked to get here...”

Close.