Chapter 03 | Aestas ¤ The Yellow Balloon

Before Lilit could react in any way, she heard a voice from far away yelling, “He is kidding! Do not listen to him!”

Looking behind Durojaiye, Lilit saw another one of the immigrants attempting to roll down the aisle to her station. He was not making much progress as he did not seem to have regained a lot of strength in his arms yet to push the wheels along. Although, by the looks of him, Lilit doubted that he ever could have had much power within his flabby exterior. Whereas Durojaiye appeared to be in peak physical shape, the newcomer looked like a beachball. Lilit began to feel a pang of guilt at the thought and filed it away for future self-improvement. Even in a place like Aestas, prejudice had not been completely overcome. Sure, predetermined judgements based on the superficial components like skin tone had been largely put behind them, but plenty of other ones remained, especially socio-economic concerns.

Peering at the man coming down the lane, Lilit could not place what region on Earth he may have originated from. It did not help that people of various façades had moved all over the planet. The only thing she knew with certainty was that he was darker than her and lighter than Durojaiye. That didn’t really narrow things down.

As the stranger rolled up to the window, Durojaiye smiled in delight. Something sparkled in his eye, but the newcomer did not seem to notice. Instead, he continued to stare straight at Lilit and pleaded, “Please forgive Durojaiye; he thinks that he is funny.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Lilit reprimanded, “but just who are you?”

“Oh, many apologies,” the heretofore unidentified man said. “My name is Ahmad Al Zaheri and I just want you to know tha—”

“Hold your horses, Ahmad!” Lilit commanded as she raised her hand up to the glass. She created a second virtual monitor setup and sent a digital request for permission to pull up Ahmad’s record. A manager would have to manually approve the ask as Coordinators were not supposed to pick and choose their own clients. In the dropdown to enter a reason for the override, Lilit selected “Spouse or Domestic Partner” and submitted it. A brief moment later, Lilit’s cousin granted the authorization and Ahmad’s information filled her secondary setup.

Ahmad tapped his hands nervously as Lilit looked over his details. Raising her head, Lilit reproached him, “Ahmad, nothing in your record here shows any type of legal connection to Durojaiye. How long have you known each other?”

Ahmad fumbled for a bit before asserting, “It has only been a few weeks now, but it feels like forever.”

Lilit smiled at this and felt her own anger at being suddenly interrupted melt away. Relaxing her own countenance and making understanding gestures towards Ahmad appeared to finally allow him to calm down, too. “Oh, so you two met aboard the interplanetary shuttle? That’s so sweet!”

“Yes, exactly,” Ahmad proclaimed. “Although nothing about Durojaiye should be considered sweet. He needs me to look out for him, otherwise he is likely to wind up dead.”

“Based on what I’ve seen so far, I can’t disagree with your assessment,” Lilit granted.

“Well, I do!” Durojaiye protested. “I have been more than capable of taking care of myself for the decades before we met, and will be very willing and able to do so during my time here and beyond. I keep telling you: you do not need to worry about me.”

“Though you say this, I have no choice but to continue to do so,” Ahmad countermanded.

“You two are absolutely adorable!” Lilit gushed. “Alright, I get it, you don’t have to tell me anything more. I see how quickly things have gotten serious!”

“Now I am confused,” Ahmad perplexed. “I do not understand what you mean.”

“She thinks we are a couple,” Durojaiye explained to his companion.

“A couple of what?” the still lost Ahmad asked.

“A romantic couple,” Durojaiye began. “Because I spurned Lilit’s advances earlier, she now believes that you are my beloved who is keeping her from syphoning off my DNA to expand the gene pool.”

Lilit tried to interject during the entire replay, but Ahmad beat her to it, “Me, in a romantic relationship, with him?!”

“What is wrong with me?” Durojaiye demanded.

“Where to begin?!” Ahmad exclaimed. “Who would want to bed you... aside from Coordinator Lilit here, I mean?”

Lilit wanted to scream but she could not get a word in edgewise between the duo. Instead, Durojaiye responded with, “My wife, Chigozie, back in my home village. And I can prove it with the children we have.”

“What wife?” Ahmad asked. “What children? You have never mentioned any such thing before. Do you not believe that this would be pertinent information one would readily share with a good friend?”

“You never asked,” Durojaiye accused. “You have been too busy lecturing me on handrail safety and Venusian culture.”

While they were bickering, Lilit took a deeper dive through Durojaiye’s record before declaring, “He’s telling the truth.”

“Huh?” was all Ahmad could respond with.

Durojaiye turned back towards Lilit and declared, “It is okay, you can tell him what you are seeing on your screens.”

Taking his permission to reveal personally protected information at face value, Lilit noted, “Ahmad, it’s all right here in his profile. Durojaiye, is your family coming to Venus later? It’s rather unusual for a married person with children to come here alone.”

“No, they will not be joining me,” Durojaiye confessed. “I will return to them when I complete my mission. Until that time comes, I will not be able to see or communicate with them. I will miss them terribly, but this is a temporary situation that is beyond my control. I know what must be done, so I will see it through until such a point that we can be reunited.”

“You mean this alleged espionage mission of yours?” Lilit scoffed. “You do realize that by telling us you are a secret agent, you are officially the worst one in all of history.”

“You mean, this spy thing is real?” Ahmad asked aghast. “That this is not just one of your bad jokes? That you really are some type of infiltrator?”

“More like a mole,” Durojaiye conceded. “Lilit, please be at ease; I am not here to do anything nefarious or cause any damage. Quite the contrary. I have been assigned here to act as a citizen of Aestas and do whatever is asked of me by you or whoever else is in charge. If you need me to pull weeds, that is what I will do. Should you want me to construct a new skimmer, I will do that exactly as the directions are laid out and never deviate. A key part of my assignment is to observe and report back about regular life here on Aestas. Earth Central Command is looking for intelligence on what it is like to be a Venusian, on getting into your minds and hearts. Therefore, I will be a Venusian so that they can learn and plan and scheme and prepare for how you might respond to a variety of stimuli.”

“How could I possibly trust you to freely roam around my home after a damning admission like that?” Lilit insisted.

“How do you make the decision to trust anyone who comes up to this window? How will you decide if you should trust Ahmad?” Durojaiye countered.

“Hey!” Ahmad shouted. “Unlike you, I have actually worked tirelessly and prepared to be here. I came to Venus of my own volition and want to be unconditionally accepted into my new home.”

Lilit looked through Ahmad’s records and verified this reality. He had degrees and proficiencies in just about every useful field for someone living on Aestas. Looking up at him and forgetting to formally receive permission to reveal details about his life, she said, “Ahmad, I’m quite confused. You are, for all practical purposes, overqualified. Why did it take you so long to finally get here?”

Not giving him the opportunity to answer, she then turned towards Durojaiye and said, “Your record indicates almost no useful skills whatsoever. You say you’ll pull weeds or build a skimmer, but how do you intend to do any of these tasks? You don’t have any prior experience doing either of them, or much of anything else worthwhile, it would seem.”

Durojaiye was quiet as he appeared to have no answer. Suddenly, breaking the silence, Ahmad declared, “Then I shall teach him.”

“Ahmad, what are you saying?” Lilit cried. “Do you realize that by intertwining yourself with this man you are tying yourself to his fate, whatever it may be? He is, I might add, a person who has already broken your trust after just a few weeks of knowing him.”

Not deterred at all, Ahmad immediately entreated, “Coordinator Lilit, please, I am begging you to let Durojaiye stay and to make me responsible for his education so that he might be found suitable.”

“Why would you offer this?” Lilit charged again. “What has he done to earn such loyalty and sacrifice from you? I should lock him up in a holding cell on the docking platform and send him back to Earth on the next shuttle!”

“No,” Ahmad demanded, “that will not do. I believe that Venus is the land of new beginnings. It is why I have come, and it can be that for my dear friend here. Durojaiye, whatever your past is, whatever your reasons for being here are, they do not matter. I can help you see Aestas as a fresh start for you, too.”

The above piece is an excerpt from the speculative hard science fiction novel Aestas ¤ The Yellow Balloon by J.P. Prag, available at booksellers worldwide. Learn more about the author at www.jpprag.com.

As humanity begins to tame the stars above, at what point do a group of colonists turn into a unique, indigenous people who will band together to protect their homeland... no matter what?

Lilit Sarkisian was an average young woman who made a living welcoming new immigrants to the floating city of Aestas, soaring high above the clouds on Venus. Then, one day, she met her new clients Ahmad Al Zaheri and Durojaiye Yakubu. From that moment onward, her life irreparably changed and forever altered the course of the place she had always known as home. Somehow, these two became her best friends in the whole universe, and her most loyal coconspirators.

Aestas appeared to be a successful colony, much more so than places like Mars where terraforming had ultimately failed. Yet the powers-that-be, both on Venus and Earth, refused to do anything to alleviate the pressures caused by its exploding population. To fully resolve these issues, Lilit found herself evolving from an unknown civil servant to the leader of a revolution to a dangerous interplanetary symbol. Her story did not end there, though, nor did the machinations of those who had other plans for her birthplace.

With the help of her most trustworthy companions Ahmad and Durojaiye, was Lilit able to save the irreplaceable Venusian society from forces far more powerful than her?

Aestas ¤ The Yellow Balloon is a work of mixed fiction and nonfiction elements. With the fiction elements, any names, characters, places, events, and incidents that bear any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental. For the nonfiction elements, no names have been changed, no characters invented, no events fabricated except for hypothetical situations.